#*excerpts

[malinaa]

Rivers Solomon, Model Home

[misspelledthoughts-archive]

i’m better off without you, but my heart doesn’t know the difference when i stretch the vowel in stop, or part my hair to the left or curve the letters i write like you did i’m better off without you, but once in a while i’ll feel the sting of your absence in your favorite song, and the love that remains will long for the friend you once were

[feral-ballad]

Joy Sullivan, from Instructions for Traveling West: Poems; “Instructions for Traveling West”

[secretsiwhispertothemoon]

Frida Kahlo, from a letter wr. c. November 1933, featured in The Letters of Frida Kahlo: Cartas Apasionadas

[shisasan]

Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus, originally published: 1977

[lilliesand-valleys]

[fairydrowning]

– Noor Unnahar, Instagram account "noor_unnahar"

[TEXT ID: / [Lemons] / My father's mother loved lemons. Years after her passing, / we run out of everything, but never / lemons. / Nothing else shelters grief / better than memory. / It's my father way of saying, / even in your absence, you will be / cared by me. / END ID]

[maryqos]

coco mellors, cleopatra and frankenstein.

[dionyrtal]

Vertigo Peaks by Dion Anja 2. Return II by Dean Gioia

[liketolaugh-writes]

I've been playing with a no-one-knows AU where Danny has been married to Jason for years but hasn't told him his secret. Jason knows that Danny isn't human, but hasn't pressed because Danny is so terrified when he approaches the topic. The Batfamily do not know.

Presently, the GIW are in Gotham and closing in, and the Box Ghost has come to Danny seeking help.

----

“You’re a ghost,” Jason said gently, pulling one of Danny’s hands away from his face to wrap it in his own. Danny let him. “Aren’t you?”

Danny’s breath hitched again.

Surprisingly, the Box Ghost looked almost as horrified as Danny.

“What? NO! I, the BOX GHOST, would not out Danny Fenton to his human family! For he is as human as I once was!” He flailed his arms in blatant panic. “There is nothing to reveal, for Danny Fenton is most certainly NOT a ghost!”

“What’s wrong with Danny being a ghost?” Box Lunch wanted to know, tilting her head up to peer up at her father in confusion. “Is it a secret?”

“BOX LUNCH!” the Box Ghost wailed, every inch a mortified parent.

“Yes, it was, or your father would not be so blatantly lying about it,” Damian told her, taking pity on the child ghost.

“Oh!” Box Lunch nodded seriously. “Danny isn’t a ghost!”

Danny let out a slightly hysterical laugh, and then started to cry, gasping quietly with tears pouring down his face, hunched down to hide from them. He didn’t pull his hand out of Jason’s.

“It is no longer a secret here, as it has become apparent,” Damian elaborated.

Box Lunch scrunched up her nose. “Oh.”

“Ghosts are not bad,” Cass said softly, “if ghosts are Danny.”

“Danny.” Jason scooted closer and pulled Danny against him, and Danny let him, pressing into him without unwinding at all. “Danny, I already knew. I’ve known for years.” Danny tilted his head up to give him an incredulous look, and Jason grinned at him. “You’re not good at hiding it, stardust. Your freckles glow when you’re excited and your eyes flash green when you’re frustrated. You walk through closed doors when you’re sleepy and things fall through your hands when people startle you. I’ve known you aren’t human since we moved in together.”

“…Oh,” Danny murmured, guilt and relief and wonder swirling together in his still-wet eyes.

“Phantom!” the Box Ghost scolded. Jason took note of the sudden change in address. “You are the worst secret keeper ever!”

“Shut up, Boxy,” Danny snapped. He pulled away from Jason and wiped his eyes, sniffling. Their hands stayed locked together. “We, we need to hide you and bitty-bite b-before we talk about this any more. I wasn’t joking about the Guys in White.”

The Box Ghost flapped his arms dismissively. “They will not find us! They are looking for YOU, and their instruments will not be prepared for such subtle spirits as Box Lunch and I!”

“They are looking for me while I am hiding,” Danny said, soft but barbed. He wiped his face again and turned around to better face the other ghost, glaring sharply. “Something I am well known to be very good at. Far better at than you.”

The Box Ghost went so pale he was almost translucent.

“You don’t look like a ghost at all,” Tim said, studying Danny. “Your skin is pink, you don’t glow… most of the time, no pointed ears or fangs. Your eyes are normal.” His eyes narrowed. “Is this… not your natural appearance?”

Danny flinched. “I… I…” He swallowed, staring at nothing, and then forced his attention back onto the Box Ghost. “Your base signatures are pretty low. If you stop using your powers and suppress your auras as much as you can, you can probably bring them low enough to hide.”

No answers would be forthcoming for now, Jason understood. He signaled sharply to Bruce and Tim, the most likely to try to interrupt. Wait. Time-sensitive, finish operation before proceeding.

Bruce didn’t look pleased, but he nodded sharply. Tim just watched, thoughtful eyes fixed on Danny. Damian was scowling, Dick frowning faintly, but Cass’ curiosity looked borderline idle. Jason watched Danny interact with the other ghost with a healthy blend of interest and concern, and tried not to wonder if Tim was right.

“Box Lunch, do you know how to land?” Danny asked. It seemed like a silly question until Box Lunch wrinkled her nose and cocked her head.

“Land?” she asked, audibly uncertain. For that matter, her father looked vaguely baffled too. “Like… with my feet? On the floor?”

Danny managed a smile and nodded. Box Lunch eyed the floor, then drifted down to hover at floor level. “Like this?”

“Not exactly,” Danny said, sounding more fond than anything. He slid off the bar stool and knelt down in front of Box Lunch. Jason couldn’t look away; he’d been deprived of any open knowledge of Danny’s nonhuman side for so long that his curiosity was damn near insatiable now. And Danny teaching a kid of his species? That was doing things to Jason. Good things. “Close your eyes.” Box Lunch did. “Feel the energy in the air. Do you feel gravity? Do you sense how it pulls things down?” She nodded uncertainly. “Hold onto that feeling. Let it hold onto you. Do you feel it?” Nod. “Good. Now- let go of the sky.”

The instructions didn’t make a lick of sense to Jason, but Box Lunch dropped right out of the air and landed on her feet. Her eyes flew open, and she pinwheeled dramatically until Danny caught her.

“Ahh!” she squealed, looking dismayed. “I’m heavy!”

Danny chuckled. “No, bitty-bite, you’re still light as a feather.” He picked Box Lunch up and held her out in front of him, smiling. She squealed again, kicking her feet, her eyes bright with delight. “Good job. Do you think you can hold that?”

“Um, sure,” she mumbled, not looking at all sure.

The Box Ghost landed on the floor with a grunt - Jason suspected that he’d been listening to Danny’s instructions too. He held out his arms for Box Lunch, and Danny handed her over willingly.

“Now what?” the Box Ghost asked tentatively, staring at the floor like it would eat him. Yeah, Jason could definitely believe that he’d never landed before either.

“Now, you listen to me,” Danny said seriously. He reached out and grabbed Box Ghost’s arm, demanding his attention, and forced eye contact. From the Box Ghost’s wide eyes, this behavior was as new to him as it was to Jason. But then Danny continued, speaking as firmly as if he were willing his words into existence. “You are not a ghost. You are not a ghost.” Understanding flickered across the Box Ghost’s face, and he screwed his eyes shut. His glow started to dim. “You are solid. You are heavy. You are warm. You are made of flesh, blood, and bone. You are not a ghost. You are not a ghost. You are human.”

The Box Ghost’s glow receded and disappeared. Except for his blue skin, he almost looked human now. He opened his eyes uncertainly, and Danny gave him a weary smile and a nod, letting go of his arm and leaning back.

“But what about Box Lunch?” the Box Ghost asked anxiously, looking down at Box Lunch. She’d squeezed her eyes shut to try and follow Danny’s instructions, but didn’t seem to be meeting with the same success.

Danny sighed. “I’m not sure how to explain it to her,” he admitted, reaching up to run his fingers through his hair as he looked at the little girl with worry. She opened her eyes and gave him an anxious look, and Danny gave her a small smile. “It’s not your fault, bitty-bite. It’s just… you’ve always been a ghost, so you don’t have your dad’s memories of what it felt like to be human.”

Box Lunch stomped her feet. “I can pretend!”

“Then pretend,” Danny said seriously. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just do your best.”

“Wehh!” Box Lunch flailed her arms, brow furrowed in concentration. “I am human! My body is super solid and I crash into things a lot! And I run around on the ground and eat human food! Fear me!”

It was so cute that Jason muffled a laugh, and he wasn’t the only one. Box Lunch ran a circle around the floor, then crashed into a wall on purpose and bounced off, giggling. Even Bruce’s hard expression softened into a fond look.

“That should keep you off the sensors,” Danny said to the Box Ghost, voice low. Something about his eyes looked exhausted. “Just make sure Box Lunch maintains it. Maybe keep playing human with her.”

The Box Ghost nodded uncertainly. “Thank you, Phantom,” he said quietly. “I know that we can count on you.”

[acti-veg]

‘While bats can only sense the outer shapes and textures of their targets, dolphins can peer inside theirs. If a dolphin echolocates on you, it will perceive your lungs and your skeleton. It can likely sense shrapnel in war veterans and fetuses in pregnant women. It can pick out the air-filled swim bladders that allow fish, their main prey, to control their buoyancy.

It can almost certainly tell different species apart based on the shape of those air bladders. And it can tell if a fish has something weird inside it, like a metal hook. In Hawaii, false killer whales often pluck tuna off fishing lines, and “they’ll know where the hook is inside that fish,” Aude Pacini, who studies these animals, tells me. “They can ‘see’ things that you and I would never consider unless we had an X-ray machine or an MRI scanner.”

This penetrating perception is so unusual that scientists have barely begun to consider its implications. The beaked whales, for example, are odontocetes that look dolphin-esque on the outside—but on the inside, their skulls bear a strange assortment of crests, ridges, and bumps, many of which are only found in males.

Pavel Gol’din has suggested that these structures might be the equivalent of deer antlers—showy ornaments that are used to attract mates. Such ornaments would normally protrude from the body in a visible and conspicuous way, but that’s unnecessary for animals that are living medical scanners.’

-Ed Yong, An Immense World

[malinaa]

Rivers Solomon, Model Home

[derangedrhythms]

Rebecca Perry, Beauty/Beauty; from 'Kintsugi 金継ぎ'

[feral-ballad]

Zehra Naqvi, from The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose; “Dear Baba”

[secretsiwhispertothemoon]

Bilal Al-Shams, Sacrifice