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a-wartime-paradox · 2 years ago

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The BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures "War in Heaven" arc, as it may have originally been

The BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures, at their start, didn't have any arc set-in-stone, and so author Lawrence Miles wrote the masterpiece Alien Bodies, kick-starting the "War in Heaven" arc. However, on 3 July 2000, The Ancestor Cell was published, putting an end to the War in Heaven arc, at least within the EDA range.

Before this novel was published, Lawrence Miles had other ideas for the War in Heaven, and I for this post have attempted to reconstruct a rough timeline for what could have been, from the available evidence. Bear in mind that I have taken some creative liberties and speculation. As there will be quite a few different stories in different ranges, some released and some unproduced, I've decided to code them for convenience: first off, assume everything is a published EDA unless told otherwise - then, green is for a part of the "Bernice Summerfield" New Adventures, blue is for Past Doctor Adventures, orange is for anything else, and bold is for unproduced (these can be combined).

Prelude

Down (September 1997)*: the Gods are introduced, setting up a War seemingly separate to the War in Heaven. This most likelywasn't originally intended to tie-in to the EDAs, or be part of the War in He and, but was brought in by Dead Romance.

Alien Bodies (November 1997): Faction Paradox, the Enemy, the Celestis, and the state of Gallifrey and it's cloneworlds during the War in Heaven is introduced and established as being in the Eighth Doctor's future.

Unnatural History (June 1999): small skirmish with Faction Paradox. It is altogether unclear whether they come from the War or from the Eighth Doctor's time

Act 1

Dead Romance (1 March 1999): the universe of the VNAs, that of Chris Cwej, is implied to be in a bottle in the EDA universe, as itself contains a bottle. Later stories would draw continuity with the VNAs, and The Ancestor Cell (not counted in this list) saw the merger of the bottle into the main universe. This is also implied to be the case by the fact that Cousin Eliza - Christine Summerfield - appears to be in the prime universe by The Faction Paradox Protocols. Personally, I reconcile these by concluding that only the later VNAs starring Bernice Summerfield, which lacked the BBC Doctor Who license, are part of this "bottle", and that Christine used the Gods of that universe to climb out of it, as she implies at the end of the novel.

Interference: What Happened On Earth (August 1999, part of "Interference"): a major interaction with the War; the Doctor prevents the destruction of Earth by wartime powers, thus marking his first major intervention in the War, as Earth is a cradle point of casualty. The War also infects the Doctor's timestream back to his third incarnation, in Interference: What Happened On Dust.

Toy Story (1999/2004)*2: Lolita talks to the TARDIS.

Interference: Foreman's World (August 1999, part of "Interference"): I.M. Foreman reveals the bottle universe, says the people within created their own bottle universe, and it is lost. This effectively confirms the implementation in Dead Romance. Interestingly, as far as I know, most people read Interference first, completely missing the fact that the ending of it is meant to confirm Dead Romance, not foreshadow it. At least, I completely missed that.

Beneath the Planet of the Spiders (after "Interference"): The Fourth Doctor combats the Eight Legs in place of the Third Doctor, and presumably the effects of Interference are further explored.

Valentine's Day (after "Interference"): the Doctor exiles himself for fear of regenerating into something worse than Faction Paradox could imagine. With his absence, the Daleks rise to power. The Doctor then trains a replacement, with the combined help of the Time Lords and Faction Paradox. Ideas of a replacement were adapted by Miles into The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, where the replacement is Sabbath Dei.

The Taking of Planet 5 (October 1999): Mictlan, realm of the Celestis, is destroyed, and the Doctor aids in saving the rest of the universe.

The Shadows of Avalon (2000): The specifics of Compassion's transformation into a TARDIS, and potentially the transformation in totality, were probably not part of Miles's original plan. However, he notably didn't contradict it in The Book of the War, so this will still be included.

Act 2

From here on out, there aren't any actual plans for Eighth Doctor novels, although that is likely just due to the small gap between Interference and The Ancestor Cell. Nevertheless, this has the interesting diegetic effect of making it seem that the War has started to escape the Eighth Doctor, and is widening it's girth.

First I shall list the unproduced novels that would fit into here, and then offer my diegetic summary:

The War (after 12 March 1999): Pertaining to an unknown range, perhaps the Past Doctor Adventures (as it also included the non-past Infinity Doctors and would have included the future Requiem), this would have featured Joanna Lumley's Thirteenth Doctor being in a concentration camp with other "strays from other realities", all taken from BBC sitcoms which the BBC still had rights to. @verityshush commissioned Wenart Gunardi to make a cover for this, in the style of the Virgin New Adventures (the anachronism fits)

Requiem (after 1998's "Interference"): There is a "huge, bone-like thing" in the sky over a war-paranoid Gallifrey. Miles contested that "The Ancestor Cell" copied the idea of this, but the thing in the huge black bone structure in Requiem reportedly was totally different to in "The Ancestor Cell".). There would have been 5 sequels to Requiem, all following this "future incarnation of the Doctor". Presumably these would have crossed over with the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures at at least one point, if not more.

Below is my deigetic imaging of what could have been.

The War in Heaven expands beyond the Eighth Doctor's timestream, and begins infecting both alternative timelines (The War) and future incarnations (Requiem). The future incarnations may be an "infection" of the developing War, as the Doctor "originally died on Dronid", but as it's heavily implied that's not quite what happened, he could have easily experienced Requiem first and then gone back to the beginning of the War (which should be impossible, but just look at how many times the Eighth Doctor interacted with the future War) to be found on Drornid.

Despite expanding beyond the Eighth Doctor, it still chases him, or to be more specific, the War Queen Romana chases him, Fitz, and their timeship Compassion. Eventually, in unknown book (unknown because future novels with the War Queen Romana never even got to the pitching state, but feel like they should have existed), the Doctor would regain his TARDIS, and in my ideal world it would have regenerated (not because I don't like the Victorian parlour, quite the contrary, I the arc would be more impactful if it had a permanent effect). I think that after he gets his TARDIS back, the Eighth Doctor should just keep on as normal, not really seeing the War all that much, perhaps even his TARDIS has engineered itself to not ever collide with it again - without the Doctor's knowledge? - but there's no "cataclysmic", The Ancestor Cell -like removal of the War.

Compassion, now a timeship separate from the Doctor, Fitz, and the Doctor's TARDIS, would leave the "TARDIS team" and eventually get the companion "Carmen Yeh"*3

Finally, an unnecessary but nice note on how Compassion become the mother of timeships:

The Book of the War, specifically the entry on "Carmen Yeh", features Compassion confronting the War King, and entering into diplomatic relations with him. This is likely the intended point by Miles of when Compassion would have aided in the reproduction of the 103-forms, as opposed to The Shadows of Avalon's version (rape).

*I have not actually read this book, my info for it derives solely from Nate Bumber's blogspot about the Bernice Summerfield War

*2 This was first published in the charity anthology Perfect Timing 2, and then later reprinted in Mad Norwegian Press's edition of Dead Romance

*3 In the Perfect Timing short story "Schrödinger's Botanist", Carmen Yeh would meet Compassion and join her.

Tagging (with permission): @doctornolonger

#faction paradox #doctor who #eighth doctor adventures #the war in heaven #eighth doctor #lawrence miles #essay #a wartime paradox

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beardedmrbean · 3 months ago

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Turkish air strikes in drought-struck north-east Syria have cut off access to electricity and water for more than a million people, in what experts say may be a violation of international law.

Turkey carried out more than 100 attacks between October 2019 and January 2024 on oil fields, gas facilities and power stations in the Kurdish-held Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), according to data collated by the BBC World Service.

The attacks have added to the humanitarian crisis in a region reeling from a years-long civil war and four years of extreme drought exacerbated by climate change.

Water had already been scarce, but attacks on electricity infrastructure in October last year shut off power to the region’s main water station, in Alouk, and it has not been working since. On two visits there, the BBC witnessed people struggling to get water.

Turkey said it had targeted the “sources of income and capabilities” of Kurdish separatist groups it regards as terrorists.

It said that it was well known there was a drought in the area, adding that poor water management and neglected infrastructure had made things worse.

The AANES has previously accused Turkey of seeking to “destroy our people’s existence”.

More than a million people in the Hassakeh province who once got their water from Alouk now rely on deliveries of water pumped from around 12 miles (20km) away.

Hundreds of deliveries are made by tanker each day, with the water board prioritising schools, orphanages, hospitals, and those most in need.

But the deliveries are not enough for everyone.

In Hassakeh city, the BBC saw people waiting for the tankers, pleading for the drivers to give them water. “Water is more precious than gold here,” said Ahmad al-Ahmed, a tanker driver. “People need more water. All they want is for you to give them water.”

Some people admitted they fought over it and one woman threatened: “If he [the tanker driver] doesn’t give me water, I’ll puncture his tyres.”

“Let me tell you frankly, north-east Syria is facing a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Yayha Ahmed, co-director of the city water board.

People living in the region have been caught up not only in Syria’s ongoing civil war but also in Turkey’s conflict with Kurdish-led forces, who established the AANES in 2018 after they - with support from the US-led coalition - drove the Islamic State (IS) group out of the region. Coalition forces are still stationed there to prevent a resurgence of IS.

Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has described the AANES - which is not officially recognised by the international community - as a “terror state” next to its border.

The Turkish government considers the Kurdish militia that dominates the main military force there to be an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebel group, which has fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey for decades.

The PKK is designated as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the EU, the UK and the US.

Between October 2023 and January 2024, electricity transfer stations in three areas of the AANES were struck: Amouda, Qamishli, and Darbasiyah, as well as the region’s main power plant, Swadiyah.

The BBC confirmed the damage by using satellite imagery, eyewitness videos, news reports, and visits to the sites.

Satellite imagery of night-time lights from before and after the January 2024 attacks indicated a widespread power outage. “On January 18th.... a significant power outage is evident in the region,” said Ranjay Shrestha, a scientist at Nasa who reviewed the imagery.

The UN says Turkish forces carried out the strikes in Swadiyah, Amuda and Qamishli, while humanitarian groups say Turkey was behind the attack in Darbasiyah.

Turkey said it had been targeting the PKK, the People's Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

The YPG is the biggest militia in the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and is the military wing of the PYD, the main political party in the AANES.

“Civilians or civilian infrastructure were not among our targets and have never been,” Turkey said in a statement to the BBC.

But in October last year, the country’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said all “infrastructure, superstructure and energy facilities” that belong to the PKK and the YPG - especially in Iraq and Syria - were “legitimate targets” for its military, security forces and intelligence units.

#nunyas news #gee turkey how come you get to have 2 genocides #anyone else wonder how much better things in the world could go #if things like this got even 25% of the attention #that Israel hamass shit gets

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biblenewsprophecy · 19 days ago

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California fires may be most expensive ‘natural disaster’ in US history–most were not prepared

COGwriter

The fire damage in Southern California has been extensive and costly:

LA fires could be ‘costliest’ natural disaster in US history

14 January 2025

The devastating wildfires which have hit Los Angeles and other parts of southern California could be one of the costliest natural disasters in US history. They’re also wreaking havoc for already struggling home insurers.

Few places embody wealth and glamour quite like the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. The exclusivity of such neighborhoods in the city is one of the reasons why the wildfires which have struck the wider Los Angeles areacould become one of the costliest natural disasters in US history. …

It now appears that the wildfires will prove the most expensive wildfire disaster in US history in terms of insured losses…, eclipsing the costs of other recent disasters in California and Hawaii. …

The private US weather service AccuWeather, which also measures the costs of weather events, now estimates total losses at between $250 billion and $275 billion, almost double what it estimated last week. If those figures are borne out, it would make the LA wildfires the costliest natural disaster in US history. https://www.dw.com/en/la-fires-could-be-costliest-natural-disaster-in-us-history/a-71263644

January 14, 2025

One week after the fires in Los Angeles County began, the blazes remain out of control, scorching nearly 40,000 acres and leveling entire neighborhoods. On Tuesday, winds are expected to gust between 45 and 70 mph, accompanied by dry air, significantly increasing the risk of fire spread.

The National Weather Service has issued “Particularly Dangerous Situation Red Flag Warnings” for L.A. and Ventura counties through Wednesday evening, warning that “this setup is about as bad as it gets.” https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/return-strong-winds-spark-dangerous-situation-across-fire-ravaged-palisades

14 January 2025

US President-elect Donald Trump has compared the devastation of the Los Angeles wildfires to a nuclear attack, warning that the death toll may rise in the coming days. He criticized California’s leadership, particularly Governor Gavin Newsom, suggesting that mismanagement has exacerbated the crisis. …

In an interview with Newsmax, Trump predicted that rescuers would find “many more dead” and expressed bewilderment at the scale of destruction.

“I believe it’s greater damage than if they got hit by a nuclear weapon. I’ve never seen anything like it. Vast miles and miles of houses just burned to a crisp. There’s nothing standing,” Trump told the outlet.

He added that he had seen “very guarded pictures” of the destruction, claiming that the catastrophe is “far worse than you even see on television, if that’s believable.”

The president-elect went on to blame the Californian leadership for the scale of the tragedy, insisting that the crisis could have been prevented if water from Canada was allowed to flow to the state and its forests were properly maintained. Trump specifically accused California Governor Newsom of prioritizing environmental policies over human lives and called for his resignation. https://www.rt.com/news/610868-trump-la-fires-nuke/

Yes, this is horrific and will be costly. It is close to impossible for much of the area to be rebuilt like it was. And it will take years to attempt to recover.

As far as preparation goes, notice the following:

LA brain surgeon saves street from ‘apocalyptic’ wildfires

14 January 2025

A Los Angeles brain surgeon who fought for almost a week to save the houses on his street from wildfires told the BBC he spent 15 years preparing for such an event.

Malibu resident Dr Chester Griffiths, 62, ignored evacuation orders to keep flames from the Palisades fire at bay with the help of his son and neighbour, until emergency services were able to reach them.

“We had always known that a fire would come someday – but we didn’t know when,” Dr Griffiths told the BBC’s Today Programme. …

Thankfully, he and his neighbour, Clayton Colbert, had developed an action plan in the event of such a fire and had sourced hoses that they could use.

Connecting four hoses to hydrants, Dr Griffiths, his son and Mr Colbert positioned themselves on nearby roofs to spraying water on the flames, and using dirt to put out embers on the ground.

“There were burning embers coming down on us for about 12 hours,” said Dr Griffiths.

The trio was only joined by firefighters in the last few days of their week-long ordeal because resources were “so widely stretched” due to the number of blazes in the Los Angeles area.

“The (fire department) felt that all the homes weren’t able to be saved,” said Dr Griffiths.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l09vdlxv2o

So, while the government could not save everyone, at least one person was prepared and helped save some structures.

As far as the government goes, notice the following criticism:

A Cascade of Failures in California

January 13, 2025

Much has already been written about the L.A. wildfires and doubtless much more will be written in the future. The single most important point in the whole situation is that these fires were, if not completely preventable, at least foreseen. A firefighter warned Joe Rogan about it at least six months ago. What happened in Los Angeles was the result of a cascading series of events including adverse weather, bone-headed administrative decisions, and a degree of negligence that should be investigated for cause.

Phase One for this catastrophe was set years ago. Recently, I wrote about this contributing factor. Bowing to climate change alarmists, environmental activists, and ignoramuses in the public, California has spent decades prioritizing fire suppression over preventive measures, including the removal of brush, dead trees, and excessive forest litter that serve as fuel for wildfires. …

The L.A. wildfires started in the Topanga Canyon last Tuesday morning. Besides dry brush and celebrities, Topanga Canyon also contains many homeless encampments. People cooking food and drugs in steep-sloped canyons with dry brush is a recipe for disaster. Local residents pushed for legislation to have them removed, but it’s taking time. Meanwhile, L.A. County responds to multiple wildfires in homeless encampments every day.

If Phase One is allowing massive amounts of unburned fuel to accumulate, and Phase Two is to import vast numbers of illegals, some with malicious intent, and to allow homeless encampments in fire-prone areas, then Phase Three is to reduce the amount of available water, firefighting personnel, and equipment.

California hasn’t built a new reservoir since 1980. …

Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass has also played a role in this disaster. Bass cut the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) budget by over $17 million this year and was out of the country when the fire started. …

Meanwhile, the LAFD has focused on DIE issues. The city’s first LGBT fire chief, Kristin Crowley, is on record saying, “With the new DEI Bureau, the department will develop and drive forward key diversity, equity and inclusion strategies and initiatives to enhance the LAFD’s work environment and performance.” When asked about numbers, Crowley said that she’s “not looking for a specific number. It’s never enough.”

Evidently, sexual preferences and melanin content are more important to Chief Crowley than skill and experience.

Adding insult to injury, some insurance companies dropped fire coverage from their policies months ago in the face of rising payouts and stricter government regulations. This story is still developing, as the California Insurance Commissioner just barred companies from dropping fire victims’ policies until 2026.

All that was lacking from this deadly cocktail were the Santa Ana winds. When they arrived, there were recorded wind speeds in excess of 100 mph.

This was an inevitable perfect storm of decades-long administrative failures, bad decisions, and meteorology. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/01/a_cascade_of_failures_in_california.html

Wildfires happen every year. But what has been happening in the Los Angeles basin has been horrific.

Back in 2017, I warned:

Parts of California still are on fire and at least 100,000 people have been evacuated … I, who also live in California, also pray that those in California will repent as worse problems are ahead if it continues to go in a moral direction away from the Bible. California set a bad standard when it became the first USA state to outlaw attempts to convert homosexuals from that ‘lifestyle’ (see California’s Brown Signs Anti-Homosexual Conversion Bill). Additionally, the State of California has made a bunch of anti-biblical anti-truth laws to promote the LGBTQ agenda (see ‘California To Have Harsher Penalty For Pronoun Violations Than For Knowingly Spreading HIV’ and Ba’al-ifornia: California’s intent to change gender definitions). Plus California has other issues where it is also setting very bad examples (such as the production of pornographic entertainment). …

Weather problems can be a warning to people that society is going in the wrong direction (Amos 4:7-12). Notice also God’s use of fire between three thousand and four thousand years ago:

24 Then the Lord rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, from the Lord out of the heavens. 25 So He overthrew those cities, all the plain, all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground. (Genesis 19:24-25)

And why did it happen?

7 as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. (Jude 7)

Why mention this in the 21st century? Because God turned:

6…the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly (2 Peter 2:6)

Notice also the following:

11 “I overthrew some of you, As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a firebrand plucked from the burning; Yet you have not returned to Me,” Says the Lord.

12 “Therefore thus will I do to you, O Israel; Because I will do this to you, Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” (Amos 4:11-12)

Fires should get people to consider. But will people in California, the USA, or the other Anglo-descended areas heed?

(Thiel B. California evacuates 100,000 due to wildfires; Hurricane Ophelia affects Azores and Ireland. COGwriter, October 14, 2017)

The Bible shows that God uses weather to get people’s attention. Sometimes to punish, sometimes to lead to repentance, and other times to consider that God, not humankind, is in control. The Bible itself mentions fire as a tool that God sometimes uses. … “the wrath of God” is at least partially directed towards those that practice or condone sexual immorality like homosexuality and lesbianism. The sorrows and troubles are just beginning and will get much worse. Fires should get people to consider. But will people in California, the USA, or the other Anglo-descended areas heed? (Thiel B. California Governor warns President Trump about ‘the wrath of God’ and claims destructive fires are the ‘new normal’. COGwriter, December 10, 2017)

Instead of repenting, officials in the State of California continued to promote sexual immorality and the LGBTQ+ agenda. Administratively, the State of California did NOT take the steps it should have which has made the situation much worse than it otherwise could have been. Those blinded by pushing perversion did not take the physical steps that should have been taken in preparation. Some have asserted that this will be the most expensive “natural disaster” in the history of the United States.

Most end time Christians also are not taking the steps that they should be taking either (cf. Revelation 3:14-22). Only those that do are promised protection from Jesus (Revelation 3:7-13) from the coming “hour of trial” (Revelation 3:10), which is greatest tribulation the world has ever seen (Matthew 24:21-22).

3 “A prudent man forsees evil and hides himself, But the simple pass on and are punished” (Proverbs 22:3).

The sorrows and troubles are just beginning and will get much worse.

We recently uploaded the following fire-related video:

youtube

14:31

Fires and God’s Wrath

There have been massive fires raging in the State of California. The size and devastation of this fire qualifies it as a world event–and looks to be one of the costliest disasters in US history. What might the Bible have to say about fires? Is it possible that there are Biblical ramifications of fires? Especially fires of this magnitude and destruction. If there are any Biblical ramifications, what is God be trying to say? Is it possible that fires of this magnitude have any relationship to the warnings God gave ancient Israel and are having an impact on us today? If so, why would the warnings given to ancient Israel have any effect on us? What do we have to do with ancient Israel? Dr. Thiel shines the light of Bible prophecy on these questions. By quoting several scriptures that relate directly to the questions just presented, Dr. Thiel reveals the warnings God is giving humanity in these end times. Dr. Thiel shows us, through the word of God, that by obeying the words of God, we can stop the destruction. Even if we fail on a national level, we can still succeed on a personal level.

Here is a link to the video: Fires and God’s Wrath.

Worse disasters than the Palisade and other fires are coming to California.

California, and the rest of the world, needs to turn to Jesus and pray for the Kingdom of God to come (Matthew 6:10).

And most Christians need to stop being Laodicean and support the Philadelphian remnant of the Church of God.

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newstfionline · 1 year ago

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Friday, February 9, 2024

The Northwest Passage (gCaptain) Arctic shipping has ramped up, and by a lot, as the loss of Arctic sea ice has outpaced expectations. This thermodynamic reality is seen as a new wrinkle for shipping companies, which can now ship goods from Pacific ports to Atlantic ports not by dicing the Suez Canal or Panama Canal or Horn of Africa but rather by just going north of Russia, or potentially north of Canada sometime down the line, saving lots of miles of travel. A new report said the number of vessels operating in the Arctic jumped from 1,298 per year in 2013 to 1,782 per year in 2023, and while most of those are still fishing vessels, cargo ships and bulk carries are increasingly using the route. Cargo volumes transported through the Arctic have exploded, from 2.8 million tonnes in 2013 to 36.3 million tonnes in 2023.

We Americans Neglect Our Children (NYT) Individually, we adore and pamper our children. Yet collectively, we mistreat America’s children, especially by the standards of other wealthy countries. When we’re formulating policies for children as a whole rather than coddling our own little angels, we fall scandalously short. We prize children in the abstract but as a society tend to ignore their needs. Children are more likely to go hungry or live in poverty in America than in most of our peer countries, and they are also much more likely to die—because of drugs, guns, accidents and an inequitable health care system. If the United States simply had the same mortality rates for young people as the rest of the rich world, we would annually save the lives of at least 40,000 Americans age 19 and under, according to Steven Woolf, a population health expert at Virginia Commonwealth University. In other words, an American child dies about every 13 minutes because we don’t do as good a job as our peers in protecting kids. And it’s getting worse. An American child’s chances of reaching adulthood have fallen in recent years, Woolf told me.

Fentanyl crisis grips Mexico’s border cities (BBC) Cities on the Mexican border with the US are in the grip of a full-blown drug epidemic. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and cheap to produce, is laced into recreational drugs like cocaine and counterfeit medication. It’s also finding its way across the border. An estimated 70,000 people died of fentanyl overdoses last year in the US. In Ciudad Juárez, I meet Kevin—not his real name—a 17-year-old drug smuggler and hitman for La Empresa cartel. He shows me videos of his gang moving the drug through tunnels beneath the US-Mexico border. “A kilo of fentanyl makes the cartel around $200,000 (£160,000) in the US”, he says, “I earn about $1,000 (£800) to take it north.” Kevin has been working with the cartel since he was just nine. But he has never seen anything like fentanyl. He predicts it is the future of the illegal drug trade: “It’s the strongest drug I’ve ever seen, chemically so powerful that people keep demanding more and more. It’s going to keep blowing up,” he says. I asked him if he felt any remorse over the deaths of US teens across the border. “No, it’s all part of chains,” he shrugs. “They send guns south, we send fentanyl north. Everyone’s responsible for their own acts.”

For First Time in Two Decades, U.S. Buys More From Mexico Than China (NYT) New data released Wednesday showed that Mexico outpaced China to become the United States’ top source of official imports for the first time in 20 years—a significant shift that highlights how increased tensions between Washington and Beijing are altering trade flows. The United States’ trade deficit with China narrowed significantly last year, with imports from the country dropping 20% to $427.2 billion, the data shows. American consumers and businesses turned to Mexico, Europe, South Korea, India, Canada and Vietnam for auto parts, shoes, toys and raw materials. Mexican exports to the United States were roughly the same as last year, at $475.6 billion.

Terrorized by Gangs, Ecuador Embraces the Hard-Line ‘Noboa Way’ (NYT) Since Ecuador’s president declared war on gangs last month, soldiers with assault rifles have flooded the streets of Guayaquil, a sprawling Pacific Coast city that has been an epicenter of the nation’s yearslong descent into violence. They pull men from buses and cars looking for drugs, weapons and gang tattoos, and patrol roads enforcing a nighttime curfew. The city is on edge, its men and teenage boys potential targets for troops and police officers who have been ordered to take down powerful gangs that have joined forces with international cartels to make Ecuador a hub of the global drug trade. Yet when people see soldiers pass, many clap or give them a thumbs-up. “We applaud the iron fist, we celebrate it,” said Guayaquil’s mayor, Aquiles Álvarez. “It has helped bring peace.”

Brazil Police Accuse Bolsonaro and Allies of Attempted Coup (NYT) Former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil oversaw a broad conspiracy to hold on to power regardless of the results of the 2022 election, including personally editing a proposed order to arrest a Supreme Court justice and call new elections after he lost, according to new accusations by Brazilian federal police unveiled on Thursday. Mr. Bolsonaro and dozens of top aides, ministers and military leaders coordinated to undermine the Brazilian public’s faith in the election and set the stage for a potential coup, the federal police said. The explosive allegations were made in a 134-page court order that authorized a sweeping federal police operation on Thursday that targeted Mr. Bolsonaro and about two dozen of his political allies. The operation involved search warrants and the arrests of four people, including two Army officers and two of Mr. Bolsonaro’s former top aides. Mr. Bolsonaro said on Thursday that he was the innocent victim of a politically motivated operation.

Ukraine Worries About Losing Its Biggest Weapon: U.S. Military Aid (NYT) In the two years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine has had its back to the wall many times, in many forms: fighting with Molotov cocktails and guns handed out to the population, coping with blackouts and fleeing refugees. But there was always the prospect of more American aid on the horizon. That support was critical, analysts and leaders in Kyiv say. The United States has provided about half of the foreign military assistance to Ukraine’s arsenal, roughly $47 billion. But this week leaders in Kyiv have waited anxiously to see if that lifeline will come to an end, as a stalemate between lawmakers in the United States Congress threatens to end, for now, American support for the war against Russia. Ukraine’s army would not suddenly be overwhelmed, analysts say, but the degradation of its forces would be inexorable. European nations lack American-level stockpiles of weapons and ammunition, and would be unlikely to fill the gap, military analysts say.

Iraq Hosts Both U.S. and Iranian-Backed Forces. It’s Getting Tense. (NYT) For years, Iraq has managed to pull off an unlikely balancing act, allowing armed forces tied to both the United States and Iran, an American nemesis, to operate on its soil. Now things are getting shaky. When Washington, Tehran and Baghdad all wanted the same thing—the defeat of the Islamic State terrorist group—the relationships were fairly tenable, but in recent months, as the war in the Gaza Strip sends ripples across the region, American and Iranian-backed forces have clashed repeatedly in Iraq and Syria. A U.S. strike on one of those militias last week killed 16 Iraqis, and Iraq is saying it has had enough. “Our land and sovereign authority is not the right place for rival forces to send messages and show their strength.” the office of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement on Sunday.

China’s growth (Economist) Even in the best of times, the combined spending of its households, firms and government is not enough to buy all that China can produce, leaving a surplus that must be exported: the country has run a trade surplus for 34 of the past 40 years. And these are not the best of times. China is enduring its longest spell of deflation since the Asian crisis over a quarter-century ago. An epic stock market rout since late 2022 has seen investors lose $2 trillion. Behind that panic lies a deeper fear among investors and officials, namely that China no longer has a reliable driver of growth. The property boom is over. Cash-strapped developers are afraid to build flats and households are afraid to buy them. The infrastructure mania has run out of road: indebted local governments lack the funds. Exporting goods to the rest of the world, which China relied on for decades to escape poverty, is getting harder as protectionism rises and Western countries become wary of relying on authoritarian states. Much therefore rests on one remaining source of growth: boosting the spending of China’s 1.4 billion people.

Diapers and baby formula are hard to find in Gaza, leaving parents desperate (AP) Zainab al-Zein was forced to make a desperate decision: Feed her infant daughter solid foods that her tiny body may not be able to digest or watch her starve because of a lack of baby formula in the besieged Gaza Strip. Al-Zein chose to give 2 1/2-month-old Linda solids, knowing the choice could lead to health issues. “I know we are doing something harmful to her, but there is nothing,” said al-Zein, feeding her wailing daughter crushed biscuits in the cold tent they now call home. “She cries and cries continuously.” The war between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe that has brought shortages of the most basic necessities. Some of the hardest-hit are babies, young children and their parents, with diapers and formula either hard to find or spiking to unaffordable prices, leading parents to resort to inadequate or even unsafe alternatives.

Teenage ‘Newton of Gaza’ creates system to light up family tent (Reuters) Using two fans he picked up from a scrap market and rigged to some wires, 15-year-old Hussam Al-Attar has created his own source of electricity to light up the tent where he and his family are living after being displaced by Israel’s assault on Gaza. In recognition of his ingenuity, people in the surrounding tent camp have given him a nickname: Gaza’s Newton. More than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are now crammed into Rafah, on the southern edge of the strip by the fence separating it from Egypt. The Al-Attar family have attached their tent to the flank of a one-storey house, allowing Hussam to climb onto the roof and set up his two fans, one above the other, to act as tiny wind turbines capable of charging batteries. He then connected the fans to wires travelling down through the house, and used switches, lightbulbs and a thin piece of plywood extending out into the tent to create a custom lighting system for his family. “I was very happy that I was able to make this, because I eased the suffering of my family, my mother, my sick father, and my brother’s young children, and everyone here who is suffering from the conditions that we live in during this war,” he said.

Lagos, city of contrasts (NYT) Lagos is an experience of a lifetime. The bedlam. The 15-minute journeys that stretch to five hours because of traffic jams. The multitudes everywhere you turn, each individual fizzing with hope and energy and stories, each unfazed by the maladies of living here—crumbling infrastructure, an oppressive kleptocratic government, the daily whiff of disasters brewing. Lagos, or Èkó (as it’s known in Yoruba), is a city of paradoxes, of extremes. Every condition exists prodigiously here. This is why Lagosians sometimes quip, “Èkó no dey carry last”: “Lagos never ranks last in anything.” Take housing. In the neighborhoods of Lekki and Ikoyi, you’ll find mansions posher than any in Manhattan or Mayfair. But across the Lagos Lagoon, you’ll find a floating city: thousands of families living in shacks built over stinking waters. With more than 15 million people, Lagos is Nigeria’s capital of culture, finance and entertainment. It is the laboratory of two of Nigeria’s major cultural exports: music (including Afrobeat) and cinema (Nollywood). Afrobeat songs chart high on the Billboard Hot 100; Nollywood is the world’s second-largest movie industry by output.

#headlines #news

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cleoenfaserum · 1 year ago

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CHOLOLATE CREAM MURDERESS

There is no mystery here. We know the whodunit. We also know why she did it, and I am going to let the cat out of the bag, she was crazy bananas or bongas. So what the hell, what piqued my interest was how she went about it which is what is being told and where she ended up.

But the following article which I came across by chance was what set me off to write this blog which I hope you enjoy.

Broadmoor archives go online, revealing the story of its most crazed inmate | Daily Mail Online

This is her ... as she was pictured...

About Christiana Edmunds character... (Wikipedia)

youtube

785-1 https://youtu.be/T3u5NRaveIE

READ: The Case of the Chocolate Cream Killer: The Poisonous Passion of Christiana Edmunds – Women's History Network (womenshistorynetwork.org)

A BBC Radio adaptation of John Fletcher's play about Christiana Edmunds, the "Chocolate Cream Killer", who carried out a series of poisonings in Brighton in the early 1870's. When people start falling ill all over early 19th century Brighton, everyone thinks it's cholera due to the lack of proper sewers. Little do the police know that it's actually the work of a middle-aged spinster who, thwarted in love, its taking her revenge on all of the citizens of Brighton with very special montelimars and pralines. Obsession, bad drains, royalty, murder and chocolate all play their part ...

youtube

785-2 https://youtu.be/TUvG2dm5eVQ

The Great Chocolate Murders : John Fletcher : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

READ: A historical murder: The Chocolate Box Poisoner - Robin Stevens (robin-stevens.co.uk)

Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley Ep 11 - Christiana Edmunds: The Case of the Chocolate Cream Killer Lucy Worsley looks at the crimes of women from the 19th and early 20th centuries from a contemporary, feminist perspective.

Lucy explores the story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved mother in 1850s America, who commits a murder that transforms her into an icon of tragedy and resistance. Her life inspired Tony Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning novel Beloved.

To explore Margaret Garner’s remarkable story and its contemporary resonances Lucy is joined by Nikki M Taylor, Professor of African American History at Howard University in Washington DC and the author of Driven Towards Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio.

Margaret Garner and her small four children are owned by a farmer in the slave state of Kentucky, and they live a tantalising 16 miles from Cincinnati in the free state of Ohio. Margaret and her husband Robert, who is enslaved on a nearby farm, decide to risk their lives, and the lives of their children, for a chance of freedom on the other side of the Ohio River. On the night of 27th January 1856, in temperatures close to -20 degrees celsius, the family escapes on a sleigh and, against the odds, they evade capture and make it across the frozen river to what they hope will be freedom and safety. But their owners are hard on their heels, and soon Margaret will have to give a terrible answer to the question ‘is slavery a fate worse than death?’.

Lucy wants to know what life was like for Margaret as an enslaved woman, wife and mother. How can we hear the voices of enslaved women when they left so few records of their lives? What does Margaret’s story tell us about the lives of black women in America today? What effect did her story have on the abolitionist movement, and how can her story inform the fight against slavery and sex trafficking today?

youtube

785-3 https://youtu.be/W4si-Wpu_kc

11. Christiana Edmunds – Lady Killers with Lucy Worsley (australian-podcasts.com)

READ OR LISTEN... Broadmoor revealed: The Victorian asylum | The National Archives

READ: Victorian Broadmoor revealed in free online book - BBC News

Broadmoor is Britain's most notorious hospital prison for the criminally insane, whose infamous inmates have included Ronnie Kray and 'Yorkshire Ripper' Peter Sutcliffe. Currently Broadmoor houses 400 of the most difficult, disturbed and dangerous people in Britain. With material from inside the hospital, this film offers a unique insight into how a civilised society treats those who are both bad and mad. Originally broadcast in 2002.

youtube

785-4 https://youtu.be/-4BaCt5tlgI

#Youtube

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moviemunchies · 3 years ago

Photo

I probably should have seen this earlier, but I finally got around to it and so let’s talk about. And I have to find something to say other than “It’s a bit like Highlander but not.”

Adapted from a comic book, The Old Guard tells the story of a group of immortal mercenaries - Andi, Booker, Nicky, and Joe - who find themselves betrayed by people who want to figure out how their immortality works. After all, if you can crack the secret to immortality, you can solve all kinds of world problems. At the same time, a new immortal’s just awakened to her new powers, and is very confused about what’s going on. So they’ve got to recruit the noob, kill their betrayer, and wipe out all trace of their existence.

One of the things that bugs me regarding stories about immortals is that so many of them are about how the main characters are so sad that they live forever and would like to die for once. It gets really, really old after a while. This isn’t that. There is the notion that at least a couple of the immortals are growing weary of their lives, and we see the fates that might befall them if they get captured, and it’s not thrilling, but it’s not a story about how being mortal is so much better and I like that.

Really, the internal conflict that bothers Andi more is that she feels like the world is doomed. She feels like she’s spent so much of her immortal life trying to make the world a better place, and she doesn’t have much evidence that it’s worked. If anything, it feels like it’s worse. And so she’s jaded and cynical about people because of it.

Another thing that bugs me about fictional immortals? They’re almost all from, like, the last two or three hundred years in what they’ve done or where they’ve been. Andi is short for ‘Andromache’, a warrior from ancient Scythia, and she’s older than the other immortals in the group by over a thousand years. Until Nile comes along, only the youngest immortal is from the past couple hundred years (that’s Booker, and he was a soldier under Napoleon).

Plot-wise I don’t think this movie’s going to throw you for any loops–it’s not like there’s a massive twist that makes you question everything you think you know, or anything like that. It’s pretty straightforward in its Plot, and you can spot who the villains are from a mile off if you know how movies work. But that doesn’t mean it’s not well-constructed and entertaining. Because it is! It’s a delightful action movie if you’re into this sort of thing.

This movie gives us some delightful fight scenes. Because our main group of heroes is made up of immortals, they have had a lot of practice in fighting, and so that means we get pretty good fight choreography! I have to say I appreciate this recent trend I’m seeing of fight scenes that don’t suck? In big budget movies?

The cast is all pretty likable, at least on the heroes’ side. I think, aside from Andi and Nile, they don’t get quite enough characterization. Not that Booker, Jo, and Nicky have no character development at all–they’re quite distinctive and memorable personalities in their own right, but I would have liked to see more of them and what they were doing in different parts of history. I don’t complain too much because we still get a very good idea of what they’re like as people, but they’re still out of focus. Maybe that’s how it has to be, considering how movies work and they’re not main characters, whatevs.

Our villain’s pretty much an irredeemable douchebag, which is what you’d expect from the guy in charge of a large corporation in a film like this. Also he’s Dudley Dursley? Last time I saw him in something was in the BBC Merlin in which he wasn’t a bad guy so it’s a bit odd seeing him here. Copley’s more interesting and complex, although kind of idiot? He assumes that by betraying the team, things will still turn out for the best, just a mild inconvenience. It’s like the man doesn’t realize that corporations run by evil Brits won’t approach things in an ethical manner and purposefully make things painful if it turns a profit!

And there are no bad romance storylines! It’s great. Usually you’d feel as if a movie like this would have an awkward romance subplot or a sex scene as bad fanservice. Neither Andi nor Nile even get a love interest. If there’s a romantic arc in the movie, it’s between Joe and Nicky, and I wouldn’t call that an arc, as they’ve been together for centuries at this point, and have already worked out what their relationship is a long time ago.

It’s a pretty good action movie, it’s fun, it’s got good action scenes, there are guns, swords, and axes, and it’s got fun characters who are entertaining to watch on screen. You need a fun action movie based on a comic book that’s not DC or Marvel? Check out The Old Guard. It won’t blow your mind, but it’ll be a pretty good time.

#The Old Guard #Movie Munchies #Netflix #movies #Charlize Theron

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arrhakis · 3 years ago

Video

(via The Ghost Train Of Stalingrad | The Ghost Train Of Stalingra… | Flickr)

The Ghost Train Of Stalingrad by Daniel Arrhakis (2022)

In the Russian Arctic lies buried an unfinished railway built by prisoners of Stalin's gulags. For decades no-one talked about it ... Joseph Stalin's cruellest and most ambitious projects - the Trans-Polar Mainline. It was his attempt to conquer the Arctic - part of what he called his Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature.

The scheme was supposed to link the eastern and western parts of Siberia with a 1,000-mile (1,609km) railway stretching from the city of Inta, in Komi Autonomous Republic, through Salekhard to Igarka, on the Yenisei River.

Work on the western part started in the early 1940s but in Salekhard construction began after the end of World War II. The labour force was almost entirely made up of "enemies of the people" - prisoners convicted of "political" offences.

According to some estimates 300,000 prisoners were enslaved on the project and nearly a third of them perished in the process.

By the time Stalin died in 1953, over 370 miles (600km) had been built but it was never completed. Cold War Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred responsibility for the construction from the Interior Ministry to the Ministry of Transport, which lacked money and workers to continue the project.

The tracks sank back into the tundra. The railway to nowhere, with its huge cost in human lives, became known as the Dead Road. For decades nobody talked much about the ghostly barracks or the rusting rolling stock and rails.

Several locomotives that ran the two railroads to Stalingrad to supply the German 6th Army and the Romanian 3rd, the 4th Panzer Army and the Romanian 4th Army were used to bring troops, food, material and other supply to the fighting forces in and around Stalingrad.

After the victory of the Russians over Germany, one of these locomotives was turned into a secret and mysterious project by Stalin himself at the proposal of Wolf Messing, Stalin’s personal wizard. Magician, hypnotist, seer, psychic, Wolf Messing was a sort of Count Cagliostro, in terms of the mystery that surrounded him. Hitler was afraid of him, and Stalin and Beria took his words from him seriously. The strange locomotive that only ran at night had a strange shape that looked like a skull, whose eyes were its powerful lights that at night illuminated up to many miles away and scared the few who saw it especially on the Trans-Polar Mainline.

Many died in the Gulags that were specially created for the railway. In winter the temperature can go down to -50 Celsius and in the summer the terrible heat, the mosquitoes. Some guards used the insects to inflict merciless punishments. They'd undress the prisoners and tie him up for the mosquitoes and that was worse than any torture instrument. The locomotive became a dark legend and it was said that it fed on the souls of the workers who built the line.

Joseph Stalin, second leader of the Soviet Union, died on 5 March 1953 at the Kuntsevo Dacha, at the age of 74.

After his death predicted by Wolf Messing, the locomotive was dismantled in an uncertain location, having been covered by a blanket of snow in one of the most rigorous winters in memory. Its trail has been lost forever in the memory of the people and even in the stories and legends of the Cossacks, but it is said that on certain harsh winter nights a train with two lights illuminates the lands and skies of Salekhard region while the wolves howl...

Story and work created by Daniel Arrhakis; some elements are real others invented for this story.

Joseph Stalin's deadly railway to nowhere - BBC News www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18116112

Wolf Messing: Stalin’s personal wizard - Russia Beyond www.rbth.com/arts/2014/04/16/wolf_messing_stalins_persona...

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gatherthesuspectspod · 4 years ago

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A hundred ways to die in Wales

Hello Tumblr!

My first post ever here! I’m still learning the ropes, so please be kind!

This might be awfully presumptuous of me, but you may recognise the name from a few years back. Before all of this happened, I worked for BBC Radio 4 as their Welsh correspondent - a bit niche, I grant you, but I did alright on social media. I even had a blue tick on Twitter before it went down for good.

At its peak, whatever media you worked in, scoops were delivered on social media. No one went to the radio or the newspapers for breaking news. Hell, even the TV news was struggling. So, even radio journalists like me had to be twitter savvy, you know?

It does make me wonder how Tumblr survived. As a journalist (well, former journalist) I should probably have done some research and found out…

My housemate, Jack, suggested I start to keep this blog so that he, in his exact words, ‘wouldn’t have to listen to me moan about not being a journalist anymore.’ So, here I am, coming to scream into the void that is the last social media platform standing (apart from LinkedIn… Shoulda known that even during the apocalypse, start-up CEO Chad Moneybags would still need to post motivational bullshit about 5 am starts and tagging every post with ‘#crushingit’)

Anyway, I’ve strayed slightly from the point… So, this blog isn't going to be full of hard-hitting investigative journalism or even those colourful local news stories you used to see about water skiing hamsters. It’s just going to be me, posting my thoughts about how much more screwed the world is than the previous week.

Cheerful stuff, right? Well, as REM sang, ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine’. And you know what, while fine might be stretching a bit, it could be worse...

Before it happened, when people thought about the end of the world, we always pictured some huge catastrophe. ‘The Hollywood Apocalypse,’ Jack calls it. You know the kind - people screaming in the streets as some unspeakable horror unfolds about them.

In movies, the end of the world was always sudden, over in a flash, with pockets of humanity left to pick up the pieces of a shattered world. Except, that’s not how it happened, not that we should be surprised, life rarely imitates the movies.

In fact, it happened so slowly and contained so many individual strands that by the time it arrived, it took us even more by surprise - even the right-wing newspapers didn’t have time to come up with some ‘pithy’ name for it. I’ve always liked the term ‘tipping point,’ The point at which every one of those strands, however linked or disparate, tipped the scales so far against humanity, there was no turning back.

I mean, we shouldn’t have been surprised. We had been warned, after all. For years (no, decades, even) scientists talked about how we were destroying the earth. From the changing climate to the destruction of entire ecosystems, all in the name of capitalism.

People warned us it would lead to societal collapse. It wasn’t hard to see it coming, if you were paying attention. But, even if you were paying attention, the sheer magnitude of it was enough to cause even the strongest advocates some blind spots caused by existential terror. Like a Lovecraftian monster rising from the depths of the ocean, who could wrap their head around the true horror.

Instead, we played out our little culture wars as the planet died… we elected people to distract and not solve… we lied and allowed ourselves to be lied to. Until, in the end, there were so many that no longer cared about the truth that finding a solution was never a possibility.

The rise of ignorance led to the rise of populism, which led to the rise of fascism, and eventually isolationism. Each country, widowed and trapped in its own poky bachelor apartment of despair. With nothing but memories of past glories to keep it going while the world around slowly burns.

The thing about this kind of creeping apocalypse, this tipping point, is that there is a certain mundanity in it all. There are millions dead, but there was no Hollywood pre-credit sequence of terrified crowds running through Manhattan.

This apocalypse had an absence of symbols - actually, no. That’s not quite right. I mean, we don’t have the statue of liberty drowning in sand while hyper-intelligent apes roam the planet, sure. But last week, the sea caught on fire… the fucking sea! You’d think after completely decimating the planet for a hundred years, some companies may have learned a lesson or two - like not setting dire to the fucking sea again!

And just today, the newspapers are full of pictures of yet another ghost town in West Wales slowly sinking into the sea. We have our symbols, alright. They are just smaller, more mundane than the Hollywood apocalypse we always felt we deserved - as a species, we are so arrogant that we feel even our extinction deserves something special, something showy. But, like I said, if you are paying attention, there are symbols to be found everywhere.

Is our slow, boring apocalypse better than the ostentatious apocalypses of Tinseltown, complete with their big budget explosions and alien invasions? I’m honestly not sure.

One part of me used to think that at least then it would be over quickly. This was a particularly comforting thought during the war, as English shells rained down on Cardiff. But, even the war fizzled slowly, bubbling away around the fringes, with neither country having the resources, will or money to mount any serious threat to the other. It turned out that not even the newly installed Albion dictatorship in England could get away with a costly hot war, while millions of its citizens starved to death.

It sounds weird to say, but slowly you adjust to it. You know? Slowly, bit-by-bit, the fucking sea being on fire doesn’t seem such a big deal as it did a year ago. Slowly, bit-by-bit, you stop watching the news. You realise the images of starving children 50 miles away over the border have become the norm.

You become desensitised to the food queues, the extreme swings in weather, the rapidly shrinking coastline. When was the last time you even saw a bee? It’s all just normal. But in spite of all of that, we still sit here, night after night, staring at our tiny plastic phones, reading the latest #crushingit update from that douchebag Chad, half hoping that there is still time for the aliens to show up and finish the job…

I realise that was quite a long run-on sentence, but it’s been a while. I’m out of practice. Like I said, it’s been three years since I last wrote, well, anything! I don’t know if anyone will even read this… I mean how many people can even access Tumblr anymore? But, Jack was right, it did help to get some stuff out.

Until next time (possibly), stay bored out there!

Kara

#crushingit #bored #apocalypse #audio drama #audio fiction #Gather The Suspects

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sirrwritesalots · 4 years ago

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Resurrection ~ Sherlock Holmes (angsty)

Pairing: (BBC) Sherlock x Y/N Warnings: Some cursing, angsty, anger Word Count: 2074 Summary: You have known Sherlock and John for years, but when he comes back from the dead, will you accept him so easily? A/N: This is out of my element, I usually write romance and stuff, but I’m trying out the depressing/Sherlock type of mystery and crime out a bit, though there isn’t much of that crime stuff happening lol hope you enjoy!

The reconnection between John and Sherlock was eventful, to say the least, but in comparison to the reunion between Sherlock and Y/N still did not go as he had originally planned or hoped for.

In the years he had been away - or as everyone thought: supposedly ‘dead’ - you had taken up residence at a cottage in Dorset your family had owned for a long time. You took the death of your close friend, and someone whom you loved very dearly, in the romantic sense as well as the platonic sense, rather difficult, so as a means of coping you spent some time away for yourself from the busy capital of the UK. You needed to reconnect with yourself and handle your grief, come to terms with what had happened in order to move on, and in doing so you found the lowland hills of South Wessex comforting and appealing as you creating your new life there. You’d become accustomed to your routine, to the - what some would call - mundaneness of it all, though your blood seemed to itch for some action every now and again, which you appeased by composing or writing, possibly taking up a new hobby, anything of the sort.

So one day when there was a knock on your door, you simply expected it to be your neighbor down the road asking to borrow a cup of sugar or asking for a small favor. It came as somewhat of a surprise when you opened the front door and came face-to-face with none other than your old friend John Watson and his girlfriend Mary, who you met only a handful of times but really liked. She was good for him, you thought, after everything he had been though.

You welcomed them with a smile, “John! I didn’t know you were coming around! Mary, it’s lovely to see you again!” You were about to kiss both of her cheeks after letting the two inside when a third person appeared where they were standing a second ago.

“I didn’t know your family owned a cottage outside of London,” said the familiar deep baratome voice.

You could have sworn your heart stopped in that moment. Body completely froze with a hand closed around the door handle like a vice, a white-knuckle grip so tight the edges of the lock were almost piercing your skin. Although you always hoped you would be wrong in the back of your mind, you thought you’d never see him again. A wave of emotions crashed over you in a matter of seconds: shock, relief, joy. But the last of them all, white hot rage, washed through you like it never had before. Without saying a single word, you slammed the door in his face and turned to make your way into the kitchen.

You vaguely heard John and Mary’s mumbled comments. “Well, it could have been worse,” you imagined John shrugging to his girlfriend as he weighed some of the possible outcomes in his head. “She could have punched him in the face like I did.”

“John,” Mary said wearily, “Y/n’s not happy, and I wouldn’t expect her to be. What, with us just showing up out of the blue with him.”

“Give her some time... she’ll come around,” John attempted to give you the benefit of the doubt.

In the kitchen, your hands were splayed across the countertop to steady yourself as you felt like you were quite literally spinning from the thoughts running around in your head and your eyes slid out of focus. How was this even possible? Did John know this whole time? No, he couldn’t have. He was genuinely grief stricken, just like you had been. Mycroft must have known, that cheeky bastard knew practically everything. Why couldn’t he tell you, though? Of all people, why didn’t he let you and John in on his not-so-little secret for all these years? Your mind was running a thousand miles a minute attempting to answer all these rising questions on your own, wondering how you could have missed this simple fact: Sherlock was not dead.

After no reaction or response for me for a long time - you were unaware of how much time had passed - John entered the kitchen, calling your name. “How long have you known?” was the only thing you said, eyes now fixated on one particular spot on the counter so as to control your emotions in the moment.

“Only a few days. He wanted to tell you in person, not over the phone.”

You scoffed, shaking your head and relaxing your tense muscles for the first time since you slammed the front door shut. “That’s a shock.” Usually Sherlock preferred technological means of communication to human interaction, typically choosing to send a quick text over speaking on the phone or bothering to get off his ass and into a cab.

“Nothing about this is normal,” stated John. He was right; it wasn’t an everyday occurrence that a friend comes back to life, or rather fakes his own death. John tried to reason with you, “If you could just hear him out.”

“Is that what you did? Immediately wait and listen to what he had to say.”

“Well, um, no. It took a bit. I may have hit him once or twice. We relocated a few times.” You gave John a look that screamed the words ‘exactly’ without having to vocalize your point. “What I was trying to say is, that its Sherlock, Y/N. And we’ve been a mess since he left, no matter what we’ve done to be happy in that time.” Your mind immediately went to Mary and the cottage you were standing in; yours and John’s means of coping.

“Yeah, John, that’s my point; he left! Without a word. He went along with Moriarty and let us go on believing he offed himself. How can you forgive him so easily?” Your blood was beginning to boil again.

“So, what are you planning on doing? Leave him outside in the rain until he learns his lesson?”

You crossed your arms in front of your chest, your chin lifting a fraction in affirmation. “Yes.” At the very least, you believed Sherlock deserved that, after all he put the two of your through, to sit soggy and cold for the next hour.

John relented and dropped his arms at his sides, realizing it was useless to argue with you as your stubbornness had clearly not disappeared in your time apart, and made his way back to Mary in the sitting room. You made the three of you some cups of tea, bringing the tray with you and setting it onto the table. Noticing the fire was lit, which must have been Mary’s doing while you were having your little tiff with John in the kitchen earlier, you smiled softly at her. She and John took residence on the couch while you sat in the chair closest to the fire, leaving a single chair adjacent to you unoccupied as the room warmed up.

You could hear Sherlock’s shoes tapping the porch as he paced back and forth in a meek effort to stay warm in the rain. A part of you - the one that reached out to Sherlock, that was glad to have him back despite everything - wanted to let him in, hand him a cup of tea, wrap a blanket around his shoulders, and talk as though no time had passed. But the other part that inhabited a majority of your consciousness was annoyed at his patience. He wasn’t complaining about the weather or temperature on the other side of the door. In fact, he was more quiet than you remember him ever being, aside from then he was sleeping or preoccupied in his Mind Palace. After his eventful encounter with John, he must have come to the understanding that he wouldn’t be welcomed with open arms and it would take a bit of an adjustment for everybody to acclimate him into their lives again.

After sitting in silence for thirty or so minutes, John abruptly stood to his feet, causing Mary to quickly look at him on alert. Luckily her cup was empty, or else he would be responsible for the stain on your rug. “For Christ’s sake! This is enough, Y/N! You’re acting like a damn child,” John said as he walked to the front door. “I’ve let you have your moment, now I am going to let Sherlock in and you are going to have it out. Right here, right now. Not later when its dark and he’s caught hypothermia.”

Against your protests, John opened the door and nodded at his friend to come inside your home. Sherlock stepped through the threshold after shaking his hair outside, lifting his head to meet my gaze as John locked the door behind him.

It felt like a hole had been rammed through your chest again, the power of it almost knocking you back into the chair you were seated in. You took a deep, unsteady breath and clenched your fists to hide your shaking hands. Part of it was anger, but most of it was fear, anxiety. You tried to control your breathing, deep inhale followed by a deep exhale, like you had practiced when you began having panic attacks after his death.

“Please, let me explain,” Sherlock pleaded with a soft look in his eyes you’d never seen before as he gingerly took a step forward.

“I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to see you. I don’t even want to speak to you.” It took everything in you not to burst into tears, out of anger or frustration or sadness you didn’t know which, as you took a step back to maintain the distance between the two of you.

“Y/n, l-”

“No! Fuck! You were gone. You were dead, Sherlock! And you didn’t so much as tell me or John!” Your voice began to crack as it raised in volume. “Dead! Do you even understand that? We grieved your loss. We have borne that pain for two years now, and you think that I’m suddenly going to forgive that and let you back into my life just because you’re standing here in front of me now? That’s extremely arrogant and selfish, even for you.”

Sherlock chose his words wisely as he spoke, “Yes, I do understand.”

“No, see, I don’t think you do. Because you are incapable of feeling human emotions; you’ve said so yourself, right? They are pesky little beggars that get in the way of more important things in life, yeah?” You raised your eyebrows in expectation, waiting for him to confirm your statement to be true, since he had expressed his distaste for allowing emotions to rule him and his life many times before, and yet he remained silent. “You couldn’t possibly understand, because you thrive on suspense and mystery. On having the upper hand of knowing what others don’t, having the power to withhold information and telling others what you want them to know and when you want them to know it. You like being the know-it-all genius. What would you be without it?”

The question was rhetorical, but he answered nonetheless, “Nothing.” Your eyes widened at his response, shaken by his omission. “You’re right, I’d be nothing without my knowledge. I’m not Sherlock Holmes without my deductive skills, if I couldn’t easily figure out what others cannot. But I’m also not me without John Watson. Without you.”

His vulnerability disarmed you, and your shoulders sagged a fraction as your demeanor began to involuntarily soften up to him despite your set mind. You were taken aback by his calm and collected expression, as if admitting what he has was somewhat of a regular occupancy for him. It wasn’t, though, and you knew that it took a lot of effort for him to speak that truth aloud. You were torn between the anger of what he had done and missing him after all this time. Your heart yearned for him, and now he was standing before you - flesh and blood, alive - begging in his own reserved way for you to take him back. You knew you couldn’t forgive him on the spot, not yet anyway. But you did know that, despite all the pain he had caused you in his absence, you could accept him into your life once again.

#sherlock #bbc sherlock #sherlock holmes #sherlock imagine #sherlock x y/n #sherlock is not dead

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morganaspendragonss · 4 years ago

Text

Bad Things Happen Bingo Masterpost!

And that's a wrap on my @badthingshappenbingo card! Thanks to anybody and everybody who requested a square - this has been so, so fun! I've had this card for years and have been actively working on it for a year and a half, so it's incredible to have finally finished it 🥰

Prompts and Fills listed below the cut:

Used in Sacrifice/Ritual - Filled

you would be the one to rescue me | BBC Atlantis | Jason x Pythagoras

When Jason wakes, Pythagoras is gone.

This in itself is not so strange. What is strange, however, is that his cloak has been left behind despite there being a significant chill in the air. And when Hercules begins to wake, and there is still no sign, Jason knows.

Something's wrong.

Rage Against the Reflection - Filled

out, damned spot | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

TK wakes up gasping, choking on air. The sheets are suffocating him and, when he tries to free himself, they only seem to get tighter. The hands reaching out for him, trying to calm him, are the final straw; TK throws himself from bed and sprints to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind him as he collapses against the sink.

On some level, he is aware that the hands were Carlos’s, that the sheets were theirs, that his hands are clean, and that the dream was just a dream.

But they weren't always that way.

Falling Through the Ice - Filled

ice in my veins | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Carlos only turns away for a second, he swears. Unfortunately, a second is clearly ample time for his boyfriend to get into trouble because when Carlos turns back around, TK is no longer standing where he left him.

Instead, there’s a sizable hole in the ice.

Flashbacks - Filled

start again from the beginning | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK & Owen

Owen trusts his son. He’s watched TK fight his addiction and stay sober for the last six years, and he has faith that he can handle himself.

But when TK doesn’t show up for work the night after proposing to Alex, Owen knows that something is wrong. After all, they've been here before.

Branding - Filled

setting fire to our insides for fun | Supernatural | Meg x Cas

Cas had been prepared to find demons. Frankly, he would have been concerned if he didn’t find demons, given that that was his mission here. What he hadn’t been prepared for, however, was to find two demons torturing another, pressing the hot end of a branding iron into her forearm.

He killed the two torturers with practised ease, barely wasting a moment before they were both on the dirty, wooden floor, eyes burned out their sockets. Only then did he allow his surprise to catch up to him, breathing heavily as his gaze settled on someone he hadn’t seen in a long time.

Meg.

Memory Loss - Filled

focal point | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Waking up in the hospital is becoming all too familiar. Being the one in the bed is less so, but Carlos has had his fair share of hospital trips. He knows the drill.

As soon as he sees him awake, TK breaks out in harsh sobs. "Carlos," he breathes. "I... I thought I'd lost you."

Caught in an Explosion - Filled

can we skip past near death cliches? | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

It’s the kind of call every first responder dreads. A bomb threat in an apartment block, civilian’s lives on the line, the whole situation a hair’s breadth away from disaster. And Carlos is right in the middle of it.

tw: explosions, bombs

Forced to Kneel/Bow - Filled

in case you don’t live forever (let me tell you now) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

His teammates were still sitting in the communal area when TK entered, eyes glued to the tv screen. Paul was the first to notice him, and TK’s concern only grew as he got everyone else’s attention, their worried gazes falling on him one by one.

“There’s a hostage situation at that big, fancy hotel across town," Marjan explained. "Apparently it’s pretty serious, they’ve had to send police in, and, um, well…”

Marjan paused, and TK felt dread wash through him, knowing what her next words would be.

“Carlos is there, TK. He’s gone in.”

tw: references to gun violence

Be Careful What You Wish For - Filled

can you beat back the night? | The Witcher | Geralt x Jaskier

He misses the bard. Geralt won’t admit it, not even to Roach, but he misses him. After months—years—of Jaskier’s constant chatter and the sound of his lute, the silence, once valued above all else, is too much.

It’s been months since the dragon, since Geralt lost both Yennefer and Jaskier in one fell swoop. He’s cursed himself many times over for the words he said—to both of them—and cursed himself more for the mistakes he made to get in this position in the first place.

this is the lot of witchers, to be alone.

Blood From the Mouth - Filled

I Got You | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & 126 Crew

“I’m just sayin’,” Judd says, waving his arms around. “Somebody’s gonna get themselves killed in there one of these days. I had to come out here three times last year because of some idiots who think they know better than the ‘Keep Out’ signs.”

The team are called to an abandoned house where some kids are trapped. Everything is going smoothly, which, naturally, means that it won't be that way for much longer.

Trapped in a Burning Building - Filled

a little unsteady | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

9-1-1, What's your emergency?

'Please, help! My house is on fire and my husband’s inside!'

t.k. sometimes wonders if the universe is out to get him

Worked Themselves to Exhaustion - Filled

In Your Arms | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, Michelle & TK

T.K. and Carlos agreed when they started dating to check-in on each other that they were both okay. Reassurance that nothing bad had happened. So, when Carlos hasn't replied hours after his shift is supposed to have finished, T.K.'s definitely beginning to panic.

Locked in a Cage - Filled

running out of time | Shadowhunter Chronicles | Kit x Ty

When (if) they got out of here, Kit wanted the record to unequivocally state that this wasn’t his fault. Not that it was Ty's either, but it certainly wasn't Kit's.

kit and ty's first hunt together after three years goes wrong and they wind up trapped in a cage with no way out. naturally, this leads to a heartfelt conversation.

Demonic/Ghostly Possession - Filled

Haunting | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Owen

T.K. is five when he first sees a ghost, though, of course, he doesn’t know that it’s a ghost. His name is Joey, and he lives in the playground, which T.K. thought was a little strange, but he doesn’t want to ask. Dad says it’s rude to ask questions like that to someone he’s just met.

Fingore - Filled

ease my mind | 911: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Briefly, Carlos considers calling TK and telling him about the accident. But… He only broke two of his fingers and it barely even classifies as a minor injury in his book, so there’s really no reason to bother his fiancé while he’s still on shift himself. He pockets his phone then looks around to figure out where the exit is.

Only, an all-too familiar laugh distracts him from his task, drawing his attention to the nurses station.

Where TK is standing, smiling as a nurse swats at him for stealing one of their lollipops.

Carlos is, beyond doubt, fucked.

Verbal Abuse - Filled

this is a song about somebody else | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Marjan

TK doesn't notice the 126's latest visitor until it's too late. He freezes as Alex smiles at him, knocked off balance by this sudden intrusion of his old life into his new one.

alex vists tk at the 126. luckily, tk has his family to help him through it.

tw: abusive language

Dying in Their Arms - Filled

can you hear me screaming (please don’t leave me) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

As a cop, Carlos has to deal with all kinds of cases, and not all of them end well. But never in his life did he imagine that he'd have to respond to an incident involving his own boyfriend.

tw: major character death

Blindfolded - Filled

find you here inside the dark | Doctor Who | Thirteen x Yaz

Yaz has walked this room too many times to count now; she’s traced her fingertips over the walls, searching for any cracks or crevices to indicate where there might be a door.

If the Doctor were here, she’d have her sonic out by now, spitting out words, only half of which Yaz could understand. She’d find a way out in no time. Or, if not, at least she’d be here. Talking a mile a minute, probably annoying the hell out of their captors. Yaz can almost hear her now—

Wait.

She can hear her now.

Water Torture - Filled

soggy clothes and breezeblocks | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Carlos wakes up slowly. He cracks his eyes open, wincing at the pounding in his head. He lifts his hand to massage the pain away, only to discover that his hand won't move, the cool metal of handcuffs biting viciously into his wrist.

After an undercover mission goes wrong, Carlos is forced to fight for his life. And to make matters worse, his kidnappers are making sure that T.K. is watching the entire thing.

tw: torture

Fighting from the Inside - Filled

and curse the gods | BBC Atlantis | Jason & Medusa

Jason knows what it is to be cursed.

Slammed into a Wall - Filled

mind over matter (matter over mind) | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos, TK & Owen

After a night out goes wrong, TK and Carlos are left to deal with the consequences.

tw: homophobia, hate crimes, hiding an injury

Suicide Attempt - Filled

be done with this now | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Once upon a time, Carlos had thought that watching as his almost-boyfriend was whisked off in an ambulance, bullet wound in his chest, would be the worst moment of his life. Then TK had been kidnapped, and Carlos had spent hours not knowing where he was, if he was alive or dead, and he thought - this is it. Nothing can top this.

But, having to perform CPR on his husband, having to hold him as he slipped away in his arms?

That was worse than even his nightmares.

tw: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, depression, drug abuse, overdosing

Bleeding Through the Bandages - Filled

pull you in to feel your heartbeat | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

The call comes at the tail end of Carlos’s shift, and he instantly hates whichever idiot decided to ruin his night by mugging someone.

What he's not expecting is to find his boyfriend on the ground, bleeding out from a stab wound.

Arm in a Sling - Filled

have you been involved in an accident at work? | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK & 126 Crew, TK x Carlos

T.K. was on his way to the hospital. Again.

At least this time he could say with absolute certainty that it 100% wasn't his fault.

Self-Harm - Filled

but god i wanna feel again | 9-1-1: Lone Star | TK x Carlos

Carlos blames himself for not noticing. It's not like he had much choice in the matter; he hasn't seen T.K. all week, and his texts have been going unanswered, but he can't help but feel like it's partly his fault.

If only T.K. would actually talk about himself, instead of keeping it all in.

tw: self-harm

#bad things happen bingo #fanfiction #my fanfiction #writing #my writing #send me prompts!#masterlist

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nanoland · 4 years ago

Text

am writing hellblazer fic asfdfsfff

title: The Cave

fandom: Hellblazer

characters: John Constantine, Chas Chandler, the First of the Fallen

blurb: John gets lost in a cave.

warnings: Depression, covid19, demons getting themselves Extremely murdered.

It was when the death toll had crested 100,000 that he’d snapped and made his way to Number 10 Downing Street with murder in his eyes and a briefcase full of every cursed artefact he owned.

“What are you gonna do, eh?” bellowed Chas, who’d been following behind him in his cab for the last half mile. He’d already tried to physically drag John into it and had received a bite on the hand for his trouble. “Chuck ‘em through the windows? That’s bulletproof glass, John! Fuck’s sake! Be reasonable!”

“Stop sodding shouting!” John shouted over his shoulder, wiping rain off his face. “You’ll spread sodding germs!”

“John, I already had it. Four months ago, remember?”

“You can have it more than once! Christ, does nobody in this city read the papers but me?”

It was fair to say that John wasn’t at his best. In his defence, he’d spent the last year sitting inside his tiny, poorly-ventilated, roach-ridden flat, vividly imagining what a respiratory virus would do to lungs that had suffered over forty years of heavy smoking, two run-ins with cancer, and the actual devil sticking his actual great big grubby clawed hand in ‘em. No fucking thank you.

Chas sighed heavily and climbed out of the cab again, slamming the door as he did. He splashed through a dozen puddles before coming to stand in John’s path, arms folded. “Listen, Conjob. I love you. Even when you’re a complete prick, which is most of the time. And I know you can do amazing things. But mate, hear me out; you cannot assassinate the British Prime Minister.”

“Someone bloody has to!” John Constantine, greatest wizard of his age, screamed at the top of his wretched, ragged, Satan-besmirched lungs.

Eventually, Chas managed to calm him down and get him home for a cup of tea.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” John grunted as his socks dried in front of the heater and the rational parts of his mind re-exerted themselves.

“S’alright.”

“How’s the bite?”

“Didn’t pierce the skin. John, you need a break. A holiday. You need to get out of town for a few weeks. Go breathe fresh country air, do some weird mystical shit with a goat, whatever it is that sorts your head out these days. But you can’t carry on like this, mate. I haven’t seen you this miserable in years.”

He handed John one of Renee’s strawberry-patterned towels. Dragging it across his face, John grunted, “Holiday? At a time like this?”

“Why not? Makes as much sense as any other time.”

“What if you come down with it again? Or Geraldine? Or Renee?”

“John,” said Chas, gently, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You already tried to cure me with magic. It didn’t work. At all. Just wasted a lot of chicken blood and Renee’s best spoons. Get this in your skull: there’s nothing you can do. Alright? I know you hate that, but it’s the truth.”

John swallowed thickly. “Yeah. Yeah. Alright.”

So he went home to his tiny flat, stuffed fresh socks and his toothbrush into a backpack, booby-trapped his front door, and fled London in the dead of night, feeling like one of those gits in Boccaccio’s Decameron.

“It’s called glamping.”

“Some new wizardy stuff, I’m guessing?”

Chas’s voice over the phone was distracted, like he was half-watching the telly. John was relieved; he’d wanted to hear another human speak but wasn’t feeling up to a proper conversation demanding his usual levels of sparkling charisma and staggering wit. Not right now. Not without weed, and he’d not thought to bring any.

Nestling deeper into his teak folding chair and drawing a thick woven blanket up over his knees, John said, “Nah. Not buggering about with any of that old guff until I’m back in town. Promised myself.”

“Right.”

“Don’t sound so sceptical, you git. I’ve done it before.”

“Mm-hmm. What’s your record? The longest you’ve ever gone without doing anything mystical and creepy?”

“‘Bout… hmm. Three days.”

“You’re coming up on the tail end of that right about now.”

“I know. Chas, on my word, I am going to make it to Sunday without so much as sniffing around a graveyard or wanking off a werewolf. I am on holiday.”

“Alright, alright, if you say so. Good for you, mate. So what’s this ‘glamping’ business, then?”

“It’s camping. But posh. I’m sitting up here atop a hill in Yorkshire with a tent the size of a cathedral and me chic woodburning stove and me box of white wine and feeling like the yuppiest old cunt who ever drew breath.”

“Sounds horrible.”

“It does, doesn’t it? That’s why I chose it over a nice comfy bed and breakfast. Figured I’d wake up with a cow shitting on my head and could use that as an excuse to come home early. Actually, though… it’s alright. Quiet. There’s a river at the bottom of the hill where these giggling honeymooners like to have a morning bonk but it’s far enough away that I can’t hear them unless they’re really having fun. And the weather’s been alright. It’s all surprisingly decent.”

“And you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“Yep.”

“Hmph. I should have come with you. You get all weird and introspective when you’re left alone for more than a couple days.”

“I’m not alone. There’re birds. Squirrels. A few ghosts hanging out by the toilets.”

“John.”

“Ain’t gonna talk to ‘em! Mind you, one did give me a wink when I was zipping up. How’s everything back home?”

“Er – look, I won’t lie, it’s shit. It’s all shit. But it’s not any more shit than it was when you left three days ago. Not any worse, not any better, yeah?”

“Right.”

(Stupid to be disappointed. Stupid that a part of him had secretly believed that as soon as he abandoned the sinking ship that was London, things would miraculously get better for everyone, even as another part of him, on the opposite side of his brain, had been convinced – maybe even hoped – that the moment he was gone, the entire city would descend into screaming anarchy, at which he could point and laugh from a safe distance.)

“Listen, John, I’ve gotta go. Renee needs groceries. Be careful, please?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t fuck about with any occult bollocks. Don’t go foraging for brain-melting mushrooms. Don’t do anything. Just stay in your tent and read your dirty books, yeah?”

“Heard and understood, Mum.”

“Bastard.”

“Love you.”

“Yeah, you too.”

John dropped his phone onto the grass and stared up at the sky. A herd of thin grey clouds drifted past. Off in the distance, he could just make out the shape of a barn – or was it a church? Either way, there were sheep next to it.

A squirrel scurried down a nearby tree trunk and then up another one.

Yawning, he scratched his chin. (Getting scruffy. Hadn’t shaved in two days now.)

“Should prob’ly do some reading,” he mumbled to no one.

A few minutes passed.

He dangled his head back behind his seat and sang quietly: “First produced my pistol… then produced my rapier… said ‘stand and deliver’, for he were a bold deceiver… mush a-ring dum-a do dum-a da…”

Heaving a sigh, he stood up and walked around his tent to dispel pins and needles, then went inside to read his book.

“I am not bored,” he muttered fiercely, staring down at pages that might as well have been blank.

“Oh, but you are, John.”

England’s greatest wizard jumped up, wielding his novel as though it were a club, and dealt a devastating blow to empty air while screaming something along the lines of, “Raargh die die die!”

Then he waited for a moment to see if the voice returned. Tried to determine whether he could sense anything. Nope. Admittedly, that didn’t mean much these days. Lots of beasties and bastards out there had learned how to hide from him.

“Either I’m hallucinating or someone’s pissing me about,” he concluded, placing his hands on his hips. “Chas, mate, I’m sure you would agree that either constitutes a fine reason to leave this fucking tent.”

And leave he did.

He went caving.

The BBC had published an article a couple years back calling the UK’s cave systems its ‘last true wilderness’. He and Chas had had a good long laugh over that, Chas suggesting that John take the caver quoted on an expedition to Faerie or maybe direct him toward any of the two hundred portals to Hell between Plymouth and the Orkney Islands.

But the article had stuck with him. Perhaps it was the obvious love the caver had for his hobby, the clean and simple joy he got out of crawling around in dark, damp holes. John was always drawn to people like that, and not just because it sounded smutty.

(Imagine if he’d loved something clean and simple; gotten into bird-watching or carpentry instead of magic. Would have saved him a lot of hassle.)

Idly, one evening, he’d poked around on the internet – now that, that really was the last true wilderness – until he’d found a map listing all the cave systems in the UK, along with a guide to which were popular, which were dangerous, which were good for a family holiday, and yes (inevitably), which had been the scenes of grisly accidents.

(Wikipedia said that historically there’d been only 136 fatalities ‘associated with recreational caving’ in the UK and that, statistically, it wasn’t a particularly dangerous hobby. Hadn’t stopped him from having vivid dreams about bodies wedged in tiny tunnels miles below ground, cooling and rotting and bloating, except how could they bloat when there simply wasn’t enough room, what happened when…

Anyway, Chas had eventually rescued him from his maudlin musings and dragged him to the pub.)

And while his memory was a messy old thing, especially these days, that just happened to be the sort of useless information that tended to hang around in his head for years, like the words to every song in Sweeney Todd or the rituals required for an exorcism spell that didn’t actually work, doing nothing but taking up space.

There was a cave only a few miles from the campsite.

When he arrived, he beheld a clumsily painted sign nailed to an oak tree next to the entrance:

CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC UNTIL SPRING

NO TRESPASSERS

HAZARDOUS! ENTER AT OWN RISK

He lingered at the cave’s mouth. Though it was big enough for him to stand up in, it made for an unassuming sight. Squirrels played in the old oak with three sets of lovers’ initials carved into it that stood at its left and the pathway leading up to it was strewn with weeds and wildflowers.

“Am I really this stupid?” he pondered aloud, before correcting himself: “Am I really this bored?”

After five minutes’ internal debate, he decided that yes, he was.

He took a step towards the narrow crevice, before stopping himself. No. This was ridiculous. What was he thinking? Shaking his head, he turned and walked away.

Three hours later he was back, now with a good pair of leather boots (stolen from an arsehole in a nearby village), a Power Rangers backpack (given to him by a kid in exchange for a cigarette and some magic tricks), a cheap flashlight, two cans of lager, and a packet of crisps (paid for with the last of his cash).

“Off we go, then,” he said, and marched into the dark.

Like a well-fed leopard on a low-hanging branch, the First of the Fallen lounged across his throne of vertebrae, long black hair dribbling off his broad shoulders and pooling on the ground. Though he was wide awake, his eyes were closed. This, combined with the corpses of three supplicants dangling from nearby steel hooks, would hopefully discourage anyone from bothering him for the next few hours.

“My liege?”

Shit.

He kept still. Said nothing. Perhaps they would go away.

“Um… my liege, I’m terribly, monumentally sorry to disturb you, but…”

With a wave of his claw, the messenger exploded into red mist.

When, ten minutes later, a second messenger summoned up the courage to approach him, he realized that it must be very serious indeed.

“You have five seconds,” he said cordially, holding them up by the neck.

“Con… constantine!” they croaked.

Brightening, the First set them down. “Indeed? What’s the little bastard up to this time, eh?”

“Nothing, my liege. He’s dead.”

A few minutes later, a fourth corpse hung from a hook and the throne of Hell was empty.

To the First of the Fallen, caves were still a novelty.

Confined spaces, in general, were still a novelty.

At 13.6 billion years, he was only slightly younger than the universe. While solid planets had come into existence around the same time, he’d not actually visited one until the emergence of homo sapiens and his subsequent quarrel and falling-out with God – a mere 300,000 years ago.

Cast from Heaven, naked and freezing cold, he’d stumbled into a rocky cranny by the shoreline and wedged himself between its slimy walls. That was his earliest memory of ever being ‘indoors’. No surprise, then, that he avoided such places when he could. He had built no castles in Hell; his throne sat atop a mountain beneath an endless red-gold sky.

But right now, it wasn’t the cave that had his attention, dark and chilly and, yes, slimy as it was.

“Stupid turd,” he grumbled, glowering at the corpse. “Ow!”

He’d bumped his head on the cave ceiling again. It was too low for the average human to stand upright, much less an eight-foot primordial being.

Constantine stared at him, blue eyes blank and glassy. His body was unmarred save for the dent in the left side of his scalp, which had stopped leaking some time ago. As far as the First could tell, his nemesis had simply tripped and fallen onto an unfortunately positioned, unfortunately sharp rock.

The First spat on his tie and snarled, “Pathetic! What the fuck are you even doing here, eh? And – God’s hairy bollocks, when did you last bathe?”

His soul was still dangling off him, like drool from a dog’s mouth. Heaven, obviously, had no interest in him and the First hadn’t yet authorised his admission into Hell.

Because he wasn’t ready, dammit.

He’d not been expecting to welcome John home for at least another thirty years.

“Always have to make it difficult, don’t you?”

When he reached down to take hold of the soul – such a grubby, tattered thing – it bit, blazing gold for a sliver of an instant before he snatched his hand back. Stuck his index finger in his mouth until the sting abated. Fumed.

He tried again, grasping it firmly, as one might a snake. It thrashed. He gave it a disciplinary shake before opening Constantine’s mouth with a claw and forcing it down his gullet.

Coming back to life was never enjoyable. Constantine spasmed and gurgled, legs and arms contorting as pink foam gathered at his lips. The First, bored, sat down beside him, reclining against the cave wall with one knee crooked. Surveyed their surroundings. The ground was – oh dear – littered with crisp crumbs, an empty foil packet, two cans, and dozens of cigarette butts. How foul.

“Disaster in your wake, as ever,” he commented, tutting.

Constantine groaned, eyelashes fluttering.

Belatedly realizing that he wouldn’t be able to see in this subterranean gloom, and very much wanting to afflict him with the identity of his saviour, the First snapped his fingers. A dozen lit candles appeared across the cavern, hovering ghost-like in mid-air.

“Urgh… fffu… whu… oh, Christ Almighty.”

Watching him sit up, the First assumed a lordly expression, tilting his head. “And what do you have to say for yourself?”

Unhealthily pale skin and facial muscles stretched and twisted to an indeterminable end.

Then John Constantine set his jaw.

Growled: “I’m on holiday, you bellend.”

And passed out.

He awoke to the smell of slightly burnt waffles.

Better than burnt flesh, which was what he’d anticipated after His Infernal Bloody Majesty had popped in for a fag and a chat. Certainly better than sulphur.

“For you,” the First of the Fallen purred.

A white plate – averagely-sized but rendered absurdly dainty by the dimensions of the clawed fingers holding it – was set down in front of him.

He frowned at its golden-brown contents. “The catch?”

“No catch. I was peckish. I imagine you are, too.”

“Come on. Not in the mood. Did you piss on ‘em? Did you mix a baby’s blood into the batter?”

“Honestly, John.”

Scratching his chin, he reviewed the facts. Still in the same sodding cave, albeit far better illuminated than the last time he’d been conscious. Alive, but with that unmistakable stiffness that he’d come to associate with having recently been dead. Cold. Irritable.

Hungry.

His archenemy’s smug smile was almost enough to make him spit the first bite back out. Instinct borne from months of extreme poverty forced him to swallow instead.

“Tastes like shit,” he remarked, wiping his lips. “But I suppose you usually have minions to prepare food for you. Where’s the syrup?”

A regal sigh, before a bottle appeared beside the plate. He emptied a third of it and spent the next few minutes in delicious, sticky silence.

There were, as ever, consequences to allowing the First of the Fallen centre stage. The moment the big smelly git realised that John really wasn’t in the mood for banter, he waved a hand and conjured up a thin hardback with Into the Underworld: The Amateur’s Guide to Caving in Britain on the front.

As John rolled his eyes and stuffed another waffle into his mouth, the First cleared his throat and read: “‘According to the National Speleological Society, the minimum number of people required to safely embark on a recreational caving expedition is four – at least one of whom should have prior caving experience.’ Did you know that, John?”

John chewed sullenly.

“I did. I’d wager that most people do. At least, I’d wager that most people know that going caving in groups smaller than two – going caving alone – is wildly inadvisable. Caves are dangerous, John.”

Where were his cigarettes? Had the bastard nicked them?

“And… let’s see – ah! Here we are. ‘There is a great deal of commercial equipment available to a first-time caver, some of which is necessary, some of which is not. Two items, however, that are absolutely non-negotiable are a helmet and a helmet-mounted light.’ Do you have either of those, John?”

“Do I criticise your fucking hobbies?” he exploded, knowing better, knowing it would only encourage him. Sugary crumbs flew everywhere.

“You do, in fact. Often. And quite understandably. My favourite hobby is murdering your friends, after all.”

John threw the plate at his head.

He’d had a good sense of direction even before he’d learned how to see psychic residue coating streets and walls, left behind by previous travellers. Always scurrying around in places no kid should; subways, sewers, dirty basements, any haunted house his greedy little eye fell upon.

When he’d reached sixteen, burgeoning schizophrenia had muddled him up now and then. Occasionally, it’d even left him standing in streets he didn’t recognise with no earthly idea how he’d got there. PTSD had compounded the problem.

Even so, at fifty plus, he didn’t make a habit of getting lost. Meds, practice, and years of experience meant that he could walk from Chas’s house to Saint Paul’s with a blindfold on.

Long story short: This was embarrassing.

“I’m fairly sure we’re going in circles. That stalactite is very familiar.”

And he certainly wasn’t fucking helping.

(The floating candles, following them like ducklings, were. John’s torch had broken when he’d tripped. Still, he didn’t need the First of the Fallen for light. Could conjure it up himself, no bother. It just made sense to avail himself of a primordial being’s infinite magical resources before dipping into his own, far more limited stockpile.)

“Do you know the way out?” John asked, not breaking his stride.

“I do.”

“Will you tell me where it is?”

“I will not.”

“Then shut up.”

In his defence, John hadn’t thought the cave was big enough to get lost in. It hadn’t looked it from the outside.

But he’d wandered, then crawled, down at least a mile of twisting, increasingly narrow tunnels before getting himself killed. He’d kept meaning to stop; said to himself five times, ‘Okay, Conjob, this is getting stupid, let’s trot our arse back to civilisation’. Then he would notice another crevice wide enough for him to squeeze into.

“Curious place for a holiday,” the First of the Fallen commented after bravely keeping his tongue still for an unprecedented five minutes.

“Curious times we’re living in, innit?”

He hummed in agreement. “Are you really not here for any particular reason? Not – I don’t know – trying to find a missing child abducted by the fae? Searching for a wicked spirit who’s been cursing the local shepherds? Treasure-hunting, perhaps?”

“No.”

“You’re just here.”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“I told you. I’m on holiday. Taking a nice long break.”

“John. We’ve known one another for some time. I am familiar with the ways in which you ‘take a break’. You either go to the pub or you go to several pubs. Attempting to reconnect with nature is hardly your style.”

“Being oblivious to current events – especially shit ones – is hardly your style. Been too busy shaving your chunky arse to pick up a newspaper lately?”

“Print is dying. Besides, you try managing an entire dimension. See how much spare time it leaves you. Honestly, I’m run off my feet most days.”

“So quit.”

“Don’t be silly. What else would I do?”

“I dunno. Could be a camgirl. You’ve got the legs for it.”

“Stop trying to change the subject. Why aren’t you at home?”

John stopped walking and spun to face him. “There’s a plague, you gormless, oblivious prick. I can’t go to the pub. I can’t meet up with me mates. I can’t visit people’s homes to perform exorcisms. I can’t do anything but sit indoors, on my own, for months on end, just watching everything get worse, and that… and that’s not an option. Not for me. I crack too easy. So I got out. Before I killed someone. Now, for the last time, shut up and let me concentrate.”

He bent down to tug off his shoes and socks.

Telepathic magic tended to work best when you were naked. But sod that. Not with the First of the Fuckheads watching. Waffles or no waffles, he did not deserve a treat.

“Oh, is this what we’re doing now? Marvellous! I do love watching your quaint party tricks,” he oozed with a mocking round of applause as John dropped to his knees.

Ignore him.

Taking a deep breath, John let his awareness expand.

It was hard, with the First standing right there. His presence was staggeringly heavy, weighing on the ley lines like an iron ball on a lace hammock. And so alien; elements found nowhere on Earth, bones and muscles formed before Earth had been a glint in God’s eye.

John sneered into the darkness. Piss on that. On him. This was child’s play. Buggered as his brain might be, John Constantine wasn’t going to falter at the sound, scent, or sensation of a mean-spirited old cosmic relic.

Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.

Seven years ago, three people came this way. A family. A woman; her sister; her daughter. They were having fun. The sisters had done this before; the daughter had been begging to come along for years. Afterwards, they were going for pizza. It was a good day.

Two years ago, four people came this way. All friends from work. Well – ‘friends’. One was the company CEO, the other three wanted promotions. Everyone but the boss was miserable. One was arachnophobic.

Eight months ago, a… sheep? Yeah. A sheep. Barely more than a lamb. It was lost. There was a storm and it came down here looking for shelter. Went too deep. By the time the shepherd found it, it was half-starved.

“John? What are you-…”

Ignore him.

Ten years ago, another family. Fifty years ago, a frightened child running from a monstrous father. And others – a hundred others – a thousand. The cave had a rich and storied history. Almost against his will and entirely against his better judgement, John followed its threads through the rock layers, chasing faded ghosts, brushing up against magic so ancient it had fossilised.

“John!”

Ignore him. Ignore him. Ignore-

His head was ringing. His blood was on fire.

Fuck, I’ve gone too far, too bloody deep, fuck, oh fuck.

“Constantine! Heed me!”

His eyes snapped open.

“Ah,” he said.

“Precisely,” said the First of the Fallen, who was holding him up by his coat collar like a jizz rag in need of a bin.

The cave had changed.

It was brighter, thanks to a small, well-constructed fire in its centre.

The walls were covered in paintings. Deer. Hogs. Great red and brown bulls.

A woman sat in the corner, wrapped in furs, adding detail to what might have been a fox. She didn’t seem to have noticed them.

“Did you mean to do that?” the First of the Fallen queried.

“In thirty thousand years, a monk will come down here and find them. He’ll be horrified, believing that they’re the work of… well, me. So he’ll leave and return with water in buckets and scrubbing brushes. As he lies on his deathbed, he will be firmly under the impression that this great good deed will grant him entrance into Paradise.”

The First of the Fallen paused for effect, then added, “Alas, he will be mistaken.”

Without looking away from her work, the woman spoke several words in a language miles removed from any contemporary tongue John had ever heard.

“The young lady says she doesn’t mind spirits wandering her caves, but requests that we don’t chatter while she’s trying to concentrate.”

Crouching next to freshly-etched cow and her calf, feeling uncharacteristically dazzled, John said, “Ask her if I can take a picture. Ask her!”

“Homo neanderthalensis, John. She won’t have the faintest idea what you mean.”

Rolling his eyes, he fished his phone out of his trenchcoat pocket and waved it at her. When she deliberately ignored him, he shrugged and took the shot.

The flash won her attention. She stood – revealing a faded seashell necklace and a long, curving scar across her left thigh – and approached them, limping slightly. John held out the phone to show her the picture and, after a resoundingly unimpressed inspection, she uttered a terse sentence.

“She’s unsure why the sickly-looking spirit thinks shrinking her beasts in any way improves them,” said the First of the Fallen.

The woman raised her head (hard to tell how old she was; younger than him, definitely) and looked John in the eye, squinting. Another few sentences followed, some of which sounded like questions.

Sarcastic questions, unless he was mistaken.

“She asks if you shrink them because large beasts frighten you. She speculates that, if the only beasts you can bear to approach are scrawny ones, it’s no wonder that you yourself are such a measly creature. She says that she too was scared of bulls when she was a child, but that her mother taught her not to be. She wonders why your mother failed you in this regard. Should I tell her your mother died in childbirth, John?”

“Stick your head up your own arse and choke. But ask her name first.”

Tossing back his thick black hair, he scoffed. “Why? What does it matter? She’s a primitive, doomed creature and she’s not even really here. This is just one of the cave’s memories.”

“Christ – are you jealous I’m talking to her more than I’m talking to you? Because that’s fucking inane. This is a one-in-a-lifetime type deal. I’ve never spoken to a legit bloody Neanderthal. I speak to you all the blasted time, more’s the pity.”

Yellow eyes narrowed. “Maybe I’ll kill her.”

John laughed. “You said it, squire; she’s a memory. You can’t kill her. She’s long dead. Now shut up.”

He wasn’t able to learn her name. Still, via pantomime and pointing, he eventually managed to convey his desire to find a way out of the cave – or so, at least, it seemed.

She took a bundle of sticks from beside her fire, lit them, and walked towards the nearest inky-black tunnel.

“See?” he said to the First of the Fallen as they followed her. “Politeness. All it takes.”

“Don’t act like you have any real idea what’s going on. She could be leading you straight into a trap. You’re aware, I’m sure, that archaeologists generally agree Neanderthals practised cannibalism? Ten muscular relatives might be waiting right around the corner with clubs and a cooking pot.”

“For fuck’s sake – I have literally stood and watched you slouching on that colossally pathetic bone throne of yours and nibbling the edge of someone’s pelvis like it was a turkey drumstick. Loathsome bloody hypocrite.”

“That doesn’t remotely count as cannibalism, John. That was a human pelvis. I’m not a human. I’m the prototype. A species of one. Which, I suppose, means it’s technically impossible for me to commit cannibalism. Hmm. What an interesting philosophical notion.”

Walking a short way ahead, bare feet soundless against the rock, their new self-appointed guide said something.

“What was that?” John whispered.

“‘If you must burden my ears by bickering like children, you could at least do it in a language I can understand’. Then she called us a rude word.”

Then the First of the Fallen spoke several sentences in his usual bored, drawling cadence and, to John’s surprise, she laughed.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” the First of the Fallen said, innocently.

“I’m serious, bastard. What’re you saying to her?”

“Nothing important, John, really.”

More than once after that, he caught her glancing back at them and snickering.

The artist and the twisting stone galleries through which she led them – it couldn’t possibly have all been hers; the monk had destroyed the work of generations – were insufficient to keep John’s mind from straying back to important matters.

“Hey. Ponce. What’ve you done with my cigarettes?”

The First of the Fallen had plucked them from his trenchcoat pocket while he was unconscious. When it came to his sorcerer, he’d learned, you always wanted a bargaining chip to hand.

“We’re in the company of one whose lungs are as yet unsullied by the Industrial Revolution, Constantine. Are you really planning on exposing her to second-hand smoke?”

It was a prospect John, it seemed, hadn’t even considered. Obviously angry with himself for that (oh John), he snapped, “No! I was – it’s – look, she can’t get lung cancer, can she? She’s dead. Doesn’t matter what she breathes in now.”

Smothering a smile, the First of the Fallen said, “Oh? So the fact that she won’t actually perish upon inhaling your fumes is all that matters, is it? Never mind her comfort or dignity, I suppose; as long as you don’t have to clean up another corpse.”

Nostrils flared. Fists clenched. Blue eyes gleamed with something hotter and even more violent than divine wrath.

“Like you give a shit about her,” John growled.

So much in this miserable world reminds me of Heaven. The grass. The sky. The beauty. You alone remind me of the time before Heaven; that bizarre, unpredictable time when there were no rules, no beauty, only feelings, only sudden bursts of light, fierce and erratic, cutting through the void.

“Or anyone,” John continued, gathering steam. Nicotine withdrawal, the First of the Fallen suspected, was kicking in. “Remind me, what was that you said the day we met? ‘To be mortal is to be stupid, proud, conceited – and ultimately pathetic’. You showed your hand, idiot; you loathe us all. Ergo, any taunts that depend on you concealing that are a total bust. Forget about the ciggies. If they’ve been anywhere near you, I don’t want ‘em.”

For years, the First of the Fallen had secretly hoped John had forgotten his, in hindsight, ill-considered words.

(He’d meant every one of them, but at the time he’d been trying to come off as a Gentleman Devil, the quintessential Man of Wealth and Taste, affable and urbane, not a bitter, angry old monster.)

Should have known better. John was so foolishly protective when it came to humanity as an abstract concept, even while his attitude towards actual humans tended to be far more variable. He’d probably been furiously gnawing on that phrase – ‘ultimately pathetic’ – like a dog with a bone for thirty years.

Thirty years.

Was that really all the time they’d known one another? John Constantine, his Constantine, He Who Was Most Hated… a mere thirty year acquaintance?

“What’re you laughing at?”

“Heh. Nothing, John. Reminiscing, that’s all.”

“About what? Poor old Brendan?”

Brendan, Brendan. Who -? Oh yes. John’s friend. The one who’d sold his soul. The catalyst, in fact, for their meeting. Pity the bastard was in Heaven; he’d have liked to thank him.

“You see these?” said the artist, holding up her torch to illuminate a painted wolf pack. “My grandfather did these.”

“What’s she saying?” John demanded.

As the First of the Fallen translated, he gazed dispassionately at her.

The first time he’d encountered a human, they’d looked much the same. Small. Unremarkable. Clad in skins and hardened from a life exposed to this planet’s weather (he personally hated weather and had made sure there was no such thing in Hell).

Mind you, the ones he’d run into while naked and terrified and still injured from being swatted down to Earth like some insect had been much less hospitable. They hadn’t known what he was; only that he was wrong. When he’d tried to approach their campfire, they’d thrown stones at him. Slaying them all hadn’t even occurred to him. Father had said that they were precious and at that stage, he’d still given a toss about His rules. Instead, he’d slunk away.

Catching food wasn’t a problem. He was faster than any buck or bird. It was loneliness, not hunger, that drove him to try again, and again, and again. In time, they grew used to him. Even showed him kindness. They had an extraordinary capacity for that. (For all that it was so often conditional and withdrawn the moment one became too strange or too frightening.)

But he’d never grown used to them. They were, at heart, creatures of community. And he simply wasn’t. He was a species of one. The prototype. He’d always been alone but for God’s company, and adjusting to life as a member of a tribe had proved impossible. Their norms, their traditions, their complicated etiquette – it had all bewildered him, then intimidated him, then irritated him. That, combined with his ageless body and supernatural strength, had driven an inevitable wedge between them, and he’d returned to the wilderness to wander alone.

He considered telling John that story.

(Why not? He’d told him everything else and the idea that his nemesis might have an incomplete view of him was, for some reason, concerning.)

Then he considered John’s likely reaction. The curled lip. The scornful snort. “What, you looking for pity? ‘Boo-hoo, my rotten childhood turned me into a git’? Hah! Jog on, squire.”

No. John’s hatred was a hard-won prize. John’s contempt was to be avoided at all costs.

“You realise most people aren’t allowed down here,” the artist said, glancing his way. She was shorter than John, who himself was slightly shorter than the average man; her eyes were level with the First’s navel. “Only elders and those who’ve earned the right. There are grave penalties awaiting any who sneak in.”

“Really?” he replied, interested only in John’s furrowed brow and silent, aggravated attempts to work out what they were saying.

“Yes. Because this place is important. Sacred. When I was young, I spent years dreaming of being allowed to venture this deep. I don’t know the ways of spirits – but I’ll not pretend it doesn’t rankle that you spend more time studying your sickly friend than your surroundings.”

“You’re still young. Compared to me, everyone is.”

“He doesn’t even seem to like you very much. Why are you travelling with him?”

“I don’t know. Why do urine and semen come out the same hole?”

“‘It’s none of your business’ would have sufficed. Are you always this rude? Is that why the sickly one doesn’t like you?”

“No. No, he dislikes me for other reasons.”

“Well, well, well. Hullo,” came John’s voice, and they both realised that he’d stopped walking.

Turning, the First of the Fallen spied his nemesis standing with his hands in his pockets, studying a man dressed like a thirteenth-century peasant.

“Eh? Where did he come from?” the woman asked.

In quavering tones, the peasant said, “Are you angels?”

The First of the Fallen laughed. “John! He’s asking if-…”

“Just because I can’t speak Neanderthal doesn’t mean I don’t know sodding Middle English. Give me an ounce of credit. I’m only a cocking wizard, after all,” John snapped, before addressing the new arrival: “No. Just travellers.”

The peasant’s shoulders slumped. “Oh. I thought maybe God had sent me angels. I’ve been requesting them for several days.”

John shuddered. “Bad idea. Trust me. You don’t want to mess around with that lot.”

“But I need guidance. Protection.”

“From what?”

Eyes wide, the peasant took his hand and clutched it. “My friend, can’t you see? I am being pursued.”

“By who?”

“By demons.”

(to be continued)

#hellblazer #john constantine #chas chandler #first of the fallen #fanfic #my fic

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rjzimmerman · 5 years ago

Link

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The Kariba Dam is failing. Since the late 1950s, it has sat on the Zambezi River, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, in one of the zigzagging gorges that ripple the land there. It provides 1,830 megawatts of hydroelectric power to both countries and holds back the world’s largest reservoir. For the last decade, scientists and reporters have issued warnings about the dam’s potential to cause ecological disasters — of opposite kinds. On one hand, low rainfall has yielded water levels that barely reach the minimum necessary to generate electricity. On the other hand, heavy rainfall has threatened to flood the surrounding areas. When the floodgates were opened in 2010, 6,000 people had to be evacuated.

Climate change catastrophizes the weather — and when it comes to such extremes, dams are, well, inflexible. They cannot be narrowed enough to eke more force from less water during droughts, and far worse, they cannot be expanded enough to accommodate floods. The only other ways to handle floods are to let the water flow over the top of the dam or to open up a spillway for controlled release. Neither of these measures is foolproof at the Kariba Dam because of how the passage of time has worn it down. The dam was built on gneiss and quartzite and is made of concrete — 80 feet at its thickest point. But over six decades of the waters’ rushing through it, tumbling over it and crashing down on its other side have eroded the dam’s foundations and carved a pit at its base. Its plunge pool is now a 266-foot-deep crater.

As the stony facade continues to crumble, the likelihood rises that the Kariba Dam will not just fail but fall. If the dam collapses, the BBC reported in 2014, a tsunami would tear through the Zambezi River Valley, a torrent so powerful that it would knock down another dam a hundred miles away, the Cahora Bassa in Mozambique — twin disasters that would take out 40 percent of the hydroelectric capacity in all of southern Africa. At the same time, longer hot seasons have drained the reservoir to record lows, and drought-induced power cuts have become a daily reality for homes and businesses. The World Bank is supporting efforts to secure the Kariba Dam, but any attempts to fix or expand it risk weakening it further, which would be disastrous in the event of a flood.

Whether the water is too high or too low, the lives of millions of people are at stake, to say nothing of the natural ecosystem. It’s a familiar, seemingly inevitable tale of human folly: One of our most ambitious efforts to harness the power of nature has left us exposed to nature’s vagaries.

Is this just a failure of our power of prophecy? When we talk about climate change, we talk about our inability to predict and control what’s coming, to step into the same river twice. We’re out of time, in more than one sense: We’ve fallen out of rhythm with the circulatory relations between sun and rain and earth. We’ve damned ourselves, foreclosed some of the future’s forking paths — this is the aspect of time we call the subjunctive, the grammatical mood for what is imagined or wished. A river’s branches suggest to us what could, would, should be. But the subjunctive mood — when it comes to rivers, when it comes to time — doesn’t move in only one direction. If we look back, it’s clear: It didn’t have to be this way.

#levees and dams #Kariba Dam #Zambia #Zimbabwe #climate change #Zambezi River #hydroelectric power #Africa #droughts #floods

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themostexpensiveboningknife · 4 years ago

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2020

Failed party, money in drawer, communicate, move house, move boxes, drive in van, walk to shops, buy noodles, think it’s the end, see whole bus of soldiers in Beijing, new area, walk in darkness, think about leaving, leave, think its temporary, in taxi, post stupid photos, check and check again phone, think people with goggles on my plane are over reacting, take off my mask to eat, keep taking off to loosen, arrive back in London. Tube. Cold. Pub. Party at WeWork. Exhibition at Dulwich Gallery. Farringdon. Drugs and drinks. Brockley, South east London. DJ. Ethiopian food. Morley’s Peckham. Walking on the River. Photographer friend’s house. Canal cycle. National Gallery. Car crash, Dalston. Omar Souleyman. Corsica Studios. Meet girl, back to my friends, back to hers, sex. Morning up to mum’s best friends birthday, Covent Garden restaurant. In a van, Sunday roast. Chisenhale Gallery. arebyte Gallery. Getting worse in China, seems nice and easy and calm in England. Camberwell beers and more. Second-hand book shops, Charing Cross Road. Courtauld. Leafed through a book about a man who lived his entire 86.5 years in East London. Still talking to the same girl back in China. Both believe I’ll be back soon. Chicken wings. West London, meal. South London pub. DJing somewhere inside. Kent, see grandma. Rave, Bermondsey. Friends from Israel and Germany arrive. More drinks, more drugs. Mixing friends. Gay bar in Bethnal Green for old friend’s birthday. Acid, confused and hilarious. Tate Britain. Serpentine. Cranes on the bridge. Liverpool Street film screening. Feels shallow, but good. Begin regular E Pellici sojourns. Primrose Hill with Dad. Beer festival with Keaton and co. Peckham, school friend’s house, bad vibe. More drinks, more drugs. Working on first music compilation with Slowcook and Fafa. Begin watching all of the Studio Ghibli movies. Watching Breaking Bad. At some point have huge argument with my brother, it went like this: He came home from work and I was sitting watching Breaking Bad, he asks, “Have you been like that all day?” I either took it in the wrong way or picked up on a sly dig. It was probably me, but at this point I was pretty self-conscious and worried about going back to China and whether or not I would have a job back there. Was getting surprisingly pissed off with my brother mentioning his work, felt like an affront to me. Weird. He goes crazy (he has a short fuse), punching a wall, ready to fight me. My mum is pretty upset. A few days later I go into his room and try to patch things up. Turns into a deeper chat. He feels like I haven’t been a good brother to him, he gives the example of not looking out for him on his first days of school. I say I’m sorry, it’s because I’m a bit scared and insecure. In retrospect I regret a little laying so much weakness on the table, seems his interactions/ways of acting around me have changed a bit. Still not sure how I feel about it all. Considered getting a gold tooth with Matthew. Play with cats, enjoying them more and more. Rave in Dalston, good music from Asia and beyond. Looking at magazines. Not doing much work at all. Being out and about instead. Go to Norfolk. It’s beautiful, but get way too drunk on first night, sick everywhere, wake up naked in sick. Massive fucking shitshow. Majority of people there have no choice but to act weirdly around me now, which is understandable. Still some nice aspects. One girl there surely hates me a lot. Tate Modern. Art stuff by self is good. Corsica Studios, semi-art, semi-music event. Mr. Bao for first time of many. Radio in Tottenham. Take drugs. Pubs. Drive to Asda with brother to stock up on food. It’s March and the reality of the pandemic is hitting. More canal cycling. First and only group chat on Zoom. BH Funk. Probably have taken cocaine and messaged one of three or four girls numerous times by now. If there’s one, in the cold light of day, horrible and disgusting thing I’ve done too much this year it’s this. Incessant messaging of poor girls that I know will react (although increasingly they don’t, I manage to alienate even close friends in this way). Southbank and The Mall with Nick. Reading about Wuhan. List of good texts. Continuing to do some writing. Making WeChat posts for guī WeChat, including mix series and miniessays. Greenwich park with Matthew. Grime quiz online. Delivering food regularly for my mum’s school. Hackney Marshes with Luan. Epping Forest with Mum and Dad. By this point probably have woken up feeling sorry for myself in Ludo’s flat, after untold amounts of alcohol and cocaine. Online rave. Beijing artists only mix. Go to Switzerland, pass through Italy on the way. Its breath taking, the mountains, the expanse of scenery, not used to it. Climbing up mountains with no one around. Rolo and Patrick and Rita smoke too much weed. I really, really, really still hate smoking it. Feel a bit annoyed how long we spend sitting around while they smoke, but this is way outbalanced by the uniqueness of where we are and the beauty all around. Producing more and more, actually getting somewhere. Cooking more and more food. Reading more and more, like: Black and British, The Corrections, Real Fast Food, Bass, Mids, Tops, Zadie Smith, Olivia Lang, Graham Greene, JG Ballard, Monica Ali, Mo Yan, Jenny Zhang, John le Carre, Naked Lunch, Nabokov, Bukowski, Zora Neale Hurston, Wiley, Bitcoin, Murakami, Judith E. Butler, The Painter of Modern Life, Maupassant, Chekov, Video Art, Gravity’s Rainbow (couldn’t finish), Anaïs Nin, The Net Delusion (couldn’t finish), The Establishment and how they got away with it (couldn’t finish), Roddy Doyle, The Secret of Scent, General Intellects, Women In Love, The Intelligent Investor, Lyndon Johnson. Victoria Park more often than I can remember. To Chrissy’s house. Mile End Park. Very regularly sitting on the river in Wapping. Bring the chessboard and play Ludo sometimes, people smile and look at you differently when you’re playing chess and drinking beers versus just sitting and drinking beer. I May Destroy You. Industry. The beautiful wide expanse of Hackney Marshes. My incessant quest to reach 1000 followers in Instagram. More cycling, and I hate to say it but it really was: Here there and everywhere. Margate with my Dad to see my grandma in hospital and saw the Turner Prize exhibition. Light blue like scrubs, the sky and sun felt eternal. Swimming in dirty water. Make a DJ mix of old 2000s Road Rap. Eat cheese in Peckham. Cycle along the canal north, keep going and going through Tottenham, past Enfield keep going, it’s mad how quickly it becomes quiet fields on all sides, arrive to some kind of lake, swim and then back to the centre of town. Outside a Hawksmoor church in Shadwell ate chicken with Karim and Ludo. DJing. From my bedroom window saw a big crane in the middle of the night sitting on the canal. Begin developing the second DCCY compilation this time with BULLY magazine. Go to a house in an old school in Camberwell. Discover new secret riverside spots in East London. Finally give up my apartment in Beijing. Mile End park. Cycle further and further East to a pedestrian bridge I didn’t know existed. Get onto the beach and into the Thames water. Interview Akito. Begin writing more, after few months of wiling away the summertime. My friend Emmy gets married in Rwanda, I give him some money as a wedding gift which he tells me he used to buy his wife’s dress. Protests in HK always on TV. Get more into finances, crypto and trading, and just saving in general. Had sex with an old friend. Now meeting a girl I first knew years ago in Beijing. More secret river spots. Keaton has his baby, Noah. More times on Hackney Marshes. Barbican conservatory. Watching more films, try to watch all the films of some directors including: Jia Zhangke, Bong Joon-ho, Edward Yang, Wong Kar-wai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Decide to watch all of the infamous lauded series, go through Breaking Bad, The Wire and The Sopranos. Go to the seaside for a few days, camping also. Henry Wu album launch in a car park in Bermondsey. Go to visit Keaton’s baby for the first time. Good photography exhibition at Photographer’s Gallery. Go to Wallace Collection again. August. Go to Berlin. Swimming in Berlin lakes until I get an ear infection. It makes me drowsy and lethargic, but still seems to spend all my time cycling around the city. On one night cycle for hours to a rave on the outskirts of the city. Like a lot the abandoned airport in Berlin. Oh yeah, vaping. Found a dead bumble bee. Speak with Nevin about projects. Write a piece about the future of the art world for a magazine being started by Nevin’s friend in Canada. Go to Lithuania. Walk around Vilnius, get too drunk by myself. Get to the Curonian Spit and Nida, beaches and new friends. For the Nightlife Residency project. For a short while life is like on a desert island of new food, new people, new locations, quiet and new meaning. Go to the Russian border on the beach. Cycle to the road boarder and get stopped by the police. Go nude on the beach for the first time. Sauna, sand dunes and forests. DJ out for the first time in ages, this time with Nono. To Kaunus and try nice and stodgy Georgian food for the first time. Hackney Wick back for party. Meet a ginger girl online and go on a date. Wallace Collection again. Free beer and pizza. White Cube. National Gallery, Titian. On BBC Radio London with my Dad. Riverside beers. Saw a lost swan near my front door. Meet Keaton near his work, one of many times. Making more and more music, getting better. Decide I need more organisation and clarity, put everything I’ve done on a blog. More or less long since given up on my job at M Woods. But don’t really begin looking for anything new because it’s still sunny. At some point I start getting benefits money. Go to see La Haine in the cinema. Someone blocks me on WeChat because of me. Some pub somewhere. Sunday walks and breakfast with my parents. Go to an exhibition in Woolworth Road with Muzi. Realise how nice it is to run to Victoria Park along the canal. Vicky Park in general. Dinners at friends’ houses. Museum of London. Walking with Michael in some countryside near London, surprising how quickly things turn green. Break onto a pier in Wapping with Jack. Battersea Park. Tate, Bruce Nauman. Old Street Weatherspoon’s with Keaton, drugs. Central London cemetery. Chinese in Camberwell. Chinese in Aldgate. Italian in Camberwell. More and more exercise, running, weights and yoga with my brother. Sadie Coles. Nick, Central London. Gucci Mane. Hampstead Heath more because Ludo and his flatmates are nearby. Ludo’s now house more for days and nights of you guessed it. Borough Market more, with Emma. Alexandra Palace walk and famous sandwiches after. Tate Britian new lights. More time at Muzi’s. Signing up for cycle courier. LYL Radio show. Shave head. Take acid and it hurts my stomach. Camden Arts Centre with Muzi. Christmas party with friends. Birthday. Cake with Muzi, presents and Indian takeaway from family, walk in Vicky Park with Ludo and Karim plus battered sausage and chips. Christmas at home nice and warming meal. Evening to Ludo’s place with more friends. Boxing day with Matthew, pints and then more at his house in Peckham all night long. Next day is tough! Giant turkey sandwiches, turkey soup, turkey curry. Buy first NFTs. New Year’s Eve stay in at Muzi’s, one drink and a cake.

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

Happiness Report: World shows resilience in face of COVID-19 (AP) The coronavirus brought a year of fear and anxiety, loneliness and lockdown, and illness and death, but an annual report on happiness around the world released Friday suggests the pandemic has not crushed people’s spirits. The editors of the 2021 World Happiness Report found that while emotions changed as the pandemic set in, longer-term satisfaction with life was less affected. “What we have found is that when people take the long view, they’ve shown a lot of resilience in this past year,” Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, one of the report’s co-author, said from New York.

The Pandemic Stalls Growth in the Global Middle Class, Pushes Poverty Up Sharply (Pew Research Center) The COVID-19 pandemic is having a deep effect on the global economy. In January 2020, as reports of the novel coronavirus were emerging, the World Bank forecasted that the global economy would expand by 2.5% that year. In January 2021, with the pandemic still holding much of the world in its grip, the World Bank estimated that the global economy contracted by 4.3% in 2020, a turnabout of 6.8 percentage points. The economic downturn is likely to have diminished living standards around the world, pushing millions out of the global middle class and swelling the ranks of the poor. A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that the global middle class encompassed 54 million fewer people in 2020 than the number projected prior to the onset of the pandemic. Meanwhile, the number of poor is estimated to have been 131 million higher because of the recession.

Fallout from riot, virus leaves toxic mood on Capitol Hill (AP) The mood is so bad at the U.S. Capitol that a Democratic congressman recently let an elevator pass him by rather than ride with Republican colleagues who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election. Republicans say it’s Democrats who just need to get over it—move on from the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, end the COVID-19 restrictions and make an effort to reach across the aisle toward bipartisanship. Not yet 100 days into the new Congress, the legislative branch has become an increasingly toxic and unsettled place, with lawmakers frustrated by the work-from-home limits imposed by the virus and suspicious of each other after the horrific riot over Trump’s presidency. Particularly in the House, which remains partly shuttered by the pandemic and where lawmakers heard gunshots ring out during the siege, trust is low, settled facts about the Jan. 6 riot are apparently up for debate and wary, exhausted lawmakers are unsure how or when the “People’s House” will return to normal.

US schools prepare summer of learning to help kids catch up (AP) After a dreary year spent largely at home in front of the computer, many U.S. children could be looking at summer school—and that’s just what many parents want. Although the last place most kids want to spend summer is in a classroom, experts say that after a year of interrupted study, it’s crucial to do at least some sort of learning over the break, even if it’s not in school and is incorporated into traditional camp offerings. Several governors, including in California, Kansas and Virginia, are pushing for more summer learning. And some states are considering extending their 2021-22 academic year or starting the fall semester early. Many cities, meanwhile, are talking about beefing up their summer school programs, including Los Angeles, Hartford, Connecticut and Atlanta—the latter of which considered making summer school compulsory before settling for strongly recommending that kids who are struggling take part.

Forecast for spring: Nasty drought worsens for much of US (AP) With nearly two-thirds of the United States abnormally dry or worse, the government’s spring forecast offers little hope for relief, especially in the West where a devastating megadrought has taken root and worsened. Weather service and agriculture officials warned of possible water use cutbacks in California and the Southwest, increased wildfires, low levels in key reservoirs such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell and damage to wheat crops. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s official spring outlook Thursday sees an expanding drought with a drier than normal April, May and June for a large swath of the country from Louisiana to Oregon. including some areas hardest hit by the most severe drought. And nearly all of the continental United States is looking at warmer than normal spring, except for tiny parts of the Pacific Northwest and southeast Alaska, which makes drought worse.

‘Tough’ U.S.-China talks signal rocky start to relations under Biden (Reuters) U.S. and Chinese officials concluded on Friday what Washington called “tough and direct” talks in Alaska, which laid bare the depth of tensions between the world’s two largest economies at the outset of the Biden administration. The two days of meetings, the first high-level in-person talks since President Joe Biden took office, wrapped up after a rare and fiery kickoff on Thursday when the two sides publicly skewered each others’ policies in front of TV cameras. The talks appeared to yield no diplomatic breakthroughs—as expected—but the bitter rivalry on display suggested the two countries had little common ground to reset relations that have sunk to the lowest level in decades. The run-up to the discussions in Anchorage, which followed visits by U.S. officials to allies Japan and South Korea, was marked by a flurry of moves by Washington that showed it was taking a firm stance, as well as by blunt talk from Beijing warning the United States to discard illusions that it would compromise.

Volcano Erupts In Southwestern Iceland After Thousands Of Earthquakes (NPR) A volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula in southwest Iceland erupted Friday evening, producing a river of lava that could be seen from the capital, Reykjavik, 20 miles away. The eruption took place about three miles inland from the coast and poses little threat to residents. They were advised to stay indoors with windows closed against any gases that are released. This is the first eruption in the Reykjanes Peninsula in nearly 800 years, the Associated Press reported. Thousands of earthquakes took place in the weeks leading up to the eruption, the meteorological office reported. Earlier this week, swarms of earthquakes rattled the peninsula, with over 3,000 quakes on Sunday alone. Scientists attributed the earthquakes to magma intrusions, molten rock movement about a kilometer below the earth’s crust.

A New Year in Iran, but the country’s crises remain the same (AP) The Persian New Year, Nowruz, begins on the first day of spring and celebrates all things new. But as families across Iran hurried to greet the fresh start—eating copious crisp herbs, scrubbing their homes and buying new clothes—it was clear just how little the country had changed. A year into the coronavirus pandemic that has devastated Iran, killing over 61,500 people—the highest death toll in the Middle East—the nation is far from out of the woods. And although Iranians had welcomed the election of President Joe Biden with a profound sigh of relief after the Trump administration’s economic pressure campaign, the sanctions that have throttled the country for three years remain in place. “I was counting down the seconds to see the end of this year,” said Hashem Sanjar, a 33-year-old food delivery worker with a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “But I worry about next year.”

2 journalists detained as Myanmar junta clamps down on press (AP) Two more journalists were detained in Myanmar on Friday, part of the junta’s intensifying efforts to choke off information about resistance to last month’s coup. Mizzima News reported that one of its former reporters, Than Htike Aung, and Aung Thura, a journalist from the BBC’s Burmese-language service, were detained by men who appeared to be plainclothes security agents outside a court in the capital of Naypyitaw. The journalists were covering legal proceedings against Win Htein, a detained senior official from the National League for Democracy, the party that ran the country before the takeover. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. In the face of persistent strikes and protests against the takeover, the junta has responded with an increasingly violent crackdown and efforts to severely limit the information reaching the outside world. Security forces have fired on crowds, killing hundreds, internet access has been severely restricted, private newspapers have been barred from publishing, and protesters, journalists and politicians have been arrested in large numbers.

Spectators from abroad to be barred from Tokyo Olympics (AP) At last it’s official after countless unsourced news reports and rumors: spectators from abroad will be barred from the postponed Tokyo Olympics when they open in four months. Officials said the risk was too great to admit ticket holders from overseas during a pandemic. The Japanese public has also opposed fans from abroad. Several surveys have shown that up to 80% oppose holding the Olympics, and a similar percentage opposed fans from overseas attending.

‘You can’t escape the smell’: mouse plague grows to biblical proportions across eastern Australia (The Guardian) Drought, fire, the Covid-19 pestilence and an all-consuming plague of mice. Rural New South Wales has faced just about every biblical challenge nature has to offer in the last few years, but now it is praying for another—an almighty flood to drown the mice in their burrows and cleanse the blighted land of the rodents. Or some very heavy rain, at least. It seems everyone in the rural towns of north-west NSW and southern Queensland has their own mouse war story. In posts online, they detail waking up to mouse droppings on their pillows or watching the ground move at night as hundreds of thousands of rodents flee from torchlight beams. After years of drought, rural NSW and parts of Queensland enjoyed a bumper crop due to the recent wet season. But this influx of new produce and grains has led to an explosion in the mouse population. Locals say they started noticing the swarms up north in October and the wave of rodents has been spreading south ever since, growing to biblical proportions.

#headlines #news

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make-me-imagine · 5 years ago

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Lost

🕸13 Days of Halloween: Day 12

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Prompt: “I’m calling it, we are lost in the woods”

Pairing: Sir Percival (BBC Merlin) x Reader

Requested by: Anonymous

Gender: Neutral Triggers:

Theme: A little angst, little fluff, little humor.

Note 1: Surprise surprise, it’s not Halloween themed, of course. Almost none of them have been lol, mostly just angsty and/or spooky. Note 2: The creature described in this story is similar to that of the Barghest, a mythological dog-like creature from English folklore.

You smiled as you approached Percival. He was standing tall, though he didn’t necessarily have to try and do that, he was a giant after all. He brushed off some mud from the armor on his shoulders as he looked around, nodding to a group of people who wandered by as he gripped the horse bridles in his hands. You took the moment to watch him. Ever since you had met Percival you felt something for him, and you felt as though he returned that feeling. But the two of you were relatively shy, which was not a great combination in this kind of thing. You were friends, you joked with each other and teased each other, but neither of you could admit what you felt.

When you told Merlin and Arthur that you needed an escort through the forest to the next town to pick up some trade items, they both volunteered Percival. You knew that if you had asked him, which you wanted too, that he would say yes, but you didn’t want to inconvenience him. But fortunately for you, Merlin and Arthur did it for you.

“Percival” you finally greeted him gently, gaining his attention immediately.

You smiled widely at him in greeting, he returned it. Looking down at the basket you were carrying he frowned “I thought you were picking up items there, not taking them?”

“Oh, no, this is for us” you smiled, opening the lid “I made us some pastries with fruit, and sandwiches for the journey, since it’s quite a lengthy journey”

His smile widened “That’s very kind of you Y/n”

You smiled at each other for a moment before he cleared his throat “All ready then?” you nodded as he helped you safely onto your horse. You spared one more glance at the castle, seeing Merlin and Arthur peaking from the windows. You waved at them before heading towards the castle gates.

After travelling for a couple of hours you decided to take a break, mostly for the horses sake. Stopping next to creek you tied the horses and wandered over to the water. Stretching, you sighed “I’m glad it’s a nice day, it would have been horrible if it was raining, though it does appear to be clouding up”

Percival sat down on a large boulder near by as he looked to the sky “I don’t think it will rain on us”

“Don’t jinx us Percival” you walked over to him, crouching down to get some food from the basket.

“Do you believe in jinxes?” he asked amused, as you handed him a pastry.

“It depends on the context, but in this case, yes.” You sat next to him “Every time I have announced that something bad will definitely not happen, it does”

He chuckled “Well noting bad is going to happen”

You smacked him lightly on the arm “You did it again!”

He laughed this time, shaking his head “I’m sorry” he apologized, though not wholeheartedly.

“I know you think I’m being silly, but there’s nothing wrong with being cautious”

“Or paranoid?” he mocked, causing you to glare at him as the two of you broke into giggles.

After eating and resting, you began your journey again, not travelling for much longer before you came across a road block of Camelot guards. “What happened here?” Percival interrogated as you approached.

“There was a death up ahead, we believe it too have been an animal attack, we are searching the area” You and Percival shared a look as the guard continued “I suggest not going this way Sir, if you have to pass, you can take that last path left and go around, though it is sure to lengthen your journey”

Percival knew how important this shipment was for your job so he nodded at the man and turned “How late can you be to take the shipment”

“At least five hours, I told them in my last message the road was long, I am sure they would not mind holding it for much longer”

“Alright, then we will go around”

Another hour had passed before you started to loose track of the path, the terrain getting rougher “Have you been this way before Percival?”

He shook his head “No, but I assume the path should pick up again soon”

“Or we’re lost?”

“We are definitely not lost” he concluded, though you could hear the doubt in his tone at the statement.

Another couple of miles and the path hadn’t appeared again “Okay, sorry Percival but I am calling it, we are lost in the woods”

You heard him sight “I know” he admitted “I’m sorry”

You trotted up next to him “Don’t worry, I’m sure we will run into someone soon, and get back on our way. I don’t blame you, things just happen”

He smiled lightly at you “It’s just another adventure right?” he quoted you, something you said a few months ago when you went with the knights on a quest, mostly because you held hopefully information, of course, as usual, something went wrong.

“Exactly” you smiled. In the distance you heard a rumble of thunder, making you and Percival share another look “If it starts raining, that, I will definitely blame you for”

He chuckled as you entered a small clearing “Lets take a quick break, the horses are beginning to slow down”

Agreeing, you let the horses rest, and gave them some water before you and Percival sat on the ground. You watched the incoming dark clouds, trying not to give into the thought that you might end up lost in a rain storm. Though, you would admit, you could be with worse company.

You glanced over at Percival seeing him lost in thought, a frown on his face “You’re not still blaming yourself are you?”

“Hmm? Oh, no” he sighed “It’s just...there was something I intended to do on this trip, but with us getting lost, I’m not sure I can now”

“What was it you wanted to do?”

Looking over at you, you saw him contemplating for a moment before he opened his mouth to speak “I wanted to-”

Suddenly a loud noise came from within the woods behind you, almost a growl or a grunt, animalistic in nature. You spun around as Percival stood quickly, unsheathing his sword. You stood and moved behind him, having come unarmed. The horses began to trot around nervously, sensing whatever it was in the woods.

“What was that?” you spoke quietly, your eyes searching the dense woods for any movement.

“I don’t know” his voice was equally as low “It sounded like some sort of creature”

“Do you think it’s the thing that killed that man back towards Camelot?”

“Possibly” he looked around “We should go, get away from here”

You nodded as you moved to untie the horses. They moved incessantly as you tried to mount them. After you had, you and Percival moved quietly out of the clearing before riding faster in the opposite direction.

After riding for a short while you slowed down, reaching what appeared to be an old path “I think we may have found the path again” you said encouragingly.

Percival looked behind you, back in the forest before eyeing the path “Good” he muttered as the two of you began to move along again.

Only a short moment passed before you heard an echoing noise throughout the forest, causing the horses to jump and whinny in fear. It was a howl, deep and long, louder than any you had heard from any wolf.

You and Percival shared a look of shock before immediately began riding down the path, headed in whichever direction took you away from the creature. Not long passed before another howl was heard, this one sharper, combined with a noise similar to a growl.

As you headed down a slope, you felt rain drops hitting your hair. Glancing up, you saw the dark clouds building over head as the once distance thunder boomed above you.

“Keep going!” Percival called as you encouraged the horses to keep running, though you knew they would not stop either way, they were just as frightened as you were.

Finding a clearer road you began following it, ended up against the cliff side of a mountain. As you rode, alongside of you to the left of the path, you saw small rocks rolling down the hill. Looking up, through the deepening rainfall and trees, you saw a large black creature running above you along the cliffs edge.

“Percival!” you called out to him.

Following your line of sight, he saw the creature as well, it was hunting you, if it got in front of you it would cut you off. Looking ahead, he saw that the road branched off “Take the right path!” he called.

You egged the horses on, faster, the two of you taking the right road, hearing another howl come from the creature, the aggravation of its prey getting further evident in the deep guttural sound.

The rain was harsh and thick, soaking you to the core as you kept riding, as you rounded a corner you saw a town in the distance, looking at Percival you two shared a knowing look as you made your way closer to the town.

Just as you began to feel a sense of relief, the creature jumped out in the road in front of you. Your horse reared itself up whinnying in fear as you fell from it’s back, landing harshly on the ground. Your horse bolted from the area, into the woods towards the town. The creature looked from the horse back to you, as it stood it’s ground.

It was a large hound like creature, with a short, tangled mane gliding from its head down it’s back. It’s fur was as dark as obsidian, it’s eyes only visible due to the glare they emitted. It bared it’s teeth at you, emitting a deep growl.

You heard Percival cry out as he swung his sword at the creature, it jumped back in defense before clawing at him. Percival lunged his sword again, the hound only moved away further, not backing down, he needed a clear shot.

Standing, you picked up a large rock and threw it at the creature with all your might. Sticking the hound in it’s head it yelped slightly before drawing it’s attention to you. Throwing another stone you hit it in the face again, giving Percival enough time to lunge his sword once again, this time striking the creature in the neck. It yelped again as it yanked away before running off into the woods, deciding that it could not handle the two of you at once.

Taking no time, you moved towards Percival. He reached down and grabbed your arm and pulled you onto the back of his horse. Wrapping your arms securely around him you rode off as fast as you could towards the town.

It only took you a few more moments before you made it into the gates of the town and to safety. The rain had almost stopped completely, only existing in a light sprinkle. Entering the town, and stopping in front of an inn, you dismounted, leaning against a fence you took a few deep breaths, Percival doing the same. Moving in front of you he placed his hands gently on your shoulders as you looked up at him “Are you alright?”

You nodded “Just glad to be safe” you gave him a weak smile before your eyes were drawn behind him.

Following your gaze he sees a man waving at the two of you, standing by some bags, the shipment you came to get “I almost forgot why we came” you admitted. Pausing you looked at Percival “I don’t want to go back out there”

“We wont” he answered quickly “At least not today, it’s already getting dark out” he looked around at the slowly darkening sky “We will stay here tonight. Tonight I will ask around about a travel party, perhaps there are hunters or guards here that can guide us back, possibly go after the creature. Once we get back to Camelot, I will tell Arthur about what happened, maybe we will come back to hunt the creature ourselves.” You nodded, relived at the idea. There was no way you were going out there again with that thing lurking around the town. “Lets pick up your shipment and then find a place to stay alright?”

“Sounds good to me” you stood taking a breath before the two of you walked over to the man you came to meet.

After settling in at the nearby inn, and after Percival warned the towns guards of the creature, he made a deal with them to escort the two of you back to Camelot, and to form a guard with Camelots guards to hunt the creature down.

The two of you now stood outside, the air was brisk from the rain. You leaned against the wall of the inn before taking a deep breath and looking over at Percival “Have you ever seen a creature like that?”

He shook his head “No. I’ve heard of countless hound like animals in stories, but never thought any of them existed. Then again, Griffins do, so why not large black hounds?”

You smiled lightly, pausing for a moment “Well, this certainly did turn into an adventure after all didn’t it?”

He chuckled at the comment “Not necessarily a good one. Though we did make it out alright”

Another moment of comfortable silence passed before a thought entered your mind, the creature interrupted you and Percival in the clearing “You never finished telling me what it was you originally wanted to do on this trip”

This comment caught him off guard as he twisted his mug of mead around with his hands “It was nothing”

You eyed him for a moment “It couldn’t have been nothing. I could see it in your face that you were disappointed” He adjusted his stance nervously “What is it Percival?”

“I-” he hesitated “I was going to ask you something”

“What?” you faced him, giving him your full attention.

He looked down at you, your eyes locking for only a moment before he looked nervously down at his feet “I know I don’t hide it very well, and I know that you know...that I have feelings for you. And I have hoped that you felt the same...and, I wanted to ask...” he finally looked up, seeing your expression, a small smile crossing your face, not judging or confused, nor was it shocked or disgusted “If I could court you”

Your smile widened at the confession, relief ran through him at the sight of your reaction. You stood on your tip-toes and pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek “I thought you’d never ask”

End.

I don’t know why, but I always have to end things with fluff lol. Hope you liked it.

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