#His Black Wings full text pdf

[afra-blueraz]

Once Upon Dreams and Nightmares

Event by @bluebird-dolly-bride Story and Artwork by me

Download PDF version of Cursed Soul story here.

Read text version of Cursed Soul:

====Cursed Soul====

She was cursed on the way to find love. She was a free fairy in the sky and was flying, but her wings were torn.

Her bright love turned into a dark curse. Her wings disappeared into the sky.

She was a fairy of love but she was cursed. Her heart and soul were trapped by a dark curse.

Once upon a time, a beautiful fairy named Yuna lived in the green forests of the great land of Gilan. Birds were singing in this forest and the scent of spring flowers was spread everywhere.

Gilan was like a heaven. The heaven where Yuna lived since her birth and has dedicated her love and heart to it. This heaven was Yuna's home and her motherland, and Yuna had a happy life there. She always smiles. A smile that was a sign of happiness in her heart. She always flew in the sky and laughed in freedom.

Yuna's name was taken from her pure heart. Just as her mother whispered her loving lullaby in her ear when she was born, so that she would always remember her daughter to be in love and to love so that she could keep her heavenly land alive with her pure love.

"Never forget my beautiful daughter. This land is alive only with love. If pure love disappears in this land,this whole world will burn like a cursed heart and soul.'

Yuna's life in the forest was good and sweet until one day the forest guards caught an intruder. Yuna went to meet that intruder. Yuna should have been angry, but she couldn't be angry with the look in that boy's innocent eyes.

"You entered my territory without permission and stole. Do you know that stealing is a very bad thing?"

With a childish and innocent voice, Yuna tried to pretend to be angry in front of that boy.

"Please don't punish me. My family is very poor and needs help."

The boy was shaking with fear. He was tired and hungry and his whole body was wounded. Looking at that boy, Yuna could no longer be angry. She took the boy in her arms and flew through the skies to bring him to safety and heal his wounds.

After reaching a safe place, Yuna healed the boy's wounds with her magical power. All the while, the boy was looking at her with a warm smile, which made Yuna blush with embarrassment.

"I forgive you today. But if you enter my territory again and steal from here, rest assured, I will punish you."

Yuna warned the boy in a hoarse voice while trying to hide her embarrassment. She was lost watching the boy's eyes all the time and could not steal her gaze from his shining eyes.

"You are very beautiful. When I look at your black hair and dark eyes, it is as if I entered the night sky and the stars accompany me."

While looking at Yuna with a warm smile, the boy tried to express his love to her, which made Yuna shy and hide her face with her wings. He was a child but his words were very beautiful and full of love. Maybe this love is what her mother told Yuna all the time.

"Umm.... Oh.... Thank you. Your eyes are also beautiful. They are the color of pink roses. It's like I'm walking in a flower garden when I look into your eyes."

Yuna smiled at the boy with her face flushed with embarrassment. She didn't know anything about love, but she knew that these words could easily make him love.

"May I have the honor of knowing the name of this beautiful lady?"

The boy looked at Yuna with bright eyes and was waiting for his answer.

"Ummm...my name is...Yuna."

"In the sense of kindness. So is that why you forgave my sin? Because you have a pure and kind heart."

Yuna frowned at the boy. She was still upset with him. Yuna has protected this land with her heart and soul, she cannot easily allow anyone to enter it and steal from it.

"I forgive you. But on the condition that you promise not to steal from here again. This land is my whole life and I don't want to lose it."

This was the promise Yuna took from that boy, but she did not know that this promise would not be true.

Years passed and Yuna grew bigger and bigger with the love and dream of that boy and became the most beautiful fairy in Gilan. A fairy who took care of the forests with all her might.

The boy Yuna fell in love with grew up. But his heart was filled with worldly greed every day. Every day Yuna watched him serve the king to get gold and money, and this set Yuna's heart on fire because Yuna's heart belonged to that boy and Yuna lived with love for him.

Yuna longed to meet her lover again, to see his shining eyes again, and to caress his golden hair, and to lay her head on his shoulders again and dream sweet dreams.

Yuna wanted to see her lover again so she asked him to meet again. The boy came, but not with a smile, with armor and a sword, and this time it was Yuna's smile that slowly faded.

Yuna always remembers that sweet and kind boy in her dreams who was wounded and asked for help, but it seems that that kind boy has been destroyed. He is now a king, a king who wants to capture all the magic of Gilan.

On that fateful day, Yuna lost two important things in her life. The wings with which she flew freely above the clouds and laughed. and her love Yuna lost her pure love and her heart was caught by a dark curse of anger and hatred. A curse that only sought revenge and forgot love.

Yuna lived in the dark all the time and was waiting for the opportunity. A chance to set the heart of the king who was once her lover on fire to get revenge. To taste the bitter taste of loneliness.

Years passed and the king had a daughter and named her after Yui for her purity and kindness. The girl was as beautiful as her father. Her pink and bright eyes were shining in the sun, reminiscent of pink roses in gardens, and her golden hair was a reflection of the bright sun.

On the birthday of the king's daughter, everyone gathered from all over the land with expensive gifts to congratulate the king's beautiful daughter on her birthday. Everyone came until it was dark. Yuna came out of the darkness to present the hidden gift of all these lonely years to her former lover's daughter.

"You are beautiful just like the sun. But this sun will only shine for 16 years and you will fall into deep sleep on your 16th birthday and only your true lover can wake you up."

This was the curse of Yuna's soul. A curse that had plunged her heart and soul into darkness and erased love from her heart.

Yui was entrusted to the guardians of the forest to take care of her until she grows up and reaches her 16th birthday and everyone finds a way to break the spell.

Yui was a happy and kind child. She runs in the forest every day and fills the forest with happiness with her bright eyes and warm smile. These smiles and happiness are reminiscent of a fairy who runs and laughs like Yui in the woods.

Yuna watched her from the shadows and secretly laughed with Yui's beautiful and sweet smiles and admired her kindness. This kind and pure girl cannot be the daughter of that greedy king.

Yui fell down many times in the forest, but Yuna helped her secretly in the shadows. Even Yuna herself did not know why she did this, but she knew that this girl's heart was different. Her heart sees everything and loves everything.

Yuna followed Yui all the time and watched her secretly. She laughed with her smiles and fell into her childhood dreams with her happiness.

Who was this girl and how could she light up the fairy's heart that was in darkness.

One day Yui heard a voice from among the trees. She knew that one person helped her and watched her all the years of her life.

"Please come out of the shadows. Don't be afraid of me. I want to be your friend."

With an innocent voice and smile, Yui asked Yuna to come out of the shadows and asked her to be friend.

"I am not afraid of you. But if you see me, you will be afraid of me."

"I'm not afraid of you. I want to be your friend. Please come out. I'll see you."

Yuna came out of the shadows with slow steps and showed herself to the girl who had been watching her for years. Yuna expected Yui to be afraid of her, but Yui's smile is brighter than before.

"You are very beautiful. Your black hair and dark eyes are like the sky full of stars and shining."

Yui's words were familiar. These words were just like her father's words, so maybe she is like her father. Is it possible that this girl will change in the future and become greedy like her father? So it is better that she falls into eternal sleep at the age of 16.

But something is different about Yui. Something that makes Yuna's heart beat faster than before and she is always eager to see Yui's beautiful and bright smile. Even if it is popular to hide in the shadows for this purpose.

A feeling was coming alive in Yuna that Yuna had forgotten for a long time.

"Let's be friends. I want to stay by your side. Because you took care of me."

Yui stayed with Yuna and slept in her arms at night.

"If you're a fairy, why don't you have wings?"

"I used to have wings, but they were stolen from me."

Yui looked at Yuna with a bitter smile. She seemed to understand her sadness. She gently wrapped her small arms around Yuna's neck and hugged her. Yui's embrace was warm, just like spring.

"I'm sorry you lost your wings."

"It doesn't matter, Yui."

Yuna could not control herself. Tonight was the night of Yui's 16th birthday, Yui was supposed to fall into a deep sleep soon.

Yuna didn't know the reason for these feelings, but she knew that she didn't want to lose Yui. Yuna's heart was beating faster than before and tears were flowing from her eyes.

Yui's eyes slowly closed and Yui fell into a deep sleep in Yuna's arms. A dream that might mean eternal sleep and Yuna cant see her smile again.

Tears fell from Yuna's eyes. She never wanted this. She wanted to take revenge on the person she thought was her lover, but he was not true love.

"Yui please wake up. Open your eyes. Let me see your smile again."

Yuna hugs Yui's lifeless body and cries alone, she has lost true love this time. The love that broke the curse of her heart.

"Yui, I'm sorry. I was so deep in anger and darkness that I didn't understand what real love is. I still don't know what real love is. I only knew one thing. My life was beautiful with love. With your love that made me smile with your bright eyes every day.

I lost my wings but when you smile at me I fly again. Yui, I know you won't forgive me, but let me tell you, there won't be a day in my life that I won't miss you. I lost my wings but you gave them back to me. You were my wings, Yui."

Tears fell on Yui's face and Yui slowly opened her eyes. It was like a miracle. But this was not a miracle, but love.

"Can I stay with you forever"

"Yes, Yui. Yes, stay by my side. I want you to be my wings."

My mother used to tell me about the beauty of love.

You gave me that love.

Stay by my side and be the wings of my life.

[afy2018]

Going Through Changes Ch. 1

[Aug. 24th, 2020]

It was very early, that Monday morning, when Sara woke up. The curtain, being partially closed, revealed the sun’s strong rays. She glanced over to her roommate, Samantha Santos, who was still sound asleep. Sara slid out of her bed and quietly got changed, taking a moment to turn off her alarm so it would not go off. She grabbed her bag and books before swiping her wallet, keys, and phone. It was almost completely quiet in the dorms. She could hear some muffled conversations as she made her way down the hall. There was a student in the lobby, working as a campus officer and another working the desk.

Sara waved and continued to the cafeteria. The campus had a few students walking around, but most were either already in class or just getting ready for another early morning class. Even the breeze was calm and tired, barely grazing through the trees. The building’s lights were still on like stars to pave the way through the university. Sara gazed at the stars that still lightly speckled the sky. She tried to find the familiar constellations before they disappeared into the daylight.

Sara made her way into the cafeteria where there were only five other students getting breakfast as they waited for their day to begin. Sara walked in line to buy a breakfast burrito and a bottle of orange juice.

She peeled back the thin shiny wrapper and made her way to her classroom. There were more students walking around as she made her way through the campus and to the F Building. The professor’s offices were mostly dark with only one person in their room - that Sara could see. She made her way to her classroom. Still fifteen minutes ahead, Sara walked into the almost empty classroom. Her Professor stood at the podium-desk next to his notes and a pile of syllabi, just waiting to start the new semester. Professor Wright was a portly old man with a bulbous nose that hooked at the end. His dark eyes were full of life as he waited for the lecture hall to fill up and the hour to pass over.

Sara sat in the middle of the hall as the seats around her quickly filled up. She was surprised to see the number of women in the class. From what she could see, there was about one girl for every three boys in there with her. The moment the thin black minute hand on the clock at the back of the classroom ticked over the twelve, Professor Wright sprung to life.

“Good morning class. Welcome back.” He called out to his students. “I would like to start with those on the waitlist. Raise your hands so I can see… who or how many I need to add,” He quickly corrected, counting the seven students on the waitlist. “Okay. After class come up and I’ll email you the add code. Now,” He sighed, grabbing a stack of papers, “time for my favorite part, the syllabus.” He handed it to a blonde boy up in the front of the row and walked back to his desk. “Now, I have a PDF on canvas if there aren’t enough to go around. The important dates and my office hours are on the front. My rules of the classroom are on the second page, my recommended resources- all free- are listed in the very back. In the middle, you will find the description for your Final, your Midterm, and your three research papers. There isn’t any homework for this class. Show up to the lectures and you will pass. I take attendance once that hand reaches 8:00. If you are late to class because of reasons you cannot control, call, text, and email in that order with evidence Like hospital wrist band, pictures of your car troubles, et cetera. Any questions?”

A few students began to ask questions. Someone asked about the way he wanted the assignments turned in, another asked about the late policy. As important as these questions and answers were, Sara felt like something was off. She glanced around the slanted beige room and found a pair of dark chocolate eyes watching her. Her father had always taught her to be vigilant to any threat, especially on campus, but as she glanced at the person staring at her, she just nodded in their direction, feeling no malice, just curiosity from them.

There was a young woman with dark brown hair pulled back in a tight bun. She had tan golden skin that was mostly covered with by a dark green sweatshirt that said “CCRI Knights”; the rest was too small for Sara to read. The woman quickly glanced at another student in the room with her, twirling her pencil around her fingers.

Sara tore her gaze away from her and focused back on her professor. Wright was talking about his thoughts on social media for some reason, making Sara wish she’d learned the context to this rant. By studying how he spoke, Sara could tell that this guy was a rambler as the reviews on Rate My Professor had warned, but he was the highest rated professor for this class, so she decided that she’d just have to sit through it. Of all types of professors to have, “The Rambler” was not the worst kind at all.

Lost in her thoughts, Sara missed whatever Professor Wright had said to end the class. She quickly gathered her belongings and headed to the cafeteria. On her way there, she passed by the art wing. There was a glinting and sparkling piece that caught her eye from one of the hallways. She followed the way down, taking a quick moment to explore the small art garden.

There was a large glittering glass mosaic wall. It was a beautiful piece reflecting the native flora and fauna of New Jersey. There was a deer and a fox by the river with a fish hopping out. The colors were beautiful, with iridescent glass on the birds and trees, bronze for the deer, and a fiery amber for the fox.

Sara glanced at her phone to check the time, she still had an hour and forty minutes until her next class, great to get food from Jeepers. She headed back out of the art garden and to the casual restaurant. Sara had been there before because it came with her meal plan. Jeepers was a fun place with a lot of seating for the students. She kind of wondered how busy it was going to be.

Walking into Jeepers, Sara spotted a familiar face by the windows on the barstool. It was that girl in the forest green sweater. Even though her back was turned to her, Sara could still tell it was her. She decided to grab a bite before the lines got too long and sit next to her. They could swap numbers just in case either of them missed a class.

Sara walked in line and ordered an Asian chicken wrap, grabbed a bag of original Skinny Pop, a banana, and a bottle of water. She waited behind a string bean guy who could not have been any taller than Sara herself. He had a slight frame with messy brown hair. When he turned to look back at Sara, she first noticed his thick sharp brown eyebrows, then his wide and inviting smile.

“Hey.” He greeted.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

The young man shrugged and grabbed his food. “Pretty good. I just got out of my first college class.” He finished with an excited smile.

Sara couldn’t help but smile back. “So this is your first year?” She asked paying for her meal.

“Yeah! I’m Barry, Barry Allen.” He introduced, quickly reaching over to shake her hand.

“Hey, Barry, I’m Sara Lance.” She smiled. “I’m a Junior here.”

“Really?”

“Yup.” She answered, taking her food and thanking the cashier. “Did you get the turkey club?”

“Yeah, why?”

“No reason.” She shrugged, “Bye Barry.”

“Wait, why?” He asked again.

Sara chuckled to herself, just pulling his leg. She walked to the window where her classmate was sitting and took the spot to her left. The girl looked at Sara, tearing her focus away from the textbook in front of her.

“Hey, you’re in my Ethics class right?” Sara inquired.

“Yeah, I’m Nyssa.” She greeted, closing her book.

“Sara, without an H.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“So Criminal Justice major, too?”

“Yeah. I’m here for my masters before I join the UN Security Force.”

“Same here, but I want to join the CIA or the FBI. What’s the UN Security Force?”

“The part I want to join in is the Blue Berets, it’s their armed forces. They’re also known as the Peacekeepers. They help protect people like the victims of African raiders and ISIS.”

“Wow.”

“What about you?”

“I want to become an agent. Hey, do you want to swap numbers, you know just in case one of us misses class?”

“Oh, yeah, sounds good to me.”

Sara reached into her backpack and pulled out a pencil and pad of sticky notes. She quickly jotted down her phone number, email, and name before peeling it off and handing it to Nyssa.

“So what’s CCRI?” She asked while entering the number into her phone.

“Community College of Rhode Island.”

“Oh wow, that’s a long ways away.”

“Yeah, but I really wanted to get out of there,” Nyssa sighed. “What about you. Where are you from?”

“New York.”

“Wow, I’ve always wanted to go there! What’s it like?”

“I mean, it’s a mix. One moment you’re in the city and the next you’re in the suburban hills, then you’re in another state. What about Rhode Island, I’ve never been there.”

“I mean, really it’s a tiny state that it mostly a bay then another state almost right away.” She joked, glancing at the clock on her phone. “Well, I have to go. I’ll see you around, Sara.”

“See you, Nyssa.” Sara smiled, not partaking in her meal as Nyssa walked away.

As Nyssa walked away, Sara’s phone went off in her pocket. A text lit up from her phone with the message “Hey Sara, it’s Nyssa.”

Sara texted back, “Hey, dude”, before adding her into her contacts as, ‘Nyssa (The Cute Girl)’. She glanced at her phone and continued to eat her lunch.

~~~~~~~~~~

It was her third and final class of the day and Sara was actually kind of glad. She walked to the building and went down the hallway to her last class. She was glad to have ceramics between her major classes because it was a nice break. Sara walked into the classroom and sat down in the middle with a few other students. She set up her belongings, getting ready to write down her schedule and organized her planner, highlighting the two syllabi she placed on her desk. Someone tapped on her shoulder, making Sara glance up at them. It was Nyssa again. Sara quickly moved her backpack out of the chair next to her and smiled up at her.

“You stalking me, Nyssa?” She joked.

“I mean you saved me a spot.” She taunted back. “Were you expecting me?”

Sara chuckled and went back to fixing her planner as their teacher spoke to a few students. She glanced at her phone, two minutes before class, and their professor had already begun to hand out the syllabus and a few other papers. Once they made their round to Sara and Nyssa, it seemed that the extra papers were meant to introduce the students to their teacher. It was a Getting-to-Know-You page off of the internet. Sara filled out the survey and re-read her answers again.

“Alright, I want you to go to seven people and learn their name and one thing off of that paper.” He proclaimed, sitting back in his chair.

Sara turned to Nyssa and asked, “What was your first pet’s name?”

“Levi, he was a frog. What about you?”

“I had a Canary named Tweedie.”

“Like Tweety bird?”

“Yeah.” Sara chuckled writing Nyssa’s answer by the question.

She then went to a six other classmates of hers, learning that a boy named Nicola was born in Montana, a girl named Denise is a Pisces, another boy named James wanted to be a farmer growing up, Rachel has four siblings, Evan would want to rename himself, Charles, and Alex played bass in a Math-Rock band. It was fun, much more fun than Sara thought it would be. She was glad that she could keep the paper, it was interesting to learn more about her peers. As their class ended, they packed their belongings and began out the door.

“Hey, Nyssa, you wanna get something to eat at the cafeteria?” Sara asked, trying to catch up with her.

“Oh, yeah.”

“So, judging by your community college, I’m guessing that you’re not a local.” Sara wondered on their way.

“Yeah, I’m staying in University Court.”

“Really? Me, too. I’m in building 8.”

“Building 2.”

“So, what are you getting?”

“I haven’t tried their pasta choices yet.” Nyssa shrugged.

“Might I recommend the manicotti? It’s stuffed with ricotta and Italian sausage. It’s really filling.”

“How much do you get?” Nyssa asked pulling out her wallet.

“Like,” Sara began trying to size it up with her hands, “this big, and you get two.”

“Wow… I mean I’ve never had the manicotti?”

“Yeah, and they’re really good. Especially the ones they make here.”

“I think I’ll get it then. What about you?”

Sara glanced at the menu and shrugged. “I’m gonna get a burrito, or… nah, I’ll just stick with a Ceasar salad. After this, we should head back to the dorms.”

“Oh, why?”

“They close at 8:30.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s in, like, fifteen minutes.” Nyssa nodded before going up to order.

“So,” Sara began, unfolding a paper in her pocket, “while our food’s getting ready. ‘What is your favorite holiday?’”

“The questionnaire?”

“Yup.”

“Halloween. You?”

“Christmas.”

“Wasn’t one of the questions, like, what’s your least favorite holiday?”

“Yeah, mine’s Christmas again.”

“Why?”

Because my birthday’s Christmas day and it’s kind of annoying to constantly be compared to Jesus by religious friends, the antichrist by regular friends, and a Christmas miracle by distant family.”

“I bet you only got Christmas presents, too. Not much of a birthday celebration?”

“Yeah. No parties either because everyone traveled for the holidays.”

“So,” Nyssa asked glancing at the paper. “You can hotwire a car?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you learn that?”

“From some friends in high school.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. What’s a weird fact about you?”

“Well, it’s not really weird more as it’s just a fact about me.”

“Anything will do.”

“Well, I did jujitsu until high school.”

“Really? Why’d you stop?” Sara asked grabbing their food.

“I started wrestling. It became too much to play a sport and do another one outside of school. Did you play any sports in high school?”

“No, but I did use to fight. It helped that had learned some basic skills from my dad.”

“Wait, like fist fighting?”

“Yeah, I’d fight for money.”

“Wow, were you good?”

“My stats were pretty good. I could beat most people, but I wasn’t great, just had a lot of stamina.”

“I did not expect that from you, you look like… well like…”

“A princess? Yeah, just to the public, but in private I’m not so nice and proper.” She joked.

“Are you a secret queen of underground fighting rings?”

“Depends, are you gonna 21 Jump Street me?”

Nyssa rolled her eyes and took a bite of the manicotti. “Oh wow, that’s pretty damn good!”

“I know right?” Sara chuckled looking at the paper again. “So, we did one weird fact, siblings?”

“I have an older sister, Talia, and a younger brother, Saracon.” She told her, rounding the corner to University Court.

“I have an older sister, too, Laurel.”

“So what’s she up to?”

“She’s a lawyer. Right now she’s working for a small company. Last time she texted me, she said that she was getting ready for her first case defending a divorce settlement.”

“Wow, my sister works for my Dad’s business and my brother’s kind of AWOL, well to my dad and Talia, that is. My turn.” Nyssa said changing the subject to look at the paper. “If you could rename yourself what would it be?”

“Sara with an H.”

“So people don’t-”

“Don’t get my name wrong, yeah. What about you?”

“Amaal, I don’t know I just wrote down a random name.”

“Why Amaal first?”

“It’s a common name in my community.” She shrugged as they came upon the dorms. “Well, this is my stop.”

“Mine, too.”

“See you on Wednesday?”

“Yeah, I’m not planning on dropping any classes, so.”

“Alright, night, Sara without an H.”

“Night, Amaal,” Sara smirked, going to her dorm.

She went into the dorm and began to room 124. She took out her card key and placed it against the sensor, waiting for the beep, the green light, and the sound of the lock clicking out of place. She walked into the low lit room to see her roommate and “Big Sister” Sam Santos on her bed with her blankets pulled up her legs, her laptop slapped onto her stomach as she typed something onto the keyboard. Her hood was pulled over her head. She glanced around her device at Sara and gave her a large smile and closed the lid. Sam sat up and took a swig from her hydro flask.

“How was the first day?”

“Good. I met a new student who’s in my first and last class.”

“Cool.”

“What about you?”

“Very easy, so far.” She smirked brandishing her laptop.

“When’s your next class?”

“Well I have an online lecture at 9 and then an art class at noon, and finally my history classes back to back from 2 to 6.”

“I have the same schedule.”

“I don’t know how you do the early bird-night owl schedule.” Sam huffed.

“I enjoy it. Hey, when’s our first meeting?”

“It’s Sunday at noon. We have to sign up for shifts for Club Day.”

“Don’t we also have to elect a new leader?”

“Oh yeah, well, in the Spring.”

“Ally texted me that she wanted to start early.” Sara inquired, looking at her phone. “Dina said that they were talking about it… anyway, I don’t know though.”

“They’ll decide soon enough.” Sam sighed looking down at her laptop and opened it up again. “Oh, so about your new friend, what’s she like?”

“She’s nice and weirdly serious and laid back at the same time.”

“Sounds mysterious.”

“I don’t know about that. She’s a criminal justice major like myself,” Sara shrugged pulling on her pajamas, “she seems kind of nerdy though.”

“Sounds like a good girl,” Sam noted peeking up from her laptop.

Sara paused halfway pulling her shirt on. “It’s not like that.”

“Okay, okay, that’s not what you said about Riley Appletree.”

“First of all, it’s Riley Oglesbee. Second, he wasn’t too bad.”

“He was one of the messiest people I had ever met.”

“I liked him, he was really nice.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah… we went out to sushi a lot.” Sara shrugged.

“You liked him because he took you out for food and bought you stuff.”

“Yup.” She huffed sliding onto her bed.

“Honestly, I don’t blame you… but I do judge you.” Sam chuckled opening up a bag of kettle corn Popchips.

“You know I can’t let just you eat those.”

“I know.” She nodded scooting over for Sara.

[themedialive]

*[AUDIOBOOK] The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Suchen Sie dieses Buch?  Two Roads By Joseph Bruchac

 Book Excerpt :

A boy discovers his Native American heritage in this Depression-era tale of identity and friendship by the author of Code TalkerIt's 1932, and twelve-year-old Cal Black and his Pop have been riding the rails for years after losing their farm in the Great Depression. Cal likes being a knight of the road with Pop, even if they're broke. But then Pop has to go to Washington, DC--some of his fellow veterans are marching for their government checks, and Pop wants to make sure he gets his due--and Cal can't go with him. So Pop tells Cal something he never knew before: Pop is actually a Creek Indian, which means Cal is too. And Pop has decided to send Cal to a government boarding school for Native Americans in Oklahoma called the Challagi School.At school, the other Creek boys quickly take Cal under their wings. Even in the harsh, miserable conditions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, he begins to learn about his people's history and heritage. He learns their language and

 >>> START READING NOW

"This book is available for download in a number of formats - including epub, pdf, azw, mobi and more. You can also read the full text online using our Ereader."

 #POPULARBOOK, #KINDLE, #NICEBOOKS2020

[cosmopolitanlocation]

*[AUDIOBOOK] Under the Whispering Door

sykje jo dit boek?  Two Roads By Joseph Bruchac

 Book Excerpt :

A boy discovers his Native American heritage in this Depression-era tale of identity and friendship by the author of Code TalkerIt's 1932, and twelve-year-old Cal Black and his Pop have been riding the rails for years after losing their farm in the Great Depression. Cal likes being a knight of the road with Pop, even if they're broke. But then Pop has to go to Washington, DC--some of his fellow veterans are marching for their government checks, and Pop wants to make sure he gets his due--and Cal can't go with him. So Pop tells Cal something he never knew before: Pop is actually a Creek Indian, which means Cal is too. And Pop has decided to send Cal to a government boarding school for Native Americans in Oklahoma called the Challagi School.At school, the other Creek boys quickly take Cal under their wings. Even in the harsh, miserable conditions of the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school, he begins to learn about his people's history and heritage. He learns their language and

 >>> START READING NOW

"This book is available for download in a number of formats - including epub, pdf, azw, mobi and more. You can also read the full text online using our Ereader."

 #AMZBOOKS, #PDB, #NICEBOOKS2020

[originaldetectivesheep]

A Life of Riley Part 1 - The Problem With Grinckles ch 6

Chapter 5

VI

I leaned back and hit Send; the formatting on my Differential Equations homework had finally turned out all correct the third time I'd printed it, so I could send the PDF over to my professor and be done for the day.  Two hours of math and then another two and a half hours beating LaTeX with a rock to do up all the formulas so they looked like something, but I was done all my math for the weekend before five on Saturday. I was golden; plenty of time to eat dinner, see what was good on my groups, then hit up someone's party or go down to the bars on Sperry Street and try to hook up.  I still had a couple microwaves problems that needed tightening up, but I could handle those tomorrow; tonight was tonight, and tonight was all mine.

As I logged out of the lab terminal and stood up, I saw Sajitha waving at me through the glass out in the corridor.  I waved back, unconcerned, but she was still there in the same place after I made my way out, dropping the test prints into the recycling bucket.  "Hey, Saj," I said by way of trying to figure out what was going on, "what's up? Are you looking for me for something?"

She shook her head, still falling in next to me as I walked down the hall.  "Kind of," she said, "but not really.  Are you going over to the lab?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't have anything to do over there tonight.  I was just going to go grab dinner, probably at the Zussman caf, and see where it was going off tonight.  You?"

"The caf? Under Zussman?  Are you into the shredded green-bean sludge they put on everything or something?  Don't you live like just the other side of the parking lot behind the ChemE lab barn?  Why the caf when it's that close to go home?  Did you just forget to buy food or something?"

"No, I am kinda running low," I said, "but you don't have to eat the green-bean casserole slurry they give you if you don't want to, and actually mostly I'm trying to avoid this chick Laura from the complex; if I go home and do some ramen she'll be sniffing around to 'pregame' with her friends, and then we'll end up getting blasted and hook up while they go out.  Normally I wouldn't mind, but I'm feeling good and I actually want to do something tonight, not just get drunk watching TV and have bad vodka sex.  I mean, it's been a good day, and I got a feeling it's going to be a good night – how about I bag the caf, and we go down and tear it up at the Scottsdale till we score or get kicked out?"

"I want to go out," she said, stepping up right in next to me, "but I have something that I have to finish drawing out for Riley – some kind of stupid STOVL wing part – and I was hoping that you were going that way so I could ask you to walk me across the quad; there's some weird protest there tonight and I've been hearing bad things about it."

"Some kind of wack protest?" I said, turning to look her over critically.  "Bad shit?  What the hell is it?  The Black Bloc? Frog nazis?  And you want me to walk you over?  Saj, you'd be beating them up for me. Why not text Remy?"

Sajitha rolled her eyes and sighed a mighty sigh.  "First, Remy has a meet against Tech this weekend, so he's in Grabau Green getting kicked in the face.  And second, even if he was around, I wouldn't want to encourage him."  I wisely refrained from commenting about how she knew a hell of a lot about his schedule, for a dude that she didn't want to encourage interest in.  "And I know I can take care of myself; it's just for insurance.  I don't think it's frog nazis, but if it is, I want to just go to the lab, and not to jail because I shoved some CompEng incel weeaboo's tiki torch so far up his ass it knocked his teeth out.  They won't start if I'm not alone."

I nodded.  "Okay, okay.  I get you, and it's not that far out of the way.  No problem." I stuck my hands in my pockets, maybe unconsciously imitating Remy's fighter's strut.  "And if there's really a protest that's going to turn bad, I'm kind of curious about it – I don't think I've ever seen a riot in real life."

Sajitha shuddered.  "Yeah, that's a good thing.  You really don't want to, trust me.  But this one, it's probably not going to be a real riot, people throwing bricks at the cops shooting rubber bullets and stuff.  It's not that kind of protest – not political, no counterprotest at least that I've heard about, just talk that it would get taken over for a prank."  I could tell she was shaken up about the possibility of a riot, because she didn't even glare at me as I held the door open ahead of her.

"A prank?" I asked.  "Who the hell takes over a protest as a prank?  What the heck kind of protest even lets itself in for something like that?  Are you sure you're getting accurate information?"

Sajitha took a deep breath as we left the library path onto the main road over towards the engineering quad.  "A protest put up by amateurs who don't know how to read people who pretend to offer help. Listen, I haven't told a lot of people about this, but back freshman year I rushed one of the desi sororities for like thirty seconds, just so that I could show my parents that it wasn't ever going to happen, and I still talk to a couple of the girls who did make it in. Someone working in the admin office like Tuesday saw an application for a protest from some Anti-Grinckle Askari thing that didn't exist two weeks ago, Comic Sans and formal, non-native English, and they approved it as a joke – and told their frat buddies, who told all their other frat buddies, and now it's like all around the frats that they're going to show up and take over this protest, and with everyone drunk off their ass after that football game, if it even happens it's not going to go well.  It's probably not going to go Nazi, but how do you even tell these days – and I spend too much time around the AP lab to not just keep thinking about how much worse things could get than my worst-case scenario."

I was thinking.  "Grinckles again – and askari, that's Swahili, for like 'soldier' or 'army'.  He might have gotten other people to help him, but this smells like Wilson; he told us he was going to get rid of the grinckles his way, and that we should stay out of the way, but if he's getting taken for a ride by a bunch of frat bros, I'd want to get him out of there, get him back to his senses before he gets blamed for their shit and expelled or something.  Those white-cap wastoids can just have Daddy write another full-freight check to Tech or some other school if they get kicked out, but if Wilson loses his scholarship here, that's the end: no degree, no medical boards, and he has to go back to his village and, no lie no racism, live in a house made out of mud and sticks.  Seriously; I've seen his pictures from home. We haven't spoken since that thing two weeks ago, but no way I'm going to let that happen to him."

Sajitha nodded, sticking close as we came up on the quad.  "I know.  I hope it's not – but if it is, then I guess we've got to; do you think I should maybe ping Riley and see if we can't get the rest of the lab to help?"

I turned in place; there was the start of a crowd ahead – thank god no tiki torches, and the haircuts weren't quite shitty enough for a high Nazi turnout – and I had to get this straightened out before we got any closer, up where more people might hear us.  "Not now – not right now and not except as a last resort, if everything goes completely to shit and we can't do anything.  You call for help from the lab, and Riley's going to roll up here with that cannon again, and half the dislocator rigged up as an area-denial energy weapon, and things are just going to get worse.  If we can just put a bag over Wilson's head and kick a couple bros in the stomach and get away like that, we'll do it that way, the easy and sane way, and not make this dumb rally a case for the FBI."  Sajitha nodded her agreement, and I turned back, to start leading us through the crowd of white dudes in khakis and polo shirts towards where we'd be able to do something for Wilson if he was mixed up in this.

There sure did seem to be a lot of white people here, a lot more than you got around the engineering quad generally, or at any protest that wasn't going to start heiling at you.  And while they still didn't look like Nazis, they didn't smell like the safe kind of white protestors; alcohol and meathead body spray, not patchouli oil and weed.  This was a "protest" of mostly frat bros, drunk up to their eyeballs, in it for the lulz – and you had to be real dumb to give Wilson more than a snowball's chance in this kind of crowd, especially if the cops flipped out and shit got real. There was some kind of stage set up on the steps of Dittmarsch Hall, some kind of PA set up there, and I sidled through towards it, trying to make out what was going on and also not knock over anyone's beer and start a riot before we could figure out what the hell was supposed to be happening.

There was a scree and a hiss and a squelch from the speakers up front; some idiot not knowing how to microphone, and then the confirmation for everyone who hadn't done A/V crap in high school:  "Yo dudes, y'all ready to get LIT? Are you ready to fight tha power?  Ready or not, comin' straight atcha – himself, the generalissimo, El commandante, HNIC of the AGA – come on and give it up!  Stand up, set up, get up for the Fearless – uuuurp – Leader, Eddy Wannafunzi!"  I could see the speaker gesturing now, gesturing at someone over at the side of the steps who probably was justifiably nervous about following that brain-dead, peripherally racist attempt at a hype intro.  "Get up!  Get up!  Make some noise!  Fuck the cops!"  The bros around us burst out cheering and wooting, and whoever it was hanging about getting introduced up front decided that was good enough and started to come out, the streetlights glinting off a galaxy of medals on a crazy costume-shop uniform with the brushes on the shoulders, a peaked cap so high it looked like it had been cut right out of a political cartoon.

"Good," Sajitha murmured, pressed into my back.  "It's not Wilson up there – it's not him; it's another name and there's no way he'd lose all his self-respect and go outside in a uniform like that.  Can we go now?  This rally's going to get real stupid if that's how it starts, and someone's going to get hurt."

"No," I said, craning around to see past some idiot in a white baseball hat from a pro lacrosse team, "no, that's definitely Wilson.  The name is super fake and I don't know where he got the uniform from, but that's definitely his glasses.  Go ahead and text Riley – this is about to officially get so bad that the Applied Physics lab can't make it worse."  As if on cue, a megaphone crackled to life, and Wilson's voice gruddered out over the assembled throng – crumpled up and distorted and maybe he was trying to put on a different accent, but Wilson always and all the same.

"Comrades!" he shouted, "Comrades – comrades one and all!  We are the same – we want the same thing!  We will stop the invasion – we will stop the violation against nature!  We will act – we will act united – we will act united right now!  We will kill them – we will kill all of them – we will kill all the red fish!  We can't stop – we can't even leave one alive.  Now!  Up!  Commit yourselves!  Swear it!  Hate!  Hate!  Kill!"

"Man, it's a good thing he's got his fist closed, holding it up like that, or I'd think we were really in bizarro world," I said, shoving some drunk bro out of the way so Sajitha could nudge past.  "I give it about fifteen seconds until someone yells a racial slur and the police come in with clubs – no idea how he's still talking up there."  The crowd was roiling around us, yelling incoherently at the challenge lines, occasionally making sense, but a bad kind of sense: "Yeah!  Kill!  Fuck!  Get'em!  Fuck the cops!  Revenge!" Wilson was talking about grinckles up on the stage, in a way that would whip up his audience before they realized that he was talking about fish, but down here, nobody was hearing anything about fish at all.

"Yeah! Hell yeah!  That's it!  Fight the power!"  The hype man, whoever he was, was back, and Wilson was looking confused that he was getting upstaged, that his anti-grinckle rally was getting co-opted into an anti-something else rally.  "You heard the man – you heard the man – we got to get'em – we got to get the reds!  The fish are the end of the wedge – the fish are the tip of the iceberg; you know what we need to do.  We got to get all the ching chong fish, get all the ching chong cops, get all of them, we show them who's boss!  Fight the power!  Fuck the cops!  Get the chingchongs!"  I almost stopped for a moment as the crowd exploded – the cops must be charging from some side or another, the explicit race riot incitement the last straw – trying to figure out just how and why in the hell this had suddenly turned into a riot against Asians, and then Sajitha shoved me forward.

"RIOT!!!" someone bellowed too close, and the crowd turned into a moshpit, and I was getting rammed forward like the prow of an icebreaker, Sajitha's shoulder in my back.  Dudes were punching other dudes, going flying past and above and around us, randoms screaming, and it was all I could do to defend myself.  "I hope you like your riot now," she said, still shoving, "because this is going to feel like makeouts from a starstuck freshman next to what's going to happen in a moment.  Please, help shove, so we can get to your stupid, stupid friend before they open up with tear gas."  "GAS GAS GAS!" someone screamed, either because they heard her wrong or because someone had actually gotten a whiff of pepper spray, and the riot turned into a stampede.

With more of the bros running and fewer of them fighting us, it got easier to push forward, enough to get close enough to see Wilson arguing with his hype man – close enough to see him catch a slap on the ear that unbalanced him and pitched him a nasty fall down the stairs.  I forgot Sajitha, forgot the butthole who'd just punched him in the head, and dove over to make sure he was all right – still breathing, no blood like a fracture, but his eyes were rolled back like he was concussed.  "Wilson!  Wilson!  Say something!"

"Mic DROOOOOP!" yelled the hype man from a few steps up, following it up by dropping the hot mic into a scrultching cacophony of electronic noise as it bashed itself off the steps towards me.  "You got tha powaaa!  You got to get up! You got to kill all tha dam ching-chong!"  The shithead was wearing Wilson's idiot cap and doing an accent that was probably trying to be Nigerian based on a racist comedian who'd only ever heard it second-hand, and was the shit goddamn last absolute thing we needed.  He lowered the megaphone, wavering as he looked us over, staring up and down Sajitha's figure; "Hey, baby," he said, super-obviously drunk, "what up?  You wanna slammalama-ding-dong?"  He swung his hips and leered, oblivious to the full-scale riot raging around us.

"Oh yeah," Sajitha said, slipping her right hand into her handbag, "I definitely wanna smash." She took a step forward, wiggling her shoulders to distract him, and then punched him so hard with the brass knuckles around her right fist that I saw a shower of teeth and maybe jawbone chips go flying the other way.  The hype man went down in a heap, and there was no sign of anyone stupid or brave or interested enough to avenge him anywhere close.

"How is he?"  Sajitha dropped down beside me as I tried to cradle Wilson's head, keep his feet elevated, so that at least he wouldn't get any worse and it would be obvious, if the cops broke through here, that he was a victim and not a perp.

"He's hurt bad," I said, "he went down the stairs bad and I guess he hit his head – I dunno if he's conscious yet.  Where's the help? Where's the lab?  Shit, I'd be glad to see them roll up with that goddamned cannon again, things are so bad."

"Riley's sending Carolína to get us with the truck," Sajitha answered, ripping the more obvious medals off Wilson's uniform in case someone had made him as an Idi Amin cosplayer.  "I didn't hear anything about a cannon, but you never know." Behind us, there was a squeal of tires, the roar of an engine, and then the shouts and screams of a bunch of panicked frat bros as Carolína's beat-up black Bronco skidded sideways through them to come to a stop at the foot of the stairs.  I didn't think you even could drift a Ford Bronco – that must have been something that they worked on when they put the engine back on its mounts after the cannon thing.

The passenger door popped open as if from a kick, but it wasn't Carolína hunched up so she could barely see over the wheel in the driver's seat – that was Yuping's black brush, tall and rigid way up near the roof.  The plan had changed since Sajitha got her text, obviously, but he was still a friend and we had to get while the getting was good.  I threw Wilson's arm over my shoulders to carry him over to the truck, and Sajitha rushed ahead to open the rear door and get us all bundled in.

The crowd was starting to close up around us by the time she closed the passenger door behind her and Yuping put the Bronco in gear again – a few of them maybe noticing that he was one of the ones they were supposed to hate.  "So what happened?  Is Carolína okay?"  Sajitha didn't look that concerned, but if the plan was changed now, there might be other changes later.

"She okay," Yuping said, "Riley just change driver last minute. 'Colombian learn drive too nice,' Riley say, 'because consequences. But Chinese don't take prisoner.'"  Yuping set the shifter, left hand holding the wheel in hard, then stomped on the gas, scattering frat bros like leaves before the whirlwind.  It wasn't strictly accurate – Yuping hadn't been one of those princelings immune to the laws back in China, but then again I was pretty sure that Colombians didn't actually settle every traffic argument with gunplay either – but if it got him to move like this it was good enough.  Protestors and cops alike jumped out of our way as he gunned the engine, accelerating over the footpaths to go and find a road; if he was going to drive like this, we didn't need the autocannon to get away.

Yuping parked by the loading dock behind the building that housed the AP lab after a bunch of twists and turns and ducks to make sure we'd shed all the cops, and I handed off Wilson's incriminating uniform jacket to Sajitha to throw in a dumpster while Yuping and I carried him up the stairs.  Up in the lab, Carolína had hugs and ajiaco and aguardiente for everyone and enough cardboard and spare cushions on the floor to let Wilson rest easy; Riley, by contrast, was completely occupied torch-cutting something and barely looked up as we came in.

"I don't get it, though," I said, after we'd gotten him comfortable; Wilson was stirring a little, but  it was better to let him come back to himself on his own terms, with as much chicken-potato stew and sugarcane whiskey as that would involve.  "I mean, what the shit?  Who the hell is mad about Asians in this day and age?  I mean, shit, 'ching-chong', who even says that?"

"It was kind of a bad day for them, you know," Carolína said, like she was taking part in a different conversation.  "If they didn't have Roosevelt Kang in their fantasy, it was very bad – he went off, he threw four touchdowns and ran in a fifth on a naked bootleg very late, like he was rubbing it in."

I blinked, because I wasn't sure what Wisconsin's half-Korean quarterback had to do with anything.  "Okay, yeah, that's a good day for Kang, and if the dude you were playing started him, then yeah, you got killed, but there was a lot of bros there – they couldn't all have been playing against him this week."  Sajitha and Carolína and Yuping all stared at me after that, and even Riley turned around, torch laid aside.

"Leo, we played Wisconsin today," Sajitha said at last, slowly like she couldn't believe someone was this dumb.  "At home.  We lost 45-nothing.  Roosevelt Kang squatted down and teabagged the entire campus, or at least all the people who care too much about football. Do you get it now?"  I started to get it – angry drunks who'd just gotten humiliated in their own stadium; white people, mostly, who'd seen some Asian-looking dude go yard on them at football.  It was easier to understand, but that didn't make the riot any less stupid.

"All right," I said, "I kind of get it – I can understand it, but I can't excuse it.  And shit, Wilson, what were you thinking?  I can't excuse that, getting up in front of a bunch of drunk, short-fuse white people and talking like that.  You hang around with me too much, man – you forget how like nearly all the other white people around here are."  I felt kind bad about rolling it downhill onto Wilson, blinking on the cushion pile with Carolína holding a bag of peas to the lump on his head, but he was conscious again and it really did go down to him: he didn't have to have this rally, but he did it, and one way or another everything went from there.

"I had to," he said, his voice soft and rounded at the edges, like he was half-dreaming, half-there.  "I had to – if you don't get them screaming, they just sit and scratch.  And I have to get them screaming – you didn't see, I didn't send you profile after it finished.  This 'grinckle', this thing – didn't it come from here?  This lab? The genetics is all wrong – it's all wrong backwards, it's so wrong that if I took a different course last semester, more genetic cladistics, I maybe might say it's not a fish.  What the hell?  Who makes a fish that's not a fish, then puts it on campus to walk by crutches pond to pond?  Nobody – but when it happens – only Applied Physics."

"Wilson, I – yeah, I kind of get where you're coming from.  But – why? What the hell's that supposed to get anybody?"

He shook his head, wincing from the bruise.  "I don't know.  I don't think, maybe, I can ever find out.  But there's no why – nobody else can, so when it happens, it's Applied Physics must have."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," Riley said from the corner, "but just so you know, the grinckles aren't our fish.  I've got my hands full with enough crap as it is – we're not gene-printing random new fish to get Yuping more likes.  Speaking of," – and Riley changed the subject, exactly like Riley always changed the subject, and like always this was a change for the worse that we'd all have been better off if it didn't have to happen – "Leo, don't you live in Muttonbird Terraces?"

I blinked again, afraid of what was about to come next.  "Yes. Yeah, I do.  Why?"

"You're trending local."  I immediately grabbed up my phone and punched in on the tag; everyone around me was doing the same.  Lol fire at Muttonbird – lol fratboys burning down Muttonbird – i'm live right now yall gotta see this cops shooting at houses on fire at Muttonbird – lol Muttonbird such poors many molotov.  I slumped forward.  Perfect.  The idiot frats had gotten run off the eng quad and now they were burning down my home development and fighting the cops in the ruins.  The phone buzzed, and someone was livestreaming: a cop car was rolled over, on fire against a backdrop of low-rises on fire, white-hatted assholes jumping around, shaking up and throwing beer cans like grenades, as my entire neighborhood went up in smoke.  I looked up, and I had become the lab's pity sink; even Wilson, a glass of aguardiente under his nose to sniff himself awake, was looking at me like I was a street dog begging for pats.

"Well, yeah, you're not going to be able to go home for a while after that – if there's even anywhere to go back to."  Riley cut to the chase like usual, standing up, hands on hips.  "But you're a friend of the lab, and there's always a place here for you, same as for your friend if he wants to hide out here till the heat goes down.  Sit tight for a second; I'll send Yuping out to go grab some extra cardboard, and I'll kick clear a place under the lathe in a minute or two."   Riley nodded approvingly at me, and nobody else in the lab thought there was anything wrong with it.  Excellent.  What an awesome Saturday night.  I'd made some mistakes today, but this was the dead-ass all end: a nice promising weekend with the homework all done turning into one of my best friends mauled in a riot, my place burned down, and me ending up living sleeping on the floor in the friggin Applied Physics lab was all anyone ought to need to convince themselves that no matter how bad they thought their worst-case scenario was, it could always get worse.  A lot worse.  A whole lot worse, if Riley and this crazy lab somehow happened to get involved.

back to the top, to continue to part 2

[statecryptids]

Another entry in James A.S. Lee’s “Monsters of Grenhaven”

This entry covers a mysterious entity known as “Noah’s Raven”

Full text:

“NOAH’S RAVEN

Bezu and Anna Brasselay were returning home on a cold autumn’s eve after a long day selling cloisonné at the October Market in Mystic. As they started to cross the Hetman bridge, Bezu drew the horses to a halt. In the center of the bridge crouched something large and black. Anna thought it might be an injured bear or a man in a heavy coat. Then the thing rose to a height two heads taller than a man and turned to look at them. Both merchants cried out in fright as the red-glowing eyes- round and large as the full moon- fixed on them. The apparition remained motionless, skewering them to the spot with its gaze. Then it opened a set of wings so massive that the tips touched the railings of the bridge. It then rose straight up into the air, according to Bezu’s later report to the Grenhaven Gazette. “It did not crouch and leap as a bird would,” he said. “Nor did it flap its wings. No sir, it rose straight up with legs and wings held stiff as if it was a marionette lifted on strings.”

 Such was the first known sighting of the strange flying being that would terrorize Grenhaven and surrounding farms for six months in the autumn and winter of 1887.

The beast was given many names in the beginning- Devil Bird, Devil Moth, Snollygost, Grey Scratch. But the moniker that ultimately stuck was Noah’s Raven. This unusual name has its origins in the famous dinosaur tracks that are abundant in the central valley of Connecticut. In 1802 Pliny Moody was plowing his fields in Hadley Massachusetts when he uncovered large, three-toed fossil footprints. Impressed by his find, Pliny installed the tracks as a step on his front porch and allowed the curious to come see them. Religious leaders declared that the tracks had come from the mythical raven that had been dispatched from Noah’s Ark to find land after the Flood.

Later, famed geologist Edward Hitchcock would identify the footprints as belonging to a giant prehistoric bird. Later researchers would correctly identify the prints as belonging to a bipedal carnivorous dinosaur called Eubrontes.

It’s not clear how the Eubrontes tracks came to be associated with Grenhaven’s “Devil Bird”, particularly since the city lies in the gneiss highlands far from the sedimentary sandstones of the Central Valley where the tracks are found. It’s thought that the comparison may have been made in jest when a set of tracks were installed in the Grenhaven Natural History Museum.Regardless of the name’s origin, it’s doubtful that anyone seriously thought the Devil Moth was genuinely the bird from Noah’s Ark or that it had made the tracks. But the name still stuck.

After Bezu and Anna’s original sighting, the Raven made several appearances throughout town. Shopkeeper Hiram Levy repeatedly saw the creature crawling head-first down the Moonlight Tower that illuminated the center of town. Farmer Jean Barré saw it gliding over his fields “stiff as a board without even a flap of its damned wings!”

Many witnesses reported being filled with dread upon seeing its red eyes. One man even claimed that it also had a glowing horn or carbuncle on its forehead.

Sightings of Noah’s Raven abruptly ended on March 7th. That night, a terrible fire swept through the city, destroying many homes and historical buildings. Several people have remarked on the fact that the Raven was no longer seen after the fire. Some believe it actually caused the conflagration. Others swore they saw it consumed in the flames. Stil others have postulated that the being may have been a harbinger, it’s sudden disappearance prophesying the disaster.

There is an eerie addendum to this story. A few weeks after the fire, several people including Bezu and Anna were visited by an odd man who claimed to be a “census taker” and would ask mundane, seemingly random questions such as what someone had had for breakfast or how much paper they had in the house. He would typically end his interrogations by asking people if they had seen or heard of Noah’s Raven. If the interviewee responded yes, he would insist that what they had seen was a misidentified owl or crane, or even a case of hysteria-induced hallucination. If the person objected, Frost was said to repeat his assertions in an automatic way, as if reading from a script. Eventually he would simply end the conversation and abruptly leave.

Those who encountered this stranger remarked on his constant, unnerving smile which never wavered throughout the encounter and which led to people referring to him as the Grinning Man. Many also noted the unusual paleness of his skin and the way it seemed too thick and almost detached from the underlying muscle and bone. His clothes were said to be two sizes too small and thirty years out of fashion.

What connection, if any, the Grinning Man had to Noah’s Raven is unknown.” 

If you’d like a complete PDF of “Monsters of Grenhaven”, go here: http://www.nocturnalsea.com/Cryptid%20Manual.html

[thelmasirby32]

The UK election and SEO games: Search, scandal, and big promises

The UK goes to the polls this week and the governing Conservatives have already made headlines for their online activities. Luke Richards dives into the political battleground that is the Google SERPs – and provides his analysis of the manifesto promises relevant to the digital business community.

As the UK heads towards its third general election in four years, the two main parties – Conservatives and Labour – both seem to agree that investment in digital technologies is crucial to tackling challenges within the economy, the environment, and the country’s working relationship with the rest of the world after Brexit.

Both parties have also invested a significant amount of their marketing budgets in their digital campaigns.

These past few weeks we’ve seen examples of good and downright poor practice when it comes to search engine marketing. We’ve seen varying success in search visibility, online sentiment, and traffic. And the content of the manifestos themselves – for a digital/tech business audience – makes for fascinating reading in light of the challenges I’ve mentioned above.

Here is my analysis.

Search visibility of the manifestos

We are massively lucky in the UK with the amount of transparency and information at our fingertips as we decide who to vote for in elections.

There are bad actors, as we will discover later, but sites such as They Work For You, Vote For Policies, and The Political Compass all help to separate the quality content from the noise. And with just a couple of clicks, we can have immediate access to any manifesto.

Even before we’ve clicked through to the Conservatives’ manifesto landing page, we already know what the party’s central plan is – should they command a majority in the next parliament: “to get Brexit done.”

UK elections Conservatives manifesto landing page SEO meta content

The “get Brexit done” mantra is one that is repeated countless times in the manifesto itself. I’d expected that the Conservative SEO team would be looking to get some visibility for this as a keyphrase. But a quick search for this finds the domain languishing only on page two of Google’s SERPs amid much negative press critical of this populist sloganeering.

Interestingly, the Liberal Democrats’ (a right-wing pro-Europe party) are targeting this key phrase as part of their paid search campaign – with their sponsored ads appear in position zero of the SERPs.

Beyond this, there isn’t much more to the search result save for the “vote conservative” call-to-action in the title and the URL. It’s notable for its brevity, leaving much of the rest of the SERPs open to be filled by positive and negative press, including two articles from The Daily Telegraph (a newspaper which previously employed Conservative leader Boris Johnson) and a well-ranked piece by Prospect magazine describing the party as a “threat to human rights”.

At first glance, the Labour party has adhered much better to onsite SEO best practice.

Their site links are well-served by Google. They command much of the SERP real estate and appear very useful to the user.

UK elections Manifesto Labour party Google SERP rich links

The choice for site links is a little surprising. The link to the “Accessible Manifesto” is a nice touch – showing consideration to web users who have difficulty reading the text. But the other links don’t really relate directly to the key policy points in the document itself such as their Green Industrial Revolution and National Education Service.

The closest the Labour search result has to a call-to-action is – the “be part of our movement – with your email address…” element, but it isn’t massively compelling.  Another misstep is that the PDF for Labour’s 2015 manifesto is still live and ranking well in position four of SERPs, which could quite easily confuse and frustrate users.

Sentiment elsewhere in the SERPs is more nuanced than what we see for the Conservatives. However, again, right-wing newspaper The Daily Telegraph takes position two and three of the SERPs – and although not immediately negative – one can imagine these articles aren’t massively objective after the user is moved to click through (although this content is behind a paywall).

Search traffic comparison

In the battle for search traffic, the Labour manifesto is vastly outperforming the Conservatives.

UK elections search traffic comparison showing the Labour Manifesto outperforming the Conservatives

At its peak – shortly after publication at the end of November – the Labour manifesto got three times as much traffic as the Conservative manifesto did when it performed best on November 24th.

The related queries according to Google Trends are illuminating. “Labour manifesto waspi” is clearly the biggest policy point in search terms online. Another breakout keyphrase is “fake labour manifesto” highlighting some of the underhand tactics employed by the Conservatives (as we’ll discuss below).

For the Conservatives, related queries are dominated by long-tail keyphrases that users are typing in to differentiate the new UK Conservative manifesto – “conservative manifesto 2019 UK” from the Canadian equivalent “conservative manifesto 2019 Canada”. Sadly for Prime Minister Johnson, there’s no appearance of “get Brexit done”. Do Google’s users actually care about this policy? Perhaps not.

Banned Google ads and misleading websites

The appearance of the breakout search term “fake labour manifesto” as highlighted at Google Trends points to some of the more bizarre aspects of this general election. The Conservatives have appeared to dabble in black hat tactics, and outright fakery, to try and confuse voters and diffuse the positive results Labour is clearly getting online.

To coincide with the launch of Labour’s manifesto, the Conservative party set up a fake website at labourmanifesto.co.uk and launched a paid search campaign to capture clicks from the SERPs.

Google banned eight search ads of the Conservatives due to policy breach

Google promptly banned eight of the Conservatives’ search ads

Google has promptly banned eight of the Conservatives’ search ads. The fake website is still live, but only really visible, currently, when searching for “fake labour manifesto” – and even then it appears below several news sources highlighting the Conservatives unethical behavior.

Google’s ad policy states:

“We value honesty and fairness, so we don’t allow the promotion of products or services that are designed to enable dishonest behaviour.”

I’d be very surprised if the Conservatives’ digital marketing team don’t know this.

But for the sake of democracy, it’s good to see the search engine stick to their principles here.

Promises to increase connectivity

Of the whole election so far, the digital policy which has perhaps received the most headlines is Labour’s “free full-fiber broadband to all by 2030”.

Back in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn won re-election as leader of the Labour Party on the back of such policy announcements as The Digital Democracy Manifesto. It’s not surprising that there is much reference to the emancipatory power of emerging technology and being properly connected in the current manifesto.

The digital democracy manifesto

As the document states, the intentions behind the free broadband initiative are to – “boost jobs, tackle regional inequality and improve quality of life as part of a mission to connect the country”. It is firmly rooted in a fairly detailed nationalization plan which will see the establishment of British Broadband with two arms, British Digital Infrastructure (BDI) and British Broadband Service (BBS), as well as bringing the broadband-relevant parts of BT into public ownership.

While it is a little more buried in the Conservative manifesto, they have their own broadband plan too.

UK election – Conservative and Unionist party Manifesto 2019

As is the case for nearly every policy point in the document, it is presented in reference to the UK’s ongoing relationship with the EU:

“We are Europe’s technology capital, producing start-ups and success stories at a dazzling pace. But not everyone can share the benefits”, it states.

“We intend to bring full fiber and gigabit-capable broadband to every home andbusiness across the UK by 2025.”

The policy is highlighted again in later pages as part of the government’s pledge to support rural life and coastal communities. “£5 billion in funding already promised”, it says. But beyond this, there is no detail on how much this broadband provision will cost to the end-user, nor to what degree it will be delivered by the private or public sector.

Education, skills and new technology

While the Conservative manifesto is presented through the lens of Brexit, the Labour manifesto is largely shaped by the environment and their central proposal to kickstart a ‘green industrial revolution.’

A skilled workforce is integral to this. The proposed National Education Service promises free education to everyone throughout their lives. This is of particular interest to those working in digital where we see re-training and re-skilling as increasingly important strategies to plug the skills gap in a fast-changing sector.

“With automation and the Green Industrial Revolution bringing major changes to industry,’ the manifesto states, ‘it is more important than ever that people have the opportunity to retrain and upskill throughout their lives…England already faces a shortage of people with higher-level technical qualifications, and demand for these skills will only grow as we create new green jobs.”

Skills are also a key feature for the Conservatives, despite the document failing to acknowledge the current gap businesses face.

A proposed £3 billion National Skills Fund is earmarked to upskill the British workforce.

“This fund will provide matching funding for individuals and SMEs for high-quality education and training”, the manifesto states.

“A proportion will be reserved for further strategic investment in skills, and we will consult widely on the overall design.”

The Conservatives also promise a further £2 billion to upgrade the entire further education college estate as well as planning to build 20 Institutes of Technology. Although there is little mention of what ends the skills fund and this education investment is for. Services are given a passing mention – “we should open up trade in services, in which the majority of us work and where most new jobs will be created.” – but there is little detail on what these service jobs are expected to be, how they will be supported by the state, and how they will be opened up.

Digital experience in health and public services

Healthcare is a massive issue in this election. Both parties are looking to emerging technologies as a way to help alleviate strains from underfunding and/or an aging population, as well as to improve diagnosis and patient experience.

Labour is pledging to increase spending across the health sector by an average of 4.3% per year. AI and cyber technology are two things earmarked for some of this investment, as well as state-of-the-art medical equipment. Their manifesto also acknowledges the importance of data rights to citizens within this increasingly digital area of our lives, promising to ensure:

‘Data protection for NHS and patient information.’

‘NHS data is not exploited by international technology and pharmaceutical corporations.’

The Conservative manifesto is not short on health tech promises either. They pledge to introduce an annual Health Technology Summit and they have also promised £1 billion extra annual social care funding to go towards – in part – new technology and facilities.

In the arena of citizen protections, the Conservative manifesto also proposes a new approach to cybercrime. “We will embrace new technologies and crackdown on online crimes”, the document states. “We will create a new national cybercrime force and empower the police to safely use new technologies like biometrics and artificial intelligence, along with the use of DNA, within a strict legal framework.”

The Labour party manifesto also devotes considerable wordcount to cybersecurity:

“Cybercrime and cyberwarfare are growing, all around the world. Every aspect of our lives, from the NHS to our nuclear facilities”, it states.

In response, the party plans to review two existing bodies – the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Crime Agency – to increase powers, capacity, and skills where necessary.

Labour also wants to extend more rights to citizens online with their proposed Charter of Digital Rights, as well as planning to introduce imprints for digital political adverts in an effort to combat fake news. Additionally, as part of their welfare plans, the party wants to give users multichannel access (online, telephone, face-to-face, and outreach support) to make help and assistance easier to access for all.

Costings

Both parties want big digital corporations to pay more tax. For Labour, this is a costed part of their plan to help fund their free broadband rollout and other projects (£23.7 billion from reversing cuts to corporation tax, £6.3 billion from unitary tax on multinationals, and £6.2 billion from their Fair Tax Programme).

UK election – Costings of the Labour party

The Conservatives have also promised to implement a digital services tax although there is no mention in the manifesto or the accompanying costings document as to what this tax rate will be, what it will bring in to the government, and which digital services this is aimed at.

On this front, my guess is Google, Facebook, Amazon et al. will be more concerned if a Labour government gets in than if a Conservative one is re-elected.

Much reference is made to British Broadband in Labour’s costings document and it is easy to make the link between their tax and spend plans. When looking at broadband in the Conservative costings document, however, its cost as part of their infrastructure strategy is reiterated, but it’s hard to see how it will actually be funded.

Further analysis of both party’s costings documents highlights the divide between them

When it comes to skills, the link between the money that’s needed for Labour to roll out their Lifelong Learning is easy to see across two tables. Yet the Conservative manifesto and costings document are harder to process. There are numerous tables, as well as proposed investments such as the ‘National Skills Fund worth £3 billion’ (as it is described in the manifesto) looking like it won’t receive any more than ~£600 million per year from 2021 until the end of the parliament (adding up to just £1.8 billion in total).

Analysis of Labour and Conservative party’s costing documents

  This trend continues in the context of health and public services technology.

£1 billion for social care per year is certainly a welcome promise by the Conservatives – with an aging population, staff shortages, and the availability of emerging technologies that help with remote care and increased independence for citizens. But when turning to the costings document again, this is nearly a third of the total income from the first year of their Sources of Revenue table and it doesn’t fill me with confidence that a party operating in the wake of their own austerity measures can actually deliver these PR-quotable lumps of cash.

Takeaways for the parties

The search campaigns by both parties in the lead up to this election have positive and negative points.

The simplistic and memorable SEO approach from the Conservatives may well be all they need to convince voters. But through the lens of the Google SERPs, the “get Brexit done” slogan has brought about some negative sentiment and doesn’t seem to be driving the traffic as we might expect.

Closing note regarding the Labour

Labour, on the other hand, has seemingly tried to capture attention via a number of issues. This is reflected in the manifesto itself, the site structure and onsite SEO, and the traffic success the domain is having with niche key phrases such as “labour manifesto waspi”.

Closing note regarding the Conservative

Yet, to look at the above and assume that the Conservatives have been lazy with their online campaign is wrong. Their paid search activity appears to have been synchronized and calculated. And rather than put forward their own policies in an attempt to influence clicks to their manifesto content, they’ve turned their efforts to misleading users and firing cheap shots at Labour policies which are seeing a positive response online.

Of course, these underhand tactics within the SERPs weren’t an isolated incident.

The Conservatives were also criticized (by The New York Times and others) when their press office passed off partisan opinion as objective ‘fact-checking’ on Twitter. The party’s activists have also been found to be posing as the Green Party in Facebook ads (in an attempt to split the left-leaning vote).

In the world of digital marketing, all these channels carry weight, but I would argue that it is the party’s search activities that are the most worrying from a democratic point of view. There’s no shifting the blame to frivolous press office employees or activists here – fake microsites and time-sensitive paid search campaigns are far more strategic, and those in the upper echelons of the party should bear at least some responsibility.

Takeaways for digital businesses

The Conservatives have been punished by Google for some of their activities, but whether they are punished at the ballot box remains to be seen. In the world of search, it is never worth trying to deceive users or impersonate competitors for clicks.

Those of us working in the digital industries are very aware of both the challenges and the opportunities in a technologically transformed world. The skills gap is a very immediate issue for all businesses adopting digital tools and emerging technologies. It is important that there are state-supported programs to try and close this gap.

In the UK, we also need a government committed to connecting those in society who are left behind when it comes to broadband provision. This is significant for those wanting to start up digital businesses away from urban centers, as well as for those whose digital audiences will grow with the rollout of dependable internet in rural areas.

In the business context

Consumers expect data protections and commitment to security – as well as experiences that are seamless across channels and customer-led. As more and more parts of our lives become entwined with digital technology – be it in healthcare or other public services – we need to be able to trust that attitudes towards rights and data are citizen-led. Members of the public must be educated, empowered, and safe.

There is much pessimism about what is around the corner for the UK – a country faced with Brexit, the environmental crisis, and more besides. In a superficial sense, it’s possible to read these manifestos as a business owner and be daunted by the detail of corporation tax rises in the Labour document while feeling that the Conservatives would be a profit-friendly prospect. But it is the lack of detail in the Conservative manifesto which should be a major worry to corporations: the ‘digital services tax,’ the commitment to seemingly arbitrary investment lumps, and even ‘get Brexit done’ rings hollow after three years of failed negotiations – how can any corporation trust this?

A government that is committed to ethical, reasonable, transparent, and long term ideas about how we can work and live together is one that I feel we should be supporting at this election and those forthcoming in the US and elsewhere. After all, these are the virtues I would expect of a modern business faced with the challenges and opportunities of a future of digital transformation and emerging technology. It seems justified to expect this in politics too.

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from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2019/12/11/uk-election-and-seo-games/

[statecryptids]

MONSTERS OF GRENHAVEN

Here’s a little tie-in between my cryptid blog and my Astarapomp Dossier epistolary novel blog. 

I wanted to flesh out the world of Grenhaven, the town in Connecticut where the Astarapomp Dossier is set. So for the current packet of letters, I also included this manual of monsters from around the city that was written by paranormal researcher James A.S. Lee.

Here’s the first entry for the mysterious “Sandbar Devils” that inhabit the estuary at the mouth of the Connecticut River. 

Here’s the full text:

“What is it? the Devil! The Devil, you say? The very one. Seems he’s tired of leaving his footprints in hopyards and has decided to take a dip in the sound.”

Such was the opening line of the article in the Grenhaven Evening Gazette that first introduced folks in Connecticut to the strange aquatic critters known alternately as Sandbar Devils, Devil-Squids, Ol’ Sandy or, in more recent years, Stego-Squids.

The first Sandbar Devil was sighted in 1896 by local fisherman Burton Hall, who saw it basking at low tide on one of the sandbars that choke the mouth of the Connecticut River. He said it resembled a giant “anomalous shrimp” with a row of spines along its back. Hall also described the beast as being “black as jet, with a pearly sheen like opal.”

Sandbar Devils didn’t really get big until 1901, when multiple students from Grenhaven University on a boating tour of Long Island Sound reported seeing a small school of the creatures frolicking “like otters” amongst the bars. Witnesses described the creatures as having distinctly segmented bodies like lobsters, but with large wings or fins along their flanks. The Devils’ heads were adorned with two thick arms or tentacles, “great appendages,” said witness Archibald Browning, “lined with barbs on the undersides that I don���t doubt could have ripped a man to ribbons.” Perhaps the most unusual features of the creatures, though, were their tails, which bore double rows of spikes not unlike the prehistoric stegosaurus. Thus the more colorful, comic-book name “Stego-Squids.”

The most famous sighting of these beasties came in 1911. On a misty morning in early spring, amateur marine biologist Martin Leeds was out in his boat collecting specimens for his private cold-water aquarium.

“I’d just pulled up a big stone covered with Ciona (intestinalis. A kind of tunicate or sea squirt- ed). As I was pulling it up in the boat, I saw a huge black shape- nearly as wide from wing-tip to wing-tip as I was tall- glide under my keel. I thought it must be a ray of some sort, but then it came back and flipped on its back and extended these long, jointed arms out of the water and grabbed the rock with wicked-looking hooks all along the undersides. I remember them real distinctly. They were white at the roots, staining to amber near the tips, like barnacles on the shore rocks. The thing’s mouth was weird. Like a pineapple ring, or a lamprey’s mouth, you know? I fought it for a bit. It kept tugging and hissing and spitting jets of water from that pineapple-ring mouth. Finally I let go and it took the rock back down, I guess to eat those tunicates. Or maybe, I don’t know- maybe it had laid some eggs on the rock that I’d overlooked, and it was just protecting its young. Anyway, last thing I saw was that sharp, spiny tail slapping the side of my boat. You can still see the scratches it left.

”Stego-squids have been sighted off and on over the decades, usually among the sandbars at the river’s mouth. Though one witness reported seeing one all the way up by Rocky Hill near the historic ferry.Skeptics have dismissed the sightings as misidentified rays or skates. Perhaps even an errant mantra ray that came in from the Atlantic and got lost. Those who believe the Sandbar Devils are real, unknown animals have suggested that they could be a new species of squid, or perhaps even large swimming lobsters. Famed folklorist and cryptozoologist Paul Brighton believes they may be a type of mantra ray whose “horns” have evolved into long, flexible grasping appendages.”

More entries to come

If you’d like a PDF of the complete manual, you can get it here: http://www.nocturnalsea.com/Cryptid%20Manual.html