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herenortherenearnorfar · 5 years ago

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The Development of Farming in Middle-Earth

An agricultural revolution is driven by multiple factors. Time is one of them, as is location, as is necessity. Therefore I would argue that Valinor lacked a farming culture and that large swathes of farming technology were innovated later, in the First Age and beyond.

First let’s establish that the Calaquendi were not farmers. Tolkien’s own anti-tech sensibilities, the emphasis within the text on farming and forests, and the presence of powerful nature spirits who would make the need for fields and crops redundant all suggest a more garden/foraging based society. Since Yavanna, Ulmo, Oromë can create food (plants, animals) they could eliminate the pressures (overhunting, hunger) that led to the advent of grain agriculture in the real world. They would also have motive to stick with a more hunter-gather society, since mono-crop farming and animal rearing would contradict Yavanna’s pro-tree agenda and Oromë’s interest in preserving the wild. And although elves have a bread-culture this doesn’t necessarily mean that they cultivated wheat-- wild grains like millet and barley were used by hunter-gathers to create flatbreads. Lothlorien, which is mostly forested, and wild Doriath also created bread, meaning that the presence of bread isn’t a sure indicator of big farming.

This doesn’t mean Valinorean elves wouldn’t understand animal domestication and plant cultivation; just that they wouldn’t need to engage in these activities on a wide scale. We know from the text that elves keep dogs and horses, but we don’t get a lot of insight into their cattle raising, for example (there are extant elvish words for bull, but most other cow related words are from Gnomish or other early language iterations). The presence of weaving suggests that they may have bred woolly sheep (there is a Quenya word for sheep) but shepherding and sheep flocks aren’t mentioned until descriptions of the early Hadorians. For people with the ability to learn animal-speech keeping free range sheep would be much more feasible than for humans, allowing for a more flexible “hands off until shearing time” sheep relationship. Out of respect for Oromë, hunting seems to have taken over animal husbandry as a major source of protein.

(This also ties into a theory of mine that elves are largely lactose intolerant past childhood. Without herding it’s hard to develop those enzymes.)

The same is true of plants. Valinorean elves probably experimented with plant hybridization and modification, kept private gardens or orchards, and prided themselves on growing new varietals, but may not have kept large scale fields. What would be the need, when you can just throw some seed down on the grassland (at all times of the year no less- thanks lembas essay) and trust Yavanna to make it all work? When the woods are full of infinite food and you have the gods of sea creatures and land dwelling beasts on your side there isn’t the same food pressure that faced early humans in real life. Food is everywhere, all you need to do is nurture and collect it.

Of course not all elves were in Valinor. Middle-Earth elves would have developed certain technologies much faster than their more sheltered peers. At the same time, the Green-Elves of Ossiriand are noted to resent “hewers of trees and hunters of beasts” so they definitely weren’t clearing fields left and right. In fact, let’s split the Moriquendi up into groups based on location, to get a better sense of their respective farming styles.

In Doriath was Melian, who has the potential to fulfill a Yavanna-like role as a forest nurturer. Again, you have to put less effort in when there’s a goddess on your side. The elves of Doriath were noted woodmen and hunters, and their descendants in the Greenwood and Lothlorien seem to have favored similarly naturalist approaches. Forest gardening isn’t out of the question. However two facts stand out. One: Menegroth was underground. This means that they had the potential to develop fungiculture (possibly developed with the help of dwarves). Two: prior to Morgoth’s awakening the elves of Doriath were less isolationist and wandered far. This means that they may have done some light plant propagation, moving seeds around and planting trees in more advantageous places. Your basic early Neolithic revolution behavior.

In Ossiriand were the Nandor, who again, valued their trees a lot. This means that they’re going to be less willing to clear land or practice field farming. They may have still engaged in forest gardening, like the people of Doriath, encouraging food plants to grow and cultivating oak trees, fruit orchards, edible vines and shrubs, mushrooms, wild herbs, and other forest friendly food.

Near lake Mithrim were Sindar elves who first met the Noldor. These are the most likely candidates for early field farming tech, since they had both deforested flatland and access to water sources. They’re also the most likely to have begun growing wild grains like wheat, barley, and millet.

The Falathrim is where things get interesting. We know that they kept “pools” in addition to their beaches and that they were dear to Ossë, an ocean Maia. This suggest a seafood based diet and the potential for pesciculture. Ancient forms of fish farming often worked in tandem with the sea and spawning habits of fish. Trenches would would be dug meeting the ocean, roe would be captured, and juvenile fish raised in fresh water. The Falathrim may have kept artifical tidal pools as well as raised fry. They may have also engaged in seaweed farming. The same goes for the Teleri across the sea, though again living in Valinor means that there’s much less need to stress over food. On Tol Eressea, seaweed farming and sea fishing will have proliferated, giving way to city gardens as the island population grew.

The Avari are the most open for interpretation. We don’t know what these mystery suitors were doing on the other side of the continent. The Avari are said to have been more primitive than the Noldor but let’s look at the source here-- we can’t trust a Noldor account to be honest. Context clues can help us make guesses, however. For example, humans showed up in the middle of the First Age with domestic sheep, horses, donkeys, and goats (thanks random detail about the Hadorians from HoME). That isn’t something you figure out in a few hundred years. Given that we know early humans interacted with the Avari it’s entirely possible that they learned animal husbandry from them as well. So the Avari may have kept these animals! At the same time it’s mentioned that the Beorians “had no beasts of burden” so whatever animal technology later humans picked up from the Avari it took them a while to master it.

Other technologies the Avari may have possessed include fungiculture (for they were long without the sun and preferred dark places), forest farming, and maybe some floodplain farming since many stayed near the lake where they originated.

Now once the Noldor Exiles hit Beleriand they would have had to shift their food production methods drastically. No longer surrounded by greater and lesser spirits they faced much a much more serious potential for famine. Furthermore, encounters with the Mithrim and Falathrim, and later the elves of Doriath and Ossiriand, will have introduced new principles of agriculture. The combination of Noldor GMO technology (nurtured in an open sandbox of innovation) plus more necessity based Beleriand techniques, likely paved the way for a new flourishing of agriculture. The regions many of Fingolfin and Feanor’s kin moved into-- flat lands and mountainous regions with less forest to worry about-- will have also helped develop a more robust farming culture.

They’re still elves so they’re going to be more hesitant to mess with nature but with the rise of the Noldor we’re more likely to see irrigation, fertilizer, and professional farming. Wild grains will have slowly become more domesticated. It’s mentioned in HoME that corn (grains) originated in Aman, were brought to Middle-Earth, but didn’t do well and was mostly kept by adherents of Yavanna (including some in Doriath, who grew grains in limited amounts in sunlit glades). There’s a sense that the elves have a lot of plants but are still figuring out what to do with them. Things they can grow: wild grasses, grapes (they have wine!), sturdy fruits and veggies willing to resist Morgoth.

Dwarves are hard to judge because we don’t get a ton of insight into their material culture. Sure they love mountains but where does their food come from? They like it but how? Where? Nevertheless, we can attribute to dwarves mountain terraces, fungiculture, and indoor agriculture using reflected sunlight. In fact, dwarves might have invented greenhouses, which would give them a foot over their peers in early post-Sunrise Middle Earth. The petty-dwarves cultivated some sort of root-vegetable so other dwarves likely did as well. They also probably made big strides in pony-breeding, goat rearing, and some other types of animal husbandry.

Finally, the humans arrive. Now the agricultural innovations of non-Beleriand humans are really hard to judge. We know that they were big farmers within a few thousand years though, which again suggests some Avari help. In the east irrigation and complex water retention would have developed most quickly. They probably also further developed grain farming (important for a fast reproducing population) and your basic river valley techniques (flood control, fertilizer, plant breeding) within a fairly short time frame. Again, the Avar and non-Atani humans really don’t get the credit they deserve for speed running civilization without divine interference.

Onto the Beleriand humans who we do know about. The Haladin had independent homesteads by Haleth’s time, a practice that’s pretty hard to maintain (early agricultural was communal for a reason). The Hadorians had animal husbandry. The Beorians were quick to take to farming and willing to learn from elves. All of this suggests an adaptable, innovative farming culture which might be a little more garden focused than medieval Europe but was still plenty productive.

After the fall of Beleriand we meet even more humans. In Numenor sheep were kept, for example, in addition to various crops. Corn of Aman origin were favored and the Numenoreans spread these more developed grains across the world, leading to better farming for all men. Widespread field agriculture developed in Arnor and Gondor. Milk was drunk among herding cultures and farming cultures (both Rohan and Gondor were probably full of milk drinkers), making animal farming more profitable. Cows are widespread by the period of LoTR, as are chickens, goats, cheese, and plants like tomatoes and potatoes. Beekeeping is also present in the Shire, suggesting that beekeeping has developed over the past few millenia.

The Woses, a more woodland based group, favored forest farming and cave living. Other human groups followed their lead, remaining more forest based until Numenor came and ripped their forests up. Numenorean imperialism in general can be seen as a force for field based farming, destroying earlier forest models. And exception would be in the far East, where again, humans seem to have figured things out on their own.

Later elven groups include Silvan and Sindar communities (more likely to favour forest living) and Noldor communities (more likely to have cities, gardens, and some fields though not on a human scale.) Very late elf enclaves like Rivendell may have combined rooftop gardening with forest cultivation.

All this probably sounds like a load of nonsense so I’ve summed up the development of Middle Earth farming in a few easy notes.

Who Invented What?

Planting seeds and then harvesting them was recognized by all elf groups, roughly simultaneously

Gardens were invented by the Amanyar, Teleri (all groups), and Avari, later spread everywhere

Food forests were invented by the Nandor and Sindar, later practiced by the Woses and other human groups as well as Silvan/Sindar elves

Grain farming was invented by the Mithrim and Amanyar then later perfected by the Easterlings and Numenoreans

Organic Fertilizer was invented by the Nandor and later preferred in human settlements

Mass fertilization and nitrogen fertilizer was invented by the Noldor exiles and sometimes used in Numenor

Chemical fertilizers and pollution were invented by The Forces of Darkness

Greenhouses were invented by the dwarves and Exile Noldor, later used in parts of Arnor and Gondor

Irrigation was developed by the Mithrim then further developed by the Noldor and friends. It was also practiced by the Avari and Easterlings

Fungiculture was invented by the dwarves and Avari, then later shared with the Sindar

Pesciculture was invented by the Teleri (all groups)

Seaweed farming was invented by the Falathrim and elves of Tol Eressea

Terrace farming was invented by the dwarves and later practiced by elves and humans

Horse riding is just about universal

General animal husbandry was invented by the Amanyar and Avari, later embraced by all humans

Raising animals for meat was developed by the Avari and later passed on to humans

Raising animals for milk is entirely on humans

GMO plants were invented by the Amanyar, improved on by combined elves of Beleriand, and dabbled in by Numenoreans. Also the Avari and Easterlings probably had them to some extent but who knows because we don’t have enough info on them.

#long post #rambling #The Silmarillion #jrr tolkien #farming

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harryandmolly · 6 years ago

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The Long Way Home -12- FINAL

A/N: what a brilliant journey! thank you ALL for your incredible support and feedback. you all mean the world to me. I’m extremely proud of this whole series and I hope the ending satisfies you all. (A note for the end: I am not a lyricist so I stole Sugarland’s “Little Miss” and made it Emma’s. Highly recommend you give it a listen to give yourself the full picture while you read)

Summary: His world is a little rocked when Shawn is joined on his 2019 world tour by Emma, a former child star with a chip on her shoulder and a voice that haunts him.

Warnings: Language, family angst, Finality (TM)

Word count: 7.9k (ta daaaa!)

“Now put yer teeny little fingers there… and there.”

Emma obeyed. Emma always obeys.

Grandpa Norm stroked the strings and a pretty noise came out. Emma looked down, eyes wide.

“See, lil girl? You can do it.”

Emma lies in bed, bare feet planted on her Ravenclaw duvet, staring at the ceiling. She’s blasting Shawn’s latest album from her multi-thousand dollar stereo system with her hands folded over her stomach and she’s never felt more like a moody teenager.

She’s never been allowed to be a moody teenager, so maybe this was some sort of box she had to check to level up.

She closes her eyes and he’s there again, face red and panicked, fingers gripping her car window as he jogged to keep up. She didn’t look back when they drove away toward Reagan National for the red-eye back to LAX. She couldn’t.

She drafted six different long-winded texts between the security line and landing in Los Angeles. She sent none of them.

It’s not so much that she had to leave him – she knew that was coming in a few weeks when tour ended anyway. She’s been emotionally preparing for that. It’s more the disappointment she knows he felt at her giving in to Sandra. That’s why she was so desperate to explain it to him – he has to know about the trump card. He has to understand.

She waits until she’s striding into her house, Sandra trailing behind tapping away on her phone, to call him. It’s 4am in LA which means it’s 7am in Boston but she’s betting it doesn’t matter because she doesn’t imagine he slept either.

He answers on the first ring and listens while she sobs out the whole story, the whole sordid affair. He spits curses about Sandra in between her ragged breaths but lets her get it out. She knows he wants to protest, wants to tell her she should’ve stood up. But Emma knows Sandra. She knows when she’s bluffing. And she wasn’t.

“So… that’s it? You’re confined to your room?” he whispers.

She looks around. “Yeah. Or the house, at least. Ashley’s called me about eighty times since we were papped at LAX this morning. I’ll give you one guess who arranged that Kodak moment.”

Shawn sympathizes as much as he can, but he’s angry and she can hear it in his voice. She understands. She’s angry too. She’s so angry she can’t see straight. But she’s so tired. He talks to her until she falls asleep and then he leaves for the gym, sending her a text with a heart emoji and a promise to call her again later.

It’s been eight days since Emma has left the house. She’s trying to do the math in her head of how many hours that is when something taps her leg. She looks over at Georgie who’s lying in the same position, her bony knees pointed up at the ceiling, looking pensive. Georgie nods at the speakers. Emma turns down “Where Were You In the Morning.”

“Are you hungry?”

Emma nods. Georgie nods back and hops off the bed, scurrying in fuzzy purple socks out the bedroom door, closing it on her way out.

Georgie arrived the evening after Sandra and Emma got back to Hollywood. Emma was asleep – she slept all day after she and Shawn talked. Georgie crept into Emma’s room, turned on the lamp and crawled into bed.

Emma stirred. “G?”

Georgie’s wise old eyes stared back at her. She was expressionless, a face only a sister, another half of a soul could read.

Emma’s face crumpled until she was racked with sobs. Georgie dragged her face into her shoulder and rocked her until she calmed and fell asleep again.

The next morning, Sandra announced she and Georgie would be moving in and they’d all be spending time at home for a while to “regroup.” It was essentially Sandra-enforced house arrest. Georgie screamed, slammed doors, threw a fit unlike Emma had ever seen. But she was too tired to fight. She just watched.

She doesn’t leave the room now. She can’t look at Sandra’s face. She’s afraid she may claw it off. Georgie calmed down after her initial outburst and plays liaison now, occasionally relaying messages and couriering food.

Georgie returns to her sister’s boyfriend’s voice blasting through the wall. She closes the door again and climbs on the bed, offering Emma a plate of grapes, cheese and crackers. Emma plants a wet kiss on her cheek and Georgie sneers and giggles.

Georgie waves at the music again. Emma turns it down reluctantly, wanting to drown herself in the emotion of “Why.”

“Can I ask you something?” Georgie murmurs, smacking her lips like she always does when she eats. Emma shrugs and pops a grape in her mouth.

“What was your first time like?”

Emma’s jaw goes still mid-chew. Without meaning to, she relives her first sexual experience in fast-forward mode in her head, raising her eyebrows and wincing slightly.

Georgie snorts. Emma hears an anxious tone in it.

“That bad?”

Emma runs her tongue along her bottom lip, considering how to answer. “Honestly? Yeah. It hurt. I wasn’t ready. And it didn’t mean anything to him. It didn’t really mean that much to me, either.”

Georgie schools a calm look on her face. Emma takes another grape between her fingers, studying it.

“What’s up, G? Are you having sex?”

Emma’s heart pounds when she asks like she’s a nervous mom. She feels like one sometimes. Someone ought to around here.

Georgie’s quiet a beat too long. “I might be about to.”

Emma wants to crawl under the bed. She’s so horrified that she knows nothing about this, has no clue who her sister could be considering sleeping with. She’s been so wrapped up in her own shit, insulated by fame and Shawn and her own fucking ego. She feels nauseous but keeps a straight face as she encourages Georgie to go on.

“I’ve been talking to Holland Dittrich’s older brother Josh.”

“Jooooosh,” Emma teases in a deep voice, rolling her eyes, “That’s such a teenage boy name. Where do all the Joshes go after they turn 21? It’s like they disappear.”

Georgie snickers. “Shut up. He’s cool. He’s a rising senior at Belfort. Captain of the lacrosse team. He wants to go to Stanford pre-med. He’s like, perfect. He likes the same music as me. I even played him “Lost in Japan” last week and he really liked it. Like, I could tell he was into it.”

Emma picks at her grape and smiles gently. She kind of loves that liking Shawn’s music is a metric Georgie’s using for boys now. Shawn will like it too when Emma tells him.

“Have you been out with him?”

“Not yet. We’re catching a movie this weekend. I think he’s going to ask me to Homecoming in the fall.”

Emma nods like seasoned big sisters are supposed to even though she’s never been to a school dance in her life. Well, that’s not strictly true – she’s been to a set of a school dance for Fake It and had her first onscreen kiss there. She doesn’t think that experience counts, though.

“And you’re thinking about having sex with him.” Emma’s repeating it out loud more for herself than for Georgie. She’s trying to wrap her head around the idea.

“I mean, yeah. Seems like a good idea. He’s nice, he likes me. He’s had girlfriends before so he probably knows what he’s doing.”

Emma sews her mouth shut over the words “THAT’S NO GUARANTEE” springing up.

She stays casual. “Yeah, if he’s good to you, if you want to do it, sure. I have condoms. Always bring your own.”

Georgie smiles in that unnervingly wise way she does. “That’s not what I mean, Em. I just… I don’t know if I want to wait for someone I love.”

Shawn’s rosy face and perfect smile appears in Emma’s mind. Her heart aches. It’s all she can do not to reach for her phone and call him just to hear his voicemail.

She nods, sighing. “I hear that. I get it. Sex is a personal thing. But it doesn’t have to be with someone you love. I think it should at least be someone you like. I…” She trails off, shrugging.

“What?” Georgie prods.

Emma hesitantly continues. “Despite… everything, I don’t regret any of my sexual history. Yeah, my first time sucked. Most first times do. And I didn’t have sex with someone I loved at all until Shawn. And it was mind-blowing and so different,” she feels herself grinning and watches Georgie mirror it, “But there was a lot I learned about myself and men and sex before I got to that point and I don’t regret any of it.”

“Was… was it perfect with Shawn?”

Just there, Georgie goes from wise old owl to actual 16-year-old girl and Emma gets to feel like a competent older sister for once. She lends her a crooked smile.

“As close to perfect as anything can get. He was so… he was so gentle. And affectionate. And just… everything I wanted. Everything I deserved.”

Georgie nods thoughtfully. “I want that too. Someday.”

Emma pops her grape in her mouth and pats Georgie’s knee. “Hopefully you won’t have to wait too long. If Joooooosh feels right for the first time, do it. Enjoy it. Know it’ll probably get better, but learn from it. Learn what you like, what you’re into. And don’t be shy to tell him, boys like that, I promise.”

Georgie’s nodding again. Emma’s phone buzzes against her hip. Georgie snatches it away before Emma can answer.

“Hi Shawn!” Georgie quips, her voice going up an embarrassing several octaves that Emma will mock her for later.

“Hey Georgie,” Shawn chuckles, “How’s house arrest?”

“Fine. Emma and I are eating grapes and sulking in her room. How’s tour?”

Emma stiffens. Georgie immediately regrets the question. Shawn feels the change in tone and bites his lip.

“It’s ok. Not as fun now. Can I talk to Em?”

“Yeah,” Georgie murmurs, nodding, “Bye, Shawn.”

Emma takes the phone. Georgie takes the plate of food and scampers out of the bedroom.

Emma curls up on her side. “She’s asking me about sex.”

Shawn giggles. “Oh no.”

“Don’t laugh at me. Your sister’s not that much younger than mine.”

“Oh god, don’t say that,” Shawn whines, “I’m so not ready for that.”

“Yeah, well, when she starts asking questions, send her my way. Apparently I’m the guru.”

“Good to know,” Shawn hums, “What did you tell her?”

“She asked about my first time. I told her it was garbage and most first times are—” Shawn interrupts her with a snort of agreement, “But you learn and you grow and it’s better with someone you love but you don’t have to wait for that if you don’t want to.”

Shawn bobs his head. “Very wise.”

“She asked about us.”

She can hear Shawn’s reflective smile through the phone. She returns it.

“What did you say?”

“I told her it was as close to perfect as anything is in this stupid world.”

Shawn’s quiet. It’s a weighty silence – it’s an I love you silence, an I miss you silence, a why did you leave silence.

“I can’t lose her, Shawn. It would end me,” Emma whispers, closing her eyes and feeling threatening tears rub at her throat.

He’s quiet again for a few seconds. “I know. We’ll figure it out. You’ll figure it out.”

The words are simple and seemingly unhelpful but from him, they feel good and real. They talk for another few minutes before he has to go to soundcheck and tries not to let her know that because he doesn’t want to remind her what she’s missing but he’s in the venue and does a lousy job of hiding from the loading in noise. She wishes him a good show and they exchange blushing I love yous like a couple of kids who are still getting used to the words.

Shawn’s little fingers curl into his fists. He can’t quite catch his breath. His jerking heaves of air are fluttering the sweaty curls on his forehead as he stomps out of the rink.

He’s never felt this before. He barely knows what this is. He thinks it’s rage, despair even, but he’s never seen it before, doesn’t know how to recognize it.

He’s been practicing so hard. He was in three different hockey camps this summer. Not making the travel team is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone, and it’s just happened to him. He has no idea how to deal with this feeling. It’s swallowing him.

Shawn and anger are admittedly not well acquainted.

He’s seething on the sidewalk after he loses sight of the D.C. cab’s taillights. He can feel the heat radiating off him as his blood boils. He takes enormous steps back into the hotel. He doesn’t hear a word Andrew’s saying, only a dull ringing in his ears as the elevators carry him up to their floor. It’s not until Andrew follows him into his room and Shawn gets the chance to sit on the bed and gather himself that he even understands what he’s saying.

“You should’ve told me,” Andrew almost barks. Andrew doesn’t really get mad either. Especially not at Shawn. Shawn’s brow furrows.

“Told you what?”

“That you’re fucking Emma Kingston!” Andrew cries, throwing his hands out.

Shawn’s jaw juts out, clenching hard. He presses his balled fists into the bed.

“I am not fucking Emma Kingston. I’m in love with her.”

Andrew is silent, flabbergasted. His jaw hangs open. “You… what?”

“I love her. I’m in love with her. She’s the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. She’s got more talent in her little finger than I have in my whole body. She knows more about music and the industry than anyone I’ve ever met, including you. She is so sharp and so funny and so thoughtful and so sexy and I’m crazy, stupid in love with her.”

Andrew suddenly looks exhausted. He has this way about him where he’s all energy until something hits him too hard and he just slumps. He sinks into a chair and hangs his face in his hands. Shawn bristles.

“Why does this fucking matter?”

“Why does it matter?” Andrew repeats in a half-crazed chuckle, “Because it does, Shawn! Because everything you do matters. Especially the romantic stuff. The driving force of your fanbase is female. Females that want to date you. So when you’re dating someone, it fucking matters.”

Shawn balks. “I’m not gonna not date someone because it’ll hurt business, Andrew!”

“I’m not saying that! I’m saying there’s a process to these things. One of the things we talked about when I signed on was honesty. Honesty always. I can’t do my job if I don’t have all the pieces. You should’ve fucking told me.”

“I couldn’t. If anyone on her team knew, especially once the Kyle Dillon thing started…”

“Yeah! The Kyle Dillon thing! You realize if this gets out it’s going to look like a weird love triangle? Or worse, like you stole Kyle’s girlfriend. Is that what you want?”

Andrew’s getting hysterical and it’s really pissing Shawn off. He hangs his head and closes his eyes to breathe.

“You know that’s not what I want. I… fuck, I didn’t mean to make your life harder, man, I just… I wanted to be with her. This was what she needed from me. I’m… I’m sorry, dude.”

Shawn’s apology seems to quiet Andrew’s frazzled brain. He nods his acceptance. They’re both quiet for a while, raking hands through their hair and thinking too hard.

“Well… it’s probably better she’s off the tour, then.”

Shawn perks up. “What?”

“Until we figure out how to approach this, you guys can’t be public. Every day you were together was a risk. You can’t see her again until we set up a strategy.”

“A strategy?” Shawn cries, “What the fuck? This is my life, Andrew!”

“Yeah!” Andrew bites back, “Your life! And you hired me to manage it. This is how this stuff goes when you’re Shawn Mendes. Dude, we’ve talked about this. You know we have. You knew this was never going to be easy. It’s harder when it’s someone like Emma who’s out there in the public eye with you. We need a strategy.”

Shawn fumes. He has half a mind to jump on a plane to LA and be seen making out with Emma very publicly somewhere just to buck the system but he can’t and he feels impotent and small. He’s not used to that.

Andrew leaves him there after a few minutes. He’s lying face up on his bed missing her so much already he can barely breathe.

He didn’t know it was going to be like this. He didn’t know that the shitty things that happened to her would feel like they happened to him too. He didn’t know he’d feel her wounds as deep as he feels his own. He’s tethered now and she’s across the country so he feels stretched and uncomfortable and breathless.

He closes his eyes, tries to play her song in his head. He hums it, bounces his knee, wills it to distract him.

His eyes open. He has an idea.

The tall, spindly woman kneels in front of Emma. She’s held in place by her father’s rough hands on her shoulders so she can’t run and hide behind her mother’s dress. Emma blinks.

“Hello, Emma. I’m Margaret. I’m going to help you become a star.”

Emma frowns and sees something she doesn’t like in the flat brown eyes staring back at her.

“Ok,” she whispers.

The other shoe had to drop eventually, Angelique reminds herself. It was all going too well. The transition from Margaret to her had been too seamless. With her finely honed senses and slight paranoia, she should’ve felt this coming. Her hackles should’ve been up.

She let her guard down. She finally felt comfortable with what she was doing, like she was in the right place at the right time managing the right person. Emma felt like her teammate.

She was loading into the bus when Shawn first sprinted past her red-faced looking like he’d just seen a ghost. Andrew followed quickly after, shooting her a firm glance.

“Call your client. She’s getting on a fucking plane.”

Angelique felt her stomach fall into her shoes. Whatever this is, it can’t fucking happen.

But it did. Emma went home without a fight. Sandra smugly responded to every email about tour cancellation details. She patronizingly yammered on about Emma needing “mental space” and “time with her beloved family” like she was writing a fucking press release instead of just lying to Angelique.

She’s between a rock and a hard place now, the rock being Emma, the hard place being the rest of Emma’s team who are clamoring for answers.

Emma was apologetic, to her credit. She explained the whole situation. Angelique was about to launch into a somewhat unprofessional and probably really inappropriate tirade about getting Georgie legally emancipated when she heard something in Emma’s voice that gave her hope.

She doesn’t have a name for it, whatever it was. It was a small tinkling of something underneath that told Angelique in her gut that this isn’t over yet. Angelique had been thinking of Emma like a boxer who’d been hit hard and was waiting for the countdown so the round could end. After that phone call, she realized something – Emma isn’t down for the count. She’s waiting. She’s resting up. She’ll come out swinging.

She’s not out of this yet.

“I don’t want another lesson,” Shawn insists in the middle seat in the back of his mom’s Volvo, “I just learned notes. I want to play a song.”

“Love, you have to learn the notes to play a song,” his mom says softly.

He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “I can learn on YouTube faster than a lesson. Seriously.”

Karen relents. Let him learn on YouTube, she thinks. Maybe that’ll hold his interest.

Shawn sits cross-legged at the end of the stage, knees bouncing as the FaceTime ringtone blares at him mockingly.

Her face is warm and pink when she answers him. She’s just finished Pilaticardio, it looks like. He flushes at the idea of her in her tight Lululemon pants and shakes the idea from his head before it can sprout.

“Hey, you,” she greets. Her voice isn’t tired so much as her whole being seems tired. It makes him want to wrap her up in his arms and shut it all out. He can’t do that, so he tries something else.

“Got a surprise for you,” he says breathlessly, a little giddy, nodding and biting his lip.

Her eyebrows lift. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” he nods at someone off camera and suddenly he’s not holding the phone, “I’m passing you off to Geoff. I want to show you something.”

He hurries adorably to the center of the stage and thanks Joey the tech for the guitar he’s handed. Emma smiles, watching him get ready to command his space. Maybe he’s written something new.

He starts first. She knows within two seconds what he’s playing. And he didn’t write it.

She did.

He plucks expertly at his acoustic, bobbing his head, feeling her song in his bones. The breath leaves her body in a sweeping exhale. She doesn’t remember to breathe for a few seconds until the pounding of her heart races over the deep tones of the accompanying piano.

He closes his eyes and steps into the mic, brow wrinkling as he sings her words, sings her heart to an empty stadium. Each piece of her arrangement comes in like she told him, like she envisioned. The drums shake the song, indicate something big is coming. Shawn carries it forth, leading steadily into the throbbing pre-chorus, tapping his foot and shrugging a hand around the mic. The piano climbs with him, the drums steadily increase in volume until the song reaches a climactic pause. When it comes back in, she folds her hands over her mouth in shock.

It's everything she wanted, everything she imagined it could be. It’s big, it’s bold, it’s emotional, it’s her.

And he did it for her.

He plays through the whole song and she falls in love with it all over again. She recognizes every beat, every note, every choice made as her own. He’s playing it for her not as himself, but as her proxy. He’s made no customizations, no little twists. It’s just hers exactly as it’s meant to be.

As the last note fades out, Emma finally uncovers her mouth. Geoff comes around the camera to peek shyly at her reaction. She offers him a watery grin and he smiles back sincerely for the first time since she met him. He moves his head so Emma can see Shawn hustling to the front of the stage to get his phone back.

He’s rosy, a little sweaty and grinning with a mad look in his eye.

“So? Did you like it?”

Emma opens her mouth. A choked sob escapes where words were meant to be. She claps a hand over her mouth and coughs a laugh.

“It’s… it’s perfect. That was it, that was what I wanted. I… oh my god. I’m so—”

She cuts herself off, shaking her head. He gets it. He’s been blessed to have had this moment himself before – to watch his brain child songs get the live treatment, to feel real and big and beautiful. He knows how this feels. That’s why he wanted to give it to her.

“It’s yours, Em. You did that. You did all of it.”

Emma swallows. She tries to regulate her breathing, muttering about thanking his band for learning it, for playing it so beautifully, thanking Geoff for holding the damn phone. Shawn laughs.

“Face it, Emma Kingston. You’re a fuckin’ rockstar.”

Emma’s laugh bubbles and spills as her tears do. Shawn walks off with his phone for some privacy as she gets it out of her system and wrenches at her self-control.

“Thank you,” she manages through a throat full of snotty tears.

He bobs his head shyly. “It’s be alright, Em.”

Emma held Georgie’s pudgy little hand as they walked into Somerset School for Georgie’s first day of kindergarten. Being a rough and tumble second grader, Emma felt big and cool. She’s never seen a real first day of school before, only on sets. She’s glad these aren’t kids her age or she’d feel a lot less cool.

Georgie tugs at her hand. “What if I don’t make friends?”

Emma shakes her head. “You’ll make friends. Plus, even if you don’t, I’m your friend.”

On the 12th day of confinement, Emma and Georgie lie side by side on Emma’s bed. It’s not an unfamiliar position to them now.

Emma’s trying so hard not to feel it, but there’s something in the air. She tries not to think that it’s the last day of tour and Shawn’s playing the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and she tries not to feel like a part of her is there and she needs to go get it back.

But Emma doesn’t always get what she wants, so her efforts are pretty useless.

With a shaky sigh, she reaches her foot out and kicks Georgie’s leg to get her to turn down “Ruin.”

Georgie turns onto her side to regard her big sister. Emma looks a little less tired now. And resigned, somehow.

“G,” Emma whispers, and it’s the same voice she used when she told Georgie Grandpa Norm died while she was at camp, “It’s time to go talk to mom.”

Georgie shakes. She doesn’t know why. This is Emma’s fight, she’s just back up.

Even as she thinks it to herself, she knows it’s flatly untrue. Any fight of Emma’s is a fight of hers. And this, this fight, this cosmic inertia of mother and daughter, she’s a part of this too.

She’s a few paces behind Emma as they pad into the living room, unintimidating in pajamas at 11am.

Sandra is sitting on the couch in gym wear typing away at her phone with E! News on in the background. She doesn’t notice when they walk in.

“Mom,” Emma prompts. Georgie feels relieved not to hear a quiver in it.

Sandra’s head snaps up. She hasn’t seen or heard from her eldest daughter in days. She beams at her two girls who’ve come to see her.

“Hey babies,” she coos, setting her phone down, “Want to go get some lunch? Might be time to get Emma Jean back out in the world.”

“Mom, I love you,” Emma states.

Georgie’s eyes blow wide open. Sandra’s mirror them. To be honest, neither of them is sure of the last time Emma said that. Or any of them said that. They aren’t that kind of family.

“Babygirl, I love you too,” Sandra hums, her voice lowering, misunderstanding the direction of this.

“I love you and I don’t want to hate you anymore. So you need to leave my house.”

Sandra’s brow furrows. Her eyes briefly touch Georgie’s – she’s equally stunned. But Emma is a mountain that will not be moved. Not this time.

“Honey, we talked about this, I know it’s been a hard few months, a hard few years even, but this—“

“No. We’re not doing this again. I’m not gonna do this dance with you.”

Emma takes Georgie’s hand and tugs her forward. Georgie stumbles along behind her until they’re both sitting on the oversized ottoman facing their mother, who’s sitting straight as a rod.

“I’ve spent the last couple weeks thinking. I’ve been thinking about why it was easier for me to say the things I said to Margaret than it was to say them to you. I’ve been going over it and over it. It didn’t make sense. She was as much my mother as you ever were,” a flash of real human hurt crashes across Sandra’s face for a split second, “so why was it so different?

“The truth is, Margaret has always respected me a little more than you have. Maybe because I was always her client and I was always your daughter. And at the end of the day, she was never going to be permanent, no matter how entwined in my life she was. Not like you are.

“I think because you never respected me, I always feared you. Because I didn’t know what you were capable of. I didn’t ever really know until you threatened to take Georgie away from me.”

Georgie stares at Emma, feeling her face heat. It takes her a full few seconds before she can lift her eyes to Sandra’s. Sandra is looking back, pale as a ghost.

It’s not like Georgie didn’t know. Georgie knows all. Before Emma even told her why she agreed to leave tour, Georgie had an inkling. She knows Emma wouldn’t leave tour, leave Shawn for anything but her. Georgie is the trump card.

She stares at her mother, her unfeeling, judgmental wisp of a mother. She sees years of signed permission slips, missed band concerts, nearly forgotten birthdays. She sees a vapid hole of a woman who nearly sucked the life out of the person Georgie holds most dear. She sees nothing in Sandra.

“Emma Jean, don’t do this.”

It’s not a plea, it’s a warning. Sandra Kingston’s never backed down from a fight. She’s not about to start with her 19-year-old headstrong bitch of a daughter.

“Mom,” Emma breathes, leaning forward and taking one of her mother’s frigid, veiny hands in hers, “I have to do this. It’s all that’s left.”

Georgie didn’t know she was about to cry until the tears fell. She sniffles gently, sweeping them away, trying not to make a scene as the culmination of her entire family’s angst hangs over them.

“Do what you’re going to do,” Emma whispers. Georgie blinks in surprise. Emma lets go of Sandra’s hand. Sandra looks bowled over.

“I can’t stop you, I can’t control you. If what you really want is to place a restraining order on me so I can’t see my sister, do it. Or try. I don’t necessarily trust the American justice system, but I think I still trust it more than you. So if that’s what you want, to separate us, to use her as a pawn to make me your dancing monkey, fine. Because guess what? Georgie turns 18 in 17 months and there’s your only power over me, gone.

“Margaret is gone, mom. She signed a girl band in Sweden. She’s happy. Angelique is leading my team now. She is my teammate. She collaborates with me and listens to me and we have a way forward that I’m really, really excited about. I’m more excited about this than any move I’ve ever made in my career. I want you to be excited, too. I know you had a plan. I know you wanted to take charge when I was younger, wanted me to succeed. I can’t do it if you threaten my happiness and my family.

“I want you to be a part of this someday. Not today, probably not any time soon, but someday. I know as well as anyone how savvy you are. I don’t discount that. But you don’t know how to be a teammate, mom. And you don’t know how to be a mom, either. So for now, you’re off my team until you figure those things out.”

Emma glances at Georgie for the first time in minutes. She wraps her hands around Georgie’s and smiles softly.

“Georgie’s going to go home to dad’s. She’s going to go to Belfort Homecoming with Josh Dittrich. She’s going to make lacrosse captain and start visiting colleges. You’re going to stay home, at your home in Beverly Hills, and go to her games and take her shopping for her dress and get her for dinner every Wednesday night and on every other weekend.”

“I’m going to get on a plane.”

Georgie’s eyes lift from their hands to Emma’s face. She looks… serene. Georgie’s never once seen her look serene. She blinks quickly, feeling her fingers unfold from her sister’s. Emma plants a hand on her head.

“C’mon, kid. We have somewhere to be.”

Emma watches the lights of the New York City skyline glimmer off Georgie’s shining eyes in the back of the speeding cab. Emma promised him a $100 tip if he could get them to the Barclays Center before 10:30pm. He’s taking his challenge very, very seriously.

Emma and Georgie slide into each other during another scary hairpin turn. They both giggle, a little giddy from adrenaline.

Emma tucks a chunk of hair behind her ear and looks down. She’s in an oversized plaid shirt, Daisy Dukes and checkered Vans. Her hair is muddy with grease and dry shampoo. She’s breaking out a little on her chin. She feels fucking great.

Finally, the cabbie dumps them off outside the artist’s entrance. Emma makes good on her promise and throws in an autograph for his niece with a grin and a wink.

Emma and Georgie hustle up to venue security. Suddenly, Emma vanishes into Emma Kingston. Her face goes cold, eyes go dark and vacant. She strides up like she belongs there.

“Excuse me,” she says in that soft velvety tone of disdain.

Venue security doesn’t look impressed. She lets the corners of her mouth fold down further.

“Name?”

“Emma Kingston.”

“You’re not on the artist roster,” the guard says boredly. Emma cocks her head.

“I’m the tour opener. I was here two hours ago,” she groans, sounding convincingly exhausted. She spots a tour poster and points at her name and face splashed helpfully beneath Shawn’s. She quirks an annoyed eyebrow.

This seems to work, because they’re letting her in. She still has to find a couple crew members to swipe passes from to keep this alive a little longer. She hopes she hasn’t stirred up too much ill will with her formerly bad attitude. She needs this to work. She has to see him.

Georgie’s along for the ride, gawping at the backstage like she’s never seen one before. She waves at passing crew members and roadies. She’s charming enough that they wave back even when they’re rushing or their hands are full.

Emma lunges for Shawn’s favorite tech Joey when she sees him. “Joey! I need a pass.”

He beams. “Emma! Hey! Wow! Yeah, c’mon.”

Georgie’s teeth start to chatter with nerves as they wind their way through the labyrinthian tunnels. As they grow closer to the stage, Shawn’s voice becomes clearer. He’s nearing the end of his set. Emma’s growing fidgety, wants to watch his last few songs and be there when he walks off stage.

Joey very helpfully gets them passes and leads them up through the backstage, doesn’t ask questions when he helps them dodge Andrew, who Emma knows to avoid due to Shawn’s explanation of the “strategy.”

Emma’s nerve endings are buzzing all over her body when Joey leads them to sidestage and she catches sight of Shawn under a spot. He’s pounding hard at his guitar, dripping sweat, thrashing around like a fucking rockstar. Her stomach releases a team of butterflies that don’t stay put – they feel like they’re exploding out of her ears and cheeks. Emma reaches for Georgie’s hand, gripping hard.

She looks over. Georgie is grinning so hard her face might just break. She’s bopping up and down, singing along like she’s at her favorite artist’s concert. Emma smiles, remembering that she is. Georgie looks over and squeezes her hand.

The Kingston sisters scream and dance along to “Particular Taste” under Joey’s watchful eye as he stands guard from Andrew or other interferers.

When the song ends, Emma’s adrenaline-laced heart pumps straight into overdrive. Shawn breaks for water and turns toward them, glancing around casually as he brings the water bottle to his lips.

The bottle almost falls from his hand when he spots her. She’s smiling that perfect, quiet Emma smile, the one that first made him wonder who she was underneath. She’s standing there, a vision in plaid and denim, with bouncing, screaming Georgie nearly vibrating next to her.

Shawn bares a toothy grin and starts to laugh. His band members look up to stare at him like he has three heads. Emma and Georgie giggle along with him until the three of them are nearly doubled over, laughing at nothing.

Finally, Shawn straightens up. The music has long since faded out and the crowd is wondering what the hell is going on. Shawn chews on his lower lip, one hand around the neck of his guitar, one gripping the mic. Emma watches him curiously.

Shawn returns his gaze to the crowd. He can’t see them over the house lights, but he can hear them, can feel them. He smiles softly.

He plucks the first few notes, just to give her a taste, get her blood moving. He doesn’t look at her reaction, just down at his guitar as the crowd cheers for something they don’t recognize.

“Brooklyn,” he crows, a smirk in his voice, “Have I got a surprise for you.”

He backs away from the mic so he can see into sidestage. Emma is laughing again and Georgie is looking between Shawn and Emma so quickly she’s going to give herself whiplash.

Joey, being Joey, takes his cue and hands Emma a tuned up acoustic. It’s not her little yellow guitar, but it’ll do. She smiles gratefully and looks back at the stage as Shawn races around to inform the band that a change is being made.

When all is settled, he nods to Joey and strides back to the mic. As Joey approaches, he lifts off his guitar and hands it to him.

“Thanks, Joey.”

Shawn stands in front of the mic, hands folded behind his back. “This is my last night on this tour,” Shawn begins, sounding a little nostalgic and a lot proud. Emma looks up from fiddling with a guitar pick to watch him.

“This was the best tour ever. I want to thank my incredible band and crew for all their hard work. You guys are everything. I couldn’t do this without you, obviously, but I also wouldn’t want to. Thank you.”

He steps back from the mic and applauds, looking to each member of his band gratefully. The crowd’s roaring dies down as Shawn takes the mic again.

“I also want to thank my tourmate,” he chuckles and Emma knows it’s because “tourmate” doesn’t even begin to cover what they are to each other now, “Emma Kingston.”

The crowd shows waves of recognition, they think they know what’s coming.

They don’t.

Emma turns to Georgie with bated breath. “Want to see something cool?”

Georgie nods. Emma grins. “Stay here. You’re gonna love this.”

Georgie squeals and stands back. When Emma looks back to the stage, Shawn is turned toward her, smiling in anticipation.

Emma grips the guitar for dear life.

She’s never been on a stage as Emma before. She’s been on who knows how many hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Pageant stages, sound stages, arena stages. She has stood at the back or the side putting on her mask, lacing up her persona. She became Emma Kingston for them because that’s what they wanted from her.

She’s never been this Emma before – this Emma in a shirt from Goodwill and ratty sneakers without a stitch of make-up. This is Georgie’s Emma, Shawn’s Emma.

Emma’s Emma.

And now it’s all that’s left.

Emma takes a deep breath and it feels like new life. It feels like a promise. It feels like she’s finally present.

She takes a step, then another. Shawn starts to clap and whistle as she takes the stage, scorched by the bright lights. She’s grateful, then, that all she can see is him.

She walks up to him, watches his smug smile grow. She shakes her head, laughing again, turning to the elated crowd to wave. They shake the damn stadium with their applause. Something new is happening. They can feel it.

Shawn’s gentle touch on her arm brings her back. He leans into her ear.

“You good?”

Emma leans back and looks up at his sparkling chocolate eyes. She nods meaningfully. “I’m ready.”

Shawn grins wildly, curls bobbing as he jogs back to take a seat at the piano.

Emma takes her time adjusting the mic stand, feeling the intensely weighted quiet of the crowd as they wait for her. They think they know who she is, but they haven’t seen this before. They’re curious. Who is she?

Emma looks down at the guitar as she plucks out the first chords slowly. She repeats them a few times, not as much getting her bearings as she is falling into this.

This, what she’s worked every day of her life for since she was five.

This, what she’s dreamed about through years of misdirection, of pampering, of bad attitude, of tight jeans, of broken promises.

This, what she’s built with her own two hands.

Emma lifts her head, tips it back and forth as her eyes slide shut. She starts playing to tempo, hears Shawn’s first notes on the piano come in shortly after.

“Little miss down on love… little miss I give up… little miss I’ll get tough, don’t you worry ‘bout me anymore…”

Her voice is hers. It’s not sweetened, it’s not tuned, it’s Emma Jean. It’s generations of southern heritage, it’s years of Tammy and Patsy under the covers in bed, it’s a little twangy and it’s fucking perfect.

“Little miss checkered dress… little miss one big mess… little miss I’ll take less when I always give so much more…”

Her eyes are shut, pinched tight as she feels every word like they’re getting tattooed on her skin as she sings them.

“It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, sometimes you gotta lose till you win…”

“It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’ll be alright again.”

Her eyes open. The chorus crashes in. She rocks along with it, crooning into the mic, strumming hard.

“It’ll be alright again, I’m ok, it’ll be alright again…”

As the chorus fades back into the first chords, Emma feels the crowd with her. She has them – an artist knows when she has an audience, it’s like feeling the wind at her back. But this is Barclays Arena so it’s not wind. It’s a goddamn hurricane. And it feels so good.

“Little miss do your best… little miss never rest… little miss be my guest, I’ll make more any time that it runs out.”

Shawn’s impressive at the piano. She grins around her words as he strikes hard at the keys, feeling this as much as she is.

“Little miss you’ll go far… little miss hide your scars… little miss who you are is so much more than you like to talk about…”

With the build-up of the next chorus, Emma stomps her foot along with the piano and drums. The pause before the chorus breaks and Emma slashes at the guitar, going full rockstar like she’s always wanted to but never could. It gets even more of the crowd behind her. She’s a born performer. It’s hard to ignore.

The bridge is simple, but it’s big. It builds like the chorus, but it’s more climactic. Emma feels it rising in her. It shows her true chops as a singer. She holds her note, grinning around it again as the crowd reacts in waves of cheers and applause.

“Hold on… hold on, you are loved, are loved…”

Emma’s voice fades out after an impressive vocal run that has at least half the stadium on their feet. If she looked behind her, she’d see the band exchanging shocked looks of delight -- all but Shawn, who knew for certain she had it in her. He’s smiling that perfect proud smile, eyes glued to her like the first time he saw her perform. He remembers her blue spangly dress, her bare feet, her mismatched voice. There’s nothing mismatched here, now. This is right. This is her.

Emma steps back from the mic for a moment, regaining her breath after her impressive display of vocal prowess. She gasps breath, lifts her hand to her mouth, shaking her head in amazement as the crowd grows even louder in reaction.

She stares out at them. She wonders about every face, every story behind every life, every song in the hearts of these people who didn’t expect this today but got it anyway. All these people who are making this memory with her. All these people who took a perfect dream and made it real.

She smiles wide. It’s projected stories high onto the screen behind her. The crowd continues to cheer.

She steps back to the mic and the song returns to its quiet beginning. Emma is solo, strumming the guitar, bobbing her head and scuffing her sneakers on the stage floor. She turns to face Shawn, lifts her head and flips hair out of her eyes. He’s sitting proudly at the piano, staring at her. He ducks his head shyly when she catches him. He knows what’s coming.

“Little miss brand new start… little miss do your part… little miss big ol’ heart beats wide open, she’s ready now for love…”

Fuck a strategy. Fuck Kyle Dillon. Fuck Island. Fuck Sandra.

Emma’s looking at Shawn and Shawn’s looking at Emma and it’s obvious to anyone with eyes. And they don’t fucking care.

The chorus builds again, bigger than before. It takes Emma a minute to realize why.

It’s because they’re singing along.

The crowd is chanting with her, “it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright.”

They’re singing her words back to her and it’s so much better than she imagined it would be. Tears catch at the corner of her eyes. When she glimpses Georgie jumping up and down sidestage, crying like a 13-year-old at a Bieber, concert, her tears come loose. Her throat grates, but she sings through it.

Emma sings “I’m ok,” Shawn echoes “it’ll be alright again” and for the first time in her life, Emma believes it.

She doesn’t want to let go when the song draws to a close, the last chord reverberating but barely audible under the mass of screams, of delighted cheers, of chants of her name.

Emma steps backward away from the mic, trying to catch her breath. She drops her pic and claps her hands over her mouth, shaking her head. The cheers grow louder as she gets emotional.

She recovers enough to swing her guitar behind her back and lift her arms to wave. She’s choking back sobs, biting her lips, wishing in the back of her head that Sandra could see this.

Emma looks to Georgie, who’s crying harder than she is. When Georgie realizes she’s spotted, she waves hysterically, cheering and jumping up and down again. Emma laughs, lifting her hand to wave back.

A big, warm hand catches her wrist. She looks up instinctively. He’s there beside her looking at her like she handed him the world.

Slowly, like she’s watching from above, he drops her wrist and steps into her, cupping her neck in his big, rough hands. The crowds roars are deafening as they see what’s about to happen. Emma holds onto his ribcage as Shawn leans in and gives her a searing kiss.

He holds nothing back. He slots their lips together, pulls her up on her toes to deepen it, dropping his hands from her neck to wrap around her waist and lift her slightly. She swings her arms around his neck and holds on desperately, gasping into his mouth, whimpering gently.

With the ground-shaking din of the crowd’s reaction ringing in his ears, Emma’s mind is perfectly blank, clearer than it’s been since she was small. She has one thought in her head. A memory.

She sighs, resigned. She sweeps a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his neck. She leans in and kisses him, soft and sweet. It lasts only a moment. His lips are soft and taste like morning and lemon. She shudders.

He has lost any sense of the world around them. He shrugs an arm around her, uses the other to move some hair out of her tear-streaked face. He leans back in and she shuts her eyes, waiting for another kiss. Instead, he trails his lips over her hair, her cheekbones, her nose, her fluttering eyelashes.

“Emma,” he breathes into her ear. Her body tightens against his in response.

The name doesn’t sound so scary anymore.

Emma smiles into his lips, overwhelmingly grateful.

Her hero’s journey for independence was a long affair, one Shawn arrived for the tail end of. He can’t be attributed much credit for Emma’s departure from her team, from Margaret and Sandra. He was a background figure in all of those scenes.

But Shawn did something just important, just as crucial to getting Emma to this point. He taught her how to be loved.

When Shawn releases her, they smile big and toothy in unison and start to laugh again like they did before, too filled with love and hope and plain, stupid youth that it comes out like explosive carbonation.

Shawn tucks hair behind her ear and kisses her forehead. The girlish shrieks are deafening. They make Emma chuckle again.

“Wait for me?” Shawn whispers in her ear.

Emma nods. “I’m not going anywhere.”

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#shawn mendes #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes fluff

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songofsilentechoes · 4 years ago

Text

The ship’s entry into the atmosphere was smooth enough, but that lurching feeling from the lower-end compensator sat poorly as Noelle clung tightly to the safety strap she was lashed into her seat with. She wraps her boot into the cargo net of the large crate she was next to for that added sense of security while the pilot yelled something back into the hold.

She fumbled with the cheap translator she bought off the station to try and understand what it was he said, as the ship suddenly lurches upward, buffeted by something from outside, causing her to drop the device.

She closes her eyes and tries to have faith in his abilities while she struggles to remember where her soul would be going if she died right now.

More yelling from up front, this time from the co-pilot. An internal alarm goes off and the yelling intensifies, but over the din, she doesn’t hear them leaving their seats, so she remains put.

There’s a loud exclamation and a heavy slam of something hitting metal and the alarm stops. The co-pilot says something while the ship rumbles. Her stomach’s contents lurch as the ship drops suddenly followed by a heavy slam.

Noelle opens her eyes as the ship’s engines stop. She can still hear the wind outside, but the ship feels steady again. Laughter and celebratory speech from the cockpit suggest they made it to their destination alive.

She fumbles with her strap and stands, nearly tripping from the cargo net. Untangling her foot, she retrieves her translator and sees that it seems to be working still. With an adjustment of her earpiece, she heads for the cockpit to find the crew.

The co-pilot is talking with someone over the comms. The large pilot turns towards Noelle and smiles, his big frog-like mouth grinning from ear hole to ear hole. He speaks in a friendly tone.

“LITTLE ONE NOT DAMAGED. GOOD. ARRIVED.”

She responds, trying to verbally mimic the words the translator feeds her, with her runes copying the text exactly.

“Pleased. Thank. Dangerous. Scary. Cargo safe.”

The big pilot laughs. She must’ve said something silly to him. The co-pilot finishes his call and he and the pilot share a brief exchange, gesturing at Noelle. Eventually, the co-pilot speaks in a more cautionary tone. Her device beeps and translates roughly for her.

“LAST CHANCE. NOT SAFE FOR LITTLE ONE.”

Noelle tries to look confident in her reply.

“Having concern. Thanks. Uncertain being....uhh....Hazards must be being overcome for mission?”

The two big creatures exchange looks and the wide pilot puts a heavy hand on her shoulder, speaking calmly. She takes in his words before she looks to her translator.

“CAUTIOUS OF DANGERS. GO. DO NOT STAY LONG. WE STAY FOR A TIME FOR YOU. CARGO NEEDS WAITING. WE GIVE...”

The pilots look at each other.

“TWO CYCLES MOST.”

The co-pilot speaks.

“THREE, BUT PAY FOR THIRD.”

The pilot nods.

“THREE CYCLES.” He pokes her with his meaty finger. “UNDERSTANDING?”

Noelle nods.

“Understanding being. Very dangerous. Cargo waits two cycles. Three for pay.”

He nods. “THEN LEAVE.”

She repeats. “Then leave.”

He nods, satisfied and turns back to his work as his copilot stands and stretches, readying to move the cargo containers. The small girl stands out of his way while she double-checks her gear.

Higher tech cold weather gear wasn’t as comfy as her own, but she had to admit that it was significantly more effective. She checks the seals on her boots and suit before putting in the over-armor for the environment suit, clamping it into place. Powering it on, a fresh breath of air enters the environment suit. While still a little stale, it’s far cleaner than the recycled environment of the ship’s interior she was breathing for the last few hours as they traveled. Arriving through the station was a bit of a pain, but she needed the equipment this time, and she was able to negotiate a rental for the environment suit.

She reaches up and pushes the button for the hatch to let her out. The hydraulic hiss sounds as the heavy seals are released and the door opens into the airlock. The second door opens and the hiss is follow by a gust of utterly frigid air that fills the small room. The environment sensors kick in a half second later than she would’ve liked and proceed to regulate the temperature within.

She steps out and can barely see the small building they landed at through the heavy snow. She walks towards it, her boots causing her to take heavy and clumsy steps. The door hisses open and lets her in.

Once inside, a small vaguely-humanoid machine chirps a greeting at her and gestures at her with a motion she doesn’t recognize. She fumbles for her translator.

“uhh...Finder?”

The machine chirps and points to a device at the far wall. A voice calls out from deeper in the building in the same language at the pilots. The machine responds dismissively, earning a grunt from the voice within. Noelle stomps over to the machine and links her map with the local scanner, and marks the area that was surveyed. After a bit, her suit beeps and a small indicator blinks. She fumbles with the interface a bit before it brings up a Head’s Up Display in the helmet, causing the flashing to stop.

“Oh, that’s helpful. Wish I understood the manual.”

She looks from left to right, getting her bearings on what direction the map is facing in relation to herself and her destination. She then tries to convert the distance from their units to ones she understands better.

“About...10 minutes in that direction? Let’s....assume 30 to an hour. Even with this keeping me on course, I don’t think I can move fast out there...”

The machine chirps quizzically at her. She jumps a little in surprise, not used to being heard.

“Ah....(she looks at the translator) ...apology great. The Voices speak through me?”

The machine seems to accept this and continue with its�� business.

---

She really should’ve picked a nicer place for her trip; or maybe taken a break to turn in her previous findings. The harsh winds threaten to knock her over, if her heavy boots were sunk a foot deep into the snow. Each step was miserable, landing on a hard crusty surface until she puts enough weight down to pull herself out of her last footstep before cracking and sinking into the soft snow. Even stomping on the crust didn’t help because the extra force needed tired her out, too.

Her body was sore even before she began. Her bruises were a recent gift from the massive foliage from before. However, every step here caused her muscles to ache. She found herself missing luxuries like a soft bed and a nice, hot bath.

The snow under her splits and she loses her footing, tumbling and landing face down. Groaning, she tries to pick herself up onto her hands and knees and flops back down, resting a bit.

“Ugh....how long have I been walking?”

The suit chirps and after a bit, pulls up a clock. Three hours had passed while she walked. No wonder she was miserable. She pulled herself to a sitting position before she realizes she can hear herself think. Looking around, she finds herself in a cave, almost totally obscured by the snow. Her suit was struggling to maintain the navigational data in the storm, but she should be close by. Meteorological data suggests it would clear up a little in about an hour, so she moves a little deeper into the cave and lies down to rest.

Noelle wondered what the plant would look like. The spacer she bought the data from said it was pretty, but their description of a pale white plant seemed to her like it would struggle amidst the snow and storm. She closes her eyes and waits for the whistle of the wind against the cave entrance to die down.

---

Noelle is roused from her nap as the atmospheric alert makes a sound informing her of the storm clearing. She sighs and stretches, remaining on her back. The wind’s calmed down, no longer whistling into the cave.

Gentle chimes can be heard in the absence of the howling wind. Noelle enjoys the sound for a time before she realizes how out of place it feels.

Sitting up, she looks around. Around the edges of the cave, hundreds of plants begin to open in the cave in the wake of the storm, the buds making a faint chime when they open and a pale blue luminescence spreads through the plant’s fibers. She inspects the plants and finds that nestled under the buds in the fruit, wrapped protectively by the plant’s structure. The patches appear to be fairly close together.

She gingerly takes one, and the flower opens wider, and it’s song is somewhat more crisp; rings of glass or crystal.

The fruit itself is a small, pale thing, like a rock coated in frost; no larger than a grape. Her body heat doesn’t seem to reach through the suit to defrost it, or the surrounding environment is simply that cold. She taps it against the floor of the cave, resulting in a hard “tak tak tak” sound. Some of the nearby plants’ chimes resonate the the taps.

She takes a rock and brings it down upon the fruit, splitting it with a loud crack. The flowers’ luminescence flashes in a splash of brighter glow from the point of impact. Lifting the rock, she finds the fruit split with the bean-like pit remaining. She picks it up and examines it for a bit.

“Wonder if any of these are any good....or even palatable. Hope so....I promised her quality, but her stock is so vast...it’d be difficult to simply find someone else’s good coffee and point them her way...”

She sighs and proceeds to collect a soil sample, make a copy of the atmospheric data, and gather enough of the fruits to make for a decent presentable quantity, as well as a little more for attempts to cultivate it elsewhere. She’d rather not need to go through with this again for these particular samples.

After ensuring the samples are secured, she heads for the cave entrance into the blinding white of the snowfield and activates her beacon. She then begins the long walk back to the ship.

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takeenata · 8 years ago

Text

Birthday

February 8th, 2016. My friends are gathered at my house, here without my knowledge or planning involved. Not without permission, however; my friends are welcomed to enter my home at any moment, so long it’s at some reasonable hour. My family, wife and kids, are here as well. Today is a momentous day for them, but sometimes I just like to believe it’s a good reason for them to party. They drink brew I spent a few days working on to perfect to my tastes, and apparently it’s just right for them too. They eat food that I prepare them, from full-fledged meals to small snacks. I am the provider of all of this, and despite the occassion, I am more than alright with this being my birthday celebration. Happy 45.

I’ve never wanted anything extraordinary for my birthday celebration. Up to when I was twelve, mom and dad would celebrate my day with a loaf of cinnamon banana bread. It became my favorite thing to eat when I was six, and till this day I would choose it over a batch of cookies or a cake. My wife is aware of this, and she attempts to recreate the banana bread on this day. I have never asked her of this, she does it on her own accord. When the night’s done and my friends have gone their separate ways back home, the kids want to go off and see their friends. My wife and I are more than alright with them seeing their friends at this time; we’ve visited their parents more often than not because of how much time our children spend together. It also gives us about three hours alone in the house. Three hours alone, on my birthday. If I have to share anymore detail about what happens next, you need help.

It’s roughly eight o'clock in the afternoon. If you’re a working person, this is usually the time you go to sleep so you can get up and get a head start on your work, and get off work pretty early. Which, my day is usually going to sleep around eight-thirty, waking up at five-thirty, working out for an hour, take a shower, make breakfast for the kids before they go to school at seven-thirty. Then I work over a hot forge till it’s twelve, take a thirty-minute-lunch, then work on what I can till it’s around four. But the part of owning your own business, and being the only one that works there, is that you can work whenever you really want. As if no one’s going to complain that you’re not working; especially when you’re a blacksmith for a living, and on average your final products sell for over a grand each. Add the fact that you work on more than one project a day too; on a good day I am handling six to seven different pieces.

Eight PM. I went to the fridge to see if I have the right things to make breakfast for my kids in the morning. Sadly, I ran out of milk and eggs during today’s celebration. Breakfast is the most important part of the day in my house, and I’ll be damned if I ever let my kids go a day without having something to kickstart their morning to school. I know that Docward likes to have a bowl of cereal and toast with strawberry jam, and Nimie ‘cannot survive’ unless she has her morning orange-juice and scrambled-eggs. Pirella doesn’t care what’s made for breakfast, so she says, but I know for a fact she enjoys oven-baked bacon as much as I do. I look through the freezer to see we’re also out of bacon; a flashback of making about ten pounds of bacon for my party today came back to me.

I closed the fridge door to walk to my bedroom, hearing Pirella chatting with someone. The room is illuminated with a single lamp on a nightstand, and with it I’m able to see my wife laying on the bed with a laptop on her legs. She’s wearing boxers, and a white tank-top. Her face is illuminated by the screen of the laptop; as I walked in she looked up at me, smiled, flashing the sharp white teeth of hers. “Hey, Husbee.”

“Husbee? That’s new.” I was in my pajamas, which was just a pair of wool shorts with a string, the undershirt I’ve been wearing throughout the day, and a navy blue robe. I disrobe myself, hanging it up on the back of the bedroom door as I closed it.

“Well babe gets kind of dull doesn’t it?”

“What’re you talkin’ about, babe?”

Pirella laughs. “I hope you’ve had a good day today.” “It was an amazing day. I really appreciate you all bein’ there.”

“Of course we’re all going to be there. It’s the least they can do showing up to this after all the times you’re there for them.” “I don’t like pulling favors from people though, even if they do owe me.”

“Tak this whole house is built on a favor.” She proved a valid point. 2010 was the year I finally settled down and was able to get a house. But, I wasn’t one to just buy a house with money I barely had. However, a year prior to settling down, I had saved a man’s life at the hands of some sinister necromancer. Considering the man was wealthy in many ways, and had political power, the necromancer had plans to kill him and reanimate his body to their favor, essentially a puppet. I didn’t find out what all the necromancer wanted to do after the fact; I do know that the magic abuser is hospitalized, paralyzed from the neck down. I was not proud of what was done to him.

“I guess you have a point,” I said with agreement, remembering I had asked that same man if I could have a house built to my liking, and he was more than willing to do so. Three months later, my two story house was completed, with a forge house in the side.

I need a change of subject. “So who are you talking to, honey?”

“It’s Aimee. She says “Hi.””

“Hello Aimee,” I say back in a louder voice. I make my way to my dresser that perches a television on top of it. Well, sort of perches it on it’s top; the television is mounted on a wall, and my dresser underneath it. From the dresser I reach for the second to last drawer of this four-drawered-construction; it’s the jeans drawer, and from it I take out one of the worn out pairs of Arizona jeans as well as a belt.

My wife noticed me changing into jeans. “Heading somewhere?”

I slide open the first drawer to take out a black shirt, then the second drawer to draw out a red flannel. I begin to dress, and I tell her “Need to make a grocery run before the store closes in…” I flick my wrist for my watch. “An hour and a half.”

I continue getting dressed. I can hear Pirella telling Aimee to wait a second. The uegat got out of our bed, stretching down her tank-top; sitting down had bunched it up to her chest. “Do you plan on driving?” “When it’s right down the street? I don’t want to waste gas. Plus I could use a walk to think about some things, you know.”

“Everything alright? I know Christmas is a hard time for you, but you’re usually a lot more open during your birthday.” She planted her hands on her hips. “What’s eating you up?”

“I’m forty-five now. I’m three years away from outliving my mother and father. I just want to think this stuff out alone, you know?” I started to get dressed, putting on my jeans and other articles of clothes. I felt like my explanation wasn’t enough and that I might’ve offended my wife a little.

“I know you’re always there for me. I really love that about you. Even before we were married, you were there to get me off my ass and onto my feet, kicking and fighting. But, this is one of those things that I want to think through first before I talk much more about it, you know? I’m sorry if that hurts you in any way.”

She quickly wrapped her strong arms over my shoulders, drawing me down to her for a tight hug. “Tak that’s all you have to say. I love you, honey.”

I wrap my arms around her waist and lift her up to my height, bringing her feet off the carpet flooring. “I love you too.” She presses her lips onto mine, and I embrace my wife with tender love.

“Stay safe out there. I heard it’s going to rain, and I’d rather you not catch a cold.”

“I’ll bring my jacket, the big brown one.” I have to specify. I have a lot of jackets, and often they’re used for separate occasions. Rain; cold-weather; style; travel; business; it’s important to have something for everything.

“Don’t forget your wallet either.”

“I always carry my essentials.” Essentials being wallet, car-keys, and concealed weapon. A mental list of whatever I needed from the store is what I need now though. It was bacon, milk, and eggs. A gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, and maybe two packets of Oscar Meyer thick-cut bacon. I like my women like my bacon; thick and delicious.

Bad jokes aside, I need to make sure that’s all I’m having to get. “Anything else from the store you think we need?”

“Grapes, bananas, and apples. You all ate the fruit today.”

“We had fruit to begin with? Where the heck was it?”

“On top of the fridge in a basket-weave. Though I guess it’s hard for you shorter people to see up the fridge now, ain’t it?” She laughs.

“Your ears don’t count for your height.” She has ears pointing up that are about a foot in length. If ears did count towards height, my wife would be taller than me by a few inches. We share a laugh together. I finish getting dressed and make my way outside, heading for the nearest store before they close for the night.

…

I buy the needed items if I want to assure my family are going to have a happy breakfast tomorrow morning. I make small talk with the cashier, as they made comments about me being here close to closing. I replied with it being the least busy at this time of night, but how I also needed to restock after my birthday this year. They wish my a happy birthday. I buy my items and start to walk back outside.

The automatic doors slide open. I see the downpour of rain begin, followed by several claps of thunder and flashes of lightning arc across the blackened sky. The sky might’ve already been black, considering it was evening; the clouds were blocking the moonlight. I’m thankful to have grabbed my raincoat; I’m not so thankful that years ago when I bought this thing, I picked the obnoxious, highlighter yellow option. At least it’s reflective. My hood goes up, making my head form an awkward shape since my ears stick out a few inches from my head. Hoods aren’t my style anyways; niether are beanies.

I walk home, listening to the sounds of a storm roll over me. It’s peaceful, despite the destructive nature that can come in these storms. Reminds me of a time I watched a tree back in Kansas get split in half by a bolt of lightning. The sound it made was awesome. Find it strange or not, I didn’t see a legitimate lightning storm like this when I was living back in Alaska, up north. I seen a lot of blizzards and some rain, but the rain was a rarity with how cold it got. The blizzards were always something else to wake up to, as you exit the front door and there’s two feet of snow blocking you.

The thunder is calming. Single story buildings made of bricks make the path home for me, but they echo the sounds of the storm and resonate them in a deeper, more mellow manner. Each roar surges through my chest, as I feel the echoes shake inside my body; my heart settles and slows. I believe this is my body’s way to let me know, now more than ever, can I relax. I’ll end this day on a high note, with self-reflection; self-realization.

It was back in 1971 when –

“There you are,” grunts a voice unfamiliar. A pair of clawed hands takes ahold of the hood of my raincoat. Make that several hands taking hold of my raincoat; is that five or six pairs I’m feeling right now? Difference sizes too, and some don’t even have claws. I’m swept off my feet and thrown into an filthy alleyway that’s barely given any light from a broken street lamp that flickers. The groceries I had bought fly from their bags, making a fresh mess of breakfast items. A waste of forty something dollars.

The hands toss me against the rusted metal of a unsanitary dumpster; my head slams against the sides of it, hard enough to make the open plastic lid slap down with an audible thump. The sudden surge of pain causes me to slide down the sides of the trash-filled box. As I now sit in a puddle of sullied water, I feel my vision blurring, the rain not helping as it fogs my vision. I can only make out eight figures that use the shadows to mask their identities. Wiping away the rain, I can see them better.

Demons. I should’ve figured. Such a strange variety of them too. One is an imp; another wears a tailored tuxedo; a third has skin with a violet shade to it. One has more than four horns breaking from it’s skin; a different demon looks to be suffering from an overextended diet of grease; the sixth’s skin I believed to be red in design, but as I look again I see their skin is actually riddled with tattoos on a pale-skin-canvas; another had shackles burned and chained to it’s wrists and ankles.

A stranger stood amongst these seven demons. While the rest wore leather and cloth looking clothes, they wore jeans, boots, and a hoodie that prevented me from seeing their face. I couldn’t see the color of their skin, or any other definite traits. I can’t label them as human, or other subhuman, humanoid, or other bipedal race of being. I could safely assume them as a demon, since the crowd it stood with was consisted of only demons.

I finally stand after observing the demons that surrounded me in a half-circle. Needless to say, I am in no mood to end the best day I’ve had in awhile with a fight against eight demons, with intentions I’m sure are to kill me. Hands clenched, adrenaline making my heart race after it had just calmed; my mind ticking with ways I’d win this inevitable fight, despite odds stacked against me. “What do you want?” I question, having good hope this was just some sort of confusion. Afterall, none of the demons carried weapons with them.

“You,” they all said, simultaneously, like they rehearsed this scene to get it right.

I shake my head. “I’m not in the mood for this crap,” I spit out. My hands gesture to the mess of food that was going to be breakfast for my family. “You all just completely trashed my grocery run, and the store just closed.”

“Damn your pitiful food, elf!” Said the most well dressed of the demons, their tone sounding like the rich stereotype. He’d be the one paying me for the food he helped ruin.

“Dine on your blood tonight,” included the demoness with violet skin. “You’ll be drowning in it!”

I roll my eyes. This is not the first time I’ve heard someone talk high-and-mighty, treating me like a lesser individual when they make threats against my life. It’s too common for me to hear more threats against me than actual hopes for me, which is cons when it comes to being an avid ‘protector of good’ and ‘destroyer of evil.’ I’ve had a pretty damn good day, and I’m not about to let eight strangers completely ruin it for me with their threats. “I ain’t in the mood for this,” I say, left facing and starting to walk out of the alleyway. “I’m not even going to ask that you guys pay me back for my food; consider this a warning to leave me alone.”

My way is suddenly stopped by a standing wall of tattooed skin. I look up at the one in my way, which is uncommon for me as I am usually one of the tallest out of my group of friends, standing six-feet-five-inches. The giant of a demon, this muscle made obstacle completely blocks me from exiting, stepping left and right as I try to step left and right around him. He’s laughing at me now. “This is the infamous “Elven Hero,” the halls of Hell scream so much about? “Heaven’s Sword” walking away from a battle. Pathetic.”

“Is that what this is about? Y’all want to test your metal against me?”

“I’ve long dreamed of fighting you one-to-one, Takeenata. But we are not here for games,” said the mound-of-muscle-mass, as he lifts me up aggressively by the front of my raincoat. “We’re here to-” “Gash,” softly spoke another voice, a whisper directly in my ear. Chains rattled as the pale demon spoke. “He mustn’t know. He’s not allowed.”

“Very well,” said the brute holding me, suddenly strengthening his grip. The demon Gash tossed me with extreme force and speed, and I collided with the cold, wet, brick wall of the alleyway.

I’m no where near strong or sturdy enough to have left a dent in the wall, however, I did leave behind a splat of my blood due to new injury dripping behind my head. I can feel my back broken in a few different places now; vertebrates out of place and an inability to walk normally. Lucky for me I landed next to the dumpster, which I use now to pull myself back onto my feet. I hold onto the edges to keep myself up.

I can taste a clot of blood in my mouth. Something’s bleeding inside of me. Elven genes dictate that injuries usually heal up quickly when that injury is given rest for a good week or so, and the dwarven bit of me lets me withstand injuries pretty well and have the strength to press on, disregarding awful pain. Despite these advantages I may have, I don’t think it’s going to help me when I can’t feel or move the lower half of my body now.

Still though. I have to fight. From my back I draw my handgun, a .45 caliber with a twelve round clip, and on my utility belt, two more clips to load. Always carry essentials. I take the pistol off safety and hold it with my firing hand, my right hand, as my supporting arm, the left arm, keeps me up and holding on the edge of this dumpster. The enemies surround me, which narrows down my need to aim well.

I still don’t want this to go down. I just want to go home, sleep next to my wife, and wake up to a loving family. However; I’ll take anyone that tries to kill me down to Hell. I spit out the clot of blood collecting in my mouth, then gaze at the eight demons surrounding me. “None of you are leaving here without any scars,” I say with utter aggression boiling in my veins.

The imp tries to charge at me, flaring his tiny teeth with an open mouth, wanting to bite me. His head was bigger than his body, he stood no bigger than two, maybe three feet tall. My aim goes for his abnormal sized head, and I pull back the trigger. I fired a shot straight into his gold colored eyes, and he goes down like a bag of rocks. Though, I know he’s not dead, just immobilized while he recovers from taking a bullet into the eye. Judging from there being no exit wound I witnessed, the bullet is lodged in his brain. This will give me more time as his body tries to push it out.

A chain appears from the heavy rain and wraps around my wrist. The joints of this rusted chain pinch my wrist and squeeze with incredible strength, attempting to cut off the circulation to my firing hand. He knows my weapon can cause damage; the demon in rags and chains wants to take away my advantage.

I attempt to whip the chain back at him by flicking my arm up and down. Success; the whip hits the demon in it’s face, and he drops his weapon. With my wrist being freed, I aim for his head and fire. The aim wasn’t all too good, but I manage to hit his chest well enough to toss him on his feet.

With two out of the fight, and two bullets used, with 34 rounds left to spare, I feel complete faith that I’ll make it home tonight. I’m going to have to call my wife and get her to drive here and pick me up; no way I’m walking for a few weeks, and there’s not a chance that I’m crawling back half a mi –

A sudden force hits my chest. Colliding force that goes through my chest, that I can feel penetrate my…heart? I’ve never felt anything legitimately touch my heart before; metaphorically is something else. The sudden sharp pain that surges through my chest, how clean it went through and the way it feels inside. I’ve felt this feeling before; I’ve been stabbed. In the heart.

Mind goes numb. Body fails to move. I slowly descend down to the cold damped ground, dropping my pistol and staring off into the end. This was the end – holy shit. With each pump of my heart, my vision fades into dark. With each beat, my life fades away. I clutch at my chest, holding the very knife that penetrated me. I’m not sure what sort of idea I had just then, but I find myself taking the blade out of my chest and observing it.

“Such strange designs,” I thought to myself, admiring the weapon that killed me. I look up to see my attacker, which was the stranger in the hood. He didn’t move the entire time, didn’t say a word either. I should’ve paid better attention to him.

Life slipping away by each second, vision become more black by the second. I’m so sorry Pirella, I won’t be coming home tonight. My kids, oh God my kids; they won’t have a father anymore. My group of friends will be short one person now.

Eyes close, and I feel the last gasp of air escape my lungs, and the last pump in my chest.

I’ll be seeing you, mom and dad.

#takeenata #takeenata versus the inferno

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