#I never want to draw another cow again this was a chore

[paragal]

I had a dream

of the wide open prairie

[paper-mario-wiki]

Do you do farm stuff Scout? Or would you like to? Like owning chickens or tending an outdoor garden, that sort of thing?

From ages 7 to 19 I lived on farms, and was made to be an active participant in maintenance and usages of the facilities I don't know why the fuck I'm typing it like this, but I grew up on a farm. I was kinda in charge of everything, but slacked a lot and my brother had to cover for me. That said, I still spent a LOT of time doing chores.

At one point or another I've been responsible for most every farm chore you can really think of. All the basics like raking leaves, milking goats, collecting eggs, feeding chickens- but also the big stuff like moving tons of hay, herding flocks, caring for large animals such as llamas, alpacas, horses, and cows, as well as delivering babies, gutting and plucking fowl (only chickens and turkeys, though I've also cared for ducks and geese), dehoring, hoof cleaning, corpse transportation, crop maintenance, winter ice removal by breaking up frozen water troughs in 10 below weather (thought this was usually circumvented by anticipating the cold and setting up water heaters beforehand), constructing enclosures, slaughtering pigs, and etc etc etc etc etc all that shit. Bunnies snakes mini horses donkeys. All that shit. Farm stuff. Ya know.

Moved away when I went to college and immediately plunged into a mixed-zoning district in the Fushimi district in Kyoto. This was a really good transition from rural living to city living, because mixed zoning districts have blocks dedicated to apartment complexes and family homes right next to blocks of rice fields and ponds, which was behind the 7-Eleven I bought most of my food from.

Now I live in a SHITTY mixed zoning area in SHITTY America where we never stop hearing cars because there's a massive parking lot nearby and constant police sirens, not because the area is particularly dangerous, but because there's like 2 police stations nearby.

My ideal housing goal, which also happens to be my current goal in life, is to reach a slightly more rural version of the Kyoto living situation. The goals are very distinct:

0. I'm editing this one in after the fact to note that while I've used Kyoto as an example a few times in this post, I'm just looking for an area that feels right and would happily live in any prefecture that fits my needs.

I want to not be tied directly to a visa which would draw me away from doing whatever work I really want to do, like my student visa did later on when school started getting worse as professors were struggling to learn digital classroom mechanics. The visa I'm shooting for is dependent on a few ideas I have for businesses, but that's still kind of a long shot.

I want to be in a position of relative financial freedom so that I can spend enough time genuinely living there instead of just being tied to a computer all day, limiting me to the world I already know. This one's the big one, so I'm still workin on that. That said, recently I've been taking some pretty massive steps towards making this a more tangible circumstance. Fingers crossed.

I want to have a home that I own instead of renting, and I'd like to work with a Japanese architect to actually construct it. Again, these are big big plans, but I think a life goal is a thing worth thinking big about. And it's not like I'm trying to build a mansion, or even a family-sized house, I think I'd be content with three bedrooms, a kitchen, and common room. Of course, in keeping with the "dream big" spirit, in a world where I've got enough money to have a nicer, slightly bigger home, I can imagine as many as 5 bedrooms. It's nice to imagine in this "perfect" outcome that I've got a reason to have enough space for guests to sleep over. A local community, or an otherwise tangible, real-world web of relationships would be nice. Like, Real Adult Socializing Shit.

I want to have a significant emphasis on self-reliance on this home. As far solarpunk as I can reasonably go, without biting off more than I can chew as someone who's kinda limp-wristed. In a gay way and a feeble way. I figure this will come down to solar panels, water filtration, a well, and a garden (or at least the space to have gardening stuff like pots and soil). Some chickens would be nice too, but I don't know that I'd ever take on livestock proper.

I want to be properly submerged in trees without being more than a 5 minute bike ride from a train station. Somwhere like Yase-Hieizanguchi Station in north Kyoto is a good example of station that's on the edge of a metropolitan area and the forest. There was an apartment there I almost got, but backed out when covid hit cuz I decided moving across town would be a whack decision.

This is a BONUS goal, but I think it'd also be nice to not compromise on a single location, and instead have a home out in the inaka, while also having a small apartment rented in the city I can go between whenever I need to. In a world where I can afford a plot of land out in the country, but would still need to travel into town for business, that would be nice. Though in that scenario I'd likely need to also take on the arduous task of getting a Japanese drivers license. If I know far enough in advance that I want to take this specific route then I could bypass that last one by getting an international license before moving to Japan, but after moving to Japan you're barred from getting an international license.

I couldn't tell you in honesty that I'm a Salt of the Earth, Red Blooded American Farmer in my heart, and in fact I could not WAIT to move away from the farm. I hated that I didn't have a say in living on a farm, and was made to take care of animals. But what I DID enjoy about that life was the stillness. The opportunities of perfect silence. The stars unobstructed by light pollution. The ability to explore. Those things I was incredibly grateful for. And as such, in my perfect world, I would like to live on something like a farm again one day, just on my own terms.

[lifewithmai]

I Found Peace in Calauan, Laguna

Angela Palma 2023

There are many places I have traveled so far in the Philippines ever since I became aware of them. For example, the Quezon province, specifically Nakar and Infanta, Pangasinan, Antipolo, Caloocan, Taguig, Makati, Manila, and Laguna. Out of all these beautiful cities, beaches, spots, views, etc., you may also wonder, Why Calauan Laguna?

Our first visit and stay here was for our cousin's 7th birthday celebration way back on November 27, two years ago. It was summer, and they had just finished building their house there, so we were the first to stay. I remember our first summer here being full of excitement and happiness. I loved the close neighborhood, the generous people, the packed sari-sari stores, the overlooking mountains, resorts, lagoons, hot springs, and the fields. At my cousin's birthday party, we set up tents and hired clowns to entertain the kids that we invited from the neighborhood. It was quite a big children's party, but it was expected in our tradition to have big parties when we turn seven. It was a fun and memorable celebration for everyone. The next day,our family went to make a second celebration at a village named "The Promise," then into Camp Silva Natural Hot Spring.

In July 2023, we decided to have yet another summer break in Laguna. I never thought that me and my family would need this short break especially me, because, being here for the second time, it was different. Coming back here helped me think clearly and solve all the puzzles that were trapped in my mind in Manila. What helped is the way life here is filled with such simplicity. It filled my longing for a simple, quiet, and peaceful life.

A walking-distance field near the house we're staying in has a hidden, built-in playground, a bicycle lane, a small stage, and wide grass floors. At noon, this is where everyone hangs out, including families, their little kids, and teenagers. There are also areas with fruit trees, plant farms, and farm animals such as cows and horses. On Laguna, this was my favorite spot. My siblings and cousins stop by in the mornings and at noon, and I usually bring my phone to take pictures along with my drawing book, journal, and a novel to read. Since it is quiet and windy out, I spent my time here writing my thoughts on paper or reading books that I brought with me on this trip. I also learned how to draw scenery, which is something I've always wanted to do. One of the most pure and memorable experiences I had here was when little kids approached me to compliment my drawings, even if they seemed simple or funny to me. They were so appreciative that they make me smile every time I see them and refer to me as "ate ganda na marunong mag drawing."

I also enjoyed my time indoors in our lovely home and helped with chores. I enjoyed accompanying my mom to the palengke to buy fruits and vegetables, and I enjoyed being assigned to prepare our daily meals. This place made me want to stay longer because it made me feel alive again. Unfortunately, we all have our own responsibilities back in Manila, but it has been an adventure to be here in such a magical place. Who knew that such a simple place would bring us closer and give us the peace we needed?.

If I could write more about this journey, I would say that it healed me. My inner child and I are so grateful that my family decided on this trip because I can't think of a more beautiful way to spend a short summer vacation than this.

[muffindaddystyles]

LOVE ME, WRESTLE ME.

Boyfriendrry blurb of some smutty and fluffy thought.

Taking online classes, resting, doing assignments, then spending some time with Harry and watching a movie at night that always ends up in a good fuck isn't boring but it's insipid.

The cooe of rain outside's soothing and tranquil enough to fill in already comfortable silence between you people, your lips murmuring around the instinctive words from the scrabby page of the Oscar Wilde's; The selfish giant. Your knees are hiked up sitting in the love seat opposite to where Harry's sitting on the messy-ly made bed since you both were feeling a tad lazy and in mood to procrastinate house chores.

You're constantly loosing your focus, because you're terribly horny at the moment and Harry in a baggy yellow pawy sweater spread on his tummy over the bed doing nothing but staring at you like he'd swallow you whole isn't helping at all with the ache between your thighs.

So, you do what was needed to be done.

His eyes follows your commotion as you leave your spot kneeing up on the edge of bed, your crotch against his face and you look down at him with a witty smirk.

"Wrestle me." Your voice challenging. You arch your brow with profound irritation when he intentionally dismisses you off by rumbling his lips to blow away the curls falling over his dooey eyes.

"Pardon?" He creates a noise, within a click of his tongue or his hand against your bare thigh (fondling the soft skin he's obsessed with) that dries your throat with hunger. He heard it right. There was no wavering in what you invited him for.

You guys have this game where he has to make you cum within two minutes and you've to wrestle him off, if you loose and cum you've to keep him warm and sloppy in your mouth until it turns into a nice blowie so it's a win win either way.

You fail every time. Most of it is very obvious.

But, right now he's trying to rile your nerves up by acting like an utterly supine cow.

"Hmm?" The questioning hum turns into a giggly squeal when he grabs your ankle and throws you onto the mattress like a rag doll, "S' fuckin' insatiable all the time ..." He growls towering above you, pushing your thighs apart with a tight grip to your soft fleshy insides that makes you hiss. A laugh pits up in your belly from the thrill of shutting them back and fighting him off to piss him further.

Ofcourse him being stronger than you fails you to do so and a loud moan bubbles around you when he licks his palm till the tips of his fingers and smacks your already soaking centre harshly.

"Fuck." You mewl softly sinking into sheets when he yanks your shorts down leaving you in nothing but his large hoodie, your pussy lips flutter from the heated sensation of your stickiness coming in contact with the sting of his chilly rings.

He pins your wrist atop your head and fits himself between your wide opened legs grinding his hard (trouser clad) prick against your heating centre in vigorous rubs, leaving a burn with every stroke and making you loose your stance with the growing desire to have his fingers inside you.

"C'mon fight me now." He grits. Glowering down at you sternly and your tummy coils against his's pelvis with each nasty roll of his hips, you gasp around a sob when he nips at the soft skin of your jaw. He wants you to surrender yourself to him but your ego's more than that so with a trick of pulling at his hair you flip him on his back and crawl up to straddle his torso jerking his shoulder down.

"Aha!" You grin in a victory. His brows pinches down furiously and before you know his calloused hand came spanking your butt-cheek making your face smash into the crook of his neck with an unexpected vulgar series of moans, "Bratty little fuck doll." He grunts landing another spank right where the first one left crimson imprints, again and again till you're a squirming crying mess.

He slides his two fingers down your puckering rim to where you're dripping with wetness and teases your entrance by never dipping them in till the end but rather stroking the spongy wall of your soppy cunt.

You squeal when he flips you on your tummy and leans all his weight over your back to glide his hand between the compact space of their bottoms, he patches breathy kisses to the side of your neck leaving love marks, sliding in his fingers deep inside that when you feel a certain crack resonating to your ears and shooting pain till your toes making them jelly.

You're fucked.

It all happened from your arm placed at the weird angle while he had your hips in air.

"Harry, I think. I might've broken my wrist." You stammer in a calm voice though, barely able to speak when the pang in your joint's inflaming like a wildfire along with the pleasure that's subsiding into an akward spasmy feeling as you pulsates around his fingers.

"Sucha bullshit excuse to mice outta yer defeat." He rasps to you smugly. Your face scrunches up in pain and your head falls into the throw pillow.

"No . ." You shake your head quickly gulping down the thick tears down your throat and when his head clears out from the fog of lust, noticing the weakness in your words he immediately pulls his digits out, "Holy ... Fuck." You try to stay placid knowing his insides are ticking in panic and is about to explode in one, two and —

"Baby -– how — how are y'so calm? Is it hurting? Show me." The shift in his demeanor is adorable as minutes ago he was about to rail you to unconsciousness and now he's the softest cutest caring boyfriend.

Tears prickles at your waterline when he presses his thumb into your wrist bone ever so diligently and it jolts severe pain up your arm.

"I think it's, 'm so so sorry baby. We should go to hospital. Stay here, yeah?" He tells you cupping your cheeks worriedly and rushes to fetch a wet rag when you nod through a sniff and wobbly lips.

He cleans you off, shushing you with tender kisses to your ankles when the throb got overwhelming. Helps you wearing your jeans and shoes being careful not to hurt your wrist any further in doing so.

"It's okay, you're okay lovie —- if the pain's too much —--- dunno we should probably run to hospital." He's out of breath snatching the keys and his coat taking glances of you after every second to make sure you're okay, more like assuring himself, "Bub it wasn't your fault. It was an accident, I can endure a lil bit pain." Through the whole call ride he was jittery and twitchy waiting for to reach the clinic speedily.

He has you embraced by his side with a careful support of his palm under your wrist so it wouldn't dangle that much as he walks you inside.

The doctor sitting infront of you two stares at the way you both are flushed, rosy cheeks, ruffled hair and sheened skin radiating 'we were in the middle of having great sex.' But, she chooses not to speak as you shrink to Harry's side timidly from the embarrassment and shyness.

Harry just passes you a nervous smile squeezing your shoulder to cheer you up and nudges you when the doctor asks the ever awaiting question.

"So . . . How did it happen?"

"Cupboard —-" You speak.

"She fell of —-" And he speaks at the same time.

You look at eachother with wide shocked eyes but then he clear his throat allowing you to speak, "I was putting some dishes up in the cupboard when I lost my footing and knocked my wrist against it." The doctor surely didn't give into your guys shit. Nodding along to your made up story.

You guys feel exposed when the doctor spoke inspecting Y/N wrist, "The injury caused from the pressure of weight, splinting the bone away and tearing the muscle too ... nothing that wouldn't heal in two weeks. You'll be good with an arm cast and these pain killers."

When you step out into the waiting corridor it feels like your secret has been revealed to every single person sitting there and you pull the strings of your hoodie to cover your face and Harry chuckles kissing your head at your silliness.

Once in the privacy of car he speaks looking at your cast properly, "One thing fo' sure that game isn't made fo' us -- you're too delicate to play it just fo' fun and thrill. Next, time just ask me to fuck you baby and I'll surely do it happily." He sighs a puff of breath kissing your cast and patting it lightly jerking back in horror when you yelp.

"Ouch!" He takes your jaw to kiss your lips upon seeing you grinning at your own misheviousness.

"Ye' batty little creature, stop messin' with your poor boyfriend!" He grumps cheekily at your playfullness.

"'M sorry, daddy will you take care of me?" You blink sickly coy through your lashes. Pouting up at him innocently and he shakes his head bopping your nose.

"You just wait and watch." He kisses the side of your head while reversing the car.

"How about we start from drawing dicks on ye' cast, hmm? How bout that?" He smirks and you gasp surprised at his antics.

"Harry!" The car fills up with laughter and giggles until he takes a rough turn.

"You better drive safe else 'm walking home!"

[rocorambles]

Reminiscent

Pairing: Daichi x Reader

Genre: SFW, 5+1, Soulmate/Reincarnation AU, Angst (there is technically a character death, BUT THERE’S AN ULTIMATELY HAPPY ENDING, I SWEAR), Fluff 

Prompt: You woke me up at 3 in the morning for this?

Summary: 5 lifetimes Daichi and you just weren’t meant to be and the 1 lifetime you finally found your happy ending together.

Author’s Note: This is my contribution for my HQ Discord Server’s SFW collaboration. There are so many talented writers on the server and I highly encourage you to check out the collaboration masterlist here to see how everyone decided to run with this spicy prompt. (Masterlist goes live December 1st!)  

Tagging @sawamooora  since I accidentally scarred her by making her read only the section where there was a character death without the heads up...OOPS, so I guess you can have your happy ending now~

I.

When Daichi meets you in this first lifetime, he can’t help but notice just how different you are from him and he stares at the luxurious fabrics beautifully accentuating your figure, wishing he could wipe off the meticulously and elegantly layered on makeup and see more of your bare face, wanting more than anything to know who you are beneath the graceful and well-mannered smiles and bows you grace the court with. But when he looks down at himself and sees the memories of crimson blood splattered all over his skin and robes, hears the sound of his sword piercing flesh, remembers the way your father enthusiastically thanks him for another job well done as a flash of fear races across your eyes at the corpse of proof he drags in, it’s all too apparent just how different the worlds you live in are. 

And really, that should have been it, he should have stopped himself right then and there, stopped thinking about you, stopped his gaze from trailing after you when he sees you roaming around the clan property. But his heart has different plans and here he is, a well respected samurai who works underneath your father, pining after you, a clan leader’s daughter, someone already betrothed to the son of a neighboring clan, someone much too pure and innocent for his blood soaked hands. 

He smiles when he sees your posture relax, your body slouch in relief when you think no one is watching you, no pretenses and facades to keep up when it’s just you, unaware of the brown eyes watching you. He clenches his fists so hard his nails threaten to break skin when he hears your secret anguished sobs as he guards your bedroom the night after you meet your fiance for the first time and realize you’ve been doomed to a life with a man who’ll never love you, a man who doesn’t see you as anything more than a political tool. He dreams of a life where he can whisk you away, a life where there would be no consequences if the two of you ran off to live a peaceful, happy life together far far far away from the cruel and cold world of money and power you’re both entangled in. 

But there are consequences and he lives with the constant shattering of his heart as he watches the light dim in your eyes as you continue courting your fiance, the cool indifferent look you wear on your face throughout your own wedding ceremony, the way you seem like just a shell of the vibrant young woman he once knew and fell in love with. And yet, he doesn’t do a thing, remaining faithfully by your father’s side and serving your clan for the remainder of his days.  

II.

Something jolts inside of Daichi when he sees you in the second lifetime and he can’t help but feel like there’s something familiar about you, something nostalgic about the situation you’re both in as you humbly bow before helping him dress and get ready for the busy day of meetings he has. And you watch in awe as you dutifully trail after him, making sure all his needs are attended to, amazed by just how hardworking, intelligent, and kind the young lord is, so different than the stories you had heard of royals. Not once does he ever treat you as anything less than an equal, not once does he ever lay an unwanted gaze on you, let alone a finger and you find yourself jumping to please him and aid him out of something more than just a sense of responsibility as your heart flutters from just his presence. 

You feel honored by how much he entrusts you with when it’s just the two of you in his room and you patiently listen when he throws his disciplined manners out the window, grumbling and ranting about the power-hungry ploys of his fellow royals, the way greed and privilege have corrupted them, how he can’t trust anyone anymore. But when he wonders if he needs to change, to adapt in order to thrive, you surprise the both of you with your vehement outburst as you blather on about how he’s perfect the way he is. And then there’s silence as the two of you look away, both your faces heating up at the hidden message in your words, a message so incredibly inappropriate considering both your positions and the time you live in. But before you can open your mouth and stutter out an apology, you freeze at the warm smile Daichi sends your way, heart racing at the heartfelt, but quiet thank you he utters in response. 

Of course nothing happens after that. This is real life after all and Daichi is far too respectful of his family and their reputation, far too noble to smear his clan’s name with taboo affairs, far too kind to hurt his future bride despite the fact that he’s never even met her yet, doesn’t know the first thing about her other than her name, to pursue something just for his own pleasure, his own satisfaction, something that could potentially harm so many others. And you understand. After all, these are the reasons you fell in love with him, and you’re just happy to be able to remain by his side for the rest of your days despite the lancing pain in your chest every time you see him with his wife, with his future children, living a life where you just exist on the sidelines, watching and longing for something you know you’ll never have. 

III. 

In the third lifetime Daichi meets you in, he can’t understand the regrets of a missed opportunity he feels when you introduce yourself to him, welcoming him to the neighborhood with a basket of freshly baked goods. He knows he should smile, graciously accept your kind (and delicious smelling) gifts and he does, but as he bites into the still warm cookies after you leave, the image of the gold wedding band around your finger is branded in his mind. 

In a small rural community like yours, you’re bound to run into each other, especially since your farms are right next to each other and he thinks you look ethereal each morning with the sun rising behind you, a soft golden glow framing you as you gather eggs, milk the cows, and water the crops. But there’s a sense of bitterness he can’t explain when your husband joins you, a hulking stoic figure besides you as he helps you on the fields, and he turns his back on the two of you to tend to his own chores. 

There’s nothing “wrong” with your spouse, nothing Daichi can truly fault him for and if he’s honest, if Ushijima wasn’t your husband, he’d have only respect and admiration for the man. He certainly can’t complain about how he treats you and something bittersweet churns inside of him when he sees Ushijima’s usually stern face soften whenever you’re around, when he sees the way Ushijima’s broad shoulders relax whenever you affectionately hold his hand. And although he internally chides himself at night in private when he dreams of what it would be like to be in Ushijima’s shoes, he can’t help but feel relieved, glad that you’ve found someone who loves and treats you well. 

But he laughs the silly thought away. Of course you had found someone who loved you. Why wouldn’t you have? And yet that night he dreams of your face, dressed in a beautiful silk robe better suited for the historicals eras of Japan, seated next to someone he somehow knows is your husband, but there’s only loneliness in your eyes and he wakes up with tears in his eyes, unsure why he’s crying, why he’s hoping you never feel alone ever again. 

IV. 

Daichi should be scared of you when he meets you in the fourth lifetime, but although he’s certainly wary of you, staring at you with his beady eyes from the branches high above your head, he can’t help the curiosity he feels when he sees your small furry body try to leap and paw at him despite how far the distance between the two of you is. And despite all his natural instincts, he feels himself relaxing, cawing teasingly at you as you tire yourself out, fluttering down a few branches closer to you when you give up and just sprawl out on the floor, tail flickering back and forth in interest as you watch him draw nearer. But before he can get any closer, he hears a human voice calling for you and the two of you lock eyes before you rush back to your owner and even after your body squeezes through the little cat door that had been built in the front door, he can’t help but watch your home closely, wondering if he’ll see you again. 

To his delight he does see you again, every single day as a matter of fact. On sunny days, he spreads out his wings and swoops down to meet you when you lazily curl up at the base of his tree and sometimes the two of you just lay there together, basking in the warmth of the beautiful day, sometimes the two of you take a stroll together, you trotting down the sidewalk as he flits from tree to tree beside you. He’s learned that rain and water in general don’t sit well with you and on gloomier days he glides over to the outside of your favorite window, peering through the glass and cawing warmly when you jump up and curl up on the windowsill, his beak and your nose pressing against the glass across from each other. 

But time is limited, especially for a crow like himself, and as you grow bigger and stronger, he begins to lose his appetite, begins to struggle flying for as long or as well as he used to. And although neither of you can speak to each other, there’s an intuitive understanding as you tone down your playing and spend his last remaining days just laying side by side, his feathered body curled up in the warm plush of your fur, your body and tail wrapped protectively around him until he passes away peacefully. 

V. 

Daichi only has himself to blame for the fifth lifetime being a complete loss. You had caught his eye in a way no girl ever had before when he saw you skillfully racing across the court at the Tokyo training camp. He can’t explain exactly what draws him to you. Sure, you’re attractive, but he’s been around other beautiful girls before, hell Shimizu is the manager of his team and even she’s never captivated him like this. Maybe it’s the fact that he hasn’t seen many talented female volleyball players up close before? But that can’t be it. No other female player in the room even remotely peaks his interest. No...it’s something deeper than that and he swears it feels like there’s an invisible thread tying the two of you together. 

He watches and watches until a lanky arm is thrown over his shoulder, a sly voice purring in his ears. 

“Sa’amura. My, my, my. I thought a country bumpkin crow like you would have better manners than to gawk at our pretty Tokyo girls like a creep.” 

Daichi scowls at the messy haired Nekoma captain, but his face heats up when he realizes how strange he probably looked just staring at a gym full of female athletes. But before he can spout any excuses, Kuroo hums in interest as he follows Daichi’s gaze to see who he had been looking at so intently. 

“Well well well. I guess birds do attract each other. You have some good taste, Sa’amura. She’s a great player, although I personally think she would have been a better fit at Nekoma than Fukurodani. She moves a lot like a cat, doesn’t she? But if you want to get closer to her, try talking to Bokuto. They’re both pretty close.” 

A cat? Daichi wordlessly waves goodbye to Kuroo who’s strolling away before turning his attention back to you. And he’s surprised to see that there’s something eerily correct about Kuroo’s observation, something about your feline movements that nags at a deep unconscious thread inside of him, and it’s unnervingly easy to imagine you with a tail swishing back and forth behind you, to imagine you with soft ears and claws. But when he blinks, there you are, completely human once again, celebrating a point your team had scored, no cat appendages anywhere in sight. 

He doesn’t take Kuroo’s advice, never approaches Bokuto to learn more about you, and he leaves training camp without even exchanging one word with you. But from time to time for the rest of his life, he’ll dream of you, dream of a friendly cat he feels like he used to know and he’ll wake up with a pang of regret, wondering what would have happened if he had the courage to talk to you all those years ago. 

VI. 

Daichi groans, nursing a hangover as he groggily sits up in bed and turns off the ear splitting alarm. Thank God for humans and their habits, his brain not needing to work at all as he methodically brushes his teeth and throws on his uniform. But as he makes his way to the precinct, he pauses at the corner of the street, intrigued by the sight of a newly opened cafe. There’s technically coffee at work and the smarter and financially responsible choice would be to just wait and drink the free caffeinated liquid, but something draws him into the quaint storefront and before his mind can even catch up to his body, he’s already pushing open the door and walking towards the counter. 

He hears your voice ring throughout the small store, telling him you’d be with him in just a moment and he takes his time to peruse the menu, the soothing scent of coffee whetting his appetite and making the pastries in the glass case look even more appealing. He’s narrowed down his options to either the chocolate frosted donut or the coffee cake when he sees you approaching from the corner of his eyes and he smiles only to freeze when he sees your face.

“Do I know you-”

“You look familiar-”

Both of you start and stop talking at the same time and there’s an awkward silence before you both burst out laughing. As you prepare his order, both of you throw out possibilities of where you may have met before, but nothing pans out, and you both shrug your shoulders as you hand over the paper wrapped pastry and piping hot coffee. It’s a big world with tons of people. Perhaps both of you had met someone who looked similar to the other. But as Daichi sips his coffee and as you wait in the cafe for your next customer, neither of you can stop thinking of the other, wondering if you really hadn’t met before. 

And maybe it’s that curiosity that leads Daichi to regularly return to your cafe on a daily basis, that leads you to always perk and brighten up when he walks through your door. Daily morning coffee runs before work is how it all starts, but pretty soon you’re seeing him at all times of the day. Sometimes he pops in to order a sandwich and some chips for lunch. Sometimes he’ll plop down at one of your small tables, plugging his laptop into an outlet as he works for hours on end even on the weekends. And sometimes, when there’s no one else in the store, when you’re technically closed, you’ll join him, sharing a new dessert you’re testing for the menu with him and chatting away into the wee hours of the night. 

So really, it shouldn’t be a surprise when Daichi nervously enters the cafe right before closing one day, making sure no other customers are around before asking you out on an official first date. And even though you knew that the day where you two would discuss what your relationship exactly was would come soon, your face still heats up. But you eagerly nod, fingers instinctively interweaving with his when he hesitantly reaches to hold your hand and as the two of you walk hand in hand to the restaurant he’s chosen for dinner, you both can’t help but feel like your hands fit perfectly together, like you were made to be with each other. 

Romantic candlelit dinners become more frequent casual affairs after a while and the two of you find yourself cuddled up on a couch in comfortable clothing, eating a meal the two of you had cooked together more often than not. You make fun of Daichi’s bachelor closet, dragging him to go shopping and ignoring his squawking when you pay for all his new clothes while he’s still changing in the fitting room. He teases you for how flustered you get when you see him in his cop uniform, purposefully striking a cheesy pose in the doorway only to bend over in a belly bursting laugh when you just wordlessly gape and stutter at the sight. 

But the change that both of you love the most is never having to sleep alone again and your bodies slot together perfectly like two puzzle pieces when you curl up with each other in bed, letting sleep, body warmth, and rhythmic breathing lull you both into the best nights of sleep you’ve ever had. 

Well, usually that would be the case.

Daichi grumbles as you insistently shove his body until he begrudgingly sits up in bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and batting away your hands that keep on nudging him awake. He looks at you in confusion and maybe the slightest hint of irritation at being woken up at such an ungodly hour of the night, but the bright smile you flash his way softens him and he internally groans about how weak he is for you as he stumbles out of bed, sleepily accepting the bundle of clothes you throw at him and haphazardly throwing them on. 

He lets you drag him out the door, shivering a bit as the cold night air wakes him up and he holds you close to him, his cop instincts keeping him alert as he continuously scans the area. You live in a safe neighborhood, but it is the middle of the night and he’d be a hypocrite to not be aware of his surroundings when he’s always warning people not to be out by themselves late at night. But the two of you make it to what he assumes is your final destination unscathed and his jaw drops in disbelief when he sees that you’ve brought them to the neighborhood park. 

“You woke me up at 3 in the morning for this?” 

You giggle at his outburst, slapping his arm in mock anger as you pull him to sit beside you on one of the benches. 

“I checked the weather and tonight’s supposed to have the clearest skies for stargazing! And you and I both have off tomorrow, so it seemed like perfect timing. Don’t be such a grumpy old man.” 

And how can Daichi possibly be angry when you’re practically radiant, the soft glow of the stars illuminating your features as you stare up in awe, holding his hand and snuggling into his side as your free hand points at the different constellations you recognize. But the two of you freeze when you hear rustling nearby, letting out a sigh of relief when only a stray cat stalks out from behind a bush and you both watch in amusement as it regally walks towards your bench before plopping down with its stomach bared right at your feet. 

But just as Daichi is about to reach down and accept the invitation to pet the furry creature, a loud squawk echoes throughout the area and suddenly the cat is leaping to its feet as a crow swoops down and hops around on the ground just a few feet away. And the two of you watch in amazement as the two creatures play with each other, paws lazily batting at the bird while wings spread wide and teasingly brush against a whiskered face in a practiced friendly dance. 

It should be just a light hearted scene, maybe heartwarming at most, but to the two of you it’s more than that and your hearts ache, tears streaming down both your faces in a strange combination of soul crushing sorrow and gratitude for the present. But why is it so sad? Why are you both crying? The two of you shakily laugh, apologizing for your strange behavior as you hurriedly try to wipe the salty streaks away, but they don’t stop, only growing worse and turning into body wracking sobs as pain, loss, regret, and unrequited love built over what feels like multiple lifetimes slam into both of you all at once. 

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. 

But like magic it all instantly fades away when the two of you find yourselves tightly wrapped in each other’s arms, your body somehow now in Daichi’s lap as you bury your tear stained face in his chest, his arms wrapped around you in a bone crushing hold as he buries his face in the top of your head. And the two of you just stay like that for a bit as the calming breeze swirls past you, as the creatures and sounds of the night begin to fade away, as the morning sun begins its ascent into the sky, all the while exchanging words of love with each other, words of gratitude for finding each other. 

And when the tears have finally all been wiped away and the sun is shining brightly down on both of you, the two of you share a smile before Daichi is ushering both of you back home, jokingly whining about immediately going back to sleep once you both return home, both of you animatedly bantering as you walk away, ignorant of the way the cat and crow lay curled up beside each other, both their eyes never straying from your retreating figures until you’re out of sight. 

Neither of you ever discuss that night again. Neither of you ever try to understand and explain the chaotic overwhelming mess of emotions that had bombarded both of you. But every now and then, even after the two of you exchange vows, even after your shared home is filled with children’s laughters and voices, the echoes of that night follow both of you in your dreams and you wake up with tears in your eyes and a lingering ache in your hearts. 

But all it takes is a quick glance to your side, the reassurance that both of you are together, right where you belong, to completely snuff out any negative emotions and you let the comforting warmth of love lull you back into slumber, smiles gracing both your lips as Daichi holds you just a bit closer and tighter to him, as you snuggle just a bit more until you’re firmly tucked underneath his chin.  

[lassieposting]

Hey, I saw you did a hc thing for Scaracen/Dexter and I was wondering if you could do one for Ghastly/Skulduggery?? (I love the pairing but there is no content and it makes me sad) Hope you are having a good time :)

I genuinely thought I had done this for ghasdug but apparently not? I can't find it anyway

There is content in my ghasdug tag but tbh in my experience the ghasdug shippers are on discord mostly...hit me up

ANYWAY

So. Ghasdug. Ghastly wants skug from the start.

They're 16 when they meet. Ghastly gets a bit seasick and doesn't really want to go anywhere by ship, but his mama tells him he needs to, there's something important for him on that ship, that one right there, and he trusts her enough to know that she's clearly foreseen something and to just go with it.

By the time they get back to shore, he's already thinking, it's you. I was supposed to meet you.

They head back to Dublin together. Ghastly's mama takes one look at this awkward, skinny, skittish child and decides she's adopting him, and skug moves into their farmhouse and is subsequently freaked the fuck out by his very first experience of A Loving Family. Ghastly's mother like, hugs him and reminds him to wear a coat and clips his ear for swearing and makes sure he eats breakfast. He is semiferal and not used to any of this.

For a few months they settle into a comfortable routine:

- Ghastly's father spends the week making clothes, then does commission deliveries one day and takes hats and boots and suchlike to the market the next.

- Ghastly's mother has a job as a barmaid, where she gets to regularly crack some skulls and socialise, which is great for her because she is both a short-n-stocky powerhouse and a giant extrovert.

- The boys spend most of their time together, and they're supposed to do the bulk of the chores. It's not a large commercial farm - they have a vegetable garden, and some chickens, and an old carthorse, and maybe a couple of goats or a cow for milk and cheese. Ghastly and Skug are supposed to cut firewood and feed the animals and fetch groceries from the market and milk the milkable animal and fix this and repair that. All the things the parents dont have time for

Which. Is great in theory but skug has never had to do a hard day's work in his lazy aristocratic life, and develops a severe and immediate allergy to manual labour, so actually ghastly tends to do most of the chores while skug skives off and naps in the sun or chats up the girls who live on the neighbouring smallholding over the fence

And like, therein lies the problem, because they are both solidly in the grip of that cruel mistress called puberty and like. Skug was a fuckin weird-looking child. He had big ears and a sharp nose and a bunch of missing teeth and his limbs were all too long for him. But he's now rapidly growing into all the features that made him an unfortunate child, and it's already clear that he's going to be one of those people who will, inevitably, grow into handsome young men.

Which is like. Fine. Ghastly doesn't care. He's not jealous or anything. He doesn't feel a twinge when the neighbour girls only speak to him to ask about Skulduggery. Nobody here is bitter.

It's a good thing, he tells himself. Nobody will want to marry him anyway, so he's glad skug is around now so Mother can harass him to meet a nice girl and give her grandchildren. At least someone will probably want to have children with skug.

He has a dream about skug not long before his 17th. They share the attic room, and when he startles awake, skug is smirking at him from the opposite bed and asking "who is she?" and ghastly thinks oh no. He's painfully embarrassed and awkward about it, and skug rolls over and stretches and says, "relax, bespoke, your secret is safe with me" and all ghastly can focus on is that he's actually been putting some muscle on lately and when he stretches like that it does funny things to ghastly's insides.

- they start riding into town in the evenings to meet up with hopeless at the tavern, play cards and flirt with pretty girls. Or rather, skug flirts with pretty girls. He's all legs and freckles and elegant clothes, and they hang off his every word. Ghastly knows they will never look at him like that. He's Skulduggery's ugly friend. Girls only approach him to ask about skug

- and he gets it! Skug is unfairly attractive! And he's witty, and clever, and sometimes when ghastly wakes up first he stays very quiet so he can watch skug sleep, the way the dawn turns his hair to burnished copper, the way his curls fall across his forehead and the patterns his freckles make on his skin. Skug is an affectionate, tactile drunk, and hopeless looks at ghastly with something like pity whenever skug rests his chin on ghastly's shoulder or leans his head on ghastly's knee or wants a piggyback back to where they tied the horse, and ghastly takes what little he can get and says nothing.

- they're coming home drunk in the pouring rain one night, later than usual, riding doubled up on ghastly's carthorse. ghastly is behind, loosely holding on around skug's waist, and the whole way home all he can think about is how close they are and how much he wants to lean in and put his mouth on skug's neck, and by halfway home he's reduced to silently begging his semi not to pop a full on hard-on until they're home, when skug will crash like always and ghastly can take care of himself in private

- when they get home, they're locked out, which is what they get for coming home well after ghastly's parents are asleep, but this isn't a one off and ghastly's mother always leaves blankets for them to sleep in the barn. so they put the horse away and give her a rub-down/groom together and skug's shirt is practically see-through and his hair is plastered to his skull and ghastly can't take his eyes off the visible jut of collarbone where the neck of skug's shirt is undone and skug makes a couple jokes about it when their eyes meet, how ghastly has been brushing the same bit of horse for as long as it's taken skug to do half his side, but then the third time he laughs and teases, "if i didn't know better, bespoke, I'd say you wanted me" and ghastly will forever blame the alcohol but he doesn't even think about it? It comes out before he can stop himself, before he has time to remember what it could do to their friendship

- he says, "what if i did?"

- skug goes quiet for a minute, and it's a tense sort of quiet, not the thick, cloying tension that comes before a storm or an argument but the light, vibrating tension that comes with standing on a cliff's edge or drawing a bowstring, and then he ducks under the horse's head to come around to ghastly's side. He's still a little shorter than ghastly, still has to look up ever so slightly to meet his eyes.

- skug says, "do you?" like it's still half a joke, and there's a chance to back out right there, to laugh and deny it and let this become an amusing footnote at the bottom of their friendship, but ghastly ignores it. "yes."

- skug shrugs, his lip quirking, and says, "so have me."

- ghastly learns a lot that night. he also accidentally blurts "i love you" when he comes, but nobody's perfect and he's...relatively...sure skug was too distracted to have been paying attention, so he'll count that as a massive win

- morning finds them in the hayloft, tangled up in the blankets left out for them, regretting their choice of tavern beverages and, in ghastly's case, sporting a classic case of morning wood. He's kind of hoping he'll get lucky again with sleepy morning sex but skug is disgustingly hungover and just wants to burrow his head into ghastly's chest to block out the light and go back to sleep so like, out of luck.

- when skug has slept off the booze a bit more, Ghastly awkwardly broaches the question of "just how drunk were you" and they establish that they both remember fucking, neither of them regrets it, and the attraction is apparently mutual? Which is a mindfuck for self-conscious teenage ghastly, because, like, why tho

- they both get to do the walk of shame into the house when ghastly's parents wake up. Ghastly's shirt hides the nail marks skug left on his back nicely; sadly, the same cannot be said for the giant hickey he left on skug's throat, and he is eternally grateful to his parents for not bringing it up (he'll allow his mother her raised eyebrows. She did it quietly)

- they just sort of? happen, after that. There's no conversation about what they are to one another, so there are several crossed wires and feelings get hurt, but they always move past it. They both have phases of going off with someone else - but they keep ending up back together regardless of how much they argue.

[cheap-perfume-and-gasoline]

The Memory Lane Job for @badthingshappenbingo - Disowned By Family

Some minor Leverage season 5 spoilers. Fic below the cut.

"I wish I'd had another son."

It echoed through Eliot's head for the thousandth time since he left. He's eighteen and already on the run, no real home, his bed a shitty twin bunk at basic camp. The night before he left was the night he finally told his father he'd enlisted. He'd dreaded the moment for weeks, and rightfully so. He showed up for his first day with a shiny purple bruise on his cheekbone and aches all up his back and arms; his father's parting gifts.He missed the Oklahoma air but he didn't miss the screams that tore through it when he wasn't good enough, when he'd left out a dish or stayed out too late or didn't do the chores just so. He missed his bed but he didn't miss the blood and tears stained across his pillowcase. He almost missed the dusty air of the hardware store, because it was the only place his father was ever something like kind to him.

Eliot just tried to block out his father's voice in his head, screaming, "Don't you ever come back here, boy! I don't never wanna see your face here again! You hear me? Never!" over the sound of his truck's engine. He focused on the aches in his body instead. It was easier that way. It hurt less.

His drill sergeant barking orders was already familiar; Eliot never so much as blinked when he'd get up in his face and yell 'til the cows came home.

He made friends easy, always had, and that was a blessing. Most of them were in awe of him, of how serene he always seemed when they'd all get punished for some infraction or another. He taught them how to hold still, even out their breathing, block out the noise and focus on their own heartbeat 'til the storm passed.

The bruises healed.

It wasn't like Eliot never got injured during his time in the service. He'd taken more than his fair share of bullets and blows. It always felt unfair to him that some of his buddies only ever got shot once, but they bled out and somehow he kept breathing. But it weren't no good to think on it too hard for too long, or he'd get it into his head to take his own last bullet - sooner rather than later.

"I wish I'd had another son."

It was one of the last things he had of his father, that parting wish. He was long since out of basic, doing things no man should ever have to do. But it was for his country, for his brothers, or so he thought. Bad choices are still bad choices, though, no matter who you make 'em for, and they still tore at his mind every night as he struggled to find rest.

Part of him wondered, in the small hours of night, what that other son was like. The man he wasn't, couldn't be. The other Eliot, the one who stayed back home and took over the hardware store from his daddy when the old man got too old to run the damn thing. The other Eliot had a ring on his finger and a pretty girl on his arm and a kid or two clinging to his jeans by now.

The real Eliot, lying in the dark in Myanmar or Pakistan or some other forgotten, war-torn place, dust in his hair and blood on his clothes, just shut his eyes and tried not to miss the smell of Oklahoma summer.

"I wish I'd had another son."

Those weren't the only words his father gave him. They were just the ones he hung onto, that made it easier to stay on the run. Made it easier to pull the trigger, draw the knife, watch the lights go out.

He carried those words like a weight across his shoulders, like a cross on his back, even though it'd been a long time since he believed in Jesus or even set foot in a church. Eliot Spencer was long past deserving any kind of grace, and no amonut of prayer would forgive the things he'd done. He didn't care so much about getting to heaven, anyhow, didn't want paradise no more. He just wanted some rest.

"I wish I'd had another son."

He was out of the military now, and doing worse things for worse reasons and worse people, but at least the money was better.

His father's words still haunted him, though, right along with all the other ghosts that came to his mind in the dead of night. The boy his father wanted died a long time ago, and there weren't no getting him back. He lay buried in the cemetery up the street from his childhood home, and Eliot almost envied him. Almost.

"I wish I'd had another son."

It quit mattering so much, the way his father used to look at him - eyes hot with contempt and disappointment - but the old man's gaze was still burned into Eliot's mind. Sometimes it even busted out so Eliot could see his father's eyes in the mirror instead of his own.

But he couldn't feel the heat anymore, just the cold water from the tap as he rinsed out another injury. Then the sting of disinfectant and the bright, sharp stab of the needle as he stitched the wound.

It didn't matter. None of it did. He just wanted some rest.

"I wish I'd had another son."

The way Nathan Ford looked at Eliot changed everything. They were two men who'd lost - one a father, one a son - and it tore out of both of them like a bullet through the heart.

Things started to mean something again. Eliot knew they'd both feel the pain of their losses forever, a dull ache under the skin that never quite went dead. But that didn't stop Eliot from taking his second chance and clinging to it like driftwood in a hurricane. He did his damnedest to do Nate proud, even though he was drunk off his ass most of the time and a cold, manipulative jerk the rest.

Eliot would kill for Nate and the new family he'd stitched together. He'd put his body on the line if it meant they'd get out unhurt. He had a sister again, a brother, and even something resembling a father.

"I wish I'd had another son."

Those weren't the only words his father gave him. Those were just the words that made Eliot fight harder than he ever had for the people who did bother to care about him the way he cared about them. He took the blows with something like a smile on his lips, because they came for the people he loved, not from them.

But years and years before, before Eliot knew how dark everything would go, before he even knew the full ire of his father's rage, the old man gave him another set of words.

"No matter what, you can always come home."

So eventually, Eliot blew the dust off his father's advice, got in his truck, and drove down the streets that hadn't been familiar for a long, long time. He'd double-checked beforehand, made sure the old man hadn't kicked it. Stubborn brute swore he'd die in that house, and sure as hell his address was still the same, and damn close to where the team's last job had taken them, in more ways than one. Eliot brought a peace offering - a six-pack of the old man's favorite. The light was on in the kitchen window and he could just make out the sound of the football game playing on the TV.

He knocked at the door and called out for his father.

There was no answer, just the Oklahoma air thick with humidity and cricket songs.

No acknowledgement, not even a rustle or a footstep inside. Eliot tried to ignore the tightness in his jaw and the sting in his eyes. The old man could still hurt him after all.

"No matter what, you can always come home."

Eliot Spencer left the six-pack on the porch, got back in his truck, and drove on towards home.

[magpiemorality]

On the sixth day of Christmas

Kid!Deceit, Patton, Kid!Roman, Kid!Remus, Virgil & Kid!Logan, Victorian(ish) AU. Roughly Victorian-ish setting. Young Daniel (Deceit) is sent away to the countryside for unknown reasons to stay with his Uncle Patton and his cousins Roman and Remus. These are excerpts from his diary, spanning from his arrival in the beginning of winter to Christmas day.

Six Geese A’Laying

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Dear diary.

I don't like it here. The farm is smelly and loud and the house is always dirty no matter how much I complain! My cousins are rowdy and disgusting and crude, and Remus in particular had developed a fondness for flinging animal dung at me whenever I'm forced out to help. He and Roman are the most boorish, awful boys I've ever met. Why did I have to be related to them?

It's not fair. I want to go back home but Uncle Patton says it's not possible right now, and that father is expecting me to stay until the new year at least, even though that's so long! I'm going to have the worst time ever.

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

I hate it I hate it I hate it! I hate them! Roman keeps making fun of my birthmark and he won't stop even when I say so and when I pushed him over Uncle Patton was angry at me instead! I HATE IT HERE. They wouldn't even believe me when I said I was too sick to do my chores today- Uncle Patton says lying is bad but Roman and Remus do it all the time, especially when they've done something bad and want to blame me. I only do it sometimes, because they deserve it.

There was one good thing today- the man that looks after the horses in the barn let me ride the gelding for the first time. His name is Verjel (I think?) and he's very tall and very quiet and very polite. I told him it was nice to meet someone with some manners and respect in this dump and he just smiled and showed me how to feed the horses right so they don't bite your hand. I like the horses now.

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

Roman is a total beast. He hid my gloves outside in the pig sty where they got utterly ruined, and then he refused to admit to it when Uncle Patton asked. It was really obvious it was him though, and Uncle Patton said he was in big trouble. He also said it was okay when I cried, but I made him promise not to tell anyone. He also said we could go and get some more in the market in a few days, but they won't be the same. Those were my special birthday gloves from father last year, and they were made in India I think. I don't think they'll have them in the market here in this nowhere town.

Virgil (I asked how to spell his name, he said I could find it in a book and he brought me the book yesterday so I could see it, but I'm not allowed to read the book yet because Uncle Patton says it's too scary for me) let me come and take the horses out today. I helped him pull them to the pasture in the early morning, and I got up especially for it! Uncle Patton said it was good to see me finally taking an interest, but I'm not really, it's only because Virgil is showing me the more grown up stuff. Remus isn't allowed to help with the horses yet, and Roman is a scaredy cat. I'm the only one Virgil lets work with him and I think it's neat.

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

It's nearly Christmas and father has written me a letter! He says he will visit for Christmas day before he has to return to the manor to continue sorting things out. I don't know what things there are to sort out, but it sounds terribly important. Uncle Patton didn't look very happy when he read his letter, but he wouldn't tell me why. He said he was excited to hear about father's visit, but I think he was lying. Why do grown ups do that so much, and then tell us off for it?

Remus was nice to me today. He said it was very impressive that I was allowed to help with the horses so much, and he helped me carry the tack (that's what Virgil calls the saddle and the bridle and the reins and things) back to the tack room. I said I would ask if Virgil would let him ride the gelding for Christmas maybe. I hope he says yes- Remus looked very happy and it was really nice.

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

Father is delayed. He was meant to arrive the night before Christmas, but he sent word that he was stuck at home still. Roman said it meant he wasn't coming because I'm not important enough, and I hit him. Uncle Patton was very upset with both of us, but it was all Roman's stupid fault! Of course I'm important enough! Roman is a poop head and I will never like him. Uncle Patton said Roman was just upset because his father is no longer around, but he wouldn't explain what that meant and I think he was lying again because he likes Roman more, because Roman is the best at milking the cows.

When father arrives I will tell him how mean Roman has been (Remus is my friend now so not him) and he will take me far away from here. I will miss Remus and Virgil a little bit, but I miss my room and my gloves and my butler so much more. I will not miss Roman. I might miss Uncle Patton a little bit, but only if he's not mean to me again before then.

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

Father is unable to come for Christmas. I think I may run away.

Daniel

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Dear diary,

I'm in big trouble and I might not be allowed to help Virgil with the horses again. Uncle Patton has banned me going anywhere without him after I nearly froze to death in the barn. Which isn't true! I was just fine sleeping there and I was just a bit cold, and Virgil found me right away in the morning! Uncle Patton was really angry though, and he cried a bit which was strange, and even Roman has been very quiet recently. I was only in bed asleep for two days, not even half a week! I was just really tired, I don't know why they're blaming me.

Remus made me a drawing when I was in bed. It's really ugly but I love it. It has me, Remus, Virgil and the gelding in a field fighting an evil dragon that has eaten lots of people. It's a bit horrid but it makes me happy to see it anyway. Roman hasn't spoken to me at all. I wonder if he's sick too?

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

Roman had a horrible nightmare last night. It woke everyone up, and even Remus was crying about it. Uncle Patton promised it was just a bad dream but Roman didn't eat any breakfast and Remus was acting weird after they had private twin time and talked about it. I think they talked about it, anyway. Uncle Patton says there are some things that aren't meant to be shared and that I mustn't ask what it's about, because if Roman wants to tell me he will. I think that's silly- he never wants to tell me anything! So how will I know what's going on if I don't ask?

Father sent a gift ahead of Christmas to say sorry. I have put it under the tree and I'll open it when he should have been here. Why couldn't he come for one day? I asked Virgil and he says it's only a medium long trip, and can be done in a day in the carriage. Then he said I must promise him to tell him if I want to go away anywhere so he can help me, and I did. I won't go anywhere though. Father didn't put anything in his message about when I was sick. Maybe Uncle Patton didn't tell him? He would probably have come if he knew.

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

Tomorrow is Christmas. The animals are in the barn and we all went to sing carols at the church down the lane, and me and Remus and Roman sat on the gelding while Virgil and Uncle Patton walked. It was really pretty inside and everyone was really jolly and there were mince pies and another boy named Logan played chase with us so it was really fun. It was really late because it was called midnight mass and I was so tired I fell asleep on the gelding and Virgil had to piggy back me home instead. Then we all had a sleepover in Remus and Roman's room, after we put our stockings out and some carrots out for the reindeer. I hope I don't get coal- Remus says he knows someone who got coal once, but he never has even though he's not always good at not being naughty. I used to hope Roman would get coal, but he's been a lot nicer since I was sick and I think we could be nearly friends now. So I don't hope he gets coal.

I wish father were here to blow out the candle. Uncle Patton doesn't do it quite right. But he's here to do it now anyway, so goodnight.

Love,

Daniel

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Dear diary,

I had the best Christmas ever! There was a big turkey to eat and no one got any coal and I got some new gloves from Roman and Remus and a book about horses from Uncle Patton and the bestest of all was from Virgil- I got my own horse riding boots! They're not new but they almost fit really well and they're shiny because Virgil cleaned them lots and he says we can add extra socks to make sure I can wear them right away! Father's gift was just a toy car but I'm not grateful, even if Uncle Patton says I should be. I gave it to Roman because he likes cars and he gave me a hug. It was nice.

When we went outside to play in the snow I was on Roman's team against Remus and we won, and then we switched and I was with Remus and we won again! I think I'm good at snowball fights. Virgil told us all a story after dinner and we went out to collect the eggs, and Uncle Patton made a funny joke about the geese, but they don't lay eggs at Christmas time, Logan told me that when we met, so I don't know why it was funny.

I love it here. I never want to leave ever!

Love,

Daniel

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12 Days of Sides-mas Masterpost

[lovemesomesurveys]

.・゜゜・. Holy Cow A Survey .・゜゜・. by junkie_dreams 1. What made you pick up the last book you started reading? It was the next one in a series that I’ve been into, so of course I had to see what happens.  2. Have you received any bad or troubling news lately? Just the ongoing bad news we’ve been receiving this year so far. 3. When was the last time you were relieved about something? I was glad that my doctor said I could do my next two, possibly three, appointments over the phone. 4. What about your life concerns you the most? A lot of things, such as my health related issues. 5. Is there a common thing most people seem to do without trouble, but it scares you (talking on the phone, driving, interviews, etc)? When was the last time you had to do one of these kinds of things? Talking on the phone/making phone calls is definitely one of them. There’s a lot of things, though. I’m a big baby.

6. Is a pen pal something you would enjoy? If so, what kinds of little things would you send your pen friends? In 3rd grade my class had pen pals and then at the end of the year we got to meet them in person during a field trip and ate lunch together. It was fun then, but no that’s not something I’d be interested in now. 7. Describe a time when you were there for a friend? I don’t have any friends, but I try to be there for my family.  8. When was the last time you went somewhere for the first time? One of the restaurants at Disneyland earlier this year. 9. What is a situation that makes you feel especially confident? Confidence? Don’t know her. 10. What was the subject of your most recent conversation? My brother and I were watching this documentary last night on the ID channel about Jeffrey Dahmer and were discussing about it. 11. Hypothetically and generally speaking, how would you go about breaking up with someone? Is there anything you would make sure to say, or perhaps not say? I did that once. I just had to be honest and tell them how I felt. I was nervous about it and felt horrible, but I knew it wasn’t fair for either of us to keep things going if I wasn’t happy or all the way in.  12. Are you more of a night person or a day person? What is it about the night/day that you favor? Night. I like my night routine of eating ramen, watching YouTube videos, listening to ASMR, scrolling through Tumblr, and doing surveys. 13. What do you find particularly offensive? Would you say you're easy or difficult to offend? I don’t think I’m easily offended. 14. Is there a belief you have that most others around you don't have? Do you share this belief with others, or do you tend to keep it to yourself? Have you ever offended anyone with this belief? I tend to keep a lot of my opinions to myself.  15. Do you consider internet friendships as important as offline friendships, or do you view them differently? I’ve had really close online friends in the past. I felt closer to them than my “real life” friends at the time.  16. When was the last time you visited relatives or friends of the family? Is visiting family something you enjoy? I haven’t been to anyone’s house in several months. 17. What did you do for the last holiday or event you celebrated? For Easter my family and I had a nice Easter dinner and watched a movie. 18. If you've moved out from home, what was the scariest thing about it? What was/is your favorite thing about it? I’m still living at home with my family. 19. Are there any fictional characters you like even though they're "bad" or "evil?" What qualities draw you to a character? Yeah. The villains in movies/TV shows can be so badass and just... so villain-y. hahah. I don’t know. And sometimes really hot, like Eric Northman in True Blood (played by the gorgeous Alexander Skarsgard). 20. What are your thoughts on "forgiving" murderers, rapists, attackers, etc? Do you think it's even possible to forgive these people? Forgiving doesn’t mean what they did was okay, it just means that you’re not allowing them to have a hold over your life and fill you with anger and hatred. Even still, I can’t imagine being able to say I forgive someone like that. Like, I couldn’t say those words.  21. What was the last series you finished watching? Do you have any plans to begin another? I’m about to finish Defending Jacob; there’s only one episode left. I’ve also been binge watching The Gilmore Girls and I’m almost done with season 5 and there’s only 2 seasons left.  22. What is one way in which you are different from a year ago? What is one way in which you are still the same? I don’t feel like I’ve changed since last year. There’s definitely a lot I need to work on and change, but I really don’t see that happening this year. I’ve been saying that each passing year the past few years, though... :/ 23. When was the last time you had to walk somewhere in the rain? How about the snow? Years ago in the rain. I’ve never had to walk anywhere in the snow.  24. Are there any types of survey questions you dread or don't like answering for whatever reason? What kinds of questions do you like best? Basic questions get annoying, stuff about relationships, sex, marriage, and children, and ones that ask my opinion on controversial stuff. Listing stuff like favorite scents gets really annoying, too. I’ve listed them SO many times.  25. If you could learn about anything without the stress of grades or cost, what kind of classes would you take? I don’t want to take anymore classes. I like reading up on/learning about stuff on my own at my own pace in my own time. 26. What was the last item of clothing you purchased? Do you wear it often? I just ordered a couple shirts. I haven’t received them, yet. 27. Has anything made you feel nostalgic lately? My mom was going through some stuff last night and came across a few of my baby photos. D:  28. What was the last chore you completed? I straightened up my room a bit. 29. Name a song you've listened to today? I haven’t listened to any music so far today. 30. Is there anything you've promised yourself you'll never do again? Yeah. Some I did again, though. 

[purplesurveys]

800

.·゜゜·. Holy Cow A Survey .·゜゜·.  (and holy cow, it’s my 800th on here) by junkie_dreams

1. What made you pick up the last book you started reading? I started reading it for a while, then thesis made me too busy to read it for a few weeks, then when I was finished with that I realized I’ve left the book alone so I continued it and proceeded to finish the whole thing.

2. Have you received any bad or troubling news lately? All things revolving around Covid19, George Floyd, & Trump < Pretty much, though replace Trump with Duterte. He’s being such a cranky ass about hastily passing this new bill that will essentially allow warrantless arrests to anyone complaining about him on the internet, so everyone’s kinda stressing out about that right now. 

3. When was the last time you were relieved about something? Since Tuesday, every day that I’ve woken up without a fever is a relief. Another thing is that it’s Gabie’s birthday today and I was relieved to find out that she loved the surprise I made for her :) I pooled all her friends together and made them do video birthday greetings and submit photos that they have with her and I compiled it in a simple short film. It turned out super cute!

4. What about your life concerns you the most? Anything job-wise. They say 2020 graduates are heading into the worst job market in a very long time, and I think that’s pretty straightforward information.

5. Is there a common thing most people seem to do without trouble, but it scares you (talking on the phone, driving, interviews, etc)? When was the last time you had to do one of these kinds of things? Talking on the phone, ordering in a restaurant, and asking for help in any kind of store. I had to talk to a Grab delivery driver the other day to help him with directions going to my house; andddd I don’t usually have to recite my order or ask for help at a store myself because my girlfriend will often be the one to speak for me HAHAHAH.

6. Is a pen pal something you would enjoy? If so, what kinds of little things would you send your pen friends? No, only because writing exhausts me these days. I only enjoy writing for people I already know very well and love, and I wouldn’t feel invested enough to write to people I don’t know all that much yet.

7. Describe a time when you were there for a friend? Angela was sad the other day so I dropped her short messages to let her know I was there for her. She never replied, but it’s okay; it was just important to me that she knew I wasn’t going to leave her alone.

8. When was the last time you went somewhere for the first time? I dunno, I obviously haven’t gone around the city in months...though I’m thinking it’s the milk tea place we have at campus, called Nomu. I was there to pick up a drink a week before lockdown.

9. What is a situation that makes you feel especially confident? If it’s a situation that I know I can handle, like a test I studied a lot for; or if it’s a situation where I have a lot of support.

10. What was the subject of your most recent conversation? My dad was asking if he can have one of my soju bottles (my mom recently bought me five) and was also asking what flavor is really good. That prompted me to walk over and hesitatingly point out the good flavors, until he said, “Just kidding, I was just checking to see if this will make you stand up. You’re so predictableeeeeeeee” hahahaha

11. Hypothetically and generally speaking, how would you go about breaking up with someone? Is there anything you would make sure to say, or perhaps not say? I’d do it personally, say everything there is to say, and let’s face it, I see myself crying a lot too because I can never have serious conversations without tearing up lol.

12. Are you more of a night person or a day person? What is it about the night/day that you favor? I like the nightlife more. I hate the sun and when it’s bright out, so I’m most active when it’s evening and the lights and stars are pretty.

13. What do you find particularly offensive? Would you say you’re easy or difficult to offend? Mostly anything racist, misogynist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, biphobic, acephobic, and anti-poor. I’m very alert about these things and will call out anyone making insensitive sentiments about any of them.

14. Is there a belief you have that most others around you don’t have? Do you share this belief with others, or do you tend to keep it to yourself? Have you ever offended anyone with this belief? Ok so it’s technically the opposite of belief but I am atheist in a predominantly Catholic country. I’m very vocal about it except with my family. I probably have offended some people by stuff I’ve said or shared, but I don’t care. If they choose to ignore the myriad of issues surrounding their religion, they’re part of the problem and the reason why I’m so wholly against it.

15. Do you consider internet friendships as important as offline friendships, or do you view them differently? I value offline friendships more.

16. When was the last time you visited relatives or friends of the family? Is visiting family something you enjoy? I visited my lola, aunt, and cousins last Sunday when I was sick, since the doctor we were heading to lives in the same village. I hadn’t seen them since December I think? so my lola cried when she saw us walk through the front gate :’) I love visiting family, whoever it may be. It’s always fun to catch up, as long as conversations don’t turn into politics lol.

17. What did you do for the last holiday or event you celebrated? For my birthday we were stuck in lockdown so I couldn’t really do anything, but we had lots of food which is the easiest way to make me happy anyway. My parents and sister bought a blueberry cheesecake but had the blueberry part scraped off and then they crushed a whole pack of Oreos to turn it into an Oreo cheesecake lol; and Angela sent me a box of sushi.

18. If you’ve moved out from home, what was the scariest thing about it? What was/is your favorite thing about it? I haven’t yet.

19. Are there any fictional characters you like even though they’re “bad” or “evil?” What qualities draw you to a character? Yeah. Many antagonists speak the truth, and that makes it so easy to root for them. It’s this case very often in pro wrestling.

20. What are your thoughts on “forgiving” murderers, rapists, attackers, etc? Do you think it’s even possible to forgive these people? I don’t even forgive friends who betray me, so much less would I forgive assholes like the ones you listed. It’s definitely possible; I just choose not to do it because that’s my way of being in peace.

21. What was the last series you finished watching? Do you have any plans to begin another? I’m awwwwwwwful at finishing series man. I’m still on Descendants of the Sun but I also started a rewatch of The Big Bang Theory lmao. I want to finish DOTS first though and then maybe move on to Crash Landing On You, another Korean drama. Big Bang’s not really a priority for me and just something I wanna watch when I don’t want anything too heavy.

22. What is one way in which you are different from a year ago? What is one way in which you are still the same? I’m a lot less afraid of dealing with people (and been better with it) thanks to the stuff I’ve had to do in the last year, like my internship and heading external relations for my org. I’m still the same in the sense that I’m still deathly terrified in the last few moments before I do the aforementioned dealing with people lol. Once I jump into the conversation I’m perfect, but I take f o r e v e r to get prepared.

23. When was the last time you had to walk somewhere in the rain? How about the snow? I don’t like walking in the rain and we don’t get snow.

24. Are there any types of survey questions you dread or don’t like answering for whatever reason? What kinds of questions do you like best? Questions that make me think too much or are too deep. I also don’t like basic surveys. Random is where it’s at. Ask me what I got at the last restaurant I was at, places I plan to visit soon, the last time I got mad, stuff like that.

25. If you could learn about anything without the stress of grades or cost, what kind of classes would you take? Law.

26. What was the last item of clothing you purchased? Do you wear it often? Two identical tops in different colors. I haven’t gotten the chance to wear either a lot because lockdown happened shortly after I bought them.

27. Has anything made you feel nostalgic lately? Sure. When I was compiling stuff for Gab’s surprise video, I came across some very old photos of us and of her and Angela.

28. What was the last chore you completed? Wash my plate from breakfast.

29. Name a song you’ve listened to today? 7/11 by Beyoncé, heh.

30. Is there anything you’ve promised yourself you’ll never do again? Drink buko juice. I had to drink it for the first few days of my UTI treatment and it’s so disgustinggggggg.

[i-love-charles]

Five Finger Fillet I

Chapter 1/3

Notes: Javier Escuella + Female Reader, Uncle Being Uncle, Slow Burner

Wordcount: 

A comfortable silence fills the campgrounds at Clemens Point, everyone keeping busy with either chores or planning their next stage robbery. Your own hands working feverishly at a bloodied shirt in the soapy basin at your bent knees; your nostrils flaring in muted disgust at the running red pigment laying claim to Arthur’s shirt collar – yet another shootout was your guess. It was rare that the camp ever had the opportunity to slow itself down so when the silence was cut short by an enthused Uncle jumping from his horse and practically hopping through camp, you let out a small groan to Mary-Beth besides you whom had perched herself against the provisions wagon with her face practically pressed into her sappy romance novel. Your reaction to Uncle’s arrival elicited a small, stifled giggle from her soft hidden features.

“Dutch! A ranch nearby…drunken farmhand…heard of cattle unguarded at night. I got the information from a man at the saloon in Rhodes, said there’s about thirty or forty cows out back!” Uncle, wheezing between sentences, shouted out to Dutch as he made his way to the cheap wooden table laying in the centre of camp where Ditch sat idly reading his new favourite Evelyn Miller novel.

“Then get off your backside Uncle and check it out, bring the cattle to our friends Clay and Clive at Clemens Cove, take either Javier or ___ with you.” He chimed whilst still whisking through the words in front of him. Javier was the first to react at the sound of his name - his attention lifting from the map of a homestead to the north of Rhodes, someplace called ‘Lonnie’s Shack’, to the conversation before him.  

“Dutch, come on. I’m not going rustling with Uncle, he’ll get me killed, hermano!” He groaned rolling up the map of Lemoyne and placing it on a crate nearby. You quickly dried your damp hands against the bedroll beneath you and rose to your feet; you definitely didn’t want to go with Uncle either, he was useless or almost always too intoxicated to actually help. You and Javier both made your way to the table where Dutch lay back unamused.  

“I’ve got too much to do here, Dutch.” You replied, countering Javier’s complaint.

“Uncle can’t go alone, he can barely dress himself, so decide who’s going with him or I will.” Dutch spoke up whilst closing the book and making his way to his tent, mumbling something along the lines of ‘just bring back money’ and whipping at the . Your eyes met Javier’s, almost waiting for him to be the gentleman and offer to go.

“I’m planning for a homestead, I can’t go, chica.” He explained, his tone almost pleading for you to take pity.

“Your planning can wait, Javier. I’ve got to wash blood out of the men’s shir-”  

“Why don’t you make it exciting and decide with a game of ‘five finger fillet’?” Uncle interrupted whilst twiddling the tip of his knife against the pad of his index finger. Once he let the words lose from his mouth, he looked up at you both knowing he’d started something. He brought the blade down to wedge into the grainy wood of the table and proceeded his escape to his usual spot at the foot of a shaded oak tree - hat tilted over his face and an open bottle of spirits at his lap.

You hated to give him credit, but the idea was actually a very exciting one, both you and Javier were more than competent when it came to the game. You relied more on precision when it came to winning tactics, whereas Javier’s skilled lied in his stamina. Almost reading your mind Javier sat himself down at the table, dislodging the knife and offering the handle to you with a roguish grin plastered at the corners of his mouth.

“Let’s not waste any time since we’ve both obviously got so much to do. One round, thirty-seconds each. Whad’ya say?” He chimed, you countered his question with the same grin and took the blade from his grip, joining him on the chair adjacent and proceeding to lay your palm flat against the cold wooden surface, the blade pressing down to meet the wood some inches from your thumb.

“Time starts with your first jab.” Javier retorted from across the table, arms crossed, and eyes fixated on your hand.

The first jab of the knife landed perfectly in the space between your thumb and index finger – each jab between your digits landing gracefully quick while the seconds counted down. Your mind chose to zone out Javier’s burning gaze and instead focused itself on the task at hand. The blade made its way through each of your fingers again, ever so slightly meeting with a small etch of skin on your ring finger but not hard enough to draw blood or raise Javier’s attention. The sun beamed down, and its rays caught against sharp metal spike that continually disappeared against the splintering surface between your fingers. Your grip on the knifes handle was strong and rigid, expertly raising and dropping the blade down, never faltering.  

“…4, 3, 2, 1. Seven laps, not bad at all, chica.”  

His round was even quicker, the blade stabbing down precisely between his fingers and his eyes purposefully fixated and engrossed into yours. Even when the table began to creak, and its thin legs began to stumble after every harsh collision of the blade he still made a point of never breaking away his gaze. You knew this was his intimidation tactic but, honestly, you weren’t intimidated at all. His eyes were beautiful, even when they were practically covered by the thick rim of his hat. In those few seconds that your gazes fixed upon each other you took the opportunity to really admire his chiselled features, particularly the sharp shapely facial hair that lay against his skin or even the thick, dark strands of hair showering around his face that broke from the ponytail behind his neck.

“…4, 3, 2, 1. Guess you better saddle you and Uncle up, Javier.” His round finished falling just short of your seven-lap score. He jabbed the knife into the wood and let out a defeated sigh.  

“Uncle, will you go and saddle up Boaz and while I get changed?” Javier’s question wasn’t met with an answer, not even the typical Uncle groan that we’d all become accustomed to whenever Uncle was asked to complete a chore. The usual spot Uncle slept at all day under the oak tree was vacant, until a stumbling and slurring Uncle emerged from behind one of the wagons, a new whisky bottle in hand.

“I ast’ that gal to give me some…ring dang d-” Uncle collapsed to the floor at your feet mid-song and immediately began loudly snoring whilst clutching at his whisky like he wanted to buy it dinner and take it to bed.

Your first thought was the inevitability of doing this job with Javier alone, and this realisation gave you immediate butterflies. Although you hadn’t been on many jobs before this, you were glad this one would be with Javier. He’d always been the nicest to you, and you had held a large soft-spot for him since day one, otherwise you wouldn’t have assisted Hosea in teaching him English.

“I’ll go and saddle up.” You groaned, stepping over Uncle and making your way to the hitching posts whilst trying to conceal the little smile that threatened to spill from your lips from Javier’s eyeline. Oh God, why did this man make you so blush and nervous? It’s pathetic.

Part 2

[keelywolfe]

FIC: Blue

Summary:  Rus had never meant to lie to his brother. 

Notes: More from @cheapbourbon ‘s village AU.  I’ll post these to AO3 when I come up with a better title than ‘that AU that I can’t stop writing’. 

In order, they are:

Crimson

Yellow 

Warnings: There’s some implied sexual harassment in this one, (not from Edge, I don’t play that way. Not Blue, either, because no.) Just a heads up. Also, I am taking serious liberties here with ideas about society. This ain’t exactly colonial America.  Also, in this version I picture Blue as the elder brother. 

~~*~~

Rus woke up later than he’d meant on Wednesday. His sleep had been troubled, knowing he was going to sneak back out to the wood the next day and the sun had already risen by the time he’d groggily woken. A quick peek into his brother’s room confirmed that Blue was still asleep and Rus crept downstairs, skipping over the creaky third step and slipping out the door.

Morning chores were simple and done quickly, gathering the eggs from their few chickens and quickly milking their amicable old cow, but he’d meant to pack a better lunch this time and had to creep back inside to try doing so quickly and quietly. To no avail; Rus managed to wrap up a few cold boiled eggs and last night’s biscuits, but he was still fumbling with a bit of salt pork when he heard his brother coming downstairs.

“Brother?” Blue came in, rubbing at his sockets. “You’re up very early.” He eyed the food on the table, the half-filled gunny sack. “And what are you up to this day?”

It was so difficult to lie to his brother, Rus settled for a half-truth. “i was going to sneak off to the southern fields while you baked with the matrons today.”

Blue hummed in soft amusement, “You were never fond of the smell of yeast. Wouldn’t you rather go into town, though? Some of the others play checkers at the store while their mothers are here.”

“no, i wouldn’t,” Rus said shortly. “they don’t like me, blue, beating them at checkers is hardly going to change that.”

“I know,” Blue said, soft with sympathy. They both knew. After their parents had died, Blue had stepped up as head of the household, and knowing he had little skill for farming, he’d taken a ‘prenticeship with Healer Gestor, taking over when the old man had passed himself. Blue was a useful member of the community, well-liked and respected. Rus was nothing more than the younger brother and too ill in his youth to learn a skill. It was well known that he had no dowry of his own to make him appeal to any of the youthful men and no property to draw any young ladies. There was no benefit to befriending Rus, other than only himself, and that didn’t seem to be enough for any of the villagers. Except…

“Elder Smith approached me the other day. He offered me a position as a house boy, but I think we both know that isn't what Elder Smith really wanted,” Rus told Blue unhappily.

He did not tell his brother the way Elder Smith had nearly cornered him in the shop, in the far back by the pickle barrels, the way his hand on Rus’s shoulder had squeezed painfully hard when he asked and hadn’t released him right away when Rus declined. He didn’t tell his brother that he’d nearly run from the shop after, walking quickly home and that was when he’d decided to make another trip to the woods.

His brother only nodded sourly, under no illusions about Elder Smith. Unmarriageable was not undesirable.

“there’s no money in it, but i think you understand why i prefer to nap in the field.”

"We're fine with the coin I bring in, Rus,” Blue told him firmly. He took over Rus’s fixings, neatly wrapping the salt pork in a little brown paper. Then he went to the pantry and there was the sound of rummaging. When he reappeared, it was with a handful of spice cookies that Rus hadn’t seen before and was that not like his brother, to take the opportunity to spoil him with his affection. He wrapped those quickly as well, tucking each package into Rus’s sack. “You don't need to work and you need to take care of yourself."

"brother," he sighed. "i haven't taken ill in ages."

"Because you take care of yourself," Blue countered swiftly, "so continue to do so. If napping in the fields on baking day helps you, then you have my blessing. Go on, then, before the matrons come."

Guilt gnawed at him, "i love you, brother."

Blue gave him a gentle smile, "And I you. Now get you gone, fool, before they see you."

With a last quick hug, Rus did as he was bid, and the taste of guilt was heavy at the back of his mouth. He swallowed it away and kept on determinedly, his sack over his shoulder.

~~*~~

It was ridiculous, he supposed later.

In the same little clearing they’d met before, Rus was sitting just as he always had, only this time he’d spread an old blanket out on the leaves, his parcels set to the side in anticipation. As though he was planning a picnic with one of his agemates, Rus thought ruefully, utterly ridiculous, but he didn’t put anything away. He only drew his cloak tighter around him and waited.

Sooner than he expected, he heard crunching steps approaching and that alone almost sent him hiding behind the tree. Edge’s appearance settled him and he realized Edge must have deliberately made sound as he came so as not to startle him, as Rus had never heard him before.

It made a strange sort of warmth grow in his soul and Rus smiled up at him, “hello!”

Edge stood back and seemed to consider that, so Rus tried again, adding a little wave this time, “hello?”

“Hello?” Edge parroted back, with the same questioning inflection and Rus couldn’t help smiling.

“close enough,” he sighed. He patted the blanket coaxingly, trying hopefully, “come sit with me?”

That had a better response. Edge settled to sit on the edge of the blanket and seemed interested in it, running a hand over it. It was merely an old blanket that Blue had received as payment for some duty or another, nearly worn out from use, the once fine blues and greens faded. Edge seemed to find the pattern and the fabric fascinating, perhaps not surprising considering the rough weave of his own clothing, but honestly Rus hadn’t come out here to teach a weaving lesson, even if he could.

He wasn’t sure why he came out here.

“i don’t suppose we’ll have much to chat about,” Rus murmured. It was enough to catch Edge’s attention and his eye lights snapped back up to Rus. To Rus’s dismay, he began to reach for his pouch, probably to offer more of his dry meat and Rus gestured frantically.

“wait! um, no, no, no,” Rus stammered out and Edge paused, looking at him suspiciously. Maybe Edge thought he only came out for a free lunch once a week? Well, Rus was more than happy to disabuse him of that notion. He beamed at Edge proudly, laying out each item in its paper wrapping, “here, i brought lunch this time!”

To his surprise, Edge didn’t look happy or even interested. He…he looked angry, and Rus faltered, his hands falling into his lap. “what? what’s wrong?”

Confused, he watched as Edge shot to his feet, pacing around the clearing and gesturing while saying words that Rus didn’t understand. The context seemed obvious enough, though. He finally turned away, arms crossed over his chest and giving Rus his back, and even Rus understood the insult in that. He didn’t believe Rus was enough of a danger to keep even half an eye on him.

“well, fine, then!” Rus snapped, unaccountably hurt, “i’ll eat lunch on my own, thank you, and you can enjoy eating your pride!”

And he did, snatching up one of his brother’s biscuits and biting into it defiantly, chewing furiously. To his shame, he started sniffling, sockets burning and tears brimming.

He wiped away the tears angrily even as more spilled free, furiously embarrassed but he hadn’t expected to feel this way out here. Here was supposed to be frightening and wonderful and different, and instead, it was just like home. Being rejected for reasons he couldn’t understand.

He flinched when Edge suddenly crouched next to him, he hadn’t even heard him move, but his anger was softened. He cupped Rus's cheek in his hand, wiping away tears with his thumb and looked into Rus’s teary sockets with intensity, until finally, with an aggrieved sound he sank down to sit on the blanket, poking at the provisions that Rus had brought. The salt pork was well received as well as the eggs, though the biscuits were firmly rejected. The cookies, on the other hand…

Edge picked one up and sniffed it, brow furrowing, and Rus kept his smile to himself. He took a tentative bite, chewing briefly, and then paused, his sockets widening, before cramming the entire cookie into his mouth, chewing furiously. Rus couldn’t help laughing, delighted.

At the sound, Edge looked up at him, head tilted, and his gaze was soft.  He reached out to cup Rus’s face again and this time, he leaned in.

“wait,” Rus began, panicked, and Edge made a soft, hushing sound.

“No, no, no,” he said, softly, and it sounded like a promise. The touch of his hand was light, steadying, as Edge leaned in close to breathe in deeply against Rus’s cervical vertebra, shifting upward to nuzzle softly against the side of his skull. He didn’t hold, didn’t grip, didn’t hurt, and Rus trembled, his hands clenched in his lap and the only thing he felt when Edge pulled away was disappointment.

“edge,” he whispered, and earned a smile.

Edge touched his thumb against Rus’s mouth, stroking softly, “No, no, no?” he prompted.

“i…i can’t,” Rus stammered, his soul pounding, he wanted, he did, but…

“No, no, no,” Edge repeated and nodded, pulling away completely. He took the moment to steal another cookie while Rus pulled together his tattered composure, taking the last cookie almost absently when Edge offered it to him. The sweet sugar-spice melted on his tongue and the taste made him think of his brother, of home.

He needed to go home.

With a shaky breath, Rus began gathering up the remains of their meal, stuffing the lot of it back into his gunny sack. When he got to the blanket, he hesitated, holding it bundled against his chest.

“you...you can have it, if you want?” Rus said, though he knew Edge didn’t understand a word of it. Instead, he pressed the blanket gently into Edge’s arms, encouraging him to take it. He did, holding it, looking at it with confusion. “keep it,” Rus tried. He patted the blanket, then Edge, “edge. for edge.”

Slowly, Edge nodded, though he didn’t seem any less confused. Rus backed away from him, smiling helplessly at the sight of one of the fearsome creatures of the forest clutching an old, worn blanket like a child with their lovey.

It was difficult to turn away but Rus finally did before he tripped like a fool, making his way home. The southern fields were fallow and unfarmed, tales telling of them being cursed, but Rus was still very careful as he crept out of the woods and into the safety of known lands. The walk home was long enough for contemplative thoughts and when he made his way to his own front door and opened it, he sniffed appreciatively at the aroma of yeasty baked foods rather than the sour smell of rising dough.

Blue was sitting at the table, shelling peas, and he gave Rus a warm, teasing smile, “Did you sleep well?”

He couldn’t lie to him, not again, and instead Rus offered simply, “i had a good day.”

With a sigh, he sank down into a chair to help his brother, letting Blue’s chatter wash over him as he offered whatever idle gossip the matrons had brought with them along with yeast cakes. Rus listened half-heartedly, nodding when it was required, but his thoughts were on the woods, on Edge and his blanket, and on the next Wednesday.

 tbc

Read the next one

[theinquisitivej]

SteamHeart Episode 11 Reactions

Chapter Eleven: Amidst the Wolves

You can listen to the full episode here.

I’ve taken to bringing up the epilogue of each chapter at the end of these episode write-ups, but this time I’ll be tackling it first. In ‘Amidst the Wolves’, we hear about Annie Oakley’s childhood, before the Wendigo, before Frank, before the story of New Century, and the details we hear in this episode are pretty much what happened in real life to the real Annie Oakley. Annie may be a pivotal character in the ongoing story of this series, but she really was a sharpshooting legend in our world, and she really did marry another sharpshooter named Frank Butler. In the epilogue, Alex tells us that he took some creative liberties in one or two scenes to build tension, and that the old man being the person Annie took the name ‘Oakley’ from may have been a myth, but the kindly man did exist and did help Annie when she needed it. This chapter is an unbelievable story, and it’s a fascinating detour from what’s going on in the present day in SteamHeart which gives us an insight into the past of one of the most charismatic members of Team Steam.

         Gazing out at Washington as the sun begins to rise, Annie feels a little introspective, and starts remembering her past. We hear of the home her parents had built for themselves in which she was born as Phoebe Anne Mosey. They were a frontier family, living in a log cabin not too far from the woods. What the young Annie most enjoyed doing was exploring the local surroundings with her father as they set traps for small wildlife. Annie seems to have always had a taste for the freedom of the outdoors, which makes sense when you consider how well suited she is to the life of a Cartographer scouting the wilds of the Reunified States. It also makes the listener realise how compelling Seth’s offer to her in Arlington must have been; if Annie has always been drawn to nature, then the prospect of letting go of her humanity and embracing the wild impulse to run free as a Wendigo must have been truly tempting for her.

         One day, her father was caught in a blizzard, coming home in a bad state and on the brink of death, which he succumbed to a few weeks later. Annie’s early sharpshooting days were inextricably connected to her father’s rifle, so the connection she must feel with her father through what would come to be one of her most impressive and defining talents would make this loss especially painful. When they sold their cow Pink, Annie tells us this was another hard loss, reminding me of the grief she expressed when her horse couldn’t go on any further and had to be put down in Secret Rooms. Annie cares deeply about the animals in her care. After more loss with her sister dying of tuberculosis, Annie eventually gets the chance to begin her sharpshooting career when she begins hunting to provide for her family, at first for food, but, when she learns she can sell what she hunts to others, she commits herself to this activity. Much like Hrao in Tiger’s Eye, Annie uses hunting to provide for her family (or tribe) as well as help her cope with hard times. The difference is that Hrao mindlessly threw herself into hunting because she didn’t know what else to do, whereas the sharpshooting and hunting lifts Annie’s spirits because she gets to do what she’s good at and be paid for it. Hunting helps Annie, but it doesn’t really help Hrao, because not every way of coping with grief is going to work for every person.

         Some time after that, Annie is sent to live at the Darke County Infirmary where she can learn skills like sewing, until she eventually decides to live with the Slade family when they come looking for someone to help look after their young child. At first, this seems like a chance to get away from the confines of the infirmary and get closer to the woods which Annie so dearly misses. Soon after arriving at the Slade household, however, Annie realises what an awful place this is. Josiah and Judith Slade set Annie to work all hours of the day, having her wake up at 4:00 in the morning to milk the cows, prepare breakfast, and do every other household chore under the sun before sitting her down in the evening to look after the baby, when Annie was exhausted. These were cruel people, and they treated Annie like a slave. We hear of one terrible moment when (and sadly I must remind you all that this really did happen) Judith Slade punished Annie for falling asleep at her post by casting her outside into the snow without shoes and locking the door. It’s horrible to hear someone go through such abuse, especially as we know Annie lost her father to the cold, which would make these circumstances particularly frightening. As Annie prays, she wonders whether God was putting her through this because he was angry at her hunting, the part of herself she had once taken such pride in. Thankfully, she knows that bad things have happened in her life well before she ever picked up a rifle, so she doesn’t continue to blame herself. Her thoughts turn instead to what she can do to leave this place, before Josiah kicks her back inside. Her description of his rough grip makes the trauma all too real. It’s horrible to hear, and even worse to listen to after learning that someone really was put through this.

         Years go by, and the Slades, or the ‘Wolves’ as Annie refers to them, continue to abuse her. One day, after catching a glimpse of one of the letters from her mother that the Slades had been keeping from her, she learns that her mother was requesting that Annie be sent back home to them. This leads to her deciding to get away from these Wolves. A few days later, she gets her chance when the Slades are out. She gathers her possessions, as well as the 48¢ she had saved (she knows where the Slades keep their money but consciously makes the decision not lower herself by stealing from them), and a little bread before walking out. She heads to the nearest station, not by the road where she may encounter her captors, but through the forest, a natural landscape where she can feel safe and content. At the station, she waits for her train, only to see the Wolves searching for her. A train draws into the station; the next few minutes will decide Annie’s fate. Just then, an older gentleman standing next to Annie observes her frightened state, assesses the Slades that she is so nervous to see, and decides to help her by obscuring her from view while she boards the train. Once on board, a conductor requests her ticket, and she realises she doesn’t have enough to buy one – her decision to not take the Slade’s money has had a knock-on effect, and for a moment it seems like her morals may just have cost her her freedom. The Wolves are checking the windows of each carriage and could catch sight of her at any minute. But the old man tells the conductor that she’s his granddaughter and buys her ticket on her behalf. Annie manages to stay out of sight, and the train departs. Annie thanks the old gentleman for saving her life. When she hears that Annie reminds him of his granddaughter, she offers him the other dress that she had tried to give the conductor in exchange for a ticket, asking him if his granddaughter likes dresses. He sadly answers “…she did.” This story is tense, uplifting, and yet this moment just makes you want to reach in and give this man a hug. One of the best things we can do is take the pain and grief we feel from loss and tragedy, and turn that into kind acts that help make the lives of other people better.

         In the episode’s closing minutes, we hear of Annie successfully returning home to her mother’s house, and her last meeting with the Slades when she lived with much kinder proprietors who looked after her and drove Josiah from their door when he came to demand Annie’s return. We are told that the names Josiah and Judith Slade are fictitious, as Annie will not commit the names of these people to history. In her biography, the Annie Oakley from our world made the same decision, referring to these abusers only as “the Wolves”. Annie’s thoughts turn to the kindness of the old man on the train, who she never met again, and does not know if he lived to see the world turn into what it is today. His name, in the world of New Century, was Jonathan Oakley, and he was the man who gave Annie her life, her desire to always try to save others and give them a better life, and the name she chose for herself.

         Annie and Butler sit together and watch the sun rise in the early hours as they drink their coffee. The road ahead may be laden with danger and grief, but Annie is thankful at least for this perfect moment.

[sending-the-message]

My Mother Kept Everything by TheTrueRory

As a kid, you never really realize when your parents tend to be different. To you, they’re just you’re parents. But eventually, the whispers start, the ongoing murmurs, and you can’t help but think about your parents in a different light. That moment tends to be unforgettable, even if regrettable.

I was seven when the whispers got to me. I’m from a small town, very small, very closed off, very religious. The type of town that seems ten years behind the rest of the world around it. The kind of town where you call everyone by their first name, even at seven.

We lived outside of town, on a small farmstead that had been in my family for a few generations. Though we had sold most of the land and no longer farmed, we kept enough for ourselves to live off of. A few cows for milk, a few chickens for meat, nothing special. Just small time country life.

You’d think that we would have this grand sense of space, being out in the country, no other home for two miles in any direction. The Great Big Empty, as my now-fiance refers to it. But it wasn’t empty to me, nor my family. No, my family’s property was filled with everything, scrap and junk and garbage, because my mother kept everything.

Back then, “hoarding” wasn’t a known compulsion by any metric. But a medical diagnosis wasn’t really a necessity when it came to Coffee Row, the rumour mill every small town is at least familiar with.

“I’ve heard she goes to the dump and steals all the old mattresses.”

“It’s such an eyesore.”

“I’m surprised none of her kids have caught some sort of disease from playing in that yard.”

“Well, they aren’t the brightest of kids. Probably get that from her.”

“Bruce isn’t the brightest man in the world either. Look who he married.”

These phrases, repeatedly spoken by the crotchety retirees at the local coffee house, would then trickle down to mouths of their kids, and their kids, until a punch of third graders couldn’t help but think of me and my family as dirty. And, well, you tend to internalize those things after awhile. I didn’t think too highly of myself in my childhood.

And, I mean, they weren’t necessarily wrong. No, my mom never went to the town dump to steal old mattresses or broken down equipment. Actually, I don’t think she ever went to the dump once in her life. To her, everything would eventually have it’s purpose. “It’s better to have something and not need it then to need something and not have it” was a common wisdom she imparted on us kids. Though after a few years, I can’t help but see it as a defensive posturing than anything else.

By the time I became aware that my mother’s “collection” wasn’t as common as I suspected, my father had given up on trying to curb her ways. The strong and silent type, barrel-chested and heavy-hearted, he thought it best just to let things be. He didn’t care of the whispers and the murmurs and of Coffee Row. He just wanted a simple life with his family. And if having to live in what others considered a condemned area was what stood in the way of his loving happiness, then that’s what he would do.

My mother seemed normal, to me at least. I know I was just a kid, but you’d think any sort of compulsion would have more signs, more symptoms. But no, not really. My mom was just…a mom. She made me packed lunches. She baked things for the school bake sale. She made me Halloween costumes. From the inside, everything was normal, everyday, life.

But that was until the rumours got to me.

I didn’t confront my mom. I mean, what’s a seven year old going to say? Stop being weird? Throw some of this shit out? No, I never told her how I felt. But my resentment was something that became obvious to the rest of the family.

“Never you mind what the other kids say,” my father told me, sitting in the near darkness of my room one night after a bedside story. “They’re just bitter people with nothing more to talk about then that they don’t understand.”

“But I don’t understand it, Dad!”

In that near dark, only half illuminated by my bedside lamp and the nightlight plugged in beside the door (used as a guide when midnight nature called) my father took a moment before saying, “I don’t either. But I don’t think it’s our place to understand.”

After that, I tried my best to push it all away. But parents tend to forget to pressures of the classroom, and the resentment still tended to boil up from time to time. It was the approach of my eighth birthday that really made things clear to me that I wasn’t dealing with the family farm situation properly.

“How did it go today, hunny?” my mother asked with her usual brightness. She was almost always cheery when me and my little brother got of the bus, espicially on days she didn’t work a shift at the county hospital.

I didn’t reply, choosing instead to have some classic childhood seething. But she wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“Did you remember to hand out the invites?”

“Nobody wants to come, Mom!”

I was louder than I had wanted to be, on the verge of tears, but not backing down.

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I handed out all the invites to everyone in the class, but nobody wants to come to a birthday party in a junkyard, Mom!” I turned to storm off to my room in an overly dramatic way that would have been suited in a melodrama than from an almost eight year old. My mom didn’t stop me. I glanced back and she was just standing at the other end of the hall, watching me walk away.

After that outburst, my mother wasn’t as cheery when I came home, but she didn’t throw anything out. She didn’t clean the yard or the barn or the three abandoned sheds that dotted our grazing field like rat infested infections. Those sheds, which me and Shaun, my younger brother, called the Junks, was the worst of it. We rarely ventured out to them ourselves. To me at least, the insides of the Junks were what I imagined my mother’s mind to be like. Decades old newspapers piled high, broken equipment, rusted tools, all of our school projects and hand drawings and childhood activities, labelled and stored and stacked and stacked and stacked. Organized is a polite word to use when describing having to actually carve a pathway from one side of the room to the other.

Every once in a blue moon something would come up and my mother would need something from on of the Junks. An old certificate. A decoration for a rare occasion. A newspaper article about a study from years gone by (this was before the advent of Google made such discoveries simpler). And off to the Junks she would go to find her well kept gold. “It’s better to have something and not need it” as her saying goes. Sometimes she’d come back, item well in hand. Many times she didn’t.

I never liked going to the Junks myself. I didn’t like the idea of lifting up some boxes to find a rats nest, or something long ago dead. It never happened, but imagination is a powerful thing. And after a few years of quiet resentment following my eighth birthday outburst, and the growing distance between myself and my mother, I was never sent out to get anything anyways.

School life, of course, never helped either. The birthday shut out was one of many that I would experience in my small school. The friendship pool tends to be small when you have less people in your entire school then most city classes. And every class needs an outcast. That’s tradition at this point, right?

It wasn’t until grade ten that I made a friend. A girlfriend, in fact. She moved to our small town after her dad became the doctor at the county hospital. She wasn’t a big fan of country life, I could tell, but the pay for being the only doctor for miles around was too much to pass up, and the man himself came from a neighbouring community. So I started dating my mom’s boss’ daughter. Some might think that might make things complicated, but much like the friendship pool, The dating pool isn’t something small towns are known for. Not to disparage those who end up marrying their high school sweethearts, but in these situations it’s more beggars can’t be choosers than anything else.

I was worried when I first started dating her. The other kids teased relentlessly.

“You’re gonna catch something from him. The plague is somewhere in his yard.”

“His mom’s fucking crazy. You must be too if you’re dating him.”

“Don’t go to his place unless you have your tetanus shot.”

She didn’t really give them mind, but after awhile (in teenage days, “awhile” is a month at most) it did start bothering her. I never invited her over to my place either. I was embarrassed, and I think that bothered her too. She thought we were sneaking around, that I didn’t want her to meet my family. Again, she was only half correct.

Three months into the relationship, though, a situation arose where avoiding having her over was really not going to work: a long weekend with the house all to myself. Every horny teenager’s dream, and it was happening to me. Mom, Dad, and Shaun were all going to the Grand Canyon for a fun family vacation. Me, being the brooding teenager that all fifteen year olds aspire for, asked to be left home. While my Mom protested, my father talked her into letting me get my way.

“He’s becoming a man, and if he wants to stay home and work, I don’t see a reason to stop him,” I overheard him saying to her one night, long after I was meant to be sleeping, sneaking out for a cold glass of water.

“You know that’s not why he’s wanting to stay home as much as I know it,” she retorted.

“He’s a teenager, Maggie. I know you two have had your problems, and you think that this is just another step of distance, but he’ll come around. Trust me on that. In the mean time, let’s just give him some space.”

She didn’t reply, and I snuck off without making a sound. The next morning, it was settled. I was a man, as my father said, and could make this decision myself. Though, as he reminded me thoroughly, this meant I wasn’t get a vacation, period. My chores would still be well in affect throughout the weekend, he said, but the smirk told me that if things slid, the punishment wouldn’t be the harshest.

They left early in the morning on the Saturday. I was planning on sleeping in myself, as every fifteen year old plans, but was groggily, gently shaken awake early, by my mother, sitting beside my bed (something of a rare site, her being in my room).

“Mom? What’s going on?”

“Just wanted to talk to you before we left.”

She looked around my room,, as if seeing it for the first time. I was groggy and annoyed at being disturbed, but I noticed the sadness that seemed to blend into her usually sturdy eyes.

“Everything okay, mom?”

She looked back at me, that sadness even sharper, “Yes, yes, everything is…fine,” she sighed, “you know I wasn’t a fan of having you stay home alone this weekend, but here we are. You’re father can be rather convincing, as you know. I just wanted to say…you’re a man almost, but not yet. But almost. And I guess that’s harder to accept than I would like to admit.”

The grogginess abandoned me. A sobering conversation like this was a rarity from my mother, and it deserved my full attention. Yet, she just sighed, this sigh seeming to be an apology of sorts as she slipped off my bed to stand.

“I didn’t want to leave while we were both angry at each other. I guess we’ve been angry for a long time, longer than we should be,” I could see it, that sadness was not a new thing but something that was always there, just deeper, maybe smaller, but always, always, “I hope that when we get back, we could maybe try not to be. How does that sound?”

“That sounds…that sounds good, ma.”

She smiled at that. She always enjoyed being called “ma”. But the smile seemed to curdle, turn in a second, as another thought drifted into view. The true purpose of this early morning reconciliation.

“I know that you’re planning on having the Somner girl over while we’re away. Don’t, don’t get upset or indignant. I don’t much care to argue about teenage love at the moment. I only have one request from you.”

She looked at me, the sadness gone, replaced by an affirmation, a forcefulness which surprised me after such tenderness.

“Don’t take her out to the sheds. I know that it wasn’t on your mind, and that you’d probably be preoccupied otherwise, but it needs to be said. Don’t take her out there.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was just confused, very confused. I would almost have laughed if not for that harshness in her eyes, and that tone, that don’t-mess-with-it tone. I just nodded, which was enough for her. Her features softened once more, and left my room without another word.

Saturday afternoon, Morgan came over, and that’s when things changed for me.

I had tried to make it as perfect as a fifteen year-old could. I cleaned the house as much as I figured I should and then some, I washed up nice and clean, I made a true presentation of what we were all taught romance was. Even with the scrapyard front yard and the closets burdened with random assortments of just stuff, I thought the day would go off without a hitch.

Morgan was a year older than me and got a car for her sweet sixteen. Nothing to flashy, but enough to make her squeal with delight when it first arrived, and enough to get her to pull into my yard early that afternoon. I had wanted her to come early, make a day of it, you know? Go for a hike, take her through the garden, show her the points of my family life that didn’t embarrass me to no end. Hopefully offset her initial reactions from pulling into the yard.

That all changed the moment she arrived.

“Imagine seeing you here,” she said playfully as she stepped out of her car.

“Yeah, imagine that,” I walked up and kissed her, quick deep and all too excited. She laughed at this see-through nervousness and looked around.

“So, I guess this is why you never invited me out before.”

I looked around, ashamed of it all, “Yeah…yeah I guess.”

She looked at me, saw it all, all that guilt I apparently had, and couldn’t help but laugh a little, “Come on, it’s not that bad. So you’ve got a few junkers and clunkers and stuff. What’s the big deal?”

I looked at her, and smiled, “Wish I knew.”

She rolled her eyes and started towards the house, “Don’t be so dramatic. Come on, you going to show me around or what?”

“Depends what ‘or what’ might mean?”

(I always thought I was more creative with words than I actually am)

She looked back at me, smiling, God what a smile, “Don’t be an idiot, please. I don’t like idiots.”

I smiled, too. Until…until I saw her eyes wander from me, and her smile fade, as those eyes locked onto something off in the distance.

“What are those over there?”

She pointed off behind me, and I turned to see she was pointing out, across the field, through the junkers and the clunkers, straight across to The Junks.

“Oh, those? Those are just The Junks. That’s what me and Shaun call them, at least. They’re just…just more of all this, I guess.”

(There’s that shame again)

“Can we go out there?” she asked as she already turned and took steps away from the house.

“What? Why?”

“I...I just want to, I guess? Can we go out there now?” She was now walking for them, seemingly not caring what I had to say on the matter.

“Morgan, you don’t want to go out there, they’re just full of garbage. Come on, let’s go inside.”

She just continued. She didn’t look back.

“Morgan, come on!”

Nothing. I went after her and grabbed her wrist.

“Morgan, stop!”

She did, and looked back at me, but not like she ever had before. There was a moment, just a moment, a flash, of hate on her face as she pulled free of my grip. If she hadn’t pulled free, I would have dropped it out of shock.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Jesus Christ, what’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing! I just…I want to go out there, okay? Why the hell can’t we? Why are you being a jerk about it?”

“I’m not being a jerk, I just don’t want to take my girlfriend out to the shitty junk buildings where my mom stores all her useless shit! Okay?”

She looked at me, just looked and nothing more, for a few seconds before turning and continuing towards The Junks. I didn’t run up and grab her wrist this time. I just followed behind, confusion clouding my mind, anger choking my throat, and a chill, a coldness, crossing my body.

She stalked her way through the field, stomping down the long wild grass which prevailed throughout the field, weaving her way around the destitute machinery and piles of rubbish which littered the field. I simply followed, nothing else I could seem to do, no protests to be made.

She stopped dead centre of the three leaning and over-sunned buildings. Any paint that had once existed on their rotting exteriors had since given way to the unforgiving gift of time. The windows were empty, gaping holes, robbed of their glass by wailing winds and weak installations. The doors barely existed, a courtesy extended to the interiors more than actual protection from the elements. Standing there, actually taking them in instead of taking them for granted, they didn’t really seem like buildings as much as memories long since abandoned.

I walked up behind Morgan, almost tentative, worried I’d send her off on another rage tangent. She didn’t react to me, simply staring up across the buildings which fascinated her so much.

“There you go. Three eyesores, just like I said. Happy?”

“What’s in them?”

I shrugged. “Junk, like I said. Newspapers, old toys, family projects that never took off, antiques that aren’t worth shit, I don’t know. Nothing worth salt, really.”

“But, what’s really in them?”

This question sent chills down my back. The way she said it, eyes wide and body slack, like a child, it was unnerving. Her voice no longer sounded like her own, like the voice that liked to whisper things privately into my ears. She sounded and looked like a complete stranger in that moment.

She was moving again, cascading forward towards the door which only ever held back layers of old, forgotten junk and the shame I felt for it all. A door that, to me, was nothing but rotting boards and rusty nails. A door to nothing. But to her, to my teenage heart-breaker, it was a door to all she seemed to want and more.

I wanted to not move, not from my place in front of the three Junks, but my mind was gone, blank, as those chills that shot throughout me went from creeps to fear to terror in giant leaps and bounds. I marched, steps behind her, but I watched it all like I wasn’t there at all. Like a security camera watches the murder of a late-night service attendant.

She reached out and pulled the door open. The hinges screeched, cried out, not from rust, but from some sort of…of satistaction. A moan of disgusting approval. And those doors revealed...nothing.

Pure nothing.

A blackness that is unknowable, unexplainable, stood in that doorway. Inky , thick, tangible blackness. This was not simply the absence of light, this was the death of it. Light touched this and simply stopped existing. In fact, the blackness seemed to feed off the light, to grow and pulse with each moment of exposure to life outside it.

Morgan stood outside the throbbing, living blackness, not taken aback, not shocked or confused or even afraid. She stood there and breathed it in, watched it with a fascination, a love that was almost as dreadful as the blackness itself.

I wanted to scream, to do anything. And I almost did it, almost pulled myself together enough to run over and grab Morgan and slam that door shut and never, ever come back to these horrible ruins again in my life. I almost did it. But then the sounds reached me, and overpowered every ounce of will I had gathered to that point.

The screams. The blackness was screaming, wailing, rasping. It was like listening to a thousand deaths. It was the sound a soul makes when it is wrenched unceremoniously from it’s unwilling host. It was a sound that came with a stench. It made my blood curdle in my veins. It made my heart stop beating.

But Morgan…that smile, that whimsy simply grew on her face as the orchestra of hell reached her. In the ecstasy of evil, she seemed to love the song it sung. For her, it wasn’t horror she heard, but a siren call, a lullaby. An acceptance.

She didn’t look back. Didn’t say anything. Didn’t make a noise. She simply took a step forward, and was gone. And worth her, in a blip, in the blink of an eye, the nothing was gone. In a blink of an eye, I stood there, alone, looking at a rotten building filled with rotting things, but things nonetheless. The blackness, the horror, the screaming, was gone. And with it went Morgan, forever.

I was found by a neighbour, crying, screaming, running but almost collapsing. I don’t know how long had passed, I don’t remember anything else from that weekend, from the rest of that year really. Everything I’ve heard about it is second hand, whispered amongst the townsfolk and told to me by my brother on his less than sober nights.

The police. The investigation. The allegations. None of them I can recall. Any time I think of that day, the sucking, feeding screams return, and I just start to shake all over. Therapy doesn’t help. They want you to talk through it, to write it out in a private journal, to make it real, and I refuse to do that. Drugs don’t help either. If I slip into something less, something relaxed, something even one step away from this heightened fear that I have forever resting in my heart, then it returns. That hunger. That screaming black hunger.

My family, already burdened with the strange looks my mother had always gathered, were now outcasts. We weren’t formally dejected, but we were never welcome anywhere again. Both my mom and dad lost their jobs, my brother and I were basically ostricisized at school. We weren’t welcome here, not in this small town, or any of the neighbouring ones. Wouldn’t be surprised if the whispers of our names reached coast to coast. I know that’s the paranoia talking, but I still wouldn’t be surprised.

But we never moved. It wasn’t even discussed, wasn’t even a consideration within the family. It wasn’t an option.

Years later, after both my brother and I had gotten as far away from that middle of nowhere, middle of nothing town, I went home to visit. I didn’t do it very often. Though I had grown up to both look more and act more like my father than my younger years would have initially suggested, the buzz that my visits generated at Coffee Row still caused my skin to crawl.

It was my final night of a four day visit. My father had gone to bed at that premature time that older men who have known little else besides work seem to need. It was me and my mother sitting in their living room, both reading quietly, enjoying just being together but not needing to say it. The sitting area was towered over by books, wall to wall, books stacked to the ceiling, and doubled-up in other areas. It made the room both comfortable and suffocating, with a sudden jolt of Earth undoubtedly ending our lives under the hard covers of Holmes and Hemingway.

I sat reading only to stop and look up. My mother, hair tinged grey, face lined with years of secrets.

“What’s up?” I asked. She just continued looking at me for a moment more, seeming to decide something.

“I know what happened to her.”

“What happened to who, ma?”

“The girl. That Somner girl from years ago. The one that you try and pretend you’ve forgotten about, and that you’ve gotten over. I know what happened.”

My mouth immediately went dry, my heart raced. Simply hearing that name, remembering, remembering all that darkness. That empty.

“Mom, I never told you what happened.”

“You never said what happened because you couldn’t. No man could.”

Her face, her lines, they seemed to age before me, to by weighed down, tortured by what she was thinking about. She took her time, but I waited.

“You don’t see what I see. Neither does your brother, or your father, or any man. You can’t see what we can. I don’t know why, so don’t bother asking. All I know is that this land, our family’s land, my family’s land, has belonged to us, has been our burden for much longer than I think we can really know. This land has been our responsibly. The men are to protect the women, and the women are to…to stop it.”

She looks at me, deep and hard and knowing, and that’s all she feels she needs to say to describe everything in that nothing.

“There’s no need to ask me questions about what it is or what it does. You saw it. You know that no matter what, it’s not a good thing. No, no, it’s where goodness goes to die, that’s for certain. And it’s our family job to keep it back. To keep it contained. To keep it hidden.”

She stops now. Getting this little bit of information out seems to have drained her from any remaining energy she had. Much more and she would simply fall asleep where she sat.

“Mom, why are you telling me this? Why now?”

Her eyes became harder, her mouth set in place.

“Don’t you understand? It’s our family’s duty to keep the darkness at bay.”

My heart beat so hard, but my blood ran cold, sluggish, as what she was saying was dawning on me.

“It’s our duty…but I can’t see it. And dad can’t see it. And Shaun can’t see it.”

She nodded. That was it. That was the end of the conversation.

It was our duty to keep it out, to keep it locked up in the Junks or whatever the fuck those buildings actually were. It was our job…and I can’t even see it.

The Great Big Empty. That’s what my fiance calls it. That’s what most anyone would call it. Any man, at least.

I wish it was empty. I wish it was that simple. I wish that it was the empty we actually know, a quantifiable empty. But it’s not. It’s a hungry empty. An empty that will rob you of everything you are.

An empty that is now my fiances’ responsibility.

[thetaekswoon]

DAY6 Jae| Camp Counselor AU

This isn’t a part 2, but I kind of want to make these camp counselor aus into a series or something I do for a lot of groups because it’s just so much fun to write, and I also have such strong roots back to my sleepaway camp from back in the day.  Shoutout to any ASITs if they’re reading this lol!

I hope this was what you wanted!

Jae:

CIT (Counselor in Training) Boys Cabin Leader

Jae prefers to spend more time with the older campers than the young ones, he likes that he can feel and act more like himself around them and joke around more freely, he doesn’t feel trapped acting only as their babysitter.

Not only that but Jae is definitely a camp favorite among all of the older campers because he is just so cool and funny and chill, unlike many of the other counselors who prefer to keep their relationship with the campers primarily professional, Jae makes friends with every camper he sees.

 and it’s not just him being friendly or anything, Jae honestly tries to become best friends with every camper.

, but it’s still something about the older campers that draws him to hang out with them the most.

Like during meals Jae always sits at the CIT’s table and eats with all of his CITs, joking around while almost all of the other counselors are sitting with each other on the other side of the dining hall, away from the campers while they can,

, and hanging out with the kids never seemed like a chore or a job to Jae because, well.... they’re people???  And if you actually take the time to listen and interact with them they’re actually really funny, like seriously some of these kids in the CIT program are only a year or two younger than some of the counselors, so treating them any differently than you would your counselor friends is just stupid to Jae.

  Like have you ever heard CITs Chenle and Renjun make fun of first year counselor Mark of the Red Fox cabin?  It’s freaking hilarious and gets Jae rolling on the ground practically sobbing every time.

Speaking of the CITs, Jae prefers being a CIT Leader over a normal counselor any day, and is so glad that he got the job because working with the CITs is so much cooler than working with the small campers because they’re cooler they already have been attending the camp for several years (it’s a requirement to be in the CIT program that you have been at camp for at least 3 years), so they know everything about the place through and through, even more so than some of the counselors,

, there is a working xbox in the CIT Lounge while the one in the staff lounge broke months ago and no one wants to go pay for a new one,

, the CITs get to participate in exciting and different events that the other campers aren’t allowed to.

For example, the CITs don’t really have a set schedule for the day like all the campers do, so what Jae and his CITs do changes everyday, and one day he’ll take them fishing in the lake, but the next they’ll be baking small blueberry tarts for the girl CITs,

 and finally the CITs are granted permission to leave camp grounds once a week for a day out,

, and the day outs are always so much fun because they travel to fun places like the zoo, amusement and water parks, and go out for dinner before heading back to camp.

Jae is ALWAYS playing his guitar.

In between courses Jae will be chilling with his guitar under the sun in the center of the camp’s big grass field, and campers will just start surrounding him and one thing leads to another and they’re all singing Wonderwall and it sounds awful because everyone is making a joke out of it, but still ahhh (such a head canon of mine tbh messing around and singing wonderwall with jae)

around the campfire during the evening activity,

and other times he’ll just sing his CIT boys a lullaby to help them fall asleep after a long day of cleaning out storage shed out by the lakefront.

Though Jae is basically always with his CITs, he also manages to teach one class a day for all of the campers....

Can you guess what it is?....

MUSIC AND GUITAR OBVIOUSLY!!!!

Every day at around 11 am, Jae greets his guitar class in the theater building (it has the best acoustics) and has everyone sit in a circle and play what they had been practicing for the last few days.

 tbh Jae’s guitar class was such a popular class for the campers to take because he was such a good teacher that the class became overcrowded and it became evident that he couldn’t have just one guitar class anymore

, so counselor Sanha stepped in and helps Jae teach, and runs his own guitar classes during time slots that Jae is busy with his CITs.

Jae’s counselor is very summer, very much dealing with the heat.

He is almost always wearing a tie-dyed shirt and beige shorts.  A rope necklace and these shorts are his iconic look.

sometimes he wears a bucket hat because the forecast suggested that the sun is going to be stronger than usual, and CIT Kyla laughs endlessly at his ears sticking out from the sides when he does this.

Big glasses accidentally reflect the sun into people’s eyes while he talks to them outside... whoops.

Overall, Jae is the sleepaway camp’s lovable dork counselor who plays the guitar and eats too much pizza.

, and you’re one of the CIT Leaders for the girls, and have known Jae ever since you both started to come to the camp when you were 5 and 6, and were in the Coyote and Hare cabins.

Way back then Leeteuk was still a counselor for the Coyote Cabin, but know he has made his way up the ranks to be one of the camp directors, and is your BOSS!

Anyway, you’ve known Jae and have been friends literally since before you learned your multiplications tables, and now here you are serving your favorite place on earth as CIT Leaders.

  You and Jae are both a little over the top when it comes to camp cheers and the such because well, you’ve both been there for so long, this place is like your home, if you guys wanna shout the words to BLACK SOCKS you will.

“BLACK SOCKS THEY NEVER GET DIRTY THE LONGER YOU WEAR THEM THE BLACKER THEY GET

SOMETIMES I THINK I SHOULD WASH THEM BUT SOMETHING INSIDE ME KEEPS SAYING NOT YET

NOT YET

NOT YET”

(repeat several more times each getting louder and faster and more aggressive until you literally can’t keep up anymore)

Sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone is supposed to be sleeping you’ll gather all of the CITs and tell ghost stories to them, that may actually leave poor little Jeno weeping and begging Chenle not to do that dolphin laugh because he keeps getting scared.

, anyway you and Jae are basically as close as friends can be to each other and sometimes campers joke around that you two are like a married couple because of it, but every time they something like that you two can’t help, but laugh because it just all sounds so ridiculous...

.... doesn’t it?

that is until the CIT day out comes around, and this week you are all going to the waterpark and then a fireworks show because the Fourth of July is right around the corner, and how fun would it be to go out and run around with sparklers and actually see some good fireworks for a change?  Instead of the short and cheap fireworks show that the camp prepares for all the kids during this time of the summer.

So, you guys load all of the CITs into the camp vans and drive off to the waterpark which is two hours away.

 arriving at the waterpark is a bunch of madness because you, Jae and the other CIT Leaders need to organize all of the tickets for everyone, and then it becomes a matter of checking everybody in, and finally you can all relax.

It wasn’t seeing Jae shirtless that finally did it for you, you had seen him shirtless hundreds of times before, after all you two do both work at a summer camp.

For whatever stupid reason, it was seeing him walk out of the boys changing room wearing his bright violet swimming shorts, a bucket hat, floaties on both arms, and crocs.

like what kind of person? you thought, only Jae, your cute best friend, and then suddenly you realized you just called your best friend cute in your head, but you didn’t mean like cute cute like puppy-dog or stupid cute, you meant cute in a like-like kind of way and you slap yourself on your head.

“Y/N have you gone mad hitting yourself again?” Jae asks, pretending to be concerned and act like a doctor, looking into your eyes and asking for you to stick out you tongue and say ahhh, “I’d say it might be mad cow disease, but we can’t be sure until the test results co-”

“Quit it dumbass, I just realized I forgot something back in the van.” you say, pretending to look through your bag for something.

“It wasn’t sunscreen was it?  I can already feel the sun pelting down onto me.”

you were lying when you said you forgot something in the van, but then you realize that you really did forget your sunscreen, that or it must have fallen out of your bag because it wasn’t there anymore.

You nod,

“Dammit Y/N, the park people won’t let you back in if you leave, don’t worry, I won’t let you burn.” Jae says, “I still got some left.”

turns out Jae’s sunscreen wasn’t a strong enough spf for you, so by the time you and the CITs leave the waterpark and arrive at the place where the fireworks show is happening your shoulders are burnt bright red.

Jae keeps apologizing to you all throughout the fireworks show, but you keep telling him that it wasn’t his fault, that you probably should have reapplied the lotion when your shoulders started to feel hot.

, and somehow, by the time that you get back to camp, Jae somehow convinces you to let him lend you some of the aloe that he has in his cabin.

And then he... puts it on your himself?

tbh it was cold and awkward and giggly, and felt kind of strangely intimate,

and Jae is blushing all over, 

because he has always seen you as his gorgeous best friend in the whole wide world, but he’s been wanting to see you as more than just that recently and now you’re letting him put his hands on you kinda and you’re so close that he can smell your hair which still smells of chlorine from the waterpark 

,,, and it a moment of boldness Jae announces that he is going to kiss you.

And you let him.

Dating Jae is almost exactly the same as before, except now theres a lot more cuddling, and skinship in general.

Jae always greets you in the mornings with a quick peck on the cheek (staff aren’t allowed to show any form of pda around the campers) and a surprisingly sweaty hug, like come on the heat hasn’t even kicked up yet Jae.

Whenever you two go out on solo dates into town on your day off, which is almost never on the same day because you are both working with the CITs and there are a very limited number of CIT staff, but when you do you always make the most out of it.

, going to restaurants downtown and being able to hold your hands in public

The teasing never seems to stop coming from CITs Guanlin and Somi, who figured out that you two were dating in a matter of minutes, and constantly need to exert the small amount of power that they have over you.

“Hey Y/N is that a MOSQUITO BITE on your NECK *gasp* ???!!?!”  They’ll shout at you when you walk into the lounge after your breaks,

“Or maybe it was a vampire considering how obvious it is by the mark that they were out for blood.  What do you think Jae?  Doesn’t Y/N look like they were just attacked by a vampire teehee?”

<><> do not edit/remove anything from the original post <><> this AU belongs to me <><>

[artdjgblog]

​Innerview: Effie Lin / ​DPI Magazine (Taiwan)  

November 2009 - January 2010

Photo: DJG (2009) by Cayla Kennedy (Age 5)​

Note: Interview for a magazine feature.

0​1) What is your philosophy in your art world? I have to be a human first and a maker of things second. Sometimes the two court together really well. Sometimes they pick fights and choose sides. I sort of have a get up and go method and plan to always be working on my life and work, and to my best ability, given the resources at hand. It’s not that I have a complete lack of care, responsibility or feel disenfranchised or on the outskirts. Though, I do have my moments. Even in bad moments, when it’s probably not a good idea for me to be around me, I try to eventually spin a positive from that experience. They can be the most crucial moments as I learn a great deal once I get beyond their borders. I think that’s part of the process. Process is a big deal and we’re all a part of it. And there is such a thing as bad process equaling a positive in life and work. All I know is that I need to be honest and pure with how I speak inside and outside of the work I am putting on and off the table. Anyway, I’m not really a grouch or a slouch in both areas of life and art, but it is a constant work in progress. I think that thinking too much about it, or the idea of it in the larger spectrum, can become damaging, unhealthy and grow bean stocks further from the truth. Though, I might add that I understand how hard it can be to keep from big ideas and big thinking, it is. I like where it is that I’m at right now and it all stacks up to here. I just need to be making things until I move on to something else. And that something else will probably involve making things too. I love what I do. There is a bigger component to the little pictures that I’m here presenting. I just need to keep up and in the know of the tip toes and perhaps leave some behind in the only way I can try, that means being something like me. ​0​2) What is your favorite medium and why? I feel that maintaining and manhandling a single medium would be quite overwhelming. I admire those that can do it, and do it skillfully. Not that I’m a special breed, but I don’t understand how some people can milk the same cow every day, for years. Every day is a little different inside and out and that fuels my mood of operation. I think that I suppose there is a definition when one looks at the work I’m doing, and the way I go about it, to easily pin me to a favorite medium. I like to use my hands and things around me to tell my stories. But, I don’t know much other than the day-to-day as my mind and energy wanders much on the map. I wake up and see what weather we’ve got. I believe much of it comes from growing up on a farm and spending a lot of time alone. A lot of people think that time is at a stand-still on the country clock. It wasn’t for me as there wasn’t really a cap on the kind of external culture and entertainment I could in-take and fuse with country living inside and out. Everything was a big pot of soup for me and it still is. I was always doing something and I still am. I also watched my Grandma make a lot of things by hand, and although not really an “artist”, she’s been a big influence on the work I’m doing. Another thing, I can’t be as involved with my work when there is a computer screen barrier involved. I can use a computer, but it is only like a nail gun to me. In my college studies while struggling with the introductory marriage of technology and design, I almost quit completely. Funny, before even getting on a computer I naively claimed to tech-savvy peers, “I am going to take the route that doesn’t employ computers.” Anyway, computers are cool and all but it is not how I like to really play. It didn’t help that around this time in my early 20s, I also had doubts about my artistic talent and identity. I also never felt comfortable visiting the design firms of my possible “future”. Some people find a home in them, but I couldn’t and wanted to be in a sense, a stay at home mother to my art. So, these factors led me to re-learn and go back to being a kid locked up inside and/or getting that kid to come back out…becoming an adult can be crippling. I started putting my identity back in the work at this time by leaving my human elements and story behind. I was also exposed to new kinds of external stimulus with art and culture and that helped me see things better too. I eventually had a calling to do my own thing completely, dropped out of school, moved to a big city and mixed it all together. Cities are big cooking pots anyway. But, on a personal level, I’m not done cooking yet. I’m kind of “mild” right now compared to most. I’m just one more guy carving a name on the cinder block and trying to pay the bills. ​0​3) Could you talk about the exhibition post of “Showing My Sheep”? Could you talk about your creating concept? I was born and raised on a farm. We raised sheep and showed sheep at county fairs. I used to have a basketball court shared with the sheep lot. As a youngster I spent some time wanting to be a farmer and in many ways now I kind of am. I’d like to live on a farm again someday, mostly for quiet space, to have more animals and to have a big barn I can work in. I did my first retrospective art exhibition called “Showing My Sheep” after five years of working on my art odyssey. Yeah, that’s not a long time for a life or career overview, but it was important for me to show my whole flock of work together like that and up to that point. And in truth, a 5 year old sheep is middle age. The image on the exhibition poster is a quick scribble of me (or something like me) in sheep’s carcass/dress. I’ve always wondered silly about sheep walking upright and maybe a bit of my love of Gary Larson “The Far Side” comics is shining through just a bit too? But, there is more to this one as it is a tribute to my upbringing as it represents my sheepish nature and approach mixed with the “wolf in dress” image that I think we all catch and can’t catch up with, at least every now and again (notice the front legs and how they are also a wolf snout?). Another idea in this sheep image is how zombie-like an artist, anyone for that matter, slaves to their nature. I rummage a lot of thrift shops for unique papers and board game “play cards” to print on. Paper can add another dimension to something like a poster, in this case adding to the idea of the game of life and art I play. The board game this paper came from is called “Facts in Five: The Game of Knowledge”, thus adding to all the pieces of art and life that added up to the making of my 5 year retrospective. There is also the handwriting element of an anonymous other’s involvement that I find fascinating. Plus, there is the “grid” pattern that reflects a panel fence to keep the sheep in and out…breaking fences, doing my own thing, so to speak. If you squint you might even see sheep pellets, or what I used to refer to as M&M’s, as they would make for an interesting game of basketball. Did you get all that? There are lots going on in this one. Almost another 5 years after that exhibition and I wonder if I’m nearing the end…hmmm. You never know. ​0​4) Which one of your work is your favorite? Or which one made you spend the most time and effort? What’s message you would like to convey through this work?? Favorite Work: My favorite piece of personal art was stolen at an exhibition in late 2004. It is the only thing of mine that wasn’t/isn’t documented (scanned, photographed) and I can’t recreate it. It is a simple little broken pen scribble drawing of a mentally handicapped water bison. His name is Mortimer. I made him in a couple minutes while on hold on the phone with the phone company. I busted a pen and let the ink spill. I’ve tried other drawings like it, but they turn out different. I have a lot of favorite works, but that one is the winner and loser. Time & Effort: I don’t think you really need “time” or “effort” to make something stick or feel, or even get something done. In fact, once I’m in the creative moment there is no such thing as “time” and “effort”. If you do something enough and love it, then it becomes another extension and you’re a paint brush for something bigger. Though, the words do become tangible when “life” stuff is thrown into the mix. This can’t be denied. Due to my so far 8 year schedule of day jobs, night jobs, marriage and the general day-to-day, I’ve always worked fairly fast and in small slots of time and many things at once, lots of things. It’s as much mental and military discipline as it is anything else and I just go for it. If it ever starts to feel like a chore, I try to take a short break or study up in other areas. If it ever becomes a chore out of my grasp, I’ll find something else to do completely. It can be struggling at times, but there is something good about the “life” stuff that I feed from. It can add fuel to the fire and makes me realize that I’m not always first in line. Sometimes it can be rough sitting on my hands while at the day job, but I’ll make up for it. In truth, there are never enough resources for the things I’d like to leave behind before I’m called quits. But, I sure try to make the best of “time” and “effort” while I’m here. I’ve made many posters and I love the fact that the poster has a shorter shelf live than something like the CD. I like experimenting with posters because if it gets swatted down, it only lived for a couple weeks and another will come along. They are kind of like flies. At three to five sessions, I try to court CD packages a lot longer. There are instances when an image instantly clicks in my mind when I’m told of an upcoming CD and that’s the final product, but most of the time I have to make them incubate and mature. I’ve always been fascinated with productivity and the human mind and mood, at least in my path. I often look at my timeline of work, wondering how different some of the things would have turned out had I did them on another day or even a minute later than I did them. The past few years, my music design output has shrunk some. I reached a certain point after 2006 to where I realized I needed to step back. I still do a few music projects here and there, but mostly just make a lot of visual art for myself. Which, I’ve always teetered on visual art. Maybe I’m trying to make up for Mortimer? I did start something different for me and in a medium that I’d love to pursue more. It wasn’t until this year (2009) that something really consumed me and that was a music video. It has been a great thing for me to be more patient with a project. Now, that’s a whole different extra innings of “time” and “effort”. ​0​5) Which one of CD cover/album artwork is your favorite or make you really proud of? What is the concept? Could you talk about your creating process? Did you listening to the music when you working? I’ve been asked this question a lot. I always answer with: “Whatever Makes You Happy” by The Elevator Division. It’s something to feel proud when you accomplish anything, but even more when it is all done and duplicated by hand in one night. 250 CD packages were made out of hand-cut cardboard, spray paint, stencils, rubber stamps and glued inserts. The concept is a hand shooting off a missile finger. The music themes revolve around relationships on and off the battlefields of life and war and the cover image relays the idea of shooting off one’s options, as in, “Whatever Makes You Happy”. Conceptually (design-wise), it might be the best thing I’ve got in me and inspiration came at the last minute before production and during a great Midwest thunderstorm. Upon the last spray of paint in my basement (yes, I was stupid enough then to spray paint in an unventilated basement), there was a crack of lightning and I flew upstairs and out the door of my home and slid down the well-watered front lawn and into the gutter of the street with red spray paint all over me. The squatters on the porch at the supposed drug house across the street got a kick out it. It was a massive affair and I swore I wouldn’t do it again and then I did a near repeat 4 years later for another band, but not all in one night. I swore I wouldn’t do that again-again and then I kind of did it again two years later. So, I must be due up for another one soon. In the case of The Elevator Division, the band lived with me and practiced nearly every day directly outside my basement studio door at our home. There were several bands that this happened with. I usually don’t listen to albums that I’m designing very much and I rarely listen to them after they are a finished product. This is especially so when it is blasted in the flesh right next to me. ​0​6) Why is sound/music important to our life? What is the most important for designing the album/CD cover? I’m not a fan of a lot of “noise”, but I like sound and I love music and I like some noise music. I love the idea and image of the album cover and making an album “feel” on the outside and giving it an identity. I find I have a detachment from the music and the memories when it is fused in our current in-between stage right now of technology and mp3 land. Even if they have a digital image shroud, they lack a hard identity to me as they float out in space and it makes me a little sad. I prefer a physical collection/body of music, with identity. I don’t want to get too far into this topic and I’ll add that both formats have their good and bad. And I love walking to and from work with a pocket overflowing with Bruce Springsteen songs (I have the records at home too). Along the same lines, I think that the idea of “cover art” or something physical isn’t going to die 100%, at least not in my lifetime. I do hope it doesn’t get even more eclectic-expensive like it kind of is looking. I love album art and I can’t really afford it. I just remember one of my earliest memories being the apple on records by The Beatles. That was/is important to me. I bit that apple and it has been good to me for 30 years now. ​0​7) What had been the most challenging thing to you in art world, and how did you overcome it? I think I have challenges and things to overcome and then I tune into the news or watch certain documentary films. I realize there is nothing for me to complain about after that. Of course there are some personal issues that challenge me and my little world. A major one of is overcoming some of my social phobia. It’s made me who I am and probably factors to why I make the way I make, but it has kept me from getting in the ball game as much as I probably should have. Though, what is “probably should have”? Technology makes great networking devices, and is “the now”, but at the same time I always feel so exhausted and behind with it. I also don’t have resources to keep up with it (money, time and mind) but I’m trying bit by bit. Another thing I’ve always carried a heavy lump with is a day job. But, it’s the only way for me to stay afloat. Every year I spend more money than I make with art (currently, I have 24 cents in my DJG Pay Pal account). One way to overcome this is to stop entering high-cost art and design competitions, which was one way of being social with a lot of people. Well, from a global publishing stand point. Competition fees are rising so much these days. Another challenge is the business end of the art. I stink at business. Though, a lot of that has to do with not having enough time and not being the best at problem solving and math, plus always being broke. And I would rather just make more art. I’m a happy camper though and constantly doing my thing. ​0​8) What are your future goals in the art world? Naturally, anyone who feels they’re sitting on something at home is going to set their sights on doing their own thing full-time and for full-time income. But, even if I never get there, I will be punching my own time card in some form or another. I’ll find peace. I’ll always be working on something and working on myself. I could easily keep my head down all day, dragging my wagon (and I kind of do), but I love the idea of sharing my work on a larger, global scale too. It is global on the internet, yet I easily butt heads with technology as it can get quite beastly. But, I appreciate it greatly as even a decade ago you probably wouldn’t have found out about me to get an interview like this. Thank you! I’ve met a lot of my initial goals and it’s easy to sit here and think about tomorrow but I need to work out today to make it there. I’d love to eventually put out an officially published book or lots of them (any bidders?). I plan to start with some handmade ones very soon. I’ll also finally be selling things on my web site soon. I’m currently working towards a 10 year retrospective show of my time in Kansas City, MO USA. I plan to show everything. Also, I will be working on more and more visual art in the coming year. I’d love to exhibit my physical work in more nooks and crannies of the world. I’ve been fortunate to do this a little bit, but nothing on a massive scale. I love the idea of ideas and imagery inspiring people. I also love the idea of relaying an interpretation of the world, while we’re all down here in this together. It’s kind of neat to think I’m leaving a little trail behind in this way and sharing that. Though, I’m not so confident art can change the world on a large platform, I do think it can help a little bit. Even if that means muscling up a smile that you can say was honestly spent. -djg