#Five Magical Stories

[sprinklesharkie]

duality of girl

[transbookoftheday]

The Enchanted Forest and Other Stories: Five Tales of Gender Magic by Zoe Storm

Four friends go hiking in the woods and take a wrong turn. Two girls meet in a nightclub in London. A boy goes to sleep after a horrible night out, and wakes up as a woman seventeen years later. The son of a clan’s chief is asked to act as a guide for their guest, a girl from the sea. At Christmas, a girl summons a spirit and makes a wish.

Five stories about people finding themselves, with the help of a bit of magic.

[cream-and-tea]

LAY ME DOWN. chapter seven excerpt. unedited. featuring: agnes’s attempt to understand a new and troubling situation through understanding a new and troubling person. light body horror. self-harm adjacent behaviour. general freaky magic stuff.

[transcript under the cut]

oh brother. these guys again.

TAGLIST (ask to be +/-). @vellichor-virgo @transmasc-wizard​ @houndmouthed @muddshadow @just-wublrful @corkywantstowrite @shrunkupthejams @andromedaexists @caninemotiff @lungs-and-gills @lychniscitrus @phantomnations @onomatopiya @deer-in-headlights-stare @arctic-oceans @redbloodprose @definitelynotclayface @cannivalisms @atthenian

“Show me then,” the words are out of her mouth before she has time to think. Animal instinct. Too distracted to remember to bite her tongue.

Pallas blinks at her once, slowly. “What?”

She can walk it back, that would be safest, the nothing already crouched expectantly in the back of her throat. Instead she uncrosses her legs and swings them over the edge of the bed to better face them. Having feet on the ground makes her feel more solid, more certain.

“I want you to show me. Vita. I want to see it.”

Pallas raises an eyebrow. “Show you?”

She scoots forward slightly and nods, made a bit braver by the fact that they don’t seem to be angry or condescending, just confused. Probably really confused because Agnes is awful at telling what people feel by their faces and even she can see it clear as day.

“You’ve already seen it,” Pallas says, setting down the pen and shrugging back into their jacket. “You know what it does.”

And that’s true isn’t it? In the Haithwood and in the library. Pallas winding every bit of her body around their fingers and holding her frozen to the ground, Pallas making Calliopes nose break and bleed in a burst of icy rage, Judge reaching under her skin to pull her injured flesh back into shape. Vita. Blood and flesh and living bone. Honestly she’s seen enough for a lifetime. There’s still that sick feeling in her gut whenever she thinks about any of it.

So maybe it has less to do with the magic and more to do with Pallas, who’s spent every hour of every day since she got here pushing her to reach for the dead in a way she never has before. Pallas has had everything to do with her ghosts and her gravespeaking but every time they’ve used their power she’s had absolutely nothing to do with it, a bystander at best and a victim at worst. It's not that she’s upset, or ungrateful, just that she wants to see them the same way they’ve seen her. That isn’t so much to ask? Right?

“Yeah.” Agnes moves to rest her chin in her hands. “But I haven’t seen you use it when you’re not…”

Scaring me? Attacking people?

“...y’know,” she finishes lamely.

Pallas has gone still in the chair and she can’t help but feel the same hot embarrassment as before at the expression on their face, nakedly baffled in a way that feels too intimate for her to be seeing. It’s like something about what she’s asking has managed to fully shock the danger out of them, leaving just a person who doesn’t understand what’s happening. Agnes hadn’t thought that was even possible to do, and the revelation that it is fills her with a kind of mad, giddy joy. You’re just like me. You don’t know what’s going on right now.

All this time she’s been tiptoeing around Pallas, but now she’s knocked them off balance and hasn’t been reduced to a pile of blood and guts. So there are some things she can do. She is not totally helpless and they are human after all and they are being awkward! Being awkward in front of her!

“I don’t exactly have a broad scope,” Pallas says dryly. “I doubt you’ll like anything I have to share.”

Agnes doubts it as well, but that’s not really the point. And nothing they said just now was no.

“Maybe it’ll be nice. Maybe I’ll think it’s nice.”

Pallas stares at her like a chicken confronted with a bicycle. Then they look away. Then they let out a long, quiet breath and close their eyes before shifting to face her properly, both feet on the ground as well.

“Sit back,” it’s closer to their normal voice but with a faintness to it. Not quite trembling, but definitely not steady either. Agnes straightens up and tilts back onto her palms as Pallas shifts forward. It feels like too long before they open their eyes, which are just as grey and bad as ever.

“I won’t do anything to you,” Pallas says, as if that’s an option they were considering. Agnes can’t help but feel a twist of relief, the memories of that first meeting in the woods are never far from her mind and no matter how much she wants this, any chance to avoid something like that happening again is a welcome one.

“Right.” She nods.

“If you start screaming, or vomit, or pass out, I will cease interacting with you alltogether. That is a promise.”

“I’ll be okay.”

Pallas’s brows furrow with what could be concentration or could be concern. Their mouth opens, floundering for half a second, like they were about to say something else before closing back into a tightly pressed line. They hold their left hand out in front of them, like they’re waiting for a high five, and somehow Agnes knows that, whatever it is, it’s about to start and her anxiety feels like victory in the face of that.

At first it is nothing much, just a thin red line slicing down their middle finger. So straight and clean it could’ve been made with a scalpel. Not even that much blood. Then, simultaneously, the line begins to creep down their palm and out to each of their other fingers, dripping beads of crimson down the clammy pale of their skin. Somehow it doesn’t seem real, like Agnes is looking at a diagram in a book that’s mysteriously been animated in front of her. If Pallas feels any pain at all they don’t show it, face unchanged as the skin starts to peel back from their hand.

That does make Agnes draw in a sharp breath, even though she’s been very good at staying quiet and still up until now, fearful like she was in the classroom with Judge that any sudden action will throw the magic off-balance. But she doesn’t look away, because she asked for this, and Pallas doesn’t pause in their unfurling even if their brows furrow slightly at the sound. It happens in one smooth motion, practiced, effortless, performed with all the ceremony of taking off a glove. Agnes does not start screaming, or vomit, or pass out. She’s dressed animals before and, apart from how Pallas is not dead and the effect is contained to just the one hand, this isn’t really different. There's the careful separation of skin from muscle, the delicate definition that separates the parts underneath, the red and pinkness of it all.

Of course it’s not really the same either, because the parts of Pallas being stripped away are not set aside for later use; instead they stay floating in the air around the hand, held frozen in the same way her body had been back in the forest when they first met. Warm, wet flaps of skin, fresh as the blackgreen bark stripped from trees back home, hover drowsily like something pickled in a jar. It is also not separated, not really, everything still intertwined and beating with red and alive, muscle and artery and nerve working together, just lifted up and away. Agnes never paid her own hands much mind beyond the work they could do and how cold they got in the winter, but now she imagines her skin split apart and away the way Pallas’s is, wonders if all of that really exists inside her too. It feels wrong somehow, what’s in front of her now is just meat. A person should be made up of more than that. There are so many small parts to a hand, parts she cannot name but Pallas probably can or else they would not be able to do any of this. They don’t stop until the muddy white of their fingerbones begin to show, then the entire thing spasms with an uneven spurt of blood, a pulse that Agnes feels in her own chest, and goes totally still.

In the silence she can’t help but lean forward, marvelling at the web of flesh in front of her, and even as her scalp prickles and her stomach turns over and the air around her seems to hum with the urge to run a part of her itches to reach out a finger and touch. That really would just be the same as fiddling around with the guts of an animal, but also it would be different. Somehow she knows it would be different. Different in a way she’ll never be able to understand unless she does it. Which she won’t. Because Pallas is terrifying and this has only proved that a hundred times over.

Though maybe not as terrifying as she thought before. They did listen to her, or humour her, or whatever this is. It’s something for sure. Agnes can always make do with something. It’s how she stays alive.

Her breath ghosts across the bloody strand of a muscle, and that is what breaks the spell, that or Pallas is just done or some other condition she doesn’t know has been met. The coming back together seems to take a good deal longer than the taking apart, sweat glueing dark strands of hair to Pallas’s cheeks and the grinding of their teeth made audible despite the damp, slithering sounds of their hand seaming itself back together until the only trace of what just happened is a rusty crusting of blood packed around their nails and in their palm lines.

They pull the hand away while Agnes can’t help but keep watching, transfixed as they flex it in and out of a fist with a disinterested glare, impatient while a few stray cracks and pops fill the newfound silence. Once that’s done they hold it out one more time, as if proving to Agnes just how inconsequential vivisecting a part of them in front of her really was.

“There. Happy?” Pallas slumps slightly, tipping their head back enough that she can see their pulse fluttering frantically just beneath the skin of their neck. Again she resists the urge to touch it. She likes all of her flesh right where it is. Thank you very much.

Palla shifts to look at her and Agnes remembers that she’s been staring, not answering them, and internally kicks herself for being such an idiot.

“I am,” She breathes out, makes the monumental effort to meet their eyes. “I actually really am.”

[kanerallels]

for the ask game, sabine and ezra in the musketeer au please? I feel like that would be very fun

FRIEND GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE I WAS LITERALLY WRITING ABOUT THEM SO RECENTLY but since that fic won't be posted for a couple months, have a low key preview:

“How did you even end up being a musketeer?”

Sabine glanced up from cleaning one of her blades, eyeing the boy skeptically. She’d only known Kanan’s apprentice for a day or two now. But she already knew that he was a troublemaker— sneaking around, eavesdropping on Kanan and Hera’s conversations.

That said, she’d been right there with him, so who was she to judge?

“My family are all warriors, too,” she told him. “Not musketeers, but they’re fighters. So I always knew I wanted to fight alongside them. But… things changed.” A pang of memory went through her, and she looked back down at her blade to avoid meeting Ezra’s curious gaze. “Then I met Hera. And she offered me an apprenticeship, so I took it.”

Everything had changed then. She’d left her past behind, and moved on, determined to become a musketeer. To become better. She still wasn’t really sure if it was working.

Glancing up, Sabine studied Ezra. “What about you? How’d you end up as Kanan’s apprentice?”

Ezra shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “I broke into his house.”

“That checks out.”

[hastalavistabyebye]

Last line challenge

Rules: In a new post, show the last line you wrote (or drew) and tag as many people as there are words (or as many as you feel like). 

Tagged by the wonderful @whiskygoldwings @adhd-coyote @insertmeaningfulusername <3

If you remember the few lines of Echo's angst I shared a bit ago, I finally had time to munch on this WIP again :D non-angsty snippet this time :

Echo had half the mind to acknowledge the importance names hold too for first gen vode, before all thoughts flew out of his mind in favor of the assault of feelings taking over his brain. None of them wasted more time to lost themselves in languid kisses and shivering caresses, drunk in the warmth of their bodies pressed together.

NPT : well obligatory uno-reverse because y'all are working on some great things and I want to see 👀👀 plus @corrie-guard-things @cookiemonsterv3 @mereelskirata and @the-starry-seas

[missyeon]

steve blackman count your days

[thunderboltfire]

I was having fun with making up their voices! I've also decided to solve a question of languages (languages color-coded to avoid confusion).

Also, this one has quite a lot of tiny text, so I've included transcripts.

[ID: a list illustrated with colored doodles of characters' heads. Titled Who speaks what?

Igna [cartoon picture of Igna's face drawn in brick red color]: Native language: illiraian (southwestern regional form). Understands enough elvish to know when she's being threatened, and can ask for directions, but not much more.

Argo [cartoon picture of Argo's face drawn in sap green color]: Native language: northern elvish. Fluent in illiraian, hardly discernible accent. (it took Igna 3 months to figure out what's off - he rolls 'R' a bit too hard and his vowels sometimes are pronounced too close to the back of his throat).

Theria [cartoon picture of Theria's face drawn in muted brown color]: Native language: Samhran. Fluent in illiraian, audible samhran accent (difficulty pronouncing consonant clusters, palatalising 'L's and 'T"s, mixing up vowels and dyphtongs, sometimes sing-song affect to the vowels). Speaks basic Andaran and broken Omtheron.

Daen [cartoon picture of Daen's face drawn in violet color]: Native language: Moer. Fluent in illiraian, Andaran and gods know what else. Communicative in old elvish. Understands both dwarven languages, but speaks neither. No discernible accent in illiraian.

Haart [cartoon picture of Haart's face drawn in blue]: Native language: Kará (east-dwarvish). Fluent in illiraian (mostly without an

accent, but he often switches soft and hard 'H'). Understands some Andaran and Omtheron. Knows his local variety of sign language.

Knows some expressions in samhran (exclusively swearwords and toasts).]

-

Results: Igna is a spoiled kid, she's the only one in the group who has the luxury of speaking her native language day-to-day. She grew up in complete nowhere, with a very scarce contact with other languages. Tentative A1 in elvish, due to her dad trying to teach her.

Argo probably had the knowledge of Illiraian hammered into his head during his education - inhabitants of Riss speak exclusively a dialect of elvish day-to-day, but the duchy is an enclave, and it would be severely imparing not to know the neighbors' language.

Theria has been away from home long enough to gain a pretty good grasp of Illiraian, and has around B1 level in Andaran. Both spoken with a pretty thick accent, her native language is from a different language family with a strikingly different phototactics, and she's learnt the foreign languages pretty late.

Daen speaks many languages, and all of them pretty well. Maybe it's his long lifespan, but it's possible he's got a knack for language learning.

Haart has had a similar situation to Argo in a sense he's lived in a close neighboorhood of another language and learnt it in childhood. He comes from a merchant house, so it's understandable his family would want him to know foreign languages.

[ID: a scale diagram titled "profanity meter" Left to right: Daen titled "Apocalyptic event indicator", Igna titled "curses when hurt", Argo titled "curses if pissed", Haart titled "curses to emphasise" and Theria titled "Fuck is a sentence divider"]

-

I have to face the fact that Theria most probably has a severe case of unwashed mouth. Her mercenary career spans a good few years when she enters the stage and she doesn't seem like the type to watch her language, so in all probability she doesn't even notice that she curses like a sailor.

[ID: a list titled "Voice and expression". On the left side there's an up-and-down double ended arrow titled "pitch". Characters from top to bottom:

Igna: Easily the highest voice of the group. Clean, and rather strong despite it. Makes an open and honest impression when speaking, fairly good singing voice.

Theria: on the lower side of feminine voices, full-bodied voice with a bit of a vocal fry, on average way louder than the rest of the group. Enjoys singing, but easily dominates a choir

Argo: rather raspy, matte voice. Has a tendency to mutter - the limited sensitivity on the scarred side of his face makes it harder to speak clearly. Speaks quite fast despite of this. Can't hold a note for his life.

Haart: soft, full baritone. Probably the nicest laughter. Nice singing voice, talks with his hands a lot. Makes a characteristic huff when he's nervous.

Daen: low, resonant voice. Clear pronounciation. Reticent, rarely talks more than necessary. Makes a formal impression.]

Last but not least, my trials to work out how would they probably sound like. (I'm not really one to do voiceclaims).

[leederpfucker]

Gang I'm considering shipping Lolbit with that goddamn rainbow

[anisohtropy]

KAVETHAM PRINCESS BRIDE SEND POST

[aleki-lives-here]

I watched an mdzs animatic with a song from wicked, and something in my mind finally clicked and now I want to scream about how similar my current and my past hyperfixations are.

"Good news, the witch is dead!" like

"No good deeds" is such a "character pushed to their limits" song. Imagine it before the nightless city. The first scream, as Wen Ning and Wen Qing walk away. The chanting as he lies there, unable to move, praying for them to be well. Memories of people he loves: Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli, Lan Zhan, the Wen siblings.

"Was I really seeking good, or just seeking attention?" -- as he looks at the burial mounds and leaves.

"If I cannot succeed, Fiero, saving you, I promise no good deed will I attempt to do again." -- as he learns about Wen Qing and Wen Ning's death.

Ending with him arriving at Nightless city and pulling out the flute.

I want to see it animated so much!

My skills are so annoyingly not up to the task. Maybe if my hyperfixation survives long enough that I learn drawing and animating things well? It'll be the third mdzs animatic I really wish to do one day. Maybe one day.

[immobiliter]

so it's not entirely clear how many of focalors' memories furina actually retained once she was separated from her divine self, and there are two pieces of evidence to suggest that she has very few, if any at all — firstly, that when neuvillette quizzes her about egeria and the stone slates at the start of act 5, she genuinely seems to know nothing about egeria or the nature of the sin that she committed against celestia ( she had no reason to really lie to neuvillette at that point, especially as this is in the aftermath of poisson and the final straw for him to put her on trial to get some answers ), where we in fact know that focalors was one of egeria's oceanid familiars, wanted to be human herself and was her successor after egeria perished during the cataclysm, and second, that focalors specifically describes to neuvillette that when she separated her divine and human selves, she "left behind only a self that was as naive and bewildered as my past self on her first day as a human being."

but furina does have the knowledge of the prophecy before focalors explains it to her more fully in the mirror, saying that it's in her head but she doesn't know why. so, in trying to reconcile all of this, i lean towards the idea that focalors left behind certain vague memories, the two key ones being that of the prophecy and an understanding that she needed to bring the hydro sovereign to the court of fontaine, but without any context in order to preserve the idea that, for the most part, furina was operating completely in the dark in terms of focalors' plan

so furina enters into her position as hydro archon with considerable gaps in her memory ( and, due to being a human with an unnaturally elongated life span rather than being a species or divine creature who is naturally long lived, has memory issues later down the line, but that's a separate meta ), and, as a result, she does an incredible amount of research into the archons, celestia and her role in teyvat. i don't think it was a coincidence or just a fun joke that, in her demo, furina imitates all of the other archons we'd met up until that point — she confesses to the traveler before her trial that at one point she had agents all over teyvat and i think some of this was intelligence gathering concerning how archons governed in other nations. furina became archon in the immediate aftermath of the cataclysm and the death of fontaine's previous archon without any memories of focalors' life as egeria's confidante and familiar, so was already at a huge disadvantage in those early years of her rule

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

i finished night on the galactic railroad!! :3

ahh ……. it made me tear up a little bit towards the end but i stayed strong :’)) suchhhh a lovely book. this was my first time reading miyazawa but now i completely understand why he’s so beloved ……..

his writing is . soooooo so pretty 🥹🥹 the imagery in this had me feeling so inspired and just…….. awestruck? the foreword mentions that miyazawa viewed space as an emotional landscape, not a cold vacuum, and….. that resonated with me so deeply when i was reading. his descriptions of the galaxy and all the things campanella and giovanni encounter on their trip were just so, so beautiful….. his use of imagery is so insanely gorgeous….. liquid moonlight and stardust and phosphorescent crackles…….

the atmosphere of it all was just so wonderful to me :’) the train, and all the glowing lights, the melancholy and joy and the feeling that something isn’t quite as it should be ………………

i already knew about The Twist before reading, which. i think!!! actually added to the experience a lot. it made everything feel very bittersweet from the beginning….. an inevitable ending of sorts :’) it was just really good!!!!!!!!! from the prose to the dialogue to the story itself!!!!!!! the theme of true happiness and how it must be located in the stars…. i really really enjoyed my time with this book. calling it a comfort read feels a little wrong but…. it was just very comforting somehow……..……

”i think i understand how that scorpion must have felt… if it would make people happy, i wouldn’t mind if my whole body burned to ashes.”

^ my favorite quote <3

[auxilioooo]

Five is the Magic Number pt 4

[barkingbarghest]

Realizing how I've always had a soft spot for characters who struggle with their anger and violently lashing out. I'm sure that means something, but for now just filing it away for future use.

[invinciblerodent]

I can't seem to stop starting new playthroughs

so here's Phyridia/Phyr "I also slept with a god and have a city for a last name Gale, you're not that fucking special" of Warford, an actual DnD character I've played for a while

[kanerallels]

Ship ask game: kanera (I reallly like how you write them)

First sentence: “Oh come ON!”

(that is so sweet you have no idea how much that means!! Thank you!!)

“Oh, come ON!”

Kanan glanced up from cleaning his blaster at Hera’s irritated growl, following it to where she was working on some of the wiring underneath the console. “You doing okay there?”

“Fine,” Hera said, sliding out from underneath it with a huff of annoyance. “The com system is just giving me a little trouble.” 

“Nothing the legendary Hera Syndulla can’t handle,” Kanan said, shooting her a grin. “Captain of Phoenix Squadron, hero of the Rebel Alliance—”

“Oh, don’t start,” Hera said, but Kanan didn’t miss the sparkle of amusement in her eyes. “You’re distracting me from my actual work.”

“And you like it.”

“Don’t push it, love.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”