#I NEED TO SEE MORE . HOW HAD SHE DETERIORATED MENTALLY BEFORE BEING MAGIC WOMAN ??

[thefunniestguy]

i think ,,,,,, even outside of being a betty enthusiast . adventure time would have managed to be 10x better if there were more betty-centered episodes ,,

[totowlff]

chapter forty-six — the loneliest

➝ it's not always easy to deal with your own mind

➝ word count: 1,9k

➝ warnings: mental health issues

➝ author’s note: yes, it's an update. yes, it's a shorter chapter. yes, the conversation is based on real dialogues.

JULY, 2018

As she sat on the couch in Alma’s office, Elisabeth felt pathetic. She couldn’t help it. This always happened during her appointments. Alma had assured her that it was completely normal and that she was far from the only client that experienced such strong emotional releases, it didn’t matter.

She had already been sobbing in front of the therapist for 20 minutes, without being able to complete even a coherent sentence to answer the only question she had asked so far. Such a simple question, but it had been able to make her crumble under the weight of all the fear she still felt.

— I believe it has been a difficult few days for you — Alma said calmly, her hands folded gently in her lap. 

— Yes, very difficult — Elisabeth managed to say, as she dried her nose with the tissue she had taken from the small table next to the armchair she was sitting on.

— Is there any point that you have found more difficult? — Alma asked, as Elisabeth nodded — And what would it be?

Elisabeth took a few deep breaths, trying to contain the whirlwind of emotions that had taken over her since the beginning of the month. Then, after sniffling and drying her eyes, she looked at the therapist again.

— My father's hospitalization — she said, quietly.

— I believe you are following everything closely…

— At first, yes, but now…

Niki's first few days in the hospital were reassuring. The immunosuppression therapy had shown satisfactory results in a short time, which cheered everyone up. However, it didn't take long for predictions of a possible rise before the end of the summer break to turn into what they didn't want to hear.

Elisabeth had just returned from an appointment with the obstetrician when Marlene called her and told her, with a choked voice, about Niki's worsening situation, that he had been transferred to the ICU. She felt tears welling in her eyes as her mother described her father's situation, stating that his lung tissue was deteriorating rapidly.

However, the final blow was when Doctor Idzko said that all treatments had been exhausted at that point, leaving only one option left.

— He needs a double lung transplant to survive. 

Alma pursed her lips, seeming to absorb the impact of the information.

— I assume he's already in line waiting for the organs, right? — she asked, earning a positive nod from Elisabeth — And you, how do you feel about this situation?

— Anxious, anguished, scared, all of that together. It's like there really is a chance that my father will die and I — she hesitated for a few seconds, feeling her throat tighten. After taking a deep breath, Elisabeth continued — I don't want to lose my father.

Even the possibility of it left her feeling disoriented. She didn't see herself being able to move forward without her father's presence in her own life, especially considering the magical phase that was about to begin in her life. How could Elisabeth be a mother without having her father by her side, guiding her in the same way he had always done?

— Why?

She raised her head, hesitantly.

— Because I can't see myself without my father. I don't see myself living in a world where my father isn't present, by my side, supporting me…

Alma pressed her lips into a thin line.

— Elisabeth, you are aware that no one lives forever, right?

— Yes.

— And you understand that our lives, at some point, will come to an end, right?

— Yes, but this is not the time…

— Who is to say that? — the therapist asked, her voice serious.

Elisabeth stared at her in silence, frozen. Sighing, the woman continued.

— It's understandable to be afraid of dying and losing our loved ones, but it's impossible to predict when or how we will all leave. In the end, only today is a reality.

— I don't want him to die now, he can't — she stammered, her eyes full of tears.

— No one wants to lose the one they love, that goes for anyone — Alma explained to her — But that's not up to you to choose, Elisabeth. And, in a way, we need to be prepared for that. To die, you just need to be alive.

She looked down at her hands, the diamonds on her fingers seeming to sparkle with tears. That statement was brutal, not to say cruel. How could life be something so intense and, at the same time, so delicate?

— I think this situation hurts more because you are living on both sides of the coin at the same time, dealing with a departure and an imminent arrival…

Elisabeth pursed her lips, her eyes dropping to her belly. That dichotomy was painful, especially because it was something she had always longed for, which was to see her father becoming her children's grandfather. And that seemed increasingly distant at that moment.

— Can I ask you something? — Alma said, making her wake up from her own thoughts and look up at the therapist.

— Yeah…

— Are you afraid of being alone?

She pressed her lips together tightly.

— Well, not necessarily. I've been alone on several occasions…

— I mean being without your parents, your siblings and your partner. Are you afraid of being completely alone in the world?

— Not a very pleasant prospect, is it?

— But it's perfectly plausible. No one is eternal, Elisabeth, and we never know what could happen the next minute — Alma explained, while her foot swayed slowly — So, do you have this fear?

Elisabeth had never stopped to think about it, but, in a way, it seemed too obvious. She couldn't remember a time when she was, in fact, alone. There was always someone around, whether it was his parents, his brothers and, more recently, Toto. There was always someone she could count on to provide support when needed.

But what about when there was no one?

— Do you think I'm afraid of being alone?

— You tell me, Elisabeth. Do you have this fear?

— I don't know.

Alma smiled.

— I think you know.

Of course she did.

She knew because she felt the agony building every time she woke up alone in bed in the morning. She knew why she had to face her classmates with her head down and pray that they would ignore her presence there, without telling anyone how they had made her life a living hell. She knew because she had experienced loneliness and rejection as a teenager and hated it.

Elisabeth was afraid of being alone.

She was afraid of not having anyone by her side, of being abandoned, of seeing everyone leave and her being left behind. She was afraid of not having anyone around her who understood her, no one who saw her as she really was and welcomed her with the love she had accepted she deserved, no matter how much she thought she was a complete disaster.

— I think I… have that…

Alma tilted her head.

— Fear?

— Yes, that fear.

— And why are you afraid?

— Because it's bad.

— What is ‘it’? — Alma raised an eyebrow.

— The loneliness. Loneliness sucks. And I don't want to be alone.

— Well, if we think about it — the woman began, looking at the notepad she had in her hand — You're not really alone when there's no one around. You're in your own company.

— I don't like my own company — Elisabeth replied.

— Why not?

She remained silent for a few seconds, thinking about the right words.

— Because I'm not a pleasant person to be around.

— You don’t think so? — Alma questioned — From what you told me, you have loving parents, brothers who really like you and a very loving partner, as well as a child on the way...

— But I don't feel like I’m very pleasant to be around, Alma. I feel like I'm a burden that everyone has been condemned to carry...

The therapist gave a small smile.

— I can assure you that you are not a burden, Elisabeth. And, if you have any doubts, try asking anyone around you and tell me the answers in the next session.

After saying goodbye to Alma, Elisabeth drove back to the penthouse in silence, the woman's words reverberating in her head. In just one session, she had realized that she couldn't change her father's fate and that she would be alone, one way or another, and that she would need to get used to her own company.

It seemed like a bleak prognosis.

She was still thinking about the therapist's speech about death when she entered the apartment, seeing Toto sitting on the couch with his iPad.

— Good evening, Liesl — he said, giving a smile, to which she responded shyly.

— Hello, darling.

— Is everything okay? — the team principal asked, setting the tablet on the coffee table while Elisabeth walked over, dropping her coat and bag on the armchair before dropping down next to him with a groan of pain.

— Yeah, everything is fine.

— How was therapy?

— Therapeutic — she replied without much emotion in her voice, making him laugh.

— That's good, it means it's working — Toto said, as he put an arm behind her head and brought her close to him. With her head resting on his shoulder, Elisabeth felt her body react to his heat and familiar scent, her muscles slowly relaxing, as if her unconscious mind knew that she was safe there — And our aprikose?

— They are making my feet swell and making me feel like crying about everything, but other than that, they’re fine. 

— That's good — he smiled, placing a hand on her belly — No more kicks?

— We don't know if they're kicks — Elisabeth murmured.

— Due to the gestational age, they could very well be — Toto said, smiling — And that means we're going to have a very active person to keep us company in this house.

She would have smiled too, if it weren't for the memory of the conversation with Alma. And that didn't go unnoticed by the team leader.

— Are you okay, my love?

— Yes, I was just thinking.

— What were you thinking about?

Elisabeth pursed her lips, hesitating for a few seconds.

— Whether our child will enjoy my company.

Toto raised an eyebrow.

— Liesl, it’s our child. Of course he will enjoy your company, you are his mother.

— But he might find me too boring and not want anything to do with me.

A giggle escaped the team principal's lips.

— Are you listening to what you're saying?

— Am I wrong?

— Yes!  — Toto exclaimed — You've never been so wrong in your life.

— But I…

He adjusted himself on the couch and placed his hands on her face.

— You are incredible, Elisabeth. You are smart, witty, funny and, above all, loving. You will be a wonderful mother to our baby and I am absolutely sure that he or she will not find you boring or will not want your company.

The words filled her eyes with tears.

— And you? — she stammered.

— Are you asking if I enjoy your company? — Toto returned the question with a smile — Know that, if I didn't enjoy your company, I wouldn't have asked you that question in the office.

Elisabeth blinked.

— Which one?

Taking her right hand, the team principal lifted it until it was between them.

— The one who put this ring on your finger.

Looking at the diamond, a small smile appeared on Elisabeth's lips.

— Can you promise me something? — she asked softly.

— Anything.

— Don’t leave me alone.

It was Toto's turn to smile.

— Not even if you want to, Liesl. I promise you, my love.

[thebiscuiteternal]

I had an evil thought on twitter and way too many people encouraged it, SO-

“Collecting the Pieces”

Mild Horror, Family Secrets, Mental Instability, Magical Fuckups, Sangyao-lite, Nie Huaisang Doesn’t Know Yet, Jin Guangyao Is About To Know More Than He Ever Wanted To

__________

There is something wrong with Nie Huaisang.

It manifests in small signs at first.

Little things like how he would look at a person, but not at them, green eyes dull as if he wasn’t actually seeing who he was talking to. The unnaturally pale tint to his skin and the dark shadows under his eyes. The fact that his robes had gotten heavier over thr last several months, trying to hide that he was getting thinner.

The incident where he had lost consciousness in the middle of a discussion with Ouyang-furen and had only been saved from cracking his skull against the floor by the reflexes of his head disciple was… concerning. But like all of the other symptoms, it could easily be tallied up as exhaustion from lingering grief and having so much responsibility dumped onto an unprepared back.

But then...

Then there are the conversations none of them can hear. Those moments where he sits with his head slightly bowed, staring at nothing and lips moving silently.

There is something wrong with Nie Huaisang, and for those not of his sect, his presence has gone from mildly concerning to downright unnerving.

Jin Guangyao has to point out to his father more than once that they have only just averted the conflict with the previous sect leader; to bar the new one from the discussion conferences just because he seems strange would be an insult tantamount to inviting war, even if Nie Hengbai does seem to be doing all the talking for the Nie at the moment, his sect leader a quiet little shadow at his side.

He finds it a unique opportunity to observe, in fact. Everyone is so unsettled by the mere fact that Nie Huaisang converses with empty air that no one has apparently thought to find out what he is saying when he does .

The seating arrangement isn’t ideal. The only person besides his own disciples who doesn’t seem to be scared off by Nie Huaisang’s unnatural behavior is Jiang-zongzhu, who pointedly settles himself on the opposite side from Nie Hengbai and scowls at all gossipers, their host included. His height half-blocks Nie Huaisang from view.

But still, Jin Guangyao can see.

And as he watches the words fall unheard from Nie Huaisang’s mouth, he feels a chill slowly creep up his spine.

‘Da-ge, come back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll behave. I'll be good. Please come back. Please, Da-ge…’

He is glad that his sleeves hide the involuntary clenching of his hands.

While he knows better than to completely dismiss a possibility, no matter how small the odds, his mind nonetheless rebels at the first idea to enter it. It cannot actually be Nie Mingjue's resentful ghost haunting his little brother. Even if it had been whole, if he and Xue Yang had not scattered it with the man's physical pieces, it is decidedly not Nie Huaisang that the man would be tormenting with his presence if he were capable.

Isn't it?

And yet, he cannot shake the cold in his bones.

There is something wrong with Nie Huaisang, and he will seek out the source.

---

"San-ge?"

Nie Huaisang blinks at him, eyes glassy and confused. He tilts his head questioningly like the birds he is so fond of, then slowly regains awareness of his surroundings and smiles, looking more like himself.

Jin Guangyao forcibly clamps down on a shudder. "It's good to see you, Sang-er," he says, allowing himself to adopt the regional address since they are nowhere near the judging eyes of Koi Tower. He reaches out and sweeps the younger man's hair out of his eyes, then tuts in concern. "Are you still not sleeping well?"

"Ah-" Nie Huaisang flinches and looks embarrassed at the gentle chiding. "It's… nothing, really. Busy times and too much paperwork, that's all. Can I get you anything?"

"I just need to look over some map records, if you don't mind. A handful of small sects have brought a problem to my father, and I'm afraid our own records are… a bit lacking."

The younger man simply nods, accepting the excuse at face value, and Jin Guangyao isn't sure if that says something about Nie Huaisang's state of mind, or the Jin sect's reputation for ignoring anything that isn't expenditures or debts to be collected. Either way, when Nie Huaisang reaches out to tug his sleeve, he goes willingly and tries to ignore the slightly unsteady sway to his friend's pace.

Even though the poor end to his relationship with Nie Mingjue had been loud and public enough that the whole of the Unclean Realms knew about it before the day had even ended, he is apparently still a familiar enough face that barely anyone pays him mind.

Indeed, most of their worried glances are directed towards their sect leader.

He refuses to examine the possible reasons why that might be settling sour in his stomach.

They are still a few halls and turns away from the library when Nie Huaisang lets go of his sleeve and puts a hand to his head, looking even more pale than before. Jin Guangyao catches him before he can topple into the wall and then bites his tongue when green eyes slide over him, gaze unseeing.

“Sang-er?” he asks cautiously.

Nie Huaisang’s eyes don’t clear, but he seems to still be at least halfway lucid. “I’m sorry… I don’t feel well. I think I need to stay here. You remember the rest of the way, don’t you?”

“I do, but this is no proper place for you to rest.” He leans around the corner and waves over a passing servant. “Would you assist Nie-zongzhu to his room, please?”

“Of course, of course,” the woman says in a tone that conveys she is apparently -unfortunately- used to this. “Come along,” she says, taking hold of Nie Huaisang’s hand and wrapping a steadying arm around his waist, as if guiding a lost child, and he follows her lead without complaint.

Jin Guangyao watches them go and squashes that sour feeling when it threatens to churn.

Answers.

Answers first.

---

The library he needs, he has decided, is not the primary library, the one that Nie Huaisang had been taking him to. No, he seeks out the room buried so deep in the Unclean Realms that no daylight reaches it, that he had only stumbled upon by accident back when he had been employed here.

Lighting the only lantern in the room with a flame talisman, he finds that nothing has changed since the last time he was here other than a thickening of the layer of dust.

Swallowing hard, he straightens his back and starts with the family records.

---

‘After much deliberation and testimony from the physicians and healers involved in the care of the first young master, it is the advice of the sect elders that- ’

He has relit the lantern twice, and he’s fairly sure it’s long past dinner when he sinks into a chair and slaps the open scroll down onto the table, feeling lightheaded and shaky.

A spirit-tethering.

Until he had seen the books Lan Xichen carried from the library of the Cloud Recesses, such a thing had been the stuff of fantasy stories. Even in the vaunted Lan texts, it was only described in abstract theory.

And yet there was apparently enough foundation to it that a serious proposal had been made to cast such a thing between a pair of children to keep Nie Mingjue from being torn apart by the saber he’d bonded with far too young.

He forces himself to keep reading, feeling his stomach sink with every passage.

Nie Haoran had argued viciously against the idea for two years, even offering himself as the tether, only to be shot down due to his own unstable health. He had only given in when his son had experienced his first qi deviation at eleven years of age.

Eleven years old.

Nie Huaisang would have only been five.

Jin Guangyao bites his tongue again and presses the back of his hand to his mouth to forcibly swallow back the bile that bubbles up in his throat.

The mechanics of the matter only make the horror of it even more stark. The only ones who would have been able to undo the tether would have been the brothers themselves. He finds notes, plans, all written in Nie Mingjue’s sharp-edged calligraphy, of how he would set his brother free once his own health became too compromised but before his mind was too unstable…

But he hadn’t done it.

Hadn’t been able to do it.

He’d deteriorated too quickly.

Instead...

Nausea continuing to roil in his guts like a thunder cloud, Jin Guangyao rolls up the scroll and shoves it back into place with enough force that it crumples, practically fleeing the room even though there is no monster there to escape, just-

It is indeed dark outside as he traverses the hallways, barely able to restrain himself from running.

No one answers when he knocks at Nie Huaisang’s door. He sucks in a sharp breath to ground himself, then carefully pushes it open.

The room is as stark as he remembers from his last visit. Though he knows he Lan Xichen have both offered to help, Nie Huaisang has yet to start replacing any of the possessions that his brother had burnt. There is a tray of food on the table near the bed, untouched and probably long cold.

The person he’s seeking is curled up on the bed on top of the covers, still fully dressed. Fingers twitch and scratch at his own arms as he shivers, most likely in the throes of a nightmare.

His lips are moving.

Jin Guangyao doesn’t dare read them.

He closes the door behind him and crosses the room to the bed. Nie Huaisang doesn’t react to the dip in the mattress as he sits down, nor to being pulled and shifted until the younger man’s head rests in his lap. When he gently removes the guan from his hair and begins combing out the braids, however, the fit finally eases, the anxious lines of Nie Huaisang’s face smoothing out as he calms.

Jin Guangyao closes his eyes for a moment and sighs.

He now knows what is wrong with Nie Huaisang, and he knows he is at fault.

He could lay the blame elsewhere. He wants to. The elders who’d made the proposal... Nie Haoran for allowing it... the healers who’d carried it out… It is most tempting to blame Nie Mingjue for having not undone it as soon as they were both grown.

But no. The fact of the matter is that Nie Huaisang’s condition can be laid at his feet. Had he not hastened Nie Mingjue’s death… He doesn’t regret that.

He refuses to let himself regret that.

But this…

Grief could be moved past.

Missing pieces could not.

He opens his eyes to find Nie Huaisang has shifted to curl against him, and he allows himself a small, weak smile as he begins carding his fingers through silken hair again.

He knows what is wrong with Nie Huaisang, and perhaps he can’t fix the damage already done, but there are still things he can do. Information he can find, pieces he can move or remove. He can make things easier.

“It will be alright,” he murmurs, then leans down and gently presses a kiss to the sleeping young man’s temple. The gesture makes Nie Huaisang snuggle closer in his sleep, and his own smile gains strength.  “I took care of er-gongzi before, I will be happy to take care of zongzhu now. He is my responsibility, after all.”

[kitaychan]

White Flame

Chapter 12

Warnings: Blood, Psychological Horror

General Summary:  Royal/ Magical AU. As their two Kingdoms get closer to a war, the past keeps on hovering around their choices. Prince Ivan has a hard time controlling his magical powers while being tormented by a mysterious ghost and Prince Alfred embarcs in seeking a revenge that might cost more than it’s worth it.

Preview: Alfred frowned, approaching the table. “Why do you know all that?”

“Because that law concerned all magic holders, it was a direct threat that took the lives of thousands, Ludwig’s father applied that law in his early years of reign, the sorcerers in the Middle and East Kingdoms were purged. It is an antecedent for us in the Islands as we received some of the refugees that fled from there.” Arthur took the book and the candle from the table, not bearing the smell of iron anymore, he motioned Alfred to follow him upstairs.

Knowledge

A single drop of water fell every now and then, echoing in the small basement, Arthur was sure it had been a dungeon before, for what purpose did the King have a dungeon in his palace? Arthur didn’t want to know. The place was damp, the door’s lock was so rusty, he didn’t have to use a key to open it.

Inside, the darkness was unbearable, he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, Arthur had to light a candle but it only seemed to worsen the gloomy atmosphere the small room had.

Cobwebs covered the shelfs, the rusty chains on the floor were sticky, he hoped that the red splotches on them were oxide and not blood, the smell of iron was enclosed after years of not opening the room, Arthur had to breathe slowly so as to not gag.

The sooner he got to work, the sooner he’d be able to leave. He opened a shelf, a lone spider running away at the sign of him trespassing its home, the books inside were crumpled, the lower ones were wet, his eyes traveled over the faded letters in the covers, putting some over the table, Arthur frowned, that looked more like a dissection table but he had no right to question predecessors, not when he was guilty of usurpation.

The light flickered slightly, shadows dancing around the scattered books laying on the large table, tha yellow pages and the dusty covers showed the deteriorated state of the texts, Arthur cursed mentally, whoever had the nerve of putting books in here.

So far his search was futile, there was no mention of the creature he saw at the ball. Though his mind had pointed to the obvious label of ‘ghost’, its presence was beyond the forces of a mere spirit.

The wooden door cracked, the light from the candle merely revealed the person that stood in the entrance, Arthur would have been more cautious but the thunderous laughter that filled the small room was unmistakable.

“I can’t believe you are here, when I said that the old books were in the dungeon, I was joking.”

Arthur didn’t glance back, setting aside another useless book, diary was a better way to describe them, the handwriting was messy, barely legible, though they had some beautiful illustrations, the purpose of that book was merely botanical, nothing he could use. He sighed, a headache beginning to form in his head. “Alfred, why are these books here?”

“Because I said so.”

Arthur turned to him, crossing his arms. “This is not the moment for your games, I need a serious answer.”

Alfred shrugged, looking around, covering his nose with his hand as he entered. “That’s the answer, I got these books from a merchant, he said they were from the royal library in the east, I thought, “royal library of the east” as in books regarding their culture, geography and such, it was a scam, they are diaries from Ivan’s grandfather. What an irony that it is me who acquired them.” He picked up one from the pile, toying with the pages. “This guy should have been an artist, look at how realistic this looks. Do you think it is a self- portrait?”

The page Alfred was showing him was an illustration of a man, his haunting eyes looked directly at the observer, the traces were precise and resembled the same face he saw in the ball, Arthur eyes widened.  “Bloody hell, Alfred, you have the best of luck. Let me see.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow, passing the pages rapidly as Arthur observed him with dread. “I found it first, I get to look at the drawings before you do. Look, it’s Yekaterina!”  He held the book for him to see again.

A drawing of a young woman was there, her hair tied in a braid, it was barely a sketch but her face was detailed, her expression was soft, she was smiling.

At the end of the page, Arthur glanced at what seemed to be a poem, though he couldn’t distinguish all of the words. He sighed. “That’s probably her grandmother.”

Alfred observed the page again, nodding slightly, flickering through the book. “True but the resemblance is astonishing. There are more drawings of her, looks like he really loved her, right?”

Arthur grimaced, averting his gaze from Alfred. “He kind of killed her.”

The book was dropped on the table, making the pile of unrevised books shake. Alfred’s words held a speck of derision in their tone. “What? No way, is there anyone in that family not a murderous lunatic?”

“I don’t think he meant to do so.”

“What’s on your head, Arthur? Now, the whole notebook filled with portraits of his dead wife, places this guy into a creepier level.”

“Firstly, those portraits might be from before, she is really young in those. Secondly, he didn’t directly kill her, there was a law during his reign that declared all magic related activities forbidden. He didn’t happen to know that she was a sorcerer too. When the rules in the east are upheld, they apply to everyone, without hesitance and without privileges. That Alfred, is why they don’t usually change laws, it can be counterproductive for the royalty. After that incident the law was abolished, probably to save his son from that same fate.”

Alfred frowned, approaching the table. “Why do you know all that?”

“Because that law concerned all magic holders, it was a direct threat that took the lives of thousands, Ludwig’s father applied that law in his early years of reign, the sorcerers in the Middle and East Kingdoms were purged. It is an antecedent for us in the Islands as we received some of the refugees that fled from there.” Arthur took the book and the candle from the table, not bearing the smell of iron anymore, he motioned Alfred to follow him upstairs.

When they were reaching the first floor, Alfred cleared his throat, a sheepish smile on his face. “Nice story time, you should enlighten me more about this and not those wacky tales of invisible creatures. Let’s get some dinner.”

“They are not tales and they are heavily connected with your own Kingdom’s history. In fact, I believe that man you showed me earlier had something to do with the behaviour of this King, such paranoia can’t be fortuitous.”

Entering the dining hall, Arthur noticed Madeline was already there waiting, the table was arranged and the food was served. Was Alfred looking for him so they could eat together? Arthur’s stomach twisted, reminding him how starved he was.

Alfred shook his head, patting him on the back. “What are you talking about this time, a ghost?”

The food looked astonishing but his appetite was spoilt, the smell of iron was lingering in his nose. “Perhaps” he replied, frowning at the sight of Alfred, he was giggling.

Noisy laughter echoed in the room, eclipsing Madeline’s greeting. “You are proposing a mighty opponent, Arthur. You can’t punch a ghost, you can’t kill it ‘cause it’s dead and you can’t even see it. How do you get rid of one?”

Arthur grimaced, taking a sip of the wine, Alfred always managed to formulate questions with answers that he could not give.

---

Ivan wandered around the hallways, the silence broken by his footsteps. Every now and then he found himself returning to the same place.

The trophy hall was tidy, the gray wolf had been covered again, it was an order he gave after his father died, even when he couldn’t bear to see the animal, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. What would that knight say if he could choose? Surely he wouldn’t want to be dead but if he were a ghost..

Ivan shook his head, he had to get some rest or else those silly thoughts would end up as a nightmare again.

Light footsteps echoed in the hall, a soft voice greeted him. “Good evening.”

Ivan turned around to see Natalya, she was holding her hands together, her blue dress was impeccable. He sighed, greeting her back. “Hello, Natalya. Do you like hanging around the palace?”

She nodded, approaching slowly, a frown in her face. “It is a beautiful place. How did the celebration go?”

He shrugged. “It was fine, the treaty was signed and Gilbert threatened us, the usual diplomacy."

She lowered her head, knitting her eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound very well, I hope it's nothing serious."

Ivan dismissed with his hand and shook his head, turning to watch the silhouette of the wolf, feeling Natalya's gaze on him, he asked. "Is there something you need?"

She nodded. "Yekaterina, she is looking for a seal, she asked me to retrieve it from you, said that you knew what she was talking about.”

Ivan pondered on what that could mean, but he hadn't entered the office since their arrival. "I don't understand. She must be confused."

He frowned, Natalya was still observing him, an awkward silence filled the room and she made no sign as to leave. She had another motive, didn't she?

Clearing his throat, he asked. "What do you like the most about the palace?”

Natalya shifted uncomfortably. “I… I like the gardens, they are colorful and the servants said that there was a peacock around, though, I haven’t seen it.”

Ivan chuckled, pacing around. “It’s a cunning animal. My father brought it from the east but just as the people from there, it does not trust us.”

Natalya observed the fabric covering the mounted animal. Placing her slender fingers on the wolf’s head, her voice betrayed her calm demeanour. “Why did you bring her back?” she huffed.

So, that was what she wanted to say.

Ivan glared at her. “Why did you take the letter? It wasn’t for you.”

She shrugged. “I delivered, Tolys was busy running away with Feliks. I had to read it for her, why did you think it was a good idea to send a letter to an illiterate person?”

Ivan’s eyes widened, he averted his gaze from her. “Well, you know why she’s here, why do you ask then?”

She hummed, lifting the fabric slightly. “Why her?”

He shook his head, taking Natalya’s hand and moving it away from the wolf. “There is not a single magician that would come here after what happened before, they are too scared and she may help me.”

Natalya took a step back, retreating her hand and muttering her question. “Why are you seeking magical power? Don’t you have it already?”

Ivan frowned, the fabric sliding swiftly from the animal, revealing the soft gray fur. “I can't control it as I wish.” The wolf’s blue eyes were staring back at him and he stepped back, his voice quivering slightly. “It can be quite dangerous.”

“It is foolish to ask that much from her, what if she knows nothing?” Natalya huffed.

Ivan locked his gaze with Natalya and she fumbled with her hands. “She has to, Natalya or I’ll have to ask help from Alfred’s sister.”

Looking back at the wolf, his hands trembled, those blue eyes, he couldn’t just throw the animal away, those eyes weren’t  a beast's eyes, even after these years those blue orbs were still haunting.

Natalya’s voice changed abruptly, raising her volume. “Why do you ask the help of strangers when you could have relied on me? Am I that abhorrent to you?”

Ivan flinched at the sudden outburst, focusing on Natalya's expresion, her eyes were blue too, aside from the tears threatening to fall, her eyes had a glint of audacity now, strange as she didn’t seem to have enough will to contradict him before, Ivan wondered if he could trust her to be honest for once. “Natalya, do you love me?”

Her eyes widened but her answer came without hesitation. “Yes.”

Ivan grimaced, he was hoping she’d doubt, he approached her slowly. “I don’t think I can return your love the way you expect me to, Natalya, I do love you, just like I love my sister, we are family. You don’t have to submit to my wishes so easily, it makes me uncomfortable and it’s unnerving to deal with falsehood if it comes from you.”

She nodded, embracing him forcefully and sobbing. “I hate you.” her voice was shaky, she inhaled deeply after every sob. “I hate all of you, I try to keep everyone happy but Katya is cruel, my mother wants to get rid of me, my father doesn’t take me seriously and you… you don’t love me. You all should suffer more than I do.”

He waited for her to finish, her words were harsh, deep inside, Ivan was relieved, Natalya’s words were true, she was pouring her thoughts to him without worrying about his opinion.

When her voice stopped, she pushed him away, hiding her face with her hands and turning her back.

They stood for a while in silence, Natalya pacing around the room, she faced him, clearing her throat. “I can look for a mage in the firebird, my father said that the inhabitants were docile and well learned.”

He sighed, giving her a small smile and nodding. “We should go and look for the peacock, it must be hidden.”

She leaned to his side and took a hold of his arm, Ivan watched her wearily but did not push her aside.

“What is that you wish to know?” She asked, lifting an eyebrow. “About magic” she added.

“Anything about fire.”

Natalya chuckled, showing him a small smile. "I like that wolf, you shouldn't hide it, it's magnificent."

Ivan tried to stop himself from frowning while Natalya's grip tightened, perhaps it wasn't a good idea to rely on her.

---

The fireplace cracked, the wood inside gleaming with a bright yellow before turning red, Alfred liked to watch the flames consuming the logs, there was nothing better than sitting beside the warmth after a long day, that smell in the basement has left him dizzy.

He could lay beside the fireplace and rest, the carpet was soft and thick, the dim light emanating from it was an invitation to close his tired eyes, way before his father’s death, he found himself struggling to get a clear view from afar, this led him to abandon the hopes of mastering archery, how could he shoot if he didn’t see the target clearly?

He sighed, closing his eyes, soft footsteps approached, he didn’t have to see who it was, the steps were familiar, Madeline was always delicate, even when walking, she was an expert at sneaking around without getting caught.  

Her voice broke the silence, “Is the light bothering you again?”

Alfred opened his eyes, her concerned expression was hard to distinguish with the low light, what he could see was the cream color of her dress and the book she was holding. He yawned, pointing at her hands. “What are you reading about this time?”

She sat by his side, showing him the book, the cover was green adorned with golden leafs, Madeline beamed. “It’s a book of spells, there is one that claims to conceal you from dangers.”

He hummed, his eyelids closing again. “Does it have one for my eyes? I could use some eagle vision or something.”

Madeline giggled, placing her hand in his forehead. “I don’t think that’s possible, to perform magic one has to give something, perhaps such a deed would require leaving you blind in the first place, in order for your vision to be changed.” She moved her hand over his closed eyes. “Let’s see.”

Alfred moved away rapidly, widening his eyes at Madeline's mischievous smile, he whined. “What? I don’t want to be blind!”

She laughed, reaching to touch him again. “I promise I’ll give you the eyes of an eagle, they could be yellow too.”

Alfred jerked away, laughing nervously. “No way, I like them blue, stay away.”

Madeline retreated her hands, “You have some correspondence” opening the book, she showed him several envelopes and a folded paper. "I have written a letter for Yekaterina,” she added.

Alfred raised an eyebrow, eyeing the letters, trying to read with no avail. “Ugh, I can’t read this late, what do they say?"

“I didn't open your letters, though, there is one from Ivan, what do you think he wants? I thought they'd be colder towards us."

He squinted his eyes, extending his hand to receive it, the blue seal was untouched. "No idea, I'll read it tomorrow. Why are you writing to Yekaterina?”

Madeline frowned, her gaze lowering to the folded paper. "Their father died, we have to send them condolences perhaps that's why he wrote to you.”

“We don’t really have to reply, they didn’t send anything to us before” He sat up, and clicked his tongue, waving the letter in his hand. “Wait, they did, they sent us a horrible treaty with the threat of more confrontation unless we accepted.”

Madeline frowned, placing a hand on his shoulder. “It is the right thing to do, besides Yekaterina is lovely and I want to keep contact with her. I just want you to sign it.”

Alfred glanced at the fireplace, he could throw the letter into the fire easily, a small chuckle escaped him. “Are you sure you wrote that letter to her?”

She retreated her hand, her voice serious. “What does that mean?”

He rolled his eyes, “Oh please, you spent most of our time with Gilbert, Ludwig or Ivan. Why would you write to Yekaterina if you were pleasantly talking with her brother the whole time?”

Madeline smiled, closing the book and standing. “I can write to him if that’s what you want. He sure makes some good and interesting questions, give me the letter and I will reply to it too.”

Alfred shook his head, why was she annoying him? “No, I do not want you to do that!”

She pursed her lips, dusting her dress. “You don’t like me talking to other people, I see.”

Alfred stood up, looking at the book in her hands. “To other guys whom I barely know anything about, No.”

She sighed, smiling again. “Do not worry. I wrote for Yekaterina and I didn’t mention how much you like her.”

Alfred gasped, shaking his head vigorously. “I don’t.”

Madeline laughed, pointing at the letter in his hand. “You said she was beautiful and it’s fine, think about how useful it would be if you married her, I’m sure his brother wouldn’t dare to declare a war on her or the other way around, you can’t attack your brother in law. Perhaps that's why he is writing, I'm sure he noticed how you were doting over his sister.”

“I said that she was beautiful because she is, that doesn’t mean I like her!”

She rolled her eyes, handing him the paper. “Whatever you say, just sign.”

Alfred frowned, taking the paper, he gaped at his sister's handwriting, it was so neat and elegant, unlike his. “No.” he paused, “You wrote the letter, is your doing, I will send one tomorrow but this is your work and I won’t take credit for it, let her read both letters and see how bad my writing is.”

Madeline giggled “Fine, I was going to save you from the embarrassment but have it your way.”

Alfred smiled as she walked away, he turned to the fireplace, the flames were dying alongside the light they provided, Alfred saw himself alone in the room, he traced the blue seal with his finger, opening the letter, squinting his eyes, some of the letters gained a bit of clarity, the words uprising, secrecy, aid, were registered by his brain, a cold feeling settled in his spine, he shivered folding the letter and ran behind his sister, calling out to her. “Wait Madie, you can’t leave me alone.”  

She observed him quietly, a soft smile graced her face. “Quick or the ghost will catch you.”

When she halted her steps to look back at him, Alfred  was relieved, the wrenched feeling in his gut disappearing slowly while a headache grew noticeable.

[becoming-lilibet]

Reflect on your greatest struggle. What was it and how did you grow from it?

My greatest struggle has been a culmination of years that were spent between a mix of deception, of denial, a realization that my body was deteriorating like an 80 year old, lies, and a flame that would not burn out. Some stories need a back story, but when it comes to stories of an insidious fight with anorexia, they can turn into war stories of competition. I will not speak of certain weights, I will limit the discussion of behaviors as much as possible (only ones to show how an entire family unit watched their daughter die before their eyes), and omit numbers of total intake and the like, which I suppose falls under behaviors. But this is a journey that has taken place over the course of my young adolescence until now, at age 31. 

There is no onset age where a man or woman develops an eating disorder. Mine just so happened to begin around 8 years old when it was my only way to cope with being sexually abused by two neighborhood boys. My innocence was taken and I was free falling through the streets of Gracemore. My body had been violated and I in turn violated the natural equilibrium of myself. I remember being a sad kid who perfected the art of deception. If I pretended everything was okay, no one would catch on, and I could suffer in silence behind my purple painted walls. 

It started simply with chewing and spitting. TO this day I’m unsure how that behavior went unnoticed by my parents, but now I know as an adult that those struggling with EDs are sneaky little shits. I’ve written another piece called “The Obsession with Emptiness” on my recovery blog (recoverywithoutkale) that tells the tale of how around this very age I also discovered the evil of the Diet Culture aisle at stores and  began to shoplift laxatives and diuretics. 

By time I reached 13, my ED was all I thought about. You can’t diagnose a child with Bipolar disorder (I finally received that diagnosis at 19), but I was in fact struggling with towering highs and abysmal lows. My mom and I fought a lot during my middle school years. It wasn’t entirely her fault or mine. I believe my mother has untreated mental health issues that made us pit against each other. 

I found an old photograph of my mom in a bikini, lounging in the sun. She was skin and bones. It was dated 1986, before I was a thought. My sister caught me starting at it and said, “Yeah, see? Mom was anorexic, now she binges.” At the time I didn’t know what the word “anorexic” even meant. I was so out of control with my impulses, my identity, my sexuality, that I ended up losing my virginity my 8th grade year. What I didn’t anticipate was that my boyfriend was going to break up with me right after he had sex with me two or three days later. 

But I found the cure for my heartbreak even deeper. My mom was going on the South Beach Diet and asked me to join with her. I eagerly agreed. I felt so powerful. I felt so accomplished. I lost a significant amount of weight in the first two weeks of Phase 1, beating the amount of weight my mom lost by double. That’s all it took. I was addicted. She eventually stopped, but I didn’t. How could I stop now? 

Thus began my dance with ED. At age 16 I was seeing a therapist who had been consulting with my doctor and they diagnosed me with anorexia - restrictive type. At this point I wasn’t abusing laxatives or diuretics or diet pills. Just an adherence to a strict starvation diet. After that I went down a new rabbit hole: the online ED community on Xanga. It was essentially pro-ED, without a doubt. Competing, challenges, tips and tricks. It was all dangerous. Then when the summer I was 16 rolled around, I was date raped by a member of my youth group after returning from a mission trip to San Antonio. The ED swooped in and rescued me. I thought the more I lost, I could kill the femininity inside.

By time I graduated and went to college I knew my problem was out of hand, but I had no way of stopping it. At least, I had no idea how to stop it. I attended an eating disorder support group on campus but the girls were so banal and I couldn’t stand them. 

After I got pregnant, I ceased all eating disorder behaviors all the way until my daughter stopped nursing around 8 months old. I was left with untreated Post-Partum Depression and a whole lot of extra baby weight. I lost weight, to say the least. But I lost myself most of all. 

September of 2009 I admitted myself inpatient to the eating disorder ward (VITA) at Research Medical Center. How ironic, I thought to myself. The place I was born is the place I’m coming to die. There was a three month long wait list, but after assessing me they admitted me three days later. I had a myriad of tests done to evaluate the damage I’d done to my body. They pushed me around in a wheelchair because my blood pressure was so low, as was my heart rate, and because of the severity of my anorexia, they did not want me burning any calories by walking. It was humiliating. 

That first day I spent the whole day getting every test imaginable done. Then, my results. When I heard the words it was as if I were floating above my body. The doctors asked who referred me there and I was confused. “No one. I admitted myself.” Next they asked, “Are you living alone?” and I answered, “No, I live with my parents...” Their eyes widened and looked perplexed and asked, “Have you been resisting treatment? Why didn’t your parents bring you in months ago?” I was offended by his first question. I told him, “I’ve been complying with my shrink, taking all my meds, being honest with my ED therapist, and being transparent about my behaviors, but neither of them suggested treatment so I Googled it myself.” I had no answer for my parents actions. Then he leaned in and said, “I’m going to be honest and level with you here since all you’ve been doing is be honest with us and most patients aren’t forthcoming during the intake process. You are dying, Sarah. If you hadn’t admitted yourself today I would guess you’d have two weeks at most before you passed away.” Me, floating, higher and higher...

So began a three month hospitalization to weight restore and heal my disordered mind. I had a positive experience at VITA. My therapist was amazing - she convinced my parents I have a real life-threatening disorder that I did not choose. The psychiatrist Dr. Mandal taught us so many profound lessons - most of which I haven’t forgotten. And I made close friends, which is crucial when you’re forced to wake up at 4AM for vitals and be drugged to sleep at 9-10PM. I can’t say this is where I magically recovered, but it’s where I finally discovered I could, can, and will beat this. 

Eating disorder recovery is a life long journey, I was re-hospitalized at VITA again about six months after my discharge. Hung in the balance for years of recovery and relapse, and spent last summer at EDCare (a story for another time, perhaps) for 13 weeks where I experienced medical malpractice. I don’t know how to say I am now. I’m learning to embrace a few fat body in a fatphobic society, I act on ED behaviors a couple times a week, sometimes none at all. But this is certainly the furthest I’ve ever come in recovery and for that I am proud. I have a lot of hard work to do in the future but I have a small group of people who are in my support system. I won’t stop fighting now. 

[nerdylittoyvoid]

Half light - Banners (Connor x Fem! Reader

Warnings: Swearing, Mentions of mental illness, Angst

Synopsis: Connor just wants to know both sides on Y/N 

Heyoooo the warning is up there for all those who may want them, feel free to ignore them (you rebel, I like you) or listen to them (you warning abiding human, I also like you). So, this fic is for @spectacular-spiderboy‘s 600 follower writing challenge! I hope you enjoy! 

“it makes me feel nervous, you have that look in your eye”

 Connor’s LED blinked yellow, his face showing pure concern while seeing her like this.

You were sitting alone at your desk, the clock displaying 12:46 AM. It was another late night at the DPD filling out what seemed to be endless paperwork. Your hands shook as you tried to complete another file, your erratic breathing evident. Shakily running a hand through the hair that had fallen out of your braid, you looked pale. Too pale.

Connor could tell that your heartrate had accelerated. He’d seen you too many times like this before, taking care of everything else but yourself. You tried to put up a ‘strong woman’ front with everybody in the office, trying to be seen as a super woman of sorts. Able to accomplish everything, not letting anything get to you. But Connor, he could tell that you were deteriorating. Scanning you, he saw that you were severely fatigued and dehydrated. The girl he became deviant for was so focused on everything that she needed to do that she forgot to sleep.

He hated seeing you like this. As a human, you were so fragile. Any need not being met would put your health (or worst-case scenario, your life) at risk.

Yet, you were adamant that nothing was wrong. It was almost as if you had forgotten that Connor could do a full scan of your body to ensure your health needs were met. You’d put on a smile and build a brick wall towards everybody else. He never had the honor or the pleasure of knowing who that real Y/N was. The Y/N when she was sad, anxious, upset, vulnerable. It was at the point that he didn’t know if the happy, bubbly, sarcastic girl was really you.

“When you’re in the half light it is not you I see

And you’ll live a half life

You only show half to me”

Y/N grew up in a troubled home. Her parents divorced in the middle of her childhood. Everyone she loved all grieved over so many losses, so many personal troubles. She has learned that it was best to not bother anyone with her own problems. After all, everybody else already had so much on their plate.

She did have a therapist who she visited frequently, along with a doctor who prescribed her depression and anxiety management medications. It wasn’t that she was trying to avoid getting better, she just didn’t want anyone else knowing what she was battling. She was doing pretty well for herself, too. She had cut down on her drinking, went out for walks more often, tried her best to take time for herself. But what good is any of that when you can’t even get out of bed in the morning.

Sensing an anxiety attack coming on, Y/N grabbed her sedatives from her bag.

“Take two when experiencing beginning symptoms of an anxiety attack or as needed. DO NOT OPERATE ANY VEHICLES WHILE UNDER THE EFFECTS OF THIS MEDICATION. MAY CAUSE DIZZINESS OR DROWZINESS.”

Sighing, Y/N took her water bottle out, and followed the directions on the bottle. She noticed her bottle was still full. She had forgotten to drink anything today. “Shit.” She thought to herself.

Y/N sat back in her chair, taking a couple minutes to let the medication do its magic. It was too late in the night to take public transit, she’d be stuck taking a taxi or walking. Most likely the latter, she couldn’t handle interacting with anybody else right now. Any type of exposure would lead to a full-on meltdown, which is never good when in a stranger’s car.

“Sometimes I join you

Let you wash over me

When we’re in the darkness

Only the blind can see”

 Slowly, but loudly enough not to startle Y/N, Connor walked back into the main office to approach her desk. Quickly, Connor analyzed the bottles in her hand. Venlafaxine XR 150 milligrams: a potent, short lasting Serotonin and Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor, and Clonazepam 2 milligrams: a strong sedative in the benzodiazepine family. Both psychotropic medications.  

Connor cleared his throat, hoping to gently catch your attention. After seeing you trying to hide a panic attack at the DPD, he read that using slow, quiet and gentle approaches work best for someone in distress.

“All you all right, Y/N?” Connor asked gently, purely out of care and concern.

Y/N’s head shot up as her eyes widened. “Shit,” she thought, “I thought I was alone.”

“Of course, I just have a headache. Not ideal when you have a case load bigger than a house, with a porch and a fence.” Y/N chuckled, trying to sound as convincing as possible.

“I am not sure if you are in the best space for me to be blunt with you right now-“

Y/N cut Connor off. “Fire away.” She leaned back in her office chair, placing her palm over her forehead.

“Although a headache may very well be present, your symptoms point more strongly towards an oncoming anxiety attack. I’m really worried for you Y/N.” When he got no response, he sighed, grabbing an office chair from another desk. “Can I sit with you?” He asked politely.

“Be my guest” Y/N gave him a weak smile, attempting to show appreciation for his caring acts.

 “Can you shake it off for me?”

 Connor sat down beside her. Turning to her he asked another question, “Is there anything you need that I can do for you?”.

Y/N stopped for a moment. She hadn’t been asked that question in so long. She wasn’t being pressed to talk about what she was feeling, it was an open offer. She let out a long sigh that somehow turned into a chuckle. Damn it, his actions started making her choke up.

“I really just need a hug if that’s not too much to ask.” She said, somehow defeated. All of those years she spent building that guard up, miraculously seemed to vanish, and she was left in a vulnerable state.

“Anything to make you truly happy.” Connor stood up, gently holding Y/N’s arms to guide her up. To him, in this moment, she seemed so fragile. Like any sudden movement would cause her to break. Slowly, he pulled her in, resting his chin on the top of her head.

Like a pin poking a balloon, Y/N just let everything go. She began to sob, muttering little comments on how everything was becoming too much. Heavily sobbing, she noticed this meltdown felt different. It felt like a release, like weight had been lifted off her chest. For the first time, she wasn’t alone.

As if Connor had read her mind, he whispered softly, “You are never alone in this world. Nobody is.”

Stifling through her sniffles, she choked out one witty comment. “How could anyone be with all these damned security cameras. The government surveys all.”

Connor let out a chuckle. Hearing her make a humorous joke regardless or the bad situation proved to him that his Y/N was still there. “Conspiracy time is not now.”

“Every time is conspiracy time.”

Connor tried to sound as robotic as possible. “I have been programmed by cyberlife and the government to politely disagree with you.” For the first time in the past couple days, Y/N let out a laugh. A real one.

“Words cannot express how much I appreciate you. Truly.”

In that moment they looked into each other’s eyes. That feeling, the urge to kiss was there. But, Connor refrained, not wanting to take advantage of the distressed girl. Smiling softly, he kissed the top of her head, in a romantic but still somewhat friendly manner.

“I’m always here for you, it doesn’t matter what time of day or night it is. It’s not like I sleep, anyways.” Connor reassured, while squeezing her shoulders with one arm, rubbing her back with his free hand. “Let’s take you home, you’ve had a late night.” Connor decided.

Taking Y/N out of the building, Connor led her to the car that Hank had help him buy. Opening the passenger side door for her, she climbed in. Soon enough, he was in the driver’s seat, and they headed back to Y/N’s house.

Arriving at their destination, Y/N climbed out of the car with Connor following suit after shutting off the engine. Y/N unlocked her front door, greeting her cat as she walked in.

“I think you should get to bed, maybe call in sick tomorrow morning.” Connor suggested.

“I think that sounds fucking lovely right now.” Y/N signed, as she walked over to her bedroom and collapsed onto her bed.

“I’ll let you get changed.” Connor closed the door, waiting patiently on the other side. When Y/N gave the all-clear, he headed in to see her curled up under her duvet.

“Stay with me tonight, please. If it’s not too much to ask, I don’t want to be alone. I have some baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt you could borrow.”

Hesitantly, Connor agreed. Taking the clothes and going to the bathroom to change, he came out soon after and crawled into bed with her. Taking her into his arms, he felt his thirium pump beat in a way it never did before. After much thought, he decided that this is what love felt like. He loved Y/N.

“Thank you, Connor. I don’t know what I could do to repay you for this.” Y/N whispered, appreciatively.

“Just let me get to know the other half of Y/N.”

“It’s a deal.”

With that, Y/N dozed off. That night, she slept better than she had in months.

[blooblooded]

Smiles goes to The Void

"You remember too much,

My mother said to me recently.

Why hold onto all that? And I said,

Where can I put it down?"

--Anne Carson, Glass, Irony, and God

For Smiles, life had degraded into a blur of sameness. The days and nights were repetitive, nothingness. Time passed by too quickly for him to hold on to.

He was 27 years old.

“Pop this zit on my back for me.” Pete’s voice jarred him from a state of spaced out contemplation. He was sitting on his bunk in the dorm, staring straight ahead. Smiles passed a hand across his face to bring himself back into the present, to bring himself out of the blankness. He saw that she had approached him and was in the process of pulling her shirt off.

“What?” he asked. His mouth was dry.

“This zit. It’s on my back, I can’t reach it.”

“Urgh.”

His second in command dropped her shirt on the floor and turned around. Smiles had a full second’s view of her tits before she sat down on his bunk with him with her back toward him. “I can’t get it.”

Over the last few weeks, Pete had become increasingly difficult to deal with. Always challenging him. Checking him. Calling him out. It was that time. He knew that she could sense the change within him, the growing weakness. It was only natural. She could smell blood. More importantly, she could sense that he was no longer in control. She wanted to be in his position so that she could do better than he could. The only problem was that he was still around.

Maybe she was right.

Smiles pressed the spot in the middle of her back with two thumbs. “Does that hurt?”

“Yeah. Get it for me.”

He grimaced and pressed hard until it popped, then wiped it on her skin. Her skin was hot to the touch. Pete leaned back against him and Smiles was able to cop a feel. It didn’t bring excitement like it used to. At this point, after what…5 years of working together, he still found her attractive, but too…something. Too familiar.

It wasn’t normal to want to fuck someone who thought you were old and used up, irresponsible.

Two days ago she had told him he needed to file a formal request to step down as Primary agent on the team. He had rejected that. It wasn’t something he was able to do. Until the day he was Retired, until the day his handlers dragged him away and put a bullet in his head, Smiles would remain responsible for Pete, Nickels, and Johnny.

That day was coming soon. He could feel it. He could see it in the way the staff looked at him. He could hear it in the way his own team talked about him.

“Why are you so fuckin’ greasy?” he asked her.

“Like you aren’t covered in backne.” Pete made herself comfortable against him and reached back to press a hand to the crotch of his sweatpants. When nothing happened, she tilted her chin up and her eyes back to look at him. “Your dick still broken, huh?”

Smiles didn’t even try to move her hand from grabbing at him. A few months ago, before he had been electrocuted by the red haired Artificial trying to escape Eden, they had fucked all the time. Now it felt impossible to muster up any interest for anyone, much less the girl who constantly accused him of not caring enough for his team.

He was worried that the problem might be that he cared too much. That he could not separate himself from them.

“Yeah, I found popping a huge pimple on your back so sexy,” he said, attempting to joke. He had to joke. Over the last few months it had felt like a huge scream had been building up inside of him. There was no release for the scream, it felt more real than he did. Nothing he did could bring release.

Pete left his bed and picked her shirt up off the floor. Her skin was covered in a sheen of sweat like it always was, a side effect of a body temperature that ran too high.

Burning. She was always burning. She loved him, she cared about him, but in the end she would burn him up. That was the destructive nature of fire.

Smiles passed his hand across his face again, resisting the urge to hit himself to jar himself out of his state of depersonalization.

This had all started when he had failed to stop the group of extremists from driving through the gate. Nothing had been the same since that day. He had become slower, caught up in his thoughts. Movement and instinct were no longer natural. Smiles found himself thinking about those people more than he thought about himself. Their faces were in his dreams and those dreams bled into his reality. Ever since that day, he had started to screw up.

No. Not just since that day. Ever since he had found the blonde blood magic user’s work ID on the floor of Helen’s temple. Even before he saw the young woman in person, he had dreamed of her with black slime and blood dripping from her mouth and nose and ears. It wasn’t fear or disgust that he felt when he thought about that either. No, it was dread, the same helplessness he felt when he thought about being unable to stop the terrible things happening to his team.

This was what going insane probably felt like. Smiles had lost it. He knew that everyone could see.

It was only a matter of time.

“Nicky should be coming off her shift Upstairs soon, you better be nice to her.” Pete stretched her strong arms up above her head then easily bent to touch her toes before moving down into a plank and beginning a sun salutation. Her physical and mental control, so carefully practiced, were unmatched. They had to be. She wasn’t like Smiles. If Pete lost control, she would burn this whole place down to the ground.

Would that really be so bad?

“When am I ever not nice to her?”

Pete exhaled a small sarcastic breath. She finished her sun salutation and began another one. “Right. Think about why Nickels keeps getting assigned TP work instead of field work with us, or why Johnny snuck out of here this morning before we woke up.”

Bitch. She was such a raging bitch. Smiles rose from his bed to stand next to her. He touched his toes and the knee on his left leg, his bad leg, popped. “Nicky’s on brainwash duty because they can’t get their hands on enough psychics to kidnap, get off my ass, that’s not my fault. If staff wants to assign B-Class telepaths to disintegrate the new kids’ brains, that’s on them. They know what they’re doing.”

It had already occurred to him that the Program was somehow deteriorating. The dorms could house up to 150 secret police agents, but by his count, there were 108 of them left. When he had been Recruited, agents were likely to be terminated for stepping out of line or getting injured. Now? It was like the higher-ups didn’t want to risk it. It was not out of compassion, it was out of not being able to kidnap enough kids to keep the Program running smoothly. Something was happening on the outside. Something was getting in the way of Recruitment.

As busy as he was, he did not have the capacity to figure out the why’s or the how’s of this. All he knew was that now, because of the difficulty of discovering psychics, there were only about 35 of them in the Program, and only half of those were A-Class. So B-Class telepaths like Nicky were stuck on brainwashing and torture duty when they were ill suited for it. In the old days this would have never happened. Smiles was selfishly grateful for it, since it meant he was less likely to get hauled Upstairs to get his mind violated.

He tried to mimic a pose that Pete twisted herself into but was not flexible enough for it. “You seem particularly devious today, Peanut.”

“No reason to be devious. I’m just saying. And you seem particularly spaced out and mean, but hey, what else is new.”

Smiles responded with a short bark of laughter with no real fondness behind it. “You know me.”

“I know you’re getting old.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She fixed him with a look even as she moved through her routine of stretches. In the years that they had worked together, she had grown from a chunky, angry teenager to a strong, composed young woman. She had no issues with calmly starting conflict. “You think any more about filing a formal request to step down?”

“Fuck you,” said Smiles. He stopped mirroring her poses and crossed his arms.

“Yeah? So what happens to us when they put a bullet in your head a month or two from now? They'll split us up. They’ll make Nicky work Upstairs permanently until she starts getting seizures and brain bleeds, then they’ll put her down too. They won’t even bother putting Johnny on a new Squad since he’s C-Class, he’ll just have to be a free floater and work with those kids who treat him like shit. Me, they’ll reassign me to work on an Elite Squad, they’ll make me burn people. They’ll make me really hurt people. Do you want that for us? If you put me in charge then we won’t get split up after you’re dead. I can keep us together. If you really cared about us then you’d step down.”

These thoughts had already occurred to him. They had occurred to him months ago, when he realized that he was starting to get caught up in...whatever was going on in his mind. The...memories, the dreams he was having. It was the obvious choice, the smart choice. But Smiles did not want to accept it.

“Fuck you,” he said again. “Fuck you, Peanut.”

Infuriatingly, Pete smiled at him, then dropped into the splits. “Well you’re definitely not fucking me, or anyone else, Boss.”

He considered throwing a punch at her and starting a tussle, the way that they always used to end arguments. He didn’t.

The temperature in the dorm room rose. Smiles didn’t comment on it.

Soon, Nickels returned to the dorm room after her shift working Upstairs. She looked tired. No, tired was not the right word for it. She looked drained. Her pretty, fat face was greyish colored and a dribble of blood showed in both her ears. Smiles could see that the pupils of her black eyes were hugely dilated. When she saw her teammates, she gave them a vacant, empty smile.

She looked like Lady.

“Dust leaking trees the black pyramid,” said Nickels.

Smiles and Pete looked at eachother, then back to their 20 year old companion.

“What’s that, Nicky?” Smiles asked nervously.

Her eyes were black. Blood trickled out of her ears and down her neck. “All over horses to go to night.” And she wobbled like she was going to fall over.

Instead of standing there like an idiot, staring, Smiles went to her and led her to his bunk so that she could sit down. Sweat had saturated her tank top and there was something else on it too, something that looked like thick mucus. He helped her strip it off, then grabbed a water bottle so that she could drink. “Snap out of it,” he said, trying to hide the fear from his voice. “It’s not real.”

The blood in her ears worried him. The word salad worried him more. There was a reason that psychics did not last long in the Program, especially low level ones.The human brain could not tolerate being overused like that, and it was not natural for someone to go into another person’s mind for extended periods of time.

Nickels took a sip of water. Some of it dribbled out of her mouth. She looked at Smiles and he rubbed the soft stubble on her head.

This was the part he hated most. It was not so bad when he was suffering, he knew that he could handle it. Smiles could power through, he could put the soft, scared parts of himself away in a box somewhere. It was this. Being forced to watch, to see the suffering of others and being unable to do a single thing about it.

If anything happened to Nickels, he did not think he would be able to stand it. It was no secret that she was his favorite-- how could you not have a favorite? Even though she was part of a group of people he despised, he couldn’t help but love her. Pete could be bossy, pushy. Johnny could be clingy, annoying. But Nicky? She was special to him, a sister.

“Fuck those fuckers,” said Pete a little choked up, standing there, unmoving. “Why are they doing this to all of us?”

They -- whoever ‘they’ were, in his 7 years in the Program, Smiles had never been able to find out -- were doing this because they could. Because they wanted to. Because they didn’t care. To them, the minds and bodies of over a hundred young people were nothing more than commodities to be used up.

“Snap out of it,” he said again, more to himself than to his teammate.

And after 10 minutes, she did snap out of it. Nickels’s pupils returned to their normal size and some color returned to her face. “I think I’m gonna throw up,” she said. “Sorry. They had me working on some guy all morning.”

“If you puke, don’t do it on my bed,” said Smiles, unbearably relieved that she was speaking in full sentences again. “Fuck me, Nick, I thought you were permanently disabled or some shit.”

She noticed that her shirt was off and crossed her arms to cover her bra and the rolls on her stomach.. Out of the 4 of them, Nickels was the one with the greatest sense of modesty. “It was fucked. They never have me work on civies but Lady is sick so they put me on rotation. Dunno what they were thinking, I’m just a telep.”

“They had a civilian Upstairs?”

“Some guy, he has dreams R&D wants to get into or something. They got pissed because I can’t see images, only words. I kept trying to explain but they wouldn’t listen.”

Smiles didn’t know why the scientists in R&D would drag a civilian Upstairs to their creepy labs. He didn’t care much either. Better an adult man get tortured and have his brain invaded than some scared 13 year old kid. He rubbed Nicky’s head again, knowing that it brought both of them comfort.

Of course, Pete had a healthier sense of curiosity. She sat down next to Nickels as well. Nickels flushed. “What do you mean dreams they want to get into?”

“I dunno. Dreams. It’s not like I could see anything. They need someone like Lady or Wicker for that.”

“But the guy was thinking?”

“Not lucidly. There was something wrong with him, it was like trying to read a crawler. Scrambled and shit.” Nickels touched her ears and winced. She brought her hands away to look at the blood. “Some of his thoughts were pretty clear though, not like that was useful to me. Like, ‘It wasn’t me!’ and ‘Talk to me, Marty,'' blah blah blah, over and over again. Useless shit. That’s when it started hurting me. I tried to tell that Handler cunt Alaska I wasn’t getting anything but she just smacked me until I kept going.”

Pete made a low sound of frustration. She got up from the bed and moved back into her series of sun salutations.

On the other hand, Smiles felt like he was the one who had been smacked. Something about the name Marty made him feel bad inside. Presumably it had been the name of someone he had known in his life before, and it had not been the first time he had heard it lately. The extremists in the truck, the ones who had escaped Eden those months before, had said that name, and he had felt the same horrible unease. Presumably this was unrelated. Marty was not an uncommon name.

Still, it made him feel sick to hear it. It made him sicker to hear about his subordinate’s abilities being misused. He rubbed Nickels’s head one last time, then stood up.

“You good, Nicky?” he asked her, fear and dread growing inside of him. At the rate that they were forcing her to use her abilities, she would die of an aneurysm before he even got Retired. “You feel OK now?”

Maybe Pete was right. Maybe he needed to step down.

His little psychic looked up at him, completely trusting and loyal. She was still pale and he could see the dark circles under her eyes. How could anyone hurt her? How could anyone make her hurt other people? The scream that had been building inside of Smiles threatened to come out.

“I’m all good now,” she said. “I just need a nap.”

Smiles clenched his fists. The dorm room felt way too hot.

He couldn’t fix much, but he could try to fix this.

“You stay here with her,” he told Pete, who was again twisting her body into something painful. Did that really help? Did that really keep the anger, the helplessness at bay? Nothing he tried ever helped. Exercise didn’t help. Breathing didn’t help. Nothing fucking helped, he was just stuck with his negative feelings unless he put it away in a little box, pushed it away inside. And that didn’t address the source of the problem, now did it? “I’m gonna go talk to staff and ask them to take her off Upstairs duty.”

Did Pete’s careful breathing sound angry? What was she keeping deep down inside? What was trying to get out of her? Smiles wondered if there was a scream building in her stomach as well. She didn’t even look at him. “Fine,” she said. “Go pull Johnny out of wherever he’s hiding while you’re at it.”

How could she say that that easily? The prospect of finding their youngest teammate and the trouble he got himself into was never a pleasant one. And she always pushed it off onto him because she couldn’t stand to deal with it. The last time Pete had attempted to deal with Johnny’s behavioral problems herself, she had sent Coop, a 16 year old neuro-path with repulsive proclivities, to the Infirmary with 3rd degree burns. Staff had locked her in solitary for a week after that.

Smiles looked back at Nickels, who had laid down on his bed. She had curled her arms up like she was comforting herself. His stomach flipped.

“I’ll fix this,” he said, but the girls weren’t listening to him. And he left.

He stomped down the dorm hallway. Only a bunch of C-Class 13 year olds were up and about, they scattered when they saw him. Even though they had no reason to be scared of Smiles, word spread. He did not have a reputation for being friendly. That was fine. That was just fine. He didn’t want to interact with the majority of the little monsters in here anyway.

This place was killing him. The dormitory walls were all painted a light green so that they did not appear so institutional. Some stupid posters, the kind with cute animals and therapy-speak phrases like “Pause and Reflect” and “Think before you Speak” hung at different points in the hall. They hung right alongside notices that all behavior was being observed by staff and violations of policy would be addressed immediately with appropriate consequences.

He walked past dorm rooms, many of them empty. The lounge was empty as well. Best not to think of that, best not to think about their dwindling numbers. Or why they were dwindling.

The main office was located above the dormitory floor, on the same level that the training rooms were located. Smiles took the stairs instead of the elevator. There were no cameras in the stairwells, but there was one mounted in the elevator. He took the stairs 2 at a time and spent a moment at the top to prepare himself before he pushed through the door.

He walked into the office. It was never locked, no, staff tried to encourage agents to come to them whenever needed. Not that anybody ever did. It didn’t take long for newbies to realize that the Handlers and dorm staff were worse than anyone on the inside, and had more power. If another agent beat the shit out of you or molested you, at least you could fight back. Maybe even report it if you caught one of the more sympathetic staff members. If a Handler had it out for you, you just had to take it.

Over the years, Smiles had learned one thing for sure: all the freshly graduated Artificials that got hired on as staff had to come from some repressed, unpleasant homes. Maybe they were all like...that. So far, he had not come across a single one in his life that did not have severe emotional issues.

The office was painted the same green as the dorms were and it had the same stupid posters on the wall. There was a big desk that held a monitor with a bunch of camera screens on it. There was a couch in front of that desk, presumably to encourage dumb newbies to sit down and spill their guts. The entire place would have made for a believable high school guidance counselor’s office, and Smiles hated it.

He had hoped that a new or easily manipulated staff member would be on desk duty, but no, no such luck. It was only October. October --Nickels had read his mind once and gleaned that his real name was Henry-- was one of those creepy later stage Artificials, around the same age as Smiles. Some Artificials mostly appeared normal, but some…came out wrong. October was tall and muscular and had an eerie, uncanny valley face that was only made less creepy by a perpetual expression of lazy insolence. When he saw Smiles walk in, he rolled his heavily lidded eyes.

“Whatever it is, I don’t have time for you,” he said. He was watching videos on his tablet.

Smiles could never bring himself to grovel, especially in front of a piece of human garbage like this. He had really been hoping for the Handler named Saturday, since her rapport with the team bordered on sympathetic. “I don’t want my psychic assigned to any non-field-work objectives from now on,” he said. “I’m serious.”

“Ahh’m serious,” mocked October, mimicking Smiles’s flat Lower Levels accent. He put down his tablet and leaned on the desk. What did these people do all day when they were not harassing others? “What are you gonna do, file a complaint?”

Smiles gritted his teeth. “She’s B-Class. She’s just a telepath, and is more useful on the field. You people are gonna liquify her brain, she just got off shift with blood in her ears, talkin’ nonsense. I don’t want her working Upstairs anymore.”

“She’s a psychic. They all have to carry their weight around here, even your fat little telep.”

“Why can’t you just make Lady go on permanent brainwash duty instead?”

October fixed him with a strange look, a weird, tense smile. “Maybe BG doesn’t want his precious psychic’s brain leaking out of her ears either, huh, you ever think of that? Maybe this place doesn’t revolve around you and your people, Smiles. No. Psychics get assigned psychic work. The rest of you get field work. You got a problem with our schedules, take it up with someone else.”

One day, whenever Smiles got dragged upstairs to get a pullet between his eyes, he hoped that October would be working. On that day, he would do whatever it took to take him out with him. There was nothing that would bring him more pleasure than to hurt him as severely as possible.

He shifted his weight slightly. His bad leg was hurting him again.

“What needs to happen to get Nicky off those shifts? What, you people need to Recruit more A-Class psychics? What do I need to do?”

“Nothing. That’s just the way things are. Quit complaining.”

It was useless to appeal to this person’s better nature. This person did not have a better nature. Smiles attempted anyway. “I’m responsible for her.”

That got a reaction. October scratched his eerily perfect nose, then stood up. The uniform that they all wore was black and unremarkable. “Yeah?” he asked, coming around the desk and into Smiles’s personal space. He smelled good, like expensive cologne. “You’re good at being responsible, Smiles? Why can’t you stop your telepath from getting sent Upstairs then? Why do I keep hearing about how guys have been running a train on your Artificial? Why can’t you even take care of yourself, then? The way I see it, the only responsible one on your Squad is the pyrokinetic. What were you saying about responsibility?”

He couldn’t help it. It was a reaction that October wanted, and it was a reaction he received, even if Smiles knew that it was all true. The anger was not something that he could control. His right hand twitched upwards like he was about to strike out.

For a moment, they both looked at each other. Two men of the same age, who under other circumstances, out in the world, might have also worked together or gone to school together. Might have even been friends. There was a world where both their lives had not been irreparably changed by being made to be violent to others.

Lazily, the same way he did everything else, October gave Smiles a little shove backwards. It wasn’t hard, it didn’t hurt him. It was just enough to remind him who was really in charge. Just enough to remind him that no matter what, he couldn’t do shit. Just enough to make him feel small.

“Get out of here,” said Smiles’s Handler. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

And Smiles followed orders. Smiles left.

He paused again in the stairwell to collect himself. That could have gone a lot worse. He would try again, he would come to the office when Saturday was working and try to get her to see his point of view. And if that did not work, he would go to someone else, again and again.

It was fruitless, yes. But it was something to do. It was something he could do to stop himself from feeling so helpless.

He wanted to take it out on someone. The best way to stop feeling weak and worthless was to go hurt someone else, go make someone else feel weak. There was no time. Smiles had more important things to do.

After all, he was responsible.

He wandered the hallways of the dormitories for a while. It didn’t take long. As the saying goes, bad pennies always show up. Smiles caught his youngest teammate slinking out of a bathroom and pinned him with a mean look.

To his eyes, Johnny looked bad. There were stains on his t-shirt and he moved in a wincing, cringing dog kind of way. Obviously hurt; either he had been jumped for annoying the wrong person, or he had allowed other kids to mess around with him again. Probably the latter. He had been in bad shape for a while now. Just like the rest of them, he was angry, trapped, lashing out in what small ways he could.

Smiles approached him and Johnny froze like he had been caught doing something wrong. “Hey,” said Smiles. “Where’ve you been hiding, huh? Peanut’s worried sick about your dumb ass.”

Johnny looked at him mistrustfully. Like Smiles, the last 6 months had marked a distinct change in him. Maybe it was because he was 16 now, no longer the playful, loving child he had been when he was Recruited. But Smiles didn’t think that was it. His affect and attitude often changed to reflect those of whoever he spent time with, a weird and chameleon-like emotional ability. 6 months ago he had behaved more like...well, more like Smiles. “Why don’t you leave me alone?” he asked.

“OK. After you tell me where you’ve been for the last 3 hours. You want me to write you up? You can’t just fuckin’ disappear like that when the team’s on call.”

“It ain’t my fault, Boss.” As usual, Johnny’s tone pitched to a whine. “I wanted to hang out with Major and his buddy. Well. I only wanted to hang out with Major because he said he’d let me kiss him this time. They didn’t let me leave, the door was locked, you can’t write me up for that, that’s not fair.” He paused. “They didn’t even kiss me.”

Major was a 17 year old C-Class agent who had a sadistic history, a long list of assaults. Smiles took a menacing little step towards Johnny. He already felt the uncontrollable rage rising up from his belly. “Oh yeah? That sounds like gang rape.”

Johnny smiled vacantly and rolled his luminous yellow eyes, but came off as pathetic, a kid trying to act more mature and worldly than he was. “Gang bang, Boss. I’m really good at--”

“--Yeah? They lock the door for that? Lock the door for hours?” He needed emotional help that Smiles could not provide. “Infirmary. Now.”

“I don’t need to go to the Infirmary, I need—“

Tired of this. Smiles was so tired of watching someone he cared about, someone he loved, put himself in these situations over and over again. Self destruction was nothing new in the secret police, there were people who were so hurt or angry that they wanted that same pain to show on the outside. In a way it made sense. How was this any different? Smiles couldn’t even get rid of the problem, couldn’t just go beat the shit out of the little freaks behind this, because they were all the same age, all boys who were 16 or 17.

Well. He could. Could if he wanted to. And he still might. What was it to him if he went and hurt a couple of teenagers? Why did he have some rule in his mind that he wasn’t supposed to target those who were under 18? Teenagers could be just as twisted and nasty.

It made him angry too and it was hard, impossible, not to take out that anger when the source was right in front of him. The desire to protect, masquerading as anger. Smiles grabbed Johnny’s wrist so that he couldn’t get away from him. “Today isn’t the day,” he said, starting to drag him down the hall. “Not the fucking day.”

“Ow! Let me go!”

But Smiles didn’t listen. Smiles dragged him all the way down the hall and all the way to the elevator that led up to the Infirmary. He ignored everything. He ignored the whining, the crying, and did what he needed to do. Smiles always did what he needed to do. That was responsibility. He could be responsible.

In the elevator, Johnny pushed his body up against the wall so that he was as far away from Smiles as possible. “I hate you,” he said.

“Aw, you hate me now?” Smiles pressed the elevator button multiple times as hard as he could, as if that would make the trip up faster. “Fine. I like that just fine.” He was used to the little mood swings, the rapid fluctuations between obsessive admiration to frantic dislike. Doc had told him about it, said it was called splitting. It wasn’t something that could be fixed, just like his own dissociation couldn’t be fixed.

Or maybe it could, out in the real world. In the Program, what was the point of trying to treat mental illness? There wasn’t a point, the only thing that could be done was make the symptoms a little easier.

“Pete says you’re gonna be dead soon. Then you won’t be so mean to me anymore.”

Smiles mashed the elevator button. He wanted to be done. Johnny smelled like piss. “Maybe I will be. You ever think about what’s gonna happen to you once I’m not around to find you? One of these days someone’s gonna keep the door locked.”

“Probably be better off then, Boss.”

What Johnny probably needed was a good hard smack, but Smiles didn’t raise a hand to him. In the long run, corporal punishment wouldn’t do any good. You couldn’t smack the delusions out of a person. Smiles continued mashing the elevator button until the door stopped, dinged and opened.

“Come on.”

“I told you I don’t want to see the doctors. They-- they make fun of me!”

Smiles grabbed his arm again anyway. Johnny dug in his heels and pushed back, for a minute it seemed like he was going to try and hit him, but Smiles easily overpowered him, seizing a handful of his shirt and shoving him out of the elevator. He didn’t want to hurt him. He didn’t want to upset him. Smiles just didn’t know what to do or how to help.

The Infirmary was one of the few places in the Capitol Building that was not dormitory that the accessible elevator led to. As such, it was painted white and had none of the stupid posters. The Infirmary was part of Upstairs-- it was only a few small rooms on a floor dedicated to....Research and Development. Smiles understood not wanting to go there.

He walked up to the front desk, pushing Johnny in front of him. It looked like the only nice nurse-- Doc, a big man with a soft accent-- was not on shift. Doc only worked there part time, 2nd shift a couple of nights a week. Instead, a young woman with cornrows and blue scrubs was on duty.

“You again,” the nurse said flatly.

He showed his teeth with a threatening smile. It was true, Smiles ended up in the Infirmary often due to his rash behavior. Sometimes staff made him go, claiming that he was ‘manic’ and needed to be sedated. “Me again. 3385C here needs medical care.”

“Why?”

“Will you just fuckin’do your job and make sure he’s OK?” Smiles didn’t want to embarrass himself.

The nurse rolled her eyes and got up. “You know the drill,” she said, pointing towards the exam room and walking back without waiting. Johnny followed her, but not before giving Smiles one last yellow look of blame.

The definition of blame is to assign responsibility for wrong-doing. Smiles thought about how he was about to be responsible for kicking the shit out of someone in the near future. The white walls of the Infirmary made him anxious, he had had too many bad experiences there-- and worse ones in the Research and Development rooms that lay beyond. He wasn’t about to wait around for his youngest teammate to get checked out.

Even though it was what Pete would have done.

No. What was he thinking? Pete wasn’t capable of doing anything that wasn’t her precious breathing exercises and yoga. She couldn’t make the hard decisions, not like him. Why was he so focused on her? How had she gotten into his mind so easily?

Something had happened to him. Whether it was the aftereffects of almost getting his guts spilled in Helen Gutierrez’s blood magic temple, or if it was the girl with the curly blonde hair he kept dreaming of, something had made him stupid and weak.

He wasn’t going to be around much longer.

“What’s wrong with you?” A squeaky-toy voice jarred him from his thoughts and made him flinch. Lady. Smiles had forgotten that Nickels had said she was sick.

Lady had come out of another exam room. She appeared...worse than normal. Thinner, if that was even possible. Paler, definitely. When she smiled at him, he could see that her teeth were greyish, translucent. An IV was stuck in her arm, attached to a bag of fluid on a rolling hanger.

Nope.

“Not today, bitch.” Smiles didn’t turn around, didn’t want to take his gaze away from the fragile but terrifying young psychic. He stepped back. “Get away from me.”

How was it possible that this stick insect person had gotten into his brain, his memories, and tortured him so much? He could probably kill her with one good punch to the throat.

The grey pants and shirt she wore were too big for her, but were part of the uniform that top psychics were supposed to wear when they worked Upstairs. Lady blinked slowly, as if even that was difficult for her. “Is your telepath sick yet?” she asked.

“What?”

“Your telepath. Is she sick yet? We’re all getting sick.”

Smiles eyed her. He was afraid of Lady, but she wasn’t known to be a liar. At least, she had always been truthful to him. There was no point in a psychic as powerful as her to lie or be lied to; she could dig the truth out of anyone the same way a bird pulls a snail out of its shell. “The fuck you mean, sick? Sick like a cold?”

“No. Sick like...brain sick.” Lady placed one of her spidery hands on the point where her IV was connected to her arm. “They have us trying to crack this civilian. His mind is...it’s beyond the Rift and they want to see inside. They want to see the black pyramid in the Void. Everyone who looks, something happens.”

Dust leaking trees. The black pyramid.

“Nickels isn’t sick.” He stared at his enemy, at her weakness. If something was happening to her brain because of what she was being forced to die, he hoped that she would die. But Nicky had been forced to do the same things. “She didn’t see anything, she’s just a telep. What the fuck are you talking about, sick?”

He was scared now. You couldn’t catch anything from reading a mind. You could go crazy, yes, Lady was proof enough of that. But you couldn’t get sick. The brain was just wet tissue containing millions of nerves, synapses. There were memories, there was pain and joy, but there was nothing...nothing that could spread.

Lady’s nose began to bleed and she absently watched it drip onto her ill fitting grey shirt. This was a person who had been completely broken by the Program. There was nothing left inside of her except the sadistic desire to inflict pain on others. BG could try to protect her all he wanted to, but it was too late. They had used her up. They had used every part of her up a long time ago.

It was sad, but it was the fate of every psychic. Smiles felt no pity for her. He couldn’t. She had caused him too much pain over the years, even if she had been commanded to do it.

“What do you mean, sick?” he repeated, not wanting to get any closer to her. “What guy? What fucking guy do they have you people working on back there?”

She used the back of her hand to wipe her nose. “I think I’m going to be dead by next year,” she said, sounding strangely contemplative. Some of the blood from her nose got into her mouth and stained her teeth. “I’ve been there the most. My mind, I mean. In the Void.”

There was no Void. It meant nothing to Smiles. More crazy psychic talk.

Smiles couldn’t help it, he stepped towards her, close enough to touch. “Lady,” he said. “What guy? What Void? Nickels was talking about some black pyramid earlier, what is it? What fucking guy?”

She looked up at him. Her black eyes were enormous and the pupils had overtaken the whites. “Nobody. He was nobody, a man named Lee Harlan. One of R&D’s projects, but there’s a lot more of them now. They put crawler blood into his head and now he’s somebody, one of the links between here and, and the other place. They make us see it. They make us look at it.”

For a moment, Smiles was no longer there. He was no longer in the room with her. His mind became peacefully blank, protecting him from the panic that rose from hearing a name he did not recognize but for some reason understood. He dug his own fingernails into his palm to bring himself back and stood there stupidly staring at the sick psychic in front of him. Lee Harlan. Marty. He knew those names, knew them better than he knew his own. His heart pounded in his chest and he could feel his eyes bulging.

Crawler blood. One frenzied thought occurred to him then, as it had before: why did they always collect the slime from the little goo aliens when they were sent out to terminate them?

He was aware that he was shaking and he didn’t know why.

“They make me go into his head and look at that place,” said Lady, and it was like she was not seeing him. Her gaunt face was just big black eyes and a smear of blood. She looked like she was about to break into pieces. “I don’t want to look.”

From far away, Smiles heard his own voice: “Look at what?”

And then, Lady was no longer looking past him. She smiled and held her hand out. “I’ll show you,” she said.

There was no time to move away. Lady pressed her hand to Smiles’s cheek and her skin was as cold as ice. Cold like a corpse’s.

And Smiles looked.

It wasn’t real and he wasn’t there, he knew that much. This was simply Lady’s memory of going into someone else’s memory. This was only images that she was projecting into his mind, images and sound. But it felt real. It felt so real.

Smiles found himself standing alone in a vast desert of white sand and a sky so red that it looked like a sea of blood. The horizon stretched on forever. There were grey rocks all around him, huge monoliths of absurd shapes, twisting themselves into geometry his mind could not comprehend. There was no wind, no living things. No moon or stars or clouds, but fleshy, pulsating orbs hung in the sky like massive egg sacs. And in the distance, rising up at the place where land and sky met, ascended a black pyramid of inconceivable size.

When Smiles tried to suck in a mouthful of air, his lungs would not fill. Looking down, he saw that he was in Lady’s body, of course he was, this was her experience, her memory of a dream. She was the one who had been choking for air in a place where there wasn’t any. Above him, the gelatinous skin-colored sacs wriggled in the red sky as if something wanted to burst out of them, and one of them grew dozens of eyes that rolled around in their sockets.

When he tried to scream, no sound came out. Low buzzing emanated from somewhere, and Smiles knew that it came from the terrible black pyramid. He clapped his hands over his ears (or, in the dream, Lady had clapped her hands over her ears) to drown it out but was unable to, and the fillings in his teeth vibrated, shook like they were going to shatter. Didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t want to see! He wasn’t supposed to see this!

Something terrible lived here, something terrible had once been here. It was unnatural and evil and he didn’t want to see!

From behind him came another sound, a sort of wet, heavy smacking. Smiles turned, his body moving slowly like he was underwater, to see a man crouched less than 3 feet away, over what appeared to be someone else’s prone body, repeatedly smashing one of the misshapen grey rocks into their head. The skull was split open like a broken gourd, brain matter spilling out onto the fine white sand. The other man kept smacking the rock down, over and over again.

“It wasn’t my fault!” The man panted, hysterical. He was either laughing or crying. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about his appearance, other than a pale scar curving into his hairline. “Why don’t you believe me?! I’m a good person, I’m a good person, Marty! Why don’t you believe me?!”

Without any evidence, Smiles knew that this was Lee Harlan, whose dreams Lady had forced her presence into. Forced her presence into again and again and again. To find..something…

Smack. Smack. Smack. Smiles was completely and painfully present. Trapped in a memory, in images in his own mind, he was unable to drift away.

Fluid began to leak out of his ears and he could hardly move. All he knew was that he needed to leave this place, leave before the man with the rock saw him. Leave before the grotesque and massive objects in the sky hatched. Or worse, before whatever it was that had once lived here became aware of his presence.

The rock came down again, hard. “Please believe me!” babbled Lee Harlan, who then seized the shoulders of the body laying on the ground, the body with the ruined face, and shook it. A small chunk of skull, hanging with scalp and black hair, broke off and fell to the sand.

Impossibly, completely impossibly due to the smashed jaw and broken teeth, the body spoke. A child’s voice. “This is all your fault, you fucking degenerate.”

Lee laughed. Or maybe he sobbed.

This wasn’t happening.

Smiles found his voice in that airless place. “Lady!” he screamed. Finally. The scream inside him came out. The pain in his head and body were too much for him to bear, but the fear was worse, much much worse. “Get me out of here! Get me the fuck out of here!”

The noise made Harlan’s head snap up to look at him. He was white, there was blood splattered across his face and the dull light that emitted from the wriggling, unnatural spheres reflected off his glasses. He let go of his grip on the body, let it fall, and slowly rose from his crouch.

In the distance, the black pyramid droned its maddening oscillation.

“Get out of my head,” Harlan said very quietly, advancing a step. Behind him, the body that he had been pounding into jelly stirred.

“Lady!” Oh god, he didn’t want to see! It was all beyond him, beyond any human. Was this the place that they had made Nickels tune into? What mind breaking words had formed in her mind when she had tuned into the pyramid’s hum? What gibbering language could come from the fleshy things hanging in the sky? Every part of the Program was preferable to seeing this! Smiles would take anything, he would rather hurt people, would rather witness assault, would rather be humiliated, would rather drown in his own helplessness-- anything other than this! “Lady, goddammit!”

The things in the bleeding sky thrashed. The small body on the ground thrashed and sat up, and it’s smashed head began to knit together and reform. More fluid leaked from Smiles’s ears. If he stayed here, in this memory of a memory of a dream, he would go insane. Harlan advanced another step towards him, panting and wheezing, and Smiles could not turn around, could not allow himself to face the black pyramid on the horizon.

“Get out of my head!” Harlan said again, louder, his skin waxy and his eyes rolling up under their lids. And somehow, Smiles knew that he knew him, knew that he recognized him. For so many years, he had wished for some memory, some reminder of his life from before the Program. Now, staring a memory in the face, he regretted that wish.

Fate. Fate is the buzzing life-swarm of mankind. The buzzing, the hum, would not stop.

Unmoving, watching Lee Harlan approach him, Smiles wondered what would happen if he-- if he in Lady’s body in this memory-- was touched.

He did not have to wonder.

One moment he was trapped in the terrible white desert of the Void, the next he was standing in the terrible white Infirmary. Lady had pulled her own memory out of his mind.

Smiles bent over and threw up bile. “Oh god,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “God.”

Before him, Lady was almost a comfort, a familiar presence. All his suffering of the last hour was now a relief, something expected. Something real. His life had been put into perspective by that one small glimpse of an impossible place.

“You see?” asked Lady, and she laughed, girlish and high pitched. “See? They want to know more about that place. You know what I think? I think they want to get in.”

He was going to be sick again and briefly considered slapping her, but knew the consequences of touching her cold skin. Shaking his head, Smiles scrambled back and away from her. Away from the Infirmary. Away.

But the indescribable buzzing did not stop droning in his head until well after he got off the elevator and into the dormitories.

Faces passed him in a blur and Smiles pushed by them, not caring who he shoved. He had left his teammate alone up there, but that was not important, no, the important thing, the only thing that mattered, was that he returned to the safety of his room as quickly as possible. There was too much in his head, too many unavoidable revelations.

He slammed open the door of the dorm, startling both Nickels and Pete. They watched him with wide eyes. Smiles was now drenched with sweat and he pulled his tank top up to mop his face. He felt weak and faint and confused.

“What the fuck,” said Pete. She was back on the bed next to Nickels. “What happened to you? You get strip searched again or something?”

“Don’t start!” Smiles snapped. He was breathing heavily. The white sand. The red sky. The eyes staring down at him from huge globular chunks of flesh. Lee Harlan’s hysterical expression. And the pyramid, the enormous black pyramid.

Something bad was happening, something he did not have the capacity to fully understand. He had always believed that the squints in their labs were researching...normal stuff, normal science stuff. What Lady had made him see in the Void changed all of that. What could R&D hope to learn from a place like that? What possible reason could they have for wanting to know about it, or more unfathomable, what possible reason could make someone want to go there?

It sounded like blood magic to him. Those red eyed cunts worshipped something that they said lived in the Rift. Well, maybe it did, but Smiles had a pretty good feeling that Something had once lived curled inside of that buzzing black pyramid.

Unthinkable. It was all unthinkable.

Now he was sure that he had known Lee Harlan from his life before. But how? He had come into the Program at 18 years old.

He was starting to dissociate again, as the initial shock left him. Smiles rubbed his face and tried to focus on his breath. He had to stay present.

“Nick,” he said, at length.

His chubby teammate blinked at him. In the time that he had left, she had changed into clean clothes. “Yeah?”

“What else did you tune into on your shift this morning? Did you hear anything else, anything that wasn’t the guy’s thoughts?”

Nickels’s mouth tightened. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Did you hear anything else? Shit like humming?”

“Quit bothering her,” said Pete. “And you were supposed to find Johnny, but I don’t see him here.”

Smiles glared at her with such force that she shut up. Again, he mopped the sweat from his face. “Just had a run in with Lady. I heard that shit too. In the Void. I heard it. Did you-- did you hear anything in it? Anything like words?”

The circles under Nickels’s eyes were very dark. Their gazes locked and Smiles could see in her a sort of recognition. The knowledge that the two of them shared was vast and nightmarish. He wished that he could take it away from her in the same way that he wished he could take it away from himself. “There were words. It’s a broadcast. It’s broadcasting to something out here, something that can hear things we can’t.”

“What’s that broadcast, Nicky?” He did not want to know. But he had to. Something in him compelled him, not curiosity, but the unfiltered and raw desire to understand what could not be understood.

In a quiet voice, the quietest that she was capable of, little more than a whisper, Nickels said, “Directions. Directions through the stars. A way back home.” She paused one last time. “A way-- a way back here, too.”

Smiles thought of those wriggling things in the blood red sky of the Void.

And for the first time that day, he had a true understanding of what responsibility meant.

[ezra-mariposa]

( diego boneta)  ・゜。・。・゜  ezra mariposa who is the child of absolem is 22 years old and grew up in auradon. they did have magic before the charmings gained the throne, but on top of their ink manipulation, they’ve noticed they have sensory adaptive magic. they use he pronouns and are pansexual. i wonder how they’ll handle their new magic…. 

Ezra Mariposa Age: Twenty-two Family: Absolem Mariposa (Father) Magic: Ink Manipulation (Born) and Sensory Adaption [More info here.] Hometown: Wonderland Occupation: Currently a student at Auradon University, majoring in Literary Arts and Sociology. Also works part time at a bookstore near campus, and occasionally publishes articles and stories.

Ezra’s father raised him as a single parent the first four years of his life, his biological mother was never known to him and so far as his father recounts she could have been one of several women he knew in his days of more heavy drinking and drug use. The man only learned he had a son when he received a call from the hospital that named him as the father of child who had been given up there. Only a few months old at the time, he came to claim him and was proven to in fact be his biological father but was denied any information about his mother as part of her terminating parental rights.

When he was nearly five his father started a relationship with a woman he met at a local bookstore. She eventually married into the family and became his adopted mother; Ezra was endlessly fond of her and she taught him how to read and love the idea of writing. While she had no magic of her own she was quick to encourage him to learn about his, seeing it as something that made him special; a gift. She was a very creative sort who was in love with the idea of beauty and fantasy, and very affectionate towards him; being the only mother he had ever known she was very important to him.  

The relationship fell into a strain when the couple tried to have more children and were unable to so do, at that point his father fell back into the habit of drugs and she tried time and again to get him help but he refused. 

It was during one of those late nights that she had no choice but to pick him up from a bar, and unable to find anyone to watch Ezra she took him along. The two got into a heated argument on the way home that resulted in an accident that put Ezra in the hospital for several months with traumatic head injuries and resulted in her death while his father survived mostly unharmed. 

While Ezra did recover otherwise the trauma damaged his optic nerves too badly and resulted in his sight deteriorating. At first doctors were hopeful that as swelling when down his eyesight would return but the opposite happened; over the course of months Ezra’s vision grew darker as the nerves lost function from compromised blood flow. It was a terrifying time for the boy, barely ten, watching the world slowly go black around him. But during that time, determined not to simply give up, Ezra focused more on controlling his magic so that he could at least retain his connection with words, and also learned braille as a backup. 

After the devastating accident Ezra’s father fell worse into depression, began to depend more and more on drugs to tame the guilt he felt. He did maintain his job as a high school literature teacher in Wonderland, but only barely. Was not really enough to maintain their lifestyle however and eventually Ezra lost his childhood home as well when the pair had to move and cut down on their living costs.

Shortly after relocating to a less expensive area of Wonderland Ezra began high school and took an after-school job at a local bookstore. Despite the hardships of bills and the like Ezra maintained a fairly optimistic life, made friends with his peers in school and carried on a rather normal teenage existence. He did begin to explore drugs though because it was just such a normal part of life around him. 

He was never exactly a wild child but did have his share of late nights and hangovers to mark off. But, being very intelligent by nature, his grades really didn’t suffer much and he graduated with little issue.

Ezra had a handful of off and on relationships in high school. Nothing overly serious, but mostly due to his own inability to put himself into the situation of getting too committed after seeing how easily that could fall apart. He still hangs on to that idea a bit now, not really invested in relationships as long term situations.

Ezra was in his senior year of high school when his father began showing signs of mental illness and memory loss. By the end of the year he was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer disease. It was a rapid progression before doctors could get it under control and by graduation Ezra had decided to put off college for to take care of his father.

The man’s condition has stabilized for the time being, but with the progression being so rapid he no longer can live at home. Ezra cared for him for two years before his father was moved into a full time care institution; most of Ezra’s money from writing short stories or anything extra from work goes into keeping up with his father’s medical bills.

Along with his decline Ezra’s father has developed Dementia and often returns back to memories of earlier points in life. Very often when Ezra goes to visit him weekly he spends most of his time sitting and listening while his father tells him stories about the past along with a blurry mix of drug hallucinations and stories; there really is no telling with him what was real and what wasn’t but Ezra has come to accept that and appreciate the fact that his father’s mind still is active enough to craft such rich tales. 

It was during this time that his father began to recount strange tales about Alice, things that could never have been real of course but just hearing the man speak of her has driven home the aching point to Ezra of just how much his father cared for her, not so much like attraction as it was a fatherly affection. Knowing that the two of them have not spoken in years remains a painful though for Ezra to consider.

While there was a few years in his teens that Ezra was angry towards his father for their living situation that anger has faded with seeing the man decline to disease. He has a large amount of respect for him and a great deal of love, still speaks highly of him and tells his friends that his own creative spark came from his wise father. 

In the years of caring for his father Ezra became more involved in drugs and drinking himself to offset the stress, he likes to think himself careful with those vices but addiction is addiction and it was a crutch during that point. Since he saw little harm in it he still continues those vices, thinking them something that just helps him get through rough spots in life.

Ezra does’t fully believe that magic is unnatural and it can be explained by science. In part this conviction comes from having so little faith in fairy tale notions. His desire to want magic to be explained by science is also a desperate want to cure his father - if he can find the right sort of person with the correct magic to undo disease then maybe he can see his father’s illness reversed and the man returned to who he used to be.

Knowing that in time he would need more money than he can currently make, Ezra enrolled in college when he was twenty, deciding to study literature and literary history. His intentions are to get a degree that will allow him to work both writing professionally and possibly teaching as his father had.

Ezra lives on campus, the apartment where he used to live with his father is gone because he couldn’t afford to keep it. Everything he owns is with him in his dorm or otherwise in storage. Since he has no other family to speak of when holidays come around he either stays on campus or stays with friends if he doesn’t have the option of remaining at the dorms. 

He works part time at the near-campus branch of the bookstore he’s had an ongoing job in since high school. He’s happy there, loves to read and it’s such a familiar setting. Much of his school is covered by a scholarship he gained by testing in very high, so his paychecks go first to his father’s medical bills not covered by his retirement pension from the high school, then to necessities, and after that fueling Ezra’s vices. 

While one would think he might be wary of the idea, given how much damage addiction has caused in his own life, Ezra still is actively willing to drink and use recreational drugs himself. His distraction of choice remains cannabis because it’s very mellowing, but he does also drink at times, and harder drugs than that are a rare, but not unheard of, indulgence. 

He does very much enjoy writing stories, and is very good at it, as a sort of release of tension and a bit of his father resides in him when it comes to spinning tales.Is a published writer in several small publication papers around the area, mostly fantasy stories, where he writes under his pen name Cate Pelose (French term for caterpillar.)

Personality-wise Ezra very often comes off as calm, sometimes to a fault. On the surface he seems like the type that nothing bothers and takes life as it comes. He’s friendly and comfortable with most people, and a bit lazy by nature. Under that surface he’s very insightful though, and mature, the type that often plays the adult in situations and looks after those around him. Ezra grew up a bit fast and while he does settle in well with his peers he’s often more introspective than many of them.

Ezra loves conversation, loves debates and introspective views; he will hold an involved conversation with most anyone and approach most any subject. He’s very intelligent but not pushy about it, enjoying very much hearing the viewpoints of those around him. Very often he finds himself speaking in metaphors or stray notions the way his father used to, his dreamy ideas often sneaking into conversations.

Ezra is a vegetarian, he believes in being a pacifist and doing no harm to others. It sometimes makes him seem like a pushover in that he won’t fight, but he will speak his mind, firmly, and let the words stand for him. When people push him he stands resolute and if the other person is just unreasonable he walks away rather than carrying a fight. 

One of the things that Ezra has held a fondness for his entire life are butterflies. As a child he would watch them for hours, careful to never touch the creatures and damage them, and now he still holds those memories close. He has always kept them as pets, allowing them to grow from caterpillars and releasing them when they gain flight; they seem to have a strange fondness for him as well and a trusting nature, often willing to crawl on his hands and be held. 

Music has, in the last few years, become a point of escape for him. The sounds set off his magic and he has favorite songs, mostly soft classical music, that are very calming or energizing. Of course when he does listen to music he basically has to be somewhere he doesn’t need to focus otherwise because it drowns his senses and makes it nearly impossible to keep any sense of his surroundings. 

As much as he wants to cling to logic as a safe spot, Ezra is very prone to fits of fantasy. His mind wanders, especially if he’s high or drunk, and at those points his real desire to believe so many things he can’t allow himself to shows. He very much wants the world to show him magic and beauty, but has seen so much of the rough edges that he can’t have faith yet. 

Pansexual by nature, it’s more the intellect of a person that attracts him. He is drawn to points of beauty in others that have little to do with their physical appearance; their outlook, their interests, their ability to stir him in a conversation. Since the loss of his sight Ezra weighs attraction on the scale of how much a person can ignite that feeling of making the world light up around him. 

Along the same lines, however, when he does find something of interest in people and they show interest back he’s not uncomfortable with the idea of physical contact. Sex is an outlet, and while he does value it as more than just a chance encounter in many cases, he prefers to enjoy the company of others and not expect more than good sexual chemistry where he finds it. It’s still a bond, he still holds affection during, and after, for his partners, but doesn’t see sex as a basis solely for a relationship, or limited only to being something found in one.

[fyeahfbimagines]

What’s Left Of This

pairing: Seraphina Picquery x reader 

cw: possessive, borderline abusive behaviour, (unintentional) self harm (ish?) 

a/n: I’m still fairly new to writing imagines, and this is proof of that.This piece is more similar to my usual writing, and I warn it is long and not overly happy. I hope that despite that, you can find something to take away from it. And I promise that in the future, I’ll ease up on the angst. 

prompt: Seraphina is possessive of female reader to the point that Seraphina, will try to keep in her apartment nearly all the time. Reader lets it because she can work form the apartment by writing stories for a magazine. Reader is a no-maj, but the law about the no-majs knowing about the wizarding world had been uplifted, but Seraphina is worried someone will take reader away from her. (by anonymous) 

“It’s only for one evening, Seraphina. I’ll be fine,” you laughed, wrapping your arms around her waist and  kissing her softly. She always got like this when you had plans, even if they were as simple as going to buy groceries, or to pay a visit to a neighbour. But as often as it happened, you still couldn’t pinpoint why Seraphina tended to get so…well, jealous it seemed. “I’ll be gone for a few hours at most.”

Seraphina shuffled uncomfortably, biting her lip.

“I would still prefer if you stayed home,” she sighed, standing almost perfectly still for a single moment. Her eyes drifted around the room, unable to stay fixed on one point it seemed, and she was fidgeting incessantly, fingers twitching and wrists swivelling back and forth like a rocking chair.

“Why does this always happen, Sera?” It was a question that had been burning at the back of your brain ever since the issue had arisen, since the first time she grabbed your hand on the way out the door and begged you to stay, as if you weren’t coming back in a matter of mere hours. “I’m always going to come back…you know that don’t you?” You took her face in your hands, forcing her to look you in the eye.

“Fine,” she spat, pulling away before you had the chance to react. “Go then.” And with that, she stormed away to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her and leaving you wondering what had gone wrong.

You didn’t end up going out that night. Not because Seraphina didn’t want you to, or at least, that’s what you liked to tell yourself. No, you didn’t go out because you couldn’t leave her alone, as upset as she was. But from there, one night seemed to turn into a whole week spent inside the apartment. It was lucky enough that you worked from home, writing for a magazine that didn’t ask too many questions.

It was enough to keep you occupied. And the fact that it didn’t require they saw your face more than once every few months was advantageous, under the circumstances. But cabin fever was unavoidable, as were necessary chores and errands that needed running. Eventually, leaving became inevitable.

On the day when this became glaringly apparent, you decided that it was time to come up with a plan. If Seraphina didn’t want you leaving the house alone, perhaps it would be more viable to propose going out together. It had been long enough since you’d been on a proper date, after all.

“Come on,” you told her, later that evening when she’d found herself done with work, and the both of you were just itching for something to do. “We’re going to dinner, and I don’t wanna hear any objections.” It was a long shot. You knew it was a long shot because it always was with her, and yet, you always tried.

“Okay.” It came out as barely a whisper, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips when you grinned and snuck a kiss, pressed softly to her temple. “I’d like that.” Just as you knew she would.

It wasn’t a fancy place upon first glance, but the food was to die for. It was a hidden gem among a plethora of no-maj establishments, trying to sell what little they could in the deteriorating economy.

Ever since the law regarding no-maj relations had changed, the joint became a popular spot among wizards and non-magical people alike. It was run by two brothers, one born with magic and the other a squib. But contrary to what you’d think, they were still closer than most brothers ever could be.

It was your spot, the little table tucked in the back corner, dimly lit and strangely intimate. Seraphina preferred it, as it was somewhat secluded. Both of you still had difficulty, you could say, going out in public. With you being a no-maj and her being the President of MACUSA, it was an unexpected match and not always the most well received.

Seraphina insisted she didn’t mind that the public opinion was constantly shifting, but even one as skilled at pretending as she was could only hide the truth to a certain extent. It bothered her, that much was clear. Not necessarily that you weren’t a wizard, but perhaps…well, she’d always wanted to fix everything, is all. She held herself to unattainable standards, and seemed to always want to keep pushing. She couldn’t be content that not everyone had been swayed, even though she knew in the back of her mind that nothing had ever been that easy. It seemed to take a toll on her in a profound way that wasn’t invariably rational.

“Thank you,” you said, smiling politely at the young boy who escorted you to the table. He couldn’t have been older than ten, you noted, both impressed by his diplomacy and saddened by the fact that he’d been forced into holding job at all when he was still only a child. You made a mental note to leave him a few extra coins before you left.

“Yes,” Seraphina hummed, “thank you.” She offered a gracious nod, and a more genuine smile than you’d seen her bare in longer than you cared to think about.

“It’s been so long since we’ve done this,” you chuckled, watching her tentatively over the menu tipped up just under your nose. She seemed to shift, like the statement carried just a little bit more weight than she was prepared to hold just yet. You reached for her hand, folding your fingers gently around it and squeezing reassuringly. It had to be talked about, there wasn’t any way around it. But in that moment, it could wait. For a little while, everything in the world could be put on hold to make time for sweet, willing ignorance. 

It was an incredible meal, just like it always was. And Seraphina almost seemed lighter by the end of it; less stressed, and certainly more herself, anyway. Once the cheque was paid, you and Seraphina stayed only long enough to see the boy’s eyes wide at the rather extravagant tip before heading back into street.

A part of you thought it should have been enough. It was an entire evening out of the house, and you thought for a second that perhaps you didn’t need more than that. Maybe, in some ways it could’ve been enough to keep you sated, but that was just it—only in some ways. Because it wasn’t healthy to want your partner to be a hermit, you knew it as well as she did. And it wasn’t normal to think that it was, even for a second. You loved Seraphina.You wanted to spend the rest of your life with the woman, and you couldn’t do that if things kept ending up this way. It was a dangerous pattern, and an unsustainable one at that.

It was chilly, and the air was crisp. Seraphina was wrapped up in your coat, and you snuck your arm around her waist as you walked. It was quiet enough that the pair of you would go mostly unnoticed, and still, Seraphina tensed the moment she felt your hand on her hip. You went to pull away, but she shook her head, reaching across to hold your hand were it had stilled against her midriff. And as you walked, she seemed to grow less and less bothered by the few other people bustling up and down the street.

You put the kettle on while she changed into her night clothes, a routine you’d adapted for the days when she was home early enough to sit for a while, to wind down and feel something akin to human again.

She stepped into the kitchen looking nothing less than perfect, and sat down across from you once the water had come to a boil and was carefully administered between two mugs. Words sat on the tip of your tongue; Oceans of words, and none of them seemed to be adequate. She seemed to be struggling just the same, her mouth opening and closing periodically as she fought to make sense of an onslaught of not-quite-neutral emotions.

“I’m sorry, if that means anything by now,” she whispered, finally, her cheeks flushing visibly, even in the dim light. She wouldn’t meet your eyes, instead opting to stare at her hands where they clutched the scalding mug. It must have been burning her palms; it had to be.

“Stop that,” you snapped, prying her hands away and sucking in a breath. “I don’t want apologies, Sera. I want an explanation.” It wasn’t an unrealistic request.

“Well, I don’t have one,” she huffed, pulling her hands back. She did burn them, you thought, as she tucked her palms underneath her arms. “I don’t know…I don’t know how to talk about this.”

Well, that complicated things. Sometimes her endless composure was enough to fool even you into thinking that perhaps, just maybe, she had all the answers—to this, to anything. But she wasn’t inhuman. She was still vulnerable and complicated, just as much as anyone.

“Try,” you pushed, more gently this time. “I don’t want a lot, Sera, but I want to know why. Because if there’s something I did, or something I can fix-“

“No,” she cut in, voice still not quite her own. “It wasn’t you. It was never you, it’s just…it wasn’t…I couldn’t…,” she stumbled over the words, growing more and more flustered with each passing moment until her hands trembled and her eyes shone with unshed tears. “I just wanted you,” she murmured at last, the statement itself obscure and indefinite.

“And I thought that if I could make you stay…then you’d—I don’t know. I’ve always been afraid of losing the people I love and I got…I got scared. I got scared.” She was heaving, her lungs turning themselves inside out to keep the tears at bay. “And with the new law, just knowing that so many were against the wizards having any part in your world, I-I thought that they would take you away from me and I don’t want that. I don’t know if I could take that, and now you’re upset with me and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She nearly choked on the words, looking you in the eye so fully, it was impossible for your chest not to ache for her. She shook her head, turning away and looking almost…ashamed.

“I…,” now it was you who was lost for words. You pursed your lips, watching Seraphina closely and minding every single breath you breathed in her direction. Because this was a woman whose day job was the smooth management of a country, and perhaps that had skewed your perception of her just enough to have glossed over the fact that Seraphina Picquery was remarkably insecure. And maybe you hadn’t considered that, but she also hadn’t considered that talking about it might’ve been easier than waiting. “Why didn’t you tell me?” It was a question that had been sitting at the tip of your tongue since this conversation started. “Did you think I wouldn’t understand? Hell, I worry about you every day you’re away from me, but do I try and keep you from leaving? No, because I know that wouldn’t be fair to you.”

“I know,” she moaned, hiding her face in her hands. “I made a mistake, and believe me when I say that if I could do it over again, I would change everything.” Her face was streaked with tears, and she looked like a mess. You thought back, trying to recall a single instance in which she’d ever been this distraught, and came up absolutely empty. Because you’d never seen her like this; you were willing to bet that few had.

And even knowing that, her next words still managed to shock you.“But I understand if you don’t want to be with me anymore,” she breathed, words barely audible but they had been spoken. You knew they had.  

“No,” you shot back, instantly. You didn’t give it a second though, because there was no way in hell that you were leaving her like this—or ever. Perhaps it was something you should’ve considered, but in that moment you could only think about her, just as you always seemed to. “I’m not leaving over this.”

“You should,” she muttered under her breath. “I’ve been awful to you.”

“I’m not even going to bother denying that, because it’s true,” you sighed, feeling like this discussion was going around in circles. You rubbed your temples, trying to figure out where to go from there. “But I love you. I’ve loved you since the first day, and I’ll love you until the last and this is not it.” You couldn’t think of a single reason why it shouldn’t have been the last, and that was the problem. You were prepared to let this woman walk all over you, god damn it. “I don’t know why I’m letting this happen. I don’t know why I let this happen to begin with.” Staying felt selfish, in the most twisted way. Yet, leaving was almost unfathomable. “But it’s not going to happen again. If I stay, the overprotectiveness is going to stop.”

“It will,” she assured you, her eyes suddenly wide and pleading. “I swear, it won’t happen again.” And you supposed, that was as much as she could promise. So you let your guard down, and you let the weight in your chest fall away, piece by piece. Some of your common sense had slipped away in process, but by then, you didn’t care much. So, you pushed yourself away from the table, stood up and swayed because your legs didn’t quite feel sturdy anymore. And you took her hand, you looked her in the eye and believed her because her pain was unequivocal. When you opened your arms, she took everything you had left to give her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, over and over. Her lips were pressed against your neck just gently enough for you to feel the words as she spoke them.

“It’s okay,” you said, though it might not have been and you would’ve never known. “I forgive you.”

[catsafarithewriter]

“If you kill them, you’d better kill me too, because otherwise I’m going to kill you.” -The Cat Returns, Haru to the villain of the week who has pushed her into "face of a woman on the edge" mode (love jumpin'jack flash, that's what that is from)

Hah, I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me doing these! (Actually, I just wanted to write random angst and I remembered this prompt.) This is... longer than I expected it to be (1.5K) so the idea sorta got a life of its own. (And I really like the idea it generated, so I might have half a plan to use it for a future case...) 

Haru slammed the door behind her, gasping. Her coat was stained two shades of blood, and a fresh wound ran red down her arm. Her legs threatened to collapse beneath her, and she could feel the abuse of the last… week? Month? She had lost track of time, but her legs knew that they had been running for far too long.

She staggered across the room, which was centred by a large stone table. Carved into the stonework was a a twisting pattern of lines and curves.

A map.

A map too simple, too neat, too clean for the hellish world she had traversed.

The only source of light, save for the antiqued torches in the wall brackets, were the dots shimmering on the stone map.

Four, to be exact.

She tentatively reached out and brushed a finger over the nearest one.

She was flying low across a bubbling lake; the roof above was too low for her relax her flight, for even a foot lower would set her down in the scalding water. Steam was rising from the surface in waves. Surely eventually it should boil itself out? But now all that mattered was not burning to death.

She snatched her hand away, but the image was already burned into her mind. She could still feel the ache in her wings, the heat searing her skin…

She leant heavily against the stone table.

Toto.

He was still alive.

But for how long?

She passed her gaze over the dots of light, counting again.

Four.

Two were moving. Two were not.

She dropped her hand over the unmoving dot in the centre of the map, and for a moment the world spun. When it cleared, she was watching herself. The angle was different though, and there was a shadow in the doorway behind her.

She gasped and spun round to the newcomer.

“You run well, for a human.”

He was younger than Haru had been expecting. Almost too human for the hell he had put them through. He sauntered in, his hands in the pockets of a scruffy lab coat, and his sneakers padding softly across the stone floor.

A vampire, Baron had hypothesised. Possibly a trapped spirit. Certainly some kind of immortal, anyway.

She stared at him, trying to see past the tattered appearance and to the truth of his being.

“What? No witty banter? No quick comebacks?” He collapsed down into a fluffy armchair that appeared beneath him. “I am disappointed. You were so snarky before.”

Very probably powerful, Baron had theorised, back when they had first found the opening of the maze. Dangerous, more than likely. And now all their lives hung in the hands of this… person.

“Why are you doing this?”

“No snark today then. Shame. I was hoping to witness it firsthand. And the answer is simple. Curiosity.”

“This isn’t curiosity. This is cruelty.”

“You underestimate me, Miss Yoshioka. The curiosity I have is enough to kill a cat.” He smiled. “Or two.”

“If you kill them, you’d better kill me too, because otherwise I’m going to kill you.”

The man merely laughed. "Such fire from a human who can barely stand. Tell me, how did you find my manticore?”

Subconsciously, Haru raised a hand to her scarred arm. “I would have liked it more with fewer teeth.”

“Oh, good - there’s the snark I was looking for. I was beginning to worry you’d lost it.”

“If you kill my friends, you’ll have more than my snark to deal with,” Haru hissed. “What do you want with us? What can you possibly get from this vile game other than sick enjoyment?”

“Knowledge.”

“That isn’t an answer I’ll accept.”

“It’s the only answer there is.” He summoned up two drinking cups shaped like horns, and offered one to Haru. “Don’t worry; it’s not poison. In fact, the horns were gifts from a previous tenant.”

“What can you possibly learn from torturing us?” Haru persisted.

The man shrugged and the drinking horn vanished. “Suit yourself.”

“Answer me!”

The man - monster, vampire, immortal, whatever he was - sighed and rose from his armchair. It vanished the moment it was no longer needed, and he paced towards the young woman.

“Do you know why Creations like your friends sleep? It seems counter-productive, doesn’t it? That a creature of wood and magic should require to shut down on a regular basis.”

“And that’s why you’re doing this? To see if Creations need sleep?”

“Oh, not just that. There’s so many questions I want to answer. So many different conditions I can put them through. To learn more about Creations like them, half mortal, half flesh-and-blood… and yet they do not age like the humans that made them. Do you know why they must sleep?”

“I don’t care.”

“At first I thought it was merely a matter of habit, or mental rest. After all, even if the body didn’t deteriorate under sleepless conditions, the mind still suffers. It still needs to stop. But Creations have a funny little extra side effect.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because it’s fascinating. Creations like them need to sleep in order to rejuvenate their magic. Their magic is so small, so limited, that merely existing as flesh and blood exhausts them. Can you imagine that? That being should almost be too much to bear?”

Haru’s heart went cold. “What have you done to them?”

“Ran a few tests, made observations… Well, they’re the ones doing most of the running.” He motioned to the stone map. “Why don’t you take a look?”

Haru’s gaze passed over the lights; Toto’s star still circled the room he had been trapped in, but now both other lights were stationary. She reached out to the one that had been motionless for longer, afraid of what she might find.

The wall she was leaning against was cold. Uncomfortable. And yet she made no effort to move. She could barely feel her legs. Across the lone room was a portcullis gate. Closed. And thankfully so, for on the other side was an amalgamation of monsters. 

A siren wailed through the room. She didn’t react - not anymore - and only a sliver of panic rippled through her mind. The portcullis began to rise, and she slammed her left hand down onto a flashing button - surreally modern - built into the wall.

The portcullis shuddered to a halt, and then lowered back down before the monsters could squirm through.

She collapsed her head back against the wall, her breaths escaping from her in ragged gasps. She wanted to sleep - she ached to sleep - but she could not. She must not. Her mind was a mess, focused only on the ravenous monsters, and the single button that kept them at bay.

The tiredness was a hollowness within her.

She inhaled, and she felt the hollowness - the tiredness - crawl up her shoulder and blossom across her chest. Her heart beat erratically as it tried to stave off the dull receding of her magic, but eventually it would revert to wood too. Like her arm. Like her legs. Eventually - whether it was due to her heart and lungs or her remaining arm - she would no longer be able to press the button, and the monsters would swarm in. 

She wasn’t sure she would care by then though. 

The siren started up again, and she reached out for the button once more. 

Haru dropped her hand away and the connection was broken, but she could still feel an echo of that emptiness cooling in her chest.

She ran a hand along her shoulder, and was reassured by the bloodied wound.

Flesh. Not wood.

“What have you done to him?” she whispered, and this time her words were laced with horror of the known.

“I think you’ve already figured it out. And this is just the beginning of the sleep deprivation condition. Once I get a baseline, I can see how he fares under more complex conditions - sleep deprivation and running, sleep deprivation and emotional strain - and test a wider range of variations. Reaction time. Mental clarity. Reasoning. In fact, I’ve already begun testing the crow Creation’s stamina under constant flight.”

Haru recalled, with vivid clarity, the images she had gleaned from Toto’s mind. She shuddered, still able to almost feel the burning heat with the memory. “You have your answer then. He’s turning back to wood. Haven’t you seen enough? Haven’t you done enough?”

He smiled. “But there are so many other questions to pursue. How fast do they heal? Does their magic help speed the process? I hadn’t been so sure that Creations like that were able of bleeding at all, but…” and here he pointedly eyed the blood splattered across the hem of Haru’s coat. “Well, I now know the answer to that.”

“Then you’re testing us to death,” Haru hissed.

He laughed. “Only at the very end.” The gleam in his eyes was hungry. “Only at the very end.”

[thisiswhatafighterlookslike]

My Pageant Journey

In September 2016, I saw a post from my FB friend Chontell Lucas (Miss SC Plus America 2016) asking ladies to consider taking the pageant journey in the next year. My initial thought... “Not for me.” Over the next few days, I saw the post a few more times and I kept being drawn to it, even though I didn’t want to be...LOL! So I eventually left a comment on one of the posts, wishing her well on the next phase of her own journey and assuring her she would find the ladies she was looking for. A few messages later my, now friend, was in my inbox talking to me about the pageant and sharing with me her belief that I would do well. She felt I really should consider it. Hmmm I don’t know... maybe... I told her I just never believed in pageants and I still don’t. I don’t believe in competitions and the thought of me standing on a stage (especially as a plus size woman) for someone to judge me and tell me if I am “good enough” or “the best or not” according to THEIR opinions just was not going to work for me. She shared with me, that she had the same feelings and that she was in my exact same position not long before me. She completely understood. She explained Miss Plus America (MPA) is more of a community service driven, faith based pageant...they aren’t just focused on beauty. She is said “Sis you do so much in the community and with your own work as it is, you got that part!” (She was selling it lol!) Ok so my personal reflection, I no longer use the “label” or term “Plus” for myself. I had weight loss surgery in 2014, tipping the scales approx 440lbs! Once I lost significant weight and got focused on my goal, I just didn’t look back on any term connected to my “former” look and life. So for me, “Plus” was not a word I called myself or desired to in over 2 years. It wasn’t bad or something I hated, I just was focused on moving forward and getting smaller and healthier. Words have power. So we have to be mindful of the power we give them in our lives. But the truth is prior to seeing the post and my conversation with my friend, I had been thinking about a few things and wondering what I wanted or needed to do in the next 6 months to year, if at all. 

1) To Pageant or Not Pageant... That is the Question! With doctors telling me cancer was taking charge of my body and it’s functions, I began to write the proverbial “Bucket List.” I thought of some things I had not done and looked at the reasons. I asked myself the Reason, I didn’t want to be in a pageant. I forced myself to be honest. It wasn’t just not wanting to be judged. Because the truth is, I am strong enough to handle that. It was words I had deep in my mind, heart, spirit...words spoken from my ex-husband that I had tucked away. Yet, they weren’t maybe so tucked. Words speaking to me, telling me that I could not be accepted or received at my size, that I am not as beautiful as I could be being so “Big” and the only people that see me as appealing are just men who like BBW. Words shot at me saying the world has not come to truly accept fat people, especially fat women and a fat black woman, will always be viewed as a lazy and “less than’ woman, so I will never be truly accepted or valued for who I am or seen as beautiful as other women no matter how well I dress, speak or carry myself. I THOUGHT I didn’t give these words my attention, but somehow they were coming to the surface after many years and torturing my thoughts on a regular basis as my life and work was becoming more public. So were the people who said they love me and love my look, lying to me, was I as good as the next woman. I found myself trying to hide in public places and although I never stopped working and doing all the many things I loved, I preferred to do more from behind the scenes and place others in the front. So now a pageant... no I don’t think so. BUT, was my reason good enough to go to my grave with? I was beginning to think it wasn’t I needed to face this, address this... Embrace this. I needed to take this journey at least once, and even if I didn’t win... I did it! I needed to be able to kill and bury those words and be done with them for good. 

2) Was “Plus” really such  a bad word? I looked in the mirror. Why was I so upset with this word? It didn’t have anymore power now then it did in 2014 when I was over 400lbs! So what was my issue? As long as a word could affect my world and attitude, I was not free, and I believe in living freedom. I thought about the reality of my life. Due to all the treatments I was taking and even the chemotherapy (yes we don’t all lose weight) I was at a major stall in my weight loss and had even gained at some times. So at this time in my life, I am a Plus Size woman and as I faced the mirror and looked at old pictures.. that was absolutely ok. I am still smart, beautiful, loving, giving, and every bit the same person I always was and nothing could be taken from the success of my previous weight loss. I may not be where I want to be but I surely was not where I was! I also thought, how many women (young women) look up to me and are inspired by me at my current image. These ladies see someone that encourages them to be their best and be who they are at their own best. I get countless messages and emails from females who tell me when they see me, they are so inspired and uplifted. When meet me and see a full figured woman who has curves, yet remains elegant while embracing fashion and personal style, they feel better about themselves. So I felt I owed it to them to show them you walk that pageant stage Full Figured, Curvy, Positively Plus and LIVE in that! You are inferior to NO one due to the size and shape of your body. 

So after about a week and lot of reflection, I decided to GO FOR IT! What did I have to lose really? Nothing to really lose but the crown. I would gain experience from the journey, freedom, connections to new ladies and beautiful friendships, learning more about other platforms and causes and investing myself more in this state of SC that I call home and what it has to offer. 

These months of preparation of definitely been a process. It is always interesting coming into a group of people you don’t know and getting to know them. You hope and pray it goes well and you become good acquaintances and if you are truly blessed, you develop genuine friendships and embrace sisterhood. Of course this is all a “time and work” situation... you get out what you put in. Honestly, in the beginning, I wasn’t putting in much, or as much as I could for my own reservations and issues, but over time I began to get comfortable with these beautiful ladies and they became a part of my life. 

In March, I believe most of our lives officially changed during the Crowning Ceremony & Bootcamp Weekend. We were all finally together with each other and able to meet, chat, work together and really get to know one another. I was happy to meet these lovely ladies and connect faces to some hearts who had become so beautifully kind to me over the last few months and particularly the last few weeks. 

I wish I could say my journey was just a challenge of personal adjustment and getting to know various personalities. That would be SO easy... a cake walk! It became a literally painful challenge as my health became a major issue for me, that exceeded far beyond the pageant and affected everything I did and attempted to do. As it affected my body, the pain intensifying and weakness and sickness increasing, it affected my mentally and emotionally. I started to feel like such a failure and I was letting everyone down. I began to battle with the notion to step down. I never want someone to feel they can count on me, or look for me and I not be there. I take my obligations and my word seriously. My finances were hit hard, as my medical insurance was erroneously cut back in November and I was without coverage for little over 90 days. This had me paying for some of my meds, appointments and treatments out of pocket and some I had to go without, some doctors/appointments I had to reschedule and 2 procedures were rescheduled until they could be covered by insurance. This very negatively affected my health. But I didn’t tell anyone. Some I didnt even share with my parents. I was quiet in my own world. I kept thinking, maybe this was a mistake, or maybe not now. But my heart would never allow me to let it go. Right before Christmas, I showed my dr 2 lumps under my right arm that had been bothering me for about 3 months. I think I had been putting off mentioning them out of fear. We scheduled biopsy and in February I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. This was in addition to the Ovarian Cancer and Leukemia. I was hit with a hard blow and I really was broken... During this time I kept complaining about pain when I ate and even drank a lot. I was told this was probably the ovarian cancer and just being tired, but we will do some tests. Well after 3 trips to hospital, I was diagnosed with Crohns Disease! A result of the Chemo!!! So now what do I do?  I finally had a talk with my ambassador Kendra and my director and they encouraged me to keep going, but pace myself. Something I have no clue how to do! LOL! 

As I got closer to pageant weekend the biggest issue became managing my pain. It was getting harder and harder. A year ago my bones in lower back, hips and legs began to show deterioration. I was told they did not know how well I would be able to dance/walk in a year, or If I could at all. My doctor strongly advised I stopped wearing my beloved stilettos, slow down and change my life to something more peaceful. Despite how much I remain active and I have NOT given up my beloved stilettos/heels (nor do I plan to), it has become so painful to walk. I have taken a break from dance/choreography. We decided 2 weeks ago to test a neurostimulator in my back to assist with pain management. It definitely was no “magic cure” but for the first time in well over a year, I was able to sleep. So after a 4 day test, we agreed place permanent device in, at least for now. The issue, I had some problems after the fact that put me on medical restriction and my doctor was absolutely not in favor of me going to the pageant. I had to cross this finish line! I spoke to the staff, made them aware. I was tempted to just say I can’t do it. But I just do not have “Quit” in me! 

So Pageant Weekend. I didn’t have the finances for so much I still needed and it seemed so many signs were saying... this is not your time Lady lol! But down to the final moments... God stepped in! I was blessed with the money and all the pieces of clothing I needed! My hotel was paid for in full and I never worried about eating. I was here and I finally at peace! My journey was coming to an end and all was getting better...No..all was well! I was bonding with my SisterQueens in a beautiful way and I just felt good! 

Pageant Day... I woke up and everything felt WRONG! OMG No! I was in so much pain, I woke up weak, dizzy, stuggling to speak, I couldn’t get out of bed. In fact, I couldn’t sit up. I had to really pray and focus my movements. I crawled to the bathroom. I prayed. Tears poured down my face, I worked too hard to get here to not be able to complete this. Normally days with this pain, I medicate and REST. Today I need to PUSH. I pulled myself up and was able to get to my bottle of water and take my meds. Laid down for 15 minutes and slowly began to get ready... I was feeling well enough to move and hide the pain..but with every movement I had sharp pains shooting through my body and the weakness felt like someone through 50lb weight on my back!!!!!! I began to sing to myself and tell myself.. You can do this! I got to the venue for final rehearsal and I was.. OK. I led the ladies in heartfelt prayer as we started our day and I felt positive. As the morning went on, the looks from the queens started and they were asking.. “are you ok?” my response...”yes I am just tired.” but no the pain was getting worse by the moment. I did my walk through for my elegant pants wear and I had to lean on a table backstage. I thought just take a minute and breathe...... But something was wrong..the room was going black and pain went through every inch of my body. I have pain induced seizures and I needed to avoid blacking out. I was trying to sit on the floor.. but I only remember waking up laying on the ground. I had passed out. For a few minutes I couldn’t speak but I could hear and see people around me. After a few minutes I was on my feet and able to communicate some. The decision was made to send me back to my hotel instead of stay at rehearsal. I was upset... this was my day and I had to finish it! I took a nap and woke up still extremely weak and very much in pain. But I was taking that stage! My ambassador called to check on me. Ultimately the final decision was mine. I answered... I’m on my way. I am pushing through. See you soon. 

MY MOMENT.... The night was finally at its apex and I actually felt a little better. I was laughing with everyone and relaxing offstage as we were preparing for our final awards and crowning. This was it. I stood in my coral strapless chiffon gown and matching heels. I won the Against All Odds Award and that was very special to me. I held it close to my heart. Now they called the queens for the “Mrs” Division forward... and they announced the winner... LEYA ELIJAH-ELLER! She is now you Mrs South Carolina Plus America. I looked at the 2016 winner who is a dear friend and it was so emotional... I said to her... We Did It! We both fought our tears. As they were crowning me and putting on my sash and still handing my trophies...lol... I got ready to take my first walk... Yeah. I lost my ballance...the crowd gasped. I actually laughed. I  cant even desribe how bad my bones were hurting at that point and my stomache was throbbing in pain... but it was a fleeting moment... I smiled that signature smile and recovered... I took my walk... I was humbled. I DID IT! I WON!!!  

Some parts of my journey were too personal, and I will keep those private. But I wanted to share in detail the journey of a Positively Plus Size Beauty... 39 year old mom of 3 young adults, currently surviving cancer, truly fighting like a girl... This journey to Queen taught me more about myself; my personal strength, inner strength, body confidence, self image and love for life and others. I during my time as Mrs SC Plus America 2017, I intend to encourage as many women as I can to face their face fears, live life, leave no regrets on the table and most of all cross that finish line no matter what! Who knew that responding to a FB post would result in my becoming Queen! 

Ladies if my blog shows you one thing I hope its this, every dream you have is very real, and it was given to you for you to manifest. Don’t the issues and obstacles of life stop you from letting the LIVE. 

This is your Mrs SC Plus America 2017, showing you “This Is What A Fighter Looks Like!!!!” Until the next time... stay Fierce and Fabulous and Fight for what you love, desire and want! 

~Leya~

[forthepursuitofknowledge]

Turn the Page... (Evil AU Post)

The Sultana’s breath apartments, relatively quiet, though it couldn’t be helped should the occasional ‘festivity’ be brought along; more than likely moved over from the Quicksand and back to a more private setting for evening ‘entertainment’. Luckily for Noah, this wasn’t really a concern; after many times explaining his case…and more than a small amount of gil to ‘help’ plead his case. The man was able to have some adjustments made to his own room, thickening the walls, soundproofing, adding some small security to the man’s otherwise hectic life. Truly this was his home, his fortress.

Yet all the defenses of the room around him couldn’t save him from the crumbling sanity the man was experiencing. It began when he’d first seen himself after his brush with the nameless black mage, the man responsible for killing Quine. Quine, his first friend, a woman who adopted him like a brother. To say that Noah had been going through struggles of the mind was something of an understatement. His life had become riddled with blow after blow to his mental state. First the loss of his friend, a loss that took its toll heavily on him. Not only was this his first brush with loss, but for someone so close to him…a man who was so used to keeping people out, to lose the one woman who brought him into a social setting and forced him to branch out…it hurt him endlessly.

Next was the attack itself, Noah had always fancied himself a well learned Thaumaturge, and while he didn’t openly practice, he would be lying had he said he never dabbled in black magics himself. How could he help it? His father left him his soulstone, and from there he bonded with it rather easily, seeing the way the magics worked…he’d be foolish not to dip into that well, wouldn’t he? Still, for all he knew, all the magic he mustered, he was brushed aside like a rag doll in the way of a lumbering Roegaedyn. And what’s worse, he was marked by this experience for the remained of his life. He would never live this down, it’s imprint left upon his complexion, set to haunt him the rest of his days…

And now this…the Xaela he’d been giving his heart to, the woman he’d confided in and sought to bring about a new life with…gone. She was rushed away in hopes of saving herself from her past, a past she couldn’t allow him to be in the wake of, and while he knew he could not stop her…gods how he longed he had. How he wished he went along with her at times, but now left to his own deteriorating state…his mind couldn’t stand this constant blow after blow.

‘What good has this done you, Noah?’ He could hear his mind call to him, was this from the lack of sleep? Was it his mind slipping?

“Silence damn you, I’m not keen on losing my mind, I have lost enough…I shall not lose THAT.” The man sat in his chair, looking to his fireplace, watching the flames burn bright and hearing the comforting sound of wooden logs crackling, giving way to the heat that was slowly rendering it to ash.

‘You think embracing such silly things has done your mind any good, do you? What happened to the man you were, Kelten. What became of the steeled man who was invulnerable to the foolishness of the world around him? What became of the man none could phase, not even the mightiest of chest beating Dotharl stood in your face, teeth bared…and you did not flinch. Now look at you, sitting in your room…your time being spent reflecting on the pains of your experiences in social experimentation. What wonders it has done for you Kelten, what it has yielded?’ His mind’s voice rang thick with sarcasm.

Noah’s eyes shut tight, he couldn’t stand to think that this voice in his mind was right…and yet how could he not? Ever since he’d joined this company, ever since he’d allowed himself the chance to try his hand at a social experience, he’d found his hand bitten.

Tired eyes stared into the dancing flames, feeling a slight comfort in the combination of heat they gave off, and the enticing almost entrancing colours playing out their sweet performance before him. Noah could not respond to his inner demon, for all he knew it would only bring him that much closer to losing what sanity he had left. And yet…

‘Remain silent all you wish, Noah, but you’ll not escape me. I’m not one of those women to have come into your life, only to find the door so soon after they’ve met you. I’m far from something so easily dispelled, and yet you wish me gone? Aren’t you being a bit brash?’

“That would certainly explain a great deal of bother…” He spoke aloud, shutting his eyes and cringing as though immediately scolding himself for giving into that damn desire to shake this voice aside.

‘And yet all you want is for lasting companionship, isn’t that right? What more reliable a companion. Here I am Kelten, and I think you’ll find it’s quite difficult to be rid of me.’

“Yes you’re bothersome.”

‘Why of course I am, I’m you.’

Noah bit his tongue; he fell right into that one. As he continued to rub his temples furiously, seeking some comfort from the constant headache he’d been having for several days now. He was tired of feeling this empty hollow feeling in his chest, tired of the constant tug at his heart…tired of the constant failure after failure when all he wanted was someone he could depend upon.

‘We had that Noah, but it was taken from us…it was ripped away from us and no matter what happens…we can’t bring her back. She wanted to teach you about the joys of being willing to put yourself in the way of others, place yourself in situations you hated. She wanted you to make friends and instead all you’ve done is found yourself hurt…again…and again….and aga-‘

“ENOUGH!” Noah stood up, shouting to the walls. “I WILL NOT HAVE YOU SLANDER THAT WOMAN’S NAME!” In his rage he could feel his aether rising, a slight hum in his head as he tried to steady his breathing, but to no avail. His heart beating fast, the rage in him festered for so long it was spilling over, making his body tremble.

‘She was taken away Noah, Cirina left you, if anyone were to see you now, they’d think you a monster.’

“Stop it, STOP!” His voice wavered, despite his shouting, gripping his head tighter as he felt his body reaching a boiling point. He wanted it all to cease, all to stop. He couldn’t bear this feeling anymore, this emptiness, there had to be a way to fill it! There had to be something else that could take the place of what he’d lost!

‘Your mother never loved you, wouldn’t look in your direction…you were too much like him. You only reminded her of him. And so she cast you out, her own child. And all alone you lived, until you dared try and bring others back in, and what has it brought you? What has it done but leave you weak and so easily crumbled! Turned you into this horrid sight! Get over yourself, Kelten, who could speak to a man with such a face…?’

“YOU WILL STOP! YOU SHALL OR I SHALL-“

‘You’ll WHAT!? What will you do! Burn? Wreck? Destroy? Tear? Rip? Break? Crush!?! WHAT WILL DO YOU NOAH KELTEN!?’

“OR I SHALL KILL YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME!? I SHALL LIGHT EVERY NERVE ABLAZE, SEND YOU TO YOUR OWN PERSONAL HELL I DIG MYSELF! I SHALL SEE YOU BURN DAMN YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME!? DO YOU HEAR ME!?!?!”

Noah was left, wild eyes glaring to the walls around him, panting heavily as his body was tense. In a moment he turned, around. He knew what he had to do. He needed his revenge, he needed to forge his body…metal, yes…metal would help the man.

He turned, looking at his Griffon Mask, the white hood sat there…it’s shade almost taunting him in its purity…surely not fitting for man who was going to wear it. Not the man he was to become. If Noah was weak, then no longer would he be Noah. The man rushed to a cabinet in his study, picking up black aetheric ink and moving with heavy footstep back to the hood. He poured the ink onto the material, letting it coat the fabric and metal until he channeled his own aether, the ink on the mask reacted giving the entire hood and metal guard a black finish to replace the white.

Slowly the man took the hood, placing it on. Throwing upon him a black jacket with some gold finishing that had been sanded to remove the shine it might have to give him away.

“No longer…NO LONGER! I shall not lose a thing more, it shall not be I who loses, but THEM. First I start with the man who took Quine from me; I start by tearing his aether from him. I make him scream, shout! I BURN him to his core and scatter the ashes to the winds!”

Noah began to grip and grab potions he had scattered about his apartment, various cocktails he had always kept but never dared to think of using for what he intended.

“Noah Kelten was frail, was weak and trampled! But no more…Not ever again! No…Noah Kelten has died tonight. And in his place stands Page…And I shall take my vengeance. I shall not let this go quiet into the night; I shall make those who practice such magic suffer. I shall wring this world from black magics if it costs me all I have! And any who should seek to come between them and I…any who dares place their feet in my path…” Noah paused…reaching out to grip his stav, tightening his grip on it firm. “Ashes and dust…all shall be as ash and dust…” His voice came out grizzled, guttural, the man’s anger taking him entirely and leaving nothing that was once Noah Kelten behind.

As the man finished placing on his attire, he could already feel it…that whole filling now…the part of him that long for completion was finding it. He looked to his hand, as though seeing himself a new man, born full in the fires of destruction.

“Rhalgr…you and I have never spoken…so what say you?”

…

“Shall we chat?”

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Jewelry Quotes

Official Website: Jewelry Quotes

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• A girl could never have too much jewelry or too much weaponry. – Laurell K. Hamilton • A little man is running a jewelry store. A man runs in saying, Okay, take my watch, put on a new band, install a new battery, clean the case, install a new crystal, and tune it up. I will be back in a half hour for it. Thanks! and runs out the door. The little jeweler says, C-C-C-Come in? – Henny Youngman • A lot of the jewelry that I wear are fan gifts because they’re so awesome and they give me great presents. – Taylor Swift • A man can do a television interview and roll out of bed 15 minutes before; it’s just not the same for a woman. A woman has to pay attention to her hair, makeup, clothing, and jewelry choices. – Michele Bachmann • A man’s got two shots for jewelry: a wedding ring and a watch. The watch is a lot easier to get on and off than a wedding ring. – John Mayer • A piece of jewelry is in a sense an object that is not complete in itself. Jewelry is a ‘what is it?’ until you relate it to the body. The body is a component in design just as air and space are. Like line, form, and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the basic inspirations in creating form. – Art Smith • A woman needs ropes and ropes of pearls. – Grace Kelly • Accessories are crucial. A great bag and a piece of statement jewelry are the fastest way to elevate an otherwise understated look. – Ivanka Trump • Accessories are important and becoming more and more important every day. They can completely change the look of an outfit, and women like the idea of having a wardrobe that’s versatile. For instance, a strong piece of jewelry can make a simple outfit look elegant. – Giorgio Armani • Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with. – Thomas Carlyle • All my jewelry has stories. – Eva Green • Always make sure your jewelry isn’t taking over you or your ensemble and keep everything in proportion to your frame – Nina Garcia • Another thing rappers, I admire your rebellious spirit, but materialism is a form of mental slavery. Slow down on the jewelry, pick up a book. – Dov Davidoff • Any girl who was a lady would not even think of having such a good time that she did not remember to hang on to her jewelry. – Anita Loos • As I get older, I use less jewelry – necklace or earrings each morning, not both; my clothes are getting more basic – fewer colours and simpler cuts; and my make-up is stripped back to basics. – Tracy Chevalier • At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first. – Ethel Merman

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'product', keywords: 'Jewelry', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_jewelry').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_jewelry img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be careful with the man jewelry. A little goes a long way. – Ashton Kutcher • Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away. – Janet Malcolm • But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Which cost five hundred dollars, and not a cent less, And jewelry worth tem times more, I should guess, That he had not a thing in the wide world to wear! – William Allen Butler • But the Milanese have made bad choices, bad fashion, and bad jewelry. – Christian Lacroix

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• Cool! Now I can steal some rich old coot’s Ferrari and go fishing for marlin with the same piece of jewelry. – Jennifer Rardin • Costume jewelry is not made to give women an aura of wealth, but to make them beautifu – Coco Chanel • Customized jewelry is one of my targets with Bold Machines. – Bre Pettis • Death, jewelry, or magic; it sounded like Valentine’s Day. – Laurell K. Hamilton • Decide which you want to play up: your clothing or your jewelry, but not both. Let one be the star and one the supporting player. – Padma Lakshmi • Do not judge from mere appearances. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • Donald Trump participated in something known as the empty box scam. He bought $65,000 worth of jewelry from Bulgari across the street from Trump Tower, and had the record show that it was mailed to him in an out-of-state address. Now, if you’re not a New York resident, you may not have to pay sales tax if the jewelry is mailed to you in another state. The problem is, they were empty boxes. It was proven. – Hillary Clinton • Even if heaven were real, and measured as Revelation says, so many cubits this wayand that, how gimcrack a place it would be, crammed with its pavements of gold, its gates of pearl and topaz, like a gigantic chunkof costume jewelry. – Margaret Laurence • Every day of my adult life, I have worn at least one piece of jewelry from my maternal grandmother’s collection, all of which were manufactured by famed Danish silversmith Georg Jensen. To the naked eye, I am either a Jensen loyalist or a grandmother loyalist. Really I am just a Pretty Things loyalist.- Sloane Crosley • Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children – honored as the jewelry of God. – Thomas de Quincey • For me accessories create and define a woman’s personal style. The bag she carries, the watch on her wrist, her jewelry, her sunglasses, her shoes all define a look that is her signature. For Spring 2014, my accessory collections are about a clean, graphic boldness creating a new dimension redefining modern classics. – Ralph Lauren • For me the diamond dawns are set In rings of beauty. – John Townsend Trowbridge • For me, hair is an accoutrement. Hair is jewelry. It’s an accessory. – Jill Scott • Funny, I never shopped. Even my jewelry – not a piece of my jewelry I bought for me. – Imelda Marcos • Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free. – A. E. Housman • Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency…and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It’s not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating. – Alan Greenspan • Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

• He hits the ball 130 yards and his jewelry goes 150. – Bob Hope • Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night. – Ann Coulter • I am happy to receive any items of jewelry. – Katie Price • I am not big on jewelry, but I do love hats as an accessory, specifically snap backs and beanies. – Jourdan Dunn • I believe in trying foods from all over the world, going to markets and finding jewelry and furniture and just treating myself well. It’s important for me creatively to travel. – Crystal Renn • I collect jewelry for a story – so something I got on a trip or something I got from my family. You know it always needs to have a meaning for me. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • I didn’t mind giving up carnality, jewelry and red meat in return for comradeship and an afterlife. – Margaret Millar • I don’t buy jewelry just for the aesthetic side. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • I feel naked without jewelry. – Olivia Thirlby • I had a strong identity in mind but then of course I had to trust Didier Dubot’s expertise. They’ve been doing jewelry for so many years. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • I had much rather be adorned by beauty of character than by jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, character comes from within. – Plautus • I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It’s the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate. – Graham Greene • I hate imitation jewelry, dark lipstick and most of all a shrill voice. This has spoiled many a picture of feminine loveliness. – Ray Milland • I have been making wire jewelry – and think I’ll really do something with it, eventually. – Alexander Calder • I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogs in January. – Barbara Kingsolver • I have tons of jewelry. I like to wear a lot of it – Amber Tamblyn • I hope that when girls see my clothes, my shoes, or my outrageous jewelry collection, they feel the thrill of wanting more for themselves too. I love what my friend Andre Leon Talley said: “If you are successful, people want to see it. They want to share in your dream”. – Kimora Lee Simmons • I hope that women everywhere will wear this jewelry and feel the passion and love that is, to me, the real spirit of True Harmony. – Carol Alt • I just love clothes! I’m a girl who loves clothes, accessories, shoes, bags and jewelry. – Kelly Rowland • I like black for clothes, small items, and jewelry. It’s a color that can’t be violated by any other colors. A color that simply keeps being itself. A color that sinks more somberly than any other color, yet asserts itself more than all other colors. It’s a passionate gallant color. Anything is wonderful if it transcends things rather than being halfway. – Yana Toboso • I like colonic irrigation because sometimes you find old jewelry.- Joan Rivers • I like jewelry. Big rings, big necklaces. Shoes, belts, luggage. – Janel Parrish • I like to be dressy casual. I wear jeans and nice sneakers. I wear nice clothes, but not super dressed up. I don’t wear too much jewelry. I keep it simple and maybe wear just a little chain. – Vinny Guadagnino • I love how significant jewelry is throughout the world and throughout time. People have been adorning themselves with jewelry for years and its one of the oldest forms of art and design. This is something that has and will always inspire me. – Pamela Love • I love jewelry – rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, you name it. – Sofia Vergara • I love photography. I like to write. I like coaching. I’ve made jewelry. I’m very creative. – Diandra Asbaty • I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. Its like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry. – Caroline Leavitt • I love rhinestones, faux jewelry. – Adriana Trigiani • I love to be casual and comfortable, but I also love the easy glamour of wearing jewelry all the time. – Elizabeth Taylor • I love to shop. Clothes, electronics, and I love jewelry, especially yellow gold. – Apolo Ohno • I make jewelry occasionally. I’m not a hobbyist. I’m a reader, I’m a lover of books, I like to watch movies, but mostly a lot of nothing. I’m quite content doing very little. – Janeane Garofalo • I might not wear chains or I may just wear a watch or I may not wear any jewelry at all or I may just go all out on an outfit or just rock some basic s*** just a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and ones. But, I still standout more than a lot of people in the room so I can’t really describe it but I know from the outside looking in people can explain better than I can. – Lil Herb • I never had a fondness for gems or the extravagance of Harry Winston or Van Cleef & Arpels. I’ve always liked the more flamboyant, imaginative things. I lusted after costume jewelry. My husband was a very lucky man. – Iris Apfel • I obviously have a great love and appreciation of jewelry, thanks to my mother, much to the dismay of both my father and my boyfriends. – Ivanka Trump • I really just appreciate good jewelry, clarity, gold. I think gold is made for kings and pharaohs – that’s what I am. That’s why I rock gold and, you know, stuff like that. – Big Sean • I really learned a lot from collecting clothes because I got to go back into the history of fashion and fashion photography and jewelry. It changed how I felt about fashion and about what I did forever because I used to look a little bit down on myself for it. – Stephanie Seymour • I really love Paul Smith. And Chrome Hearts. They make the most beautiful, high-end leather and outerwear and jewelry you’ve ever seen. But I’m not a big fan of shopping. I certainly am a fan of clothes and especially people that put time into the construction of them. – Dean Winters • I remember opening my dad’s closet and there were, like, 40 suits, every color of the rainbow, plaid and winter and summer. He had two jewelry boxes full of watches and lighters and cuff links. And just… he was that guy. He was probably unfulfilled in his life in many ways. – Jon Hamm • I remove my wedding rings and put them in the jewelry box. So many others have done this. I am not the only one. I am not the only one. But here, I am the only one. – Elizabeth Berg • I think it’s a tribute to the artistic importance of hip-hop culture and what hip-hop has brought into music and fashion and jewelry that it is being adapted or imitated or is inspiring variations or new types of art or new types of music. – Simon de Pury • I think I’ve revived the costume-jewelry industry. – Madeleine Albright • I think jewelry can change an outfit more than anything else. Transformation, punch, individuality: One or all of the above are why you should wear jewelry. – Iris Apfel • I think swag is very important to rappers. It’s the overall appearance and style of an artist – these blue shorts and this blue hat and this $80,000 chain, this jewelry and all these tattoos, that’s swag. – Soulja Boy • I think that the lack of intuition in fashion today is one of the most dangerous things. My fear is that our business is turning into a bag business, and it’s all about the bag. But it’s not only about the bag. It’s about the women. And it’s not about a bag or a shoe or the jewelry. It’s only about women. . . . Being almost politically correct and doing only what you expect without the ability to make mistakes is very dangerous to fashion. We have to go with our heart. We have to go with our intuition. – Alber Elbaz • I think there is going to be a whole market and we’ll start to see hip-hop jewelry regularly in jewelry auctions around the world. Therefore, anybody who gets on the train early can only do well financially in the long run. – Simon de Pury • I treat clothing or a piece of jewelry like it was a piece of art. – Daphne Guinness • I used to collect vintage clothing – exquisite lace dresses, embroidered shawls and ornate jewelry – but that’s just not me any more. – Britt Ekland • I used to think that if I had success I would have freedom. But I have less freedom now than I’ve ever had. And what gives me satisfaction is not the jewelry and not the cars. What gives me satisfaction is doing things for others, like children. – Criss Angel • I want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. I have asked for a chainsaw for my birthday, but I think I’ll probably be given jewelry instead. – Susan Orlean • I will not go out with a man who wears more jewelry than me, and I’ll never, ever go to bed with a guy who calls me Babe. Other than that, however, I’m real flexible. – Linda Sunshine • I won’t wear rings and jewelry on the stage because I don’t want you looking at my hands. I want you hearing what I’m saying. – Mavis Staples • I’m busy sorting through our new collection of rhinestone jewelry. Should anyone be in the market for sparkly accessories the size of a hubcap, this is the place to get them. Earlier today, a customer picked up one of the enormous chandelier-style offerings and asked, ‘Do those be genuine rhimestones?’ I couldn’t even begin to explain everything that was wrong with her sentence, so I simply replied, ‘Yes. They do be genuine. – Jen Lancaster • I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear. – Daniel Handler • If a girl says not to get her a birthday present that means get me a birthday present and make sure it’s jewelry. – Kami Garcia • If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them. People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some dowdy old lady, and I don’t intend to disappoint. – Brooke Astor • If I’m not feeling good, I load on jewelry. It gives me energy and makes me feel happy. – Kate Hudson • If there was a choice on spending a lot of money on accessories or dress, I always chose accessories. I think jewelry can change an outfit more than anything else. – Iris Apfel • If you don’t know jewelry, know the jeweler. – Warren Buffett • If you don’t know the Jewelry, know the Jeweller – Warren Buffett • If you don’t want people to look at you, Park had thought at the time, don’t wear fishing lures in your hair. Her jewelry box must look like a junk drawer. – Rainbow Rowell • If your dad is anything like mine, then you have no clue what to buy him for Father’s Day. The only Father’s Day tradition in my family is the annual conversation he and I have where I say, ‘Hey, Dad, what do you want for Father’s Day this year?’ and he says, ‘Nothing.’ Then I ask my mom what I should get him and she says, ‘He likes sandalwood soap, dangly jewelry and Chanel No. 5 perfume.’ – Michael Showalter • I’ll work for whoever wants to hire me. Even the jewelry channel. – Dylan Moran • I’m a big rings person…and bracelets…and earrings. I love all of it [Laughs]. One time, I was getting off an airplane and I had been traveling for like a month in Europe, and I came from the airplane right to my mom’s house who I hadn’t seen in awhile, and she looked at me and she goes, “Is it possible to fit any more jewelry on you? Is that actually possible?” And I looked down and, because when I travel I don’t like to pack my jewelry so I end up wearing a ton of it, and I had just had everything on me. And I love buying jewelry when I travel – so there was a lot. – Kate Hudson • Im a hard worker, and everything with me is, if I work hard, I should get paid for it. Everything with me, I try to symbolize something flashy like jewelry or a car. The rubbing hands is a symbol of hustling, so it goes back to the money. – Birdman • I’m crazy about jewelry; swimwear and jewelry. – Candice Swanepoel • I’m going to get up every morning at 6:30 to work out. Then, when I’ve kept with it all week, I give myself something I really want, like a new handbag or a piece of jewelry I’m coveting. – Molly Sims • I’m just disillusioned with the hip-hop sound right now. It’s too materialistic. You know, I’m the kind of guy … I can’t do that. If you track my movement, you’ll never see a picture of me with any girl that wasn’t mine, or my own car. My jewelry, my clothes. What kind of gangsta rapper has a stylist? A stylist?! – Ice T • I’m listening to Gogol Bordello, which is totally random, but I love him. Just finished the new Joan Didion book, Blue Nights, which I loved. I haven’t been to the movies in God knows how long. I haven’t been doing anything but living in a bubble, making jewelry! – Pamela Love • I’m not a huge jewelry fan. – Felicity Jones • I’m not into jewelry. I’ve got some earrings but they’re not too expensive. There are guys who drop a hundred grand for a chain. The public’s got it right – a lot of NBA stars are arrogant and like to spend lots of money and have lots of girlfriends and all that. – Andrew Bogut • I’m not normally a jewelry person. I’m supposed to be a working class champion and all, and I don’t like to rub my success in people’s faces. – Bubba Sparxxx • Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about “Soviet jewelry” has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what’s happening – a proposition I beg leave to doubt. – Molly Ivins • In a way, there’s nothing more intimate than a piece of jewelry. A painting is hung on somebody’s wall. You put a piece of furniture in your home. But jewelry is worn by a person, so there is a fascination with the history of a piece. – Simon de Pury • In both business and personal life, I’ve always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry. – Ivanka Trump • I’ve always loved the fashion of the ’30s and everything that came with the Art Deco era – the jewelry and the glamour. – Emmy Rossum • I’ve been designing my own pieces for a long time. My mother’s a jewelry designer, so we knew at some point we were going to do a line and dive into the fashion world. – Christian Serratos • I’ve been on a plane before with more money in jewelry than my life insurance policy, and it’s one of the scariest feelings in the world… if you lose it, you have to pay for it yourself, and you don’t even get to keep it! – Rumer Willis • I’ve borrowed tons of jewelry. Most people [in Hollywood] do. But it’s your responsibility to keep track of it. – Rumer Willis • I’ve never in my life bought a big piece of jewelry – like, ‘I’m gonna get myself a big piece of jewelry!’ Songwriters’ lives are unstable and up and down. Even though mine has sort of has followed more of a going toward the sky trajectory. – Kara DioGuardi • I’ve read about all the sales today. If you’re an auto dealer, you’re feeling it. If you’re a furniture retailer like we are, you’re feeling it. If you’re a jewelry retailer, you’re feeling it. I know some of these businesses because we’re in them. Yeah, it’s being felt, but it will be felt big time more if we don’t do something about it, what’s going on. – Warren Buffett • I’ve teamed up with BaubleBar to curate a collection of gorgeous jewelry pieces. I worked closely with the BaubleBar team to design a collection that encompasses my style and all of my go to pieces. – Ashley Madekwe • Jewellery takes people’s minds off your wrinkles. – Sarah Phillips • Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank. – Madeleine Albright • Jewelry is fine on some guys, but it’s not for me. – Ross Kemp • Jewelry is incredibly feminine, and reflects the grace and beauty of a women’s style like nothing else. – Ivanka Trump • Jewelry is something that has to do with emotion. That aspect of jewelry really interests me. – Ann Demeulemeester • Jewelry is the most transformative thing you can wear. – Iris Apfel • Jewelry should not upstage you. I pick one hot point on my body that I’m going to highlight. Let one area do the singing – you don’t want to hear three songs at once. – Padma Lakshmi • Jewelry takes people’s minds off your wrinkles. – Sonja Henie • Jewelry, to me, is a pain in the derriere, because you have to be watching it all the time. – Eartha Kitt • Kindness is not something that we put on for certain occasions, like a piece of jewelry; rather, it is an attribute of God’s that He desires to reproduce in us. – Charles Stanley • Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law’s hand upon the jewelry of our minds. – Elihu Burritt • Lust is the sin that gets me excited. Luckily, because I’m married, I also get really good jewelry out of it. – Heather Locklear • Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. – Oscar Wilde • McCain was introduced at the convention last night by his wife — I won’t say ‘trophy wife’ — but she did $300,000 worth of clothes and jewelry on, no matter to the party of the little guy. But Cindy McCain talked about how his character, honor and integrity made him the exact kind of married man she was looking to pick up at a bar. – Bill Maher • Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage – they’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry. – Rita Rudner • Mock jewelry on a woman is tangible vulgarity. – Bayard Taylor • My approach to jewelry has always been to keep it very simple, but if you want to wear something, make sure it is exquisite and lovely and will stand out. – Sophie Cookson • My dad was a jingle writer, and my mom was a jewelry designer and musician. – Reeve Carney • My everyday look has definitely become more low maintenance, but accessories are everything. A structured bag, statement jewelry or a cute scarf can add polish to any outfit! – Adriana Lima • My favorite jewelry, it’s just what I’m feeling at the time. – Erykah Badu • My favourite thing in my wardrobe is my jewelry. – Kate Reardon • My grill is intended to be discreet. It’s there because I enjoy jewelry. – Jill Scott • My husband gave me a necklace. It’s fake. I requested fake. Maybe I’m paranoid, but in this day and age, I don’t want something around my neck that’s worth more than my head. – Rita Rudner • My inspiration is always love and history, and my passion to a fault is craftsmanship and responsibility. Those are the simplest things. It goes beyond jewelry. It’s every part of my life. – Waris Ahluwalia • My parents were glad to see that my new husband looks like a ‘regular guy’-no earring or anything. But really I think a man with an earring is better prepared for marriage. I mean, he’s already experienced pain and bought jewelry. – Rita Rudner • My style is ghetto chic. I love tacky jewelry, mega heels, high-waisted shorts, catsuits. – Jessie J • My years of living the jet-set life were fun, but they weren’t fulfilling. The perks and benefits were lovely, but all of the fabulous furs, fancy jewelry and fun fetes simply weren’t enough to fill my soul. – Sandra Lee • Next to gold and jewelry, health is the most important thing you can have. – Phyllis Diller • Nice jewelry and a boys corpse. Oh you’re so pretty. – Koushun Takami • Not on one strand are all life’s jewels strung. – William Morris • Not the brightest gem in the jewelry shop, but you’ve got to admire his single-minded dedication to drug abuse. – John Green • Nothing in life is fun for the whole family. There are no massage parlors with ice cream and free jewelry. – Jerry Seinfeld • Seriously. Who needed a real lover when you had a handsome, affectionate man who adored you, put a beautiful house over your head, gave you a great job, lavished you with fabulous clothes, shoes, purses and jewelry and would never break your heart? – Kristen Ashley • She is mine own, And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold. – William Shakespeare • Some say the economy means that you have to persuade people to invest in clothes – to buy less things but more expensive things. I disagree – invest in jewelry, or a house, maybe, but not in fashion. – Donatella Versace • Studing jewelry gives you an incredible technical background. If you can work on very, very small things, then, I think, typically you find it easier to go bigger rather than the other way around. I think a lot of architects have struggled with small things. Whereas if you start small, it’s easier to get bigger. – Marc Newson • Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark; Our women’s world is sunk so deep, who can help us? Jewelry sold to pay this trip across the seas, Cut off from my family I leave my native land. Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison, With heated heart arouse all women’s spirits. Alas, this delicate kerchief here Is half stained with blood, and half with tears. – Qiu Jin • Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head. – William Shakespeare • That whole week, we started to divide things into those two categories: anything or something. A piece of jewelry bougth at a department store: anything. A piece of jewelry made by hand: something. A dollar: anything. A sand dollar: something. A gift certificate: anything. An IOU for two hours of starwatching: something. A drunk kiss at a party: anything. A sober kiss alone in a park: something. – David Levithan • The best legacy you could leave is not some building that is names after you or a piece of jewelry but rather a world that has been impacted and touched by your presence, your joy, and your positive actions. – Jon Gordon • The children break all my jewelry, so everything I wear is cheap – from Topshop or Dorothy Perkins. – Sally Phillips • The countless gold of a merry heart, The rubies and pearls of a loving eye, The indolent never can bring to the mart, Nor the secret hoard up in his treasury. – William Blake • The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. – Salvador Dali • The earth is like a beautiful bride who needs no manmade jewels to heighten her loveliness. – Khalil Gibran • The Female Once-Over – a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it’s binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me? – Jim Butcher • The grossest form of this injury of the body to ornament it, is in tattooing. Next, the piercing the ear all around its rim, piercing the nose and the lips to introduce rings or bars of jewelry. – Julia McNair Wright • The jewelry business is a very, very tough business – tougher than the computer business. You truly have to understand how to take care of your customers. • The jewelry stores say, ‘Tell your wife you love her with a diamond,’ while wives tell you they love you with, ‘Ok, but just because it’s Valentine’s Day.’ – George Lopez • The kinds of things I like with crystals are the really beautiful costume jewelry, vintage pieces, and they usually have that diamond shape. – Zoe Kravitz • The leather vests are work vests, supposed to look like factory workers. They’re actually the vests we use in the studio when we make jewelry. – Pamela Love • The most precious jewels are not made of stone, but of flesh. – Robert Ludlum • The only gift my dad ever bought me is still in my jewelry box. It died at 10 minutes to 11 decades ago, but the gold Caravelle watch keeps my dad alive. A watch isn’t about keeping time. It’s about stopping it. – Regina Brett • The ultimate in futility is owning important jewelry. Insurers often insist on the wearing of paste replicas because necks with real rocks around ’em risk wringing. – Malcolm Forbes • The writing process for a short story feels more like field geology, where you keep turning the thing over and over, noting its qualities in detail, hammering at it, putting it near flame, pouring different acids on it, and then finally you figure out what it is, or you just give up and mount it on a ring and have an awkward chunky piece of jewelry that seems weirdly dominating but that you for some reason like. I could be wrong about field geology here. – Rivka Galchen • There were no jewelry hidden. Walt wanted this atmosphere: They were supposed to live here, they’ve been outside somewhere, but they could come back at any minute and catch us. – John Hench • There’s nothing essentially romantic about things like roses or jewelry. Romance starts as some blank concept, and then you just fill it in with objects so you have something to point to when you want to make it real. – Andrea Seigel • To me, jewelry is a natural progression and there is something so meaningful and magical about creating that one of a kind, special piece. – Pamela Love • We must buy jewelry; it identifies us with our tribe, just as body piercing identifies those of a different tribe. – Paulo Coelho • We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone. Why would someone display a rock? Aren’t there enough of those in the world? – Rick Riordan • We used to have MTV and all these ways we can show our videos, and it was these rap shows, and it was everything. And then it became not cool to be conscious; it became cool to just hang out. Escapism rap became the norm. And, when I say “escapism rap”, I mean getting high, get your cars, get your money, get your jewelry, go to the club, have your women, and it just became all about escaping your reality and not making your reality better on a real tip; not just on the have fun tip. – Ice Cube • We were broke in a way that only kids can be broke. Our toes were black with dye from wearing boots that weren’t waterproof. We had infected ear lobes and green rings around our fingers from cheap jewelry. No one ever even had a chocolate bar. – Heather O’Neill • Wear a fabulous smile, great jewelry and know that you are totally and utterly in control. – Donatella Versace • Wearing a breathable fabric is the most important thing for me. I also love to keep it simple and keep the number of garments Im wearing ideally at one (a sundress for example), and then add some great jewelry. – Hilary Rhoda • Well, I always tried to look nice and be feminine even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there’s no reason to add to everyone’s misery by looking miserable yourself. That’s my philosophy. This is why I always wore makeup and jewelry into the jungle-nothing too extravagant, but maybe just a nice gold bracelet and some earrings, a little lipstick, good perfume. Just enough to show that I still had my self-respect. – Elizabeth Gilbert • Well, I never studied design and I went to art school to study art, you know, sculpture and things like that, and ended up making things like sculpture and started making chairs and jewelry together and that’s how I started. – Marc Newson • Well… I had braces and I had to wear headgear! I loved my braces, actually. For me, they were like a piece of jewelry! Instead of the silver or pewter I had gold braces. It was so much fun, I loved them. I got to change the colors and stuff and I had the rubber bands. – Jordin Sparks • What can I say about my jewelry? It speaks for itself. To me, style is to be simple. – Elsa Peretti • What I love about jewelry is you can change it for something else without surgery. – Joan Rivers • When I wear jewelry it needs to really mean something. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • When I went to stay with I’m, he asked me for something of my fathers to make the tracking easier. I gave him the Morgenstern ring. He said he‘d let me know if he senses Valentine anywhere in the city, but so far he hasn’t.” “Maybe he just wanted your ring,” Clary said. “He sure wears lot of jewelry. – Cassandra Clare • When I’m in the house of God, I don’t wear my jewelry, if you’re looking for my jewelry. All you see is my heart of gold. – Mr. T • Whether I’m making a recipe or a piece of jewelry or a white-rose-and-jasmine tea or the perfume, I like to think of myself as a happy little sorceress, and if I could just have a little general store with all that stuff and give people a sense of my taste, that would be lovely. – Padma Lakshmi • Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry. – John Lennon • With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker. – Gwendolyn Brooks • Within each piece, I create an intriguing balance between jewelry and the body, and an intensity which draws others to it. – Sarah Richardson • Wives are good on paper, at least. until they turn into harpies with sharp claws and open check books. Then they’re kind of frightening. And they put on all kinds of makeup and parade around the street with their shopping cart yelling “Sale on aisle seven!” at anyone who will listen. Their wooden clog sandals make a helluva racket on linoleum tile. Their plastic jewelry clatters like the bones of little children. – Rob Campbell • Women like jewelry. They’re like racoons: show them some shiny stuff and they’ll follow you home. – Alonzo Bodden • Working-girls, in pairs and groups and swarms, loitered by these windows, choosing their future boudoirs from some resplendent display which included even a man’s silk pajamas laid domestically across the bed. They stood in front of the jewelry stores and picked out their engagement rings, and their wedding rings and their platinum wrist watches, and then drifted on to inspect the feather fans and opera cloaks; meanwhile digesting the sandwiches and Sundaes they had eaten for lunch. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • Yeah, my role is gonna be a character by the name of Yondu. And there’s gonna be more of Yondu. Yondu is gonna be even more handsome. Perhaps maybe Yondu will add some more bling to his teeth and wear some more jewelry. I don’t know. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we’ll flush out the character even more. – Michael Rooker • Yes, your jewelry choices make a difference. When you invest in ethical, heirloom-quality jewelry, you’re also investing in the future. Your purchase supports a creative community of like-minded humanitarians, out there doing important work. – Zoe Helene • You don’t want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what’s out there now does – you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree. – Padma Lakshmi • You just don’t notice the time of your own metamorphosis. Until you do. Every once in a while time dissolves and you remember what you liked as a kid. You jump on your hotel bed, order dessert first, decide to put every piece of jewelry you own on your body and leave the house. Why? Because you can. Because you’re the boss. Because… Ooooh. Shiny. – Sloane Crosley • You know, my uncle wore a lot of jewelry, a lot of gold chains. – 2 Chainz • You know,” I said, holding my ground. “I gotta tell you. The goatee thing? Yeah, way over. And you know a little jewelry really does go a long way. Just something you might want to consider. I’m actually glad you stopped by, because I have a couple things I’ve been meaning to say to you. Number one, about your wife? Yeah, she’s a skank. And number two, you know that whole thing where you killed Jesse and then buried his remains out back there? Yeah, way un-cool. – Meg Cabot • You never have to buy an issue of Cosmo again to be the ‘Best Lover He’s Ever Had.’ Just remember this phrase: ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t know if that will fit.’ Then start mentally picking out jewelry.- Lisa Ann Walter • You should not say anything that you cannot put your totality behind. The total value of you is that whatever you say, you stick with it. When you don’t stick with what you say, you have no value, and your decoration and your jewelry and your sex and your person have no value. Real communication is the faculty of a human that whatever you say, you stick with it. – Harbhajan Singh Yogi

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Jewelry Quotes

Official Website: Jewelry Quotes

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• A girl could never have too much jewelry or too much weaponry. – Laurell K. Hamilton • A little man is running a jewelry store. A man runs in saying, Okay, take my watch, put on a new band, install a new battery, clean the case, install a new crystal, and tune it up. I will be back in a half hour for it. Thanks! and runs out the door. The little jeweler says, C-C-C-Come in? – Henny Youngman • A lot of the jewelry that I wear are fan gifts because they’re so awesome and they give me great presents. – Taylor Swift • A man can do a television interview and roll out of bed 15 minutes before; it’s just not the same for a woman. A woman has to pay attention to her hair, makeup, clothing, and jewelry choices. – Michele Bachmann • A man’s got two shots for jewelry: a wedding ring and a watch. The watch is a lot easier to get on and off than a wedding ring. – John Mayer • A piece of jewelry is in a sense an object that is not complete in itself. Jewelry is a ‘what is it?’ until you relate it to the body. The body is a component in design just as air and space are. Like line, form, and color, the body is a material to work with. It is one of the basic inspirations in creating form. – Art Smith • A woman needs ropes and ropes of pearls. – Grace Kelly • Accessories are crucial. A great bag and a piece of statement jewelry are the fastest way to elevate an otherwise understated look. – Ivanka Trump • Accessories are important and becoming more and more important every day. They can completely change the look of an outfit, and women like the idea of having a wardrobe that’s versatile. For instance, a strong piece of jewelry can make a simple outfit look elegant. – Giorgio Armani • Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with. – Thomas Carlyle • All my jewelry has stories. – Eva Green • Always make sure your jewelry isn’t taking over you or your ensemble and keep everything in proportion to your frame – Nina Garcia • Another thing rappers, I admire your rebellious spirit, but materialism is a form of mental slavery. Slow down on the jewelry, pick up a book. – Dov Davidoff • Any girl who was a lady would not even think of having such a good time that she did not remember to hang on to her jewelry. – Anita Loos • As I get older, I use less jewelry – necklace or earrings each morning, not both; my clothes are getting more basic – fewer colours and simpler cuts; and my make-up is stripped back to basics. – Tracy Chevalier • At a flea market I always head for the junk jewelry table first. – Ethel Merman

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'product', keywords: 'Jewelry', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_jewelry').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_jewelry img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Be careful with the man jewelry. A little goes a long way. – Ashton Kutcher • Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away. – Janet Malcolm • But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Which cost five hundred dollars, and not a cent less, And jewelry worth tem times more, I should guess, That he had not a thing in the wide world to wear! – William Allen Butler • But the Milanese have made bad choices, bad fashion, and bad jewelry. – Christian Lacroix

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• Cool! Now I can steal some rich old coot’s Ferrari and go fishing for marlin with the same piece of jewelry. – Jennifer Rardin • Costume jewelry is not made to give women an aura of wealth, but to make them beautifu – Coco Chanel • Customized jewelry is one of my targets with Bold Machines. – Bre Pettis • Death, jewelry, or magic; it sounded like Valentine’s Day. – Laurell K. Hamilton • Decide which you want to play up: your clothing or your jewelry, but not both. Let one be the star and one the supporting player. – Padma Lakshmi • Do not judge from mere appearances. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy. – Edwin Hubbel Chapin • Donald Trump participated in something known as the empty box scam. He bought $65,000 worth of jewelry from Bulgari across the street from Trump Tower, and had the record show that it was mailed to him in an out-of-state address. Now, if you’re not a New York resident, you may not have to pay sales tax if the jewelry is mailed to you in another state. The problem is, they were empty boxes. It was proven. – Hillary Clinton • Even if heaven were real, and measured as Revelation says, so many cubits this wayand that, how gimcrack a place it would be, crammed with its pavements of gold, its gates of pearl and topaz, like a gigantic chunkof costume jewelry. – Margaret Laurence • Every day of my adult life, I have worn at least one piece of jewelry from my maternal grandmother’s collection, all of which were manufactured by famed Danish silversmith Georg Jensen. To the naked eye, I am either a Jensen loyalist or a grandmother loyalist. Really I am just a Pretty Things loyalist.- Sloane Crosley • Flowers that are so pathetic in their beauty, frail as the clouds, and in their coloring as gorgeous as the heavens, had through thousands of years been the heritage of children – honored as the jewelry of God. – Thomas de Quincey • For me accessories create and define a woman’s personal style. The bag she carries, the watch on her wrist, her jewelry, her sunglasses, her shoes all define a look that is her signature. For Spring 2014, my accessory collections are about a clean, graphic boldness creating a new dimension redefining modern classics. – Ralph Lauren • For me the diamond dawns are set In rings of beauty. – John Townsend Trowbridge • For me, hair is an accoutrement. Hair is jewelry. It’s an accessory. – Jill Scott • Funny, I never shopped. Even my jewelry – not a piece of my jewelry I bought for me. – Imelda Marcos • Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free. – A. E. Housman • Gold, unlike all other commodities, is a currency…and the major thrust in the demand for gold is not for jewelry. It’s not for anything other than an escape from what is perceived to be a fiat money system, paper money, that seems to be deteriorating. – Alan Greenspan • Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

• He hits the ball 130 yards and his jewelry goes 150. – Bob Hope • Hollywood liberals could not be reached for comment on the cost of the inauguration because they were being fitted for gowns and jewelry worth millions of dollars in anticipation of Oscar night. – Ann Coulter • I am happy to receive any items of jewelry. – Katie Price • I am not big on jewelry, but I do love hats as an accessory, specifically snap backs and beanies. – Jourdan Dunn • I believe in trying foods from all over the world, going to markets and finding jewelry and furniture and just treating myself well. It’s important for me creatively to travel. – Crystal Renn • I collect jewelry for a story – so something I got on a trip or something I got from my family. You know it always needs to have a meaning for me. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • I didn’t mind giving up carnality, jewelry and red meat in return for comradeship and an afterlife. – Margaret Millar • I don’t buy jewelry just for the aesthetic side. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • I feel naked without jewelry. – Olivia Thirlby • I had a strong identity in mind but then of course I had to trust Didier Dubot’s expertise. They’ve been doing jewelry for so many years. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • I had much rather be adorned by beauty of character than by jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, character comes from within. – Plautus • I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It’s the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate. – Graham Greene • I hate imitation jewelry, dark lipstick and most of all a shrill voice. This has spoiled many a picture of feminine loveliness. – Ray Milland • I have been making wire jewelry – and think I’ll really do something with it, eventually. – Alexander Calder • I have seen women looking at jewelry ads with a misty eye and one hand resting on the heart, and I only know what they’re feeling because that’s how I read the seed catalogs in January. – Barbara Kingsolver • I have tons of jewelry. I like to wear a lot of it – Amber Tamblyn • I hope that when girls see my clothes, my shoes, or my outrageous jewelry collection, they feel the thrill of wanting more for themselves too. I love what my friend Andre Leon Talley said: “If you are successful, people want to see it. They want to share in your dream”. – Kimora Lee Simmons • I hope that women everywhere will wear this jewelry and feel the passion and love that is, to me, the real spirit of True Harmony. – Carol Alt • I just love clothes! I’m a girl who loves clothes, accessories, shoes, bags and jewelry. – Kelly Rowland • I like black for clothes, small items, and jewelry. It’s a color that can’t be violated by any other colors. A color that simply keeps being itself. A color that sinks more somberly than any other color, yet asserts itself more than all other colors. It’s a passionate gallant color. Anything is wonderful if it transcends things rather than being halfway. – Yana Toboso • I like colonic irrigation because sometimes you find old jewelry.- Joan Rivers • I like jewelry. Big rings, big necklaces. Shoes, belts, luggage. – Janel Parrish • I like to be dressy casual. I wear jeans and nice sneakers. I wear nice clothes, but not super dressed up. I don’t wear too much jewelry. I keep it simple and maybe wear just a little chain. – Vinny Guadagnino • I love how significant jewelry is throughout the world and throughout time. People have been adorning themselves with jewelry for years and its one of the oldest forms of art and design. This is something that has and will always inspire me. – Pamela Love • I love jewelry – rings, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, you name it. – Sofia Vergara • I love photography. I like to write. I like coaching. I’ve made jewelry. I’m very creative. – Diandra Asbaty • I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. Its like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry. – Caroline Leavitt • I love rhinestones, faux jewelry. – Adriana Trigiani • I love to be casual and comfortable, but I also love the easy glamour of wearing jewelry all the time. – Elizabeth Taylor • I love to shop. Clothes, electronics, and I love jewelry, especially yellow gold. – Apolo Ohno • I make jewelry occasionally. I’m not a hobbyist. I’m a reader, I’m a lover of books, I like to watch movies, but mostly a lot of nothing. I’m quite content doing very little. – Janeane Garofalo • I might not wear chains or I may just wear a watch or I may not wear any jewelry at all or I may just go all out on an outfit or just rock some basic s*** just a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and ones. But, I still standout more than a lot of people in the room so I can’t really describe it but I know from the outside looking in people can explain better than I can. – Lil Herb • I never had a fondness for gems or the extravagance of Harry Winston or Van Cleef & Arpels. I’ve always liked the more flamboyant, imaginative things. I lusted after costume jewelry. My husband was a very lucky man. – Iris Apfel • I obviously have a great love and appreciation of jewelry, thanks to my mother, much to the dismay of both my father and my boyfriends. – Ivanka Trump • I really just appreciate good jewelry, clarity, gold. I think gold is made for kings and pharaohs – that’s what I am. That’s why I rock gold and, you know, stuff like that. – Big Sean • I really learned a lot from collecting clothes because I got to go back into the history of fashion and fashion photography and jewelry. It changed how I felt about fashion and about what I did forever because I used to look a little bit down on myself for it. – Stephanie Seymour • I really love Paul Smith. And Chrome Hearts. They make the most beautiful, high-end leather and outerwear and jewelry you’ve ever seen. But I’m not a big fan of shopping. I certainly am a fan of clothes and especially people that put time into the construction of them. – Dean Winters • I remember opening my dad’s closet and there were, like, 40 suits, every color of the rainbow, plaid and winter and summer. He had two jewelry boxes full of watches and lighters and cuff links. And just… he was that guy. He was probably unfulfilled in his life in many ways. – Jon Hamm • I remove my wedding rings and put them in the jewelry box. So many others have done this. I am not the only one. I am not the only one. But here, I am the only one. – Elizabeth Berg • I think it’s a tribute to the artistic importance of hip-hop culture and what hip-hop has brought into music and fashion and jewelry that it is being adapted or imitated or is inspiring variations or new types of art or new types of music. – Simon de Pury • I think I’ve revived the costume-jewelry industry. – Madeleine Albright • I think jewelry can change an outfit more than anything else. Transformation, punch, individuality: One or all of the above are why you should wear jewelry. – Iris Apfel • I think swag is very important to rappers. It’s the overall appearance and style of an artist – these blue shorts and this blue hat and this $80,000 chain, this jewelry and all these tattoos, that’s swag. – Soulja Boy • I think that the lack of intuition in fashion today is one of the most dangerous things. My fear is that our business is turning into a bag business, and it’s all about the bag. But it’s not only about the bag. It’s about the women. And it’s not about a bag or a shoe or the jewelry. It’s only about women. . . . Being almost politically correct and doing only what you expect without the ability to make mistakes is very dangerous to fashion. We have to go with our heart. We have to go with our intuition. – Alber Elbaz • I think there is going to be a whole market and we’ll start to see hip-hop jewelry regularly in jewelry auctions around the world. Therefore, anybody who gets on the train early can only do well financially in the long run. – Simon de Pury • I treat clothing or a piece of jewelry like it was a piece of art. – Daphne Guinness • I used to collect vintage clothing – exquisite lace dresses, embroidered shawls and ornate jewelry – but that’s just not me any more. – Britt Ekland • I used to think that if I had success I would have freedom. But I have less freedom now than I’ve ever had. And what gives me satisfaction is not the jewelry and not the cars. What gives me satisfaction is doing things for others, like children. – Criss Angel • I want a chainsaw very badly, because I think cutting down a tree would be unbelievably satisfying. I have asked for a chainsaw for my birthday, but I think I’ll probably be given jewelry instead. – Susan Orlean • I will not go out with a man who wears more jewelry than me, and I’ll never, ever go to bed with a guy who calls me Babe. Other than that, however, I’m real flexible. – Linda Sunshine • I won’t wear rings and jewelry on the stage because I don’t want you looking at my hands. I want you hearing what I’m saying. – Mavis Staples • I’m busy sorting through our new collection of rhinestone jewelry. Should anyone be in the market for sparkly accessories the size of a hubcap, this is the place to get them. Earlier today, a customer picked up one of the enormous chandelier-style offerings and asked, ‘Do those be genuine rhimestones?’ I couldn’t even begin to explain everything that was wrong with her sentence, so I simply replied, ‘Yes. They do be genuine. – Jen Lancaster • I’m reminded of a book my father used to read me,” she said. “A bunch of elves and things get into a huge war over a piece of jewelry that everybody wants but nobody can wear. – Daniel Handler • If a girl says not to get her a birthday present that means get me a birthday present and make sure it’s jewelry. – Kami Garcia • If I go up to Harlem or down to Sixth Street, and I’m not dressed up or I’m not wearing my jewelry, then the people feel I’m talking down to them. People expect to see Mrs. Astor, not some dowdy old lady, and I don’t intend to disappoint. – Brooke Astor • If I’m not feeling good, I load on jewelry. It gives me energy and makes me feel happy. – Kate Hudson • If there was a choice on spending a lot of money on accessories or dress, I always chose accessories. I think jewelry can change an outfit more than anything else. – Iris Apfel • If you don’t know jewelry, know the jeweler. – Warren Buffett • If you don’t know the Jewelry, know the Jeweller – Warren Buffett • If you don’t want people to look at you, Park had thought at the time, don’t wear fishing lures in your hair. Her jewelry box must look like a junk drawer. – Rainbow Rowell • If your dad is anything like mine, then you have no clue what to buy him for Father’s Day. The only Father’s Day tradition in my family is the annual conversation he and I have where I say, ‘Hey, Dad, what do you want for Father’s Day this year?’ and he says, ‘Nothing.’ Then I ask my mom what I should get him and she says, ‘He likes sandalwood soap, dangly jewelry and Chanel No. 5 perfume.’ – Michael Showalter • I’ll work for whoever wants to hire me. Even the jewelry channel. – Dylan Moran • I’m a big rings person…and bracelets…and earrings. I love all of it [Laughs]. One time, I was getting off an airplane and I had been traveling for like a month in Europe, and I came from the airplane right to my mom’s house who I hadn’t seen in awhile, and she looked at me and she goes, “Is it possible to fit any more jewelry on you? Is that actually possible?” And I looked down and, because when I travel I don’t like to pack my jewelry so I end up wearing a ton of it, and I had just had everything on me. And I love buying jewelry when I travel – so there was a lot. – Kate Hudson • Im a hard worker, and everything with me is, if I work hard, I should get paid for it. Everything with me, I try to symbolize something flashy like jewelry or a car. The rubbing hands is a symbol of hustling, so it goes back to the money. – Birdman • I’m crazy about jewelry; swimwear and jewelry. – Candice Swanepoel • I’m going to get up every morning at 6:30 to work out. Then, when I’ve kept with it all week, I give myself something I really want, like a new handbag or a piece of jewelry I’m coveting. – Molly Sims • I’m just disillusioned with the hip-hop sound right now. It’s too materialistic. You know, I’m the kind of guy … I can’t do that. If you track my movement, you’ll never see a picture of me with any girl that wasn’t mine, or my own car. My jewelry, my clothes. What kind of gangsta rapper has a stylist? A stylist?! – Ice T • I’m listening to Gogol Bordello, which is totally random, but I love him. Just finished the new Joan Didion book, Blue Nights, which I loved. I haven’t been to the movies in God knows how long. I haven’t been doing anything but living in a bubble, making jewelry! – Pamela Love • I’m not a huge jewelry fan. – Felicity Jones • I’m not into jewelry. I’ve got some earrings but they’re not too expensive. There are guys who drop a hundred grand for a chain. The public’s got it right – a lot of NBA stars are arrogant and like to spend lots of money and have lots of girlfriends and all that. – Andrew Bogut • I’m not normally a jewelry person. I’m supposed to be a working class champion and all, and I don’t like to rub my success in people’s faces. – Bubba Sparxxx • Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about “Soviet jewelry” has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what’s happening – a proposition I beg leave to doubt. – Molly Ivins • In a way, there’s nothing more intimate than a piece of jewelry. A painting is hung on somebody’s wall. You put a piece of furniture in your home. But jewelry is worn by a person, so there is a fascination with the history of a piece. – Simon de Pury • In both business and personal life, I’ve always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages, cultures, scenery, food, and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry. – Ivanka Trump • I’ve always loved the fashion of the ’30s and everything that came with the Art Deco era – the jewelry and the glamour. – Emmy Rossum • I’ve been designing my own pieces for a long time. My mother’s a jewelry designer, so we knew at some point we were going to do a line and dive into the fashion world. – Christian Serratos • I’ve been on a plane before with more money in jewelry than my life insurance policy, and it’s one of the scariest feelings in the world… if you lose it, you have to pay for it yourself, and you don’t even get to keep it! – Rumer Willis • I’ve borrowed tons of jewelry. Most people [in Hollywood] do. But it’s your responsibility to keep track of it. – Rumer Willis • I’ve never in my life bought a big piece of jewelry – like, ‘I’m gonna get myself a big piece of jewelry!’ Songwriters’ lives are unstable and up and down. Even though mine has sort of has followed more of a going toward the sky trajectory. – Kara DioGuardi • I’ve read about all the sales today. If you’re an auto dealer, you’re feeling it. If you’re a furniture retailer like we are, you’re feeling it. If you’re a jewelry retailer, you’re feeling it. I know some of these businesses because we’re in them. Yeah, it’s being felt, but it will be felt big time more if we don’t do something about it, what’s going on. – Warren Buffett • I’ve teamed up with BaubleBar to curate a collection of gorgeous jewelry pieces. I worked closely with the BaubleBar team to design a collection that encompasses my style and all of my go to pieces. – Ashley Madekwe • Jewellery takes people’s minds off your wrinkles. – Sarah Phillips • Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank. – Madeleine Albright • Jewelry is fine on some guys, but it’s not for me. – Ross Kemp • Jewelry is incredibly feminine, and reflects the grace and beauty of a women’s style like nothing else. – Ivanka Trump • Jewelry is something that has to do with emotion. That aspect of jewelry really interests me. – Ann Demeulemeester • Jewelry is the most transformative thing you can wear. – Iris Apfel • Jewelry should not upstage you. I pick one hot point on my body that I’m going to highlight. Let one area do the singing – you don’t want to hear three songs at once. – Padma Lakshmi • Jewelry takes people’s minds off your wrinkles. – Sonja Henie • Jewelry, to me, is a pain in the derriere, because you have to be watching it all the time. – Eartha Kitt • Kindness is not something that we put on for certain occasions, like a piece of jewelry; rather, it is an attribute of God’s that He desires to reproduce in us. – Charles Stanley • Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law’s hand upon the jewelry of our minds. – Elihu Burritt • Lust is the sin that gets me excited. Luckily, because I’m married, I also get really good jewelry out of it. – Heather Locklear • Marco Polo had seen the inhabitants of Zipangu place rose-colored pearls in the mouths of the dead. A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. – Oscar Wilde • McCain was introduced at the convention last night by his wife — I won’t say ‘trophy wife’ — but she did $300,000 worth of clothes and jewelry on, no matter to the party of the little guy. But Cindy McCain talked about how his character, honor and integrity made him the exact kind of married man she was looking to pick up at a bar. – Bill Maher • Men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage – they’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry. – Rita Rudner • Mock jewelry on a woman is tangible vulgarity. – Bayard Taylor • My approach to jewelry has always been to keep it very simple, but if you want to wear something, make sure it is exquisite and lovely and will stand out. – Sophie Cookson • My dad was a jingle writer, and my mom was a jewelry designer and musician. – Reeve Carney • My everyday look has definitely become more low maintenance, but accessories are everything. A structured bag, statement jewelry or a cute scarf can add polish to any outfit! – Adriana Lima • My favorite jewelry, it’s just what I’m feeling at the time. – Erykah Badu • My favourite thing in my wardrobe is my jewelry. – Kate Reardon • My grill is intended to be discreet. It’s there because I enjoy jewelry. – Jill Scott • My husband gave me a necklace. It’s fake. I requested fake. Maybe I’m paranoid, but in this day and age, I don’t want something around my neck that’s worth more than my head. – Rita Rudner • My inspiration is always love and history, and my passion to a fault is craftsmanship and responsibility. Those are the simplest things. It goes beyond jewelry. It’s every part of my life. – Waris Ahluwalia • My parents were glad to see that my new husband looks like a ‘regular guy’-no earring or anything. But really I think a man with an earring is better prepared for marriage. I mean, he’s already experienced pain and bought jewelry. – Rita Rudner • My style is ghetto chic. I love tacky jewelry, mega heels, high-waisted shorts, catsuits. – Jessie J • My years of living the jet-set life were fun, but they weren’t fulfilling. The perks and benefits were lovely, but all of the fabulous furs, fancy jewelry and fun fetes simply weren’t enough to fill my soul. – Sandra Lee • Next to gold and jewelry, health is the most important thing you can have. – Phyllis Diller • Nice jewelry and a boys corpse. Oh you’re so pretty. – Koushun Takami • Not on one strand are all life’s jewels strung. – William Morris • Not the brightest gem in the jewelry shop, but you’ve got to admire his single-minded dedication to drug abuse. – John Green • Nothing in life is fun for the whole family. There are no massage parlors with ice cream and free jewelry. – Jerry Seinfeld • Seriously. Who needed a real lover when you had a handsome, affectionate man who adored you, put a beautiful house over your head, gave you a great job, lavished you with fabulous clothes, shoes, purses and jewelry and would never break your heart? – Kristen Ashley • She is mine own, And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold. – William Shakespeare • Some say the economy means that you have to persuade people to invest in clothes – to buy less things but more expensive things. I disagree – invest in jewelry, or a house, maybe, but not in fashion. – Donatella Versace • Studing jewelry gives you an incredible technical background. If you can work on very, very small things, then, I think, typically you find it easier to go bigger rather than the other way around. I think a lot of architects have struggled with small things. Whereas if you start small, it’s easier to get bigger. – Marc Newson • Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark; Our women’s world is sunk so deep, who can help us? Jewelry sold to pay this trip across the seas, Cut off from my family I leave my native land. Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison, With heated heart arouse all women’s spirits. Alas, this delicate kerchief here Is half stained with blood, and half with tears. – Qiu Jin • Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head. – William Shakespeare • That whole week, we started to divide things into those two categories: anything or something. A piece of jewelry bougth at a department store: anything. A piece of jewelry made by hand: something. A dollar: anything. A sand dollar: something. A gift certificate: anything. An IOU for two hours of starwatching: something. A drunk kiss at a party: anything. A sober kiss alone in a park: something. – David Levithan • The best legacy you could leave is not some building that is names after you or a piece of jewelry but rather a world that has been impacted and touched by your presence, your joy, and your positive actions. – Jon Gordon • The children break all my jewelry, so everything I wear is cheap – from Topshop or Dorothy Perkins. – Sally Phillips • The countless gold of a merry heart, The rubies and pearls of a loving eye, The indolent never can bring to the mart, Nor the secret hoard up in his treasury. – William Blake • The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. – Salvador Dali • The earth is like a beautiful bride who needs no manmade jewels to heighten her loveliness. – Khalil Gibran • The Female Once-Over – a process by which one woman creates a detailed profile of another woman based upon about a million subtle details of clothing, jewelry, makeup, and body type, and then decides how much of a social threat she might be. Men have a parallel process, but it’s binary: Does he have beer? If yes, will he share with me? – Jim Butcher • The grossest form of this injury of the body to ornament it, is in tattooing. Next, the piercing the ear all around its rim, piercing the nose and the lips to introduce rings or bars of jewelry. – Julia McNair Wright • The jewelry business is a very, very tough business – tougher than the computer business. You truly have to understand how to take care of your customers. • The jewelry stores say, ‘Tell your wife you love her with a diamond,’ while wives tell you they love you with, ‘Ok, but just because it’s Valentine’s Day.’ – George Lopez • The kinds of things I like with crystals are the really beautiful costume jewelry, vintage pieces, and they usually have that diamond shape. – Zoe Kravitz • The leather vests are work vests, supposed to look like factory workers. They’re actually the vests we use in the studio when we make jewelry. – Pamela Love • The most precious jewels are not made of stone, but of flesh. – Robert Ludlum • The only gift my dad ever bought me is still in my jewelry box. It died at 10 minutes to 11 decades ago, but the gold Caravelle watch keeps my dad alive. A watch isn’t about keeping time. It’s about stopping it. – Regina Brett • The ultimate in futility is owning important jewelry. Insurers often insist on the wearing of paste replicas because necks with real rocks around ’em risk wringing. – Malcolm Forbes • The writing process for a short story feels more like field geology, where you keep turning the thing over and over, noting its qualities in detail, hammering at it, putting it near flame, pouring different acids on it, and then finally you figure out what it is, or you just give up and mount it on a ring and have an awkward chunky piece of jewelry that seems weirdly dominating but that you for some reason like. I could be wrong about field geology here. – Rivka Galchen • There were no jewelry hidden. Walt wanted this atmosphere: They were supposed to live here, they’ve been outside somewhere, but they could come back at any minute and catch us. – John Hench • There’s nothing essentially romantic about things like roses or jewelry. Romance starts as some blank concept, and then you just fill it in with objects so you have something to point to when you want to make it real. – Andrea Seigel • To me, jewelry is a natural progression and there is something so meaningful and magical about creating that one of a kind, special piece. – Pamela Love • We must buy jewelry; it identifies us with our tribe, just as body piercing identifies those of a different tribe. – Paulo Coelho • We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone. Why would someone display a rock? Aren’t there enough of those in the world? – Rick Riordan • We used to have MTV and all these ways we can show our videos, and it was these rap shows, and it was everything. And then it became not cool to be conscious; it became cool to just hang out. Escapism rap became the norm. And, when I say “escapism rap”, I mean getting high, get your cars, get your money, get your jewelry, go to the club, have your women, and it just became all about escaping your reality and not making your reality better on a real tip; not just on the have fun tip. – Ice Cube • We were broke in a way that only kids can be broke. Our toes were black with dye from wearing boots that weren’t waterproof. We had infected ear lobes and green rings around our fingers from cheap jewelry. No one ever even had a chocolate bar. – Heather O’Neill • Wear a fabulous smile, great jewelry and know that you are totally and utterly in control. – Donatella Versace • Wearing a breathable fabric is the most important thing for me. I also love to keep it simple and keep the number of garments Im wearing ideally at one (a sundress for example), and then add some great jewelry. – Hilary Rhoda • Well, I always tried to look nice and be feminine even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there’s no reason to add to everyone’s misery by looking miserable yourself. That’s my philosophy. This is why I always wore makeup and jewelry into the jungle-nothing too extravagant, but maybe just a nice gold bracelet and some earrings, a little lipstick, good perfume. Just enough to show that I still had my self-respect. – Elizabeth Gilbert • Well, I never studied design and I went to art school to study art, you know, sculpture and things like that, and ended up making things like sculpture and started making chairs and jewelry together and that’s how I started. – Marc Newson • Well… I had braces and I had to wear headgear! I loved my braces, actually. For me, they were like a piece of jewelry! Instead of the silver or pewter I had gold braces. It was so much fun, I loved them. I got to change the colors and stuff and I had the rubber bands. – Jordin Sparks • What can I say about my jewelry? It speaks for itself. To me, style is to be simple. – Elsa Peretti • What I love about jewelry is you can change it for something else without surgery. – Joan Rivers • When I wear jewelry it needs to really mean something. – Julia Restoin Roitfeld • When I went to stay with I’m, he asked me for something of my fathers to make the tracking easier. I gave him the Morgenstern ring. He said he‘d let me know if he senses Valentine anywhere in the city, but so far he hasn’t.” “Maybe he just wanted your ring,” Clary said. “He sure wears lot of jewelry. – Cassandra Clare • When I’m in the house of God, I don’t wear my jewelry, if you’re looking for my jewelry. All you see is my heart of gold. – Mr. T • Whether I’m making a recipe or a piece of jewelry or a white-rose-and-jasmine tea or the perfume, I like to think of myself as a happy little sorceress, and if I could just have a little general store with all that stuff and give people a sense of my taste, that would be lovely. – Padma Lakshmi • Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry. – John Lennon • With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker. – Gwendolyn Brooks • Within each piece, I create an intriguing balance between jewelry and the body, and an intensity which draws others to it. – Sarah Richardson • Wives are good on paper, at least. until they turn into harpies with sharp claws and open check books. Then they’re kind of frightening. And they put on all kinds of makeup and parade around the street with their shopping cart yelling “Sale on aisle seven!” at anyone who will listen. Their wooden clog sandals make a helluva racket on linoleum tile. Their plastic jewelry clatters like the bones of little children. – Rob Campbell • Women like jewelry. They’re like racoons: show them some shiny stuff and they’ll follow you home. – Alonzo Bodden • Working-girls, in pairs and groups and swarms, loitered by these windows, choosing their future boudoirs from some resplendent display which included even a man’s silk pajamas laid domestically across the bed. They stood in front of the jewelry stores and picked out their engagement rings, and their wedding rings and their platinum wrist watches, and then drifted on to inspect the feather fans and opera cloaks; meanwhile digesting the sandwiches and Sundaes they had eaten for lunch. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • Yeah, my role is gonna be a character by the name of Yondu. And there’s gonna be more of Yondu. Yondu is gonna be even more handsome. Perhaps maybe Yondu will add some more bling to his teeth and wear some more jewelry. I don’t know. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve got my fingers crossed that we’ll flush out the character even more. – Michael Rooker • Yes, your jewelry choices make a difference. When you invest in ethical, heirloom-quality jewelry, you’re also investing in the future. Your purchase supports a creative community of like-minded humanitarians, out there doing important work. – Zoe Helene • You don’t want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what’s out there now does – you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree. – Padma Lakshmi • You just don’t notice the time of your own metamorphosis. Until you do. Every once in a while time dissolves and you remember what you liked as a kid. You jump on your hotel bed, order dessert first, decide to put every piece of jewelry you own on your body and leave the house. Why? Because you can. Because you’re the boss. Because… Ooooh. Shiny. – Sloane Crosley • You know, my uncle wore a lot of jewelry, a lot of gold chains. – 2 Chainz • You know,” I said, holding my ground. “I gotta tell you. The goatee thing? Yeah, way over. And you know a little jewelry really does go a long way. Just something you might want to consider. I’m actually glad you stopped by, because I have a couple things I’ve been meaning to say to you. Number one, about your wife? Yeah, she’s a skank. And number two, you know that whole thing where you killed Jesse and then buried his remains out back there? Yeah, way un-cool. – Meg Cabot • You never have to buy an issue of Cosmo again to be the ‘Best Lover He’s Ever Had.’ Just remember this phrase: ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t know if that will fit.’ Then start mentally picking out jewelry.- Lisa Ann Walter • You should not say anything that you cannot put your totality behind. The total value of you is that whatever you say, you stick with it. When you don’t stick with what you say, you have no value, and your decoration and your jewelry and your sex and your person have no value. Real communication is the faculty of a human that whatever you say, you stick with it. – Harbhajan Singh Yogi

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[loislaneinvestigatesauthors]

Chicken Doodle Soup (Don Owens) presents Stick to the Funny Stuff!

I notice your lead female character, 'Oprah Fat-Free' deals with severe depression. Did you do research into how depression works, how the state of mind of a person changes when they are experiencing that? Have you known anyone who was depressed to that point? 

QUESTION #1:  Good question, even though "STICK To The Funny Stuff" doesn't go in-depth on the subject of depression, but rather, utilizes stick-figure comedienne Oprah Fat-Free as a representative for every human being on the planet, who faces some obstacle serving as hindrance to positive existential progression along this miraculous road called life.  But yes, statistics indicate there is a substantial number of depression cases on record. The World Health Organization has reported 300 million people around the world suffer this affliction. Reportedly, 16.2 million U.S. adults have experienced a major depressive episode, with approximately 10 million being severely impaired by their experience.  Anxiety disorders are attributed to approximately 50% of all people diagnosed with depression.  

Depression can befall an individual at any stage in his or her life.  It can range from moderate to crippling, as there are many forms of depression, as well as multiple catalysts thought to precipitate its onset, such as complex-chemical reactions in the brain and gene vulnerability identification.  I myself have been depressed and sought counseling while in the military.  My girlfriend, now deceased due to heart failure, suffered from a bipolar disorder and depression was a significant marker highlighting her condition.  It's a mental-health issue that has motivated individuals even to suicide.  But here's a statistic that I  believe offers hope:  I read a 2017 study indicating that Christianity at this point is still the world's number one faith. So then, for followers of the faith, God offers hope in the face of this state of impairment.

Of course there are skeptics who ascribe God's existence to fervent imagination, but what about those CERTIFIED physicians, such as Dr. Sean Thomas George, who go on public record as saying hopeless cases were reversed by divine intervention?  Who could be more credible sources than esteemed, highly skilled health-technicians, to confirm a miraculous event?  By the way, I myself was in three hospitals in two different states, dying, with no explanation whatsoever as to why my body was shutting itself down.  Doctors were baffled by my condition.  So perplexed was one of my doctors, he mused about publishing my case in a medical journal.  I wouldn't be here today - except for the prayers of my family and the church.  I'm a living witness to God's healing hand.  

Be they physical or mental conditions, God's Word says He is ready to step in to assist us with our afflictions.  I was reading a case of a depressed woman who'd been deemed to be in need of receiving shock treatments for her depression!  But as a believer, she called on Christ, and He availed Himself to her.  No one is saying these condition reversals take place in an instant, necessarily.  Although, God is more than capable of on-the-spot healing, as scripture illustrates.  But often in the Bible, God took His sweet time (in some instances, decades or CENTURIES) about turning situations around, simply because His timetable supersedes ours.  But He tells us in His Word that with His assist, we are more than conquerors through Him that love us (Romans 8:37) and that He is The Lord Who heals us (Exodus 15:26, Psalm 30:2).

Do you think that humor really helps people get through life stuff? Is it a matter of 'laugh or else you'll be crying?' 

QUESTION #2:  Definitely! I read an article posted online at PsychCentral entitled "9 WAYS THAT HUMOR HEALS" by Therese J. Borchard.  She states that "Of all the tools I use to combat depression and negativity, humor is by far the most fun."  I agree with her assessment that humor combats fear, comforts, and relaxes you.  She also notes that it reduces pain, boosts the immune system, reduces stress and cultivates optimism.  And she even mentions one of my favorite scriptures in the Bible, Proverbs 17:22, which states that a merry heart does good like medicine.  Actor Robin Williams' movie "Patch Adams", was based on real-life doctor Hunter Campbell, who infused laughter-based therapy into his treatment regimens for his patients.  Studies show that laughter is an unimpeachably viable element in the healing process.  

That said, I am a humor goon!  I love to laugh and I love trying to make others laugh.  This is why I chose humor to try to convey God's Good News message to the world.  I've seen the dramatic difference God can make in the lives of the willing - and how He replaces tears with the infectious rumble of hearty laughter! And I can tell you, I much prefer laughing to crying, unless they are tears of joy that ensue when you finally get past an agonizing condition or experience, such as the one I had while confined for a few months to hospital beds in Oklahoma and Texas.

How did you come up with Thin Diesel's little motivational messages? What happens when people can't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps anymore? 

QUESTION #3:  Thin Diesel is a character who comprises part of my personality.  If you read my previous bodies of work, you will see that I habitually inject into my projects these bite-sized parcels of humorous, pun-fueled philosophies designed to motivate you to go for broke, to attain the prized goal that defines your purpose, transcending you beyond meat-and-potatoes subsistence, to an actualization mountaintop whose reward is spiritual in scope, where a healthy paycheck is simply a byproduct (because truly money can't buy happiness, otherwise so much of the well-to-do populace wouldn't be as spiritually or emotionally disabled as many among the economically distressed).

I use God's Word, humor and cartoons to remind people that God can get them where He purposes them to be.  But even if you take away my humor tools and my illustrations, God is still right there, cheering you on, telling you He'll get you there as you trust in Him! In His word, He says that in OUR weakness lies HIS strength (2 Corinthians 12:9).  That faith and trust is what compels you to overcome your troubles. I've seen the change God makes in the lives of the hopeless.  It's really quite fascinating.  

What do you think is lacking in modern society that leaves so many people vulnerable to depression and anxiety? Some folks have clinical conditions that cause these mental states and need medical treatment, but I'm more talking about people who go through dark moods and life struggles. How do you think we can begin addressing these problems? 

QUESTION #4:  Don't get me wrong.  I believe in the benefits of medicine.  One of God's disciples was named Luke - and he was a physician.  Certainly our planet offers lavish provision from its vast wilderness-growth credenza, an eclectic array of ingestible products which aid in our mental and physical well being.  But just as the Bible says we cannot live by bread alone, neither can we depend solely upon the abilities of modern medical advancement.  We are human beings, crafted in the Image of our Creator.  The global community we inhabit, unlike yesteryear, is now fraught with ever-evolving technologies, expectations and social philosophies that foster stress, strife and fear.  Add to these elements mankind's reluctance to look to Him Who knows us better than anyone.  

Our hearts are God-shaped and require constant spiritual nourishment that we don't feed it, instead offering it an unhealthy menu of all things contrary to what God says is good for us.  This detrimental diet gives way to those elements which cause our mental/emotional/spiritual health to deteriorate to a milieu where darkness lurks. I know this to be true because, when I used to be depressed a great deal of the time.  As they say, the struggle is REAL.  And grossly disheartening.  But  one day I listened to The Heavenly Father when He told me I don't have to be depressed if I defer to Him.  I did listen - and now I'm thrilled to say I don't become depressed anymore! Ever! I really don't.  That's not to say life is all magical now or anything like that. I have my "MAN, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING MOMENTS???!!!" to be sure.  But Christ has taught me that no matter what I think I see or feel or hear, HE is ALWAYS in control of EVERYTHING.  If we could all truly get a good grasp of His proclamation in our hearts and minds, things would be so different in so many lives.

How did you decide to tell these characters' stories through a zine-like graphic novel? I mean, this could have been a standup routine, or a novella if you expanded the story. What attracted you to the graphic novel format? 

QUESTION #5:  Funny you should ask.  I HAVE performed Christian standup comedy on TV and radio.  And I do have a Christian-humor novel that will be coming out soon, entitled THE DIARY OF BRAN FRANK.  But ever since I was a child growing up in Chicago, I've always had an affinity for drawing. I began making animated cartoons with my movie camera and projector starting at age 12.  I even won an 8th-grade science fair and was sent to the district science fair with my entry, an animated film about energy production.  It was a positively absurd premise, featuring a caveman clubbing a dinosaur into submission, to harness its strength for various chores before the advent of the wheel.  In retrospect, I surmise I only won first place because the adjudicators were smitten with the enterprising spirit of a 14-year old, who'd manufactured an animated cartoon for the occasion.  

In any event, history shows that cartoons are an extremely popular vehicle employed to convey any kind of story for any occasion.  That includes stories that are spiritual in scope. 

How do people tend to respond to your work? Do you have any interesting stories from people who came to hear you or who read your previous books? 

QUESTION #6:  Much to my delight, people seem to love what I do.  I would never brag on myself because people who boast tend not to be as good as they think they are.  But I'm getting great reviews on amazon.com instead of complaints.  Yippee!!!!!!  I love doing book signings as author/cartoonist cHicKEn dOOdLE sOuP.  Okay, here are a few of may favorite instances concerning my work:

1)  I wrote of book of Christian cartoons called MYLES A HEDD, under the pseudonym, The Man From A.N.K.L.E.  What was so cool about that book is that my Indianapolis-based author representative liked it so much, she called me in Southern California to ask me if I would write a book with her!  I was so incredibly honored! 

2)  Many years ago, prolific writer/producer/director/ author/Stephen J. Cannell really liked MYLES A HEDD, and consented to write a blurb for me to insert into one of my books that was to be forthcoming!  What a pleasure to be complimented in such a manner by the now-deceased, Emmy-winning Hollywood luminary who'd created so many memorable TV series such as 21 JUMP STREET,  THE A-TEAM, THE ROCKFORD FILES, THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO and too many more to name here.  Also, Movie-TV-star Rob Schneider (DEUCE BIGELOW, SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE) and "Mad Mike" of MTV's popular series, PIMP MY RIDE have offered me support.  Mad Mike even wrote a review and did a video promotion for my last book, LOVE STEENX.

3).  A woman recently read my current book, cHicKEn dOOdLE sOuP pREsEntS...STICK TO THE FUNNY STUFF!!!  When she arrived at the final page, she told me how much she loved it...while shedding tears! Actual tears!  I was touched beyond measure!  That kind of reception is an author's dream and I will never ever forget that.  Because I really was wondering if people would get it.  They do and I thank God I can use laughter to point the way to Him.  God bless you one and all. And hey, don't forget to go for your dreams like I am - as I STICK TO THE FUNNY STUFF!!!

Stick to the Funny Stuff can be ordered here from Iceberg Tony’s Used Denture Discounts. 

[tattoosandporcelain-blog]

Coree Marx After six hours with Trevor Masters, without any other executives, just the two of them working out their own details, then dinner, then an impromptu performance that would send energy running through her veins, she had no idea how the man expected her to sleep.  His last words to her had been just that, for her to rest, and above even that, not to worry.  She nodded her agreement and made her way into the building, still buzzing on a high that she’d never quite felt before.  She felt the need to do something.  Anything.  To scream from the top of her lungs on the roof top.  To dance until her body ached.  To clean the apartment from top to bottom.  To fuck.  Anything to get the energy out of her as if it could surely kill her to remain within.

As she made her way into the building, the doorman lowered his head slightly.  ‘Miss Cartwright,’ he greeted, to which her smile would return with a beaming wattage that could not be ignored.  “Mister…” and all at once she realized she didn’t know his name.  ‘Malone,’ he replied, giving up his name to her.  She offered her hand to his, outgoing never quite looking so good on the woman.  “Mister Malone, I hope you have a pleasant night,” she returned to which the man offered his most honest smile, nearly surprised that someone in the building took a moment to know his name.  He watched as she made her way to the elevator, just as he always did, forever on guard of his tenants that he was charged with, until the blonde disappeared behind steel doors.

Within the elevator, she watched as the numbers increased with each passing moment, entirely too excited to get to the apartment, to tell Barron of her night, to find something to do, something extraordinary, something bigger than what she’d already experienced and yet she knew such a thing would be a near impossible feat.  Her key slipped into the door where she knew she’d find a man and a puppy within, but what she’d failed to think of in all of her excitement was that it was past midnight and Barron had class in the morning.  The apartment was silent.  A stillness that counteracted her energy instantly.  She made her way into the doorway of the bedroom where Barron laid sleeping, just staring at him for a long moment.  Everything else in her life was just extra, but that man was what meant the world to her.

Like a woman who had been intoxicated only to be instantly sobered, she felt the energy drain from her fingertips all at once.  She stepped into the bedroom, removing her shoes, pulling off nearly every article of her clothing, and slipped into bed beside him in nothing more than one of his t-shirts that had been at the end of the bed.  Curling up against him, she’d find her place, feeling his arm wind around her as if he was finally complete.  She drew a slow breath as she closed her eyes, breathing in the man that gave her the confidence to do anything she wanted, forever encouraging her to break down walls that she thought existed, and all at once, she felt tired.

The following morning, she was awake before the sun, as per usual.  She’d seek out an old friend to share the previous night with, telling him all about it before she’d even had her second cup of coffee.  While Barron was at school, she’d nap on and off with Gremlin, knowing the night may run late and she would need that energy once more.  When Barron returned just after lunch, the two would spend the next two hours together before she’d have to make her way to the venue for hair and make up as well as one last sound check.  Her call time was 4 p.m. and she’d arrived by 3:45 out of nothing more than nervousness.  ‘Miss Marx, they’re ready for you,’ she heard a woman speak to her, looking over the brim of her clipboard where things were kept in order.  Coree nodded her head, noting the difference of being Miss Cartwright from being Miss Marx, almost feeling as though she were a different person altogether with the name change.  

An hour later, her hair was in perfect order.  She wore a pair of ripped blue jeans and a white t-shirt.  Nothing any different than she might have worn to the grocery store, but she’d recalled Trevor’s reminder that this was to be casual and easy.  She wore a pair of plain white tennis shoes, something like the Keds she’d worn as a child.  Her make up was faint, not too strong as she might have expected it to be.  When she rose from the chair, she really didn’t feel that they had done anything any different than she would have done on her own.  “Thank you,” she offered to them both, feeling entirely too fussed over, but relived that she wasn’t emerging looking like someone she wasn’t.  ‘Mister Masters has just arrived.  Sound check is in five minutes.’  The woman with the clipboard seemed to magically appear before her, giving an update before she was gone again.

A smile swept her features at the promise that Trevor was already there.  She’d once been nervous when around the man, often deflecting her own nerves in banter with the man, but there was a different kind of comfort with him altogether now after the night before in the restaurant.  Coree made her way to the stage where she’d find him there, his speaking voice there over the loud speakers as he made the changes that needed to happen last minute.  As Coree came out from behind the stage, she’d instantly notice the chairs were gone from where he had ordered their removal the night before.  She made her way quietly to where her stool sat from the night before, placing a bottle of water atop it before addressing him.  “If this is too casual, I brought a few other things,” she offered in regards to her own attire, awaiting his approval.

Trevor Masters The sun peaked in from a sliver in between the lips of two thick curtains of a maroon twinge that were embroidered with golden leaves and vines. Only a few hours after he had stepped into the hotel room to finally rest his head after he had expelled ever feeling he could muster into a few stanzas and bars. A still dressed Trevor was coddled by supple white sheets that wrapped around his head like a cocoon, just enough for the light to sear into clenched eyelids that were rimmed by a dark band that signaled just how little sleep the overworked man got. Of course, no one would ever see it. He had learned a few tricks from make-up artists over the years to hide his exhaustion. The last thing he needed was those around him worrying about his deteriorating mental health and telling him to pump the breaks. Now was the time to speed up, not slow down.

A quick shower, to perk himself up. A little liquid adrenaline by a quick stint under icy water that blessed him like a new born baptism. Though this was all unneeded. He was on a high that would last until MSG. It was something that boiled his blood and made him feel invincible, bulletproof and indestructible. Swiftly he dressed, throwing on a simple garb of a sleeveless tank top of ebony hue and grey sweatpants that hugged his legs firmly with a pair of red high-tops and the typical fitted cap of a Boston sports team. Within moments he was in the lobby, checking out with a smile that beamed confidence for a man on less than three hours rest, A gaunt face offered a gentle smile as the front desk wasn't sure to offer concern or congratulations. He hustled out the revolving door and down the street. Walking was the only option, he had to burn off some energy before the event.

Sneaked squeaked against the shimmering, reflective tile of the stage as two bright eight inch Fresnels beam onto two stools and empty mic stands. Trevor squatted down and pushed his feet over the edge, letting the heels beat against the hallow backboard of the stage. An old fashioned bulb mic that glistened under stage lights was in his palms. It was pressed firmly against his lips as he let a wispy voice echo out of his throat into the room. "I'm just so sick of bei-..." Her voice instantly snapped him from his trance and caused the remnants of what he was saying to bounce around the empty room. His leg was brought up to the stage, where a combination of his knee and free hand pushed him onto his feet as he made his way over to her. Pushing from the tips of his toes, he began to rise and fall. Loud pounds and creaky boards rang out as his shoes came crashing down from his bounding demeanor. The energy was still alive. He tossed the fragile microphone nonchalantly to a passing stage hand that gave him a sharp glare as he caught it. Trevor leaned back before rolling forward, catching himself on his hands before springing right in front of a now startled blonde who was trying to address him, even if he was lost in a mixture of bliss and relief.

"It is fine. Comfort over appearance." His head dipped and rose as emerald eyes inspected what she was wearing, looking far more ready than he expected. His chest pumped as he stifled a chuckle, she looked better than he did which might just be the biggest shock of the evening. "Take a seat. Showtimes soon, we can just do a microphone check and vocal warm ups if you need." He motioned his hand over to the stools before he walked over to grab two microphones from the stage's edge. One was a magnificent hue of white gold and sapphires which were arranged in the letters T and M. The other was black as night embedded with all around rubies. He stuck them both in their stands with a forceful jab so that the stand gripped it firm. "That is for you. Don't ask how much it cost, just think of it as an early congratulations gift." Pale fingers flipped the switches on each device as he tapped against it before pushing his lips against the silver dome of his own. "One. Two. Three." A raspy, booming voice of a man ready to collapse if not for raw energy pushing him through this filled the room before he gave a thumbs up over to woman in front of a soundboard with earphones on.

His head turned to her as she went about mic check. It was do or die tonight. He did everything he could to infuse a bit of confidence into a woman who could barely stand alone. Shaky legs made for easy falls but tonight he was the brace.she needed to take her first step towards a full on sprint. The first song would be easy, a warm up to the grand finale which would surely start like a dentist pulling out a rotted tooth. Eventually she would submit, of that he had no doubt. Confidence came easy to him. He firmly believed that tonight would be the first night of a fledgling star's career.

Coree Marx The overall demeanor of the man was nothing like the man she’d been out with the night before.  This was different.  He was… off the rails?  She watched him move about, leaving her to wonder if he was on some sort of trip or if he was just like this on the day of a show.  She watched in a mixture of confusion and amazement all at the same time as he moved this way and that.  His words were flowing through him, making it hard for her to keep up.  She’d attempted to find a state of calm throughout the day while he seemed to be in search of something else altogether.  “Are you—“ she began, her own words cut off before she could ask if he was okay as he was retrieving microphones from the edge of the stage, instructing her to the stools.  The deer in the headlights look in her eyes was to be expected to some degree, yet it would be even more prominent beneath layers of eye liner and mascara.  Stools.  She was to sit.  A microphone was being placed in an empty stand.

“This is…” she began, wanting to thank him, to tell him how beautiful it was, but before she could get the words out, he was counting through his own microphone in a check of his own that was completed by a thumbs up directed across the room.  The woman stared at her, expecting the same of her.  Coree leaned forward, drawing the small on/off switch to the on position.  “One, two.”  A nod of the woman would tell Coree her mic was in working order and the two could begin whenever they were ready.  Glancing over towards Trevor, Coree gave a nod of her head.  Vocal warm ups had been done during hair and make up and she was ready to jump right in if he was, though she held a bit of concern over his stability there on his stool as she wasn’t sure the stool could hold him.  Hell, she wasn’t sure if the stage could hold him.

For the first time since this night had been mentioned, she honestly was nervous for him.  She had thought surely it would be her that would fall apart up on that stage, but the more she watched him, the more concerned she had become.  He might’ve been her superior, but over time she felt as though there was a friendship growing as well and the man simply did not look well to her.  She bit against her lower tier, feeling a tenderness there that would remind her to go easy on that gesture as the lipstick covered up the proof of too many lip bites previously.  Pressing her lips together, she’d lean back from the microphone to speak without it picking up every word she said.  “I’m good to go whenever you are,” she assured, thinking perhaps a run through of both songs would serve them well, knowing she’d need it on her own just as much as she’d need one more attempt at the duet as to not make a fool of a man as well known as he was.  

It wasn’t every day that Trevor Masters took a stage and there was no way she wanted to let him down.  This now went beyond that of him being her superior as well as the one that held the key to her album in his hand.  This was on a level of artist to artist, though she didn’t deem herself on his level in the slightest, yet she didn’t want to be the one to make a fool of him.  It would be that pressure alone that would allow the night to go off without a hitch as she was held to a greater responsibility.  One day that responsibility would no longer be in his hands and would be in that of a fanbase, but for now, she would owe it to him.  The band would take a moment to find their places, ready for the soundcheck that would send them into the rest of the night.

The venue was so empty, just as it had been the night before, yet the blonde knew it was all different now.  It was the day of and she’d never quite seen anything like it.  There was a pressure about it that she hadn’t tasted before, yet he’d given her a sampling of the energy that it could hold all at the same time.  She wanted it again.  She craved it.  And the only way to get there was through this.  Her foot tapped against one of the rungs of the stool, a sign that would soon prove to be a good thing, though upon their beginnings, no one could know what the good signs were verses the bad.  This one though would prove to be good and if she could just keep it up once things shifted into her own song, they might just be alright.  If only she were doing another cover, she’d thought to herself a million times, yet Trevor had told her the night before that she couldn’t get through that way.  Every now and then, sure.  But people didn’t want that all of the time.  Hell, she didn’t want it all of the time.  She had something to say and even if she was terrified that no one actually wanted to hear her words, she’d still have no other choice at this point in time but to open her mouth and let them out, letting the notes fall where they may.

Trevor Masters A quick roll of his shoulders popped a few of the kinks in his neck. Firmly planted on the stool with microphone in hand, his burly arms rested on the fabric of his pants as a steady exhale escaped his lips. It had been too long since he had done this and the energy from his midnight excursion into the studio was falling off, leaving him as he normally was, which was exhausted and sluggish at best. The performance didn't unnerve him, in fact he wasn't unnerved at all. All that lingered on his mind was what was on hers. He had prepared her as best he could, now it was in her hands. Trevor fastened the microphone in the plastic grip and turned to the band only for all the members to shoot him thumbs up and bright-eyed smiles. It was all met with a swift nod, pulling the stand close to him. Just a few rehearsals, she could handle it then it was showtime. A sadistic, sinister part of him wanted to spring it all on her, to pull the wool over her eyes but the damage would be irreparable if he did, and even worse if she failed. Another idea for another day.

The heavy bass line rung out from massive speakers, woodwind sounds accompanying behind it with the rhythm of a drum line and maracas mixed in leading to the perfect entrance of the song. The band was on fire as well tonight; cleaner, tighter and more organized than the night before for some reason. It wasn't often they got to perform with him, but to Trevor, it was no big deal. He hated the tension and worry his name brought with it and disliked the fact that people acted as if he was going to be a diva otherwise. It didn't matter, it was just a show. As long as it got from start to finish the crowd would be happy. They were easy to please after all.

Once the wrap-around came back, his lips parted and were pressed against the cold steel grid of the head. "Well get up, up on the dance floor tonight..." It was all the same, it came out easily as expect. The lyrics were easily memorized and the song was as popular as could be on the radio. The new album had reached number one instantly to no one surprise. The lack of a teleprompter would make it easier on the rookie. This wasn't the place for her to rely on that kind of crutch, she needed to stare her demons in the eyes and demand they back down. The only way to do that was under a spotlight when they want nothing more to jeer and ruin you.

The first verse came to a close and flowed into the chorus. The balls of his feet tapped against the shiny surface of the stage with the beat of the drum. His head bobbed and bounced between broad shoulders, the mane on his head flopping from side to side. It was only natural, like every performance in the past was. There was something he could never explain to his artists about when you sing on stage live. After you get a grip of it, you sort of just pretend you are in the shower on a bright spring morning, or you act as if you are driving down the coast of Cali, top down and just chirping out whatever tune a DJ spins from a local radio station. You don't care who knows or sees, you only care for the music and the fun that comes with singing. "We're going, somewhere where the sun is shining bright..." She'd realize it, sooner or later but it would become the most addictive feeling she'd ever experience as a recording artist.

Only one more quick verse before he was clear of this performance, most would call it highway robbery. The ticket prices for three simple stanzas, only to be left with a deer in headlights that might not even be able to utter her lines. Everything was already prepared for refunds. Ticket booths would be open at the door to offer refunds to anyone dissatisfied with their experience. What matters now what her doing her job, and seeing that it didn't matter to him if she failed again or not, what mattered was the fact that she began to understand that there was nothing to fear. Live singing was the most fun a performer could have. Right as the second verse came to an end, his head turned to her, lips pressed against the right side of the bulb microphone, eyes sprung open to lock with hers. It was all common in a duet, to signal they were up in under two lines. "You're like something that Godhas sent me, I want you, baby, solamente..."

Finally, he was done, pulling back from the microphone and inhaling deeply to replenish the emptiness of his lungs. His feet tapped with the band as he swiveled on the stool to face her entirely. It was only rehearsal, she'd be fine but what mattered was how she'd react once eyes were on her. Guests were lining up outside, and surely they could hear the faint vibrations of their voices and the band from even outside. They knew what they were coming, and maybe she didn't know but that he'd tell her after it was all said and done. If she can do it without them watching, why couldn't she once they were seated?

Coree Marx Sound check really wasn’t all that different than being in the studio to her.  Sure, there were chairs and lights and appearances mattered, but really it was still singing to a room of musicians that had a common understanding and sole purpose as one.  This, she could handle.  And she would with flying colors as though nothing could potentially shake her.  Even moving on from this into the rest of the night, into the live performance, she thought she might just be alright this time.  The night before had instilled in her a confidence, a high, that still hadn’t completely dried up, leaving her craving that feeling once again.  This wasn’t a restaurant with an impromptu cover at a piano that did not belong to them, but it was close enough.  At least this song was.

The night before, Coree had learned a valuable bit of insight into her issues.  She couldn’t sing her songs.  Granted, those were the ones she needed to sing.  Those were the words she needed to say.  Those were thoughts that she wanted nothing more than to convey them, to share them, to give them to someone else who might be feeling the very same thing.  Yet those were the words that would be the hardest for her to get out.  Those would be the words that would rest heavy in the curve of her throat, threatening to choke the very life out of her if they didn’t come out or get swallowed, hanging in the balance, fighting for their chance to live, begging her to just part her lips already.

The cover she and Trevor began with was one that would flow as easily from her now as it would in a couple of hours.  It was someone else’s words.  Someone else’s emotions.  Someone else’s heart.  She could do that.  But hers, that was another story.  It sparked the thought that maybe she should sing songs written by other people.  Not necessarily covers, but songs from writers that didn’t want to perform them themselves, people like she used to be.  Maybe then it would all be easier.  But then what of those words that welled in her throat?  What was to become of them?  And would she simply be selling out?

As the song came to an end, the lyrics had left her lips without pause or delay, promising that those who had bought tickets would at least be satisfied with the performance between the man they were really there to see and the woman he was introducing to them for what might be the first time.  The curve of her lips held a satisfied smile, pleased with the result of it and the chemistry that existed on stage between herself and a man known to be a legend.  As she let the last note pass her lips, she was glancing over to him, giving up a gentle nod of her head.  She was more than pleased and it would be that energy that would take her through the rest.  

Beyond that warm up, the band would pause for a few minutes to give the two vocalists the opportunity for water before they’d finalize the decision for the intro to the song she would sing independently.  It was important for her to perform it here just as she would perform it that night, just as she had done it the night before, but perhaps without the lengthy pause there at the beginning.  Her confidence was still higher than it had ever been as she took that final sip of water and placed it down on the floor in front of the drum riser.  “Yep, I’m good,” she promised, a confidence from the blonde that was only ever seen from her in studio, sure to warm the hearts and concerns of those on the stage that night.

The sounds were just as eerie as they had been the night before coming from a combination of the band and her voice, straining there in the beginning, breathy and dramatic.  The song was one that many people could easily relate to as they’d more than likely been in a similar situation at some point in their lives, therefore it was really the best choice.  She sang her heart out on the edge of the stage, carefully aware of where it ended, refusing to limit herself to that stool.  What was being seen there before every person in that room at that time was nothing of the girl that stepped out on that same stage the night before, afraid of her own words.  No, she had a confidence that was undeniable guiding her every step, her every word, her every move.  The relatively acoustic intro was dropped and the full band kicked in a moment later, fueling the energy of the performance that would leave her slightly winded beyond.

The last beats of the song came to an end, leaving a silence for a moment before she’d flash that flawless smile towards the man who had put this all together.  Her smile spoke volumes to the fact that he had nothing to worry about that night if she could just do that very same thing again.  “I think I’m ready for tonight,” she stated in a voice that was nearly not her own.  This level of confidence was not customary for her when it came to her own lyrics and her own music, as it was something all too raw for her to be certain of, but this time, she was sure.  Things were coming together and it was all dated to the night before in a restaurant after something so incredibly organic and pure, that she’d find something there on her own that no one else could have possibly given to her.  Her true voice.

-April 1, 2017