#I need to stop writing this so fast

[solioquyforme]

Aftermath of Ubbe and Lhyrie’s spar. In the days after, she trains more with Lagertha and gets help from an unexpected guest. Ubbe spends his days with Alfred. Lhyrie treats a patient.

This chapter came together much too quickly. That’s what you get with sleeping issues.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

A Dark and Drowning Tide

gothic fantasy romance

a folklorist is chosen as the co-leader of an expedition to find a fabled magical spring for the king, along with 6 nobles

when her mentor, the other leader, is found dead on their boat in the middle of the night, she has to figure out who did it; while continuing the mission through the wilderness and navigating the potential political fallout

and the only one she can probably trust is her academic rival, a naturalist, who she hates

dark folktales & creatures

Jewish lesbian MC

arc from netgalley! out sep 17

putting both covers here because they’re both so beautiful!! (artists: Audrey Benjaminsen, & Erica Williams)

[tetzoro]

good morning + happy monday friendz. the yearning is pretty bad today, let’s weather the storm together <3 i hope you all have a great start to your week ෆ

[mimicteruyo]

Reading through a WIP draft: "hmm, the romance aspect of this fic is so secondary that the main scene where it plays out actually feels pretty jarring. Which makes sense since this is supposed to be gen and the original concept required the ship to NOT be included, but maybe I should cut it out to make it—"

*furiously makes notes to add more context and weight to the shippiness as well as another romantic scene*

[bunnihearted]

🪿

[evilwriter37]

I need to stop stressing about my multichapter fics. They’ll get written when I want them to. There’s no deadline on this. I can and should be having fun with it.

But oh boy, am I stressing anyway.

[dutybcrne]

Kaeya deffo loves possessive partners, send tweet-

[sebek-zigbolt]

Do you ever think how Sebek is 16. And how Malleus and Lilia have said that 16 is the age of a newborn (fae). But Sebek looks like hes (more than, honestly) 16 in human years. So it's not hard to asume that he inherited the human lifespan, which makes his disdain of humans and his dad more explainable, and mostly about hating his own weaknesses. So Silver AND Sebek have to suffer :) Lilia and Malleus will outlive them. Sebek's mom and even grandpa will outlive them. And what impact they had on the lives of the people they love most, amounts timewise to the same as a dog to a human if not less.

[evreeone]

text (i can't put read-mores anymore without preface text, is why there's something here always)

i feel like there's a switch in my brain that gets flipped every other day that just has flipping between "i'm okay, i can just bide my time the next (hopefully only) four years, i'm somewhere that at least state-wise is protective, i won't have it as bad as everyone else, it's going to be fine. i have my small community in the form of my friends if nothing else, and i have at least One friend irl who is pretty supportive and protective, even if the world around me is going to fall apart i won't be alone in it and it might fall apart less for me personally so maybe i shouldn't be so negative" or "i want to [----] myself, i'm sick and getting sicker, old and getting older and i can barely physically handle climate change right Now let alone how it'll worsen once environmental protection policies get cut, i'm in a city where racists are pretty bold and i'm already too afraid to leave my house, i'm going to have to watch people i love and care about and family in less safe states suffer even more, i'm going to watch the birds suffer, Why do i even Want to continue living this life because there's no Living to it as someone who is just a shut-in and now any small tentative hopes i had for a future in being more openly queer are Pretty Much Gone because i'm not strong enough to persist as myself in the current political environment"

every time i wake up. the smallest tinge of hope some mornings and then complete and utter hopelessness other mornings, and it's exhausting. i never really think about the future much because i always expect to die before i get there but it's been especially hard to grapple with the fact that the one time i started to (within the past year) it immediately went to shit.

i still really don't know what to do, for myself or for others, and i think the answer might really just be Nothing and that's. hard. as it stands though i am still clinging to rain world dlc release date as at least a Gotta Get This Far marker and just crossing my fingers something else is dangled in front of my brain like a horse and a carrot that'll help me continue to push myself forward

[starrystevie]

someone needs to stop me before i write a tuck everlasting steddie au.

steve harrington, the town prince who lives in a mansion on the outskirts of town, who has always had this yearning for the forest on the other side off their picket fence that he could never put his finger on. steve who had to follow societal rules and comb his hair just so, had to learn to sit up straight and how to charm his father's business partners with a smile. steve who wanted to be more than fine china and fine pressed suits, but didn't know what that more was.

he ventures into the forest one day to find it, to run away in search of something, fed up with the rules and expectations that weigh too heavily on his shoulders. what he finds is a boy who couldn't be much older than he is drinking out of a brook. it's an ordinary brook and steve is thirsty, but this boy is yet another person forbidding steve to do something that he knows he needs to do. they tussle, get steve's nice white shirt muddy and wrinkled, all because the boy won't let him get a drink for some unknown reason.

and as they stare at each other afterwards, panting and a bit sweaty with a playful grin steve's never felt pulling at his lips, the boy takes him by the hand with a promise of adventure.

eddie munson is the more that steve knows he needs. he's wild and free and lives each day like it's a gift in and of itself whereas steve sees his monotonous days as a prison. eddie teaches steve how to swim, how to walk barefoot on the forest floor, how to lie in fields of flowers and let his hair get messy. he teaches him what it means to be alive, what it means to have a heart beating in your chest and breath in your lungs and love coursing through your veins.

but eddie, he finds out, and his uncle have secrets. they can't die, immortal, and it's all thanks to a simple brook in the forest. they live each day like it's their last because sometimes they want it to be. they yearn for loved ones passed like steve yearns for the freedom the munson's seem to have in spades. they take each day slow and steady when the earth seems quiet and like it's everything they could ever want. they let steve into their little world and show him what it really means to have a soul.

steve's daddy doesn't take too kindly to his pride and joy running away. doesn't like his bright shiny toy of a son could want something outside of the empire he's made for him. he pins it all on the elusive munsons and has them tried for kidnapping, concluding without a trial that ends with nooses around their necks no matter how hard steve screams that they did nothing wrong. in fact, they did everything right by showing him what beauty the earth holds for them.

it ends in an escape, eddie on the back of a wagon as he and his uncle run out of town with steve standing in the dust the wheels leave behind. "steve harrington, i will love you 'til the day i die!" is the last thing he ever hears from eddie munson's lips. it was steve's first and fiercest love and while it wasn't eddie's first and might not even be his last, it sure would be his fiercest.

[cosmic-d1ce]

I know its been like a whole day but i am impatient and am considering just making q!Forever's yandere arc myself

[merakiui]

SCARAMOUCHE CHARACTER TEASER HAS ME CLAWING AT THE WALLS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[danielnelsen]

mmmmm thunder bad

[forgotten-daydreamer]

how do you call it when you're so angry that you start to panic

[nejackdaw]

Now That You've Lost Tomorrow (is yesterday still a friend?)

4.2k words of the Celann backstory in my head

Under the cut for length; not NSFW. Also leave my Jimminy Cricket ass alone, I was thinking about Disney narrators when I started this lmao. It wasn't supposed to be an actual piece send help

Ahem. (Tw animal death) (tw gore) [Minor edit made 8/28/24]

Born in the Northmoor of Breton High Rock, Celann aged to be a fine man. With a lively, happy home, he was a handsome, good natured jokester with a penchant for bringing smiles wherever he went. Be it through mischief at home, exaggerated peacocking (resulting in clumsy accidents) in front of his beloved fiancee, charitable work through the town, or the song on his lips, he was an easygoing presence that had endeared himself to the people around him. Life was good and grand: he had an easy, do nothing guard job in a happy little town to bring in coin, plans to settle down and start a family, and wanted for nothing between it all. But things started to change when his elder sister prepared to set off on her apprenticeship–dark winds blew in that he, and all of them, would never recover from.

It was an adjustment for everyone with Jehanne recently absent; she'd been gone only a week, but the absence of fabric scraps and 'come look at this for me's, the messily kept tomes and quills that dripped ink, the prospect of not hearing another "you're being ridiculous, it's been weeks! Come join us for dinner!" and her high pitched, victorious cackles as she raced away, knowing she'd magically cleared up everyone's schedules by asking–she'd only been gone a week, but it felt an awfully lot longer than that. Celann kept up with his guard work in her absence and Charlotte, ever interested in his sister's seamstress and design work, had taken up the hobby when she wasn't keeping the ledger at Garnier's, insisting someone had to be leaving fabric in a house somewhere in Jehanne's absence–to balance things out, obviously, as all good magic is supposed to be.

Time passed this way for another week or so as everyone tried to reassure themselves that everything was fine; it was a large change, but they'd known for months, and they'll settle into this new normal soon and everything would be fine. But suddenly news came whispering through the streets of strange shadows passing by windows at night, shadows with no one to cast them, and soon enough the guards were being asked to look out for missing pets, small cats and birds that must have gotten loose.

Small cats and birds that were found far from their homes and butchered, torn apart but not eaten.

An uneasiness settled over the town as more and more of the creatures turned up, and "killer" was on everyone's lips. After a few weeks of disappearances and gory resurfaces, they began tapering off until they stopped entirely. Like any predator: from small prey to large–the guards instructed woodsmen and hunters, trappers and fur traders to keep an eye out in the woods for anything that didn't look like an animal had gotten to it first. It took only two days after the order was given for a horrified hunter to return with news of a torn, gaunt elk carcass, black with rot around the edges of the worst wounds. Next it was a boar, then a doe–then nothing once again.

Celann was tasked with joining patrols, increased in the wake of the animal attacks until investigators, who so far had found no leads towards what everyone assumed to be a fledgling serial killer, could find some hint as to what had been happening. Everyone waited anxiously for the inevitable first victim.

It came only a month after the shadow appeared.

Following loud, panicked shouts, Celann stumbled into an alleyway to find something hardly recognizable as human. It was pale, even for a corpse, and gaunt like the beasts had been–ripped apart and stained black at the edges, wounds rotting prematurely. He covered his mouth and looked away as he desperately fought against the thick, burning bile at the back of his throat, side stepping into a puddle of dried blood to let a more senior guard pass by.

When everything had been documented, after the corpse had been covered and the area sealed off–more for the townspeople's sake than the scene's–and they were given permission to leave, Celann headed immediately to the blacksmith, grateful for the harsh, painful way the smell and smoke of the forge cleaned the blood and rot from his lungs. He left with three sturdy daggers, weapons he grimly pressed into his family's hands as he made them swear to carry it with them. The protests died on all their lips when they saw the fear in his eyes, each taking it with the same gravity Celann presented it with and solemnly promising they would.

After only three days, there was another disappearance; another corpse, butchered and rotting unnaturally. He'd never possessed the same gift for magic most of his people did, but Celann knew enough–knew to fear the third and what it would bring, because there was no way this terror was only a man and threes were either a blessing or a curse. In the end, it was both.

When he stumbled on the third victim, it hardly occured to him that the man had anything at all to do with the last horrifying, supernatural month. He wasn't torn open like everything before, the ground wasn't coated in blood and viscera. He looked almost like someone who'd been lucky and gone in his sleep somehow–but when Celann knelt down to check if he was alive, he startled to see familiar jewelry and recognized the gaunt corpse of the book seller from around the block. His wedding band sat at an angle around a finger too small for the old, tarnished metal, and when Celann reached for his wrist to get a better look he touched something slimy and cold.

He distantly registered someone from the patrol calling out his name as he stared down at the red on his fingers, a steadily growing urge filling him with every beat of his heart to smear it off on the rough stones beneath him until his own blood ran hot and quick and erased the feeling forever. He clenched his fist instead–looked over at the boots beside him and pretended he hadn't just terrified himself as a second guard knelt with him to inspect the body.

It was Simon who found the most important thing the body had to tell them; Celann was busy wiping the blood off on his trousers and trying to get his mind working right again. A frantic tap on his shoulder got his attention and he looked up into Simon's wide, terrified eyes before slowly turning his head to see what he'd found. The gloved hand gripping the corpse's jaw slowly retreated, shaking, and Celann looked down to see two frighteningly neat holes at the side of the neck.

They shared a long, quiet look before Celann reached out again for the merchant's hand, praying desperately he didn't dig his fingers into disgustingly smooth, exposed flesh again as he avoided gripping the wrist to turn it around. Torn and bloodied, but the black edges were smaller this time. Cleaner, neater, less noticable.

They raced away burdened with news of a vampire preying on the town, searching desperately for the commander and whatever investigators they could find.

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The city was placed under curfew immediately after the news arrived, and patrols were focused for the dark and evening hours. Everyone was required inside and with at least one companion; a vampire could easily overpower a pair, but the hope was that, with no lone targets, it would resent the effort it would take to target anyone else. Guards were similarly paired and ordered not to stray from one another–the only souls out in the night needed to be vigilant. Celann thought about the daggers he'd bought his family, thought about Charlotte taking Jehanne's room at home without him there in the night to share their bed. He wondered what good those knives would be, what good his sword would do him, if the beast got insistent.

Heavy tension hung over the town for weeks after the news arrived. Curtains were drawn and lights were left burning outside as people hoped the creature would pass them by. Every sound was investigated.

After a week, after two, after a month… there was nothing. No pets, no woodland beasts, no disappearances.

The dread started to lighten as time passed, and after four weeks of no new attacks, the townsfolk had, to a degree, returned to life as normal. They were still sure to make it home before night properly fell, still kept a light on, but as the days went by there seemed to be a collective feeling that it had all been a nightmare, some trick of Vaermina.

Celann noted three absences with every pass through the town.

Nightmares didn't claim lives, and he worried at how quickly everyone let themselves believe any danger had passed. The bookshop was closed for a week, what with the owner being dead; he and Lotte liked to buy each other occasional gifts from there, and the darkness in the windows–always warmly lit and welcoming before–never failed to stir a sense of dread in him.

But then a second month was passing without any sort of attack, patrols returned to normal, and even Celann let himself relax. With how often the beast had attacked before, there was no way it would sit and wait for months. The town had been on alert and anything it would have hunted locked inside, but even the forests nearby had been spared. It had surely moved on at this point to easier prey, or either fled in order to avoid detection, he reasoned.

That reasoning was why he accepted the promotion offered to him: an easy, quiet job out at the watchtower, not too far from town and coming with a pay increase; he'd be replacing someone who quit, understandably, in light of the vampire attacks while they had been happening. The new station was a bit of a trek from the gates, at the edge of the forest, but the road was usually quiet enough and the pay was enticing so he agreed. Fresh air, new faces–it sounded like a nice change of scenery, anyway.

It took a few mornings–early, dark, quiet–to adjust to all the rustling, and Perrette teased him for it, but they got on well and she explained their duties simply and easily. They arrive at midnight and they're relieved around breakfast, and spend their downtime chatting or pretending they weren't falling back asleep. Celann never bothered her when she did, and she returned the favor when he was half asleep, half awake, never quite able to properly sleep in the tower.

It was early, a week or so after he'd started, and he was tired; he'd been resting with his head pillowed on his arms at his desk, lost in that dark, semi conscious haze. There wasn't anyone out at this hour, with the moon still so high, and he paid no mind when he hadn't heard Perrette for what should have been a suspiciously long time. She was probably playing cards and he was just resting, after all, not falling asleep like his coworker did. If anything popped up they could handle it.

Just resting is why one eye opened blearily at a sound outside, a sound Celann had only half heard and had already forgotten by the time he was looking at candlelit paperwork. He kept it open a bit longer, listening for any other sounds, then let his eyes close again, shifting in his seat to get comfortable. Nothing, just the dark and the quiet–but as the seconds passed something settled heavy in his chest, had suspicion creeping into his head, and he sat up to look around.

Nothing. Just the dark and the quiet. He slowly stood from his chair and breathed deep, waking himself up as he glanced around the inside of the watchtower. Perrette wasn't at the window, there was no humming or the sound of cards, like he'd expected. The deck was, however, still out on the windowsill, game partially through, and when he moved closer he spotted a few that had blown outside. A familiar dread settled over him as he looked down at them, caught in flower stems and other growth that kept them from blowing farther away.

The moon was still high. Perrette was not here. She was not with the cards she carried in a little box as a gift from her lover, hand drawn with curling letters on the back. It was quiet. It was… unnaturally still, Celann realized. He stared out through the window at the road as his hand moved to the hilt of his sword. He listened. Something moved in the undergrowth behind the station and he quietly crept his way to the–open–back door.

A black hare greeted him at the threshold, a bloody, mangled carcass with its white ribs exposed to the moonlight. The smell of rot hit him and his face twisted; his sword scraped against the sheath as he drew it.

Vampire.

Celann didn't know where Perrette was, what had happened to her, but he doubted the beast would leave a display if it wasn't waiting. It hadn't left. He stared out into the woods and swallowed, listening and hearing nothing. Nothing. His heart beat a terrified rhythm behind his ribs as he stepped outside, stepping carefully over the carcass and into the night, heading hesitantly for the woodline.

He'd hardly stepped through, heel snapping dead leaves and trampling plants–sound, something BURSTING forward, a scream–

He managed to put an arm between them, elbow digging into their chest, pain, hot, claws and yellow eyes. His heel slid back in the dirt as the creature strained against him, screaming and snarling and gnashing bloody teeth inches from his face. The hot smell of blood and decay hit him in the face and suddenly there was a fist in his hair, pulling painfully and jerking his head to the side–it vanished as soon as it appeared and Celann watched the vampire stumble back, face twisted in betrayal.

His own twisted to mirror it as he stared at the disfigured visage of his sister.

Jehanne.

She was clutching one of her hands as if injured, and he noticed a small, circular brand pressed into the heel of her palm. The shape of his earring, a small piece of silver resting by his jaw.

Those two moments stretched into forever then minutes suddenly blurred–claws, pain, BEGGING, being thrown, his shoulders slamming into a tree.

Celann blinked blood from his eyes and raised himself onto a shaking arm, catching his breath as he reached for his sword. He noticed she'd torn through his sleeves; the cloth was dark and sticky with blood, and he could feel the edge of his mouth throbbing, the skin around his lips torn open with a nasty downward swing of her claws. Jehanne was pacing agitatedly, glaring down at him and spitting to herself as he pushed himself to sit in the undergrowth. His head was throbbing dizzyingly, shoulders on fire from the impact, and he could feel something hot and wet snaking its way through the short hairs at the back of his neck.

Celann staggered to his feet, leaning against the tree for support, and let out a shuddering breath as he held his sword in front of him. Trying to evaluate.

She wasn't uninjured herself, not that it did him any good; he'd mangled one of her wrists and she'd still thrown him like a doll. He'd cut and sliced and stabbed and she was standing all the same, and they shared a mutual look of despair. Some mix of emotions flashed across her face, faintly illuminated by what moonlight breached the canopy, bright eyes wide as her lips were parting and she was clawing at her face, fangs glistening, then– "But we're family!" she wailed

The world went quiet.

Realization hit him, then. Cold blood. The world became the woman in front of him. He couldn't let her leave. Horror. Couldn't let her live. Agony. She'd kill them all. Kill her first.

He wondered how many times his sister must have crept past their windows, how many nights she must have watched him from the forest. Family. She'd kill him if it meant turning him, kill them all if he couldn't stop her.

Jehanne took a step forward and spread her arms invitingly, one wrist hanging at a sickening angle. Another step when he didn't immediately move, a sweet smile on her face, then lunged–steel and blood and pain and screams. He couldn't hesitate, couldn't go easy anymore. Blood flew from his blade as he drove it into her heart–vampires need to be stabbed in the heart–once, twice, a third time. He staggered back and tensed, waiting for her to somehow still be moving, dizzy with blood loss and buzzing with adrenaline.

He distantly watched her head slump against the ground, face half pressed into the dirt; glowing yellow eyes went dim and returned to a familiar brown. He watched, paradoxically, as she regained some color, despite being dead. Dead. He looked at glassy eyes and felt far away. Trees and green growth and blood splatters came back into view, but it was someone else's view, someone else's eyes. They laughed, whoever it was, desperate and manic, and dropped his sword as he stared at his sister's corpse. Something was screaming about it, somewhere inside him, but it was far away and muffled, a mile away.

Celann stumbled on suddenly weak legs towards the nearest tree and let himself collapse to the ground against it, staring at her face until it blurred. Everything blended together, and all he knew was that he was cold. He distantly remembered he was bleeding, but the thought vanished almost instantly into the gentle fog that was clouding his mind. He shivered, he thinks, and then thinks nothing else as he sits on the forest floor beneath the moon for hours.

He doesn't register Perrette stumbling out of the watchtower, only partially realizing she was yelling at him at all, even as she knelt beside him. He came back to himself when someone was snapping incessantly in his face, when irritation managed to stir him into some faint awareness. Simon was kneeling in front of him, eyes wide with fear as he gestured at the people around him. They descended upon him, quiet and gentle as they hauled him to his feet, and as he was half dragged, half helped back to town, all Celann really noticed was that it was morning. The sky was a pale, misty yellow–sunrise. Morning. The night was over. The night was over but he would live with what happened in the dark forever.

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He had nightmares every time he managed to fall asleep, shepherded into the temple to be healed and watched over. Breathing was difficult and he assumed he was dying; he was only a little concerned at how okay with that he was. A stranger visited him on the third day after the Incident and the priestesses allowed her to feed him something from a vial, some liquid miracle that ended the worst of the night terrors and let him breathe easy.

There had been a newly made vampire den nearby, she explained when he woke again, and Jehanne had likely been taken the day she stepped out onto the road. Her voice was factual as she informed the temple they'd all been taken care of, but there was sympathy on her face as she looked down at the shadows under his half vacant eyes. She hunted vampires–and other deadra–she'd said as she left; there was something he didn't like in her tone, something knowing, as she closed the door behind her and told him she'd be staying in town for a month or two.

He was sent back home later that afternoon, back to he and Charlotte's house, but everything felt… strange. He felt like he was intruding on his own space, in his own house, in his own bed. Lotte was being patient, but the pain in her eyes when she looked at him sent a spike through his heart. Blood. Breaking bones. He supposed he deserved it after what he'd done, though even he could tell she very genuinely didn't think less of him for it. But she handled him gently and he missed her smiles, missed making her laugh. That solemn look didn't belong in her eyes.

His parents visited twice, to make sure he was healing alright, but there was a distance between them that had never been there. They'd raised Jehanne for 26 years, their daughter, you killed our daughter, what kind of man kills his own sister? It was never said, of course, but he could see it in the tension on their faces and the stiff way they held themselves near him.

They declined both times to stay for dinner.

Celann couldn't move on. His family thought he was a murderer, his fiancee was no longer living with the man she'd gotten engaged to. Something in bim broke when he thought about it, that they were supposed to be married in a few months. He'd been over the moon about it, wouldn't stop talking about it to anyone who listened, even if they weren't really, but the hush that had fallen over the house as Charlotte gave him the space he'd started needing felt like an ill omen.

Two months passed of feeling like an outsider in his own life and he was saying goodbye to her. She refused to break off their engagement, said he felt guilty and was being stupid, and as he tried to promise not to darken her door again she told him for better or for worse came before the wedding vows and if he didn't at least write to her on his trip with this mystery woman she'd find him and drag him back home like a runaway boy.

It… hadn't been what he'd planned on. He hadn't planned on returning or writing at all, had planned on removing himself entirely, no longer the man she'd intended to marry and pained at how she was caring for him. He hadn't told her about meeting the woman from the temple, either–but people talked and Lotte was good at listening, and he wasn't as surprised as he could have been. He had mixed feelings about the indefinite engagement, but if it was what she wanted he'd let her have it, like she was letting him leave because he needed to. They looked after each other like that.

Perrette, on her part, when he found her at breakfast, immediately told him through a mouthful of jam and toast where the woman from the temple was before standing and pulling him into a hug. She pressed a small wooden box and a dagger into his hands before wishing him well and telling him to hurry, because the stranger had been packing her things last she saw and getting ready to leave.

It turns out she had left, hours ago, but Celann found her waiting expectantly outside the gate just off the road. She was sitting with her own breakfast with a second placement set up for him, and he once again didn't like the knowing look in her eyes as he sat down. She explained, eventually, that she was with the Vigil of Stendarr, and had been sent with two others to investigate rumors of vampires in the area. Jehanne had been an opportune victim, out alone on the road so early in the morning; the vampire had been trying to start a clan and needed bodies to fill the seats.

He'd almost been one of them. It was a matter of hours, apparently.

Again, she assured him they were all dead and asked if he intended to join her and her companions on the road–if he had seen what chaos and danger creatures like vampires pose and wanted to take up arms against them. He didn't answer, and she didn't demand he give one; they ate together in silence again and she didn't comment on the way he'd glance back at the gate every now and then. The guard on duty would give a little wave each time, a sad look on his face, and so Celann looked less and less until he didn't look again at all. He was leaving, after all; something deep in him was different, had shaken him out of the life he'd had, and he was moving on. There wasn't room for whatever he was in the space he'd made for himself anymore.

A few nights later he would untie the ribbon around that little box Perrette had given him, far away from town, and open it to find a clumsily hand drawn set of cards with little messages penned in her handwriting on the back. He turned the fool around to see a scribbled portrait of himself amongst the scrawled decoration; the back of every queen was a rough sketch of Charlotte. He put them gently back in the box, retied the ribbon, and ignored the look Freyja gave him as he slipped it back into his bag.

He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, again, without a body next to him.

"For those who cherish memories of loved ones, their compassion often conceals the beast. Our compassion compels us to destroy it."

[hlvrai-stuck-together]

...You're really sure they both forgive me for what happened? Cuz I fucked up really badly this time.

I'm sure. It wasn't your fault, Bubby.

...

Well then, I forgive Gordon for stealing my chips that one time too, then. And the dip. And for leaving crumbs all over the couch. And for not washing his damn hands before touching the remote.

I'm surprised you even remember all that, but umm? Thanks?

You're welcome, fucking nasty little sewage boy.

Hey!

*(The fire continues to shrink in size, becoming a much smaller version of what it was before.)*

I have the blanket! Apologies for the holdup, I had forgotten that we had taken the large one with us upstairs last night and had spent a rather lengthy amount of time looking for it down here! Hopefully this can help!

...I may have overestimated the size of the fire. Do you still need the blanket?

Yes, please. Thank you.

*(The large blanket is thrown over the stovetop. Without the fire in the way, the dials behind it become clear- they're all turned off. Dr. Coomer is able to hold onto the blanket with his limb enhancers, and keeps it in place for a moment while they wait.)*

Thank you, Harold. Sorry about the mess.

It's no trouble.

Just maybe let me do the cooking for a little while.

Fine, I can do that.

*(Dr. Coomer lifts the blanket. The fire is gone.)*