#Big Sky: Deadly Trails

[justjensenanddean]

Jensen Ackles as Beau Arlen BIG SKY: Deadly Trails (2022) | 3.02 – “The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep”

[deaneverafter]

I Want More (Jenny's Version) 🩷

No one does coworkers to friends to lovers better 🥹

Beau Arlen and Jenny Hoyt, Big Sky, I Want More by Kaleo

[alwayscaskett810]

[sarahcaskett]

2023 Tumblr Top 10

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Created by TumblrTop10

[soulmates-for-real-tranquility]

[sammy-bryant]

JENSEN ACKLES as BEAU ARLEN Big Sky: Deadly Trails | Super Foxes (3.11)

[cherie-doll]

hunter!könig x doe!reader

your eyes so big and observant as you wander in the forest, it's your first year being out alone, away from the other deer. with every step you take nimbly because you're not experienced yet with where you can be loud and where you can be quiet, you hope not to attract the attention of a predator. the encounter will surely be deadly, your long gracile legs not thick enough to run for long distances, your soft body that will easily tear between sharp teeth.

you wouldn't venture out too far, preferring to stay in a patch of grassy meadow, lying in the soft earth and smelling the dirt and enjoying the gentle blow of trees that fence it in. you can fall asleep here among the blooming buds of flowers in spring, but when fall comes and things start dying you're forced to give up the now toughened and dry grass in search of the creeks where life is sure to be a little more green. you don't know when you step over into the hunter's section but soon the air is contaminated with sharp sounds piercing your ears, you're bolting through unknown terrain. you're confused and scared and you don't even know where to run to. safety was unknown here.

you take grand leaps across the fallen corpses of animals on the hills, the sun already setting. you hear and smell the hounds nearby, who must already be close on your trail. you tumble and fall as your hooves dig into unknown terrain, it's hard to manage in the unknown.

your strength is dwindling; you can't go on. the darkness has taken over and you figure it's best to find someplace to hide. the cold wind shakes the leaves and trees, creating the most terrifying sounds that make you shudder down to your bones. you feel something watching you and you instinctively take to running.

you're veering off the path now, your lungs burning, heart thumping wildly, legs weakening. and you've fallen right into the trap. a bear trap clamps it's jaws on your hind leg. you're full of adrenaline still but the pain is awful, you panic more as the sticks and twigs snapping underneath heavy steps that are coming closer. pushing away branches is a big, heavy man that stares down at you from ahead. you pull but you're locked down to the ground and can only watch paralyzed in fear as he continues his way down to you. he's even bigger up close. you snort, blowing air through your nostrils but can't do anything to defend yourself.

when he gets close he moves slower which confuses you, his gaze isn't on your throat but on your injured leg and when he kneels before you he takes to pushing the springs down and the clamps easily fall open underneath his strength.

you can't move as his hands move up to your ears, you tremble as he moves his thumb and forefinger creating a pleasant and rippling effect on your body as he calms your nerves down. you feel strangely safe as he cradles you gently in his arms, picking you up and carrying you away. his clothes are smudged with blood when he puts you down in front of a warm fire, across his skin are scars etched. he empties the chambers of his gun and rifle if it stops your quivering and allows you to sleep more soundly. and he only stares, his gaze deepening as your body rises and falls in rhythm to your breaths.

the moon hangs in the black sky blanketed with stars. you pray he's good to you as you're in your most vulnerable state. you bury your head into the earth as you choose to ignore the screams of distress of the other woodland creatures who were too agile to step into a bear trap, but they couldn't avoid the bullet.

you choose to expose your bone and were shown mercy.

[dollymatt]

༉‧₊˚. COWBOY¡MATT

in which you and your cowboy kind of go on a date to the funfair even though matt has to hand you back at the end of the night . . . paired with sweetheart reader

The fair glows like a memory before it’s even over, warm, golden lights blurring against the purple sky, the air thick with kettle corn and summer dust. You walk beside Matt, cotton candy in one hand, the other tugging at the sleeve of his flannel jacket that hangs oversized around your frame. It smells like him. Smoked cedar, leather, sun. Your daddy thinks Matt’s just there to supervise. just one of his older and supposedly more responsible farmhands who's just being sweet and doing him a favour, making sure his sweetheart daughter doesn’t get herself in trouble. But Matt’s the trouble, really. And you’re so damn glad for it.

He looks so unfairly good under the midway lights—hat tilted back, forearms crossed, denim hugging every line of him. Big hands, bigger shoulders, and that slow, knowing smile. The kind that could get a girl into all kinds of sin. You bounce on your heels in red cowboy boots, cheeks warm from laughing as he hands you a stuffed cow he won at the ring toss. You squeal, holding it to your chest like it’s a diamond.

❝You didn’t have to win me a prize,❞ you tease, bumping your shoulder into his. Matt just grins, flexing his arm a little. ❝Gotta show off for my girl somehow.❞ ❝Oh, so I’m your girl now?❞ you ask, biting into your cotton candy, voice all syrupy and sweet. ❝Always been, darlin’.❞ His voice is low, deadly soft. You try to hide your smile behind the spun sugar, but he sees it anyway.

He wins you two more prizes before you can stop him—one from the milk bottle toss, where he knocks every bottle clean off the crate with one throw, and another from the basketball hoops. You all clap, mock surprise. ❝What can’t you do?❞ ❝Keep my hands off you, apparently,❞ he mutters under his breath, and you burst out laughing.

The scrambler ride comes next. You wait in line, talking about the lights and how you used to come here when you were little, your voice going soft with nostalgia. He listens, smiling, thumb tracing the back of your hand. When you both climb in, you barely get buckled before it jerks into motion. Each spin sends you flying into his side, and his laughter rumbles warm against your ear.

❝Told you to hold on,❞ he chuckles, gripping your waist. ❝You like it,❞ you shout over the roar, giggling as you slide into him again. ❝Gives you an excuse to grab me!❞ ❝I don’t need an excuse, sweetheart.❞ By the time you reach the Ferris wheel, the crowd's thinned and the night hums softly around you. He helps you into the seat like you're delicate, settles you on his lap, legs draped over his thigh, arm curled around your waist. You point out stars, still catching your breath.

❝That one’s shaped like a horse,❞ you say, chin tilted up. ❝Nah, it’s you. Pretty and wild,❞ he murmurs, fingers trailing lazy shapes on your thigh. You squirm a little. His voice is syrupy, that Southern drawl wrapping around you like a slow burn. You rest your forehead against his jaw, and he presses a kiss to your temple.

It feels like a date. Because it is. But when the ride ends, and he walks you back to the truck, he’ll say ❝thank you, sir❞ to your daddy like he didn’t just spend the whole evening with your thighs over his. Like you didn’t fall asleep against him on the ride home, cotton candy on your breath and his hand warm on your knee.

You doze in the passenger seat, boots scuffed, face tilted toward his shoulder. Matt drives one-handed, slow and sure. The stars blur by overhead, and he looks over at you, smile all soft. Already thinking about sneaking through your window come midnight.

𖦹 ׂ 𓈒 yap ／ ⋆ ۪ hex looks so ugly on the title but not below so um . . . booooo the more I read this the more I hate it

⌗ dolls . . . @bernardsbendystraws @jacsismattswife @angvl3tears

© DOLLYMATT ⋆˚࿔ est. 2025 do not plagiarise or repost my works on any other platforms.

[ketchuplover9070]

Test Drive

Part 2:

You take off to find another dragon for you to slay. Running around like a madwoman with tomahawk in hand while your helmet clanks around on your head. You ran into Dobber’s hut. He was the man you were working for. The past couple of years, you were Dobber’s apprentice. Making and sharpening swords and weapons, as well as some fun inventions of your own. One of these inventions being a homemade slingshot. Here’s the catch….its double barreled! As you rushed into Dobber’s hut you grabbed the slingshot machine and rushed out to go and find a beastly dragon to take down.

“COMING THROUGH!!!”, you shouted as you twisted and turned through the masses of people in the streets trying to hold their own. You ran up on the mountain, trying to get a better view of the baddest dragon of all. The nightfury.

A shadowy figure flew across the night sky, and you took aim. Pointing your slingshot machine straight at your target. Once you felt as though your shot was deadly, you pulled the trigger. A loud catapult sound came from the machine as the weapon shot through the air. You watched as it soared, and suddenly you hear the dragon whine in pain and you see the creature fall from the sky.

“Holy shit, I just took down a nightfury.”, You whispered to yourself, astonished by the moment happening before you. You tighten your vest and rushed down the hill to tell your father the news. As you make your way to him, you call out for him.

“DAD! DAD!”, You shouted. Only to be met by his piercing stare.

“What is it, Y/N?!”, He said sharply.

“I TOOK DOWN A NIGHTFURY!”, You exclaimed. Wide-eyed and grinning, you watched as his face contorted.

“What the hell are you spatting on about? A nightfury? Like you could take down a dragon. I have people that I need to tend to. We just had disaster strike our village and you are out here claiming you killed a nightfury?! Do us a favor and just go back to the house.” His voice was stern and his words hard to swallow.

“BUT DAD I REALLY DID!”, You didn’t ease up on your claim. Circling him, trying to get him to slow down somehow and just listen to you.

“OUT OF THE WAY, Y/N!” He boomed.

You expression dropped and you lowered your head.

“Yes sir.”, You walked away mumbling things under your breath. Until finally out of your father’s periphery you darted off into the woods.

While on your way to the woods, You hear a twig snap behind you. You spun your head around to find the reason for the sound. Only to see a flash of white hide behind a tree.

“I see you, Satoru.” You stated blankly.

“Um no you don’t actually. I’m invisible and so you must be crazy and seeing things woman.” He creeped out from behind the tree and started to circle you. Almost like predator and prey.

“Why are you out here?” You stared him down.

“I could ask you the same thing.” He snapped back.

“But I asked you first.” You retorted.

“True. I was following you. Interested in seeing if you actually took down a nightfury.” He said with his brow quirked up.

“Is it really that crazy that me, unathletic, no battle iq, clumsy y/n, could take down a dragon? Is it really that impossible for you people to conceive?” You said with a slight bit of anger behind it.

“Well it is actually. Y/n, i’ve known you since we were babies in diapers. You are the most unique, discombobulated girl i’ve ever met. So yea, when you go around shouting that you killed a nightfury, of course people are going to not believe you.” He said with a little bit of reason in his voice, inching closer to you.

You backed away from him.

“Leave me alone, Gojo.” You said roughly and continued to stomp farther into the forest.

“Wow, last names? That’s harsh. But fine i’ll go.” He spun around on his heels and headed off toward the village.

Climbing down a steep hill you muttered to yourself. “Stupid,stupid, stupid. Did I seriously think I took down a dragon?” You huffed out until you saw a big mud trail on the grass. “OR MAYBE I DID TAKE DOWN A DRAGON!” You hit a happy dance and then headed towards the scene. You looked over the ledge that lead straight down and saw it. The beast. The nightfury. “Holy shit!” You whisper yelled. “Okay time to kill a dragon. It’s easy right? My people do it all the time.” You took in deep breaths before you slid down the hill. Creeping up to the creature as to not startle it. You pulled out your dagger and held it up. Closing your eyes, until you peeked and saw the beast staring back at you. Suddenly it lounged at you, making you fall on your back. The wet grass cushioned your fall, but all you could think about was the dragon looming in front of you. Showing off its teeth as to warn you, until suddenly it just flew away. Or more like tried to. You took note on how it couldn’t seem to maneuver properly, you wondered if it was injured. “OMG DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?” You took off running back to the village. Once you made it back to your house you started to take note of what you saw. Until suddenly your father came home. He walked over and sat down next to you.

“Hey, Y/n,” He began. “I know i’m tough on you some times but it’s for good reason. You are clumsy and stubborn but I know you mean well. So that why i’m going to give you your dream, OF BECOMING A DRAGON SLAYER!” He beamed proudly like it was the best statement he had said all month.

Your face faltered, “Oh that nice and all, but I decided that I don’t want to kill dragons. Or more so that I can’t kill dragons. I’ll be useful other places like helping with the sheep or helping Dobber!”

The chief’s smile fell, “but y/n, you’ve been wanting this forever. I mean you and Satoru always talked about being the best dragon slayers on the Isle of Berk! I remember when you guys would go around, swords in hand and act like you guys with fighting dragons. And somehow you were always the slayer, which made Satoru have to be the dragon. He always let you win too. It was always the funniest and cutest thing to watch. I mean what happened to that dream?”

“It just went away dad. I mean it’s not like you don’t have a future chief. Satoru is the best thing for this village, we both know that. We both have known that for years. He will lead us to greatest after you leave your post.” You dropped your eyes as your father’s face dropped but then picked right back up again.

“You are just spouting nonsense. I know you want to be a dragon slayer. This is just a phase, you are going to training tomorrow. So rest up and eat well, I’m going back to find the dragon’s nest, so don’t wait up for me. I shall be back soon.” He grabbed a weapon and a sack and left. That was all. Didn’t listen to you at all. But I mean, what’s new? You went to change into some less heavy clothes and fell asleep, to prepare for dragon training. Like that was going to go well.

(Ok so i don’t know if i want to keep the story on track as the movie, or venture off a bit. cause i feel like it would be a bit boring to have a copy and paste story line. but let me know your thoughts or something’s you would like to see happen!!)

[actual-changeling]

"Well, that went down like a lead balloon."

Crowley did not sneak up on him this time, it was more of an ungraceful drag or stumble with one hand pressed against the still-bleeding cut on his stomach. Aziraphale turns his head to look at him, his eyes lingering on the soot and bruises smeared across his skin, but stays silent when Crowley shakes his head exactly once.

Don't.

"It did, rather," he says instead, as the space around them empties slowly but surely. Stopping the second coming had been exactly like the first apocalypse and nothing like it at the same time. They're both a bit singed, for starters.

"You think we overreacted? Second offence and all."

Crowley tentatively lifts his hand, grimacing when blood-soaked fabric sticks to his palm and tugs on the wound. It would barely require a miracle to heal it, but he is currently quite comfortable in the limbo of not knowing whether the destruction of heaven and hell erased his celestial powers or not.

"Someone had to teach them the real difference between good and evil," Aziraphale continues lightly, leaning into the twisted mirror of their first conversation on the walls of Eden.

"I'm pretty sure they regret sending me up here to 'cause trouble' by now."

Trying and failing to sound humorous, Crowley bites back a groan. Fatigue washes over him wave after deadly wave, and he considers simply allowing himself to fall to the concrete floor when a hesitant arm slides around his waist and pulls him closer, conscious of his injuries.

Crowley freezes for a second before leaning into it, processing the sudden influx of touch and heat as one big, blurry embrace, and it is such a welcome contrast to the painful reality scratching at his bones that his eyes flutter shut. Aziraphale holds him both gently and as if he is never going to let go of him again; unsurprisingly, he finds he doesn't mind that at all.

They stand in amicable silence, swaying slightly without really meaning to, and although both of them want to go home, they cannot imagine a place that would fit that description better than each other's presence.

"You did the right thing," Aziraphale eventually says, and Crowley forces himself to blink up at him, blue meeting gold meeting love.

"With the apple, and trying to make me see the truth, and with not coming to heaven with me. I'm sorry I caused you so much pain." His voice breaks at the end, trailing off into an ocean of unspoken confessions and feelings, but Crowley is pretty sure he couldn't handle more anyway, not right now.

He presses a hand against Aziraphale's cheek to tilt his head towards him, grimacing when he leaves bloody prints behind.

"Angel." It's a name, an endearment, a prayer, a decree, a question. A curse, and a plea, and a promise.

"I'm still mad," is all Crowley whispers before nudging their lips together, tasting blood, ash, and the dawn of something entirely unknown and new.

I still love you, is what lies beneath it.

For the first time in their existence, they're truly free. When it begins to rain, they tip their faces towards the sky and welcome it home.

[mukbangg]

Kenji Sato relapse. Because I saw one edit of him on tiktok on my offday.

Superstar baseball play, the one and only Kenji Sato. He's drop-dead gorgeous with his swept-back hair and sleek fashion, killer smile and deadly winks. He's a man in high demand, teeth sparkling in every commercial his face is plastered across in the city.

The number 1 trending man in Japan currently, and probably the number 1 most whiniest, clingiest man to exist. In the world.

Perfection oozes out of his every pore, but thats just on camera.

Behind the scenes....at home, he's stuck to you like hes somehow fused to your skin, one arm around your waist as he trails behind you, toes kicking against your heels.

You love the man, of course you do, but when he gets you he just...never let's up.

Especially on a bad day.

He wants nothing more than to sit you down on the sofa and kneel in a heap by your feet, face buried in your lap as his arms lock around you.

Then he whines and whines and whines about his day, his manager, his dad, the kaiju, some fan, the bird, the bees the sky the weather anything.

At some point you kind of tune out since you know exactly what he's gonna say, hands playing with his messy hair and stroking his nape.

Fiddle with his earlobe, cup his cheeks, the usual and....

"You're not listening!!"

The sharp drag of his voice grabs your attention and you ping back to him.

"Ah? You're saying your team did..."

"NO, I was talking about my dad!"

He scowls up at you, teary-eyed, though he refuses to cry(big baby).

You tune out abit as he grumbles incoherently, too entranced by his damp lashes and pouted lips, cheeks blotchy with his heated frustration.

Your thumb traces the colour, eyes flitting down to the way he dug his teeth into his bottomlip.

Bite, suck, bite, suck, bite, suck-

"Dont bite, Kenji,"

Your murmur, cutting off his low whining.

Thumbing at the slightly swollen lip, you pull it free from his teeth, brushing it.

You smear his saliva over the reddish flesh, admiring how it's glistens in the low light before your thumb slides into his mouth to press down on his tongue.

"So noisy, Kenji, you're such a big baby,"

He's scowling again, brows knitted as he tries to garble something out, though you just slide your thumb further till he gags.

"Why don't we go to bed, hmm? Some stress relief will do you good,"

That got his attention.

He's drooling into your hand, perking his head.

You pull your thumb out with a pop, and you can practically see his tail wag. If he had one.

So eager.

Kenji's a whiner but more than anything, he's eager for you, your own giant puppy.

[justjensenanddean]

Jensen Ackles as Beau Arlen BIG SKY: Deadly Trails (2022) | 3.02 – “The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep”

[deaneverafter]

Something about Beau and Jenny being each other's second chance at a life and family, and each other's first chance at true love and happiness 🥺💕

Beau Arlen and Jenny Hoyt, Big Sky, Second Chances by Gregory Alan Isakov

[alwayscaskett810]

[evolutionsvoid]

When it comes to traveling to foreign lands, I found that there are often categories that the local flora, fauna and fungi fall into. There are, of course, the famous/infamous species, the ones everyone outside of these regions have heard about. The creatures whose tales or imagery has reached far beyond their own territories, so that folks who have never even been close to these places know them by name. If you are visiting this area, you are counting on seeing at least one! Then, sadly, there are many that outsiders don't know about and frankly wouldn't even care if they did see one. Species that blend into the background, of no real fame or interest to the masses. If a guide pointed them out, it would only gain a polite nod and a half-hearted "mhmm" from tourists before they quickly forgot about it. Fools to ignore such wonderful things, even if they seem mundane! But then, you run into an interesting category, which is the species that people are more unknowing of and less talked about, but garner a shocked "what the hell is that?!" from travelers who encounter them. Creatures that you never knew existed but now have a hard time believing people never told you about. Sure, they may not be as crazy or cool as the iconic critters of the land, but one look gets you wondering why more people aren't spreading the word! This can be in a good or bad way, but at the very least they grab your attention! And the itsumade is certainly one of those species!

Honestly, I hadn't heard much about them before my trip to this land, but the second I saw one flying overhead, I demanded to know everything about them! What is that thing?! What kind of bird is that?! Oh how I must have filled my guide with regret for taking this job when I bombarded him with a hundred questions. He did his best to tell me that this big ol bird was an "itsumade," probably struggling to even understand my excited rambling. Indeed, the itsumade is a pretty large bird but size isn't the only thing that makes it striking! Bright colors on its neck and wings draw the eye, and then the other features really catch your attention! A long serpentine tail that trails behind it, and then that strange naked head that unsettles many viewers. While the neck has a pretty fabulous mane, the head itself is bare of feathers, save for a mighty crest on the males. The skin is surprisingly pale, and the features give it an almost human-like look. You kinda have to squint to see it, but it seems to stand out more to humans, who really don't like the image of this freaky avian.

It seems one of the big reasons the itsumade isn't talked about a lot outside of its natural range is because people seem to find it ugly. Or more so unsettling and strange. Most folk would prefer to never see one, and that is especially true for locals who know what the appearance of an itsumade means. Despite their "scary" appearance and pointy bits, these birds aren't really predators. Instead, they are scavengers, with their diet mostly being carrion. Their flight through the skies is them searching for dead things to feed upon, their serrated beak easily tearing through rotted flesh. Their scaly barbed tails are used to ward off predators, but also to swat away other scavengers that try to muscle their way in. Itsumade, however, are quite large, and thus need a hefty amount of food to fill their bellies. This means they typically don't waste their time with tiny morsels, only going after them if food is truly scarce. No, what they are searching for is a proper feast! So that means when you see an itsumade hurrying its way across the sky, you know that death is nearby. And lots of it.

These birds have gained a foul reputation due to being the first arrivals at scenes of great carnage. Like a plague killing an entire herd of livestock, or a deadly battle leaving many slain soldiers behind. Spotting an itsumade is seen as a terrible omen, as their presence means that something horrible has gone down. So good are they at sniffing out these banquets, that these birds have occasionally been responsible for alerting locals that something terrible has indeed happened. I recall one such tale where after a nasty storm, the appearance of an itsumade made people cautiously curious of why it had come. Following its flight, they discovered a tree that had been uprooted by the weather, and the bird scratching away at the churned up hole. After a little digging through the exposed mud, a mass grave was found. The tale claims it was the secret of a long revered lord, whose beloved status came from him quietly killing off any dissidents and disappearing their bodies. The itsumade have also alerted folks to plagues or hidden bandits, where death claimed many in silence. This would be seen as a good thing, but it is all dependent on who you ask. Some would say that the itsumade is merely a sign of these events, while others claim the itsumade is the perpetrator of these tragedies. An omen of things to come, or what has already happened.

As you can see, it doesn't make these birds all that popular with the people, as some see them as causers of evil, while others know them as a symbol of bad things to come. The sight of one garners a real "oh no, what happened?" in whoever spots it. Hearing their call, which sounds like their name, sends chills down peoples spines. They are avoided, especially by those who think the itsumade themselves bring about these disasters. Stories of these birds carrying misery and plagues with them, which probably isn't helped by the fact that they often eject their stomach contents at those who disturb them. Getting blasted with a bunch of half digested rotting flesh really does give the impression that it is spewing disease and death at you. Or I guess a little more than an impression because that is kind of literally what it is doing. But not in a bad way! Not the "I am vomiting a thousand plagues upon you, your family and this entire land" and more of "I am puking dead putrid flesh on you because you are bothering me" Like, you can see the difference, right? Or maybe not. What I am saying is that one is bad and the other one is....less bad. Hmmmmm, maybe I should be talking less about the itsumade....

Chlora Myron

Dryad Natural Historian

[blakegopnik]

Happy to see my review of Dawoud Bey's great show at Sean Kelly Gallery getting nice play in the New York Times. The full text is below (click on "Keep reading") but one thing I didn't have room to dwell on, as much as I would have liked, is the vitally important tension between Bey's video and his stills. That's a tension (as I see it) between the “gaze” of the enslaved, in the fractured video, and of Europeans, in the elegant, traditionally artistic, even "sublime," prints. It would be so easy for someone to think the prints were just elegant, knock-off commodities meant to fund the more truly important, more challenging video. But I think the reflection back and forth, between the settled elegance and the unsettling challenge, is vital to the entire project.  

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE ENSLAVED - THE NEW YORK TIMES

CRITIC’S PICK

By Blake Gopnik

Jan. 30, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET

The terrifying first capture in Africa.

The deadly crossing of the Middle Passage.

The brutality of slave markets and servitude.

It’s almost impossible to imagine, let alone depict, the full horrors of American slavery, although writers, directors and artists have tried.

But there’s one moment that seems to have caught their attention less often: the first encounter of kidnapped Africans with the strange new land where they were marched into enslavement.

In a remarkable exhibition called “Stony the Road,” at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York, the artist Dawoud Bey takes us on the path that tens of thousands were forced to walk, from the slave ships that landed at the James River’s docks to Richmond’s slave pens and markets.

With 14 still photos and a vast, two-sided video projection, Bey explores the Richmond Slave Trail that extends for several miles in Virginia’s capital. At Sean Kelly, Bey’s stills

are the first art you encounter. Those deluxe black-and-whites, almost a yard across, show various wooded spots along the trail, avoiding any details that speak of our era. (In fact, the trail now crosses many modern settings.) We get a view of trees and ground, of bits of river and patches of distant sky, such as an African might have encountered 250 years ago.

The images were shot on old-fashioned film and printed on traditional photographic paper, so we’re treated to the velvety blacks and sparkling whites of landscapes by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston and other pioneers of American photography. It’s tempting to linger with those tasteful, orderly images — in the gallery, and in this review — but I discovered that they get a whole new meaning after seeing Bey’s video at the gallery’s rear.

That video is titled “350,000,” an estimate of the total number of enslaved people who passed through Richmond’s trading markets. (The piece was originally commissioned for a major Bey show at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond in 2023.) Ten minutes of black-and-white footage appear on a screen that bisects a big space and reaches almost to its high ceiling. It shows the same wooded path as in Bey’s prints, but to utterly different effect.

The piece works hard to put us in the place — physical, but above all psychological — of one of Richmond’s newly disembarked. The images are projected at “life scale,” Bey told me, so that the path’s tree trunks and branches are the same size on the screen as they would be if they were there before us in life. And the trip down the path is captured in a single take, without edits, by a Steadicam held at an adult’s head-height, giving a captive’s-eye view of the passage up the trail.

But the goal isn’t to create a crisp, immersive substitute for a past reality. (Bey insists that his piece isn’t about faking some kind of long-lost documentation.) It’s about using the visible artifice of fine art to encourage a trip into a past we need to confront. In some ways Bey’s video has more in common with a poet’s evocative description than with a Spielbergish attempt at historical re-enactment.

So Bey’s cinematographer, Bron Moyi, shot all the footage with a century-old Petzval lens, once used for dream sequences in silent movies. It blurs all but the middle of the scene it shows, giving an almost drunken effect to Bey’s footage, which is also shown in somewhat slow-motion. Real vision never really works quite like that, but the Petzval provides an excellent metaphor for the kind of disorientation Africans must have felt on first being shoved ashore in Virginia.

They couldn’t have known quite where they were going, or what the endgame might be — most couldn’t understand their tormentors’ language — and “350,000” has a similar lack of plot or endpoint. Its camera’s “eye” rarely looks straight down the path toward some far-off goal. Instead, it veers from earth to treetops; from river, down at right, to undergrowth that hems the path at left.

No one knows if captives would really have looked anywhere but at their own stumbling feet or at the back of the chained figure ahead, but the camera’s wandering eye evokes the fracturing of any normal they might have known. Even the flora in Bey’s video, sure to strike most Americans as an average woodland scene, must have seemed foreign.

Bey makes his disjunctive technique stand for the utter confusion — physical, cognitive, spiritual — that captives must have felt. A soundtrack, commissioned by Bey from the dance scholar E. Gaynell Sherrod, adds to the effect: It’s a mash-up of random footfalls and birdcalls, of heartbeats and hoofbeats, of grunts and sighs and clinking chains. It doesn’t quite reproduce what the enslaved might actually have heard, but it sometimes adds Hollywood melodrama that the visuals smartly avoid. However, Sherrod’s soundtrack, and its lack of obvious sync to Bey’s visuals, maps onto how trauma can fracture our perceptions.

 “Bey’s installation doesn’t recreate a single moment in someone’s pain,” our critic writes. “It condenses all the moments that thousands of subjects might have suffered on the Richmond Slave Trail.” via Sean Kelly, New York/Los Angeles; Photo by Adam Reich

In a final touch, Bey gives art viewers a more immediate taste of that same bewilderment: The occasional visitor who peers around to the other side of Bey’s screen will eventually realize that the view there is actually the same path but seen on a different trudge down it. That gives a sense that Bey’s installation doesn't recreate a single moment in someone’s pain; it condenses all the moments that thousands of subjects might have suffered on the Richmond Slave Trail.

And then, leaving the video behind, you encounter Bey’s stills once again, and now they seem to play a different role in his story. After witnessing the splintered sights in his video, his stills now seem to stand for the very firm and settled present that today’s art world lives in, at so many removes from an enslaved person’s view.

They give us something like the stable, settled view favored by Europe’s artistic culture, circa 1800, when wild nature promised escape from the everyday into the sublime. It’s almost as though Bey’s prints offer a bright light at the end of their forest path, so that, as in many an Ansel Adams photo, the white of the immaculate silver print becomes the white of escape and transcendence. The prints have a stable authority, in their confident choice of subject, the snapping of the shutter, their deluxe printing, that isn’t there in the video.

Bey’s show gets its name from a passage in the second stanza of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the hymn by James Weldon Johnson that premiered in 1900 and is known as the Black national anthem: “Stony the road we trod/Bitter the chastening rod.”

Here’s how the stanza ends: “Out from the gloomy past/’Til now we stand at last/Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.”

Now, 125 years later, Bey’s gloom seems to cast new light on art’s gleam.