#Aisling Nihilo

[toaarcan]

I've been listening to Epic: The Musical a lot.

Ask me about my OC lore.

[drahtphotography]

Look at this! Eric has some words to share! Draht Photography

New Post has been published on http://www.drahtphotography.com/evening-ex-nihilo-wedding-sampler/

The Evening Ex-Nihilo Wedding Sampler

This wedding at Ex-Nihilo blew me away. I was surprised, as I hadn’t photographed at this particular winery before. Later, I learned they only host a maximum of 5 weddings a year, making this a very special day indeed.

        My day began at Sparkling Hill. The guys were busy helping each other get dressed. A top button was being particularly stubborn. We all banded together and dedicated ourselves to getting this situation taken care of.

      After this, pocket squares, ties, and cufflinks. As a modern man, every detail must be taken care of. Before long, everyone looked their absolute best. Feel free to zoom into that pocket square.

  Just in time too! We had a bride out on the golf course, awaiting the first look.

  The first moment I saw her, I knew our groom would be swept back. She stopped, a few feet behind him. Although they both did their best to diffuse the situation, the air was thick with excitement.

    At this point, sometimes couples say something sweet. She just said, “Well, turn around!”

        He was taken aback to say the least. After a few words were said, we joined the rest of our bridal party in our extra luxurious bridal chariot. We all shared a laugh, remembering what the limo guy quoted us.

    All the way from Predator Ridge to Ex Nihilo,we basked in elegance,class and a cool breeze.

    Fun fact, I stitched together 20 photos to make this panorama. It was the only way to show you how incredible the view really was. The clouds broke up the sunlight, leaving hazy shadows of the sun and crepuscular rays falling into Okanagan Lake.

Our officiant, the lovely Nadene Rogers, was amazing. We had time to chat before hand, and I was blown away with her dedication to the day. She has a gentle way about her. “I’ll do this until I’m 80, I hope. I’ll stop when I can no longer speak.” I feel the exact same way.

    This was the most serious, solemn part of the day. Like many couples before them, they had written down vows to each other. The vows were destined for a special wine box, to be opened in five years.

    This is a solemn ceremony. After this day, their lives will change forever.

    It’s worth it to pause for a moment, just to see the expressions on their faces.

    Our groom got iced. He got iced hard. She’d hidden that Smirnoff in the box house before, and the only thing left to do was for him to drink it in front of everyone. The crowd, of course, lost it. Everyone was clapping and cheering him on. What’s a guy to do?

    He downed it all, wiped off his mouth with his hand. and simply proceeded back to the officiant.

They kissed. With the sunset, smoke, and Smirnoff, it was every bit as epic as you think it’d be.

      Heading up the aisle, they were stopped in every row by guests wishing them cheers. Shout out to the staff right here – they had passed out wine glasses to every guest during the ceremony. These two are so loved. Every person wanted to stop them, maybe to have their picture taken, or perhaps for a short conversation. Knowing this, after family formals, I dragged them away. I needed a headliner.

    The hazy smoke cast shadows upon the BC mountains, as we caught the last of the sun. Normally, I have to do a sneak away session to get these sorts of photos.

Fun fact for the nerdy photographers out there, I used complementary colour theory on these photos. Yellow and dark blue are opposite of each other on the colour wheel, and so they stand out as much as possible. That gives the greatest possible range of colour. The greater the range of colours, the more pleasing the image is to our eyes, because it lets our brain reconstruct the scene with greater accuracy.

Time to head back to the venue! Right away, I noticed the scotch bar was a huge hit. Loaded with high end whiskies and cigars, the consoeurs flocked.

      This guy’s name is Scott. He’s the groom’s brother. Scott, I know you asked me for a special photo through my car window as I left. You were kickass groomsman, and you looked great doing it. Just long click this next image to save it to your iphone.

    The night continued on. Even past the 10:30 pizzas, the bar was open and the live band played.

    First dances were tearful, and slow songs were sang.

      So this is where I’ll have to leave you. Right at this daddy-daughter dance on this hot summer night. I have so many incredible images to share.  That being said, I do need a little time to edit the photos. 3 weeks, to be exact.

    So keep in mind, this is only a sampler. At 30 images, one of the biggest ones! I did mean to be finished at 9am, but I might have gotten a little carried away.

If you personally know the bride and groom, feel free to contact me here. Let me know who you are, along with the bride and groom’s name, and I’ll make sure you get a link to the finished album!

If you know someone who’d like to see this sneak peek, feel free to click one of the share buttons on the top or  bottom of this entry, to share and tag them! Although I try to get the word out, a lot of family members and amazing bridesmaids and groomsmen don’t know about these samplers!

    Thank you for reading this far. I put a lot of time and work into these sneak peeks so it’s great that you’ve taken the time to read this far!

    If you’d like to keep a picture, even on mobile, just click it and it will open in a separate window. You can save it from there.

Lastly, if you’d like to stay updated, feel free to follow me on Instagram, facebook, twitter, or Tumblr for frequent updates. Talk to you all in a few days!

[dawnstruck]

creatio ex nihilo

It's not that Yoon Bum wants to die. It's just that he wants to be alive even less.

Sometimes, you have to learn how to prioritize.

for @galeaya067

[Read on AO3] [Companion piece to fiat lux]

The idea is not a new one. In a way, it has always been with Bum and he struggles to recall a time when it wasn't there. It's as though, as soon as he had been born, someone had placed a heavy cloth above his cradle and shrouded him in darkness. Behind the cloth, everything is very far away and yet not. Noises are too shrill and too hollow at the same time. Faces lose their meaning and, sometimes, time does, too.

So Yoon Bum stumbles along the path of his life and there are potholes, too many to avoid, his parents dying, his grandparents, bullying, belated diagnoses, medication, his uncle, rejected confessions, restraining orders, his military service, lost jobs, rainy days. With each step the thought grows and wanes like the tides under the moon and it's just another fact, like the temperature at which water freezes and how to spell his name.

A fact that, when something goes wrong, when Bum burns his dinner or gets a bad grade on an exam, he thinks that he should kill himself.

Somehow, and he can never quite articulate a reason why, he doesn't.

Then he climbs into Sangwoo's basement.

The thought is still there, always, but Bum never has a concrete plan. It's all just mist between his fingers and, whenever he tries to catch it, it evaporates before his eyes as though it had never truly been there.

But it's a Friday afternoon and Sangwoo has taken him along to the convenience store and left him standing in the aisle to go grab some beer, and the shelf with the personal hygiene supplies is right there. And it's still not a conscious decision but, between one blink and the next, Bum has reached out a hand and grasped the silvery-blue package off the display.

It feels solid in his hand but almost weightless, just for a moment. He slips it into the hungry pocket of his coat and there its sudden heaviness seems to throw him off-kilter. He has to grapple with his crutches to regain his balance but, once he does, he feels very steady.

“Bum?” Sangwoo says and a startled fire lashes up in Bum's stomach, all the way up to his face. When he turns around, he prays his cheeks do not burn.

“Let's head out,” Sangwoo says, jerking his chin into the direction of the self-checkout.

Bum gives a meek nod and follows after him. He glances up towards the security cameras and the curved mirrors in the corners of the store, towards the bored cashier behind the counter and the other customers, but no one seems to have noticed. And, what's even more important, Sangwoo does not seem to have noticed either.

On the way back to the house, Bum has to stop himself from grinning giddily.

He has to wait till Tuesday when he knows Sangwoo will spend the better part of the day at university.

He waits then minutes, fifteen minutes, anxiously watching the clockface to make sure that Sangwoo is not coming back because he forgot anything. Then he scrambles to pull himself up on the coatrack to pull his coat off the hook. The heavy fabric descends onto him, but he is already fumbling for the inside pocket where he had previously hidden his stolen trophy.

He shoves the coat back, more out of habit than anything else. Then he crawls into the bathroom.

The door locks with a promising click and for a moment he sits like this, sprawled on the cold floor, reveling in his solitude.

The skin of his bare knees catches on the tiles as he makes his way over to the bathtub, as he reaches out an snaking arm to turn the tap. It's screwed closed tightly, Sangwoo always uses too much force, claiming he doesn't want it to drip and waste water, and Bum quivers with the effort to twist the knob around. His palm stings but, finally, the waterfall opens, gushes, heavily splatters into the smooth ivory of the tub.

Bum had cleaned the bathroom only yesterday; a perverse thrill curses through him at the thought of now tainting it so wholly.

While waiting for the tub to fill he turns toward the small package that sits in his lap, innocuous, unassuming. With blunt fingernails he wrestles the sharp razor blades free, resisting the urge to triumphantly close his fist around them.

In that moment he knows that he cannot wait any longer. The tub is nowhere near full yet, but he heaves himself up onto the rim and then clambers into his porcelain bed. His sarcophagus.

The water is hot, too hot, but even as his toes curl is protest, as his groin and thighs are scalded, he knows it does not matter. Nothing matters but his escape.

He's still dressed in the skirt and the soaked fabric clings to his legs like a seaweed, pulling him under. Bum does not resist.

Between his fingers, the razor blade glints invitingly. Then he gets to work.

In distant fascination, Yoon Bum watches as his skin parts underneath the metal, a neat path carved into him, down along the inside of his arm, following the blue veins that course through him like rivers.

This, at least, is familiar. The pain is like an old friend. The blood, this red, this intense, is a new one. He's surprised by how alive it is, not foul or rotten at all. Almost as though his heart hadn't stopped beating a long time ago.

And yet it's different from the scars on his wrists, the scars he had put there with jagged keys and sometimes his own teeth, in school restrooms and huddled up in his own bed when he needed to feel less naked, less vulnerable, when he replaced pain with pain and hoped to make things go away for a little while.

All of that had been about pushing things deeper inside of him, to bury them, hide them, forbid even himself from seeing them. This, though. This is about opening himself up, letting all the filth and failure and fragility spill out, everything that had accumulated over the quarter century of his life.

After all the times he has been called a liar and a creep, this is the most honest thing he has ever done.

When he is done with one arm, he turns on the other. It's more difficult than the first because his left hand is jittery and his fingertips are already growing numb. This cut is not as cleanly executed as its twin, but he still finds a certain kind of beauty in it. A purpose.

The tub is almost full now, or at least full enough. He barely manages to turn the tap off again, but it needs to be done. For some reason, flooding the bathroom seems like something he shouldn't do. Sangwoo would surely be upset. The mere though sends a burst of hysterical laughter through Bum and he slips farther down, till his chin touches the surface and his toes the end of the tub.

He lets his arm sag into the water, too, and immediately the blood disperses into a translucent cloud.

It will be quick now, he thinks. He hopes.

His other wrist is propped up on the rim of the bathtub and, here, the blood runs along the porcelain in thin rivulets, eventually joining its kind in the rosy water. Bum blinks and lets the razor blade slip from his grasp. He does not hear it clatter onto the tiles, instead witnessing as darkness slinks into the corners of his vision.

He remembers the shroud above his cradle and how this must finally be the manifestation of what has always lurked in wait of him.

Death. Death.

Bum tilts his head back and closes his eyes. It's almost like going to back to sleep on a Sunday morning. An indulgence. A privilege.

It's not that Yoon Bum wants to die. It's just that he wants to be alive even less.

Sometimes, you have to learn how to prioritize.

The angel arrives with the sound of drums and thunders and a furious choir. He steps through the mist and the mist parts around him in deference.

The angel knows Bum's name like his mother knew his name, like his uncle knew his name, like the judge behind the podium knew his name. Love and anger and disappointment and exasperation. In his mouth, Bum's name turns smooth like a shard of colored glass in the ocean.

He plucks him out of the sea salt, lifts him from the waves and carries him into a blinding white light.

Bum thinks, This is Death.

Save him, the angel says, like holy scripture, like a psalm.

But then again, hadn't the devil once been an angel, too?

He wakes in increments. Noises trickle into his quaint world, breathing and beeping, heels clicking on floors. Death was never meant to be this loud.

His eyelids flutter. Lights, shadows, distorted and dangerous. He tries to make a sound and a weak mewl crawls out of his mouth.

“Fucking finally,” the angel says. He must be a cruel angel, a crude one, but Yoon Bum thinks he might have known that before.

He's being carried again, but he does not feel as light as he ought to. Colors twirl around him as though he were stuck on an infernal carousel. He feels sick. He closes his eyes.

He opens his eyes, drowsy and dazed. His head rests against a window. More colors. Bile in his throat. He swallows, but saliva drips from the corner of his mouth.

Underneath him, the engine dies, as though in mockery of his defeature. Then the car window opens and the pain returns.

“No,” Bum protests helplessly. His arms, wrapped in thick layers of gauze, fight against the gentle grasp around him. “Please no.”

“Shh.” Sangwoo's voice in his ear is like a snake in the grass, a warning, a threat. “It's all right.”

The bed still smells of their love-making from last night. The nausea, never quite gone in the first place, returns with a vengeance. Bum's tears seep into the pillow as he tries to suffocate himself.

When he returns, Sangwoo's face, beloved and boyish and beautiful, breaks something deep inside of Bum.

“Don't,” he whispers, weakly holding on to the remnants of his resolve, “Please don't, just let me- let me-”

“Let you die?” Sangwoo asks dangerously. His presence swallows up the room. “Is that what you are trying to say? You want me to let you die?”

You've had my life, Bum thinks. Just let me have my death.

“I won't let you die, you hear me!” Sangwoo is right in front of him now, pulling Bum's arms aside. His fingers dig into the open wounds and it's impossible to tell whether he is doing it on purpose or out of ignorance.

“You cannot die!” he reminds Bum, “You belong to me!”

“No,” Bum insists. The word hiccups out of his chest, right along with his heart, and he knows it must be the truth. “I don't. I don't wanna be here.”

Sangwoo's grip only tightens, like manacles.

“Do you want me to chain you up again?” he asks as though he weren't already doing so, “Is that it? You wanna go back to the basement?”

Bum doesn't. He doesn't want the damp and the dark and the memories of death still sitting against the walls. He just wants to go home, even if he doesn't know where that is.

“I've given you everything you need,” Sangwoo claims, “I feed you at my table. I let you sleep in my bed. I share all I have with you. And this is how you repay me?”

Sangwoo's voice is harsh and so are his words but, when he pulls Bum into an embrace, he is very warm. Bum hadn't quite realized that he had been shivering before.

The blood loss, he tells himself, even as his body molds itself against Sangwoo's, seeking out his radiance. He's been here before and, somehow, it always makes him lose something along the way, his fear, his train of thought.

“You won't leave me, Bum,” Sangwoo whispers, spoken like a sordid secret, “Promise you won't leave me.”

His embrace is a prison. Bum chokes.

“I promise,” he says, even though the sobs have left him in tatters. “I promise, Sangwoo, I love you, I won't leave you.”

The plea feels too real on his tongue, less like a lie and more like a confession. He's practiced these words in front of the mirror, many times for many people, had hungered for someone to say them back.

I love you I love you I love you.

Stay away from me, you freak, a cacophony of voice echoes in his head, I'll call the police.

“That's right,” Sangwoo presses a kiss to his scalp, his lips full of forgiveness, “I love you, too. You'll stay with me forever.”

It's not over. It never is.

Bum closes his eyes and surrenders.

[toaarcan]

First Champion/New Champion

"You remind me so much of her, my Child. I promise you... I will not let you fall as she did."

Aisling's predecessor as the Raven Queen's champion, and indeed the first champion she ever had, was Vasyana the Survivor. Vasyana was a Shadar-Kai Grave Cleric, who fought in the Cataclysm, and was the sole survivor of her party. The newborn Raven Queen found her near-death on a mountain, and they inadvertently made a connection, transforming Vasyana into the first of her living valkyries.

Vasyana was largely responsible for the way the world came to know the Raven Queen, and vice-versa, showing her both the beauty and horror of the world she now sat in judgment of. The Goddess of Death grew very close to her champion, even gifting her sword, Terminus Est, to Vasyana.

Unfortunately, Vasyana had been infected by the Shard of Ice, and over time, the Shard grew stronger and stronger as it fed upon the worship of Vasyana's followers. As its power increased, it froze its host's heart, leaving her cold and calcified, unable to grow and change any longer.

Unwilling to abandon her first and oldest friend, the Raven Queen did her best to prevent the Shard from corrupting her any further, but the most she could manage was stalemating it.

Eventually, the Goddess of Death realised there was nothing she could do for Vasyana, and that the crueler being she had become was no longer a fitting champion for her cause. Resolving to bring her to her rest in the afterlife, she began a long and complex plan to pass the mantle to a new chosen hero, Aisling Romazi.

Though the Raven Queen loves her new champion like a daughter, she is more cautious with her affections, and more protective of her new charge. She sees much of the Vasyana she loved in Ash, and has vowed to protect her, and make sure she never suffers the same fate as her predecessor.

[toaarcan]

Ash, you're doing your anime rival a concern.

Co-starring @paladin-official's Nurghal Ironhide.

[toaarcan]

Sometimes it's the family you choose.

(I gave Lualisin horns instead of a halo because let's be honest, she absolutely went to the Hells when she died)

[toaarcan]

Aisling isn't particularly good at realising that her feelings are reciprocated. Kallista isn't remotely subtle about it. Ahkmou and @just-a-bogbear's Karakya are mostly baffled about how she keeps Nat 1-ing this Insight check.

Don't worry, they're both equally bad at picking up on this sort of thing.

[toaarcan]

[toaarcan]

Lualisin Deol is a master manipulator with an affinity for using magic to edit the memories of her victims, and has managed to lie her way into maintaining much of her social standing despite her own hatred for Drow society's rapid societal progress.

Aisling, her estranged daughter, has an Intelligence stat of 8 and a Wisdom stat of 10, and isn't about to let that stop her from ruining Lualisin's day.

[toaarcan]

Daughter of the Reaper.

[toaarcan]

My PCs are not all created equal and I won't pretend they are.

[toaarcan]

They're menaces to society. And kitchenware.

Ahkmou is normally smarter than this, he just has no concept of how food works because he doesn't eat.

Costarring @just-a-bogbear's Karakya and @paladin-official's Nurghal.

[toaarcan]

One of Mercy's best friends is the local terrifying cryptid that she decided to declare her aunt.

Aisling is hunter, predator, killer, valkyrie, saviour, chosen one, The Angel of Death in her home setting... and dedicated friend and protector of this small half-devil with a heart of gold.

[toaarcan]

Very important update coming to HeroForge soon.

[toaarcan]

[toaarcan]

This line from Frankenstein is probably my favourite quote from anything, ever. I had to put it with Ash, because... yeah.