#Erina aesthetic

[epitomees]

~ Erina's Tags ~

More will be added as needed!

[anaharaeicons]

✧･ﾟ ↳ Anime characters with blonde hair

[yandereunsolved]

˗ˏˋ Jonathan Joestar Mood board ´ˎ˗

╰┈➤ Which Jonathan are you? 1-9

[jpegmaestro]

[midnight-faye]

ERINA GARLASCHI

Presenting my oc in the best way I know: aesthetic, music and info dumps!

Chart template:

Zodiac sign(s): Sagittarius Sun, Pisces Moon, Taurus Ascendant.

MBTI: ENFP

Some backstory: Erina is a young squib who lives between two countries: Italy, her home where her mother and brothers stay and London, where her potion-maker father has his business. Despite her family being a long line of pureblood wizards, she hasn't shown signs of magic yet. She still is happy with her life and doesn't want to change, until some strange magic and a certain letter from Hogwarts make their way...

The rest is available on AO3!

[pinkcatmaid]

You guys are sleeping on rabi ribi and y'all should play it :'3

[terabyte-teddybear]

jonathan and erina moodboard with a blue theme as a surprise gift for @suziqueso 💙

[momusus23]

ikuta erina (生田衣梨奈) & fukumura mizuki (譜久村聖); morning musume. '19 christmas event

[soulsballad]

tag drop; original characters. ( p. 3 )

[summer-nights19]

Hey author, can I get a request for GOM who have a S/O who can be really mean and Blunt on the outside but kind secretly (On the outside, they can act like Jade West or Karma Akabane but to those who are close to them, They can be gentle, kind, caring, and funny).

Hii Erina :> I love this concept so much omd (and it's so fun to meet another knb writer)

GoM x S/O who's like Jade West

Akashi

When he first met you, he was intrigued- most people respected or feared him, so he was shocked when you were seemingly unintimidated. While it bothered him, it also made him feel indescribably linked to you

Now, he loves that you have a softer and kinder side that you only show him and a few other people. He's quite possessive, and it makes him feel like you're his

Because he knows how rare that side of you is, he treasures it even more, though he doesn't tell you often

It was definitely an enemies/rivals to lovers kind of relationship

Appreciates how blunt you are- he despises fake people and sees it as a strength of yours (plus it means guys don't usually try to hit on you - it's very clear you're not interested)

Definitely tells you to watch your attitude jokingly

Aomine

Another enemies to lovers - you'd always argue over the stupidest things

Over time however, you realised you had more in common than you thought and you understood each other

Opening up to each and developing trust other took time - he appreciated it even more knowing you don't normally let people in

Teases you about how different you act when you guys are alone, but he actually kinda likes knowing you so deeply compared to everyone else (also, he's the same-)

You guys definitely spend hours laughing together and bitching about people that piss you off

If you have a goth/alt aesthetic like Jade, he's secretly into it

Kise

Definitely tried to hit on you from the start. The fact that if didn't work only made him more resilient

Initially, you found the way he tried so hard to get to know you and always hung around you very annoying, and you made that painfully clear

However, over time, he showed you he was on your side and genuinely cared about you, so you gradually behan to open up and show him the softer side of your personality

Now, you two do everything and go everywhere together

Teases you about being an "emo kid" (he loves your look really)

Is secretly entertained when you pick fights with his groupies

Sunshine x grumpy kind of dynamic

Thinks your rare smiles are everything and does everything he can to make you happy

Midorima

You met when you were paired up together for a class project

It was very painful at first - you were both stubborn and unwilling to compromise, so you spent hours insulting each other

But, with the deadline looming, you managed to figure out how to work together and ended up getting an A* on that project

You started respecting each other and seeing each other's good qualities (although neither one of you admitted it)

Takao probably realised Midorima liked you way earlier than Midorima himself and teased him relentlessly because of it

Definitely a slow burn, but when you guys became close, Midorima completely fell in love with your soft side

At the start of the relationship, communication felt awkward and difficult at times, but the deeper your bond got, the easier it became as you grew less guarded around each other

Gets flustered very easily around you, especially if you compliment him

Your flirting looks more like insulting each other

Murasakibara

Friends to lovers - you guys would just chill together because you found everyone else's company intolerable

Will insult the hell out of each other but fight anyone who insults the other one

At first, he just saw you as funny and sharp tongued. But, when you grew closer and began to trust each other, he saw the other side of your personality and grew to adore it

Took him months to realise why he loved your company so much and he remained in denial for ages after that

Very possessive/jealous (you tease him a lot because of it)

Becomes a sweetheart when you're alone

You guys mostly do chill things together like relaxing at home while eating snacks and watching TV

Masterlist

[girlymatsu]

Q, R, T, and Y for erina! 💌

Q. Do they have a signature look or fashion?

Yes!! I mean I put my own spin on it but she’s a gyaru into agejo fashion!!

R. How tall are they?

Hehe erina is like 154 cm so Like 5’-5’1 ^_^

T. What are their favourite foods?

Erina looves greasy street foods like fried chicken, fried potato cheese, deep fried dumplings… she loves going to night markets and eats so much and gets so much acne from oil oops

Y. What physical object do they value most?

Erina has a hard time keeping track of stuff but it might be a scrapbook full of junk she’s glued in that she tries to make aesthetically pleasing but it’s really messy with a bunch of junk

[epitomees]

~ Zenkichi Hasegawa’s Tags ~ 

More will be added as needed. 

[sebaztianlovesgeek]

(don't read if you don't want to be spoiled for Black Butler or JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 1)

The best thing about being both a black butler AND a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fan is because of the potential the 2 stories have in a crossover fan fiction.

Think about it, JoJo's part 1 (Phantom Blood) and the first few arcs of Black Butler take place IN THE EXACT SAME YEAR (1888), they also take place in the same country and the same city and they both have sort of the same supernatural and horror elements in it.

Not to mention in both stories there's a part where the characters are on a happy boat cruise and suddenly a bunch of zombies start attacking them.

I think the only thing that drives these 2 universes apart is the fact that Jack The Ripper is different in both stories. In Black Butler he (or she) is both Madame Red and Grell working together, in JoJo's he's just a random dude who later is turned into a zombie by Dio (and then is killed within like 5 minutes lol).

But I guess that can just be excused by saying Dio found the wrong Jack the Ripper and just found a random guy who coincidentally also killed prostitutes, and meanwhile Grell and Madame Red were doing their own thing.

I'm honestly very confused why I barely see any JoJo's x Black Butler fan fiction, I'm not sure if it's me just not looking hard enough or if not many JoJo fans are also fans of Black Butler or vice versa. I've met some people who are both JoJo and Black Butler fans (mostly online since where I come from, anime and manga, especially less popular stories like Black Butler, aren't well known) but most of the time when I meet someone who is a fan of one of these, it's just the one and not both.

Anyways, I'd also just love to see the interactions between the Black Butler and JoJo characters. I know a lot of the characters in JoJo's part 1 are less memorable than those in other parts, the only really memorable characters are JoJo, Dio, Speedwagon and Zeppeli, and sometimes people can remember Erina, Poco, Dire and Straizo but they usually only remember the first 4.

(I actually like a lot of the Phantom Blood characters, and despite it being one of my least favourite JoJo parts I still like it, I love the aesthetic of it, plus if Phantom Blood never happened we would have never gotten better parts like Stardust Crusaders or Diamond Is Unbreakable.)

Black Butler, meanwhile, has a wide range of amazing and memorable characters, though this is probably because Black Butler is a lot longer than JoJo's part 1 for obvious reasons:

Phantom blood was the first part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and is the shortest part, in the anime only being 9 episodes long while most parts are 20-40 episodes long, JoJo's is a story told through different parts which usually take place years and eras apart, every part also often takes place in different countries and every part the main character (or as the JoJo fandom knows them as... The JoJo's) changes because each part is the story of someone descendant of the Joestar family.

So therefore in each part we mostly get new characters and only a few reoccurring ones.

Black Butler was designed to only be told within one whole big story line, with the same main characters, therefore we'd be seeing the same characters every arc, the story mostly takes place in one main setting (London city, England) but on occasion the settings can change:

Like when Ciel and Sebastian joined the circus and left the city, the anime only version when they went to Paris, the emerald witch arc which takes place in Germany, we also sometimes get flashbacks to other countries like India.

So how would the Black Butler and JoJo's characters interact?

This question can be interpreted in many ways depending on how you see the characters from both stories.

Ciel and Jonathan are quite similar, they're both rich nobles who live in Victorian era London, their parents died, their mansion burned to the ground, their brother is an antagonist in their story. Heck they both even have blue hair (well in the anime for JoJo's at least because apparently in the manga Jonathan's hair is brown).

Personality wise though, Jonathan and Ciel are very different. Jonathan is a kind, loyal gentleman who just wants to protect his friends, family and the innocent, meanwhile Ciel has experienced a lot of trauma from a young age, his family was killed, he was kidnapped, abused, watched his twin brother die, made a deal with a demon who only wants his soul and so much more I could write a whole other post on.

Because of this trauma Ciel, despite being 12-14 is a cold, miserable, depressed and sometimes a bit cruel.

Of course Jonathan went through a lot trauma during Phantom Blood but since most of it didn't happen when he was a child, him and Ciel react to their traumatic pasts differently.

Jonathan would probably want Ciel to open up to him, but Ciel just isn't having it, this could lead to some interesting dialogue between the 2 protagonists because of how similar but also different they are character and personality wise.

What about other characters, more evil characters such as Dio and Sebastian?

Now I don't think these 2 would get along, because since in my mind Ciel would be an ally to Jonathan, Dio would want to be rid of him as well, so Sebastian would have to protect Ciel at all costs.

However, these 2 are both supernatural creatures (Sebastian being a demon and Dio being a vampire) so they'd probably like.. I dunno tease each other when fighting? Like they wouldn't just be yelling angrily at each other they'd make fun of each other.

(okay maybe Dio would yell angrily if he starts to lose because in Phantom Blood he's a bit of a manchild compared to him in Stardust Crusaders in my opinion, I don't hate Dio, he's in fact my favourite JoJo's character ever but we can definitely see how his character developed after all the mistakes he made in Phantom Blood)

Sebastian probably knows about the existence of vampires, the mask, hamon and the pillar men, he's existed for thousands of years afterall, possibly since time began itself, heck he may have even been friends with some pillar men.

I don't think demons are affected by hamon, since hamon comes from the sun and we see Sebastian and other demon characters are definitely NOT affected by the sun unlike vampires.

Undertaker and Grell would probably both be interested in Dio, for different reasons.

Grell would probably be attracted to Dio romantically and sexually, because...

1: she's a simp

2: Dio is canonically very charismatic and handsome which is why he literally has so many servants and minions in part 3

Dio would probably be annoyed by Grell, but Grell is a fairly useful and strong character with her being a grim reaper and her thirst for blood, so he'd probably manipulate her and just try to put up with Grell being an obnoxious fangirl

Undertaker would probably be interested in Dio's ability to turn people into zombies, I don't think he'd want to join Dio's side but he'd probably do it anyways for his own gain. He wants more knowledge on the cinematic records, he may even kill one of the zombies to see what their cinematic records are like, if they ended when they became a zombie or if they continue since they're neither dead or alive. Undertaker also wants to get inspiration for his own bizarre dolls and how to make them more life like.

The grim reapers in general probably also know about vampires and hamon (though I'm not sure if they'd know about the history with the stone masks and pillar men) and would probably treat them the same way they treat demons, obnoxious creatures who interfere with soul collection.

You're probably wondering "But vampires and demons are not the same, the reason the grim reapers hate demons is because they eat souls, and therefore don't let the grim reapers collect them. Vampires don't eat souls, they drink blood"

Well I feel like when vampires turn people into zombies, it sort of corrupts both of the cinematic records and the soul, the zombies still have records and a soul, but after being turned they're just broken and not worthy of the reaper's time unless it's for experimental reasons when it comes to characters like Undertaker.

I feel like if Black Butler and Phantom Blood were to ever have a spin off crossover anime show (which definitely will NEVER happen because they're both owned by different companies and both Hirohiko Araki and Yana Toboso probably wouldn't have an interest in that, but pretend we're in an alternative time line where Araki and Toboso's works are owned by the same companies and they are both very interested in each others works and have all the legal rights to make a crossover series) It would definitely be a lot longer than Phantom Blood, not as long as Black Butler is but probably about 20 episodes+ , I'm not sure how many seasons or arcs there would be, but I'm guessing 1 or 2 seasons and a few arcs.

So I'm guessing they would be in Japan specifically, in other countries? Well despite me coming from the same country as Jonathan and Ciel (England) both Black Butler and JoJo's are sadly not that popular here, it's a pain in the arse trying to find merchandise for both animes even in anime based shops, the most I usually find of them is manga, and even then they usually don't even have majority of the volumes.

Would it be popular? Well JoJo's and Black Butler in Japan are rather popular (JoJo's is definitely a lot MORE popular with some describing it as around the same amount of popularity as Star Wars does in the West in Japan, but Black Butler is fairly popular as well, I'm guessing JoJo's is more popular because it's been around since the mid 80's and Black Butler has been around since the mid-late 2000's)

I just think this whole concept is really cool and I'll probably talk about it a lot

[zarenillia]

[The following will NOT contain spoilers for TEVI, but is a lengthy rant with basically no direction. Viewer Discretion Is Advised]

There were issues with TEVI's story, and I fully enjoyed it regardless of them, and the music is really incredible.

But the gameplay. Oh boy the gameplay (somewhat affectionate).

To start with, I like the crafting system. Not only is it pretty good game-wise, but it really helps emphasize that component of Tevi as a character.

I like the orbitars, they have some really good options, and their whatever it is Burst Gauge thing is pretty neat too, although can be a bit confusing to try to switch around to the one you want while you're busy fighting, as it's desire to add more quality detail over Ribbon's ui actually kind of hurts it. In RR, Ribbons attack options are color coded, and while switching them not only does the bar near your health change but there's also a prompt near your character. In TEVI that's still pretty much the case but since they're icons that are color coded to the two orbitars themselves, trying to swap between them without looking near your health bar can be a bit frustrating when you use the wrong one. C1+C3, S1+S3 look functionally alike, though C2 and S2 are a little more distinct in terms of icon of the others of the same type. Granted you'll never really be confused on if you're on S or C (which I was on S for most of the time, holy fucking shit does S1 kick ass).

Supposedly ranged builds are pretty powerful, but I mostly used melee, using charged shots to add damage, as one generally did in RR outside of 0% runs, especially as that seems to be encouraged in TEVI due to the amount of sigils that change attacks at certain combo levels, and combos in general are a mostly melee thing, unless you're using basic shots and then you're probably using mana and depriving yourself of charged shots. But maybe magic sigils fix that problem, again I mostly did melee so I wouldn't know. Maybe I could try doing a magic run, it seems like a game I'd like to play again as I did with RR.

Speaking of which, Cocoa Mode 2.0 with Cocoa 2.0 in Vena. Please. I need this. I loved Cocoa's playstyle. I loved her bombs. I want it back. And I'm sure we'll probably get it back since they're working on DLC.

In terms of character design, while I do miss the very gay all girl cast of RR, I do love TEVI's characters (yes even the men, they're good characters), and I do find it hilarious (and comforting to an extent) that despite the changes in theming and in character aesthetics, TEVI continues RR's tradition of not allowing characters to wear pants. Well, quite a few do, but for the most part everyone is still pants-less. Yet also with significantly more details to off put that so the game also doesn't feel as sexualized as RR does. Like just compare Tevi to Erina. They're both wearing bunny suits and have ears, and yet Tevi has a lot of details that put that off to the point that you might not even realize that's what it's supposed to be, with the belt and pouches, the leg strap, whatever the hell she's doing with like some kind of coat or jacket. The characters also feel a lot more developed in TEVI. I mean RR's cast had character to them, but most of it was based on character tropes and "oh yeah she's hella gay, but for Character D, unlike Character C who's gay for Character B who seems gay for Character F but will probably come around to C eventually." But none of them have character moments like what happens throughout TEVI's story. Which I would love to go on a tangent about, and might on a separate post, but not yet (see: top of post).

Also, voice acting???? I do like it, even though I don't really understand Japanese at all, it does still add tonal indications that really emphasize the energy of not only what people are saying, but also of the character themselves. If a character is feeling really emotional, on the verge of crying, you can feel that in the VA, if they're starting to get annoyed, you can feel that. If they're very currently not taking their job seriously and are basically on a vacation, you can feel that in their energy. Along with the words themselves and the character sprites to go along with it, character dialogue feels so much more advanced than in RR. TEVI's story can be a little dark, and sometimes you can hear the effects the events are happening on the main 3 through their voices. There's times you can hear Tevi's voice cracking with just pure unadulterated rage and anguish, and I love that. You can hear characters falter as they realize the full scope of what was happening just outside of their vision all their lives, all the things they never knew, were never told. And I think the VA work really contributes positively to that, even if you don't listen to the full thing. You can hear it in just the first couple words of each dialogue.

I guess that kinda concludes my rant. Standard recommendation that you should play both TEVI and Rabi-Ribi, and I look forward to the DLC of TEVI and eventually when RR2 comes out. Unless you hate metroidvanias. Then they may not be for you. Ender Lilies and Ender Magnolias (which is still in EA during the posting of this) are also pretty good. Hollow Knight and Cave Story+ too. Also Dust: An Elysian Tail, Lost Ruins, Touhou Luna Nights.

Also BASED ROLEO BASED TRANS RIGHTS LMAO

[bartholomew-junior]

@azriel23 here it is! sorry for the wait!

1 . i think the fact that felix was able to give an npc so much depth is v impressive, and he has so much swag. he’s a coward in battle and very emotionally open and just kind of helpful and kind, and i feel like in an environment like in the bellowing wilds, those traits would be overplayed and downplayed respectively, which makes him feel like a “”less useful”” person, which gives him issues surrounding his worth which he later takes the time to resolve (most mentally stable fools gold group member) and then later helps masika. aghh. i think the trans ohio jack hc is also cool

4 . old kind of pulp novel that’s the size of a hand that kind of rips off indiana jones but once u read it u have a transcendent life experience cuz the author’s worldbuilding is fantastic. basically the marrying of the indy jones aesthetic and dnd. i think it would kick ass, especially if u give every1 their respective aesthetic.

9 . i feel like this man’s politeness caused by his anxiety mixed with his overall laziness would make for a,,, very confusing combo? like i’d trust him to organize the fridge and help me w work, but i dunno if he could efficiently clean up his messes, but he’d def keep to himself and his side of the apartment. yes, i’d def room w this guy cuz he’s atleast polite about it and he has good vibes.

12 . earlier, i mentioned the trans ohio jack hc, which i think is good and fun, but the thing with xanu where he just,, pushed jack along in finding the foreclaimers for god knows how long keeps nagging at me. like,,, do you think jack felt like a fish out of water once xanu’s influence was removed? i would if my “”life’s purpose”” was just taken out via my abdomen. anyway i think offscreen erina brews jack’s testosterone cypionate and doesn’t bill him for it.

23 . uhhhhh this one from ep. 4. no reason other than vibes and the fact his expression is comical

summary: he’s a fungi (get it. fun guy) and i hope when the full dating sim releases people speedrun romancing him. for fun.

[clarythericebot]

I posted 1,047 times in 2022

144 posts created (14%)

903 posts reblogged (86%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@lilaccatholic

@feenyxblue

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I tagged 384 of my posts in 2022

#clary scribbles - 151 posts

#bookmark - 122 posts

#aesthetic - 27 posts

#poetry - 19 posts

#poem - 17 posts

#resources - 8 posts

#the hunger games - 7 posts

#soma x megumi - 6 posts

#soumegu - 6 posts

#meta - 6 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#and the problem isnt him but the fact that he can't give up his power if he doesn't want his kingdom ruled by someone deliberately cruel

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

NO THEY GAVE HIM THE SOFT EYES

26 notes - Posted April 3, 2022

#4

this is how that scene went right

See the full post

51 notes - Posted July 13, 2022

#3

SouMegu, the Shinomiya Arc, and what if it wasn't love?

Gosh I will write metas about these two for anything.

Anyway.

Because I ship them together, I'm tempted (and hey, I do) read into the first Shinomiya arc of the series, wherein Soma decides to throw his goals and education and reputation at risk in order to help Megumi win her position in Totsuki back. This is very important because he never does this ever again with anyone in the series. (Yes, he takes up challenges that helps others, but never again for the sake of another person, really; it is always to do with some form of ideology in cooking.)

In this one, singular act in the first season, he decides to bet it all for the specific, articulated purpose of helping his best friend (and if his outright saying it wasn't enough, he flashbacks to everything he'd gone through with her right before he gets angry and makes that challenge to Shinomiya). And he loses.

Here is how that episode ends: Him slamming his fist against the wall, muttering "I lost, I lost" over and over again. He genuinely expected to win. Even though Doujima's commentary makes the audience see this positively - what all of us need is the gall of daring to hope we can succeed - this crushing disappointment also bespeaks that he never actually thought he'd have to give everything up for this one person. If he did, would he have been willing to make that sacrifice?

My shipping heart would like to think yes. Megumi was his best friend. Of course he would, and the fact that he was willing to do this for her shows that she's special.

But the fact that he extricates himself from the solely personal problems of others from here on out tells a slightly different story.

I think Soma is genuinely a selfless and kind character (look how sweet he was to Hisako when he encouraged her to go back to Erina), but the Shinomiya arc finally slapped him with the stakes of what he's undertaken. He's willing to fail miserably and succeed gloriously for the sake of advancing his cooking - he's always known that - but is he willing to lose everything just for potentially helping another person? The answer, it looks like, is no.

So his way of getting around that is justifying every potentially selfless match as something to do with cooking--whether it's about ideology (Mimasaka) or finally defeating them and getting them to admit that his cooking is delicious (Hayama and Erina). In fact, when Erina's grandfather asks Soma to save Erina, he tells him flippantly, "It has nothing to do with me." He only promises to continue on his quest to make Erina admit his cooking delicious.

What does this all mean? Well, this argument--Soma never actually gets to the crux of the show, even as he professes it. The secret to good cooking is to do it for someone that you love. Devote everything you have to one person. He does this so early on in the series with the Shinomiya arc, but he didn't really grasp the totality of what it meant until its end and everything might've been taken away from him. So, interestingly, what his take-away from all this is a subtle form of ruthlessness; not nearly as cruel as any of the characters we face, but it is more damaging than one might expect.

The ending of Season 5, I think, is proof enough of that. If he was doing this ultimately for Erina, he would've been happy that she got what she wanted--her mom to approve of cooking, to find the joy of it again. That s the ultimate goal.

But no--he is the same as he was at the end of that battle in season one, only fixating to onto his failure to the point that it's unhealthy. Second Place in Blue doesn't matter to him, and neither does helping one of his friends reconcile with her family. Joichiro, his father, tells Soma he approves of his ability and that he will allow him to take over the restaurant and it doesn't matter to him. He literally cuts himself off from his friends without warning and travels abroad so he can hone the skills he things are desperately inadequate. It's played for comedy, but it's not funny. And it's the farthest thing from triumphant.

I like Soma's growth mind set--his belief that anyone can improve and get better and do the impossible, with enough work and creativity. But the shadow to that is if I didn't win, it's not good enough, and if it's not good enough, I need to work even harder, even harder than I had before, even if I have to leave a place that I've grown to love, even if I have to sacrifice it all in the altar of cooking. I honestly have to wonder where the line is for Soma between it's not good enough and I'm not good enough. That's never explored, though, and I think that's a pity, considering that a recurrent criticism I've seen of season 5 is his lack of internal development.

But here's the thing--such a mindset would require him to care about someone so deeply he is willing to lose the battle to win the war. He doesn't really have that in the series, and problematically the series seems to want to keep him as an (ironically) static idol of self-improvement.

Wouldn't such a development have been fascinating and foreshadowed, though? In that first arc, we meet a chef that is burned out. That's tired. That's why Megumi's dish touched Shinomiya so much--even though it was imperfect, he still felt the care she put into this dish, and that assessment is literally against what Totsuki stands for. Perfection is what a make dish good. Seeing the face of the chef, and all that. How does love make anything better?

But it does. And it snaps Shinomiya out of his rut.

Would that mean, then, that Megumi is the secret to getting Soma out of his? Imagine a Soma that was allowed to circle back--to realize in the end what he instinctively did at the beginning; that he is willing to put everything on the line for a person that he loves, not just to impress or defeat them, but to help them, to give them joy. Imagine a Soma that is willing to enjoy both his victories and his losses, knowing that throughout both he is loved all the same.

59 notes - Posted February 15, 2022

#2

The Guardian

As heartbreaking as this fact may be, they cannot do this for all the sick children.

The child must be the perfect mixture of sleepy and awake; innocent enough to still believe in wondrous things and lucid enough to know they are not dreaming, that they are being trusted with a precious secret they must keep for however long they have left. Delilah only has three days.

That night, the guardian – the title they have come to know themself over the years – bundles Delilah’s frail body in the wheelchair and whisks her out into the hall.

“Is it another surgery?” the ten-year-old mumbles. Two years ago, the girl threw screaming fits at the thought of going under the knife, and her parents made a point of reassuring her and promising her treats and rewards weeks well in advance. These past few months, that ritual had been thrown out into the wind. There had been far too many emergency operations, and by now, Delilah was used to it.

“No, child,” they say. “You’re far past need of that now.”

Delilah doesn’t hear their voice catch. “Good,” she sighs as she sinks into the metal seat. It can’t be the most comfortable space, but the guardian understands that at this point, almost nowhere feels comfortable. The place they are taking her is perhaps the final one, in this life, that pain cannot completely follow. Delilah tugs at their sleeve. “Can I take a nap?”

“In a while. I have something to show you.” They point to the end of the low-lit corridor. “Do you see that door?”

“The door to the exit?” Delilah blinks and sits up. “No, wait, that’s different. That’s…” She frowns. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“I should hope not. I only put it there a minute ago.”

“You can’t just put doors-“

“I can.”

The guardian says it with so much authority that Delilah twists to look at them. Her lips form a small oh. “I’ve never seen you before, either,” she says.

“You haven’t.”

“But I thought you were my favorite nurse.”

“Why?”

“You sound just like her. No—you feel just like her. And my parents, too. You feel like whenever they give me a hug.”

“Is ‘safe’ the word you are a looking for?” they offer.

“Yes.”

“I am safe. Even though I’m not your nurse, I am your friend.” That hadn’t always been the case, of course. There was a time long ago when they were far from a friend of any human. But that no longer matters. “I want to show you something through that door. It’s the world that I came from.”

“You’re not from around here?”

“No.”

“I guess I should’ve figured. What are you waiting for?”

“Your permission, Delilah.” For the second time in five minutes, the girl’s mouth rounds in surprise. “Will you allow me to take you through the door? The decision is entirely up to you.”

It will probably be the last decision entirely up to her. They want to give Delilah that.

“Yes,” the young girl says. Then, belatedly: “Please.”

_ _ _

On the other side, the world is made of light.

When they first brought children here – Adrian, the first one, had been shaking with tremors even when his eyes were wide saucers of excitement – they were afraid that the shift between worlds would destroy the children’s already precarious health immediately. It is so different from their universe made of mud and blood and soil; here, essence is stripped bare and free to float along. Galaxies can be experienced with a single touch; so can oceans of anger, clouds of love, flights of whimsy. A lifetime’s worth of marvels—that’s what they wanted to give.

Why they had been willing to risk it.

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92 notes - Posted October 21, 2022

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THIS MOMENT WAS JUST SO SOFT kajs;dlfjkaldsfk

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