#(It's still much less of a problem nowadays fortunately but still people need to respect my blogrules ThankYou)

[melanielocke]

Lost in the Shadows - Chapter 8

AO3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Taglist @nott-the-best @foxglove-airmid @alastair-esfandiyar-carstairs1 @justanormaldemon @styxdrawings @ipromiseiwillwrite

CW for discussion of abuse and description of PTSD related flashback

Helping Gideon Lightwood visit old memories from his childhood was much harder than Alastair could have anticipated. Gideon did not know exactly where they would find the information they needed, so they had been visiting several memories where he thought he might have overheard something to do with his father’s dealings in the occult. There were several instances where Gideon had seen or heard something he hadn’t understood back then but did now. References to supernatural woman he was interested in mostly, it seemed like Benedict Lightwood had had an interest in sex with supernatural women.

So far nothing that might relate to what was happening to Thomas, though. There was an instant where Benedict Lightwood said something about a rival in business falling ill with an unsettling smile, where Gideon now realized that had been his doing, but they hadn’t yet figured out what creatures Benedict had made deals with beyond the women he’d bargained with for sexual favors. Alastair suspected the creature that might claim Thomas’ life had bargained for much more than sex. He couldn’t imagine giving up someone’s life for sex, whereas Alastair could picture a cold and heartless person such as Benedict Lightwood offering up someone’s life in exchange for money and power.

Part of the problem was that there were only so many of these memories Alastair could take and he was surprised Gideon was doing so well. It was a long time ago, of course, but Alastair couldn’t imagine ever being able to show someone else memories of his father. Not even those where he wasn’t drunk. He could talk about it, perhaps, but he could never show, he never wanted anyone to see just how defenseless he’d been.

Even seeing the memories of someone else’s neglectful father was difficult for him and the occasional racist comment brought back memories from school. Gideon surely didn’t agree with any of that, did he? Still, Alastair pushed through. This was important. This was for Thomas. He didn’t know if Thomas was right, if he was in danger, but Alastair knew he wasn’t going to let him die.

Gideon noticed after a while, it was getting difficult for him. ‘We can continue tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I can tell it’s not easy for you.’

‘I’m not used to visiting other people’s memory,’ Alastair said as an excuse. ‘That’s why I’m getting tired.’

He didn’t want Gideon Lightwood to think he was weak and he couldn’t take this. Entering other people’s memories being exhausting was at least believable.

Over the next week, he easily fell into this new routine. Mornings he would go with Thomas and take a walk. They explored the different trails in the forest, and talked about books, music, history, art. Alastair felt like he was getting to know Thomas better, and the more he did, the more he fell in love. Thomas had grown up handsome, tall and muscular, yes, but he was also kind, empathetic, and conversation with him was so easy. He had many interests, and could easily talk about them for a long time. Alastair had never liked small talk much, but neither did Thomas, so instead they soon found topics they were both interested in to discuss.

He would eat lunch with Thomas and his parents, and then continue with Gideon’s memory, always careful not to take it too far. It had to be difficult for Gideon as well, to go over memories of his father, but he didn’t show it. Perhaps he was just very good at concealing his struggle for his son’s sake. Alastair could respect that.

‘Alastair, maybe we should take a break,’ Gideon said after visiting a particularly difficult memory of Benedict yelling at Gideon and his younger brother when they’d interrupted him in some occult ritual. They’d been going over memories for a week now, but so far they hadn’t found the answers they were looking for. Hints, yes, and this ritual could point them into the right direction but right now neither knew what exactly Benedict had been summoning.

They copied everything they remembered about the ritual and wrote it down, and Alastair suspected Benedict Lightwood had been summoning some creature. It was very uncommon for humans to be able to do magic, the ability Alastair had was a rare exception. He imagined Lucie’s ability was a similar exception, whereas Thomas’ sight was a little more common, but still rare. But humans could make deals with benefactors for power, something that rarely ended well. So far, it seemed Benedict Lightwood had made deals with multiple beings, some less consequential and mainly about sex, whereas others had given him the power to make opponents fall sick which must have cost. He suspected there were multiple benefactors involved, something Alastair didn’t think was common. For some people, enough was never enough.

‘Are you alright?’ Alastair asked. ‘Those memories must be difficult for you.’

Alastair was still doing the best he could to conceal how distressed it was. It wasn’t his father, it wasn’t his memory, but he’d been looking through the eyes of Gideon Lightwood with his father yelling at him, experiencing it as if he was Gideon himself. He tried his best to push back his feelings, to breathe. He narrated to himself, describing the room and its contents in a desperate attempt to not lose control. That was something his therapist had taught him, a method to ground himself in reality and assure himself he was safe.

‘I’m fine,’ Gideon said with a small smile. ‘But I can tell using your ability is difficult for you, and I don’t think it’s just because using the ability is tiring. I noticed you tensed up a bit more with every memory we visited. And the last one… I did not realize how bad that one really was before reliving it and I’m sorry for exposing you to that.’

Alastair guessed he now knew why Thomas was so annoyingly observant. It ran in the family.

The memory didn’t really take him by surprise. Nowadays, Alastair could often tell when it was coming even if he hadn’t learnt how to control it. He was thirteen years old and had come home after a particularly bad day at school and all he’d wanted was some time alone to cry and listen to some very loud music. He’d been badly bullied at the time, but he hadn’t dared tell his parents about that. Cordelia hadn’t been at home, fortunately, playing with a friend, Lucie perhaps. But his father had, and he’d noticed Alastair shaking, the tears in the corners of his eyes he’d tried to conceal. His father had been drunk, as he was always drunk, but he’d still noticed how upset Alastair was. He’d started yelling at him, calling him weak and pathetic. At the time, Alastair had still hoped he would carry cortana someday and fight monsters with it, before the sword had chosen Cordelia and Alastair had realized he’d never really wanted it anyway. His father had yelled at him that he would never be worthy of cortana, that he was weak and would run away crying at the first sight of danger, that he’d never be anything but worthless.

‘Alastair!’

Deep down, Alastair realized it wasn’t real, it was a memory and his father wasn’t here. It felt real though. He could hear Gideon Lightwood’s voice, even if all he saw was his father, stumbling drunk.

‘Alastair, I need you to breathe, alright?’

Alastair tried to take a deep breathe, in and out, like he’d practiced many times before. He always struggled with this, purposely breathing tended to make him light in the head. Still, it was better than not breathing at all.

‘Tell me what you can see,’ Gideon Lightwood said.

‘I see my father, bottle in his hand,’ Alastair said with a trembling voice. ‘But that’s not real. It’s a memory. I am in the cottage, and my father isn’t here. You are here, and you’re talking to me.’

Slowly, the cottage’s living room returned and he was sitting on the couch next to Gideon Lightwood again, carefully breathing in and out in an attempt to maintain a sense of control.

‘I took it too far,’ Gideon said. ‘I am terribly sorry, Alastair. I truly didn’t realize how bad the last memory was.’

He felt his cheeks warm, ashamed to let Gideon see him like this. Most of the time, he’d been alone when such a flashback happened, or he’d had enough time to run to his bedroom or a bathroom or anywhere he would be alone. He knew rationally there was a good chance Gideon Lightwood wouldn’t think lesser of him, but a voice inside screamed at him that now everyone knew how weak he really was.

‘Do you want some tea?’

Alastair nodded, still focused on his breathing. ‘Not the English kind,’ he added.

He focused on his surroundings, told himself over and over that he was safe, that he was far away from his father and nothing bad would happen here.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said when Gideon returned with two cups of hot water and a selection of tea bags. It wasn’t his mother’s tea, but it would do.

‘This is not your fault,’ Gideon said. ‘It’s mine, and I’m sorry. I don’t think we should continue looking through my memories.’

‘But Thomas’ life might depend on it. And not all of them are as bad as that one.’

‘I do not remember enough to be sure a memory is safe for you and I cannot in good conscious expose you to more memories like that. We’ll find another way. Thomas wouldn’t want you to trigger your symptoms for his sake,’ Gideon said. ‘We got some information I still need to work out. I take it you haven’t often visited other people’s memories?’

‘I’ve known for some time I can enter other people’s memories as well as my own, but apart from with my family I’ve never done it,’ Alastair said. ‘It is very invasive. I can’t imagine how you could show your memories of you father to someone else.’

Sometimes he and Cordelia would watch movies in Cordelia’s memory, but beyond that he rarely visited other people’s memories.

‘It was a long time ago, and I can tell it hurt you much more than it hurt me,’ Gideon said. ‘It’s not easy, but for Thomas I can do this. I won’t ask more of you.’

‘I’m the only one I know of with this ability though,’ Alastair.

‘That’s not your fault, is it? Did you always have this ability? It was not given to you by something?’ Gideon asked.

‘As far as I know I’ve always had. I think I was seven, maybe even eight when I realized other people couldn’t revisit their own memories the way I do.’

The ability had always come natural to him even as a child, and he’d freely talked about it with classmates in primary school, leading to some very confused reactions. One time when he was five or six he’d tried to teach Cordelia how to do it, which had ended with her throwing a toy tea kettle at his head because she couldn’t do it and they were both getting frustrated. Back then his father had been very interested in his ability when he wasn’t drunk, and when he was eight he and his father had visited a memory of his father killing something monstrous in a forest in the United States, a horrifying deer like creature that had eaten a hiker. He still remembered the way it had gotten up on its hind legs, limbs all bending and twisting in the wrong way. How it had howled, the most horrifying sound Alastair had heard in his life. Alastair had had nightmares for weeks and his mother had been very angry with his father for showing him something like that when she found out.

In the years to come, his mother would yell at his father more often, but that never made him change, and she didn’t leave until Alastair was diagnosed with PTSD. She’d yell at him, beg him to go to a clinic. But his father had always refused, denied the problem, and Alastair had done the best he could to protect both his sister and his mother from him when he was drunk. He suspected even his mother had not truly seen how awful he could become when he was drunk, Alastair had made sure of that.. His diagnosis had been a wake up call for her. But at least she was safe now.

‘We need to know what being my father dealt with.’ Gideon sighed. ‘This would be much easier with his journals, but so far Tatiana ignored my calls.’

‘Perhaps if we look again,’ Alastair said. ‘Sometimes it helps to go over the same memory again, see if there’s something we missed. The details can make all the difference.’

‘No,’ Gideon said. ‘You just had a panic attack from my memories . It’s because of my father’s abuse, isn’t it? He brings up your bad memories of your own father. I won’t take you back into my memories, I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I… I know what it is like to grow up in a broken home. So if you want to talk, I’m here and I promise I’ll keep your secrets.’

Alastair was tempted to retreat in his shell, to refuse to talk about it as he always did, but he felt oddly comfortable around Thomas’ father. He was kind and empathetic, like his son, and he’d helped him through a flashback. He suspected Gideon Lightwood understood that being told his father was a hero and being a hero came at a price wasn’t kind, even if it wasn’t the same for him. It was very clear that Benedict Lightwood was not and had never been a good person, whereas even Alastair acknowledged his father had done good things once.

‘It seems unfair,’ Alastair said after a silence. ‘To complain about my father to you. From what I’ve seen, yours was worse.’

‘It is not a competition of who has it worse, Alastair,’ Gideon said. ‘My brother and I have both found our way to move on from everything that happened. We had each other, we had friends, a support system that could help us through it. I think that until recently, you have been very alone, and that makes it much harder.’

‘Thomas has been kind to me,’ Alastair said. ‘During our morning walks the past week, but he was also kind when we went to school together. I appreciate that.’

He hated to admit it even to himself, but he didn’t think he’d ever had friends beyond Thomas. In his childhood they’d moved around often and he’d gone to so many different primary schools that he’d never been able to make friends, and when he’d gone to secondary school he’d first been bullied badly, then turned to bullying others in a desperate and hopeless attempt to protect himself. The other bullies at that school might have considered him a friend, but Alastair did not. He knew these boys would have picked him as a target if he hadn’t shown how vicious he could be with his words. And at his last school, he’d simply stopped caring and kept to himself, just cruel enough to make sure the bullies knew better than to bother him.

‘I’m glad to hear you’re getting along with my son,’ Gideon said. ‘Do you have any other friends?’

‘My sister, Lucie occasionally although we’re not close,’ Alastair said. ‘That is all. I never knew how to make friends, and it didn’t help that other children always thought I was weird.’

Alastair had always been one of the smartest children in his class, and other children could be jealous. Some thought it was impossible that a brown boy was doing better than them. Others simply didn’t understand the things he was interested in. Then there had always been children who made fun of the weird food his mother had made for lunch until he’d resigned to eat school lunches even if those were usually terrible.

Alastair considered for a moment, but then continued. ‘I did have one other friend, from when I was fourteen until recently. We mostly wrote emails to each other, texted after a while. He was about six years older than me, and at the time he was the one person I thought I could trust. But I was wrong about trusting him.’

He wasn’t sure he wanted to reveal his relationship with Charles, but at least this would give enough context on why he’d been so unwilling to trust anyone. Charles had done the best he could to isolate him, positioning himself as the one person he could trust. Charles had discouraged him from coming out to aunt Risa, which he’d considered at the time, citing that Iran was very homophobic as a reason. But just because the laws in Iran were homophobic, didn’t mean all Iranian people were and both his mother and aunt Risa had been open to learn more. And because Charles had seemed so trustworthy, so caring, Alastair no longer knew how to be sure he could trust someone. Even now he was wary, there was a voice inside screaming to run, to get away before this ended badly. It also felt nice though, talking to someone who had grown up in an abusive household and had survived. If Gideon had, maybe he could too.

‘What happened?’ Gideon asked gently.

‘I’m not sure…’ Alastair began.

‘You don’t have to tell,’ Gideon said. ‘I know it can be hard to trust someone after having your trust broken so many times.’

Alastair took a deep breath. He wanted to trust Gideon, he really did. It must be so nice to have father like him. ‘He wasn’t just a friend, we were in a relationship. I thought it was everything I could want, and for a time the illusion of being loved was enough to push away the pain. I thought that just what love was like. I left him some time ago when I finally realized what he did wasn’t alright.’

‘You said he was six years older than you?’ Gideon asked.

‘Yes,’ Alastair said. ‘I was sixteen when I entered a relationship with him. I didn’t realize at the time that it was creepy that such an older man was interested in me. I thought it meant I was mature and was so flattered by his attention.’

‘It can’t have been easy to leave him,’ Gideon said.

Alastair stared for a moment. He didn’t expect people to understand that. Cordelia was sweet and caring but he didn’t think she really understood why it had taken him so long to leave. She had a point, why keep going back when every dismissal was like being struck with a dagger? Why keep falling for his praise when Charles would mock him only moments later? Alastair didn’t understand it himself either, only that he’d genuinely loved and worshipped Charles.

‘I had help,’ Alastair admitted. ‘Cordelia spent some time trying to convince me to leave. But even when I started recognizing just how bad he was treating me, I think part of me still longed for his praise.’

‘I think you are very strong, Alastair, that you could choose what was right for you and leave him.’

They were interrupted by Thomas, who entered the room carrying a bag of groceries. Alastair was once again struck by how beautiful he was. In school, Thomas had still been small and skinny and Alastair simply hadn’t noticed him that way. But he’d grown up tall and muscular. Yet his features were still refined and handsome for someone so tall. And he was so different from Charles. Kind, empathetic, a little insecure. Thomas didn’t think emotions were a weakness that needed to be concealed, Thomas would not mock him for feeling. Back at school he’d thought Thomas must have it so easy, to be so kind, but perhaps he was kind because that was what his parents had taught him. Alastair had learnt later that sometimes, the worst people were the ones who had it easy, the ones who had everything yet wanted more. People like Charles, or like Benedict Lightwood.

He wondered sometimes if Thomas liked men as well. So far Thomas hadn’t mentioned it, but he hadn’t mentioned any past or current relationships with girls either. He wondered if he could have a chance with him, with someone who genuinely seemed to care about him in a way Charles never had. To Charles he had simply been convenient, broken and isolated and very much willing to do whatever it took to keep his lover happy and satisfied, scared he might be abandoned if he did not. He imagined it would be different with Thomas, who was closer to his age. A relationship with him would probably feel more equal, exploring both their desires and needs, and not just his partner’s. Thomas was interested in what he had to say, in his opinions, his interests. Thomas could make him laugh, something he’d rarely done the past years.

‘Did something happen, Tom?’ Gideon asked.

Alastair had to agree Thomas looked a little distressed.

‘Yes, but perhaps it’s better if I show you,’ Thomas said. ‘Alastair, would you be able to help? If you’re not too tired, that is. I know it can be exhausting.’

Alastair had used his ability much more than he was used to, but suspected he could do this. However, he preferred to know what he was getting into. He didn’t want to see something that would trigger another flashback and definitely not in front of Thomas.

‘I can do it, but since I’m tired it would be easier if you told me what you saw before diving in.’

He wasn’t sure why he kept pretending it was just his ability. It was easier somehow, a more acceptable excuse. He doubted it was believable though.

Thomas nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I saw someone, and I thought I recognized aunt Tatiana. But now I’m not complete sure, and since dad will be much more likely to recognize her I think it’s best to show. And there was someone with her I don’t know. It’s not the first time either, I think I saw her a week ago but she turned away too quickly then and I didn’t realize… It’s probably best if I show the rest.’

Alastair nodded, and he concentrated to bring both himself and Gideon into Thomas’ memory. He saw the town’s grocery store through Thomas’ eyes, and he tried to slow down the memory.

When Thomas exited the grocery store, he saw a woman enter, a girl behind her. He didn’t think either of them noticed Thomas, whose gaze was fixated on the pair. The first woman was around forty, he guessed, long brown hair and light eyes. Alastair didn’t recognize her, but had to admit she resembled Gideon. The girl behind her didn’t look anything like the Lightwoods. She was unearthly pretty with long silver blonde hair and she wore a long white summer dress that left her shoulders bare. She had to be in her late teens, a daughter? So far Gideon had mentioned Tatiana had had a son, Jesse, who died, but he’d never mentioned her having any other children, nor had Thomas mentioned anyone else. And he’d just said he didn’t know who the girl was.

‘I’m not sure it was really Tatiana, I thought maybe I was just jumpy from everything,’ Thomas said. ‘And I have no idea who that girl could be.’

Thomas turned around and took the car back to the cottage and Alastair reversed the memory, focusing on the part where Thomas had looked at the pair. Gideon has turned pale.

‘That’s her. That’s Tatiana.’

‘But who is that girl with her?’ Alastair asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Gideon said. ‘As far as I know she had no children beside Jesse.’

Alastair took a good look at the girl, but couldn’t see anything unusual about her. Very pale blonde hair, a rosy pale skin, light eyes. She looked around sixteen, but had a perfect clear skin most girls that age didn’t have.

‘She looks kind of helpless,’ Alastair said. ‘The girl, I mean.’

‘I guess so,’ Thomas said. ‘Do you think she’s human?’

‘I’m not sure a supernatural creature could look so helpless next to a regular human woman,’ Alastair said. ‘If she was scared of something far more powerful than her, she’d probably look for another powerful being to protect her, not Tatiana. At the same time, there is something unearthly about how she looks.’

Alastair wasn’t sure what to make of her, but tried to take in as many details as he could. She was dressed in a white summer dress, wearing spotless white ballerina shoes and it occurred to Alastair that if she walked around on these shoes often, they shouldn’t be so white. Alastair was glad he wore mostly black as it didn’t stain as easily.

‘I’m not so sure she’s human,’ Gideon said. ‘I’ve seen a succubus visit my father, she reminds me of her. She’s younger though, but maybe succubae and the likes were children once too.’

They left the memory, returning to the living room of the cottage the Lightwoods had rented. Gideon added some things to his notes, describing the girl.

‘At least we are sure now it was Tatiana,’ Thomas said. ‘Do you think we should go talk to her, now that she’s here?’

‘If I can find out where she’s staying, yes,’ Gideon said. ‘But I think it would be best if I go see her alone, see if I can reason with her.’

Gideon left for the town to see if he could find his sister, promising he’d be back in time for dinner. Alastair hoped he would be safe, he didn’t trust Tatiana in the slightest. He understood why Gideon might want to give her a chance, he’d do the same if Cordelia turned against him. Not that he could picture that happening. She could be annoying, frustrated with him, but she’d never betray him.

Alastair decided to stay a little longer. Thomas wasn’t motivated to play chess anymore after a week of losing every game they’d played. Alastair guessed he made it too difficult, and instead opted for a game of ludo which led to much frustration on Alastair’s part. The dice seemed to favor Thomas.

‘I don’t know how you’re doing it, but you’re cheating,’ Alastair insisted.

Thomas threw his hands up. ‘How am I supposed to cheat. We both use the same die.’

Thomas threw the die and rolled another six. Unbelievable.

‘I’m done with this game,’ Alastair announced when Thomas had won.

‘You won at chess lots of times the past week,’ Thomas said. ‘I only won at this once.’

‘This game is stupid. You’re either cheating, or it’s just luck.’

Thomas smiled, and Alastair was very annoyed that his smile was so attractive. His lips looked soft, and Alastair very much wanted to know if they felt as soft.

‘I think you’re just a sore loser,’ Thomas said.

‘No I’m not,’ Alastair said indignantly. ‘I just don’t like it when games are solely luck based like this one.’

‘You didn’t dislike it before you lost,’ Thomas pointed out.

‘You really have to rub it in, do you?’

‘My sister Eugenia is worse,’ Thomas said. ‘Do not ever play monopoly with Eugenia, it will end in murder if she doesn’t win and she usually doesn’t.’

‘I never liked monopoly,’ Alastair said. ‘You know, the original monopoly was supposed to criticize capitalism. The modern version still does a pretty good job of showing why capitalism is terrible. Unfortunately, it goes over most people’s heads.’

‘In what sense?’ Thomas asked, and Alastair fell into a lecture on why capitalism was terrible.

Charles had been one of those people who insisted that capitalism wasn’t perfect, but it was the best system out there and modern society was only possible because of capitalism, which Alastair thought was stupid. Why assume any modern inventions were only possible because of capitalism and colonialism? When they were still together, Alastair had been very insecure in his own ideas and thoughts. Charles was so much older and wiser, he had to know better. After the break up, Alastair had realized that Charles’ ideas were stupid and mostly convenient to rich white men. He’d grown more confident in his own ideas since then, even if people tended to think he was radical.

‘You’re really passionate about this,’ Thomas said. ‘I like the way you light up when you talk.’

‘I hope you listened to what I said as well as how I said it,’ Alastair said.

‘I did, and you make some very good points,’ Thomas admitted. ‘I always thought we have to work within the system for change, but I admit I’m not expert.’

‘I’ve always been fascinated by political theory,’ Alastair said.

‘But you quit studying politics, right?’ Thomas asked.

‘Most other students didn’t take my ideas seriously,’ Alastair said. ‘Including my ex boyfriend. He wasn’t a student though, he’d already graduated by the time I started. And I’m fairly certain I don’t want to be a politician myself, having to deal with white right wingers all day is exhausting. I don’t know how to explain to them that you should care about other people.

But I spoke to some other students in the university’s multicultural association, and figured sociology might be a better fit for me, and I think doing research, figuring out new solutions and writing about them might be nicer. I’m not great at getting people to like me, let the people with better charm try to convince others I’m right.’

Alastair hadn’t socialized much, but he’d attended a couple of events hosted by the multicultural student association. Since many of the members of that association were Muslim, Alastair could be fairly certain there would be no alcohol there.

‘If it’s any consolation, I like you,’ Thomas said with another sweet smile that definitely made Alastair want to kiss him.

Charles had said the same thing at some point. With his habit of looking through memories, he tended to remember what people said word for word. But Thomas was so genuine in what he said, so open and honest, it wasn’t the same at all.

‘Really?’

‘Of course. You’re clever and passionate and you never make me feel weird or stupid for my interests. And I’m glad you decided to come here this summer, even if the circumstances aren’t as great as we’d hoped. If I’m going to die, I’m glad I had the chance to know you.’

Alastair took Thomas’ hand. ‘You’re not going to die,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you.’

[wordpressandsocialmedia]

10 Ways to Use Booking Plugin to Improve Appointment Attendance

It can be extremely distressing when a client cancels an appointment at the last minute. Cancellations, on the other hand, cause a lot more than an annoyance. This is a complete waste of time and money.

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10 ways to raise appointment attendance rate

To keep customers coming back, provide an exceptional customer experience

Having a wonderful product or service is still necessary. It'll be almost pointless if you don't develop positive interactions with your customers.

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Fire problematic customers

Keep in mind that your customers rely on you just as much as you do on them to run your business. If they consistently miss meetings, reschedule at the last minute, or arrive late, you should assess whether having them is advantageous to you or adds to your problems.

A customer who cancels at the last minute on a regular basis, leaving you with little time to fill your calendar with another client, is almost certainly producing problems. Maybe they don't even reschedule and don't show up; you keep trying to figure out why they didn't show up and reschedule the meeting.

This type of client not only messes up your schedule, but it also draws your focus away from others who truly need your help. Perhaps someone urgently demands your assistance, but you decline since your schedule is already full. If you know the other person would cancel the meeting again, you should accept the urgent request.

Have a plugin that allows you to arrange appointments online

Customers nowadays look up whatever information they require on the internet. If you use an online scheduling system like Booknetic, they'll have the upper hand. In this way, they will not be confined to the options supplied by a customer support agent.

A WordPress appointment scheduling system on the web can make the process much easier and faster. One of the greatest appointment scheduling plugins is Booknetic. Booknetic comes with a plethora of functions. Allowing customers to pay with PayPal and Stripe, as well as allowing them to schedule group appointments, are two examples. You can observe the difference by going to our website and testing out our Demo version.

Furthermore, by allowing consumers to examine all of the options before selecting the best one, they will be less likely to miss their appointment, resulting in a higher customer appointment attendance rate.

If you're not sure how to choose a WordPress appointment and booking plugin, start by learning what features to look for in a scheduling tool.

Demonstrate how much money they have made

Your consumers make appointments with you because they need something from you. When they have a busy schedule, they, like the rest of us, find it easier to ignore the meeting and focus on something else.

You should be the one to remind them of the value they will receive from you if they attend the meeting. Many clients may find that the appointment offers them far more than they anticipated.

They will begin to await it with bated breath depending on how you offer it to them.

Set up a waiting list For some odd reason, we yearn for what we don't have. And we're willing to wait until we figure out how to acquire what we want. Surprisingly, the reward gets more attractive the longer we wait. For instance, we go to university with the expectation of graduating in a few years. Many of us see it as the start of a new life, and we excitedly anticipate its coming. The closer graduation approaches, the more agitated we all become.

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Another advantage of a waiting list is that it increases the accessibility of the work. When you have this list, you won't have to seek for anyone else if the first person cancels. The system will automatically fill it with the next person on the list.

The same applies to appointments. When people join a waiting list, it signifies that making an appointment with you is difficult and that they will have to go through the queue to see you.

A waiting list has the added benefit of making work more accessible. When you have this list, you won't have to hunt for another individual if the first one cancels. The next person on the list will be automatically filled in by the system.

Customers that did not show up should be contacted again

Sending follow-up notes after the customer arrives and the meeting goes as planned is a wonderful idea. It may, however, be a more important tool for individuals who did not show up.

The first thing you should do if a customer fails to show up for a meeting is to contact them and question about their whereabouts. You can continue to help them if you can, whether they forgot or not because there's a good reason for it. If not, show that you're aware of the situation by attempting to reschedule the meeting as soon as feasible.

You can have problems getting them back on track if you don't do it appropriately over the phone. Clients would most likely forget to reschedule the consultation for a long period. If they don't respond straight away, ask them when the best time is for you to reach them.

Make an effort to be on time

One of a company's most precious assets is its punctuality. If you consistently arrive on time for meetings and follow through on your promises, you will demonstrate that you care about the people you work with and appreciate their time.

However, being on time is not the same as being on time all of the time. Due to unforeseen circumstances, you would not be able to make it to your appointment on time. As a result, try to take in such unanticipated occurrences while planning your day or week to prevent upsetting your consumers.

Show your gratitude 

Giving gifts or making huge gestures isn't the only way to show your appreciation. Saying "thank you" and expressing that you mean it is all it takes. There are numerous ways to demonstrate your appreciation for your customers. The most straightforward technique is to thank them in person and underline their importance to the firm.

Handwritten thank-you letters or personalized thank-you cards are popular among businesses. As a result, customers are made to feel not just welcome, but also special. And when we feel special, we all want to show our gratitude to the person who made us feel that way.

Customers who have received a thank-you message are less likely to cancel their next appointment.

Make an effort to send reminders

You could be a busy person who wants all of your clients to respect your time and show up when they say they will. This may be true, but keep in mind that your customers are still on a tight schedule. They'll be so engrossed that they'll forget about the meeting they scheduled with you.

Sending them appointment reminders and informing them that you are considerate enough to provide them with reminders is a simple method.

Even if you send out reminders, customers sometimes forget about their appointments. Even though no-shows are rarely intentional, they should be eliminated.

You can send SMS, email, and WhatsApp notifications to your customers with the Booknetic appointment plugin.

Make an effort to hold them accountable

You may hold your customers accountable in a variety of ways. One of the most effective techniques is financial openness.

To put it another way, you should plan ahead of time for meetings. They are not compelled to pay the entire amount before to the meeting; nevertheless, charging them a fraction of the fee will make them reconsider canceling the meeting.

Keep an eye on them

To hold your customers accountable, you can do a lot of things. One of the most effective tactics is financial openness.

To put it another way, you should plan ahead for meetings. They are not compelled to pay the entire amount prior to the meeting; nevertheless, charging them a fraction of the fee will make them reconsider canceling.

Conclusion

Overall, if you want to increase appointment attendance, you may show that you are the best option and that you have a chance for them to arrive. For some firms, pre-paid appointments are ideal; for others, cheery updates are adequate. You might be able to put them to use. Find out what works best for your business, and don't forget to persuade your consumers that you're the finest choice.

[anarkhebringer]

Headcanons about Cervus and Lunarius then? Reminder that I Love And Care You Friend

I Love And Care You Too, Floops

Let’s see, headcanons about the sun and moon kings...

I guess I’ll start with Cervus since he’s always on my mind LOL

- He’s multilingual, and also studies languages and cultures in his free time. He knows more human languages than demon languages, oddly enough. You can thank him for the knowledge of humans and their cultures in Hell expanding so rapidly nowadays.

- He’s an absolute history buff, and LOVES it. He gives a shitload of information at once, but he still manages to keep you hooked in. He also likes to try and paint pictures of what he’s saying by trying to think up hypothetical story examples. Even if you forget a lot of what he tells you do to so much information, he doesn’t mind, because this is a topic he genuinely enjoys all around the board, so he doesn’t mind telling you again.

- He’s not like most kings, and does a lot of his work himself. He enforces breaks for his servants when there’s no rush, and Hell, he even asks the servants if they need any help with difficult tasks and actually joins them to help them out when he can. He asks his servants for things, doesn’t order them. He’ll tell them “please” and “thank you” for their work. Growing up how he did, mostly staying outside and in the streets to avoid his parents, he got to see the cruelties of it all and how the less fortunate are taken advantage of, so he swears to make his servants feel valued and offer them proper compensation for their work. He’s sworn to treat them like the living, breathing beings that they are. Treat them with kindness and value their work. He pays them by the time they work, not the tasks they complete, so it’s all fair in the end in his mind.

- His nobles that live in the palace with him are very clearly split on their opinions of him. The younger and/or more carefree absolutely adore him, and love the new breath of fresh air he is for the kingdom, and the hope he brings for improvement in peace among everyone. The older and/or more serious and traditional, however, utterly despise him for how carefree and out-of-the-box he is. The only reason they don’t try to get him overthrown or assassinated is due to the obvious positive progress towards higher quality of life and peaceful relations. That much they can respect, even if they refuse to show it.

- He may be all about civility and peace, but he won’t hesitate to escalate things in a nanosecond if he feels the need to. He knows that being civil when you need to just fight will only end even worse than if you fight and fail, so he’ll have no problems ending any fights that may arise. With Uvaria being known as the industrial and military power of Eastern Hell, enemy territories are scared to make the wrong move with him and risk him just destroying everything they ever knew to start over completely. Though luckily for them, Cervus is the stern and blunt type that observes situations carefully, so if the aggressor backs down and decides to finish things peacefully, Cervus won’t hesitate to do the same. He leaves the next move up to the aggressor most of the time, and says as such.

- His frame of mind in general? “I keep all of my emotions right here, and then I die.” He’s Not about revealing how he feels to people. Though the palace always has a psychiatrist on duty, so if he feels the sudden need to just ramble his struggles out, he can go to them. Though he barely ever does, and reserves that for his staff since he orders a few of them to make use of this free medical service when they need it. He’s a lot more empty and bitter inside than he lets on.

I’ll hop onto Lunarius now since Cervus’ part is super long jasihduh

- Himbo. Lunarius is a himbo. Not a complete himbo, though, but sometimes he’s VERY close. Cervus has had fun with that before when joking with him.

- Mentally he’s got two main modes: “I’m so happy that I could just EXPLODE! So I will just gush about it at you and maybe also cry instead.” and “Hey everyone, I’m Really Sad.”

- He’s scared of bees, but it’s the kind that has him defending and protecting them unless one approaches him, then he’s running for the hills. He’s also afraid of ghosts and zombies, though those fears have a much more sad and trauma-filled reason and reaction to them.

- He can sing really well, and likes to sing with Cervus sometimes, since Cervus likes to sing and does so very well, too. A way that almost always works to calm him when he’s mentally unstable and falling deeper into it is to hug Cervus and listen to him softly sing. Sometimes, he even hears Cervus singing to him in his dreams on those nights that he’s calmed by it, and he wakes up either at ease, or feeling void due to the negative things being gone. Either way, he’s thankful.

- He has a fondness for griffins, due to a special kind living in the snowy mountains of Celestae that are a pure white color, and their fur and feathers almost sparkle under the moonlight, when they’re most active. They tend to only come around the capital in the evenings and at night in the colder months, and Lunarius has easily befriended all that approach him throughout his life. Because of this, it makes him even more proud to brandish Celestae heraldry, due to it having a griffin as the main representative animal. Though the griffin on Celestian heraldry is special, as it also has the horn of a unicorn alongside the pure white color of the arctic griffins of the mountains. A unicorn and pegasus can also be seen on Celestian heraldry behind the horned griffin as the other representative animals. This specific horned griffin is fabled to be reborn when the next rebirth of the beloved moon deity in Celestae legends is, and since Lunarius is said deity rebirth, he eagerly awaits this griffin’s rebirth with the rest of his kingdom to befriend it, and eventually ride it into battle just as the legends spoke of.

- It’s not uncommon for Lunarius to sneak out to the stables at night and keep the horses, equosa (the sturdier horse-like creatures to replace horses in some situations), pegasi, wyverns, griffins, and various other mounts company for a bit. He genuinely enjoys spending time with animals, and finds peace and comfort in their company. He also tends to dress himself to take care of them as well, and clean up a bit for them again while he’s out there. He enjoys working on his own for once like this, and he likes further ensuring that the animals have a clean and well-kept area. At the end of it all, before he goes back inside for bed, he may end up taking one of his own mounts out for a ride to further clear his head. He has one of every mount available reserved specifically for his own use, so he tries to make sure and let all of his mounts have a turn when he comes out at night, and alternates between them all so no specific mount is chosen more than the rest every time he’s out there.

Okay, I’ll go ahead and stop here, since this is Very Long. Thank you for suggesting these headcanons, Floops! And I’m happy to go into OC headcanons anytime!

[wulfrann]

Frost Bite (Andreil Jack Frost AU, part 2)

All for the Game

Rating: Teen and Up

Story Warnings: Swearing

Relationship: Andrew Minyard/Neil Josten, Andrew Minyard & Renee Walker, Andrew Minyard & Nicky Hemmick

Additional Tags: Neil is Jack Frost AU, writer!Andrew, winter spirit!Neil, Pining, Therapy with Betsy, Friendship, Andrew tries to cope with Neil being gone, German Folklore, Andrew Minyard POV

[Part 2 of the When the frost is in bloom series - 8200 words - Published 2019-11-28]

Summary:

A few months after Neil leaves for the second time, Andrew decides to break his first writing rule and starts working on a sequel to Der ausweichende Winter.

He made sure to give the story a definite, well-rounded ending, but for some reason the characters just won’t leave him alone.

Read on AO3

*

A few months after Neil leaves for the second time, Andrew decides to break his first writing rule and starts working on a sequel to Der ausweichende Winter.

He made sure to give the story a definite, well-rounded ending, but for some reason the characters just won’t leave him alone.

And if he catches himself replacing Isa Holle’s name with Neil’s more often than he cares to admit, well. No one has to know.

*

Wymack does a poor job of hiding his surprise. Still, given the book’s success, he can only encourage it. It appears Fuchsbau Verlag has been receiving a steady influx of kids’ letters asking for more of Isa Holle’s adventures ever since the book came out. Most of them are for Andrew, but a respectable number are addressed to the characters themselves.

It takes Andrew by surprise.

He’s received letters before - but never that many, and never have his readers (no matter how young and impressionable) written directly to his characters.

It’s flattering.

Wymack promises to have Renee deliver the letters the next time she’s in town - which, according to hers and Andrew’s latest call, should only take a few days. He knows Wymack will probably send Renee with instructions to figure out Andrew’s plans for the book as well, but he doesn’t object.

Let her try - he’ll reveal as much as he wants to, and nothing more.

*

Keeping Neil out of his mind is difficult. Andrew is reminded of him every time King saunters into the room and nuzzles against his ankles. Whenever he thinks about his book. While he writes. Every fucking evening as he steps outside to smoke.

Every time Andrew looks out the window, he can’t help but picture Neil opening the balcony door to drag snowflakes and white breaths inside with him.

It’s a nuisance.

It chips away at his concentration until he’s glancing at the cigarette pack lying next to his keys more often than he’s finishing a damn sentence.

By the point Renee finally comes back to Stuttgart, he’s about ready to throw his computer out the fucking window.

Needless to say it’s a welcome distraction.

*

Renee notices, of course, because she knows him better than anyone. But since she’s a good person, she has the decency to wait until after their sparring session to mention it - once Andrew’s sore and centered and lying on the ground, feeling more himself than he has since Spring took over.

Neil throws him off-kilter. Pulls him out of axis and into his own orbit with an ease that’s less of a surprise than it has any right being.

It’s dangerous. And it’s gotten worse.

The first time Neil left, Andrew had been fine. He’d thrown himself into his work with little more obsession than he always did, had drunk more coffee than he probably ought to, but he’d been fine. Spring and Summer and Fall hadn’t all sounded the same.

He wasn’t counting, wasn’t waiting - would not set himself up for disappointment.

But he had grown used to Neil the second time around.

He had let him worm his way into his life - slowly but surely, the shape of Neil huddled on the couch reading with King in his lap had become part of his routine.

There were other things too. Because of course there were.

There were quiet conversations in the night that smelled like smoke; there was a mug that was only ever filled with warm water; there was frost blooming on the window every morning -

There were mingled breaths clinging to bitten lips and a different kind of warmth curling all around them, slow and careful and heady, and yes’s that left him dizzy and hands that stopped at his command.

There was someone to make him coffee while he was working and hot cocoa when he was not.

Andrew had known it was dangerous, but he’d let it happen all the same. And he hates Neil for it. Hates himself most of all, for letting it get this far, for being unable to squash the weak and fragile hope that Winter cradles now in its arms - a snow-white, fleeting flake, as delicate as it is razor-sharp.

When Andrew’s breathing has finally settled, Renee holds out a hand for him to take. She pulls him to his feet, grasp slippery with sweat but steady all the same, then spins around and settles herself on the bench, uncapping her water bottle with a small tilt of her head. If he didn’t know better, Andrew would think it was choreographed - not a single movement out of place, not a breath lost or step unsure. In fighting as in life, Renee moves like a dancer.

A lethal one.

Andrew joins her on the bench and picks his own water bottle up.

“Wymack told me that you’re writing a sequel,” she says. Andrew shrugs and takes a generous swallow. The water feels good running down his throat. His body is wild, abuzz with endorphins - he envies Neil’s flying abilities for a split second. The fantasy is short-lived however, and he quickly brings the bottle back up to his lips. Still, thoughts of the void cause his stomach to squirm, so he taps the ground with the tip of his foot to make sure that it’s still holding steady, and briefly relishes in its safety. “I thought sequels were the mark of the Unimaginative?” Renee goes on, then gets up.

“Imagination isn’t lucrative,” Andrew deadpans. "Maybe capitalism finally got to me.”

Renee taps her chin with one finger and a smile. “That’d be unfortunate. But I don’t believe you.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” Andrew says, then follows her up so they can start to stretch. Renee takes the hint. They bend and twist their muscles so and so in silence, and in the wishful hopes that they won’t feel sore come morning - or not so much that they won’t be able to walk, at least, in Andrew’s case.

(Sure, he stays in shape. He has a yearly membership at the gym and makes good use of it. But that level of exercise is as good as a stroll in the park compared to a sparring session with a pro MMA fighter.

Which Renee still is, official retirement be damned.)

*

“I’m tired of surviving, Andrew,” she’d said. “There are better fights than those we lead for our own sake. Fights that give, instead of fights that take. And I’m finally ready to give back.”

Andrew had taken a drag of his cigarette, aiming for nonchalant. He’s not sure it’d worked. “I thought that’s what praying was for.”

She’d smiled, because she always did.

“Faith without following through is like a cup without water. Useless, unless you plan to hit someone with it.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie,” he’d said, because he’d been buzzed and his best friend (not that he’d admit it) was leaving - and because Andrew liked a good metaphor, too, and that just hadn’t been one.

She’d left the next day with the Peace Corps. One week later, Andrew had received a package: a glass jar, filled to the brim with hollow, ravioli-shaped biscuits as tasteless as the ‘wisdom’ within it.

He’d thrown out the cookies because they were awful. He’d kept the jar because it was practical. (In the bottom left cupboard, beneath the sink. He’s been using it to store Sir’s dry food ever since she’s learned to torn open the sturdy plastic bag it comes in.)

He’s never told her, about the jar - the cookies he’d taken a picture of after he’d thrown them in the trash, and had sent it with the caption: ‘It was an insult’.

(‘You shouldn’t waste food, Andrew.’)

(‘This isn’t food. At best it’s cardboard.’)

*

Nowadays however, Renee has been leaving less and less. She’s always divided her time between volunteering and earning actual money - whether it was from beating up an infinite amount of people in a ring or doing whatever it is Fuchsbau Verlag pays her to do hadn’t changed that - but the proportions seem to have been reversed as of late, if only slightly so. She doesn’t leave for a full year anymore, and when she does spend most of one away, she never fully breaks contact.

Andrew tells her that, in his own words, on the way back to his place. Renee hums. Andrew knows not to take that for an answer, so they walk in silence until Renee’s done turning her thoughts into words. (And this is another reason why Renee’s his best friend, Andrew thinks. She knows the weight of words. The importance of choice.)

It takes a few minutes, but her voice is clear and steady when she speaks. “When I left for the first time, I thought I was finally ready to be good - truly good. I wanted to find redemption, and I thought that was the way to go about it: throw myself out there fresh out of the ring, and let helping be my healing.”

She pauses. Looks at her hands, loosely curled into fists in front of her. The index finger on her right hand is crooked, bent to the left from a vicious fracture. Her eyes linger on it.

“And it worked, at first, or at least I thought it did. The ring didn’t call to me anymore, not in the way it used to. I didn’t need my fists to stay sane. But I still needed to fight.”

She looks up, and finds something in the clouds, and blinks.

“I told you that fighting for others was better than fighting for myself, and it was - but better isn’t good.” She shakes her head. “I told myself I was helping, but really it was just another ring. I wasn’t giving back - I wasn’t even healing. I was just trying to forget.”

She smiles, then, because of course she does. “Retiring helped, but not as much as I’d hoped it would. It just wasn’t right. I asked Wymack for a job and he gave it to me. And it did help.” Her eyes find his, gentle, open, sincere. “The thing with stories is... they can reach even the most hidden scars in ourselves and pick at it. And I hadn’t healed right, so I needed to bleed again.”

There’s another pause. Andrew surveys the clouds for chances of rain and decides that it’s not for today.

“If I can heal through stories, then I want to try and help others do the same.” She says it like an evidence. A relief. Andrew knows the kind.

He feels it too, sometimes. This sense of direction. This meaning. This there’s a purpose for me here. He’s not sure he has the right.

They reach a street corner that marks the limit of what Andrew has come to think of as his part of town. His neighborhood, as much as the word doesn’t suit him. (There is always an itch where home is. Nowhere can wholly be truly safe, or so Andrew has come to learn. But it’s not as bad as it used to be.)

“How are King and Sir?” Renee asks him with a voice that hints at something else, disturbing Andrew’s thoughts.

Stuttgart’s early spring sky is white today, like a thin sheet of ice. Andrew shoves his hands into his coat pockets. “Irritating.”

Renee hums, playing with the hint of a smirk on the edge of her lips. She doesn’t ask why he keeps them around, then, because she knows. Instead she moves on, as Andrew knew she would. “How’s Mia?”

Andrew throws one of his deadpan looks that’s really a glare her way, just to make a point. He knows Renee’s immune to them by now, but it’s the principle. He has to at least pretend to be difficult.

He lights up a cigarette because he wants to annoy her.

“She’s having nightmares.”

The smoke curls up, volatile and barely there, almost tangible for a second before it’s gone. Vanishing into thin air. Like you. Andrew makes a fist of his free hand. “It’s always the same nightmare,” he pushes on. “Always the same boy, asking for help. But it’s becoming clearer. And the boy is starting to explain.”

“Can I ask who he is, or is that classified?”

She’s teasing. Andrew taps the ash off his cigarette and takes another drag, because that kind of information shouldn’t be easy to ask for. Stories take time. Fortunately for her, Andrew never seems to be able to reach the bottom of Renee’s patience, and she just waits for him to speak.

“Alberich, Prince of Nightmares,” he exhales with the smoke. (And how fitting is it, for this fleeting little prince. Curling away in the breeze.) “It’s in the first chapter.”

Renee smiles, a knowing curve to it. “Where did you take him from?”

“Das Nibelungenlied and some old Dutch poem, Karel ende Elegast. Mostly,” Andrew answers, punctuating it with a vague gesture of his cigarette-holding hand and a scowl. “For now. I need more material.”

Renee nods. She’s still smiling. “Will Isa be back?”

Andrew takes a deep cancer-filled breath, making a point not to look at the wreaths of smoke. His gaze ends up drifting upwards anyway.

He hums a yes.

Renee hums back, pleased and appreciative. Andrew is honest enough to admit that her approval feels nice. “I liked him - and so did your readers, judging by the letters they sent. I brought them with me, as you asked.”

Andrew nods. They’ve reached his block; he can see his door, his windows. The balcony.

“He’s a good character,” Renee goes on while Andrew opens the door. “He and Mia make quite the pair.” Andrew closes the door behind them. “Their relationship is an interesting one.” They climb up the three sets of stairs. “I don’t think you’ve ever written a character quite like Isa, to be honest. It almost feels like he’s actually real.”

Andrew puts the key in and turns, opening the door to his apartment. A soft thump, and Sir’s meow greets them both at the door. His tail is a question mark, a welcome home, where have you been? that Andrew answers by letting her smell the outdoors upon him. She saunters over to Renee then, curious and friendly, the known scent rising up from the shallow depths of her feline memory.

King, on the other hand, goes straight for the shoes. It gets a surprised laugh out of Renee.

“You never did tell me how you got that one.”

Andrew shrugs, shucks his coat off and goes about making tea. He doesn’t have to ask - the only reason he even has any in his flat is because of Renee, though he’s not about to admit it.

“Found him on the balcony freezing his fur off.”

“And you kept him.”

Technically it’s a statement, so Andrew chooses to ignore the implicit question there.

Renee doesn’t pry. She gets her tea and makes a neat pile of the letters Andrew and his characters have received on the coffee table, next to the yet-unopened book on German mythology Andrew’s been meaning to get into. He’s already gone through the other books he has on the subject, has combed every entry on the seasons, on winter - everything white-hair, ice-eyes, cold-hands.

(Where should I take you? Where do you fit?)

The myths are old and paper-worn. Any kind of new ink wears out under their weight, their dust and their mazes. They are enigmas kept alive from mouth to mouth, hungry voices to hungry ears. Humans and their stories. Andrew spins old texts through the spindle of himself and weaves a role for those threads of him that he cards out.

(It’s not you, it’s me. All I ever write is me. Take this image of you, shred it with your too-cold fingers, let me twine your story within mine.

Would you mind if you knew?

I made yourself a piece of me.)

*

Most of the letters are about what he expected. Kids who identify with the characters, kids who wonder whether Isa Holle is real (Have you met him? Does he really make snow fall? Did he teach you to talk to the wind like he does? and the answers on the tip of his tongue sing yes yes and no), kids who share their own stories with him, memories about winter, about snow, how they’ve learned to appreciate the cold weather more. There are a few from parents, too, who read the book with their children and found themselves enjoying it, and even one from a grandmother.

And then there are the letters that were written to Mia, or to Isa, and all of those kids believe in his story, and there’s even a few of them who say they’ve seen him.

It’s a lot.

Andrew leaves the letters on his coffee table and gets out. He’s not sure he could stomach smoking on the balcony right now.

Here’s the thing: Andrew knows he’s never written anything better than this damn book. He knows. He poured his damn soul into the thing. And he hates that he did.

The story is simple: a lonely girl makes a friend, and together they save the day.

Except it’s a little more complicated than that. Mia, a teenage girl, starts looking for Winter, because it’s the one season she loves and it’s late. So she falls into a well that leads her above the clouds, where she meets Oma Holle - Bringer of Cold, Destroyer of Pillows, Retiree Extraordinaire, and grandmother to the current Winter: Isa Holle, white-haired runaway on a vacation across worlds. Of course, once Mia finds him, she quickly realises that he is not, in fact, on a vacation, but is being chased by a pack of Sunlit Wolves. Shenanigans ensue, and she’s somehow roped into helping him trap them somewhere, and in the middle of adversity a beautiful friendship is born.

Except that it’s not just that, is it? Because Isa’s mother never wanted him and left, and his father is the one trying to get him killed. Because Mia is adopted, and the disconnection she feels towards her loving family is what ultimately drives her to Isa. Because their friendship is founded in part in a strong, mutual understanding of what it feels to be alone.

*

Bee, of course, is thrilled. She loved the first book, and cannot wait to see how Andrew will continue the story. It would have been a shame to drop such well-rounded characters, after all, although she understands why Andrew is - partially - reluctant.

“Exposing ourselves is hard, and it’s something we both know you struggle with. I’m proud of you for being so vulnerable with your readers in this book, Andrew, even if it was unintentional,” she tells him from over the steaming edge of her cocoa cup. Her smile is as warm as her drink. “The fact that you are now able to lower your guard as you did, though it can be frightening at times, is ultimately a good thing. It shows real progress.”

“I’m not sure I can do it again.”

“And that’s okay. But you won’t know unless you try.”

Andrew has a feeling she already knows something else is keeping him from writing, except that something is gone and never was here in the first place, so he leaves it at that.

Except that he was here, wasn't he? He was there on the balcony and on his couch, at his table. Andrew can’t write it off this time, not now, not ever because this time they touched, because Neil had become more real than a dream and Andrew had made him that way, had brought him that much more into his world by just writing about him. And even though he didn’t want to believe that he did, because they’d tested it, and a whole plane of Andrew’s life doesn’t make sense anymore.

Writing is a mess. The fleeting line between fiction and reality, stupidity and sensibility, magic and logic - he can’t tell where it’s gone. He doesn’t know what he believes in anymore. Stories are supposed to be safe. They’re supposed to bring you somewhere else for a while, somewhere where you can learn and play and hope all in the safety of your own mind. You aren’t supposed to bring anything back. You cannot bring anything back, and definitely not someone, definitely not him, of all things. The savior of trapped strays, riding the wind and clearing up a path for all lost kids. Those kinds of things don’t exist.

(In his weaker moments, Andrew often wonders why he couldn’t have been one of those kids. Where had his escape route been when all he’d had were bruises to cover and fairy tales to cling to?)

Andrew never should have been allowed to write about kids. It would have only been fair. He’d never been allowed to be one, after all.

So why does he keep doing it?

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never save me.

But they had.

Hadn’t they?

*

Andrew writes.

Not as fast as he’d like to, not as right. But he writes anyway. He pushes through the quiet whirlwind freezing his inspiration over. It’s a slow process, and thankless besides; Andrew has to fight the urge to delete and rewrite every sentence he produces, which is already trying on its own, and whatever he does manage not to frustratingly erase just leaves his lower eyelids twitching in distaste.

He hasn’t felt this solidly blocked in a long time. Usually this is cause for pride - or at the very least, satisfaction - but right now it just means that he isn’t equipped to deal with his own mess, which aggravates him in just that special kind of way.

It just figures that his ever-so annoying cousin would choose precisely this Thursday to hold one of his Mandatory Family Dinners.

Andrew would skip, but then Nicky would never forgive him, and he can’t have that.

(This isn’t true. Nicky would forgive him in a heartbeat. But there would be a look in his eyes, an old carefulness in the way he would move when Andrew’d be around, and that particular mess would take months to undo.)

*

Nicky’s flat is in Stuttgart West, a little ways off from the center where Andrew lives, on the third floor of one of those older, modernised buildings tourists take pictures of. It takes about one second and a half after Andrew's ringed the bell for Nicky to open the door with a smile bigger than his own face. “Andrew! You made it. Can I hug you?”

“No.”

Nicky shrugs and moves aside to let Andrew step in, megawatt smile absolutely unmoved. “I hope you like carrot salad because Katelyn brought, like, ten kilos worth of it.”

Andrew makes a face. Nicky snorts at it.

“Don’t worry, you’ll have your Schwarzwälder. Erik spent the whole evening on it.”

“Good.”

Nicky rolls his eyes. They join the others in the living room, where Aaron is busy telling Erik everything about his latest hospital story. He’s interrupted once Erik notices Andrew and immediately rises from the couch to greet him.

“You’re just in time for dinner, Andrew! I hope you didn’t have too much trouble parking.”

“You’re late,” Aaron supplies.

Andrew lets go of Erik’s businessman grip and nods at Katelyn, who nods in return and smiles, deliberately saving Aaron for last. “I had trouble parking.”

“You could have taken the tram.”

“He’s here,” Katelyn chimes in with a pointed look towards Aaron. “That’s all that matters.”

She still has her American accent, but even Andrew has to admit that it's barely noticeable anymore. She'd barely known any German when she'd arrived in Berlin years ago on that cultural exchange program, a weakness Andrew had taken advantage of immediately. The fact that he can’t anymore is irritating, but impressive.

Nicky emerges from the kitchen then, steaming dish in hand, cutting both Andrew's thoughts and Aaron's retort short. “Meal’s ready and I’m starving, so you all children will have to bicker later!”

Aaron huffs, but gets up to sit at the dining table with Katelyn in tow and a big salad bowl. Andrew is distracted by a movement in the corner of his eye, and watches Erik take a detour on his way to the kitchen to plant a kiss on Nicky’s cheek. “I’ll get the wine.”

Andrew looks away to sit as Nicky lets out an aggravated sigh. “Yes please.”

Erik snorts and they part ways, Nicky’s smile back in place as he puts the dish down in the middle of the table.

“Tada! Braised chicken with asparagus and baby potatoes, a la Nicky Hemmick-Klose. You’re welcome.”

“It looks delicious Nicky,” Katelyn beams.

“Wait til you taste it!” Nicky grins, sitting down.

Erik soon reappears with a bottle of white that he pours into everyone’s glass before taking his seat, right between Andrew and Nicky, and the chicken starts making its way around the table for everyone to grab a serving. Katelyn’s carrot salad goes around, too, but Andrew passes it along fast enough that he almost knocks Erik’s glass down. Small talk creeps its way across the table as everyone starts to dig in, so Andrew falls silent.

Watching Aaron interact with Katelyn, watching Nicky interact with Erik, listening to them all talk about coworkers and house chores or whether they want kids, Andrew is content to retreat to the sidelines.

When Aaron first had told him about Katelyn over Skype (and hadn't that taken his brother a long time to do), Andrew had felt like destroying the world. They'd been damn lucky Bee had talked him out of using all of his money on a plane ticket across the country. (“He's allowed to make his own decisions, Andrew . You don't have to protect him the way you did before.”) When Aaron had finally brought her back over with him for Christmas, Andrew had had enough time to mull it over that he'd only wanted to choke the life out of Katelyn.

Erik… Erik was different. Erik had saved Nicky's life and thus, the twins'. He'd gone out of his way to make sure the three of them could come back and settle in Stuttgart. He'd given them space. Andrew had hated him for stealing his cousin away from him when Nicky had graduated from college, but he'd only had to glance at Nicky’s smile upon hearing the news to let it slide.

(The fact that Erik could bake had helped his case. Sweetened the deal, Nicky would say.)

At the end of the day, Erik and Katelyn are - distantly - family. But allowing them in has disturbed Andrew's balance, and he still isn't sure if he'll ever gain it back.

Andrew knows, of course, he knows, from countless sessions with Bee, that there are many ways to make a good life. To find balance. And Andrew does like his life, for the most part.

Still, there’s a voice he can’t quite shut up in his head, that likes to sing whenever they’re all gathered like this.

(They don’t need you, and you know that, the voice whispers. They’re all safe now. They’ve even found their happiness. So why haven’t you?)

Andrew opens the kitchen window and lights a cigarette. The smoke fills his shell with a strange kind of heat, one will-o’-the-wisp flickering in the wind.

Eventually Nicky joins him. The night is vast outside, dark and thick and starless, wool-clouds heavy like blankets high above. They watch the city in silence: lonely passing cars and straying pedestrians in the dark, orange electric lights, whispering trees, nocturnal birds. Andrew surveys it all and then Nicky, one shoulder pressed against the wall, his chest leaning in slightly and his neck arched, eyes wandering out the window. They’re crowding the space, the both of them. This rectangular kitchen with its square window and barely room enough there for two.

Still, they’re not touching. Nicky made sure of it.

(They’d had a conversation here, when Nicky and Erik had just moved in. They’d been standing just like this. Andrew had rapped a knuckle on the window sill and Nicky’s gaze had drifted back inside.

“Are you happy?” he’d asked.

Nicky’s eyes had widened for less than a second, then his expression had settled and he’d smiled, quietly. “Yes. I’m happy.”

Andrew had nodded. Nicky had looked at him with that face he still makes when he wants to pry but isn't sure he can. Andrew had taken a drag out of his cigarette and blown the smoke outside, eyes trailing after it.

“Aaron is too,” Nicky had finally ventured.

Andrew had let a few seconds of silence pass before he’d said, “Good.”

“Are you?” Nicky’d asked then. He’d still been looking at him, on his face a smaller, more careful kind of smile. Caring. Andrew had been tempted to leave.

In the end he’d opted for honesty and said, “I don’t know.”

Nicky had opened his mouth, then closed it when Andrew’d glared at him. Then he’d sighed and said “Okay.”

Andrew had finished his cigarette in silence after that, and they’d gone back to the living room and kicked Erik’s ass at Mario Kart. It had been, all in all, a not-so-terrible evening.)

Nicky is the first to break the silence this time. It’s about the book, of course.

“A little birdie told me you’re writing a sequel,” he says. He’s grinning, and looks way too pleased about it. Andrew throws him a glare.

“Who told you?”

“No one!” Nicky says, holding both hands up in defense. “I’ve just got amazing detective skills.”

“Renee told you.”

Nicky’s grin becomes brighter in the face of Andrew’s statement and he shrugs, looking entirely too unapologetic. “Okay, she did. We had coffee together a few days ago and she knew that you’d never tell me yourself.” Andrew frowns. Nicky dismisses it with an eyeroll and a huff. “I’m not going to tell everyone, Andrew. I can keep it secret if you want me to. Give me at least a little credit.”

Andrew raises his eyebrows. Nicky mock-glares at him.

“I raised you,” he says accusingly, pointing at Andrew with narrowed eyes. It quickly morphs into a pout, however, as he goes on. “Shouldn’t that make me one of the first people you tell big news like this?”

“You’ll be the first to know when I run for Chancellor.”

Nicky snorts, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. “Don’t try and pass this off as if it’s nothing, Andrew. You never write sequels.”

“I just did,” Andrew says, and blows smoke out the window.

Nicky rolls his eyes at him again. “Alright, be difficult. One day you’re gonna get out of your teenage rebellion phase.” Andrew looks at him with a blank face. Nicy sighs, mockingly aggravated. The effect is utterly lost when it all melts into a smile. “I’m glad you are, though, Andrew. Writing a sequel.”

“Thanks,” Andrew says ironically.

Nicky huffs. “Seriously,” he says, and holds Andrew’s eyes with a sincerity that makes him want to look away. He doesn’t, though, because Nicky deserves better. Because he does, too. “I’m proud of you, Andrew. You know that, right?”

Andrew breathes smoke in then out, and in again. “I know,” he says, the words spilling out with the fumes.

“And I’m glad you found characters worth sticking around for,” Nicky adds.

Andrew frowns, but doesn’t respond. He finishes his cigarette in silence while Nicky waits, gazing out the window with a smile.

Erik still sucks at Mario Kart. Katelyn has upped her game, though, and Andrew only takes first place by a hair’s breadth. It’s not the worse evening he could’ve had.

*

Eventually Spring goes by. Andrew spends most of the Summer holed up in his flat, either writing or researching obsessively.

Renee comes around a few times but she’s busy with her brand new girlfriend, a friend of Nicky’s from oversea with blond hair and a wallet that’s probably the size of the whole country. She looks happy, though, so Andrew’s mostly okay with it. He’s tempted to make sure Allison Reynolds (‘Allie’) isn’t a threat, but Renee’s more than capable of defending her own heart and he’s neck-deep into Der Albtraumprinz anyway.

There are a few check-ins with Wymack, obviously. A few texts from Aaron. Monthly sessions with Bee. Nicky blowing up his phone with pictures of his wedding anniversary trip. Kevin even manages to drag him to a museum once while he’s in town.

Before he knows it the first leaves are already starting to fall.

*

It’s right in the middle of October when Andrew decides to tell Bee.

He doesn’t tell her everything, obviously. Only the realistic parts.

That there’s… someone. That they met two winters ago. That he left, and then came back, and left again. And yes, Neil came back, once, but what’s to say that he’ll find his way here again?

“Why wouldn’t he?” asks Bee. Andrew has about a thousand answers to offer, but he knows those aren’t the ones she wants him to find. So he searches, beneath the layers over layers of deflection and defense. It takes a few minutes. But here it is.

“There’s nothing worth coming back for.”

Andrew speaks the words matter-of-factly, like it’s nothing. Bee takes it in stride.

“Is that what you believe, or what you think?”

“Both.”

Bee nods, understanding as ever. “Very well. What makes someone worth coming back for, then?”

Andrew is tempted to cut the session short. He’s done it before, and he knows Bee won’t hold him back. But in the end he stays, and forces himself to think about it. He picks the question up and turns it around, examining the responses it creates in his mind. There’s a common factor there, so that’s what he focuses on.

“Protection. Safety.”

Bee hums. “Is that why he came back the first time?”

Andrew shrugs.

“Alright. Let’s try to look at this differently then. Why do you want him to come back?”

Andrew frowns. Bee is smiling over the rim of her cup, a small, patient smile she always has when she’s waiting.

Andrew opens his mouth. “He’s... interesting.” Bee raises his eyebrows at him, encouraging him to expand. Andrew’s fingers itch for a cigarette. “Every time I think I’ve got him figured out, he does or say something surprising and I have to reset my expectations. It’s irritating.” Andrew huffs. It only makes Bee’s smile warmer. “He respects my boundaries,” Andrew adds, because that had surprised him perhaps more than anything else, and because Bee will know. “Doesn’t question them, doesn’t push.”

“Does that make you feel safe?” Bee asks.

“No.”

“Why?”

“He’s a liability.”

“Because you’re not sure he’s coming back,” Bee says. It’s not a question. Andrew nods, even though it’s more complicated than that. But Bee knows this too, and he’s too on edge to explain. “Does he make you feel safer than Roland?”

Andrew frowns. He was not expecting that name to come up. “He’s nothing like Roland.”

Bee hums. “How so?”

Roland wasn’t a dead winter spirit with flying powers, Andrew doesn’t say. He leans back instead, crossing his arms. “Roland was a means to an end. I couldn’t have cared less about him.”

There. He says it with defiance, daring Bee to remark on it. Andrew’s fingers are digging into his arms.

And it’s true. Roland had been an opportunity, useful while it’d lasted.

Neil, on the other hand, is a risk.

This isn’t what he said. Not really. But it is what Bee will understand anyway.

She lets a few seconds pass, waiting to see if Andrew has anything to add. When it’s clear he doesn’t, she leans slightly forward with her elbows braced on her knees. “There’s nothing that you can do that will make Neil come back. That is entirely up to him. What you can do, however, is focus on the fact that you want him to and why, and what it means.”

That’s exactly what I don’t want to think about, Andrew almost says. But he knows that’s exactly the point.

It’s the middle of October, and outside the leaves make a carpet of red and brown. The whole world will be white in two months.

*

Andrew finishes Der Albtraumprinz’s definitive draft at about the same time that the last dried leaf reaches the ground. As he’s walking to Fuchsbau Verlag with the whole thing printed out, Andrew notices a new sharpness to the cold air blowing South. It bites into his cheeks and the tip of his nose, turning his breaths into small, white-as-the-sky-above-him clouds.

A gust of wind howls into his ears, blowing past his coat to stick something between his ribs. Andrew grits his teeth and pushes on.

*

It’s the 14th of December and Stuttgart’s Weihnachtsmarkt is in full swing when Andrew finally caves. Nicky has been to harassing him into going with him to the Christmas Market for days, but the promise of Renee’s presence is the only reason why Andrew ends up agreeing to the “evening of Christmas magic and late night shopping” Nicky’s planned.

As Andrew suspected, it ends up involving a lot more gawking at Christmas carols and wandering around than any actual Christmas errands. Nicky always buys all his gifts in November anyway, so does Renee, and Andrew tends to order it all online. So really, there’s no practical reason why they’re here, other than Nicky’s love for the festivities and Erik’s cross-ocean business trip.

So they wander. Nicky bribes Andrew with his weight in sweets, Renee adds a few handmade trinkets to her collection, as well a some decorations for the Fuchsbau Verlag office, and Andrew ends up purchasing a tiny felt donkey he’ll add to Bee’s present.

(It’s a bee-themed teapot. Bee broke hers months ago and has been using a plastic kettle since. The lid has antennas and the whole thing is probably one of the kitchiest objects Andrew has ever seen, so he knows Bee’s going to love it.)

They’re busy buying Würstchen at a snack booth for dinner when Nicky gasps, then starts jumping up and down and pointing at the sky. Andrew follows his gaze absentmindedly, expecting some kind of light display, and feels his whole body become rigid all at once.

It’s not a light display. It’s not even fireworks.

“It’s snowing,” Nicky gushes next to him. “We’re at the Christmas market and it’s snowing!”

And he’s right. There’s no mistaking the fine powder fluttering down into the light from the starless sky above, powdering the pavement like icing sugar. Andrew watches as the first snowflakes touch the ground and instantly disappear, physically unable to tear his gaze away.

It’s like looking into the void.  Like vertigo. A part of Andrew desperately wants to look away, but the rest of him is determined to stare, unblinking, as the fear takes over in his guts.

Renee’s voice breaks Andrew out of his spell, making him flinch. “I guess Winter’s early this year.”

The cliff’s edge is gone. Renee stands close to Andrew, smiling softly with sparkling lights eyes and rosy cheeks. A snowflake has caught on her scarf and refuses to melt.

There’s something caught between Andrew’s ribs and it hurts.

*

Snow doesn’t make a sound as it falls.

They’d had melted snow several times since the end of November. Heavy drops of liquid ice that would beat the world into pulp and then vanish, as quickly as they’d arrived. Andrew would listen to them pound against the window with a warm cup of coffee or cocoa cradled in his hands and relish being inside, where it was dry and warm and comfortable.

Where the rain is a hit, however, the snow is a caress. It blankets the world in silence, covering everything with soft whiteness. It crunches harmlessly as you step on it.

But snow doesn’t come alone; ice and frost are never far behind, and those will cut and crush what the snow has mollified. And the wind will yowl, and the cold will burn, and children will laugh as they play in it all.

Andrew is shaking by the time he makes it back to his flat. He’s taken his gloves off to smoke and the tips of his fingers are frozen red, brighter than the flame he had to cup in his hand to light his cigarette. Brighter than the Christmas lights dangling in the air, too.

He doesn’t take his coat off once he makes it inside. Doesn’t even bother with his shoes, and won’t that seem stupid when he’ll have to clean up. He can hear Sir meow at him from the living room, but not the pat-pat-pat of her paws on the floor. There is no sign of King. The space between his ribs grows bigger.

Andrew makes himself walk into the living room.

His two cats are waiting for him there. They meow at him from his desk, walking to the edge but not crossing the distance, attention focused on something else entirely. It’s only after Andrew has made it close enough to pet each of their heads that he forces himself to look up.

Light spills from the streetlights into the room, casting strange shadows on the floor. Upon the window that lets the light in, something glitters.

As soon as Andrew has set his eyes on it the tiny snowflake blooms, tracing the outlines of flowers and stars, and strange geometrical shapes he doesn’t recognise. It’s beautiful. It covers the glass in a layer that’s thin enough that a feeble light can filter through, but it’s not nearly enough to keep Andrew from bumping into a chair on his way to the door.

As he opens the door, his ribcage starts to ache.

There, standing on the railing with his hair flying around his head like a wild crown made of snow, is Neil. His eyes flicker from the window to where Andrew stands and he smiles. It feels like falling.

Andrew focuses on the feeling of cold steel against his skin and clutches the handle tighter in his hand.

Neil says: “Hi,” and floats down onto the balcony. His smile widens again.

Andrew lets go of the handle and unclenches his teeth, willing the pain between his ribs to fuck off.

“You’re early.”

The smile on Neil’s face wilts a little. He shrugs, looking away, and there’s a lie there. “Climate’s changing. Everyone knows that.”

Andrew tilts his head. “Is that so.”

“Yes,” Neil says, and meets his gaze. Andrew almost swallows his own tongue. “But I also didn’t want to wait.”

Andrew takes a step closer, almost entering into Neil’s space. He watches as Neil takes in a sharp breath, eyes flickering down almost too quickly for Andrew to notice. But then Neil looks down again and this time he lingers, dragging his eyes up slowly enough that it’s obvious what he’s asking. Still, he speaks.

“Yes or no?”

Andrew’s answer is a final step forward and a hand to Neil’s neck, bringing him down.

Kissing Neil is like trying to lick lightning. The inside of his mouth is a storm and Andrew can feel every cell of his body rattling with electricity, buzzing with it from his lips down into his chest where it pools, melting the ice between his ribs like dew in the summer. Andrew chases it, this electricity, brings it from Neil’s mouth to his, holds it in the space between his palet and his tongue where it’s warm. He doesn’t care about the cold or the wind anymore - all he’s interested in, all he cares for is right here. Andrew wants to devour him.

Which is why he stops.

A deep breath through his nose and he exhales, lips still brushing against Neil’s. His hands are framing his face, holding him there, and he can feel his warmth seeping into Neil’s skin.

Neil’s eyes are closed. His lashes are white as snow and flutter open slowly, taking flight. A dazed smile grows upon his face as his eyes meet Andrew’s and hold them.

Andrew swallows. “Staring.”

Neil’s smile brightens. He looks breathless and flushed, and way, way too alive for someone who should have died five years ago.

“I wasn’t sure you’d wait.”

“This is my flat.”

Neil rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean,” Neil says, and holds a hand up slowly to his face, letting it hover near one of Andrew’s own, still holding Neil’s cheek. Andrew flicks his gaze back to Neil’s face without moving his hand, so Neil covers it with his. “This. I didn’t know if I could expect this, or even hope. I didn’t know if I was allowed to.”

There is… something in Neil’s eyes that unsettles him, as he says it. A vulnerability he had never noticed before. Andrew steps away from Neil like he’s been burned and shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” Neil asks, frowning now.

“I’m not your answer,” Andrew says, biting the words out.

“No. But you’re the one thing I’ve been looking forward to for nine months. So what does that make you?”

Neil’s fist is balled at his side, his right hand clinging tightly to his staff. They stay like this, glaring at each other, until Sir scratches at the balcony door to be let out and Andrew breaks it off.

Neil doesn’t follow inside after him, so Andrew turns around and arches an eyebrow at him until finally he steps inside, shutting the cold air out. King immediately starts rubbing against Neil’s legs, meowing at him to be picked up. Neil crouches down and gathers the ball of fur in his arms, softly smiling down in disbelief as King immediately starts to purr. Then Neil looks up and catches Andrew staring, so he makes his way to the kitchen.

He gets two small pots, fills one with milk and the other with water, and turns the stove on. As the pots heat, he goes to fetch two mugs, and drops three spoons of cocoa powder in his. Neil watches it all from where he’s standing in the middle of the living room, on smile on his as soon as he notices Andrew looking back. Only then, as if he’d been waiting for Andrew’s attention, does he start looking around. Neil takes it all in frantically, avidly, jumping from the carpet to the couch to the coffee table, but lingering upon the desk and the bookcases.

“Those are new,” he says, gesturing at one of the many plants Renee peppered around the apartment in honor of Andrew’s birthday. It’s a maidenhair fern, spilling over a bookshelf from its pot.

“Your sense of observation is noted,” Andrew deadpans.

Neil huffs, smiling still. Andrew distantly wonders what it would take to break it and looks away, letting Neil wander around without his supervision. The water is close to boiling anyway, so he pours it into Neil’s mug, doing the same with his when the milk follows suit. Then he walks up to Neil, who looks away from the bookshelf he was scanning to take the mug and thank him, wrapping both hands around the warmth with a sigh.

“I missed this,” he says, eyes trailing after King as he saunters off, then back up to Andrew’s. “I missed you.”

“It’s just water.” Neil snorts. Andrew takes a sip of his cocoa, mulling the words over in his mouth, and says: “I wrote another book.”

Neil blinks. “What?”

“I wrote a sequel to Der ausweichende Winter.”

Neil blinks again and then grins, a flutter of color brushing his cheeks. “Can I read it?”

Andrew sips at his cocoa again and then turns, walking to his desk where a small package sits, already opened. He takes the book, a test-copy, out, and holds it out for Neil to take. On the cover stands Isa, facing away from the reader, Mia right by his side with a sword in her hands. Isa has his staff, and on his left stands a figure cast in shadows. They’re holding hands.

Neil looks at the cover then at Andrew, then back at the cover when Andrew just stares at him.

“Der Albtraumprinz,” Neil reads out loud. “Mysterious. Is that supposed to be you?”

“I’m not a teenager,” Andrew says, throwing a blank stare at him.

“Neither am I.”

“Good to know.”

Neil huffs, rolling his eyes, but refrains from further comment. He turns the book over, reading the synopsis in silence, then flips it back and opens it. The first few pages he barely even glances at, skimming over the By the same author at Fuchsbau quickly - and then he stops.

Andrew doesn’t need to look over his shoulder to know why. His books rarely have a dedication page, but when they do it’s always on the seventh, right before the actual story starts.

“To the wind that blows the Winter to and fro,” Neil starts reading. “You better come back soon.”

[princesscatherinemiddleton]

Princess Madeleine - Mama Magazine

“I want to be home with my kids as much as possible!”

Her highest priority is to spend as much time as possible with her children – who are so far unaware that they actually belong to a royal family. MAMA has met the three royal grandchildren and Princess Madeleine for a candid interview.

The past few weeks have been intense for Princess Madeleine. Recently she returned to Stockholm from Miami, the new hometown which she moved to a year ago, and she has just debuted as a children’s book writer, which has attracted considerable attention in both Swedish and foreign media. The children have been sick but they are now back home in Sweden over the summer – finally.

“It was not so easy for them to get over it this time, they have been sick with flu every two years. But in the end, Chris stayed in US with the sick kids and I brought Adrienne with me. So I managed to get home for the book launch.”

A few days after our big cover photo shoot with all the children, MAMA meets Princess Madeleine again – who is now recovering from a cold. She is dressed in a blue-grey jacket, white shirt, and around her neck is a thin necklace with small charms with the children’s names and a patron saint. She has some job assignments left before it’s time to leave together with the rest of the family.

“They have longed to get to Sweden! Both to come home to their rooms and their things. But also that we are outdoors so much more here at home than we are in Florida. It’s so hot there, and you can only be out for a short time, so for them to be out in the woods and run around, it’s a dream. And that is something I have really missed myself.”

Nowadays, we are used to seeing our Swedish royalty together with families in different official contexts, and it is not infrequently the children who are the focus of the cameras. Princess Leonore, the oldest of the siblings at five-years-old, has charmed the world’s press on both her Aunt Crown Princess Victoria’s 40th birthday celebration and her little sister Princess Adrienne’s baptism.

“She has a lot of energy. There are several teachers who say they have never met a child who has so much “free spirit”. But now I can see that once she gets into things she can really sit for a long time and concentrate. She loves to paint and decorate and make bracelets and necklaces with pearls. It often becomes a cosy moment because I also find it fun to paint and decorate, so it’s a lovely mom-daughter moment we have together.”

What else do you like doing together with the kids?

I would probably describe myself as the right amount of “hands-on”. I try to be with them as much as possible, whether we are in the park or at home. It is clear that if we are at home there are so many other things that need to be done, but I try to be involved most of the time when I can. It is important, it is about small moments you will otherwise miss.

How do the children’s personalities differ?

Leonore is the lively one. Nicolas is much more calm and sensitive with a big heart, a real mother’s boy. It’s him I get all the compliments from! He can say, “Mom, you look beautiful!”. Adrienne is very simple, happy, calm and harmonious, and just keeps going. Now she is 16 months so you start to see some more characteristics. She is very quick-thinking and tries to hang with the others with her little legs.

Which of the children is most like you?

My husband says Leonore, haha. She can stomp her foot when she gets angry. I was probably a little bit too, when I was a kid, quite determined, so yes. I would say Leonore.

And who is most like Chris?

Chris is very emotional and soft, so I see that side in Nicolas. Chris also sees details that Nicolas does and enjoys nice things. Chris gives the best advice, I always ask him when it comes to clothes, for example.

Princess Madeleine is always close to laughing as she tells anecdotes about the children and their peculiarities. When I ask if something in parenthood had surprised her, she has to think for a while.

“This “baby brain”, I didn’t expect it to last so long, this bubble you feel when your head is not really stuck. I can lose words and feel that I’m not as quick-thinking as before. And you have heard that maybe when you have child it can stay for a few months longer, or when you breastfeed, but I think it has stayed – ” (pauses) “ – longer than that.”

But now you have a little one too, that may not be so strange?

Yes, yes. Okay, so if you get fuzzy answers from me, then I’m blaming baby brain, haha!

Baby brain or not, Princess Madeleine has written and launched the book “Stella and the Secret” with her friend and colleague Karini Gustafason-Teixeira and children’s book author Stella Maxwell – a project that has emerged from Princess Madeleine’s commitment to the World Childhood Foundation and the issues surrounding the vulnerable and exploited children the foundation focuses on.

A children’s book about sexual abuse – that sound like a difficult task?

Yes, it’s been a long progress! In my work with Childhood, I have been campaigning to raise awareness of child sexual abuse. Me and my colleague Karini realised that even though we have reached out to thousands of people and organisations, it is difficult for these messages to reach children. That’s when the idea was born to write a children’s book. We wanted to reach out directly to the children, directly to the home where we know that everything begins, both good things but unfortunately also bad things…

Have you and Chris started talking about those issues of privacy with your own children?

We absolutely have. I think it is very important that the children understand this early and respect their bodily integrity and that you do not touch anyone in certain places of the body – you respect the private areas. We’re talking about that.

What responsibilities do you have as an adult for other children in your area?

We adults all have to take responsibility to act if we see something that is not okay. We have to dare to ask the child if everything is okay. We are too careful there, we do not want to interfere, but sometimes a child just needs to be asked a question, how they feel and if everything is okay.

In the book you do not wander around the topic of sexual abuse but go straight to the point…

Yes, we asked for input from various child psychologists when we had an almost completed script, and we also read in school classes and those were the ones who asked us not to be more afraid to talk more concretely in the book. Initially, we wrapped it up more, but they thought we would also have the heavier bit with Stella’s friend Elena’s secret, and I’m still glad we brought up that bit. For as the child psychologists say; children can take it. Don’t back it up, it’s better to pick it up.

Often, we adults are afraid to talk about heavy things?

Yes, we are afraid to talk about heavy topics with children. And that is exactly what I felt, that if we are uncomfortable talking about such a situation, how then should children dare to take it up with us? You know that you have to be a good parent and talk about problems that children may face, everything from friendships, tough times at school, bullying etc. but it is not always easy to address. Then it can be nice to instead have a book that you can read or listen to together, and hopefully it will lead to a conversation where you can naturally ask questions about how the children would have done in Stella’s situation. I hope the book can help, to open the dialogue that way.

In addition to the work with “Stella and the Secret”, her job for Childhood and the official assignments for the Swedish Royal House, Princess Madeleine also has had three children in the past five years; Princess Leonore, 5, Prince Nicolas, 4, and Princess Adrienne, 1.

For many, being a parent can be more or less a shock, was it so for you?

Now that I think about it, it probably wasn’t. I had a simple pregnancy and also delivery, so I think it helped, that it actually went so easy and that I did not have a really bad experience. The first time went well, and I have been fortunate that my children have been simple babies, they have slept through the nights since they were one or two months. So compared to how it has been for many other moms, I have been very spared.

Leonore was born in 2014 and Nicolas in 2015. What was it like to get pregnant again, so quickly?

That I was expecting Nicolas came as a shock! I was already in the third month, I knew nothing. We were moving from New York and I was so tired, but I thought I was safe because I was packing and there was so much with the move. But then I was pregnant. I think I was in the thirteenth week when I found out.

Wow. But then you had not felt bad and so?

No. I did not feel bad with Leonore or Nicolas. With Adrienne, on the other hand, I felt very ill. Really weird.

Did you like being pregnant?

Yes, actually! I didn’t think I would say that. I thought I would sigh and complain more, haha. Obviously, it will be heavy in the end but as I said, it’s probably because I had the benefit of having a light pregnancy, so I’ve been pleasantly surprised anyway. I think you get such a calm when you are pregnant, I like it.

You’ve had babies tight, it’s easy to get the impression that it’s easy for you to get pregnant?

Mmm, nothing has been planned, haha! When Adrienne came, I’d really thought I’d give Chris a puppy, but then…

Princess Madeleine bursts into laughter. “Okay, Chris had his birthday and I thought I’d surprise him with a puppy. I had fixed the kennel and knew when the puppy would come and everything was planned. And then he got a package with a stuffed animal that was a dog, and a card that said ‘Congratulations, you should get one for a family member’. He got completely chalky and dropped his chin, “What, are you pregnant again?” And I said “No, it’s just a dog!”

But then two weeks later I had to come back to him and say “you, I don’t know if it’s such a good idea that we get a puppy…” because then I was pregnant. With Adrienne. And then I had to call the kennel and say we have to wait for the puppy. I wished for a very long time at first, but I listened to my mom in the end, she said “No, you can’t have a dog too, wait now”. And that felt right, because it would still be like having two babies.

Since the 2013 wedding, Princess Madeleine and Chris O’Neill have lived in New York, then London, Stockholm, and now Miami. Princess Leonore was born in New York, while both Prince Nicolas and Princess Adrienne were born at Danderyd’s hospital outside Stockholm.

“Yes, the children are born in different countries, and there is little difference. In the United States they are much more concerned that the mother should definitely not be hurt, they give much more stunning at birth, so with Leonore it was very painless. I almost felt it was too much, I felt nothing, my whole legs were stunned.”

Did you experience any pain?

Yes, I did. But then when they got stronger, then they grew on the anaesthetic, so I didn’t even know when I was going to push her, it was the doctor who had to say it. While in Sweden you are much more restrained, you do not get given as much stunning. Which I can also feel is pretty awesome because then you know more and the body really tells you what to do. So even though it hurt a little, I thought it was a cooler experience all in all.

You were pregnant with Nicolas at your brother, Prince Carl Philip’s, wedding to Princess Sofia. How was it?

Yeah, that was pretty exciting, haha! Of course, I really wanted to attend Carl Philip and Sofia’s wedding that lasted two days – first it was a party the night before and then it was the wedding itself. And I told my midwife before, “I feel something is happening,” so I wanted to check the status before going into the party and into the church. But then I was actually 3cm dilated, so she thought I should have a bag with me in case I had to go inside.

So I sat inside the church thinking, “Do. Not. Let. My. Waters. Break. What do I do if my waters break? Do I leave? Do I stand? What do I do?” I was really nervous, but Nicolas waited a bit to get out. This was on Friday, then Saturday, he gave me Sunday to rest on, then on Monday we went in.

It must have been an exciting conversation for your table party?

I had Daniel at the table, which was nice, he helped me. So I could say, “You, it hurts right now, you have to talk and I’ll sit and smile!” Because it was a TV broadcast dinner too, haha! So I just couldn’t sit there and make grimaces.

Has it been easier or harder than you thought, being a mom?

When I had Leonore, then I thought it was too much. But then when I had the others, I wondered why I thought it was so hard with one child, haha! And then with three, oh my god! I do not agree with those who say that “If you have two then there is no difference with a third.” I don’t think so, but I think it’s more to plan, just logistically, because they differ so much in ages. Adrienne has her schedule of meal times and sleeping times, the other two have something completely different, so to put it together it’s a little bigger puzzle. But as a mom, I think… that’s a lot! But it’s fun! I love being a mom, it’s the most fun!

Has there been anything you wish you knew before you had a child?

I had a little trouble with breastfeeding. There are different breastfeeding cultures in the US and Sweden. In the US you were asked directly: will you breastfeed or do you want compensation for your baby? In Sweden, you must breastfeed. I think it was a little more pressing. Not sure everyone can and for me, that was a little difficult.

Have you breastfed all your children?

Yes, I have.

As a new mom, were you worried or cool?

My friends thought I was cool and I think I’m pretty calm. It is clear that I was sometimes worried as a new mom because we lived in New York and I did not have the family close, so you could feel a bit lonely during the whole thing. But we brought in help, so it felt safe to have someone there who could support.

How is Chris then, is he cool or more worried?

No! He’s the worried one of us, haha! As with Adrienne a few weeks ago, he said “she looks yellow, we have to go to the hospital, I think she has jaundice!”. And I just was like “No, she can’t have jaundice, she’s 15 months old, she’s just caught the sun!”

How do you and Chris complement each other as parents?

Good, I think. Unfortunately, I am the one who may be a “bad cop”. Leonore knows exactly who to go and ask when she wants something. But joking aside, I think we’re a good team. When I have Adrienne in the morning, he fixes breakfast for the children and solves everything in a good way, then he is busy in the days, but comes home in the evening for reading time with the children and then on the weekends we are very much together. Chris is very much a present dad when he is not working.

Who are you looking for support from in parenting issues?

It’s probably my friends. Most of them are a little ahead of me so it’s perfect, they have that experience right now, when the kids go into different ages and stages, so there I talk a lot with my friends.

Do you ever Google for info if the kids get weird rashes or the like?

No, no.

Maybe Chris is the one who Googles?

He definitely Googles! He probably has spreadsheets of all kinds of illnesses there, haha. But no, I don’t.

You and Chris come from slightly different cultures regarding child rearing. Is there something you disagree on?

Yes, I would probably say that it is. I would like to have the children with us all the time, while he is more like it was where he grew up: the children are not always with you, for example, you do not always eat dinner with the children but individually… But you have to compromise. And I agree, it is important for the relationship that you get some alone time together, and not with the children there.

Many who are in the middle of the toddler carousel may feel that they sometimes lose themselves, a bit like "where did my old self go?" Have you ever felt that way?

I have, absolutely. But sometimes I think it's a little nice too, just to focus on the children and not on myself. I think now that the kids are getting a little older, I'm starting to come back, and have more time now, when the bigger kids are more in school. I still have Adrienne at home, but I'm starting to feel more like myself again.

Do you feel lonely?

No, I feel like ... now I have a family, my own new family. But then it is clear that you always miss friends and family at home in Sweden.

Have you been able to build a new network of friends in Florida since you moved there?

Yes, but it does take its time. We moved there in August last year, so now I feel like I have good friends, and especially good moms from school that I got to know. In the United States, there is an incredible parenting presence at school so it was very easy to get in and make new friends throughout that cohesion. It is a full time job to just be a present parent in school there! No wonder it has become such a phrase, "soccer mom", because it really is.

Are you going to be a soccer mom?

Sure! I already think it has started with all the different activities of the children, the only thing you do is drive back and forth on different activities. Leonore has ballet and football, tennis ... Nicolas also has football and "sports" where you get to test everything from baseball to basketball, he thinks it's great fun.

Princess Madeleine describes a daily life that in many ways resembles many other toddler parents. Up early in the weekdays, stressful mornings and off with the older kids to school. The days are often spent at home with Adrienne, they attend gymboree classes with singing, play and gymnastics. Get the kids from school at three, shooting off for activities.

When Chris comes home from work, they take turns reading for the children before bedtime and on weekends it is fully focused on spending time with the whole family. Both Friday night ("Yes! Movies, chips and popcorn!") and Saturday candy are two Swedish classics that are obvious to the family.

Living in sunny Florida has its advantages. When the children come home, it is often a swim in the pool, swimming with friends is a favourite occupation, and both Leonore and Nicolas learned to swim early. In addition, they do not have the bulky winter overalls that we Swedes otherwise are accustomed to at home.

“Yes, it is very nice right now during the toddler years ... that booking with all winter garments - and once you have come out then someone needs to go to the toilet! Here it is only with shorts and t-shirt, in that way it is very simple, life is a little easier when there is a warm climate.”

In the US, they may also be more at ease compared to Sweden, they are not recognized as often.

How do you talk to the kids about being royalty?

I haven't actually talked to them about it yet. I think it will come naturally. And I think it was so for me, because I can't remember that mom and dad sat down to talk about it, but it probably came naturally. I think when the time comes they will ask and wonder and then you have to take it then, but now they have to live in their little bubble, in their little world without titles.

Can it be a shock when you are here in Sweden and people recognize you on the street?

That is where I think Swedes are so very respectful with the children, it is rare that anyone comes up. Even though we are in the park and I see that people recognize us, but there are not some who come and take pictures of the children or so. So they have been very kind, they live in their bubble and think they are like everyone else.

Are there times when you feel that you are not enough as a mother?

Yes, but it is clear, when all the children want attention, and then maybe you have to go away and not be able to follow up any noisy situation ... But otherwise we are very much with the children right now. And I have also really tried to prioritize this, to have these toddler years, and as long as I can, I want to be home with the children as much as possible.

You said before that you want four children?

I have to correct that. Chris has said four kids, not me, haha!

How do you feel yourself?

Right now I feel that I do not know how I would be able to get to it purely logistically, because it is quite a lot as it is, but at the same time it feels very sad to close that door. Because it is so wonderful with children. But we'll see.

“Right now I'm very happy with three children,” says Princess Madeleine emphatically and adds with a laugh: “It might be a dog instead!”

 Quickfire questions

How many times were you awakened tonight? - Two. By Nicolas and Adrienne.

How many children lay in your bed when you woke up this morning? - Haha, one. Nicolas. He is the night hiker.

What was the first thing someone said to you this morning? - "Mom I need to pee!"

Which child was most difficult to raise? - Leonore.

What did the kids eat for breakfast? - Actimel with cereals and toast. Chris fixes.

How many toy animals were sitting at the breakfast table? - Two rabbits; Leonores "Pink" and Nicolas "Blue".

When did you get to drink your morning coffee? - Standing, just before we left. And cold.

Who in the family takes the longest time to put on their clothes? - Leonore.

What are the most common kids chattering about in the mornings? - The iPad.

What is the most common thing you talk about in the mornings? - Now we have to go!

[dorms-fic-archive]

Nur für die Schwachen: Prologue [2019]

Summary: Succeeding another bout of training with ODM gear, Eren has an unexpected run-in with Annie in the nearby storage shed and the situation quickly spirals out of control. Whether or not their actions will have any lasting consequences remains to be seen; for now, all that's left to do is try to survive the remaining months until graduation. [FFNet. | Ao3]

a/n: It's been eighty-four years… okay, more like four, but still! I'll level with you guys and admit that I wasn't sure where to go with this fic after the third chapter, and after losing the original draft for chapter four, I was pretty bummed about the project for a while. But that's in the past; I want to finish this properly.

So what's different this time? For starters, the fic proper has been reformatted to be easier on the eyes. I've also changed quite a few details about the set-up in order to match with the original doujin—which I've been fortunate enough to acquire!—though I should note I am largely going in my own direction. The differences are fairly extraneous, as far as the fic is concerned. (Incidentally, the doujin's quite good for what it is!)

PROLOGUE

Initially, Annie does not know Jaeger very well, nor is she quite sure how to handle his attempts at camaraderie; so she ignores him whenever possible. She knows a first impression is important, keeps herself discreet and seldom speaks. In time, she's feared by many among the trainees, and not even Bertholdt or Reiner try to get more than a few stray sentences out of her in public.

Hoover and Braun; she finds it's much easier to stay detached if she sticks with formalities.

Jaeger is a week younger, vivacious and fearless: He doesn't seem to notice, or care, about formalities. Initially she chalks it up as a lack of intellect; he's not always on about killing Titans, but everyone knows it's what he's thinking.

But they meet again as the months bleed into each other and the earth freezes and thaws, and she quickly realises she may strike him down, she may steer clear of him, she may dismiss him coolly as many times as she wishes but she cannot truly avoid him, not forever, because in the end he just keeps coming back, and she's not quite unkind enough to do something drastic enough to make him stop.

Braun seems to think it's funny, and it's become impossible to rebuff him with violence alone, because she can't do much to him besides flip him over his arse; it was impressive the first time she demonstrated, but nowadays, more often than not, all it seems to do is give the others a reason to laugh at how unflappable he is.

Hardly anyone tries to talk to her, though, so this must be working. Annie tries to remind herself that she does not hate Jaeger or Braun. She still finds herself unreasonably irritable whenever she runs into either of them in the open. At least Jaeger wants to learn from her; Reiner's been nothing but an arse as of late. If Annie were less cynical she might even let herself find it quaint that the former boy respects her so much.

She keeps forgetting Hoover is there; not forgetting, because she can feel his eyes on her. He'll smile if she doesn't ignore him. She knows he's looking out for her because Braun won't bother, but she's not as cold as she likes to believe. Hoover's already got his hands full with Braun, trying to keep him on the straight-and-narrow, as Colt had once put it: The Warrior program already feels like a lifetime ago…

It's shaping up to be another quiet night in the courtyard. The few cadets that usually hang around to play cards and socialise are already going off to bed, and the sun has just begun to set. Annie has not had much time to think about matters beyond the reaches of her own self-preservation, what with the certainty of graduation looming over their heads—and the ambiguity of whatever will come afterward—but now….

"Oi, Annie!"

She's not alone, she realises. Jaeger is here, too. How he's managed to extract himself from the company of Arlert and Ackermann is anyone's guess. He hasn't said hello to her yet, just lingers in the background like he's got nowhere else to be, but she can feel him watching her.

She does not remember when this started, exactly, only that it's been a problem ever since last spring, and she has come to recognise her mistake for what it is.

She knows that she could put an end to this, if she really wanted. She knows he would probably let her, as she feels his eyes settle on her back like a knife held steady to the gap between her shoulder blades; he frightens her, unlike Hoover or Braun. Her nails are blunt, digging into her palms; she realises she's trembling. Something sparks off rebelliously in the pit of her belly.

She isn't sure what she'll do if she stays here.

"Annie? Wait up a second!" Against all good judgement she stops, allowing him to catch up with her. "I was gonna ask you about that technique you used on Jean the other day; what's it called?"

Annie blinks. She isn't sure what would compel him to ask such an inane question, or why she's bothering to entertain the thought of answering him at all. But she's let him get this far, hasn't she? "I don't remember," she answers truthfully. "And as I've said, the name doesn't matter. It won't help you survive."

He frowns, like he'd known she would say it but is nevertheless disappointed. It's almost cute, she thinks, then catches herself; Jaeger has always been thick enough to ignore her advances, perhaps to his advantage. A new emotion strikes her now, slow and insidious; when she speaks, her words are tinged with disappointment: "Is that all you wanted to ask me?"

His guilty look tells her enough; she's ready to turn on her heel and leave him to rethink his idiotic strategy, but then he swallows, appears to lose a bit of nerve before he recalls himself: "Well, what d'you want to talk about?"

She's taken aback by the bluntness of the question. Jaeger's eyes narrow, and Annie knows she's been caught. "I don't talk about anything," she replies, trying to be cool about it. He grabs her shoulder before she can evade him; on any other night, it would be the last time he tried. But he isn't moving. She really doesn't understand why.

"Am I supposed to read your mind, then?" he retorts.

Annie knows she's lingered too long; she's breathing him in, can feel the heat of his body through his shirt and wonders—if it's mutual, and if she keeps him up at night. She needs to get away before one of them makes a mistake.

His grip tightens, alerting her. "O.K., enough of this cryptic shit. Give me a straight answer."

She sneers. "You're an idiot, Jaeger."

His jaw sets. "Funny."

Annie ignores this. "But you're not hopeless. You just need a little coaching, that's all."

He scowls at her. "Look, I'll go, if that's what you really want."

Retreat is inadvisable. She studies the shape of his wrist, deliberates how best she could break his fingers, and makes her choice: "Have you ever been kissed?"

"I'm not—what?" Gone is his agitation. He looks bewildered. "Wait, uh. Is that what this is about?" Annie's beginning to regret her decision. She can't quite look at him, and her heart skips when he adds, gruffly: "I mean, you could've just asked." Trying for bravado, but he jumps when she glances at him, just to be sure. His eyes seem a little darker in the low light, his lips chapped, jaw relaxed. His shirt is threadbare but it's all he wears in the warmer months; he's growing out of it. She's never really thought about another human in this sort of detail before, and before she has time to realise the gravity of her error he's drawing her in.

It's not the first time she's been kissed, or thought about it—but it's never escalated beyond the limitations of common sense, and it's never mattered beyond the principle of the thing. For all of the heat in his gaze and the firmness of his grasp, he's very tentative with her. Annie thinks she might be grateful.

They part with a soft, awkward noise. "Um," says Jaeger. "Yeah, so."

He says something else but she doesn't hear for the frantic pulse of her own heart. She shuts her eyes tight, opens them. Making up her mind with the turn of her heel and heads for the girl's barracks; she will not lose control now.

She doesn't give Jaeger anymore thought. It's shaping up to be another uneventful night, which is preferable.

Camaraderie is a foreign concept, better utilised as a tool, and it's why she keeps her mouth shut among others. The girls have learnt quick enough to stop asking where she's been, or why; Ymir is the only one that bothers her, because she doesn't care enough to ask, just keeps tabs on everyone else and will only offer smug rejoinders when questioned, especially when Krista isn't there to keep her in line. She reminds Annie a bit of Reiner, or Marcel, when he was still enlisted.

She's heading for her bunk when someone calls: "Hey, Annie."

It's not Ymir, of course, just one of Mina's friends. Annie had been hoping to avoid this altogether, but she can't be lucky all the time. With a feeling of resignation, she turns her head. "What?"

"We were just…" pause, not to play coy, just testing the waters "…talking, about people we liked." Annie notes the strategic phrasing: people, not boys, elsewise the conversation would've ended seconds ago. She's not entirely sure why it hasn't ended already, because it's not like she'll suddenly learn how to socialise. "Is there anyone you're inter—?"

"No."

An exasperated sigh. "Aw, you're no fun."

"Leave her alone," Mina chides, and Annie has never been more thankful to have another girl on her side.

"But she always does this whenever we try and talk about anything with her!" Greta complains.

"Because I don't care," Annie mutters. No one is listening.

"She was really close with Eren during our hand-to-hand sessions. Weren't you?" Mina adds, looking hopefully at Annie, as if under the impression that she holds some kind of sway in this argument. Or maybe she's just trying to help. It doesn't matter.

"I just said I don't care," Annie reiterates. It's all stupid, anyway.

Greta gives up quickly, stealing Mina away to talk about whatever inconsequential matter has grabbed her fancy. Annie reclines herself and watches the sky turning dark, tries not to think about how inane life will be in the Military Police; at least here she has something to whittle away her days, pretend she has some purpose outside doing what comes naturally—they haven't even sorted out where the Progenitor is, or who has it, or what it would be manifested as—wake up, train, throw herself into this stupid ODM gear exam and then it'll be over and she won't have to deal with girl-talk ever again.

It should make her happy, she thinks. Few things do.

Eventually Mina comes back to see how she's doing: "We have the day off, to-morrow. Did you have any plans?"

Annie shrugs. So Mina sits down beside her. "We're going to graduate soon," Annie says. "I'm going to enlist in the Military Police."

"Well, that's you, Annie. You've definitely got the grades to show for it." Mina grins. "All you and I have to do now is pass the ODM gear exam. Why do you want to be an MP, anyway?"

"Does it matter?"

"Well, you don't really seem the type," says Mina. "You're not like most of the other cadets who apply. You're too…."

Annie waits for her to finish the statement, but she doesn't. Impatiently, she asks: "What, Carolina?"

Mina shakes her head. "Never mind. As long as you get where you want to be; that's all that really matters, right?"

"I guess."

Annie knows by now that pressing for information will only make the situation worse. "I don't know if I'll be able to cut out for much, maybe a spot in the Garrison or something," Mina finally admits, as Annie had dreaded. A knot twists her stomach; providing comfort is considerably out of her scope.

"You'll be fine," she lies. We're almost out of here. 

[princessgracekelly1956]

Sunday Today - the Inquirer Magazine (The Philadelphia Inquirer - April 12, 1970)

Princess Grace Talks About Life in the Palace 

How she manages the children and the Monegasque Red Cross 

By JOHN BAINBRIDGE 

"Here, you don't just rush by the little things in life, the very things that make daily living more enjoyable, that make it less monotonous.'' 

HER Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco (nee Grace Kelly of Philadelphia) has been, after the Duchess of Windsor, by far the best known American living abroad ever since her marriage in 1956 to Prince Rainier III, ruler of the ancient Mediterranean principality that comprises three hundred and seventy acres, or half the area of New York's Central Park. Although there have been occasional snide remarks in the gossip columns about the movie star turned princess, the consensus of well-informed people is that she has handled her role as the leading lady of Monaco with dignity, style, and industry. 

"Grace works very hard." I was told by a mutual friend, the wife of an American couple who live in Europe. "In the first place, she went to work and learned to speak almost perfect French. She is also a very good mother. She takes the kids with her everywhere. When she and Rainier came to visit us last year, she brought them along. They are fine children. 

"She handles all of her official duties with aplomb, giving receptions and doing all those things, and she also works very hard for Monegasque Red Cross. This is considerably different from the typical Red Cross activity in American suburban communities. In Monaco, just about all of the social service organizations are wrapped up in this one organization the Red Cross. Furthermore, I think that many of the international events that are now held in Monaco to generate publicity and stimulate tourism were Grace's ideas, although she has never mentioned anything of the kind herself. Finally, I believe it is a very successful marriage. She has to be given some credit for that, too, doesn't she?" 

Through correspondence, I had arranged an interview with Princess Grace at five o'clock one afternoon in mid-December. I took a taxi from my hotel to the Palace, which dates from 1215 and overlooks Monte Carlo, and en route followed the old journalistic custom of trying to sound out the local temper by striking up a conversation with the driver. He complained, naturally, about the traffic. He said there are 25,000 people in Monaco and 12,000 automobiles. He had a few sharp words for Aristotle Onassis, then a very large property owner in Monaco, for opposing Prince Rainier's plans for developing the local economy.

But when I asked about Princess Grace, the driver smiled. "Is good princess," he said. "First year, we didn't know - real princess or Hollywood princess? Now we know she is real princess. Is good mother. For Monaco people, that is everything. Is also hard worker Red Cross, old people, orphans. French people, Italian people still say, 'Ah, Hollywood princess.' They just jealous of Monaco people, because Monaco people pay no taxes. We know she is real princess."

Arriving at the Palace, I alighted in front of an archway, on either side of which a soldier smartly turned out in a light blue helmet, black tunic, white belt, red-striped trousers, and white spats stood before a peppermint-striped red-and-white sentry box. An officer, whose uniform was made even more resplendent with an abundance of peppermint braid, appeared and saluted, and, upon learning the purpose of my mission, escorted me through the side gate into a small reception room. There, a man with the appearance and manner of a reservations clerk at the Ritz telephoned the Princess' secretary that I had arrived. A few minutes later, a footman came to the reception room, and escorted me across the cobbled courtyard to the small private suite in the west wing of the Palace, where the Prince and Princess live with their family. 

I was met at the door by an American woman named Mrs. Dale (her husband, I learned later, is employed by the Prince in a business capacity), who said that the Princess would arrive directly, and showed me into the sitting room. 

Although I was aware of the way the Princess is properly addressed ("Your Highness" initially and "Ma'am" thereafter), I don't recall having used either form, because, from the minute she walked into the room, shook hands, and apologized for being late, until I left, nearly two hours later, she created an atmosphere so pleasant and unaffected that formal terms of address would have seemed out of place. She was wearing a handsome suit in a soft brown shade, a single strand of pearls, and a large pearl ring. She was carrying a pair of light-colored, bone-rimmed glasses, which she toyed with at times while talking but never put on. Maturity has, if anything, enhanced her beauty. Her complexion is magnificent, her eyes are arresting, and her voice is dulcet, adding interest even to her inconsequential remarks. Most engaging is her manner, which combines elegance with an easy casualness - a quality that has no doubt gone far in winning acceptance as a "real princess" by the people of Monaco. 

After Mrs. Dale had left I asked what aspects of living in Europe she had found most enjoyable. 

"One thing I enjoy is that people here take the time to live in a pleasant way," she replied. "They are not as rushed, not as hurried, as they are in the United States. For example, there is the midday meal, which the family takes together. This is a custom that I think is very pleasant. It is one part of taking the time to enjoy the days. Of course, this manner of living can also be carried too far and become annoying. It is really not too hard to change one's ways and become as lazy and indolent as any Mediterranean. 

"A strong sense of values is another thing that one perceives here. In Monaco, there still exists a respect for authority. This is so important, particularly for young people. On television, in pictures, and in books there is so much effort expended in trying to be funny or clever, which often has the effect of actually tearing down the important qualities that young people should hang onto. It seems to be the case that young people who are in search of truth and reality are afraid to admit that something old can be something of value. I was just reading an article in which Margaret Chase Smith said that the word, 'square,' has become outmoded. It used to be one of the most respected words in our vocabulary. We talked about the 'square deal' and the 'square shooter,' and they were honored words. She said that nowadays the person who seems to get the attention and applause is the one who plays the angles. What we need today, she said, are more square people, more people who are dependable in the old-fashioned way. 

"Another difference is that in Europe there is more emphasis on manners. This has its good points and its bad points, but I think on the whole more good than bad. People here are generally more polite, and the children tend to follow that lead. I'm always appalled when I see parents intimidated by their children, and I must say that I see that quite often when I go to the United States. If I say something about the discipline in our household, they say, 'Can you do that?' Now, really. Parents do have to take a stand. They have to put their foot down. So far, we've been very fortunate with our children. So far, so good. But, of course, they're not teen-agers yet. It is a problem with teen-agers everywhere. But how a teen-ager behaves depends very much on how he behaved before he was a teen-ager. People who are indulgent, overly indulgent, with babies often say, 'Oh, he's just a baby.' Babies, one finds, understand quite a lot. 

The subject of help having been brought up, I asked the Princess how many servants she has. 

"If you mean the number who run the Palace, it would be over a hundred," she replied. "That includes the Prince's Cabinet, secretaries, a governor who overlooks the Palace, a Regisseur, who is a kind of general manager, gardeners, personal staff, electricians, a curator of archives and his assistant, a woman who does bookbinding, a housekeeper, a man who is restoring paintings, upholsterers, carpenters, painters, and probably a few more. In our personal household there are a major-domo, three butlers, five footmen, my husband's valet, my personal maid, the women who wash and sew, a chef, and an assistant chef. 

"Both the chef and his assistant are French, so we have mostly French cooking, along with many Italian dishes. We also have American dishes that I tell the chef about now and again. I have a collection of cookbooks, and I give him American recipes out of them. One thing he did recently, for the first time, was a pumpkin pie. And he bakes American cakes now, too. They're quite different from European cakes, you know."

I asked if there were any aspects of American life - the pumpkin pie and cake situation being well in hand - that she did miss. 

"One misses American efficiency, I think, more than anything else." she said. "The French - and i wouldn’t be surprised if it were true of Europeans generally - have a way of complicating things that should be relatively simple. One does miss that fine American custom of saying, 'Of course, it can be done. Why not?'

"As for the things that I do like here, I must say that one is the custom of having babies at home instead of in a hospital. Perhaps it is less hygienic, but it’s much more pleasant. Even if one has a baby in the hospital, the husband and others in the family can see the baby and hold it. That practice of keeping the baby away from the father, behind a sheet of glass, is so impersonal. As for the baby, to come from the mother's womb and almost immediately be placed in a room full of screaming infants - I'm not at all sure that that is a good practice. I feel sure that the system here is much better." 

A butler came into the room to deliver a message, and after he had left, I asked the Princess if she had retained her United States citzenship. 

"Yes, I have," she replied. "On marrying the Prince, I became Monegasque. As I have never renounced my U. S. citizenship, I have dual citizenship. So do my children. Our son will, of course, have to renounce his United States citizenship. I would like to keep mine, because I am very proud of it and sentimental about it, too. If ever there were any political problem connected with my retaining it, I would, of course, give it up. 

"You know, I find myself admiring American traits and characteristics, often without being aware that they are American. I try to incorporate these traits into my children's upbringing. For example, the hospitality for which Americans are so well known. People here are not hospitable in that way. You can know a Frenchman for twenty years, and never be invited to his home. He will entertain you very handsomely at a restaurant, but you won't see the inside of his house. To an American, this is very strange." 

At this point, a door to the sitting room was pushed open by a small, gray poodle that entered and proceeded to prance back and forth in front of the lounge, barking. 

"That's my daughter's poodle," the Princess said. "It goes through this routine every night. It means that the children are not far behind." They presently arrived, accompanied by two young women who were apparently governesses. After the children had greeted their mother and had been introduced to me, they continued into the dining room, where they and the governesses carried on what sounded like a lively conversation while having their dinner. 

Princess Grace had spoken to the children in English, and I asked if that was customary. 

"Yes, I always speak to them in English," she said. "They have an English nurse. But they are completely bilingual. Their school is conducted in French, so they read and write better in French than in English. 

"We have lunch with the children at least two or three times during the week, and always on weekends. We breakfast with them every morning, and we lunch with them on Thursdays and on Sundays and on any other day when they are free of schoolwork. 

"The children here are in school until five in the afternoon, which makes a very long day for them. Our daughter is being educated at a convent. Our son studies at home with two little friends who come in. One day he has gym in the afternoon, and on Thursdays, he takes football lessons. In French schools, I think, the sports program is insufficient. The emphasis on sports may be carried too far in American schools, but there must be a happy medium. Here, there are not as many team sports, and I think that is unfortunate. It is so important for a child to learn to play on a team, to learn teamwork. Learning to get along with the other fellow - that's basic in life today." 

Getting back to Monaco, I asked the Princess if she would tell me something about her official duties. "As president of the Red Cross, I supervise all sections and departments," she said. "We have a secretary as well as heads of the various services, but I see or review every case treated. 

"I am also interested in a committee that is preserving or trying to preserve some of the landmarks and other historic sites of Monaco. Some of the new architecture is far out of keeping with the original style here, and some of the original, I feel, should be maintained. Unfortunately, there are not a great many people here who are of the same opinion. 

"In addition, there are the musical events, the ballet, and a variety of other affairs. We try to group the official events in November, December, and January. Lots of congresses and international groups meet here, and many are received in the Palace. Other duties are presented from time to time. When we celebrated the centenary of Monte Carlo, I organized the committee that carried out that program. Incidentally, I have never been inside the Casino. There is a ruling that no Monegasque can go there, but I could, of course, if I wished. However, it is the custom that nobody in our family does. 

"As far as the daily schedule is concerned, the morning is largely taken up with matters pertaining to the running of the household and with the mail. The afternoons are largely devoted to Red Cross work and to the other interests and activities I've mentioned. 

"So there is something to do every minute - and more. I mean, I never sit around and say, 'I wonder what to do.'"

[fogmongers]

                                          L  A  N  E    K  A  T  Z .                          history major.                                           dorming  with  Robin.                              skater (amateur).    photographer (amateur).    musician (amateur).

a restless hipster born to an aggressively patriotic cop and his stepford wife in nowheresland, montana, the only thing that ever stood between lane and his parents throwing down to hell was his older brother and unaccredited role model jack: the perfect boy, and the only mediator empathetic and patient enough to not only suffer the arguments of ethics between his parents and their unfavorite child, but also to defuse them.

jack had the philosophical savvy to understand and relate to lane, but at the end of the day, didn’t have the passion or endurance to live the peace-loving ideology they discussed. loyal to a fault and desperate to make his insecurely lower-class parents proud in wake of lane growing up to be a smelly hippie who brought shame to the family in their rural town, jack enlisted in the army at 18, very much against Lane’s pleas advice, leaving his little brother feeling tremendously betrayed.

already showing early signs of manic depression in his teens, the feelings of angst and anxiety caused by and for jack led to lane losing his self-preservation instinct. his high school years would see him acting on his impulses of hyper-sexuality and letting his mood swings and irritability turn him into a toxic friend. he had days where he was endearingly quiet and earnest, but switched to moods of reckless thrill-seeking decadence, or venomous, moody irritability with no warning or signal of how he would feel at any particular moment. became a serial dater who got away with breaking hearts because he had the veneer of a sweet artist--- wrote a few songs and poems for girls, always taking candid photographs of happy times and posting them with lovely captions, knows how to give a good, personal compliment when he wants to--- but he wound up being kind of isolated by the end of his senior year after girls started talking to each other about his behavioral patterns and nowadays he doesn’t have many friends to visit back in montana.

his home life was an even larger abyss, especially around the times his brother would come home. with each subsequent visit, jack became more visibly hollow. everyone could tell that he lost the shine in his smile, and it was clear that his mind was somewhere else during conversations, even before you told him that your girlfriend left you for your best friend and he smiled and said “I’m so happy for you.” 

when efforts to talk to jack again became increasingly futile and frustrating, no one in the family was able to cope constructively. while his parents promptly Bottled That Shit Right Up and, to this day, actively deny any of jack’s visible trauma, lane has reacted with a lot of emotions and crying and lashing out and, to this day, is not finished “grieving.” and it leads to a lot of tension between him and his parents. their relationship for most of hi high school life consisted only of radio silence and arguments– especially between lane and his dad, who wanted him to Man Up, stop “reaching for shit to get upset about” and “making up problems” and thought it was time for him to get his act together and stop partying so much, get more controlled like his brother, talk back less like his brother, put down the camera and guitar and join a sports team--- start thinking about his future.

it all built up to the peak of one typical argument about how shallow they are vs. how bratty he is, and his father declared that the family has been expecting lane to enlist at the end of high school to learn respect and discipline if he wants to keep his room in their house, and after lane lashed out, his dad raised his hand to hit him.

lane flinched away and the heat of the moment was cut soon enough for him to lower his arm, but the general threat of physical abuse is still there every time lane sees his dad, and the one time he tried to bring it up his dad denied that it ever happened--- basically tries to gaslight him into thinking he’s just overreacting and blowing things out of proportion and all in all the relationship has lost all hope. within a month after the incident, he stopped talking to his dad entirely.

his mom was, fortunately, there to witness the situation, and is still outwardly in denial about the whole ordeal, but she was sympathetic enough to keep them separated for the rest of lane’s childhood and support her son when preferred to go to college than boot camp. she helped him fill out his applications and apply for financial aid knowing, deep down, that she probably wouldn’t see him again after he pulled out of the driveway and headed to rainier the next year.

persona:

your standard artsy, pretentious white boy. fake-deep entry-level philosopher, hiding any vulnerability behind a fort of irony and alleged self-awareness. the guy “sarcastically” playing early 2000′s indie-pop hits on acoustic guitar in the quad because he won’t admit that he earnestly likes the sincerity of songs. teasing/negging girls who instagram pictures of their food and judging people for scrolling through their phones in public when they should be paying attention to him. would have dread locks if he went to college just ten years ago. wears his ziggy stardust or velvet underground tee shirts on the anniversaries of bowie & lou reed's deaths and mourns artists like them belligerently publically. reads sartre & marx in crowded spaces with the book cover as visible as possible. 

a walking contradiction. uncontrollable mood swings. he flips between extreme arrogance and worrysome levels of self-deprecation at the strum of a chord. an alluring and unpredictable mine field of a person, flipping the switch between boughts of wrath and guilt, ecstatic passion and dreadful apathy, tyranny and self-harm. a rebellious party boy, very popular for a loner, with boyish charm and intrigue. but he’s much more self-aware than he used to be--- after realizing that he had no friends’ houses to stay at in his senior year of high school because he pushed everyone away, he tries much harder to be a better friend to people, both out of the need for self-preservation since he can’t spend summer breaks or holidays in montana anymore, and also out of a genuine empathy and understanding of other people’s behavior and feelings that he had to learn the hard way. 

grew up extremely passionate about studying history; refuses to admit that it’s not really his thing anymore. constantly triggered by his own textbooks. he would really do better in some philosophy or literature or psychology (or being confident enough in his own potential to major in photography and grow up to be the war photographer he was born to be), but he’s developed a masochistic streak in recent years.

attached at the guts to robin dundee. they have a complicated friendship with, but robin’s overpowering energy kind of forces lane to default to being calmer to balance him out. the boys are always saying they’re going to start a band together but can never decide what kind since they’re never interested in the same extremely specific and obscure sub-genre at the same time (one week robin will say they should be a dark vaudevillian cabaret goth band while lane insists that they should play ethereal folk and by the time one of them gets into the other’s taste, the latter has already moved on to psychobilly) and they always push away each other’s recruits to the band since all of lane’s friends find robin too psychotic and anyone robin attracts finds lane too pissy and sappy. 

wanted connections:

short-lived relationships or flings that ended ambiguously or badly because he’s kind of hard to handle for long periods of time. demure or ditzy/non-threatening friends who let him feel like the mischievous one for once (he tends to flirt with these kinds of people). unrequited crushes (on either side, but he should also have a huge crush on annona). dealers, or friends/clients of his dealer who he smokes with. a party squad. a white boy skater/weed/videogame squad (COUGH nate/sid/robin/lane what COUGH). someone who’s intrigued by his undiagnosed psyche and just wants to get close to him to figure him out - or - who finds him boring because they already have him figured out. people who are begrudgingly friends with him because he workshops and photographs their art for their portfolios (maybe someone whose name sounds like mattah sarhews). a friend of that friend whom he doesn’t realize is gay and keeps flirting with because he thinks she’s playing hard to get and just has a deadpan sarcastic sense of humor. someone whose family he spends breaks with (i’m assuming he usually winds up spending them with his fling at the time but a friend who he can consistently stay with would be good too), or someone who also on campus when school’s out; bonus points if they only talk when they’re having heart-to-hearts on the empty grounds. activists who recognize his energy and want to mobilize him (it’s tk i’m talking about tk @ nina bring tk to rainier please). good influence friends who are understanding of his behavior. someone who’s a little too forgiving of him and winds up getting stepped on because they assure him he’s safe to be emotional around them. bad influence friends who push him to act more like robin. enemies who do not have any patience for him or his antics, or anyone who actively tells people about what a bastard he is. maybe someone from his old school who he’s burned?

[islandpcosjourney]

Day 23 (spring clean)

22nd March 2022

The sun is shining again today and now it really feels like Spring is here to stay rather than just teasing me for a few hours! The washing is outside, the dog runs around in joy, I smile more when the sun’s out. However, with the sun coming out of hibernation, comes anxiety. I’m hoping it’ll be less this year though. My anxiety is always over clothes on hot days. For as long as I can remember in my adult life, I’ve never felt comfortable in the sun. I love winter and the excuse to be layering and hiding under thick, warm clothes. The sun brings out everyone’s excuse to wear less - short sleeves, shorter dresses, bare legs & sandals. That for me, is pure torture, or at least it used to be.

A change in the weather naturally means a change with the wardrobe. As I’ve written about before, my selection of clothes was always minimal, basically buying clothes once a year and making do the rest of the time. I would wear whatever fitted and if that was a jumper/hoodie in the summer heat, that’s what it had to be, and I just dealt with it. I would always receive comments from people asking really innocent questions such as “aren’t you hot?”, where the answer would always be “yes, I’m boiled” but I’d never say that because I had to cover up why I was wearing that particular item of clothing. I’d just brush it aside but underneath it all (no pun intended!), I would be feeling really self-conscious, and anxiety would be brewing.

Today for the first time in a long time, maybe even EVER in my adult life, I’m contemplating moving items around in my wardrobe to be more seasonal. I can’t even believe that I’ve got enough clothes that fit to even try this. Even the coats hanging up downstairs would hang there all year but now I have lighter jackets which I can wear so really they need to be downstairs now, and the winter coats can come upstairs, probably into the spare room. I don’t think I’ll do it before Easter but the fact that I’m thinking about it, proves the change in my mind that I’m even able to consider it.

I’m loving having loads of clothes that fit me and that fit in different ways, that I take so long to think about what I wear each day as I have so many choices to make. Popsy dresses have definitely helped increased my confidence in that respect. I have dresses of different sleeve lengths, different overall lengths, different waists, without belts, with belts, different neck shapes and different patterns, some which are seasonal only – Christmas, autumn etc. I actively choose wearing dresses over jeans and a top nowadays which is such a difference in my style.

Gone are the days when Kevin would complain about me wearing hoodies all of the time. Gone are the days where I would feel anxious about wearing lighter clothes.

Gone are the days where I’d be worried about what people think about what I’m wearing.

I have new problems now. Do I wear tights or leggings? Boots or trainers? Heels or shoes? What jacket or cardigan will I wear? Where do I store it all? They’re all good problems to have and I am so grateful that I am fortunate to have choices. I never want to go back to the days when I didn’t have choices and couldn’t make the most of the weather. I still have a way to go yet before I know that I’ll feel comfortable in absolutely anything and I know that there’s times when I’ll feel bloated, and I need to have clothes in my wardrobe to help on those days, but I feel so much more confident that any weather can rear its head any day and I’ll be prepared. As I lose weight, I’m also able to wear more of my heeled shoes/boots. I had them because they looked good, but I rarely wore them because my feet would hurt as soon as they were on and my thighs could never handle anything too high. Now, as I weigh less and less, there’s less pressure on my feet and I’m choosing heeled boots more and more. Today I’ve decided to wear the boots that I bought for my Dad’s funeral. When he died, I didn’t have formal black boots suitable for the winter weather we had at the time, let alone the thick snow that appeared only days before we buried him. They were higher heels than I would’ve chosen but I didn’t have time to be picky. They have a pink embroidered motif on the outside of them, again pink not really being my colour, but they’d only been worn once, and I couldn’t get rid of them because of the sentimentality associated with their one and only wear. I saw a post by a popsy girl the other day saying how she was wearing a dress she’d bought for her dad’s funeral but as her dad was thrifty and wouldn’t have agreed with buying a dress just for one wear it was important to her that one day she would wear it again, to prove that the dress didn’t hang in the wardrobe with a stigma attached to it. Today I’ve done the same with these black boots. Although it’s a lovely spring day, I’m wearing tights for the colour pop to bring out the hummingbirds in the pattern and then the pink in these boots spoke to me and my anxiety over the height of the heel (which isn’t THAT high, but I just have the memories of being so uncomfortable and in pain in them) has disappeared – I can walk in them no problem. These boots should have a happier connotation associated with them, although any memory released by looking at an item, whether happy or sad, makes them special and does make me smile now because Dad was special to me and I’m glad I made the effort to respect him by wearing black even down to my feet. I know that at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what I wore but he was an old-fashioned kind of man, liked his traditions and would always wear black to funerals. That’s the significance that’s important to me. The wee flourish of pink on the side just makes them prettier, so today they bring me some happiness and the sun instantly picks up my mood – long may it continue.

[bisiji3]

Science and the Heaven of Light-Sound

There were no creatures on earth.

The Deva came to earth from Ābhāsvara.

There were no sun, moon, stars, or days and nights.

There was no time or seasons.

The Deva from Ābhāsvara were self-luminous beings that could fly in the sky.

They often travelled between the earth and Ābhāsvara upon its discovery.

The Deva needed no consumption of foods.

Their lifestyle was beyond our understanding.

The Deva found a thing called “the Milk” on earth.

Some of them randomly grabbed and tasted it.

Originally, the way the Deva consumed foods was different from that of ours.

That made them lighter and always luminous.

Yet, since the point when they craved for “the Milk,” they grew muscle.

They became heavy and could no longer fly in the sky.

They were able to walk on earth since then.

They no longer radiated pure lights.

Due to such ceasing of self-luminous status, sun, moon, and stars emerged.

The sun appeared, and with the earth’s rotation, days and nights came to be.

The moon revolves around the earth.

A complete revolution of moon around the earth is a month.

The earth revolves around the sun.

A complete revolution of earth around the sun is a year.

The more Milk they consumed, the uglier they became.

Deva who consumed lesser still retained their beauty.

From that moment, there was beauty and ugliness in appearance.

The beautiful ones looked down the ugly ones.

The ugly ones became jealous about the beautiful ones.

Once they had difference, they had argument and they fought.

The Milk disappeared, but there was less-tasty “earthly savory” everywhere.

The Deva who consumed more became ugly.

Those who consumed less were beautiful.

They saw each other as obstructing existence, and eventually they made war on each other.

The earthly savory disappeared, but there was another substitute with lesser taste.

The same thing happened.

When the second kind of earthly savory disappeared, the soil grew natural rice.

It’s a kind of bran-less grain that tasted delicious.

It needed not be cooked and they could just grab it and eat it.

There was no distinction of men and women.

The two sexes derived from the consumption of the grain.

Those with greater emotions were women, and those with lesser emotions were men.

Men and women grew affection and love among them.

The Deva who did not consume earthly savory and the grain were noble and supreme beings.

They blamed these men and women.

The men felt shameful of themselves and kneeled.

The women brought food to them and held them up.

Since then, the men called the women who brought them foods wife.

The Deva blamed them for their doing and ordered them to leave.

These men and women returned after three months of moving around.

They found out that other Deva were doing the same thing.

And no one felt it wrong to become husband and wife.

The Deva did not live in houses when they arrived at earth.

But then they had distinction of men and women, and so they built houses for shelter.

Before consuming the grain, they were born out of incarnation.

Since the time when they became men and women and were able to reproduce, the mothers could become pregnant and give birth to children.

Humans are then “born from mother” thereafter.

Originally, when humans were hungry, they gathered natural rice and ate them on the spot.

Later, some were lazy and gather two portions a time.

Such allowed them to offer sufficient foods for five days.

In ancient times, people reaped the cereals.

The rice could grow naturally, and they needed not to cultivate them.

Later, they reaped the rice too much.

Then the rice ceased to grow and natural rice was no more.

Instead, the soil grew cereals with bran.

People had to thresh and filter before cooking them for food.

This kind of cereal did not grow as fast as before.

In order to cultivate the cereal, people divided the land.

Their own fields came to be.

Some farmers had poor harvest, and so they stole others’ properties.

And they fought each other.

They selected a good-looking and virtuous person to resolve their disputes.

In return they would give him foods.

That man was called a king.

In the beginning, the kings were virtuous.

But later, some kings became fatuous and foolish.

Originally, human life span lasted 84,000 years on average.

When they started to theft and hurt each other,

Their life became shorter and shorter.

Three thousand years ago

When people could live 100 years in average, Gautama Buddha appeared in this world and redeemed many people with the Dharma.

Later on, the humanity still made evil karmas.

Their life span reduced even further to the nowadays 70 years on average.

When their life span was reduced to 10 years in the future, females married and gave birth to children 5 months old.

Their height decreased one inch per 100 years to one foot.

They became barbaric and the end of world shall come.

At this point, all grains went extinct.

If one could find a grain, he would treasure it just like how we treasure our jewelries now.

Fleshes scattered due to excessive slaughter of lives.

Nothing could be consumed as foods.

People cooked the withered bones to sustain their lives.

They had no fabrics but only human hair for their clothes.

Human hair was the most luxurious material for clothes.

Their sacred bodies were no longer wearing jewels and gems but were armed with blades and steels.

The land became barren and no grains could be grown.

Mosquitos, hornets, and serpents disturbed people together.

Gold, silver, agate, and other precious stones and metals no longer existed.

They could no longer hear the Daśa-kuśala-karmāni (Ten Good Practices).

They no longer respected their parents and elders.

They only did evil things.

Rage filled in their heart and they often killed and slayed each other.

A cruel war finally broke out.

People used grass as weapons to kill each other.

Some hid deeply in the mountains or caves.

When they met, they told each other:

“I won’t kill you

So don’t kill me.”

Seven days later, they went down the mountains, finding that the war had ended.

Those who did not hide in the mountains had all been destroyed.

The entire world had been through a catastrophe.

Only ten thousand people remained.

Those who survived and returned, seeing this tragedy, cried in mourn for seven days.

They then celebrated for seven days more for their fortune of survival.

They determined that they shall spare no efforts in doing good and so their life span increased.

People’s childhood extended to five hundred years, and women could still go into marriage or give birth to children at the age of 500.

Everyone was healthy.

Only nine pains and diseases still lingered in this world.

People could feel cold,

People could feel hot,

People could feel hungry,

People could feel thirsty,

People could have need for urinating,

People could have need for defecating,

People could have desires.

People could eat too much.

People still grew old.

Besides these problems, they met no challenges.

All could have enough foods and water.

Their life span increased or sometimes went back to the decreased state.

Following Gautama Buddha, Maitreya incarnated in this Sahā world

And enlightened the people.

He then became the fifth Buddha of bhadrakalpa.

Resource：Excerpt from Venerable Master Hsuan Hua – 人的始祖，是從光音天來的

Translated by天成數位翻譯公司

Organized by Jhan, hang-cheng

Relevant information：

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #460

Top Ten Games of Lockdown

So Happy Christmas! Did you have a good time? I know most of us won’t have been able to spend it with families the way we used to. I’m very fortunate in that I really enjoy spending time in the house with my family, so if that’s all we really get to do over Christmas it won’t be the worst thing in the world, especially considering what the world is nowadays. But for the people who couldn’t see families, missed their presents, struggled to find food, or suffered even worse problems, my heart goes out to you. Let’s hope 2021 is a little bit less crap.

Anyway. What with lockdown, there has been a fair bit of families-sitting-round-the-living-room going on. A couple of weeks ago I listed the films we’d been watching as a family that helped us get through this difficult time. Well, we also played a lot of videogames. We played on an evening; we played on a morning. Sometimes we even devoted a whole rainy day to sitting in the front room and enjoying some interactive entertainment! I mean, don’t get me wrong, we did other stuff too. But we had a few fun days with controllers in our hands.

I think we all needed stuff to help get us through this year, and games were a big part of that. For me, I probably ended up playing slightly less than usual; I was no longer alone in the house during the day, and for some reason everybody just stayed up a bit later so I didn’t get to go on after they’d all gone to bed quite as often either (this is also the reason why there are loads of films from 2019 and 2020 that I’ve still not seen). It’s great fun to gather round the TV with a Switch controller in your hands playing a game together. It was also great fun playing “passive co-op”, as I call it; when one person plays a single-player game but is given advice and support from others in the room. This happened a lot. Also sometimes someone would be on the Xbox, someone on the Switch, and someone on the laptop… we really need a fourth console, thinking about it.

Anyway, here are ten games that we as a family enjoyed; not necessarily all at the same time, but during communal gaming sessions or together in multiplayer. Games that helped make 2020 a little bit better. So even thought it’s not been the best year, let’s raise a glass to gaming – and also to the Switch and Xbox Game Pass. They’re great, they are.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017, Switch): Mario Kart is a great leveller, and one of those fantastic games that can encompass a wide variety of skill levels. Sometimes we let the kids win a bit; sometimes we try to show them that you can still have fun without coming first. Sometimes my youngest daughter insists I play as “her” character so then “she” can win. But I don’t need to tell you how great Mario Kart is, and the Switch Joy-Cons make it feel even easier to have a quick multiplayer session of an evening.

Stardew Valley (2016, Xbox One): I bought this a while ago thinking my eldest might enjoy it, but I’d barely scratched its surface; during lockdown, however, my wife and kids devoured it. My wife, in fact, has completed two farms and my kids aren’t far behind. The news of the update, with new farms and collections and a split-screen mode, is tantalising for the rest of my family. Incidentally, I’ve just installed My Time at Portia, which might be scratching a similar itch.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020, Switch): sadly we’ve not managed to sucker my wife into the charms of Tom Nook’s adorable vision of capitalist hell, but there’s still time. This was a great way to spend the pandemic: living on a tropical island full of weird animals, doing nothing but digging up fossils and adding rooms to your house. Serene, relaxing, compelling… and rather social, too, which is a plus.

Boom Blox (2008, Wii): yes, we still have our Wii out; it’s great for the kids. Boom Blox is a very underrated multiplayer, with simple turn-based levels and a mechanic that even a five-year-old can grasp. Yes, it’s prompted tears because someone didn’t win, but it also allows for much hilarity as you miss the blocks you’re supposed to knock down and instead send flying a cardboard squirrel or something.

Minecraft (2017, Xbox One): Minecraft was a social boon this year. Not only could my kids play together, but they could also play with – and chat to – their cousins in the game. Added to the fact that it’s a great construction and educational tool, and they gave way some interesting educational levels, and you’ve got a recipe for success. Now if only they’d release the path-traced version for Series X…

Pokémon Sword (2019, Switch): my kids love Pokémon; my eldest plays the card game, they both collect stuffed toys, and the anime is a regular feature on our Netflix account. Sword, I think, took a while for them to get into, but with us all playing it at different speeds it was good to compare notes and share in our respective journeys. Fun, too, to see how my youngest developed and became more competent as the year progressed.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Discovery Tour (2018, PC): it feels a little bit weird to say “hey, yeah, my two primary-aged children really loved playing Assassin’s Creed this year”, but that’s what they did; Ubisoft making the “Discovery Tour” versions of Origins and Odyssey free was fantastic, especially as my eldest was studying Ancient Greece. A huge, living world, realistic but accessible; suitable for kids but with the heft of a AAA adult videogame. They both love walking around this world, and I was impressed by how scalable the engine was.

The Sims 3 (2009, PC): yep, it’s old, but it’s good; I whack all the cheats on and it just becomes a sandbox construction game for my kids. But I’ll be honest, the thing they really love is designing families; they spend most of their time creating the characters and then have to switch off before they can really get to play. They don’t mind; that’s the fun part.

Untitled Goose Game (2019, Xbox One): another one that my wife and eldest adored, poring over the puzzles and trying to figure it all out. The “horrible goose” dynamic is a dark comic joy, and even though I got frustrated by the fail-repeat dynamic (I always do with these sorts of games), my nearest and dearest persevered. Daughter #1 was especially upset to discover it has departed Game Pass.

Wii Fit (2007, Wii): turns out sitting down inside all year can have a negative effect on your health; who knew? So we broke out the Wii Fit board to try to shed a couple of grams. My kids are way into it, even though I don’t think the game is designed to take such young frames into account. No matter; its fun mix of healthy activities and balance-based minigames still compels. They really love keeping the penguin on that ice…

Just bubbling under here are a few games that were very important, but didn’t quite have the reach to impact everyone in the household in quite the same way. Roblox, for instance, is huge with my eldest, and she’s just recently discovered Fortnite (these games have a social impact for kids her age, it seems); she and her sister also really enjoy Zoo Tycoon and Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure. For my part, playing on the PC of an evening while my wife was caning Stardew, I absolutely loved Gears Tactics. And – whisper it – I also let my eldest play a little Halo, too. How inappropriate of me.

Oh, and Civ VI. Obvs.

[dreamin-of-somewhere-else]

A Day in the Life

Characters: John, oldest Winchester sister!reader, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester.

Words: 2000

Warnings: A teeny tiny bit of blood, a little bit of a language (probably just one word or something), a little bit of fluff. Nothing bad at all in this one.

A/N: So I was debating whether or not to post it since it’s a bit similar to stuff I’ve written lately, but then again, I felt like I needed to post something, and some of you even seemed to want me to post it <3 

Have you seen Shameless? I’ve only seen a handful of episodes (started watching the other day) and this is a little bit inspired by Fiona taking care of the other siblings. I think it’s cute, so yeah, just a fun fact I guess. Also, this is pre-series (my favorite thing to write) and pretty much focused on the reader and her life.

So yeah, hopefully this is okay for now and I’ll try to vary the fics more until next 

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You looked down at the fresh fake IDs you just made for you and your dad, pictures of the two of you staring back at you as you thumbed through the thin stack. Reaching the Impala, you opened the door, and sat down, stuffing them into the glove compartment for now. You would need them for the investigation you were continuing tomorrow, going undercover.

Nowadays, you and your dad split up for the most part of the cases, during basically all of the research. It was fine, you were young — 21 years of age — but still good at your job. You did have quite a lot of experience contrary popular belief, judging by your youthful appearance. Since you graduated, this was what you did 24 hours around the clock, hunting was the only thing that made up your life. That, and taking care of your baby brothers, of course.

Money always had been a bit of a problem, to you more noticeable than ever since you now had the main responsibility to make sure you had it. John had basically passed it over to you, gradually over many years. For the most part, you tried to do it legally. Working a few shifts at a diner or a bar was the usual — it was surprisingly easy to get a job if you just dressed up in your nicest clothes (or in other words, the one outfit you had saved for that very purpose) and smiled a lot. They didn’t know that you would quit in less than three weeks in most cases, because you just didn’t tell them.

But, despite that, it wasn’t enough. You were four people after all, with two still going to school, and the few shifts you had the time to work (hunting was to blame for the lack of time) weren’t enough to pay for everything. So, credit card fraud and other stuff like that had always been in the picture. And although it was John who handled that, you could tell he was planning to drop that task on you too sooner or later.

Starting the car and looking down at your wristwatch (probably your most expensive possession) you cursed out loud, even though it was only you there to hear.

”Shit!”

You were supposed to pick up your brothers, like, ten minutes ago. The cheapest motel of the small town were located a bit too far for walking distance from the school, so you were driving them every morning and afternoon.

With guilt growing in your stomach, you stepped on the gas to get to the high school where Sam, a freshman, and Dean, a senior, currently went.

Five minutes later you arrived at the school building, pulling up into the now empty parking lot. They both walked towards to the black, sleek, car once it had come to a stop, climbing into it.

”Guys, I’m so, so, sorry.” You apologized with a guilty expression on your face, flashing a tiny remorseful smile on your face that never reached your eyes. ”I lost track of time,” you lied because the truth was that you had had too much to do today.

You looked from Dean besides you in the front seat, to Sam in the back.

”It’s okay,” Dean responded, and that was it.

Sam just looked tired and the rest of the car ride was quiet.

The next morning you woke up along with your little brothers, just like you always did, despite the fact that you don’t have any particular place to be any certain time. But, you helped them get ready, just like you’d always done. Dean sometimes complained quietly at you running around and fixing things for him, practically being a mother hen, but then again, he hadn’t straight out asked you to stop.

This specific motel had the luxury of a mini fridge to put some food in, so you had made them sandwiches to bring to school during the latest week you had been spending here, while they shower, brush their teeth and what not. Today, it didn’t take you long to realize that there weren’t any bread left — you forgot to buy it yesterday — which meant that that lunch plan went down the drain.

You quickly strode over from the minuscule kitchen to your oversized denim jacket that was thrown over the backrest of a chair. Rummaging through the pockets, you brought out the last money you had since your latest payment from the diner you were currently working on, and handled the crumpled dollar bills to Sam and Dean, placing half and half in each of their outstretched hands.

”Don’t you need that, (Y/N)?” Sam asked as he looked up from the cash in his hand and at you, frowning.

You shrugged as you ushered them through the door and to the car.

”Nah, I have a few more left.” It was obviously a lie, but you could always call your dad and have lunch with him today, or ask him for a few bucks to pay for your own.

Although, he never did answer your phone calls.

That day you talked to the old, divorced, Mrs Colton at the end of the street from where the body was found. She was supposedly always watching everything that goes on outside of her very ordinary house, and you hoped that she had seen anything — something that didn’t quite make sense, something that wasn’t supposed to be real. She didn’t have much to offer though, and except of talking about sightings of what goes bump in the night, you ended up having a quite long conversation about her red tabby cat once named Catshup but re-named Susan after her kids moved out.

One hour later you thanked Mrs Colton, and left her home behind. Your next stop was the victim’s house further down the street and on the way there you grabbed a duffle bag with tools from the Impala. It was in the middle of the day, and nobody seemed to be home in the closest houses — except for the woman you just visited — but you kept out of the areas she could see from her freakishly clean windows.

Opening the worn duffle bag and pulling out your lock pick, you looked around yourself. It was one of those chilly autumn days where everything was just kind of grey. A flock of birds lifted from a close by tree, and your eyes shot in that direction but there was no one there. The coast seemed to be clear.

20 minutes later, you walked out of the house, sighing and not knowing any more about what had happened to the poor guy. You had checked for EMF — but there was nothing. Not even a trace. No sulfur, and no strange claw marks either.

Soon after you reached the Impala and yawned as you sat down inside. Maybe you stayed up researching a little bit too late last night. Meanwhile, hunger was gnawing at your insides from the lack of lunch.

You pulled up a note from your pocket where you had a handful of names scribbled down. They were all friends of the victim who you were planning to talk to as well. You doubted you’d have time to interview them all before you had to drive to the diner to work today’s two hour shift. And then, after that, you had to pick up your brothers at school. On time this time.

John was a bit annoyed when you told him that you didn’t really find anything new, groundbreaking today. Fortunately, he didn’t share the same bad luck.

Turned out it was a shapeshifter. A monster who took the shape of a human, and that’s why no one suspected anything supernatural. So, John sent you out to the car to go and get all the silver bullets you had, and then you loaded your guns.

After persuading your father to not bring Sam and Dean — he wanted to at first and if Dean would’ve known, he would have wanted to as well — you left just you two to kill the damned shapeshifter.

Four hours later, just after midnight, John stumbled into the motel room, your arm wrapped around his shoulders as your head hung low. He was helping you walk, with most of your weight on him.

Sam and Dean, who were doing homework and watching TV respectively, stared at you both and when they saw that the white t-shirt you were wearing had a dark red stain, they practically flew off their beds, rushing up to you.

”Shit, what happened?” Dean questioned, looking up at John with wide green eyes.

As he and Sam waited for your dad to answer, they took your weight off him and carried you to the closest bed. Sam then went to go and get the first aid kit.

”It’s not that bad,” John responded finally, as he shrugged off his dirty jacket, throwing it at the floor.  

Either he hadn’t noticed or he didn’t care that you had taken time in your day to clean up the messy motel room a bit, clearing the floor.

Dean settled you down before glaring at his dad. He neither believed him or was happy. You looked dazed and tired, and for John to just shrug it off like it was nothing made Dean angry. He bit down on his lip, not wanting to start an argument with his father.

”It’s… not that bad…” you told him, agreeing with John, but your words were sluggish and Dean had to concentrate to hear what you were saying.

He placed his hands on your cheeks, and his thumbs under your eyebrows. When he gently lifted them, your eyes automatically opened wider. Simultaneously, Sam came back with a flashlight and shone it into them. You shrugged back, but them both had the time to see the unevenness in your pupils.

”Concussion,” Sam and Dean both mumbled at the same time, looking at each other.

Then Sam gently lifted your shirt a little bit, to check on the injury. It’s not that bad thankfully, but it did need some stitches. Dean brought out the needle and thread which meant it was Sam’s job to distract you.

”I’m tired,” you groaned, and tried to lie down. Your mind was all fuzzy, and the only thing you knew was that you wanted to sleep.

”No, no, no, (Y/N),” Sam grabbed a hold of your wrists and pulled you upwards, Dean supporting him and you by putting a hand on your back while holding the needle in his other.

”But I’ve had a loooong day,” you pouted, shoulders sagging down even more.

”Yeah, I know sis, but you gotta sit still a little longer,” Sam coaxed you, rubbing your shoulder.

You looked deep into his hazel eyes. He was 14, you 21, and you were the one that acted like a baby. And even though you practically ran the household and took care of him ever other hour of your life, you still felt guilty.

But you were too confused and tired to do anything about it.

You reached up a slack hand and placed it on his cheek. ”You cute,” you smiled.

Later that night, when John had headed out as usual, you, Sam and Dean all sat on one of the beds, curled up closely without thinking of it. You were watching some random 80s movie on the small motel room TV that probably originated from the very same decade.

”Thank you for taking care of us,” Dean mumbled to you sometime after Sam had fallen asleep, head resting against your shoulder. ”I mean, you work your ass off, and we appreciate it. We really do. Thanks.”

”’S no problem,” you grinned softly in return through the darkness, the moving scenes on the TV lighting up your face a little bit. ”My pleasure.”

Dean grinned back at you, before turning his head towards the TV again, before whispering one last thing. ”Yeah, you say so.”

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[moretalk]

“Odds and Even Money

...The closer the fight is in fact to even money, the less attractive the long end of the odds will appear and, therefore, the shorter it must be if there are to be takers. That this is the case is apparent from mere inspection, from the Balinese's own analysis of the matter, and from what more systematic observations I was able to collect. Given the difficulty of making precise and complete recordings of side betting, this argument is hard to cast in numerical form, but in all my cases the odds-giver, odds-taker consensual point, a quite pronounced mini-max saddle where the bulk (at a guess, twothirds to three-quarters in most cases) of the bets are actually made, was three or four points further along the scale toward the shorter end for the large-center-bet fights than for the small ones, with medium ones generally in between. In detail, the fit is not, of course, exact, but the general pattern is quite consistent: the power of the center bet to pull the side bets toward its own even-money pattern is directly proportional to its size, because its size is directly proportional to the degree to which the cocks are in fact evenly matched. As for the volume question, total wagering is greater in large-center-bet fights because such fights are considered more "interesting," not only in the sense that they are less predictable, but, more crucially, that more is at stake in them--in terms of money, in terms of the quality of the cocks, and consequently, as we shall see, in terms of social prestige.) 17

The paradox of fair coin in the middle, biased coin on the outside is thus a merely apparent one. The two betting systems, though formally incongruent, are not really contradictory to one another, but part of a single larger system in which the center bet is, so to speak, the "center of gravity," drawing, the larger it is the more so, the outside bets toward the short-odds end of the scale. The center bet thus "makes the game," or perhaps better, defines it, signals what, following a notion of Jeremy Bentham's, I am going to call its "depth."

The Balinese attempt to create an interesting, if you will, "deep," match by making the center bet as large as possible so that the cocks matched will be as equal and as fine as possible, and the outcome, thus, as unpredictable as possible. They do not always succeed. Nearly half the matches are relatively trivial, relatively uninteresting--in my borrowed terminology, "shallow"--affairs. But that fact no more argues against my interpretation than the fact that most painters, poets, and playwrights are mediocre argues against the view that artistic effort is directed toward profundity and, with a certain frequency, approximates it. The image of artistic technique is indeed exact: the center bet is a means, a device, for creating "interesting," "deep" matches, not the reason, or at least not the main reason, why they are interesting, the source of their fascination, the substance of their depth. The question why such matches are interesting--indeed, for the Balinese, exquisitely absorbing--takes us out of the realm of formal concerns into more broadly sociological and social-psychological ones, and to a less purely economic idea of what "depth" in gaming amounts to.18

Bentham's concept of "deep play" is found in his The Theory of Legislation.19 By it he means play in which the stakes are so high that it is, from his utilitarian standpoint, irrational for men to engage in it at all. (If a man whose fortune is a thousand pounds (or ringgits) wages five hundred of it on an even bet, the marginal utility of the pound he stands to win is clearly less than the marginal disutility of the one he stands to lose. In genuine deep play, this is the case for both parties. They are both in over their heads. Having come together in search of pleasure they have entered into a relationship which will bring the participants, considered collectively, net pain rather than net pleasure. Bentham's conclusion was, therefore, that deep play was immoral from first principles and, a typical step for him, should be prevented legally.

But more interesting than the ethical problem, at least for our concerns here, is that despite the logical force of Bentham's analysis men do engage in such play, both passionately and often, and even in the face of law's revenge. For Bentham and those who think as he does (nowadays mainly lawyers, economists, and a few psychiatrists), the explanation is, as I have said, that such men are irrational--addicts, fetishists, children, fools, savages, who need only to be protected against themselves. But for the Balinese, though naturally they do not formulate it in so many words, the explanation lies in the fact that in such play, money is less a measure of utility, had or expected, than it is a symbol of moral import, perceived or imposed.

It is, in fact, in shallow games, ones in which smaller amounts of money are involved, that increments and decrements of cash are more nearly synonyms for utility and disutility, in the ordinary, unexpanded sense--for pleasure and pain, happiness and unhappiness. In deep ones, where the amounts of money are great, much more is at stake than material gain: namely, esteem, honor, dignity, respect--in a word, though in Bali a profoundly freighted word, status. 20It is at stake symbolically, for (a few cases of ruined addict gamblers aside) no one's status is actually altered by the outcome of a cockfight; it is only, and that momentarily, affirmed or insulted. But for the Balinese, for whom nothing is more pleasurable than an affront obliquely delivered or more painful than one obliquely received--particularly when mutual acquaintances, undeceived by surfaces, are watching--such appraisive drama is deep indeed.)

This, I must stress immediately, is not to say that the money does not matter, or that the Balinese is no more concerned about losing five hundred ringgits than fifteen. Such a conclusion would be absurd. It is because money does, in this hardly unmaterialistic society, matter and matter very much that the more of it one risks the more of a lot of other things, such as one's pride, one's poise, one's dispassion, one's masculinity, one also risks, again only momentarily but again very publicly as well. In deep cockfights an owner and his collaborators, and, as we shall see, to a lesser but still quite real extent also their backers on the outside, put their money where their status is.

It is in large part because the marginal disutility of loss is so great at the higher levels of betting that to engage in such betting is to lay one's public self, allusively and metaphorically, through the medium of one's cock, on the line. And though to a Benthamite this might seem merely to increase the irrationality of the enterprise that much further, to the Balinese what it mainly increases is the meaningfulness of it all. And as (to follow Weber rather than Bentham) the imposition of meaning on life is the major end and primary condition of human existence, that access of significance more than compensates for the economic costs involved.21 Actually, given the even-money quality of the larger matches, important changes in material fortune among those who regularly participate in them seem virtually nonexistent, because matters more or less even out over the long run. (It is, actually, in the smaller, shallow fights, where one finds the handful of more pure, addict-type gamblers involved--those who are in it mainly for the money--that "real" changes in social position, largely downward, are affected. Men of this sort, plungers, are highly dispraised by "true cockfighters" as fools who do not understand what the sport is all about, vulgarians who simply miss the point of it all. They are, these addicts, regarded as fair game for the genuine enthusiasts, those who do understand, to take a little money away from--something that is easy enough to do by luring them, through the force of their greed, into irrational bets on mismatched cocks. Most of them do indeed manage to ruin themselves in a remarkably short time, but there always seems to be one or two of them around, pawning their land and selling their clothes in order to bet, at any particular time.) 22

This graduated correlation of "status gambling" with deeper fights and, inversely, "money gambling" with shallower ones is in fact quite general. Bettors themselves form a sociomoral hierarchy in these terms. As noted earlier, at most cockfights there are, around the very edges of the cockfight area, a large number of mindless, sheer-chance type gambling games (roulette, dice throw, coin-spin, pea-under-the-shell) operated by concessionaires. Only women, children, adolescents, and various other sorts of people who do not (or not yet) fight cocks--the extremely poor, the socially despised, the personally idiosyncratic--play at these games, at, of course, penny ante levels. Cockfighting men would be ashamed to go anywhere near them. Slightly above these people in standing are those who, though they do not themselves fight cocks, bet on the smaller matches around the edges. Next, there are those who fight cocks in small, or occasionally medium matches, but have not the status to join in the large ones, though they may bet from time to time on the side in those. And finally, there are those, the really substantial members of the community, the solid citizenry around whom local life revolves, who fight in the larger fights and bet on them around the side. The focusing element in these focused gatherings, these men generally dominate and define the sport as they dominate and define the society. When a Balinese male talks, in that almost venerative way, about "the true cockfighter," the bebatoh ("bettor" ) or djuru kurung ("cage keeper"), it is this sort of person, not those who bring the mentality of the pea-and-shell game into the quite different, inappropriate context of the cockfight, the driven gambler (potet, a word which has the secondary meaning of thief or reprobate), and the wistful hanger-on, that they mean. For such a man, what is really going on in a match is something rather closer to an affaire d'honneur (though, with the Balinese talent for practical fantasy, the blood that is spilled is only figuratively human) than to the stupid, mechanical crank of a slot machine.

What makes Balinese cockfighting deep is thus not money in itself, but what, the more of it that is involved the more so, money causes to happen: the migration of the Balinese status hierarchy into the body of the cockfight. Psychologically an Aesopian representation of the ideal/demonic, rather narcissistic, male self, sociologically it is an equally Aesopian representation of the complex fields of tension set up by the controlled, muted, ceremonial, but for all that deeply felt, interaction of those selves in the context of everyday life. The cocks may be surrogates for their owners' personalities, animal mirrors of psychic form, but the cockfight is--or more exactly, deliberately is made to be--a simulation of the social matrix, the involved system of crosscutting, overlapping, highly corporate groups--villages, kingroups, irrigation societies, temple congregations, "castes"--in which its devotees live.23 And as prestige, the necessity to affirm it, defend it, celebrate it, justify it, and just plain bask in it (but not given the strongly ascriptive character of Balinese stratification, to seek it), is perhaps the central driving force in the society, so also--ambulant penises, blood sacrifices, and monetary exchanges aside--is it of the cockfight. This apparent amusement and seeming sport is, to take another phrase from Erving Goffman, "a status bloodbath."24...

THE MORE A MATCH IS . . .

1. Between near status equals (and/or personal enemies)

2. Between high status individuals

THE DEEPER THE MATCH.

1. The closer the identification of cock and man (or: more properly, the deeper the match the more the man will advance his best, most closely-identified-with cock).

2. The finer the cocks involved and the more exactly they will be matched.

3. The greater the emotion that will be involved and the more the general absorption in the match.

4. The higher the individual bets center and outside, the shorter the outside bet odds will tend to be, and the more betting there will be over-all.

5. The less an economic and the more a "status" view of gaming will be involved, and the "solider" the citizens who will be gaming.26.

Inverse arguments hold for the shallower the fight, culminating, in a reversed-signs sense, in the coin-spinning and dice-throwing amusements. For deep fights there are no absolute upper limits, though there are of course practical ones, and there are a great many legend-like tales of great Duel-in-the-Sun combats between lords and princes in classical times (for cockfighting has always been as much an elite concern as a popular one), far deeper than anything anyone, even aristocrats, could produce today anywhere in Bali.

Indeed, one of the great culture heroes of Bali is a prince, called after his passion for the sport, "The Cockfighter," who happened to be away at a very deep cockfight with a neighboring prince when the whole of his family-father, brothers, wives, sisters-were assassinated by commoner usurpers. Thus spared, he returned to dispatch the upstarts, regain the throne, reconstitute the Balinese high tradition, and build its most powerful, glorious, and prosperous state. Along with everything else that the Balinese see in fighting cocks--themselves, their social order, abstract hatred, masculinity, demonic power--they also see the archetype of status virtue, the arrogant, resolute, honor-mad player with real fire, the ksatria prince.27″ - http://hypergeertz.jku.at/GeertzTexts/Deep_Play.htm

[danaisvanessa]

Best GPU For Ryzen 7 2700 X

Although introduced back in 2018, it is still capable of enjoying 1440p games in ease.Yes, AMD has introduced its own successor in the kind of Ryzen 7 3700X, you will find plenty of people around who still favor the older 2700X because of the cheap price today.In reality, there are lots of folks seeking to sell their own 2700X chip to generate budget for 3700X.  Therefore, if the fortune is on your side and you happen across this type on sites such as Ebay, you can get a secondhand 2700X (in good condition clearly ) in only $150-$175 price range.Coming back to the subject, the reason we're writing this subject is straightforward: Ryzen 2700X, such as many other Ryzen CPUs, does not include an integrated graphics unit.This means you've got to set it with a compatible graphics card to perform with those AAA names in high-res.To be frank, most of the latest graphics cards which have over 4 GB VRAM will operate with 2700X. 

 The most important problem you will face in this respect is your CPU bottlenecking -- should you use a graphics card also strong for 2700X.Fortunately, all of the graphics card we've included in this listing are acceptable for 2700X, and provide little-to-no bottleneck.Depending on the first RX 5600 XT, it delivers a couple of modifications in the kind of triple-slot layout, dual-BIOS, dual-fan coolingsystem, and higher clock rates .  These modifications, however, result from the additional 30 dollars you've got pay to get this version. On the top-right corner, you will discover a dual-BIOS switch.  This graphics card includes 2 BIOS: OC and quiet, and you'll be able to switch between them based on your taste.

  That having been said, we afterwards discovered that there is no noticeable gap between the quiet and the OC manner. The matches on that we analyzed this card comprise Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, and also the Battlefield V.With highest quality style in Shadow of this Tomb Raider, also with TAA and HBAO+ turned , I obtained 96 FPS on typical @1080p resolution.  When resolution was put to 1440p, the frame rate dropped but still spanned the 60 FPS markers. There are a few games such as Metro: exodus and Borderlands 3, but at which this GPU will limit you @1080p.It provides 5 percent greater performance compared to normal RX 5600 XT together with the cost difference of only $30.All this makes Red Dragon RX 5600 XT a fairly attractive alternative as you are just getting 10% less functionality than the RTX 2060 Super cards while still saving you over 100 bucks.

The temperature levels are somewhat higher than we would have liked, but it is most probably because of slow fan speeds and it really assists in bringing the sound level down.  Like most other graphics cards nowadays, there is a 0db attribute though which fans do not spin unless the images center get warmer than 60 Celsius.Second, whilst 6GB VRAM is excellent for nearly all of the games on the market, 8 GB would have been better -- particularly in the event that you take into account the money you are spending with this card.  Last, we could not find any large performance gap between its regular and OC style.We have the RTX 2060 Super Gaming X MSI -- among the beefier versions of this conventional rtx 2060 super card.Like other MSI RTX Super versions, you get a black/dark gray scheme on the other hand , along with gunmetal black onto the metal plate in the back.  

This backplate includes five cutouts at unique places and attributes MSI dragon emblem on its side.This dragon emblem includes RGB that adds taste to general design of the card.On the ideal corner of this card, there is a normal 8-pin power connectors while the back includes 3 DisplayPorts 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0 port.There are just two MSI custom lovers used to actively chilled the card.  And the very best thing about these fans is they feature 2 distinct kinds of blades so as to give better venting .If we discuss internals, there is a nickel-plated aluminum heatsink base plate which features four nickel-plated copper heatpipes. 

 So as to have additional surface area for heat dissipation, these heatpipes make contact with the picture core and extend to various aluminum fins.Another fantastic thing that I found here is that the heatsink is connected to the PCB with only four screws, making it rather simple to wash out the graphics card later on.We enjoying GTA V, I flipped the TXAA off, place the images level to High, and obtained 157 FPS on 1080p resolution.   We I attempted to play with 4K resolution, it dropped below the 60 fps mark, and may just make it into 47.Same occurred in Shadow of this Tomb Raider, in which I obtained 109 FPS and 74 FPS on 1080p and 1440p resolutions (Maximum Preset) but obtained just 38 FPS at 4K.Concerning electricity consumption, Gaming X gpu performs nearly like the RTX 2060 Super Founders Edition since the two of them have exactly the exact same 175 W power limitation. 

 In gaming, however, it absorbs almost 200 Watts on average.In general, Gaming X RTX 2060 superb is fairly strong midrange graphics card that delivers a fantastic improvement over the normal RTX 2060 card, and lets you play with 1440p games in ease.Its 8 GB VRAM is much more than sufficient for many games on the market, it includes a fantastic design headroom, and the Twin Frozr 7 thermal design gives a wonderful balance between the aesthetics and also the functionality.These fans do not twist till the GPU reach the 60 Celsius mark, and do not enable the temperatures with move north of 80 Celsius in almost any instance.In addition you get RGB here also it is not over-the-top by almost any way.In a nutshell, if you would like to remain with Team Nvidia and are not contemplating 4K gaming, there is no reason why you need ton't give it a go.

To know more in details please click here.

[hoodiism]

What Makes a Great Entertainer?

Most people at some time in their lives experience a excellent entertainer, unless of course they live under a rock. And, the majority of those people if they are fortunate enough get to see several. Most everyone intuitively knows a terrific entertainer when they visit you however, do they actually understand what goes into creating one? Based on my experience it isn't an accident that a number of entertainers stick out from the crowd. 

It is based on a carefully laid out plan that includes; stage presence, humility, confidence, mental planning, natural talent, expertise and one key ingredient. Did you know that the number one fear in North America is people speaking? The only way to alleviate that anxiety is with practice. 

Public speaking or any form of performance before an audience takes training. It is not just about what to do or say, it is about how to say or do it. Most great entertainers understand that it is much less important what you do or say, it is how you say or do it. 

So, how can you learn how to provide a fantastic performance? The first thing you need is the ideal information. It always amazes me how few people understand how to interact with an audience. It's not only about being confident it is about where to stand, the way to stand, when to talk, the way to talk, body language, the way to move and how to deal with the audience. 

This sort of information starts with a template. There really is a template for providing any sort of presentation. Most great entertainers know this. They don't wing it. By way of example, there's a template only for the introduction including things such as; how to select the point, what to say , asking registering questions, making the right and letting the audience what the demonstration is all about and what is in store for me. 

Although this might seem like a simple thing, it is not. An entertainer should know exactly how to perform every of these steps. It's not enough merely to know the steps, you will need to understand how to deliver them. Then, as soon as you've the template down the toughest part comes next; how to put your personality into the template. 

This is the part that takes the most practice. I recall when I first put the template to practice it was nothing short of a tragedy. Why? Because, I tried to be somebody that I am not. An audience can see right through that. I had to find myself inside the template and find out how to be me while still covering all the things I want to do to connect with the crowd. 

Ok, so let's say you have mastered the template and can deliver it into your own style and personality. What else do you want to know? Only this; the audience is the star! That is the secret ingredient. Without it, you can't ever aspire to be a terrific entertainer. And, that is the biggest mistake that many upcoming performers don't understand. 

It is all about the audience. In actuality, the more you make it on the audience that the more success as a terrific entertainer you'll ever have. The last thing an audience would like to see is some ego maniac artist take the point and make everything about them. For instance; if the artists performs exactly what they want and say what they want with little respect for what the audience needs. That is so wrong on so many levels. 

The way to do you make it on the audience? Use the template. The template teaches you how you can interact with them rather than performing them down. A blend of the ideal performance template, experience and making the audience the star will propel any livelihood beyond normal expectation. Just make sure you get the proper information from the correct individuals. How? Proceed to someone who's already doing it and ask them. It's as straightforward as that. 

Great Entertaining Ways For Better Home Security

When I look at some product reviews nowadays - cars, flat screens, laptops, I am surprised to see how they frequently start off talking about how they look. Cars must be sleek, flat screens must be sleeker, and laptops need to be thin and shiny. 

Initially I believed that abandoning any pretense of a significant review by beginning with the appearances was somewhat laughable. But then, it happened to me that to many people (and I grudgingly include myself in this class ), any sort of purchase must look the part. 

I mean, people rave about the iPhone, even though it does not have very good call quality (the newest edition of the iPhone seemingly has serious issues in this area also ). A phone is to talk on; and the iPhone has problems in that region. So why bring up this to describe home security? It is just that this is a new concept that is doing the rounds with security specialists. 

Whatever it's all about your stuff that you love the most, is what attracts the thieves also. To people who have a passionate interest in maintaining their house intruder free when they're out on vacation, the best home security system they can afford is sometimes insufficient. 

In some ways, it appears too easy to just throw money at the problem. To find creative, they go for the"previously broken into" look. What they do is, before they leave on a holiday, they tear through their house to make it seem like it got hit by storm.

[insidiousflame]

My Spirituality

 So I consider myself to be a very open-minded person when it comes to spirituality. I didn’t always used to be because I grew up christian. And as a result, I was taught to believe in that religion absolutley 100% with no grey areas in between. But of course as a person grows older, they start to question things and branch off into other ways of thinking and morals. For example, I used to be very against gay marriage because I was ignorant, and only knew the bible said it was wrong. But as my knowledge matured about the world and my own faith, I realized how out-dated that way of thinking was. My personal experiences and relationship with God, gave me an abundance of love and wisdom about life. And I had to decipher within my self what to believe, versus what other PEOPLE told me to believe. Along with of course, the many inconsistencies within the text of the bible itself, whole big conundrum i wont get into. It was a tremendous struggle because i always just trusted what other people, especially my parents, told me was right or wrong and that was it. So instead of just going along with a written text, i focused more on what felt right with me and my own heart. And let me tell you it feels so much better. So i still do consider myself a christian today. But theres some magical, controversial bits in between that I’m about to shed light on now.    I have a big interest in the supernatural. Like, not just with the knowledge about angels and demons, but things from the common mythical creatures to straight up chakra and psychic and witchy aspects of it. Magic basically. I have always, from the ripe young age of an elementary schooler, been curious about witchcraft and things associated. The only reason i was introduced to it at such a young age was because I had a friend way back then who was apparently a witch. All I remember was her having this book on witchcraft and wanting to do some spells with me. And i was like “oh that sounds cool!” But somewhere in the mix the parents found out and i pretty much wasnt able to hang around her much anymore. And that was the end of that until a bit later. I wanna say I started learning more about that magical stuff again in highschool. I would end up watching supernatural shows on youtube or researching stuff about tarot cards and crystals etc and I was just so drawn to it. And I again, came into contact with a friend who practiced all that cool stuff and he opened me back up to it with his own tarot which he actually let me borrow at one point. And oh boy was I excited. This stuff...was crazy. It felt like my soul was just passionate with this curious fire. Now there was also this side of me who felt like i was doing something bad because of what I was raised to believe. Basically, if it aint of God, its of the devil. And the devil was gonna try and suck me into this evil stuff. And although i had this excitement, I had a feeling, as I kept working with the cards over and over, that they were telling me to stay away from them. The cards were telling me. Or whatever divine influence around me was. I mean, my parents found out about them eventually and of course gave me the whole “its demonic” schpeal. But i got my own warning signs i started to notice. And this will probably sound really crazy. But honestly....all this stuff is crazy. But still happened mind you. See, the tarot cards consist of what is called Major Arcana, which is your well known cards like “The Devil, The Wheel of Fortune, High Priestess” titles like that. And the Minor Arcana, which contain the suits, “Swords, wands, pentacles, cups” listed Ace through King with numbers of course in between. I kept drawing, The Devil. I kept drawing cards with the number 6 on it. So Immedietley I had the thought of, “Okay. Something is telling me I shouldnt be using these.” So I eventually gave them back to the friend and didnt mess with them again until much later. But of course my curiousity didnt end there. Bitch please. To speed things along, I ended up buying and destroying a couple of decks until I finally reached a spiritual point where I understood the responsibility that was needed to use them. Through those years I spent a loooot of time researching about witch craft, wicca, paganism and all the metaphysical and divination practices of the like. I researched about what the bible said about them and also the concrete history of witchery and the differences of the different terms associated with them. And then I discovered.....holy shit. This shit isn’t this big bad evil that everyone makes it out to be. It’s actually.....very beautiful and artistic and expressive. And I think the mystery and aesthetic and magical aspects of those things is what really drew me in in the first place. Now don’t get me wrong, magic can MOST CERTAINLY be used for evil. It can most certainly hurt you and others whether you believe in it or not. And I think that’s why my spiritual guides, or whatever was happening back then, steered me away from it. Because I wasn’t mature enough to know how to use those tools safely and without getting carried away. Because now i have absolutley no problem using these tools for guidance. Cause I dont abuse them. Because these beautiful practices resonated so much with me, i started to want to incorporate them more in my life in now a more respectful and wise manner. And it was really, enriching for my soul and my view on life. It brought me so much happiness and appreciation for the mystery life has. And I’ve been able to find a comfortable balance with my beliefs. And here is where I’m at today. I am still a believer in the christian God. But I also enjoy incorporating symbolic and ritualistic crafts from the magical culture into my worship. So in other words, i could put myself in the category into an eclectic witch. Eclectic Witches create their own personal practices and belief or religious systems by re-creating or borrowing knowledge and practices from other beliefs, practices, etc.  So they basically see something they like about another’s belief or practice and say “oh i like that, that feels right with me, im going to incorporate that into my spirituality as well.” Which is what im doing. lol Theres a LOT that needs explaining with that because it is so easy for people to get confused and assume things which is why this topic is so difficult to talk about because it goes back into all that history and research. I had to make a whole educational documentation for my parents so they could understand why i like these things, why they arent as evil as they believe and so on. It is very frustrating when you feel like you need to justify yourself to others about what you believe. And i think my experience with spirituality has really opened me up to other’s beliefs and being a whole lot more less judgmental and more accepting and loving of people in general. So in essence, all I’m doing, is a new form of ritual. When I use my cards, i am specific to say I only wish for the guidance from God and his Angels. And everything that he wishes me to know, will be by his will only with no interference of another force or entity. I always make sure to protect myself from the negative energies. I rarely do spells nowadays, but when I do, it is only of a means of feeling like I am doing more than just....talking about it. It makes me feel a little more in control and I again, make sure my intentions are clear with what energies I am working with and I mean no disrespect to God in the works I do and it is only for creative expression and ritual dedicated to him and no one else. And that feels right with me. I didn’t go into much, but crystal healing is another thing I love, although I dont believe in 100% because I’m just always keeping an open mind and completley understand a skeptic’s point of view. But nonetheless I have had my own share of positive experiences with it and do still enjoy working with them from time to time. That’s about all I’ll go into.  And just for your convenience, I will actually link the documents of some of the basic research and explanation on my practices and beliefs in the description if youre curious. The actual couple of fun pages I gave to my parents so hopefully i dont have to explain myself further. lol I would love to touch up on some more spiritual/paranormal stuff at later dates. Have a beautiful day. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cB0avtCEEyoA_-CZKh5OWCz56qXVqoSJu6MLsZtAYIo/edit