#I’m so close to finishing my death note collection it’s unreal

[koishiro]

LOOK AT MY LIL SCAVENGING

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2022 Reading Challenge - Book 7 of 26

Title: The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories, Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre/Tags: Short Story Collection, Literary Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Adventure, Dystopia, Historical Fiction, Satire, First Person, Third Person, Unreliable Narrator (and how!), Female Protagonist, LGBT Protagonist

Rating: 8/10 (note: this is an average)

Date Began: 03/20/2022

Date Finished: 04/01/2022

Here’s the second and final volume of Le Guin’s collected short stories, published in 2012. Theoretically, this part focuses on her speculative fiction stories, which she was most well-known for. As Le Guin states in her introduction, though, genre is in and of itself a marketing tool. Le Guin tends to blend and meld the fantastical and the real all throughout her writing. There were plenty of things I’d call “fantasy” in the last volume, and several stories here that feel more like “literary fiction”. So it’s pretty ironic I’m labeling genre at all after she roasts the concept for several pages. Oh well.

I ended up loving this collection. I’m especially fond of “Nine Lives”, “The Matter of Seggri”, and “The Jar of Water”. Predictably, this volume scores a smidge higher than the previous one, but they both rounded to the same overall score, 8/10. This seems appropriate, considering. Of the 21 stories in this volume, my favorites (8/10 and higher) are as follows:

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - 9/10

Nine Lives - 10/10

Mazes - 8/10

The Shobies’ Story - 10/10

Betrayals - 8/10

The Matter of Seggri - 10/10

The Wild Girls - 9/10

The Fliers of Gy - 10/10

The Author of the Acacia Seeds - 8/10

The Wife’s Story - 10/10

The Rule of Names - 8/10

Small Change - 10/10

The Poacher - 8/10

The Jar of Water - 10/10

Huh, every other story on the list is a 10/10? I swear that wasn’t intentional…  

Individual ratings/summaries, content warnings, and some spoilers below the cut. Warning: it’s long.

#1 - The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas (9/10)

Content warnings:

Depicted-- Death, animal death, child death/infanticide, mass death, violence, child abuse, domestic abuse, racism & racial slurs, homophobia, ageism, sexism, colonialism, nonconsensual drugging, graphic sexual content, selfcest, suicide, dehumanization, police brutality, graphic torture, r*pe, slavery, inc*st, grooming, p*dophilia, cultural genocide.

Mentioned--  Recreational drug use. 

The city of Omelas seems to be a true utopia. The people are happy, every child is loved, and poverty no longer exists. But every citizen of Omelas knows the price of their bliss — the suffering of one small child, forced to live in abject misery for its entire life.

Yet I repeat these were not simple folk, not dulcet shepherds, noble savages, bland utopians. They were not less complex than us. The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

This is probably Le Guin’s most famous short story, and it’s one of two I’ve previously read in the collection. The obvious philosophical question at its center is whether the horrific, eternal misery of one person is morally acceptable if it leads to the happiness of countless others. Le Guin frames this lone sufferer as one of humanity’s most powerless people— a child forced to wallow in deplorable living conditions and subject to constant abuse. The titular ones who walk away don’t come into play until close to the end of the story. These people, knowing full well the cost of their happiness, choose to leave Omelas and never return.

“Omelas” is incredibly well written. Le Guin lulls the reader into a false sense of security describing this beautiful city in exquisite, yet somehow generic, detail. After all, a utopia would be different for everyone. She leans into the reader’s suspension of disbelief, constantly alluding to how unbelievable the concept of utopia is. But then the transition to the child’s prison and its reprehensible treatment is a jarring tonal shift that haunts the rest of the piece. Every citizen of Omelas knows of its existence, and also knows the child’s sacrifice is necessary to keep the city as it is. The people are happy, but as Le Guin says, it’s not a naive happiness.

On this reread I got the Brave New World reference for the first time. It’s certainly an apt parallel; both stories feature so-called utopias that prioritize maximum happiness at terrible moral cost. There’s a clear Marxist reading as well, because in some ways “Omelas” is a true story. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Just about anything you buy is the result of someone’s suffering, somewhere. Considering Le Guin was openly anti-capitalist, this interpretation isn’t a stretch.

As for the philosophy, I can’t help but recall the Jemisin response story, “The Ones Who Stay And Fight”, which argues that the only way to repair an immoral society is to fight against it and annihilate the history/context that created it. While I don’t 100% agree with that stance, I do agree with the premise that the ones who walk away don’t have the moral high ground. Yes, they refuse to participate in Omelas’ atrocity. But the ones who walk away from Omelas leave the tortured child to its fate, making them no different from the people who remain.

#2 - Semley’s Necklace (7/10)

Semley is a member of her planet’s aristocratic caste. Exploited by human colonizers, their once vast wealth is all but depleted. Determined to pay her husband a real dowry, Semley embarks on a quest to find the Eye of the Sea, an ancient necklace once owned by her family. Finding the heirloom, however, will cost her more than she expects. 

“What I feel sometimes is that I… meeting these people from worlds we know so little of, you know, sometimes… that I have as it were blundered through a corner of a legend, or a tragic myth, maybe, which I do not understand…”  

“Semley’s Necklace” is one of several stories in this collection set in Le Guin’s Hainish canon. While I have little to no experience with the series, each entry is easy to step into without prior knowledge. I admit I didn’t get this one at first. After some research, I discovered it’s a loose retelling of Freya’s Necklace/Brisingamen from Norse mythology. But there’s a distinct scifi twist to the whole thing. Semley’s planet was colonized by humans, leading to the poverty of the former ruling caste. So her quest to find the valuable necklace comes from personal desire (like Freya), but the context of social class adds nuance. 

The colonialism spin shapes many elements of the story. The Clayfolk are a stand-in for the dwarves of the original myth, but their culture has been inextricably altered (one could say tainted) by human inventions and influence. As a vague spoiler, the necklace’s rediscovery is tied to the idea of repatriation. For something written in 1964 and reworked in 1975, I’m impressed at how relevant it feels. Returning artifacts stolen by colonizers to their original country/culture, while by no means a new idea, is something that’s picked up a lot of steam in recent years. But Le Guin was nothing if not ahead of her time, especially regarding social justice topics. 

I dig stories that describe scientific concepts through a fantasy lens, and “Semley’s Necklace” has that in spades. I also like the recurring idea of truth becoming myth, and how that ties into the ending. I probably would have liked this story more if I was familiar with the original tale, but alas. 

#3 - Nine Lives (10/10)  

Pugh and Martin are the only two workers at a uranium mine on the desolate planet Libra. One day, their company sends over a clone to assist with the extraction. The “clone”, however, is really ten genetically identical people, all of whom function as a single unit. Despite their overt friendliness, Pugh finds the clone uncanny. But everything changes when a freak earthquake strikes the mine, leaving only one of the ten alive. 

“We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?” 

Man, this is a good story. I’m not sure where to start. I feel a little bad going into that much detail in the summary, but this one would be really hard to talk about if I didn’t. 

I love how “Nine Lives” examines the concept of individuality, especially via a plural lifeform. It’s similar in some ways to the Teixcalaan books I just read; the idea of multiple people really being one and the same. Losing 90% of oneself is an unimaginable trauma to most, but Le Guin writes Kaph’s struggles in a way that’s easy to sympathize with. While he looks like a single person, he lacks the mental tools to live that way, and much of the latter half focuses on whether recovery is even possible. Touchingly, it’s Pugh who chooses to believe in Kaph and help him, despite his earlier misgivings about the clone. 

Ultimately, the story defines individuality through our relationship with others. There’s a heavy focus on Pugh and Martin’s relationship through its many ups and downs. Kaph struggles to conceptualize Pugh and Martin as individual people. It’s not malicious; they’re simply beyond his idea of “person” after his previous existence. Only when Kaph faces the possibility of complete solitude does he try to understand Pugh as an individual… by discussing Pugh’s relationship with Martin (and Jesus Fucking Christ how am I supposed to read that confession as anything other than romantic. Pugh/Martin forever, don’t look at me). For such a dark story, the ending is surprisingly optimistic, and it’s mainly due to human connection and compassion— emphasized by the final line. 

Some details I liked... There’s a sound/music motif throughout that’s subtle at first and becomes overt further into the story. My favorite example was describing the earthquake a Totentantz— a dance of death. Also, pay attention to the silences. Honestly I could write a whole analysis about this aspect of the story, but I’ll refrain since this review is already pretty long. Similar to Earthsea, Le Guin specifically describes several characters as nonwhite. While that wouldn’t be a shock today, keep in mind this was published in 1969 in fucking Playboy, of all things. Finally, the prose itself is just wonderful. Never a surprise with Le Guin, but still much appreciated. 

#4 - Mazes (8/10)  

“Mazes” follows an imprisoned narrator, forced by a cruel alien to navigate a maze every day. They try to communicate with the alien through ritual dances, with little success.

It is intelligent, highly intelligent, that is clear from a thousand evidences. We are both intelligent creatures, we are both maze-builders: surely it would be quite easy to learn to talk together! If that were what the alien wanted. But it is not. I do not know what kind of mazes it builds for itself. The ones it made for me were instruments of torture.

“Mazes” is both short and defined by a particular perspective twist. I figured it out right away, and I think you’re supposed to, but to be safe I won’t outright spoil it. Le Guin seems to like this type of story; “Horse Camp” and “The Direction of the Road” from the last volume are similar, as is “The Wife’s Story” later on in this volume.

Anyway, I found Le Guin’s characterization effective. The primary struggle with these stories is making the narrator relatable to the reader yet still believable once you figure out what’s going on. I particularly liked how the narrator describes the different dances and their cultural meanings.

#5 - The First Contact with the Gorgonids (6/10)  

Jerry and his wife go on a trip to Australia. While Jerry complains about the Corroboree they just witnessed, some locals give him secret directions to a better experience out in the desert. Instead of aboriginals, Jerry and his wife encounter something out of this world. 

“Jerry, come back. I think—“ 

“Shut up!” he yelled so savagely that she stopped short for a moment. But she could see the hair better now, and she could see that it did have eyes, and mouths too, with little red tongues darting out. 

This is a pulpy wish-fulfillment story, and honestly, that’s fine. Le Guin writes so much serious and/or thought-provoking shit that it’s fun to read something silly. The racist, abusive husband gets his just desserts. The Gorgonids are exactly what you expect them to be. And after tolerating way too much bullshit, the protagonist finally gets to live her best life at the end. One nice detail is her name; she’s just “Mrs. Jerry Debree”, an accessory of her husband, for most of the story. Thus learning her first name at the end represents her newfound freedom. Good for her. 

#6 - The Shobies’ Story (10/10)  

The Shobies are a newly formed, ragtag family aboard an experimental spaceship. Outfitted with a miraculous new technology called a “churten”, the Shoby can supposedly travel from one area of space to another instantaneously. Such a device could revolutionize space travel— and every member of the crew agrees to test it out, knowing the risks. But the moment the Shobies use the churten, reality itself seems to unravel around them.

They were nowhere, but they were nowhere together; the ship was dead, but they were in the ship. A dead ship cools off fairly quickly, but not immediately. Close the doors, come in by the fire; keep the cold night out, before we go to bed.

This is another story in the Hainish canon. Originally I gave “The Shobies’ Story” a 9 but have bumped it to a 10 after some consideration. While it’s good in and of itself, many story elements appeal to me personally. 

Most prominent of these is unreliable narration. I can’t imagine how difficult this story was to write, because every single character has an unreliable POV. The churten breaks reality, so each of the Shobies see and experience different things, often at the same time. The only way they can return to a consistent reality is by trusting one another and, ultimately, gathering to tell their story and define themselves. 

This links into storytelling, a running motif. Before shit goes down, the Shobies tell bedtime stories to the younger members of the family, many of which are recognizable adaptations of existing fables. The story of the desert wolf is Orpheus and Eurydice. The empty, disappearing spaceship is clearly inspired by the Mary Celeste. The boy who sprouts feathers whenever he lies is Pinocchio. And so on. Each of these stories becomes thematically relevant to the main plot, but I won’t spoil it all. 

I appreciated several other details. The concept of a space crew becoming family isn’t exactly new, but I like how it’s explored. I get the sense it’s a whole cultural thing and considered a necessary part of space travel as a profession. Each of the crew members, some of whom are blood family, some of whom are total strangers to one another, spend a full month together to socially bond before they embark. This turns out to be important to the churten and how it functions. Scientists seem to believe the churten will affect sapient people differently than animals, and we learn by the end that the best way to resist this is through human bonds. It’s found family but integrated into both the setting and core story. 

Also, I LOVE that the Standard Heterosexual Couple (TM), Oreth and Karth, are both genderfluid. I believe they’re from the same race of humans as in The Left Hand of Darkness, who change their gender/sex regularly. Oreth and Karth start the story as male and female respectively, but switch before the Shoby departs. Their youngest child, Asten, is referred to in gender-neutral terms, including they/them pronouns. None of this is treated as unusual. Like, this story was written in 1990! Three years before I was born! It’s such a pleasant surprise. 

#7 - Betrayals (8/10)  

On Yeowe, elders are expected to retreat into silence and solitude until they day they die. While Yoss tries her best to live in religious contemplation, she feels a sadness and disconnect from the world around her. Near her isolated home lives a man named Abberkam, once a prominent political leader, now a disgraced hermit after a history of betrayal. One day she finds him terribly ill and decides to take care of him. Despite her vow of solitude and distrust of Abberkam, she starts to enjoy his company.

Were they not both here to leave all that behind them, all their mistakes and failures as well as their loves and victories?

This is a nice story. It reminds me strongly of two of Le Guin’s Earthsea stories— Tehanu and “On The High Marsh”. All three stories take place in an epic or otherwise fraught setting, yet focus on ordinary, rural lives. There’s a middle aged to elderly female protagonist who forms a close relationship with a broken or traumatized man. Like Tenar thanklessly nursing Ged back to health in Tehanu, Yoss does the same thing for Abberkam. Abberkam himself is quite similar to Irioth from “On The High Marsh”. Both were objectively awful people in their previous life, and now live in simplicity to atone for their misdeeds. Redemption/rebirth at a later stage in one’s life is a prominent theme in all three stories.

While this is another Hainish story, the setting is clearly inspired by Haiti. There’s a troubled history of plantation slavery, uprisings, and the eventual overthrow and banishment of colonizers. Even post-revolution, the planet is burdened by political corruption and unrest. Abberkam is one such instigator; once a revolutionary hero, now forcibly removed from power after various scandals including infidelity, embezzlement, and betraying a close friend for his own gain. There’s certainly dark elements to the setting and its bloody history, but the plot itself is quite optimistic— with a focus on overcoming loneliness through unexpected relationships. And of course, the idea of redefining oneself and finding happiness, no matter how old one is.

I like how “Betrayals” plays on the reader’s expectations. Despite nursing him back to health and happily visiting him, Yoss implicitly mistrusts Abberkam. She constantly assumes the worst of him, and that everything he does is an attempt to manipulate her. When he asks her name, she’s angry he didn’t know it already… even though it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask a stranger you want to connect with. Usually in Le Guin stories, if a man seems sketchy at first, it’s because he IS sketchy. But here it’s purely Yoss’ bias. We learn by the end that Abberkam genuinely cares about her and wants to pursue a romantic relationship. He even (vague spoiler) saves her fucking cat, bro! That shit made me tear up.

#8 - The Matter of Seggri (10/10)  

The planet Seggri has an unusual gender ratio— for every sixteen women, only one man is born. The result is a society in which women enjoy great freedom and power. But men are forcibly segregated from the population, valued only for their ability to sire children and perform in violent, deadly sports. “The Matter of Seggri” explores five anthropological accounts about life on Seggri throughout its history, and how brutally enforced gender roles ruin lives. 

She went back into the room and mechanically put on her clothes. She looked at the bed where they had lain. She stood at the window where Toddra had stood. She remembered how she had seen him dance long ago in the contest where he had first been made champion. She thought, “My life is wrong.” But she did not know how to make it right. 

This is a very dark story. While it starts harmlessly enough, it gets more and more fucked up as it progresses. “The Matter of Seggri” covered by my content warning at the beginning, but I feel it warrants a specific advisory for r*pe, p*dophilia, and sexual slavery. 

There are so many ways Le Guin could have done “The Matter of Seggri” wrong. Men are horribly mistreated and dehumanized throughout the piece, with several intentional parallels to how women have been treated throughout history on Earth. Like the whole bit about how men can’t be trusted with political power, since their hormones would render them irrational (an argument applied to women to this day). But this is never a mean-spirited jab at men as a whole. What they go through is obviously reprehensible and treated as such throughout the story. And it’s not a 1:1 parallel of misogyny, as men experience extreme and unique forms of abuse. Every single man on Seggri is destined for a life of slavery. Every single man on Seggri experiences r*pe and sexual abuse, often on a daily basis. Every single man on Seggri is barred from even basic education. Those who cannot or will not conform to strict gender performance invariably suffer death, torture, and worse. And most damning, the political and cultural climate not only normalizes this setup, but views it as good and necessary. 

“The Matter of Seggri” explores why rigid gender roles are bad for everyone involved. Women may have higher social power and status, but anyone who forms an emotional attachment to a man is destined for tragedy. One story follows a woman named Po remembering the close bond she had with her younger brother Ittu in childhood. Going in we know it can’t end well. Boys are removed from their families when they turn eleven and forced to cut all ties to their previous life. Once Ittu undergoes this ceremony, the two will never speak or see each other again. Leading up to this, their family tries to separate the two and break their bond— all under the familiar adage that girls should play with girls and boys should play with boys. When they disobey, Po gets locked in a cellar for ten days as punishment. Worse, this treatment works; she’s afraid to interact with Ittu until it’s too late. She never sees him again. The emotional damage to both children is indescribable, haunting Po for the rest of her life. 

Shame is a recurring theme. The second story follows an off-planet anthropologist who goes undercover to see what life on Seggri is like. She speculates whether women on Seggri can even experience shame, as the ones she meets are brazenly comfortable with their role in society. But shame does emerge in later stories. Po is ashamed that she doesn’t try to run away with Ittu before he gets taken away. Azak in the fourth story feels shame when she fails to help Toddra— and her inaction dooms him. In the fifth story Ardar, a man describing his traumatic experiences in the all-male “castles”, feels shame at the r*pe and sexual abuse he and his peers faced every night. Shame exists whenever someone chafes against Seggri’s culture— when they realize something is terribly wrong with their lives. 

This story’s treatment of homosexuality is surprisingly positive. Keep in mind this was written in 1994 in an intensely homophobic climate. A recurring idea in the story is that heterosexual romance is not only perverse, but impossible. The fourth story is a work of fiction about a man and woman who fall in love, and all the horrible things that happen to them as a result of that. While this is a clear role reversal compared to real life, Le Guin isn’t mean-spirited or critical of the gay relationships she depicts. Marriage between women is the cultural norm. Gay men are the most heroic characters in the story. Male homosexuality (outside of literal p*dophilia) is strictly forbidden and horrifically punished. Despite this, we learn it’s the gay men who sponsor forbidden underground education programs. In Ardar’s story, it’s the gay men who protect him from sexual assault, putting themselves at great personal risk.  

“The Matter of Seggri” is a haunting, harrowing read, but it’s one of my favorite in this collection. It shows just how harmful gender roles and expectations are for humanity as a whole. While it’s the darkest story I’ve read by Le Guin, it has a cautiously optimistic ending. Ardar leaves Seggri to pursue an education, but he wishes to return as an envoy. By the time he gets there, hundreds of years will have passed due to the limits of space travel (this is a Hainish story, after all). Despite decades of trauma, he still wishes to live among his people and see who they’ve become in his absence. 

#9 - Solitude (6/10)  

Eleven-soro was once home to the largest, most successful human civilization in the galaxy. Following environmental and then societal collapse, the remnants now live in loose tribal societies. Individuality is so prized that human groups are “persons”, not “people”. Serenity’s mother volunteers to live on Eleven-soro to study its social systems in detail, bringing her children with her. While her family feels at odds with Eleven-soro’s introverted culture, Serenity feels a strong connection to it that sparks inevitable conflict between them. 

Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship, later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situations call such a life “simple”. I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit. 

I felt pretty neutral about this one. It’s well-written, as one can generally expect from Le Guin. But as an introvert myself, the premise of “a planet of introverts” didn’t feel especially relatable. 

I do like how “Solitude” explores a recurring idea in the Hainish stories— that space travel is so slow that when people go their separate ways, they’re effectively dead to each other, as hundreds of years might pass traveling to one’s next destination. Serenity has to confront this problem, because while she loves her family, they don’t feel the connection to Eleven-soro’s way of life that she does. When they decide to leave, she has the option to follow them when she’s ready, but her mother and brother acknowledge that they might never see her again should she choose to remain. 

Also, I know I keep noting the year something is written when discussing representation in these stories. And I don’t praise representation for the sake of it (like, IMO it’s bare minimum, at least in recent years). But I’m always impressed by how well Le Guin’s stories age due to their inherent inclusiveness. In this story Serenity befriends Arrem, a character who’s straight up agender/nonbinary. Like, explicitly described as neither male nor female. There’s even neopronoun usage, in this case “heshe”. We learn heshe is part of the same race of humans from The Left Hand of Darkness, who already have A Whole Thing with gender, but Arrem is the first nonbinary example I’ve seen. This was written in 1994! Totally blew my mind. 

#10 - The Wild Girls (9/10)  

During a raid upon a nomadic village, a group of men enslave several young girls to train them as wives. On the journey back to the city, one infant grows deathly ill, and the men leave her to die in the swamp. Siblings Modh and Mal settle into their new life in the city’s hanan, a home for adolescent girls until they’re suitable for marriage. Modh learns to be content; despite her enslavement, all her needs are met and adults treat her with kindness. But both sisters are haunted by the spirit of the dead infant, whose wails only they can hear at night. 

Groda would follow them. Modh had heard the thin cry in the night. It came from the hollow place. What could fill that hollow? What could be enough? 

Oh boy, another fucked up one. Though not as extreme as “The Matter of Seggri”, there’s obvious elements of slavery, cultural genocide, grooming, and so on. So approach this one with caution. 

This is absolutely a horror story, and I’ll die on that hill. What happens to Modh and her sister is clearly despicable and depicted as such in the first act. They’re taken from the life they know and cut off from their culture, instead forced into a specific caste— so-called “Dirt People”— in a foreign society. So there’s a sense of wrongness in the second act when Modh readily accepts and feels at ease in her new home. She even marries one of her kidnappers, and we learn it’s a happy marriage based on friendship. What the fuck! Something’s not right. And indeed something IS amiss— the persistence of the dead infant Groda’s spirit as it haunts the two sisters. The more Modh adapts, the less she hears it, but the worse it grows for Mal.

All of this comes to a head in the third act. One of the kidnappers— specifically the one who abandoned Groda— expresses interest in buying Mal. Despite having the social status of a powerful husband, Modh realizes how powerless she and her sister are to prevent the unwanted marriage. And Groda’s wailing grows louder and louder. It’s reminiscent of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” — guilt manifesting as a sound few can hear. There’s even a point near the end where other characters suddenly hear it, and one becomes convinced it’s under the floor. Pulses and heartbeats are a recurring motif, by the way. 

I won’t spoil the rest, but there’s a clear theme of powerlessness and injustice, and it’s interesting to contemplate how the ending reflects these ideas. 

#11 - The Fliers of Gy (10/10)  

On Gy, people are almost identical to those on Earth, except they grow feathers in the place of body hair. Due to a rare mutation, however, a small percentage develop functional wings shortly before adulthood. “The Fliers of Gy” explores these individuals, particularly ways they have been ostracized through history, and how modern fliers cope in a world and society that forever treats them as outsiders. 

I went outside. The air was wonderful. I felt like I hadn’t had any air for a year. Actually, I felt like I’d never known what air was in my whole life. Even in that narrow little street, with the houses hanging over it, there was wind, there was sky, not a ceiling. The sky overhead. The air. I started walking. I hadn’t planned anything. I wanted to get out of the lanes and alleys, to somewhere open, a big plaza or square or park, anything open to the sky. I saw people staring at me but I didn’t care. I’d stared at people with wings, when I didn’t have them. Not meaning anything, just curious. Wings aren’t all that common. I used to wonder a little about what it felt like to have them, you know. Just ignorance. So I didn’t care if people looked at me now. 

OK, so this story is an allegory/satire about being queer. It seems stupidly obvious to me, which makes the confused reaction I’ve seen all the more funny. It’s not a 1:1 comparison, but there’s plenty of evidence.

The quote above hit me especially hard; the narrator had no idea he’d become one of the fliers, but remembers his curiosity about what it would be like. Many queer kids go through this before discovering their identity— I sure did. Then his pure joy as he sees the world in a new way. We learn that fliers have an elevated death rate due to “spontaneous wing failure”, but most accept the risk and continue to fly. It’s such an integral part of their identity that to stay grounded isn’t an option most consider. No comment. 

But the third and final narrator solidified this interpretation for me. He’s one of the few who choose to stay grounded; he goes on about how he wants to live a “normal life” with a wife and kids. He sees the wings as a tragedy to overcome rather than part of himself. There’s even a whole bit about wing binding; his wings are described as especially beautiful, but bound and hidden away. But his (and the story’s) final line implies that’s he’s dissatisfied with his life, despite earlier assurances. Many queer people remain closeted, or in denial, for this exact reason. The desire to seem “normal” and blend in, even if that version of you is a lie. Oof. 

I just liked this one. Winged humanoids have a special place in my heart. Add a narrative that speaks to me on a personal level and it’s no surprise I’m a fan. 

#12 - The Silence of the Asonu (6/10)  

The Asonu are almost entirely mute. Although children converse, adults rarely communicate in either audible speech or sign. Because they talk so infrequently, some people assume their few words conceal deep spiritual insight.

Older children shout wordlessly in the excitement of a game or tag or hide-and-seek, and sometimes scold an errant toddler with a “Stop!” or “No!”— just as the Elder of Isu murmured “Hot!” as a child approached an invisible fire; though of course the Elder may have used that circumstance as a parable, in order to make a statement of profound spiritual meaning, as appears in the Ohio Reading.

Another one I feel pretty neutral about. It’s similar to “Texts” from the previous volume; both stories focus on people who try to find deep meaning where there isn’t any. This one has subtext about racist assumptions in anthropology.

I like the part where one devotee writes a huge religious manifesto based on the eleven phrases one Asonu speaks over a period of four years. It’s intentionally absurd and over the top, especially once we learn the context behind her words. But the ending feels too dark compared to the humorous tone of everything else. 

#13 - The Ascent of the North Face (4/10)  

“The Ascent of the North Face” is the last journal of one Simon Interthwaite, detailing his expedition to scale the roof of 2647 Lovejoy Street. 

2/24. Reached Verandah Camp easily in one day’s climb. Tricky bit where the lattice and tongue and groove join, but Advance Party had left rope in place and we negotiated the overhang without real difficulty. 

This story is a tongue-in-cheek parody of adventure journals, equating climbing onto the roof of a suburban home to ascending Mt. Everest. Like “Half Past Four” in the previous volume, it screams writing exercise to me. It’s not horrible, and I genuinely laughed at the whole Ovaltine bit. But I found the premise confusing. Obviously a suburban home wouldn’t be on the same physical scale as Everest, so I assumed the narrator was like, an insect or something? But no, pretty sure everyone mentioned is human. A weird story, but not in a good way. 

#14 - The Author of the Acacia Seeds (8/10)  

Therolinguistics, the study of animal literature, is a budding yet distinguished academic field. “The Author of the Acacia Seeds” examines several notable essays on therolinguistics, including one that speculates on the possibility of interpreting botanical and geological languages.

In all the thousands of literatures of the Fish stock, only a few show any humor at all, and that usually of a rather simple, primitive sort; and the superb gracefulness of Shark or Tarpon is utterly different from the joyous vigor of all Cetacean scripts. The joy, the vigor, and the humor are all shared by Penguin authors; and, indeed, by many of the finer Seal auteurs. The temperature of the blood is a bond. But the construction of the brain, and of the womb, makes a barrier! Dolphins do not lay eggs. A world of difference lies in that simple fact.

“The Author of the Acacia Seeds” is a better work of parody than the previous one. I went down a rabbit hole last year researching animal language experiments funded by the US government in the 20th century. This story takes that (frankly idiotic) concept to an extreme, exploring an entire field dedicated to the literary interpretation of animal writing.

It’s all quite absurd, and I love it. My favorite part is when one therolinguist bullshits a manifesto out of an ant’s placement of acacia seeds, acknowledges their interpretation may be “ethnocentric”, then immediately argues that the final line as a revolutionary call for the death of the Queen. Just amazing.

#15 - The Wife’s Story (10/10)  

A bereaved wife talks about her husband’s moon-cursed transformation into a horrific beast.

It’s something runs in the blood, they say, and it may never come out, but if it does, it’s the change of the moon that does it. Always it happens in the dark of the moon.

“The Wife’s Story” seemed strangely familiar until my dear sister confirmed we’d read it together at some point years ago. I’d forgotten Le Guin wrote it! No wonder I saw that ending coming. This one is short, but it’s a creative, well-executed take on traditional werewolf stories. I shan’t elaborate. 

#16 - The Rule of Names (8/10)  

On Sattins Island, local wizard Mr. Underhill is an unassuming middle-aged man with no clear aptitude for magic. Even his simplest spells seem to go wrong, one way or another. As a result, the people of the village treat Mr. Underhill with a mix of fondness and disdain. But when a charming young wizard named Blackbeard visits the island looking for him, life changes forever in the village. 

“Because the name is the thing,” he said in his shy, soft, husky voice, “and the truename is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing. Am I right, Schoolmistress?” 

“The Rule of Names” is the only Earthsea story in this collection, which is honestly a little surprising. I guess most of them showed up in Tales from Earthsea? Maybe there were copyright issues between publishers? Hell if I know. 

This is a preliminary concept of Earthsea; some of the pieces are there, but not everything. As implied by the title, the story explores the name-based magic system and its pitfalls (though there’s an alternate meaning that becomes apparent later). Dragons and wizards exist. The world is an archipelago. Roke isn’t a thing yet, though. The prose is unrefined compared to later works, but by no means bad. And the ending is predictable yet satisfying; just paging through, I’m grinning at all the foreshadowing. 

I LOVE that “The Rule of Names” establishes a clear link between dragons and humans. Particularly that (vague spoiler) some people can be both. This idea is all but absent in the original trilogy, but is a huge deal in the last three books. I always thought Le Guin came up with it while writing Tehanu, though there’s a vague as hell hint in The Tombs of Atuan. But this story shows the idea predates A Wizard of Earthsea! Whether she simply revisited the concept or pulled a 26-year long con, it’s cool info to learn. 

#17 - Small Change (10/10)  

When her aunt dies, an unnamed narrator begins to see the dead. Left without any living family, she struggles to navigate the world on her own.

My mother came out of that new room in the form of a lacewing fly and saw me crying. Tears taste salt to the living, but sweet to the dead, and they have a taste for sweets, at first. I did not know all that, then. I was just glad to have my mother with me even as a tiny fly. It was a gladness the size of a fly.

Boy, what a surreal tale about life, death, and processing grief. I loved the prose and the otherworldly feeling to everything. Especially the part about the aunt going through a door in the house that wasn’t there before, leading to a confusing labyrinth of rooms and corridors. It feels like I’ve had not-quite-nightmares about that exact scenario.

Initially the rules of “Small Change” are a little confusing, with an omniscient yet limited narrator. But there’s a little twist addressing why she views the world the way she does. There are multiple interpretations on whether the events depicted take place or not, a la Pan’s Labyrinth. But I’d say the ending leans toward the fantastical explanation.

#18 - The Poacher (8/10)  

A young man, trapped by poverty, lives a miserable life. To avoid his abusive father’s wrath, he’s forced to spend his days foraging in the woods or starve. Such actions label him as a poacher in the eyes of the law. One day in the dead of winter, he discovers a giant, tangled hedgerow full of edible plants. He keeps the hedgerow a closely guarded secret, but one day his curiosity gets the better of him. Stealing tools from travelers and local craftsmen, he attempts to cut through the hedge to see what’s on the other side.

I knew no tales then, except the terribly simple one of my father, my stepmother, and myself, and so my daydreams had no shape or story to them. But all the time I walked, I had half an eye for any kind of gap or opening that might be a way through the hedge. If I had a story to tell myself, that was it: There is a way through the great hedge, and I discover it.

Ooooooh this story tricked me right up until the poacher cuts through the hedge and makes a few observations. Then it hit me like a truck. I’m not going to spoil the reveal, but if you catch allusions to a particular fable while reading this, it’s no coincidence.

I like how this story challenges the idea of destiny. In the context of the fable, the narrator seems primed to play a well-known character. But he intentionally avoids fulfilling this role, prioritizing his own happiness instead. Once I finished I wondered whether the narrator is selfish for doing so, or if his choice is justified by the need to escape his harsh life. 

My main criticism of the piece is that the narrator does something truly horrible during the story, but it’s never addressed. Just an uncomfortable elephant in the room.

#19 - Sur (6/10)  

Framed as a document found hidden in an attic, “Sur” describes a group of South American housewives who travel to Antarctica in 1909. The memoir reveals that these women reached the South Pole in 1910; two years before Roald Amnudsen. 

We sang. It is strange now to remember how thin our voices sounded in that great silence. It was overcast, white weather, without shadows and without visible horizon or any feature to break the level; there was nothing to see at all. We had come to that white place on the map, that void, and there we flew and sang like sparrows. 

This story is fine! I think I expected something weird to happen to the narrator and her expedition, but “Sur” is not that kind of story. It’s more of a “what if” scenario. It’s cool to think about a group of South American housewives being the first to reach the South Pole, being total badasses the entire time. 

My main point of confusion is the idea of “leaving no trace”. These women intentionally obscure their presence at the Pole so that the male explorers who think they’re the first don’t feel bad. I understand this part; it says something that these women are not doing it for glory and acclaim, but for themselves. 

But right before this, there’s a heavy emphasis on how traces of other expeditions remain indefinitely. For example, the women find a footprint from a previous attempt preserved in the snow— because it was packed down, the powder snow around it eroded with the wind, but the print itself remained behind. We even hear about various markers the women leave for each other. So you mean to tell me these women, sledging hundreds of miles on foot, battling malnutrition, hallucinations, and frostbite the entire way… somehow managed to hide every trace of their presence? Something the story states is difficult if not impossible to do? For some reason THIS is what broke my suspension of disbelief. The ending message is nice, though. 

#20 - She Unnames Them (7/10)  

Eve reverses the naming of the animals, and then herself. 

None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. 

So have you ever read or watched something that references a VERY well-known work? So well-known that the writer expects you to know it? And you STILL DON’T? Yeah. This story reminded me how Bible illiterate I am. Apparently it’s a whole thing that Adam named the animals. Fuck if I knew that.

With that context, “She Unnames Them” makes way more sense. It’s got some food for thought to be sure. Is Eve rejecting that name, since Adam named her (yes, I had to look that up too)? Hence the nonspecific ‘She’ in the title? Or is she, like the animals, rejecting the group names of human and/or woman? There’s a whole bit in the story about how animals can keep their specific, personal names, especially pets. Does she not consider Eve to be her real name anymore? The line stating it “doesn’t seem to fit very well lately” indicates this. If so, big (though probably unintentional) trans energy. 

No matter the interpretation or obvious shit I’m missing, the story is beautifully written. The general idea I got is the value of self-identification and determination. The narrator realizes she needs to define herself, and the labels others assigned her no longer fit. So she leaves to find her own way, unsure of what struggles lie ahead.

#21 - The Jar of Water (10/10)  

Kas is a servant working under a wealthy merchant. One day his master charges him with an unusual task: take a sealed jar of water, carry it across the desert during the hottest season of the year, and bring it to a saint in a neighboring city. Once the water is blessed, he is to return home the same way. Given few supplies for his journey, Kas nevertheless embraces his errand. 

It lived here, this place was its world, and there was no water in it. 

“The Jar of Water” is the most blatant parable I’ve seen in Le Guin’s work. It’s one of the last short stories she ever published, and it’s just fantastic. There’s a strong Arabian Nights vibe. Gorgeous prose, a profoundly human core, and a clear yet touching moral message at its center. Kas is such a genuinely good guy that it’s a joy to see the world through his eyes. The ending, and how it links to the central themes of honesty and compassion, is perfect. It’s a deceptively simple tale, but executed so well it serves as testament to Le Guin’s mastery of the craft. 

Closing Thoughts

Boy, Ursula K. Le Guin sure could write! The world is a sadder place for her absence.

Both volumes of The Unreal and the Real were a pleasure to read. After such a deep dive (so to speak) into Earthsea last year, it’s enlightening to read about her other worlds and ideas. I loved seeing the common themes and ideas across her works, some of which I didn’t even mention, like “making one’s soul”. While I have a lot more Le Guin waiting on my shelf and wishlist, I’ll step away from her for a while. But it’s always a joy to come back.

[eldritchqueerture]

Point of View - Original Statement Fic

Point of View (5004 words) by LadyNikita Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Statement Giver(s) (The Magnus Archives) Additional Tags: Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), this was intended as the eye but evolved into the vast as well, happens, cosmic horror, attempt at Eldritch Madness, unreality, Discussions of pointlessness and meaninglessness, Canon-Typical The Vast Content (The Magnus Archives), from the eps about space, Mentions of Death, Compulsion, discussions of free will (kind of), Dissociation, Panic, Mentions of addiction, Leitner Book (The Magnus Archives), except it was not possessed by Leitner, Pretty Colours <3, Neurodivergent Protagonist, Queer Protagonist, because I can project a bit as a treat, Can Be Read Without Prior Knowledge of the Podcast (I think)

Summary: "Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?" --- Statement of Lyria Ellison regarding a different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

Notes: Hiiiiii <3 I've been reading Lovecraft recently and as much as I hate the dude, The Colour Out of Space gave me so much inspiration that I immediately sat down and produced this in one sitting. I've been meaning to play with the concept of eldritch madness for a while; something about this trope is really appealing to me and I'm really enjoying my attempts at shaping it with words. Lyria is a preexisting OC of mine, I will give some background on her in the end notes because I love her very much. This is a form of practice for me; I'm playing with horror themes and I'd like to get acquainted with them to better incorporate them into my overall writing. Therefore I will accept constructive criticism if anyone wants to give it, but only in the form of DMs, either on Tumblr (your-queer-vampire-dm) or on Discord, if we know each other through a server. All of the warnings I think should be mentioned are in the tags, but if you think something should be added then please tell me!

Date: May 10th , 2018

Name: Lyria Ellison

Subject of experience: A different point of view and the dangers of knowledge.

—

How do you start telling a story that changed your heart, your mind, and your soul so profoundly that you can barely still function in a society? How do you say all that without sounding borderline insane? Nobody knows what I’ve seen, what I’ve been through. I know they would all say I’ve hallucinated it all and should seek treatment. But I know it won’t help. I know… I know so much now. Too much and not enough. Never enough. I know what happened was real . I don’t have proof so I’m guessing you won’t believe me either, but I need to tell someone about it. So I might as well tell you.

My name is Lyria Ellison and I’m a neuropsychology major. Ex-major, I should say. I dropped out after… Yeah. I dropped out; there’s not much point in continuing studying things about the feeble, insignificant human brain. Utterly pointless venture.

Humans crave understanding. They strive towards knowing more and more, that’s what all science is about, isn’t it? To study, to learn and understand; to seek answers to questions. But are we really equipped to handle the answers we seek? Even if we were able to reach them, are our minds advanced enough to grasp the truths about the world we live in? What if there are things just beyond our understanding, lurking in the shadows of reality, peeking into our world just enough to feed on us, on our uncertainty and our pathetic scrambling towards answers that would only bring madness?

Just a year ago, I was convinced I was going to finish my degree. I was so passionate about it too, eager to learn more and more, to research and seek knowledge. Curious and fascinated by the world around us. What a foolish thing it was to give into that drive. My mind was open to the supernatural, although I always approached it scientifically; I never said the supernatural existed, but I also never said it didn’t. It was plausible; all in all, every scientist must accept that there is still a vast amount of knowledge we don’t have about the world.

The ignorance was a blessing. But I shall not get ahead of myself.

It started around December last year; my dad had died, and my girlfriend, Shawala, and I were clearing out his house. There wasn’t really anyone else to do it; my mother had passed a couple years prior, I had no siblings, and extended family was out of the picture as well; and my dad had gathered a lot of things in his adventurous life; he was a traveller, and he loved the world, loved learning about it, just like me. I was feeling pretty overwhelmed with it all; my dad meant a lot to me back then, and Shawala proved an excellent support at that first shock. She promised to do some first view assessments of the ground floor, while I went to scope out how things looked in the attic.

It’s always either basements or attics, isn’t it? I used to read horror, Lovecraftian was my favourite – how ironic, isn’t it? How stupid . How utterly ignorant. The hubris of the human race at its finest.

Anyways, the attic was half-lit from the small windows in the roof, and dust was swirling in the faint light of the afternoon sun. It was cold here, but I didn’t pay much mind; the house was old, and it wasn’t surprising that there was draft. To say the space was cluttered would be an understatement; I could barely walk around the numerous boxes, old furniture, crates, and overflowing bookshelves; all of which made something in my chest curl tight, bringing tears to my eyes. I steered my steps towards the nearest bookshelf; I’ve always been a bookworm, fascinated by nearly any tome I came across; I’ve been reading popular science books since I was eight. So naturally, I was drawn to the books, taking huge steps above the cardboard boxes and careful not to hit anything else.

The books were old, of course, and dusty. Some of them had loose pages, and I treated them very gently, almost reverently. I have a little bit of a bookbinder streak, and I decided I would take them home and try to put them back together. As I rifled through them, I saw they pertained to a vast variety of subjects, from poetry, drama, and history, to science, metaphysics, and maths. The deeper I looked into this stunning collection, the more reverence rose in my heart; at my fingertips I had the oldest and the biggest accumulation of knowledge I had ever seen. I saw some books dated back even two hundred years ago.

At that point Shawala called me to check if I was alright. I put the book I had in my hands back and my knuckles brushed against the black leather cover of the next one on the shelf. I felt pleasant tingling in my palm at the touch and my heart leaped at the prospect; I didn’t know why –  the book seemed ordinary enough on the shelf and there was no title on its spine.

I sometimes wonder if I could have just left it there and gone downstairs; chosen to come back later and then maybe, it wouldn’t have enticed me as it did. If, by that point, I had had any choice left on the matter.

Alas, intrigued by the book, I placed my palm on the spine and took it out. The leather was soft and smooth, probably sheep, with familiar subtle grains all over the texture. I remember it striked me as odd that it was warmer than the rest of the books in the drafty attic, but I shrugged it off. The front cover had a title, small but visible in the centre, etched in gold – Punctum Visus .

I, by all means, cannot read or speak Latin, but I figured it was something to do with vision. I opened the book, an unknown anticipation buzzing in my stomach. The pages were worn and old, their texture was slightly rough but pleasant under my fingertips; as I opened the front page, I saw the title again, this time in thick but still elegant, black letters, and the smell came up to my nostrils.

I tried to describe it in my head countless times after. I always loved the smell of old books, and I knew it very well, so it came to me as a surprise to realize it wasn’t the only smell I could feel from the book. It was… cold, somehow, distant but prickling at my nose, a little bit the way peppermint tastes. It reminded me of the night sky and distant stars somehow. The smell awakened an unease within me, as I couldn’t quite place what it was and why it seemed so weird , but it wasn’t by any means unpleasant. It was… enticing. Like a promise of a mystery.

I breathed it in again through my nose, closing my eyes, and for a moment I lost all feeling in my body. I was untethered and immaterial, somewhere in deep darkness that seemed to envelop me whole. It felt cold on my mind, stretching it thoughtlessly in the empty vastness, and I saw distant flickering lights of stars. Before I could form a coherent thought, I was back in myself, panting and shaking, staring at the front page of the Punctum Visus . I looked around with shaky breaths; the attic looked the same, and Shawala’s steps on the stairs reached my ears, with her voice calling my name. A shiver passed down my spine, causing goosebumps to bloom on my skin; was it the draft, the dread, or the excitement I couldn’t tell.

I knew I had to read this book, no matter what it took for me to do so.

I took it home, almost forgetting about the rest of the books upstairs. It had spent the next month laying in my room, as I dealt with the formalities and moving the rest of things that weren’t sold from the house either to my place or to charity. After the day we left the house for the last time, I collapsed in my bed, exhausted, but instead of closing, my eyes fell on the book unassumingly waiting on my nightstand.

A surge of excitement passed through me, waking me right up. I sat up and reached for the book. It was still warm; I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, but warm it was. I think it made me subconsciously assign it more… being? Like, even before I knew anything, I somehow subconsciously accepted that it was more than just an object; that it was, in a sense, alive on its own. I brushed my fingers on the cover, feeling the texture of the leather and the etching of the letters. In the meantime during this month I had checked the meaning of the title – Point of Sight; a position from which a thing is or is supposed to be viewed. It makes so much sense now.

But then I didn’t know what dangers it held; or I didn’t want to think about them. I do remember feeling anxious, my hands trembling every time I opened the cover, but it was so mingled with exhilaration of the certainty I was discovering something important that I must have disregarded it. As I turned the pages, I wasn’t surprised to find the text in Latin; though I still felt a pang of frustration that it meant I couldn’t read it for now. I rifled through the pages, looking curiously at the letters that formed words yet unattainable to me. There was a hunger inside of me; a hunger to Know. As I turned the pages past various symbols, illustrations of the constellations, and of Earth, I determined it must be some sort of a metaphysical work. The point of view on the world around us.

Normally I just skim through works like this and leave them. While they are an interesting read sometimes, they’re not my favourite genre and, looking objectively, putting in the effort of learning a whole language just for the sake of reading a treatise on the meaning of cosmos by an unknown author seems strange at best. But somehow it seemed obvious to me that I had to read it. It called to me, sang into a part of my being that begged to be filled, promising knowledge that would finally leave me satisfied. I know now that it’s impossible. Once you’ve tasted the hunger for knowing, you will never find satisfaction; it’s like an addiction. You just crave more and more, and the knowledge never ends. After a certain point you know too much and when it all connects, when it starts to make sense… you slip. I didn’t know that, even though maybe I should have. I didn’t know what those things I was feeling meant then and I didn’t stop to question them; I gave into it as soon as it touched me. I was stupid.

What followed were a busy couple of months. Every waking moment that wasn’t spent keeping up the pretence of being interested in my major (back then I only thought it a brief hyperfixation, of course, and wouldn’t have called it a pretence at all), I was learning Latin online or staring into the incomprehensible words on the pages. This period of my life is a blur; I remember my friends checking up on me if I was alright, since I wasn’t particularly social anymore. Shawala got progressively more worried, but it fully escaped my mind to care. I know that staring thoughtlessly at the book took up more and more of my time; once, I remember, I returned from my classes at three PM and took the book out; when I came back to myself it was well past midnight. That’s when I started to feel truly uneasy about it. It was the second half of April; I looked back on what I’ve been doing these past months and this cold dread started creeping up to my throat. I realized I didn’t know why I wanted to read the book so much and I remembered the “vision” or the hallucination I had that first time in my dad’s attic. I had set it aside completely as unimportant, and I couldn’t wrap my head around why. I started shaking and theorizing in my head about the book being able to influence my mind somehow, to control it. Had my actions not been my own? How much of it was my own will and how much was the book? Was it even possible for it to influence me like that; could it be that it was supernatural in some way?

The house became cold, unnaturally so. It was dark and all the windows were closed, but a chill draft managed to find its way into the corridor I was in anyway. I sank to the floor and hugged my knees, trembling in panic. I was all alone in the flat, everyone I knew was surely already asleep in their homes, and I was small and weak in the face of something that maybe could have controlled my mind. I suddenly became aware of the leatherbound book in my hand, and I threw it along the corridor at the front door with a whimper, as far away from me as possible. The book thumped against the door, then the floor, and opened on a random page.

I’ve read enough horrors. I knew that the page would be significant, and that knowledge made me sob and hug my knees tighter. I didn’t know what was happening; I felt like I’d just woken up from a months-long dream… and perhaps I was right. The recent past felt alien.

I felt tears sting my eyes and that’s when the smell reached me. Again that mixture of old paper and peppermint cold, distantly sweet but freezing the blood in my veins. My breath came in ragged and shallow, and tears streamed down my face as I stared at the open book that was calling me in an inaudible whisper. The logical side of my mind was trying desperately to make sense of it, to assign the dissociative feeling to my father’s death and yeah, it was plausible, but somehow it just didn’t feel right. The whispers sounded again, swirling around my head, the golden sound almost touching the back of my neck, making me wince. It was enticing and promising, but this time, I felt terror instead of excitement. Disregarding how my mind was trying to rationalize the situation, I knew the book was cursed somehow. I knew that I was its victim. And I knew that I would not be strong enough to resist it.

I don’t know how much time I sat there, trembling, and sobbing into my knees, before I calmed down from the panic and decided I had to do something. I had to find out what this book was and how it found itself into my dad’s library. I couldn’t remember seeing anything in his diaries that would mention it at all, but then again, I didn’t read them all cover to cover. On wobbly legs I carefully made my way back to my room and searched the Internet until the sun started peeking out of the window; I found nothing about any book titled Punctum Visus . I tried all the libraries that I’d known of, that had their assortment online, all the research databases; nothing.

So, at the crack of dawn, with a fast-beating heart, I stood in the door of my room, staring out into the corridor, where the book still lay by the front door, unmoving. The golden strings of a wordless melody made it to my ears; it promised an explanation; that this time if I looked close enough, I would find what I was looking for.

What was I looking for?

Where else could I find the answers if not in the book itself?

I could feel its cold fingers slowly wrap around my mind, steering me to come closer. It called me with a hypnotising voice that awakened all the red signals in my brain, telling me to run and hide, but I didn’t. The voice meant danger, but I knew it also meant knowledge.

Dangerous knowledge. The pull dragged me through the corridor step by step; I hadn’t been fighting it as strongly as I could have had and I was about to start, since I was getting closer to the book, but suddenly I felt the chill of the influence let go, hovering close but out of reach. It was still compelling me to come, to Look, but I could move my own limbs. I had a choice to make.

Knowledge of danger. Did I believe my own warning thoughts that I would regret looking into the book? Did I take my own logical, rational side seriously? Was I ever good at resisting my own impulses?

I’ve never been addicted to anything, but then again, I never really had the opportunity, as it were; my friends were more of a no-alcohol types and I really ever smoked cigarettes once. I’ve never seen drugs in real life. So who’s to say if I’m not an addictive personality? And this, this was addictive. The thrill of mystery, the exhilarating process of learning, the anticipation of the answers.

Was it ever really my choice?

No supernatural force guided my steps that night; no cold fingers made me kneel next to the book and carefully cradle it in my arms, looking at the page with a shaky breath and tears in my eyes, as if I was coming back home like the prodigal son. But I’m sure it was by some paranormal means that this time I could understand the text on the pages.

I honestly don’t remember what it said. As I read the unfamiliar words, the meaning presented itself in my mind, not entirely unlike that first “vision” I had in the attic; as soon as I started reading I knew that I had made the choice and there was no turning back. That cold draft enveloped me, sat on my skin, and started to bite; I felt that smell again, stronger than ever before, something intangible but unmistakably inhuman . It was then that I realized that’s what had felt wrong to me about the smell since the beginning. It was inferior and alien. My hands started shaking as my eyes, glued to the text, moved now on their own down the page, drinking the words in. I was terrified out of my mind, but the pleasant tingling along my nerves was back, the anticipation of the promised understanding.

My mind was drowned with the tide of knowledge. This was just a prologue; a true discovery would require preparation, but I was almost ready. The voice said I was chosen, that I was a perfect candidate to bring It what It needs and that I would be rewarded. I cried tears of amazement and horror at the sheer scope of the voice – it seemed to encompass the entire world. I couldn’t comprehend it, but I didn’t know then that it was a blessing. I wanted to know, I craved to know what It was and how I could be of use to something so powerful, so huge. Divine. That was a word that crossed my mind, as much as I don’t like that. I don’t like many things, but I can’t change any of them.

The voice said I’m on the right path. I would Know and Understand. First, I needed to do something. As It told me what that was, doubt started to creep up to my mind. What was I doing? What was happening? How could this be real?

I came to on the floor by my front door, the cursed book in hand, with a tear-stained face and a bloody nose.

I knew what I had to do to get ready and, as I calmed down and went over everything in my head, I was surprised by how trivial it was. Honestly, by this point I was kind of afraid It would tell me to hurt someone, so I was glad this was just about reading a bunch of words in a specific location at a specific time. I was aware of the fact that this was most probably a ritual, and I was quite apprehensive. I kept arguing with myself in my head, over and over whether I should follow through, but deep down I knew that I would, no matter what I told myself. This part, I think, scared me the most; how compelling the promise of knowledge was, how reverently I’d found myself thinking of the book and its owner (which I assumed was the voice), how fanatical some of my thoughts sounded. I’ve never been religious, never really felt idealistic either. I was always focused on facts, on the here and now. Can knowledge be an ideal? Can you be a fanatic of Seeing and Knowing?

How much had I changed since I’d found Punctum Visus in that old attic.

I found a good, quiet spot, on the north-west side of the New Forest National Park near Southampton. I told no one about this, deeming it unimportant. I would come back after my big discovery, I would explain everything. I laugh at myself now; at my naivety.

The night of April 28 th was clear, and the starry sky looked back at me as I parked my car on the road in the forest and locked it. I tied a piece of a long red string to the wheel, not to lose my way in the forest, and started to walk forward. I held the book close to my chest, as if it could protect me from the dark, eerie outlines of the trees, swaying gently on the wind and whatever the darkness around me held. I didn’t light the torch; the moon was nearly full, bathing everything in its gentle light, and besides, for some reason it seemed that the crude yellow light would somehow break the sanctity of what I was about to do. I could see the ground in front of me and managed to lose sight of my car and everything else besides trees pretty fast.

I stopped when I found a small clearing. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on me like a big eye; I didn’t know why this comparison seemed the most fitting, but it did. I took a deep breath, feeling a chill plant little dots all over my skin, making my hairs stand on end. The wind died down and the trees froze, as if in anticipation. I felt something watching me closely; I was not alone here anymore.

The realization made my breath catch in my throat and the last streaks of sanity broke through my thick skull. Run! Drop the book and run! I didn’t. My hands trembled, my muscles tensed, and I stood there, frozen with fear as something stared at me, seemingly for eternity. Something bigger than me, bigger than anything I have ever seen was watching me, waiting. My eyes dropped to the book in my arms. The black leather was warm, as always, but this time I felt a pulsating sensation from it. A heartbeat.

I screamed. The book landed discarded on the ground, and I stumbled backwards and tripped, landing in the grass as well. It was cold and wet, and it glistened with something in the faint moonlight. At first I took it for water, but upon closer inspection I saw it was the grass itself that glittered – a shy rainbow, glowing iridescently in an impossible way. I froze, stunned, for I have never seen such colours before. It seemed utterly alien, something unfitting for the human eye to see; simultaneously beautiful and horrifying.

As I looked around, I noticed that everything alive in the forest – the trees, the grass, the bushes, the plants – had taken on that iridescent mixture of faint light that prickled my eyes and sent a shiver of terror down my spine. It was beautiful, utterly gorgeous in a way that nothing a human eye can perceive could be. It was horrifying in how different, alien, and other it was. My senses could tell this is not of the Earth; not of this reality, not of this world; everything in me that still had common sense tried to recoil from the inferiority of this magnificence and the danger it brought, but I had abandoned common sense a while back. Maybe even when I touched the book for the first time. I stared then, breathless and trembling, at this scenery as if from a fairy tale and decided to lock away my rational thoughts. I wanted to See, to Know; I wanted to experience and if this was the death of me then hell, it was a pretty good way to go. To behold such a sight, I thought, was a reward in and of itself.

Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant. I slowly rose to my knees and patted the ground down until I felt the book. It still pulsated with this heartbeat and the letters etched in the leather glowed with golden light. My hands were sweaty, and I didn’t know whether I was shivering from fear or the cold. I opened the book on the first page.

What I saw was not what I had expected. I remembered that the first page, after the titular one, was the beginning of the introduction, that much I had understood, but now it was a big picture in black and white; a night sky, with an almost full moon and strewn with stars. It was a shot from the ground and treetops could be seen at the edges of the picture. As the book swayed in my hands, the stars glittered, and the perspective shifted ever so slightly, as if it was in 3D. Stricken by a surge of dread and cold certainty, I looked up. My suspicion was right – the picture in the book depicted the exact image that was now above me. I gasped quietly and looked down at the book—

And this is where things started to really go horribly, horribly wrong.

The book was gone. What’s more, the ground was gone too and suddenly everything was not where it should have been. I blinked but it did nothing to ease the dizziness; and when I composed myself enough to register what I was seeing I froze, the most intense horror I have ever experienced crushing my body from all sides and inside out.

I realized that I was Seeing. I was finally Seeing, and I Understood it all.

I don’t know how to convey in words what I saw. I don’t believe it’s possible; humans were never made to see and understand such things. I should have never touched the book, I should have never asked for knowledge. All my life I believed that knowledge was the point; it was a tool, and it was power. I don’t know what I think anymore. I think some knowledge should always be hidden because we were not made to know everything. We can’t , it’s physically impossible for us to comprehend.

For one moment in my life. For one moment I became something else, and I saw the world in the way It sees the world. For one moment I shared a mind with an eldritch being, a thing that is Fear itself, and I saw the Earth through Its Eye. I can’t… I can’t tell you just how horrible it is. How… How meaningless; we’re all intertwined things, guided by strings of web that lead us through life, and we’re all connected in this maze of fear . We’re not individuals; we’re not special. We don’t have souls and none of our experiences matter. We’re just fear. These… These entities are a part of all of us. They’re our fear and they live inside of us, inside of every living creature that can feel fear. Can you comprehend that? How can you be sure you are yourself when there’s a cosmic entity, a power as old as life itself, living you ? And no one has any idea. Nobody knows and if I tell someone they’ll think I’m crazy. Sometimes I think I’m crazy. But deep down I know what I saw. I know it was real. And I’m terrified. I’m terrified because I know that this Being of eyes that I became a part of watches everything I do. I feel Its presence here very strongly, and I guess it makes sense. It will never leave me. It’s a part of me, just like the rest of them; just like they’re all a part of every one of you, yet you have no idea. But I know. And I know I’m all alone with that knowledge, the knowledge that I can’t comprehend, but I know I could in that one moment. It’s a very lonely place to be and I’m scared.

I’m scared as I have never been before; this fear doesn’t leave me anymore. Every second of every day I’m aware I’m watched by something as great as cosmos. I’m aware I shared my mind with that being and it makes my skin crawl.

I don’t know what to do now, but I don’t expect any advice from you. I’m leaving the book with you, as proof. Its heart doesn’t beat anymore, and I’ve seen what I was supposed to.

Don’t read it.

Notes: If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving me a comment!! For people interested in a little bit of background: Lyria is a D&D character I have created that still awaits her chance to play in a campaign. She's an arcane scholar that has a dark little secret of actually being a warlock of a being she doesn't know a lot about. She's in love with knowledge and she seeks to learn about her powers as well as the world around her. I'm currently DMing a Ravenloft campaign and I just couldn't miss the fact how much potential for a corruption arc she has. Then I listened to TMA and I was like, she would definitely become the Avatar of the Beholding.

[pinkmangafish]

Noodles ... and a few surprises

Rating: General

Fandom: Psycho-Pass

Pairing: Kougami and Tsunemori (Shinkane)

Characters: Akane Tsunemori, Shinya Kougami, and pretty much everyone else alive at the end of PP3: First Inspector. 

Summary: Part 1 - Kougami collects Akane from the isolation centre and quickly realizes something is wrong. Part 2 - Kougami arranges a surprise party for Akane, but is that what it really is?

Author’s Notes:  I had hoped to finish this in time for shinkaneweek, but it kept growing. Please point out any glaring canonical mistakes, and if possible, I'll fix them. This is my second piece of fanfic, so I am very new to all of this. I find that I am torn between the relationship between Kougami and Tsunemori, and how the plot moves forward to, hopefully, an end to the Sibyl System.

NOODLES ...

Akane Tsunemori stepped outside for the first time in what seemed a very long time. Well, it had been … No, she was not going to think about that now. Today, though technically an enforcer with limitations on her movements, she was free. Free of that windowless room.  Free of the probing questions from the perfunctorily concerned doctors. Free of the constant surveillance. Free of the need to be on her guard even when she was asleep. Free to go outside and feel the sun and wind and rain on her body. She lifted her face to feel the sun, but it was already late afternoon and the sun had lost most of its warmth. Never mind. There was always tomorrow.

She dropped her gaze and saw the man waiting for her. She caught her breath. This was better than the sun on her face. Shinya Kougami was leaning against a car as nonchalant as ever.

“I’m here to get you.” he shrugged. “Sorry.”

She had half expected Shimotsuki to collect her or to at least send a drone for her, but somehow, she was not at all surprised to see him. She walked down a few steps and then stopped and looked up around.

“I’m hungry,” she announced.

He laughed. “Is that all you can say?”

She walked slowly over to the car and smiled up at him. There were some new lines there that she had not seen in all his visits to her. Most of the time, they had leant on either side of the door as they talked, but even so, she was surprised. She almost reached out and touched his face.

“Yes. Treat me to something,” she replied.

“Yes, ma’am,” He paused as if considering something. Then, abruptly, “I’ll drive.”

Akane nodded and got in the car. If she had expected him to start a conversation she would have been disappointed, but then, she knew him and was not. She did not feel the need to chat, either. Content to be with him she wondered if she was going to have the courage to say what needed to be said. But that was not a conversation to be held in the car. It could wait a little longer. For now, she stared at the city flowing past her window. As they got to areas that she knew, she saw signs of her time away in the shops and cafes that had taken the place of others: a florist where there had been a gift shop or a mall with a new name and look. This is what Yayoi, Kagari and the other enforcers must have felt like she thought. Some of them, she knew, had spent many more years than she had in the isolation center before being granted a reprieve of sorts. A life of boredom and isolation swapped for one of danger and death, but also friendship and the chance to feel like they belonged. Her thoughts abruptly changed direction. She wondered what Homura’s plans for her were. She was under no illusion that he was responsible for her freedom despite the Sibyl System’s claim to have made the decision itself. Assigning her to Shimotsuki as an aide had been a bold move. Staring into traffic, her head against the window, she questioned whether her and Homura’s aims were still in alignment or was he now playing a different game? And if so, was she now a pawn? Then there was Arata, and Kei and the new team of enforcers. So many new variables were in play. She needed to catch up quickly. And … she had to talk Kougami. She sighed heavily.

Kougami glanced at her. He was not comfortable with this pensive version of Akane but he knew her better than to try and distract her. He waited until the car had parked and his door was open. “Akane, we’re here. Let’s get some noodles.”

 She looked at him and then at their surroundings. She recognized the small mall as the one near her old apartment. How had they got here so quickly? She was out of sync. She was unreal and everything else was too real. Had she really been that lost in thought? She would need to be more careful, more alert. Her stomach growled. Noodles? Yes, of course he’d take her to eat noodles.

“I hope Thai is okay? The old ramen place closed down six months ago,” Kougami led the way across the street not waiting for her. She nodded. Then wondered how he know about the ramen shop. She could not remember having eaten there with him. He glanced down at her, “We’re practically neighbors now. I live in that block over there,” he pointed to a small apartment building behind them. So near, she thought.

The small Thai noodle shop was a reminder that the city, no, the country, was changing and changing rapidly. Immigrants were starting to open their own businesses and that, she knew, was a good thing. The restaurant was barely that, just a few plastic tables and chairs. Kougami led her over to a corner table by the window. She wondered whether he even realized he had assessed which table gave them the best vantage point. Probably not.

A waitress appeared with a menu and set down a bottle of fish sauce and a small dish of chili in vinegar. “Sawatdee, kha, Kougami-san,” she said giving Akane a quick, interested look.

Akane realized that he had been telling a story. “I’m sorry, Kougami, I spaced out. Who were you trying to hold onto?”

He looked at her steadily. She had seemed fine when she walked out of the isolation center. Now, though, he could see the signs of exhaustion in her face. “Oh, just some junked up trafficker. He’d been bringing in kids from … doesn’t matter. Except that to bring him down both Gino and I had to hold onto him while Kei shot him with a paralyzer.”

“No!” She looked at him in amusement, her attention finally on him. “You got shot with a paralyzer again?”

“Well, technically, Gino and I are secondaries. We were holding onto the perp, so … Kei wasn’t actually trying to shoot us,” Kougami smiled at her but his eyes were watchful.

“Hmmm, are you sure about that?” she asked. “You had a bit of a run in with him just a couple of weeks ago.”

“Ahh, you know about that?” Kougami shook his head. “I’m not saying that we’re friends now. Hell, I don’t even like the man that much. But we can work together.”

The noodles arrived. Tom yum goong, hot, spicy and delicious, she slurped slowly and steadily. She smiled at him, “Much better than AI hyper-oats.” Then her eyes fell back to the table and she was quiet again. She stayed still staring at the soup that remained in her bowl, but her eyes were moving as the thoughts and questions flooded her mind. At one point she looked up quickly at Kougami and opened her mouth, but then closed it, and dropped her head down again. She stayed like that for so long that Kougami began to worry.

“Akane, what is the matter? Please, tell me … if you can.” He leant forward so he could hear her, but she said nothing. “Akane, you are okay now. You are out. You are safe.”

To her surprise, Akane felt large, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. Bemused, she watched them as they slid off her chin and fell into the soup. She wondered reflexively what the soup would taste like; if she would be able to taste the salt from her tears. Then she felt a gentle hand drying her cheeks and looked into Kougami’s eyes. He seemed to become aware of what he was doing and started to pull his hand away, but she grabbed it and held onto him. His eyes widened as her grip tightened and then he stretched out his other hand.

She clung to him desperately, tears still falling and her breath uneven with sobs. All she could hear was that one word, “safe”. She was safe. She was safe. And yet, even though it was true, it was also a lie. She knew that the most dangerous part of the journey was ahead. And yet again, and yet again, she was safe. She held onto his hands for all she was worth.

Kougami began talking again, softly, in no hurry. His voice providing her with another anchor. “One time, in Tibet, I went on a raid with this guy, Dawa, I think his name was. Anyway, he was as tough as they come. Not nasty, just through and through tough. The kind of guy you are glad to have at your back or to follow. The raid went badly. Someone had leaked the plan and they were waiting for us. The fight was brutal, and we lost several people, all friends of his from childhood. One guy literally exploded in front of him as if he’d been hit by a lethal dominator, but Dawa just kept going. A natural leader. Eventually, we got the upper hand, got what we came for and escaped. It took us almost a week to get back. The whole time, Dawa just held it together. Two more died on that trek - one from his wounds and the other slipped into a crevice. Dawa didn’t flinch once, just kept going and kept his people together. When we got back to camp, one of his men was waiting for us. He handed Dawa the body of an old dog. This man, who could wipe off the blood of his friend and keep going, collapsed where he was and started crying like a child. I don’t know if he really did love that dog as much as that or if it was his way of grieving for his friends. I do know that keeping those kinds of feelings inside is a kind of death.” His voice trailed off.

Akane sighed deeply and pulled one hand away and mopped her eyes with a paper napkin. “Thank you, Kougami. I’m feeling tired. Can we go?”

She waited at the table while he paid the bill. By the time he returned, when she smiled at him, her eyes were almost clear. “Thank you for the noodles.”

“You’re welcome.”

Out on the street the strange hyperreal feeling returned. Colours were a little too bright, noises a little too loud and the sidewalk seemed to be moving under her. It was like walking in a distorted holo. She saw a street scanner and flinched. Kougami frowned down at her. Apart from when she had first started work as an Inspector, he had never seen her this unsure of herself. She put her hand into his and felt his fingers tighten slightly. Safe.

Her apartment was only a few minutes’ walk from the mall, so they left the car where it was. About halfway there, she realized she had forgotten her small bag of belongings. “My keys, they’re …” she began to turn back.

“It’s okay, Akane, Yayoi gave me your spare set. I’ll get your things later.”

She thought about asking why he had her keys, but then decided she could not be bothered. As soon as he opened the door, it was obvious. The underfloor heating was on and there was the unmistakable feeling of stepping into a clean apartment. She kicked her shoes off in the hall, walked into the living room and looked around. The large sofa where she had slept so many nights seemed enormous after the one in isolation. She looked over at the kitchen in the corner. There was even a bowl of fruit on the counter. She glanced up at him surprised, “Thank you, Kougami.”

“Well, it isn’t much. I just set the auto-cleaner to do its job and bought some fruit,” he shrugged, but she could see he was both embarrassed and pleased by her reaction.

“I’m tired.”

“Then I’ll leave you to sleep. I’ll come back with your things, but I’ll just leave them by the door,” he stepped back, but her hand did not let go of his. His expression remained neutral as she raised a finger to her lips and began to walk towards the bedroom. She gave a small shake of her head and her own expression was so serious he was in no doubt that this was not a seduction.

With her finger still against her lips, she let go of his hand and opened a small cupboard. When she pulled out a small, plastic, white cat with a pink bow he looked totally perplexed. She set the cat down and pushed a small button on the back, then held her fingers up as she counted down from five.

“Now we can talk. This little kitty has a jammer. Any bugs, and I am sure there are some, will pick up nothing more than a silent room,” she sat down on the bed. Another sigh.

“Where did you get that thing?” without thinking, Kougami sat next to her.

“Long story short? Shion.”

Kougami grunted. Then he shifted so he could look at her. “You said we could talk. So talk.”

“You know there are somethings that I can’t tell you? Not that I don’t trust you, because I do. I trust you with my life. But knowing those things will not only endanger you, but also me, and possibly others, and what we are trying to do.” She had taken hold of his hand again. Her eyes grew wide and very luminous. “But you are right about what keeping things in does to you. To me. Th … there is one thing I do need to tell you, Shinya,” she paused and then gave a little nod to herself. “I love you.”

Silence.

Then, as he registered and reregistered her words, “Say that again!” 

“I love you, Shinya,” another pause. She did not take her eyes from his, “And you love me.”

“Yes,” he breathed. “I love you, Akane. You have no idea how much.” He began to reach for her but stopped.

Akane frowned, “What’s the problem?”

He looked embarrassed, “Well, the effects of the dominator haven’t worn off yet. I’m, I’m not going to …, I mean, I can’t … I’m sorry.”

She smiled ruefully, “I have just put your life in more danger and that is what you think about? That can wait. This can’t. The most dangerous phase has begun. It is quite possible that one of us, even both of us, won’t see the other side. You know this.” She put her hand against his cheek as he protested. “And I have put us in more danger. Yes, yes, I have. There is no way we can hide a relationship, and I don’t want to, but it can be used against us. I’m so tired of being on my own, so scared that each time you walk away it might the last time I’ll ever see you and I never told you how much you mean to me. How much I love you. That I’ll be killed, or you will be. Maybe it was all the time I had to think in isolation that did it. But that thought kept growing inside me until sometimes it felt like I couldn’t breathe. Especially after you’d come to see me. I finally realized that I can’t go on without loving you, without being able to love you and yet I have to keep going to help bring down the System. So, I guess I’ve grown a little selfish. I couldn’t live with not telling you I love you. I do you, know? I love you.”

His eyes had never left hers as she spoke. The words rushing from mouth and her expression changing at the end from serious to joyous. She allowed him to pull her over to him. She wrapped her arms around his chest and dropped her head on his shoulder and sighed deeply. She breathed in his scent. He chuckled, “Hey, I’m the one that is supposed to be the hound.”

“You were never a hound. More a wolf,” she returned. The relief of telling him that she loved him was beginning to make her a little lightheaded.

“A wolf, huh? Well, that gives me a few ideas for tomorrow,” he dropped feather kisses across her forehead.

“Only a few?” she asked in a disappointed tone.

 “Oh, Akane, you have no idea,” he looked at her with a wicked smile.

  ... AND A FEW SURPRISES

Akane looked at herself in the bathroom mirror as she toweled her hair dry. She barely recognized the woman looking back at her. The muscles around her jaw were relaxed and her eyes shone. Even her hair looked fuller. Was this what she looked like when she was happy? And she was. Happier than she had ever been.

They had not slept much despite Kougami’s insistence that she needed to rest. Soon one or the other would start talking, words of love falling into the safety of the warm dark room. Or he would hold her hand so he could kiss every line on her palm again and again and only release it to kiss the other. Too long had they waited for this night, words tumbled from their lips and their whispers became a confession of hopes, loss, pain and then again hopes as life brought them together, tore them apart and reunited them. So many years had gone by and they had so much to make up for.

“Akane, food’s almost done,” Kougami called from the other side of the door. “Oh, and put some clothes on.”

She blinked and returned to the present. He was up to something. She opened the bathroom door and a blast of cold air hit her. Quickly dressing she joined him in the living room. “Shinya, why’ve you opened all the windows in the bedroom? And …” she took in all the food on the counter. “Just how hungry do you think I am?”

Her doorbell chimed.

“Oh, hell! They’re early,” He threw her a sly look. “Ah, you stay here, I’ll be right back.”

“Kougami, what have you done?”

“It’s a surprise,” and he was gone.

She wondered if he had ordered more noodles from the little restaurant to add to the mountain of food in front of her. Then she heard the front door open and the sound of several people shushing each other as they piled into her little hall.

Akane got up and, laughing, went to greet them.

“Akane!” said three voices at once.

Shino, Yayoi and Gino, if anything could make her happier on this day, then this was it. She hugged them.

Shion laughed, and poked Kougami’s ribs. “I see you’ve talked,” she said winking outrageously and laughed as Kougami went red. “Well, there is a sight I never expected to see. Shinya Kougami bashful.”

“Shion, Yayoi, you look amazing,” laughed Akane holding the latter at arm’s length. They were both wearing party dresses. Then she turned back to Ginoza, “Hello, Gino, it is good to see you. I hear that you got in the way of a paralyzer.”

“Ha! He told you about that, did he? Ignatov better watch out is all I can say. Right, Ko?”

“What? Oh, yes, Kei has it coming. Again.”

The doorbell chimed again. Akane looked at Kougami in surprise. “Who?”

 “And speak of the devil!”

Kougami came back leading a small group of people. “Everyone, Akane Tsunemori in person. Akane, you know Arata and Kei, and this is Maika Ignatov and Sho Hinakawa. The last two are Mao Kisaragi and Kazumichi Irie.”

“Hey! What about me? Why does no one ever introduce the old enforcer!” demanded Todoroki pushing his way forward. “Pleased to meet you, Inspector. I’m Tenma Todoroki.”

“Just Akane, I’m not an inspector anymore,” smiled Akane. “I remember seeing all of your photos in the files. It is wonderful to finally meet you all. I guess we’ll all be working together now.” The serious looks they all gave her made her pause. “I mean, I’m an enforcer now, even though I’m not assigned to Unit 1 …”  

Mao nodded at her teammates and they relaxed. “You’re welcome in Unit 1 any time, Tsunemori … Akane. Err …. I’m sorry if it’s rude, but we’re starving, and we don’t get to eat out very often. Come on, Irie.”

Todoroki grimaced, “Can’t take them anywhere.” But he and Hinakawa followed them quickly into the kitchen.

What was all that about? All three had become so serious in a blink and then back again. Looking around the room, she began to get the feeling that she was missing something obvious. Before she could begin to think about it, the doorbell chimed. Again. She glared at Kougami as he passed her to get the door. He smiled at her, but she could see he was getting a little tenser each time he went. And that was strange, she thought, it did not quite make sense.

“It will take a little time,” said Arata with his mouth full. He was bouncing from foot to foot and balancing a plate full of food.

“Sorry, what will?” she turned her attention to him.

“Being out. Getting your senses back as it were. But,” he glanced in Kougami’s direction, “you are already on the right track.”

Her eyes widened and she started to ask him what he meant, but he just beamed at her and slightly shook his head. So, something was going on. Well, she would trust them to fill her in when they could. Right now, she had a party in her apartment. Shion had taken control of the music, which was now loud enough to annoy the neighbors. Akane shook her head, that would not be a problem. It was the middle of the afternoon, no one would be home.

“Sorry, Gino, what was that?” She shook herself. Get a hold of yourself Tsunemori.

“I just said that Sugo and I are your neighbors. We’re sharing an apartment down the street.”

“Oh! That’s great! Are you in the same block as Sh… as Kougami?” she asked. 

Gino smiled, “No, we’re down the other way.”

She looked at him, then at Kougami, and saw that Sugo and Frederica had arrived. What were they doing here? In one sense, since Gino and Kougami worked with them it made sense to invite them as well, but …. somehow it felt more deliberate than that. Yes, something was definitely going on. Everyone was behaving normally. Normal for a party, that is, she thought. Mao and Irie were dancing with Yayoi and Shion, Sugo and Kei were playing a holo game and everyone else was chatting and eating.  

An arm slipped around her waist. “Are you enjoying yourself, Akane?” His next words were so low that even though he had bent to whisper them in her ear, she almost missed them. “Say yes.”

“Oh, yes,” She turned to look up at him and he smiled down at her; she did not miss the flick of his eyes at the wall. “Walls have ears,” he breathed.

She laughed, “Shinya, you wretch!” It was all she could think of saying. Of course, everything they were doing and saying was probably being monitored. She had been the one to point that out yesterday. So why remind her of it?

The familiar sound of her doorbell interrupted them. She raised her eyebrows questioningly. Kougami kissed her head. “Patience. You’ll see. This is a surprise party, after all.”

He wouldn’t have invited her parents or Kaori. Her parents had been distraught when she was arrested. They had been steadfast in their support for her and called all the time. Even so, this was not the right time for a family reunion. And Kaori had made it clear from her refusal to accept Akane’s call at the start of her sentence that she did not want to be associated with a latent criminal. So who else was there?

“Sorry we’re late, everyone. Work, you know,” beamed Homura with a nervous looking Shimotsuki beside him.

If Akane’s mouth dropped open she made a valiant recovery. “Hello, Sir. Hello, Chief. How good of you to come.”

Shimotsuki, to everyone’s surprise, rushed forward, threw her arms around Akane’s neck and burst into loud sobs. “Oh, Akane, I’m so, so sorry.” Akane instinctively hugged her sobbing boss.

A tiny whisper, “We have to talk. About It.”  

Akane pulled back and stared at Mika who returned her stare and nodded, only to sob even harder, “I really am sorry.”

Homura shot a look at Akane, “Let’s take her into the bedroom for some quiet. Arata,” he threw over his shoulder, “Could you bring her some water?”

Together, Akane and Homura led the still sobbing woman into the bedroom. Arata followed immediately with the water. “Here’s your water, Chief. Get some rest, we’ll all be next door.” Then he paused and shut the door but stayed in the room.

“Well, hopefully we’re safe,” he said. “If we’re not all arrested in ten minutes, I reckon Akane’s jammer is working.”

“Yes, sorry about all the subterfuge,” added Homura. “Here, Mika, have this.” He passed a now dry-eyed Shimotsuki a perfectly folded handkerchief.

Akane sat down next to her. “Mika, did I understand you? You know what Sibyl System is?”

Mika looked pale and nodded. “For a few years. And now, Arata, too.”

“We’re the only ones who know what it really is,” said Homura. “Though I haven’t actually seen it. My father did and he told me.”

“So is this a council of war?” asked Akane.  

Arata answered her. “Not quite, but we all,” and he nodded towards the door to include the rest of the party, “agree that somehow we need to bring it to an end. We just don’t know how yet.”

“So, it is not just the two of us?” asked Akane looking at Homura.

“It never was. I know people who will support us, but it is safer if you don’t know who they are. It is a reasonable bet that all the enforcers will help. While you were inside, we’ve been making all sorts of small changes so we can be ready.”

“You mean like getting everyone to live within a three-block radius?” suggested Akane.

Mika actually smiled, “Yes, exactly like that. Unfortunately, because of our positions, Shizuka and I can’t move, but it was surprisingly easy for SAD to arrange for their people to move here, and then Kei and Arata. Obviously, the enforcers have to stay at MWPSB.”

“For now, at least,” said Homura.

“Is that wise, though?”

“What is more natural than colleagues and neighbors getting together for lunch or dinner or to play a holo game?” smiled Arata.

Homura looked at the time. “This meeting is just luck. We had no idea you had a jammer, so when Kougami said he wanted to give you a surprise party this afternoon it seemed a bit unusal. But when we arrived, he showed us a note about the kitty. Hmm, I think we’d better rejoin the others. They’re covering our absence, but I don’t think we should push our luck. Arata, you and Kei had better come in a few days so Akane and I can give you an “official” briefing on things.” 

Opening the door, Homura pretended to check on Mika who said she was fine and would be out in a minute. As soon as they had all left, Akane pulled Kougami into the bedroom.

“You’ve been planning this all along?” she demanded staring up at him fiercely.

He grinned, “What you thought we couldn’t mange without you? Ouch!”

“I’ll do more than poke your ribs if you’re not careful, Shinya Kougami!”

His smile got bigger, “Akane, you couldn’t expect me and Gino and the others to do nothing. We knew that something was going on, but you couldn’t or wouldn’t say exactly what. Ouch! Ouch!”

Akane poked him in the ribs. He caught her hands and folded them together in his. “Akane, please, I had to do something. I was going crazy. I love you.”

She glared up at him, “Say that again!”

“I love you.”

She sighed happily. “Okay, I suppose we’d better join the party. How long do you think everyone will stay?”  

[smolbeandrabbles]

Living Proof - Captain Emmett Dutton x Reader (Australia)

When She Says Baby / Starlight

GIF CREDIT: X 

@mandy23b​ @wltz-bby​ @happyskywhale​ #MendoTagSquad

Author’s Note: A little reimagining of When She Says Baby but also a sequel! At this point just thank @crawlingmist​‘s gif sets; the amount of inspiration is unreal And also the fact that I’m listening to a bunch of new music I haven’t had chance to...

Original idea based on a discussion I had with @mandy23b​ and therefore heavily inspired by the bathtub makeout scene in “Hunt Angels” - and also why I threw a Kathner reference in at the end 😏😉 This is another one I started ages ago (December!) but took me so long to finish, and then it’s been kicking around waiting to post-!

Disclaimer: Gif not mine / lyrics not mine / Australia characters not mine oh my god look at the baby!

Premise: When you accidentally injure yourself, Emmett Dutton has the perfect remedy. You’ve got some plans to remedy some things for him, too... 

Words: 3527

Warnings: sexual connotations

_________

Tell me something, but say it with your hands slow When you touch me, paint me like a Van Gogh I wanna study every inch of you 'Til you trust me to make the angels come through

Like a choir singing, "Hallelujah" When my body's crashin' right into ya When we align, ooh yeah Do you feel me? Can you feel me? 'Cause I can't breathe

Where did you come from, baby? And were you sent to save me? Ooh There's God in every move, ooh And you're the living proof The way your hands can't shake me Soft to the touch like baby, ooh There's God in every move, ooh And you're the living proof 

Countin' freckles, as they run down your spine Show your demons, and I might show you mine One at a time, yeah, yeah What are you hidin'? What a design, yeah, yeah I wanna dive in, what a divine moment Can you feel me? Can you feel me? 'Cause I can't breathe

---

Emmett had to carry you home. You refused to look at him, grumbling nearly all the way back, which made him sigh; “I did warn you.” “This is embarrassing-!” You weren’t exactly sure how you’d done it either, but you’d certainly done something to all the muscles up your right hand side over your ribs. It felt like cramps and knots rather than a strain... but you couldn’t tell yet. And you thought you were okay, until it started audibly popping. Which you knew wasn’t normal, and it hurt to move - so there was no way you were walking all the way home. Besides as soon as Emmett heard it and started showing concern you knew you were done for.

Okay, you probably would have. But this was Emmett Dutton you were talking about so, of course he had to be the gentleman and carry you back. And you were making sure he knew that you were none too happy about that. “A bath will probably fix you right up.” You folded your arms with a pout - “That’s the best you can come up with? All that army training and bath is the best you can do-!?” “Funny, usually you’re not one for complaining about things like that…” He opened the door and you gasped; “Why-! Emmett--! What are you suggesting!?” But the look on his face only made you laugh as he closed the door with his foot, and then you winced. “Okay, I’ll behave. If you think the bath is the best place for me…  please, do take me to the bath, good Sir!” He shook his head, with a grin, “Oh stop!” Emmett took the stairs gently, making sure your body was still well supported. He entered the bathroom and paused with a small frown of his own, “What?” “Well I can’t actually put you in a bath still dressed, can I?” He swivelled, eyes searching the room for somewhere he could sit you, Emmett held you that little bit tighter too conscious of dropping you. “AH!” In the corner of the bathroom was a spare chair you usually placed towels and clothing on whilst you bathed – Emmett pulled this to the side of the bath sat you delicately on it, “Perfect.” You shook your head at him, with a small smile as he began to run the water, “I don’t think you know the meaning of the word.” That tone in your voice had him raising his head to you slowly, and that look on your face had blush dusting his. “D-Don’t you start.” You batted your eyes innocently, “But you are.” He pointed at you, backing up to find your favourite soap; “You were complaining at me less than 15 minutes ago!” You sighed gently, tipping your head and placing your arm across it for dramatic effect, “Oh but, Emmett, I’ve seen the error of my ways.” He very nearly stuttered through his next sentence, pouring a little more than necessary; “S-Stop it-! I’m n-not undressing you!” You tsked, “Oh, you’re no fun.” His laugh was strained as he left the room to collect you fresh towels and clothing, “I think the word you just used was perfect.” You shook your head, watching the bubbles begin to form in the hot water, and the steam rise in gentle clouds. As the bath continued to fill you decided not to waste time waiting for him to return and stood gingerly, slipping your clothes from your body yourself. You had to be careful at how delicate your side was behaving, but there was no visible bruise – so hopefully it would just be a cramp that needed heat to unwind. You didn’t even want to help him by throwing them on the back of the chair, instead leaving them strewn around the bathtub, before you shut the water off and stepped in. Emmett had the temperature just right, you would certainly give him that. You slipped beneath the water and let out a sigh of content, resting your head against the tub with a soft smile. He was perfect – and you weren’t about to let him forget it, especially when his blushes were always so damn cute. You heard his footfalls coming back towards you moments later, and as they reached the bathroom floor, even when you weren’t watching you heard his stumble. Then Emmett’s slight cough as he regained composure, but hesitated in walking across the bathroom to you. Sure he’d collected good soft towels for you, and fresh comfortable clothing, but he knew what was bound to happen if he got anywhere near you. The last thing you were going to do was stay in that water… beneath the bubbles at least. What you knew, of course, was that Emmett also wasn’t about to leave the contents of his arms anywhere but the chair next to you. To make him a little more comfortable you didn’t open your eyes, and kept taking relaxed breaths. A silent promise that you weren’t going to move like he thought you would. Emmett skirted the room, getting as close as he dared before placing the towels on the chair, eyeline everywhere but the bath, and yet he could still feel himself getting hot under the collar. And for a moment he hated that you knew all his ticks so well; because he also wasn’t about to leave the bathroom floor a mess. Gathering your skirt and shirt, he sighed gently at the way your underwear was just strewn nonchalantly at the foot of the bathtub; collecting these too Emmett couldn’t help but look up to the sound of movement through the water. A fateful mistake, as he came face to face with you, your head resting on your folded arms – inches from his face. His pretty blue eyes were suddenly wide, and they begged you not to move. Your slow blink was just as innocent before, your voice full of sugar; “Oh, Emmett, you’re such a sweetie. What would I do without you?” “Uh, I…” His eyes couldn’t help but trace the lines of your face, the sweet little smile you were giving him, your soft skin and the water droplets now running from it, the way the ends of your hair were now darkened, having already been soaked, giving them a gentle curl, the colour rising on your own cheeks at the temperature of the water. You reached out with a hand, knowing he was already immobilized; your touch was so warm and yet he couldn’t help but almost shake as you pulled him in for a gentle kiss. “Thank you.” “Y-You’re welcome.” His eyes still held yours, but Emmett was bashful – and suddenly in the silence he backed up, “Wait! NO!” He stood, face flushing again, “You-!” You sunk back into the water, “Aw, come on Captain… I could do worse.” “I’m leaving you here in peace! You’ll be the death of me at this rate-!” But your eyes and the pout on your lips worked like a charm and you patted the chair again; “And leave me alone? Oh… But Emmett! You wouldn’t, would you?” He swallowed hard, looking to the clothing in his arms, “Just… let me put these in the wash.” But he pointed at you, “No tricks.” “I promise.” Although you could only promise him anything but.

*** Emmett sat gingerly when he returned, as far from you on the chair as he could get, still wary of you and your feminine whiles. He knew what you were capable of, and wasn’t the least bit fooled by the innocent look on your face – and as if to prove he would be ignoring you, he set a folded newpaper across his lap, but he did spend a little longer than he thought necessary surveying the water. Steam was still rising, and he hoped that would help you. You drew your hand from the water and held it out for his; Emmett’s sigh was gentle, but he took it, running his thumb affectionately over the back of yours; “How are you feeling?” You nodded, with a soft smile, “Better. Thank you… You always do know best.” “Well,” His smile held all his adoration as he looked to your face, “Anything for my best girl.” That made you blush at least a little; he was honestly such a gentleman, whatever you did to get him, you were only ever intent on keeping him. There was silence for a moment, before he chuckled; “This seems awfully familiar!” Your mind flicked back to his return from Darwin, and your heart caught for a moment; “Hardly as serious…” But you gripped his hand a little tighter; talking about it still scared you, “I’m so glad it’s all over…” “Mhm…” Emmett’s hand slipped from yours and he stroked your hair, “Me too… At least life has a little more normality now.” There was some truth in that, he was stationed back here with you, where he belonged – currently. Although you’d already vowed to him that any movement he made from now on would take you with him. You nodded, closing your eyes and sliding your body further into the hot soapy water – lying still for a moment. Emmett kept his hand on the side of the tub for a moment, pausing to watch you – you were calm and serene, and he couldn’t help but stare at you in complete adoration for a minute. The colour that flushed your cheeks now was gorgeous, and you looked so content and happy. “How’s the side?” “Better…” He watched the water stir as you pressed your hand over your ribcage; “…Yeah. It doesn’t hurt as much.” “As long as it’s working…” You nodded once more, and even though your eyes were closed you continued to smile, bringing your hands back up to run them through your hair. He wanted to tear his eyes away from you, to sit here and keep you company whilst you relaxed; that was the right thing to do, that’s what Emmett would normally do. But it was the way that you had been staring at him from over the rim of the bath that got his eyes sweeping the water and him swallowing hard. You caught him at it; eyes cracked open – that smile turned quickly to a smirk, and his hand was in perfect grabbing distance.

“WOAH!” He had to steady himself on the other side of the bath with his right hand, left pulling from yours, but now resting against your shoulder. Emmett mere inches from touching the water himself; you tsked with a pout – surely his army training had been the thing to save him. Water sloshed from side to side and spilled to the bathroom floor with the force of his weight against the tub, you were sure he’d love that just as much. You were a little annoyed but it didn’t stop you from looping your arms around his neck; “If you’re going to spend so much time staring, Captain, you might as well join me…” “Y-Y/N!” Once again Emmett was flushed and stammering, but he hadn’t pulled away from you, “Stop!” Your hand ran from around his neck to over his chest, and his breathing became shallow as you continued to pull him closer. “Just kiss me, Captain…” He moved his hand from your shoulder to the tub, resting just to the side of your head, but Emmett knew better than fighting back, and lowered himself another inch to brush his lips to yours. Another mistake on his part, because you pulled him to you tighter, and when he pulled back he found himself lifting you from the water – body pressed against his. His sigh against your lips was soft at how warm your body felt against him; you were still kissing on him, and clinging to his shoulders to let him know you weren’t about to let him go. You released his lips and Emmett was breathless, so off guard that he was basically speechless, and you knew you had him right where you wanted him – tugging him back into the bath with you by his shirt collar. The front of his shirt was soaking and now plastered to his skin, and you’d assume that the back was the same at this point. You curiously glanced down the rest of his body, noticed his spattered trousers from the force of the water pouring over the side. Your eyebrow raised and you looked back to him; “Oh, Ooops…” “Y-You-!” He attempted to protest, and you pushed a finger to his lips, “Hush-! Join me…” “Y/N!” His eyes were wide and voice shocked by the notion. “Darling, you might as well…” You looked back to his clothing, hands sliding to the first few buttons, the first one was undone but as you travelled to the second his hand caught both of yours – but that only brought him closer to you as his right hand struggled to support his weight against the wet surface of the tub. “Y/N! This isn’t proper--!!” But you could still move your hands under his to undo that second button, and you leant up to kiss him again; “This is my house, and you are my partner…” third button, your next kiss was to his jaw “…we’re not in Darwin, we’re not at a party, we’re not in public…” then his neck, and Emmett slipped again, this time with a quiet moan, suddenly his shirt was even more soaking, and his body was pressed back against yours, “…And I love you.” But you hardly thought you needed to say that. His eyes met yours, clearly embarrassed as he stood straight, water cascading from him and to the floor. Emmett wiped the droplets from his face and ran his hands through his hair with a soft sigh; “You are… you know exactly what you…” He panted again, unable to finish, “I…” You waited for him to make a sentence, to say anything even coherent, but his fingers were already on his own buttons. His hands were shaking, you sat straight, and beckoned him back to you; “Baby let me help you with those…” Emmett’s resistance was gone, and he took your offered hand to allow you to pull him back to undo his shirt. It fell to the floor with no resistance – and it wasn’t long until the rest of his clothes joined. You bit your lip gently and huddled your body to let his join yours in the other end of the bath. Yet you didn’t leave him to get relaxed. Pushing forward through the water you wrapped your arms around him again, lips back on his, he embraced your body close to his; and with the temperature you couldn’t tell if the red in his cheeks was embarrassment or the heat – but you thought you knew the answer. He tangled his legs with yours as you ran your fingers through his hair; and the harder you kissed him, the further you pressed your body into his, the more delicious his stifled little moans became – Emmett always tried to keep them to himself. You always thought that odd; like he thought the whole damn street would automatically know you were having sex. (Though, had to admit to yourself that sometimes you wanted them to know what he was capable of doing to you). That only made you even more delighted when you managed to pull a real one from him; lips to his neck and grinding your body into his. He sighed your name, and then again, his grip on your body tightening as you smirked into his skin. Emmett gasped, and his fingernails dug into you, nudging your head he pleaded to capture your lips with his once more and you allowed him as much of you as he wanted – gasping as he gained the confidence to explore you. You were a marvel to him, every single inch of you beautiful, heaven sent. And yet even you knew that he was the real Angel here. The pain in your side was quite forgotten by now as other feelings stirred within both of you. You continued to grind against him until Emmett could barely breathe, he couldn’t kiss you, his head tipped back and his breaths became short and sharp pants; “Y/N-! Y/N! P-Please S-stop! Stop!” You did as he asked and stilled, waiting for him to calm down, which he did – slowly, and as his head raised you placed your forehead to his; both your eyes lust rimmed, and both of you gently panting. “Sorry, baby, I…” need you… I don’t just want you I need you… It was his turn to hush you, “I know…” His laugh was nervous, “I know…” but he kissed you gently once more, embracing you tighter, running his hands over your bare shoulders he placed a kiss to your forehead, before turning your body in the water. It was still at a moderate temperature, and you could spend some quality time together like this; your back pulled into his chest. Emmett looped his arms around your waist, and relaxed you both against the side of the tub, kissing your ear, back of your neck and finally your shoulder. You smiled gently; “Do we get to finish this later?” There wasn’t bashful silence this time, and you were met with a chuckle; “Perhaps.” You looked back at him; “…You’re really something else, Emmett Dutton.” His gentle blue eyes were inquisitive, maybe even confused, “I am?” “Yes.” You breathed, reaching back to pull his lips to yours once more, before resting your head against the side of his; “A real gentleman.” Then you giggled, “I’m not sure I am deserving.” He didn’t like that you’d say that, and shook his head, “No. No. I won’t hear a word of it.” His hands massaged you comfortingly under the water, “You deserve no less. I am humbled by your presence.” It was your turn to blush horribly at that, “Oh… Emmett…”

 *** The rest of the bath didn’t end without a few good old-fashioned hand wandering and teasing shenanigans, but as you dried and dressed each other between gentle kisses you both knew that in the end, bath time cuddles were the best medicine. Emmett still insisted on checking your side, but was happy that you looked absolutely fine – you insisted you also felt it, but dressed in more comfortable clothing, Emmett also insisted that you sit quietly with him whilst he read the paper; because, pulling him into the bath meant he hadn’t quite got around to doing that.

You got to be cuddled up with him, and closed your eyes to inhale his warm inviting scent, and because of the bathing products – he also smelt faintly of you. That gave you a little bit of an ego boost, and you desperately tried to think of something to send him down the road to do, any small errand – just to say Yes, he smells like me, because he’s MINE. But you couldn’t think of a good excuse, and so in your arms he stayed, which in all honestly you probably preferred, you could keep him all to yourself here. “Now I might actually get to read this!” He flipped over another page, surprised you were staying remarkably still. That raised a smirk from you, head on his chest; “OH! Don’t be so sure-!” Emmett tsked, almost knowing he shouldn’t have said anything and continued reading, until he noticed that something interesting was going on in your little town; “Are we engaged tonight?” You peered at him from underneath your lashes; “I believed we were finishing off from the bathtub…” His nervous chuckle was back, “Could… Could we go out instead?” “Instead-!?” You pretended to protest, but knew that considering what you’d just been thinking, you would love to have the Captain on your arm. “Well, alright, as well as-!” You pretended to think hard, “That depends. Where are you taking me tonight?" Emmett nodded to the paper; "Oh, they're showing that new Kathner film at the picture house..." You immediately brightened; "Kathner!? Now there's a good-looking man!" It was an obvious tease, but Captain Dutton fell for it anyway; "Y/N!" You grinned; "Nearly as good looking as you!" "Y/N!!" You pressed a finger to your lips in thought; “I wonder if he’s ever filmed any steamy bath scenes…” Emmett covered his face, in potential embarrassment for you as well as himself; “Stop it or we’re not going.” Your grin was however triumphant; “You don’t really want me to stop, do you Emmett? Baby… Me?” You batted your eyelashes and then took his hand, “I would love to go to the pictures to see a Kathner film with you...” You looked to the clock, “I think we can finish before the film starts-!” He sighed, with a gentle roll of his eyes; “Remind me what I’m going to do with you…?” You threw his paper to one side, looping your arms around his neck and straddling him suddenly – certainly a bold move – “What you always do incredibly well, Captain. Love me.” 

---

Thank you for reading!! 💕💕💕

[homiegeesus]

The Year of Magical Thinking, Ch. 3

Summary: Francis Sinclair believed Arthur Morgan had not finished living. In a second chance at life, Arthur discovers what it means to love himself.

At the edge of a precipice and nowhere to run, Arthur concedes defeat. In an extraordinary turn of events, he is sent through the ether to another time where his path crosses with a group not too unlike his own family. After discovering the fate of those he loved before, he races to find a way back. But what if he realizes that there is something worth staying for in this new world? Can two people separated by nearly a hundred and twenty years of living find their happily ever after?

AO3 Link (edit: link fixed)

Author’s Note: So sorry for saying that I would post yesterday when I did not. We had some terrible weather 'round here, and it took me forever to get home last night. Long chapter is long, though. I know y'all are probably like "where is your OFC"? Well, she'll be introduced in the next chapter, I promise. I should have it posted in a couple of days. Shoutout to TheTiniestTortoise ( @shallow-gravy​ ) who has valiantly offered to beta this story (this chapter was not). Fair warning: I'm seriously going to take you up on this, so be prepared lmao. In the meantime, y'all need to go read "Blackbird's Song". It's a fantastic ArthurxOC take on the RDR2 plot, seriously drop everything and read it! Also, I created a "We Heart It" collection thing where I pin images that inspire me while writing. Just a warning, though: It might spoil some elements of the story. If you don't want any idea of where I'm taking the plot, do not click here.

Thank you to @tiesthatbind1899​​ (author of Memories of the West - another must read), for the idea. You're awesome. 

Almost forgot, in this story, Blackwater is Dallas. I read in the wiki that Blackwater was likely modeled after early 20th century Dallas, so I'm running with it. Plus, it's where I live, and even though most authors can't agree on whether you should "write what you know", this is fanfiction, so hell yes I will write what I know...at least in the first few chapters lol. Hope y'all enjoy this chapter, and as always, constructive criticism welcomed and appreciated!

The Year of Magical Thinking

Chapter 3 - American Remains

Not knowing if the doctor wanted Arthur to follow, he stood for a moment and stared at the carving on the cave wall. After Steven exited the chamber, the cave was again silent allowing Arthur to observe and reflect. His fingers traced the broad lines of the design as he pondered just how the whole situation had come to pass. What an interesting sequence of events. One moment, Arthur was dying and the next he was not. Having been a hair’s breath away from death had changed him fundamentally. Suddenly being thrust into wellness had been jarring, to say the least. Itching to sketch the new carving, he reached to his side for his journal. Hand feeling empty air where his satchel would usually be, he closed his eyes and covered his face.

In a last act of brotherly affection, Arthur had given John his most important possessions: his father’s hat and his satchel along with everything in it. Suddenly, a deep homesickness fell on him like anvil. The realization that he would never see his family again caused a well of emotions to rise up and threaten to consume him whole. He didn’t belong in this place. If Arthur was a part of a dying breed back then, then how would one hundred and twenty years of so-called progress treat him? With no place to call home and not a penny to his name, how would he survive?

Feeling suddenly claustrophobic in this cool, damp place, Arthur turned and followed the path of Steven’s exit. As the natural light of the sun reached him, he felt a wave of humid heat hit his face, instantly causing tiny rivulets of sweat to breakout across his forehead. Finally exiting the cave, he stopped for a moment and took a deep breath. Even in the heat, Arthur delighted in clean, easy breathing. Tortured by diseased lungs in the past months, he had forgotten what it meant to be well.

Looking at his surroundings, he spotted Steven near a table off to the left of the clearing. Arthur began walking towards him, that is, until he spotted the younger man talking to himself. Rooted in place, he observed Steven holding what appeared to be a small black book while gesturing wildly with his arms.

Damn it, you old fool, Arthur inwardly chastised. He had driven the man to madness with his scarcely believable tale. He walked closer to make out the words coming from the young doctor. That’s when he heard the other voice bleeding from the air that surrounded them.

“Steven, my love, my future husband, my everything – if you do not make it to this dinner, I will leave you. And then, I’ll cancel you. You will be canceled!” The voice yelled, sounding as if it came from a phonograph. Arthur furrowed his brow and looked for the source.

“Nick,” Steven responded in voice that even Arthur could tell was full of condescension, “first of all, you know I love you, but you also know I hate these dinners. Secondly, I just told you that something came up at work.” He then cradled the little black book in both hands, thumbs moving wildly over the cover. “It’s incredibly important that –”

Nick interrupted, “It’s incredibly important that you be at this dinner. Steven, we’ve had this planned for two weeks. All of the partners are going to have their significant others with them. They’re expecting you there. They all fucking love you; always like ‘Steven is so charming’ or ‘God Nick, how did you bag a guy like Steven? He’s so funny and you are so – not.’”

Steven laughed, “They don’t say that.” He finally glanced up in Arthur’s direction, smile falling from his face.

“Ugh, yes they do. It’s annoying as shit. I mean, I can be funny,” the voice replied. Steven began looking from the book to Arthur and back again in quick succession.

“Babe, I gotta call you back –”

“Steven –”

“Nick,” Steven interrupted sternly, “I’ll call you right back, I promise.” Call? Arthur thought to himself. That little black book’s a telephone? Nah…

Nick sighed loud enough for both men to hear. “Just please show up tonight. It’s all I ask.”

Steven nodded as if he could be seen. Arthur thought maybe he could. They each said ‘I love you’ and Steven glanced up at him.

“Holy shit,” was all he said. 

“What?” Arthur frowned.

Steven just shook his head and held out the little book, or whatever it was. From where Arthur was standing, he could barely discern what looked like a photograph. Steven glanced quickly between the object in his hand and Arthur’s face. He seemed to realize the older man’s cluelessness.

He dropped his arm halfway and grinned, “Oh sorry, you’re probably like ‘what the hell is this?” He gestured to the device and laughed. “Jesus, well, this is a phone. A telephone.” A flipped it in his hands, and then held it out to Arthur. “Go ahead. Check it out.”

Arthur stepped closer and cautiously took the gadget. Looking at it, what he saw would take him back some five years ago to a hunting trip he, John and Hosea had embarked upon in Tall Trees, a year before John had left to God knows where. The trip had been a fruitful one, as the trio had taken down a bear with size to rival the one they had caught in the Grizzlies. It was a good memory, set before his relationship with John had descended into spite and jealousy. He stared at the photograph, the sepia tone making it seem so unreal when his memories burst with color. Arthur, John and Hosea looking as serious as three feared outlaws could, each held rifles behind a large grizzly bear.

Arthur looked up to Steven, “Where’d ya get this?”

The corners of his mouth quirked as if he went to smile but then thought better of it. “That’s a, uh, long story. But I mean –,” Steven then smiled, “it’s you.” He laughed a little manically, “That’s you in that photo.”

Arthur, not realizing the significance of this moment, just replied with a shrug of his large shoulders, “Yeah.”

Steven briefly ran a finger over his lips as he continued to smile, “Dear God. How the hell did this happen?”

“Ain’t gotta clue,” the outlaw replied simply.

Steven just shrugged. “Well, in any case, we have to figure out what we’re gonna do with you. I mean,” he laughed, “you could come home with me, but my, uh – Nick would probably freak the hell out.” A considering look passed over his face. “Hey, you said you were sick before?”

Arthur nodded, “Yeah, but I ain’t coughin’ no more.”

“Tuberculosis?” Steven supplied. The other man’s eyes narrowed fractionally.

“How’d you know?” The doctor just gave a toothy grin.

“Mr. Morgan, you’re quite famous. Like Jesse James.” At Arthur’s perplexed face, he continued, “Didn’t you, like, have your own gang, or something? You know, like Jesse James did?”

Arthur laughed, “What? No.” He shook his head, “I was in one, but I weren’t the leader. That was Dutch.” Steven’s face lit in recognition.

“Oh yeah,” he then looked off to the side. “I haven’t seen any westerns since I was a kid, so I’m only vaguely familiar with the history.” He looked back to Arthur with a smile, “My friend Ada would know. She loves them.”

“Uh-huh. Western? Like a dime novel?” The outlaw asked, head tilted in question.

Steven shook his head. “No, movies. They’re like, uh –,” obviously wondering how to explain, “you know, moving pictures.”

“Oh yeah, I know ‘bout them. Used to go to the theater on special occasions an’ such,” Arthur recalled.

“Well, they’re a little different now,” the doctor laughed. “They’re in color and have sound, so –”

Arthur tracked his thumb across his stubbled chin. “Ain’t that somethin’,” he replied a bit in awe.

Steven smiled, “Yeah well, you’ve been portrayed a couple times, I think.”

Amazed, Arthur responded, “Yer kiddin’.” The younger man just shook his head.

“Nope. The only ones I know of came out a long time ago, like the ‘40s or ‘50s. Maybe earlier.” The outlaw lightly laughed.

He looked slyly to Steven. “Were they, uh – were they handsome?” The corner of Arthur’s mouth ticked slightly up.

Steven barked out a quick laugh. “Oh yeah. They were.” He shot the other man another toothy smile. “Though, I’m beginning to think that they didn’t do you justice!”

Unfamiliar with such bald-faced compliments, Arthur bowed his head in an attempt to hide the shy smile forming on his face. Damn it all, he didn’t have his hat. He just swatted his hand and said, “Nah.”

Steven was apparently having none of that. “Trust me, Arthur. Even covered in dirt, you’re a tall drink of water on a hot day.” He let out a loud guffaw at the sight of the blush that crept up on Arthur’s face. “I’m just messin’ with ya.”

Arthur just shrugged and tried to conjure up what little was left of his mean outlaw persona. “Yeah, well –”

“Alright,” laughing again, Steven stepped past Arthur, clapping him on his shoulder. “I’m gonna go turn off the generator and stuff, and then we’ll figure out what to do.” -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What in the hell was he going to do? Nick would kill him. No doubt about it. His future husband would whip out that Latin Fire and scorch him where he stood. Steven could see the inevitable conversation play out in his head. ‘Honey, I’ve brought home an outlaw from the 19th century. He’s going to be staying with us for a while. Oh, and he has a gun, and he could shoot us in our sleep and rob our corpses.’

“Jesus,” Steven said quietly to himself as he gathered the equipment around the worksite. His morbid train of thought was then interrupted by the shrill sound of his cellphone ringing. Grabbing the device from his back pocket, he looked at the screen.

Nick, the ID screamed at him. Steven stared at it a moment before answering.

“I swear I was just about to call you,” he started. He could hear the eye roll coming through the phone.

“Uh-huh. Why did you tell Jeremy to go home earlier?”

Shit. “Well, I uh –,” completely unsure with what to say and totally unfamiliar with lying to his partner, he explained the best he could. First though, “How did you know I sent Jeremy home?”

“You sounded weird when I spoke to you last, so I texted him. Stop trying to change the subject.”

Figures. He needed to teach the kid about worksite discretion. But right now, he had to get through this conversation. “Something did come up. Nick, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Nick responded in a concerned voice, “Steven, what is it? What happened?”

“Well – you see – I, uh, I’ve met someone else, and I’ve decided that we’re going to be together.” Steven paused a second, then added, “I’m leaving you.”

“Good lord, Steven. Be serious. I’m sitting here thinking you’re about to tell me you have cancer or something.”

“Oh, no. I’m healthy as a horse. I am leaving you, though.”

“Mi amor. Please. What’s going on?” Nick was sounding legitimately concerned now.

Steven sighed, “Look, I’ll tell you everything. This evening.” He added, “Just trust me. We’ll talk about it tonight after dinner, I promise.”

Giving a light chuckle, Nick reassured, “Okay, okay. I trust you. I wouldn’t be marrying you if I didn’t.”

“Thank you. I’ll see you tonight, okay?”

They said their goodbyes and hung up. Steven turned and looked at Arthur across the clearing. The outlaw was sitting at the picnic table, arms folded. Suddenly remembering a part of their conversation from earlier, he looked again to his phone. Selecting a contact, he dialed Lauren Linklater’s number. She answered on the third ring.

“Linklater.”

“Hey, it’s Steven. You gotta minute?”

He could hear a distinct crunching noise. “I’m at lunch. What’s up?” Always succinct and to the point. Steven appreciated that right now.

“Well, I have a question about something. Completely hypothetical,” he started.

“Okay.” She waited for him to elucidate.

“Okay, so again, completely hypothetical –”

“Steven.”

“Yeah?” He asked.

“I’ve got like ten minutes to eat before I have to go put my hands in some dude’s chest cavity –”

“Right. Yeah, sorry, so – say someone traveled through time from, I dunno, 1899 to our time. Would you be concerned about them getting deathly sick from something really simple, like a common cold? Would they be more susceptible?” Then he remembered, “Oh, and what if they had tuberculosis before they – you know, time-traveled?”

Steven figured she might be chewing her lunch, when it took a moment for her to answer.

“Is this a part of your weird cave art or something?” She asked.

“Rock carvings,” he corrected. “Well, kinda. I mean, yes. It is.” He explained, “I’m asking you because it’s a little bit outside my purview.”

“Okay, well, it’s a little bit outside of mine, too. This would be a great question for, I dunno, an epidemiologist or – heh, Doc Brown. I’m a general surgeon.”

Steve sighed, “Right. I just needed a quick opinion, so –”

“I just don’t want to give you incorrect information, especially for your job, ya know? If this is off the record, or whatever, I can try to resurrect some of the ole braincells from med school.”

He laughed, “Yes, if you could do that, I’d appreciate it.”

“Okay, so I probably wouldn’t be too concerned about this hypothetical person getting a modern day cold. Our immune systems are pretty badass, and it’s been that way for a long time. I’d be more concerned about a modern-day person going back, like, five hundred years, I guess. Still, I would maybe want to do a blood test and a cheek swab to make sure they’re not bringing small pox or something with ‘em. You say this hypothetical dude had TB?”

“Yeah, but afterwards, he didn’t have any signs of still being sick. And before, he was near death, like minutes or hours away.”

“Okay, well, they’d probably need to get checked out anyways. TB is highly treatable with antibiotics these days, so not much to worry about. If this dude wasn’t showing any signs of illness, chances are he didn’t bring it with him.” She then began to laugh.

“What?” Steven asked.

“Nothing, just – we’re talking about it like it exists. I dunno, just thought that was funny.”

“Yeah,” he breathed a laugh. He heard her begin chewing again.

“Steven.”

“What?”

He could hear the smile in her voice, “Did you find a diseased time-traveler?”

“Very funny,” Steven muttered sarcastically. “I’ll let you get back to your lunch, and your – chest cavity.”

Lauren laughed, “Okay, let me know how your project goes.”

“Will do.”

Hanging up, Steven sighed. Thinking about where in the hell he could stash a time-traveling cowboy, he walked back over to Arthur. The outlaw was hunched over the picnic table, staring intently at his hands. He looked up when Steven’s boots entered his field of vision.

“Well, we gotta head out pretty soon before traffic gets too bad.” He glanced in the direction of his car beyond the wall of pine trees.

Arthur frowned, “Traffic?”

Steven nodded, “Yup. You know, lots of vehicles, people.”

“Yeah, I know what traffic is. Jus’ wonderin’ if we’ll be goin’ through a city?” He clarified.

Motioning for Arthur to follow him, Steven elaborated, “Yeah, but not for a while. It’s pretty crazy, but it’s not just the cities that hold most people now. There are a shit ton of people in the boonies, too.” Judging by his expression, Arthur didn’t seem to like that little tidbit. Steven pointed to a couple of small crates, “Mind helping me carry these?”

Arthur moved to pick up one of the containers, “Naw, ‘course not.” Both men began walking along a path surrounded by trees leading out to the parking lot. Steven let out a loud laugh at Arthur’s face when they reached his silver Ford truck.

They sat down the crates as Arthur took a moment to absorb the vehicle in front of him.

Steven, thinking of the Bon Jovi song, tried his best to explain. “It’s like, uh, a steel horse. Ya know – “

Arthur just looked to him with a sardonic face, “I know whatta automobile is.”

Steven nodded, “Oh, right.”

“They’re just, ah – a li’l different than I remember ‘em.” Walking around the perimeter of Steven’s car, Arthur seemed to observe every little detail. Almost like an artist would a subject, he thought vaguely.

“Yeah, well.” Steven kicked a rock at his foot. “Wait ‘till you get inside.”

“Huh,” the cowboy huffed. Coming to stand beside Steven, he looked to the younger man. Placing his hands on his hips, Arthur pondered, “Just how would one go ‘bout doin’ that?”

Steven huffed out a laugh, “We’ll get to that, but first, we need to, uh – talk about your, uh, gun.”

“You ain’t takin’ my gun, Doc.”

“Steven, and it’s just –”, Steven took a step forward. Arthur’s hand went to his pistol grip, as if preparing to draw, and Steven shot his hands up in surrender. “Woah, I’m – I’m not going to take your gun, well – not for what you think. Can you just please take your hand off the gun? Please, don’t shoot me.”

Arthur acquiesced by removing his hand and briefly raising it palm forward in the air.

“Look, I’m not trying to take your gun, at least not for why you’re thinking. It’s just – times have changed. You can’t just walk around strapped like Jesse James.” Arthur quirked a dark brow. “I mean, this is Texas, but still. Cops can have itchy trigger fingers ‘round here.”

“Ain’t that all the more reason I should keep my gun?” Arthur’s deep voice drawled.

“No! Absolutely not!” Steven laughed incredulously. “I mean, that may seem logical to you, I guess, but trust me when I say you do not want to go shooting cops. ‘Law and order’ is – well, it’s just not the same as it used to be.”

Arthur looked pensive for a moment as he stared at Steven, as if to determine if the younger man was being truthful. Finally, his hands went to the buckle of his gun belt to loosen it. “You ain’t gonna make me regret this, are ya?”

Steven exhaled a nervous laugh, “What? No, no. I mean, you have more of a chance of being, I dunno, sucked up by a tornado than you have of being shot at between here and where we’re going.”

“Uh-huh, and jus’ where are we goin’?”

“Well, that’s TBD.” At Arthur’s confused expression, Steven quickly amended, “To be determined.”

“A’right,” the cowboy waved a hand in the air. “Let’s get a move on then.”

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After placing the crates inside of the bed and Arthur’s gun belt under the backseat, the men climbed into the monstrosity of an automobile. Steven had shown Arthur how to open the door and put on a seatbelt, but it seemed easy enough. Sitting in the interior of this modern-day work horse, he luxuriated in the leather seat. He ran his fingers along the armrest, the treated leather feeling like smooth silk against his calloused hands. Looking up, his antiquated mind tried to conjure up why a person would need all these knobs and dials. What was their purpose? Steven settled into the seat beside him.

“You ready?”

“I gotta choice?”

Steven quirked a brow, “Not really.”

“Well then. There’s yer answer.”

And with that, the young doctor turned on the beast beneath them. Arthur did not expect the burst of noise that felt as if it hit him physically. Steven reached for the dials in front of them and quickly apologized.

“Oh god, sorry! I forgot I had the radio on, I’m so sorry,” he said quickly.

“Good god, man. How do you still have yer hearin’?” Arthur questioned, absolutely astonished.

“Yeah, that was loud. It keeps me going on a long drive.” He laughed, “I’m so sorry.”

Arthur just shook his head, “What in the hell was that?”

“Uh, music. Metallica, I think.”

The outlaw stared at Steven like he’d grown two heads, “Music? What the hell kinda music is that?” He shook his head. “Sounded like a thousand cats dyin’.”

Steven shrugged, “I think they’d like that comparison.”

The doctor tinkered with some levers and such around the wheel, and suddenly they were moving. Exiting the area, they pulled out onto the road. Despite the anxiety Arthur felt at the fast movement, he decided it wasn’t too terrible. That is until the speed caused his world to tilt.

Steven was chatting away about where they were going and what they would do when they got there, when Arthur began to feel utterly nauseated. Mesmerized by the white lines in the middle of the road as they moved past so quickly that they turned into one blur, his vision doubled, eyes nearly rolling back in his head. If Steven noticed, he didn’t say anything, so preoccupied as he was.

“I mean, we have a pullout couch. But our place is tiny. We’d be like sardines in a can. You had those in your time –”

“Doc.”

“– right? Of course, you did. Well, we’d be like sardines. It’d be uncomfortable. I’d ask –”

“Doc.”

 “– Lauren, but she’s a doctor. She’s always working. It’s not like –”

“Pull over.”

“– I can leave you alone. Holy shit, I know who –”

Arthur finally raised his voice, “Steven!

Confused, Steven replied, “What?”

Looking at the other man, Arthur gritted lowly, “Stop this damn contraption ‘fore I vomit all o’er this nice leather.” Finally understanding, Steven pulled to the side of the road. As Arthur went to hop down from the vehicle, something jerked him back into place. Before the outlaw could grab his knife, Steven calmly reached over and unbuckled the belt. Murmuring a quick ‘thanks’, Arthur hauled himself out of the truck and into the field. A loud horn from another passing vehicle would have scared him out of his boots, if he hadn’t been so overcome with nausea.

Steven yelled a sarcastic, “Ok, thank you!” before saying to himself, “Asshole.”

Wiping his mouth, Arthur turned and walked back to the truck. Once they were both inside, Steven looked at him.

“You okay?” He asked, concerned. Arthur just nodded. Steven continued, “I didn’t even think about you getting motion sickness. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“S’alright,” Arthur said quietly.

The doctor handed him a bright pink pill of some sort and what looked like a clear canteen.

“It’ll help with the dizziness. Plus, it might even help you get some rest. We got a couple hours drive before we reach the city.” Arthur took it without question, washing it back with the warm water as Steven pulled the truck back onto the road.

He questioned, “City?”

“Yeah. Blackwater.”

Unable to help it, Arthur felt his blood run cold. Knowing that his bounty was long gone was not enough to keep his anxiety from spiking. Arthur did not say anything. This man knew his name, did he know his sins? Would he still be so generous and willing to take him in, knowing the blackness of the outlaw’s heart?

Steven briefly glanced his way. “I have an idea about where you can stay. I have to call her, but I know she’ll be okay with it.” He looked back at Arthur. “I think you’ll like her.”

Arthur just nodded, feeling the effect of the medicine begin to take hold. Eyelids turning heavy, he shifted until his head lulled forward. Exhaustion catching up with him, he surrendered to Morpheus in a dreamless sleep.

[subasekabang]

The Reluctant Hand - Chapter 1

Rating: G Word Count: 7719 (Total), 2005 (Chapter) Pairings: Platonic JoshNeku Characters: Neku, Joshua, Kariya Warnings: None Summary: Neku’s waited for what felt like an eternity for Joshua to appear in front of him, only to be greeted with bad news. Joshua laments his struggles of fighting the Higher Plane on Neku’s behalf for the last six months, and finally relays the verdict; Neku will only be allowed to continue his normal life in the RG if he also steps up and assumes his rightfully earned title of Conductor, along with all the responsibilities that come with it. Even though the news should be shocking, Neku isn’t surprised at all. It’s okay, really. He’s heard Shibuya calling him to his post, and though he knows it will be a difficult job, there’s no doubt in his mind that he should answer. After all, he can’t let someone like Joshua rule all by himself, now can he? Author’s Note: Hello everyone! Unfortunately, my fic ended up being a bit larger in scope and I ended up being a lot busier than I initially planned for, so I wasn’t able to finish all of it in time. I’m still going to finish it! It’s my offering/homage for the ten year anniversary, so I’m going to try and finish it by the end of the year. Sorry for the delay! Also, the title of this fic is a bit of a play on words: the first kanji in the name “Shibuya" means “reluctant,” which is such perfect symbolism for a certain scene I had to do something with it. So I came up with this title, where “Reluctancy’s Hand” is also “Shibuya’s Hand.” Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. I hope you enjoy my contribution, and happy tenth anniversary to all the fans around this wonderful world!

————- There were quite a number of things in Neku’s life up until now that he had, at first, been unable to believe. Most of them, of course, occurred during the same month, and most of them had also involved the same infuriating person. It would have to figure that the next incident could only involve that person as well. There was something deeply unsettling about it, the way one second he had been standing next to Hachiko like he had every week for the past six months, expecting nothing, and the next second he had felt compelled to turn his head and had immediately caught purple eyes gazing at him from just a few feet away. Joshua looked subtly different somehow, in a way that Neku couldn’t quite pin down, but before he could even make the attempt, he was running across the gap that separated the two of them. As soon as he was close enough, he grabbed Joshua’s wrist as though he expected it to be an illusion, but when the boy stood put, very real and very much there, Neku had no idea what to do next. “My, my, at a loss for words are we?” At least, if there was one thing Neku could count on, it was that Joshua would fill any silence without further prompting, and Neku nearly melted in relief at the sound of his provoking voice. “Josh…” The name slipped out before he had thought of anything to say, still maintaining his death grip on the boy’s wrist, and they stared at each other a moment longer before Joshua decided to take charge. “Neku, I’m not going to vanish. You can let go.” Neku swallowed the sudden and intense urge to punch him and finally let go of his arm, taking a tiny step back and straightening up. He took a breath and tried to gather everything back into focus, and as the scene finally settled into his head as real, all the leftover emotions he’d been holding onto started welling up to the surface again. “Where the hell have you been?” There were so many things to say, but he had to start somewhere. “It’s a bit of a long story, and I’m afraid I have some… news for you.” Joshua smiled, an expression tinged with emotions Neku couldn’t quite read. “Shall we go get some food?” “You’re buying,” Neku said, automatically starting to walk towards Cat Street. “Of course, of course. Anything for my beloved proxy.” Joshua caught up and started walking alongside him, and somehow, Neku didn’t feel annoyed or hurt by the title. Not as much as he felt he should have, at least. And somewhere in his mind, he couldn’t help but think it was almost too easy to settle back into the rhythm of their shared steps, like it was just a natural part of his life as it had been a natural part of his death. Neither of them spoke along the way, even though there were a million questions trying to burst out of Neku’s throat, but they arrived at the little cafe quickly enough. Much to Neku’s surprise, Joshua pulled out a set of keys to let them in. “After you, Neku.” Neku slipped past him and into the familiar place, somehow still free from dust despite having been closed every day for the past six months. How the place stayed in business was still a mystery. Joshua locked the door behind them and led the way over to the kitchen. “Have a seat. Do you want a drink?” “Are you… making it?” Neku asked incredulously, taking the stool at the furthest end of the counter. “Of course! Sanae showed me how to do it years ago. You don’t need to doubt me so much.” Neku watched Joshua operating the espresso machine, and the feeling of unreality started to creep back. “Where is he? Mr. H, I mean,” he asked, trying to find something to root himself in the present moment. “You want to ask about him first? How you wound me, Neku.” “Just answer the question.” “I’m afraid it’ll be a little while before you can see him, still. All of our business is concluded, but his… has a few more complications to work around.” “‘Our business’…?” “Drinks first,” Joshua said. Neku fell silent as he watched Joshua prepare their drinks; he eventually finished and settled down on the stool next to him, passing over some kind of iced coffee with unrecognizable ingredients. “Okay.” Joshua took a deep breath. “There’s a lot to go over, so I hope you’ve got time.” “Well, it’s Saturday…” Neku said slowly. “Good. Let’s start from the beginning shall we? You’ve received and read all of Sanae’s reports, yes?” Neku eyed him suspiciously. “I did, but what was that all about? It took me forever to find all the items on each list and my parents wouldn’t stop asking me about the weird letters that kept showing up for me.” “I wanted you to read the reports, so I stole them.” Joshua took a sip of his drink. “You stole them?” Neku asked, alarmed. “Of course! He did tell you he lost them—though, that was the you from the Tin Pin universe, so you wouldn’t know about that, I suppose. Anyway, I set up the item lists to keep you busy and make sure you had enough time to digest each piece of the report as I sent them.” “So let me get this straight,” Neku said, twisting a strand of his hair. “You stole Mr. H’s important and secret journal, then made me run around the city playing scavenger hunt only to just mail me the pieces of it.” “I didn’t mail them, I faked the envelopes and left them in your mailbox myself.” “And it never occurred to you that maybe you should just say hello and give them to me in person?” And somehow Neku had really almost forgotten this feeling of exasperation. “Neku, I told you there’s a lot to go over. I’ll explain if you’ll just wait.” “I’ve been waiting for six months,” Neku said, gritting his teeth. “Then you’ve got a lot of practice, don’t you?” Joshua giggled. “I can’t believe—” “It was important that you understand the hierarchy of the different planes, and the amount of trouble that game caused. There was a huge mess to clean up, and a lot of things to be decided, so I couldn’t come and speak with you directly. Sanae’s reports happened to have all the information you needed to know already conveniently written down and explained.” Joshua took a sip of his drink. “You know all of that now, so all that’s left is—” “To explain how everything went down, right?” Neku finished, an inkling of dread starting to settle on his shoulders. “Yes. I’ve spent the last six months arguing with the Higher Plane over what should be done about it all. We don’t really see eye to eye, I’m sure you realize.” “Sure.” “Well, there were a lot of things to battle with them over; what would be done about Sanae’s betrayal, what safeguards would be put in place so that the Composer would not try and destroy the city again, how to make sure that no innocent humans would get caught in the crossfire of battles in other planes… and most importantly, what to do about you.” Neku frowned. “What do you mean? What do I have to do with anything?” “Haven’t you learned yet, Neku? The eye of Shibuya is on you. It’s been on you for a long time.” Neku stayed silent. “In that game, I chose you as my proxy, and you did better than I ever could have hoped. You changed my mind about this city. However, you also left your own destruction in your wake.” “And whose fault is that?” Neku accused, the dread bearing down hard on him suddenly as anxiety wriggled deep in his mind. He took a drink; the concoction was oddly sweet for how strong the coffee flavor was. “I’m not trying to blame you. That’s how my game works; anyone can fight their way to the top if they are strong, determined, and smart, and you are all of those things. You fought your way onto my doorstep in order to stop me, and you cut down everything in your path. Reapers, the Game Master, and finally… even the Conductor.” “I think… I know where this is going…” Neku said slowly. Joshua smiled. “Yes, I’m certain that you do. Shibuya’s eye is on you, so I’m sure it’s spoken to you as well, right?” “The city can’t talk,” Neku said, concern now showing plainly on his face. “Of course it can’t, but it can still communicate. The voice of the city is the collective voice of the people within. Even if none of them are privy to what went on under their noses, they can feel the change, and they want it to stay that way.” “So the Higher Plane—what did they say?” Neku fiddled with his cup, avoiding Joshua’s eyes. “They said a lot of things… you’re a difficult case, Neku,” Joshua said carefully. “What did they say?” Neku pressed. “…you’re going to be the Conductor. They won’t let you continue your normal life otherwise.” “So… what? They’re going to kill me? Erase me?” “If it comes to it, they might,” Joshua said honestly. “They don’t want to, though. Your soul is valuable, and I won’t see it go to waste.” “So I have no choice, then?” “You always have a choice. But there’s no need to be upset, Neku. I already know that you want to say yes.” “What makes you think that?” Neku asked half-heartedly, turning away. “Shibuya has been calling you, and you’ve wanted to answer, I can tell. Maybe you’re scared, but you can answer now, and I know that you will. Deep down, you don’t have any doubts, even if you’re unsure on the surface.” Neku sighed. “Okay, fine, you’re right. But I guess…” He paused, shoulders sagging. “I’m still not sure if I can just accept it. That’s a lot to take on, you know? It’s too much for a teenager who’s still alive.” Joshua was quiet for a moment. “Would you feel better if I explained the reasoning?” “…it wouldn’t hurt.” “First, there’s the fact that you rightfully beat the Conductor, of course.” “I did that together with everyone, though,” Neku objected. “True. Normally multiple challengers wouldn’t even be allowed. However, seeing as it was a bit of a special circumstance, that you were the Composer’s hand-picked proxy, and that you were definitively the one to land the killing blow, it only makes sense that the title should fall to you, don’t you think?” “But why do I have to take it now? Can’t you get someone else to do it?” “I tried to argue that point. The Higher Plane insists that it would only create trouble down the line, and I unfortunately have to agree. The game can’t run without a proper Conductor, so I would have to appoint someone to the job in the meantime. Then what would happen when you died? The reigning Conductor certainly wouldn’t want to give up their seat to you after holding it for decades. It would create a power struggle, and we all know how that turned out last time.” “But can I even be the Conductor while I’m alive? How can I get into the UG? How can I do anything?” “I’ll explain it all, Neku. Everything’s been sorted out. The only thing you have to do alone is step up and claim your rightful title; I’ll be there to help you with everything else.” Neku couldn’t come up with anything more to object with. “You can trust in Shibuya, Neku. It found its voice again because of you.” Neku took a deep breath. “Then… I’ll do it. I’ll become the Conductor of Shibuya.”

[thedeadlyd]

Deadly D’s SE Asia Tour 2018 "Tales From the Road" What's Up! Magazine (Bellingham, WA) July 2018 Issue “Well it’s been a year Gary, what we doing this time?” I asked in regards to our last tour, one that consisted of 7 states in 5 weeks. After considering if we should hit the same route and build on what we started or go somewhere new, the DJ’s response was simply, “Go big or go home”. I already knew what this meant. Seeing how our availability to hit the road is limited, we need to maximize our time spent away. Should we hit the east coast this time? Or should we head somewhere that would add to our passport’s stamp collection? One thing we discovered on our previous excursion-something initially done out of a desire to cut down on accommodation costs-was that hostels are awesome. Not only could you save yourself some coin but also they made it possible to meet a hell of a lot of people from all over the globe. Ones just like us, seeking adventure and new friends. This is pretty tough to do holed up in some hotel room. From a traveling hip hop duo’s perspective, this element proved to be indispensable in our attempt to spread our music. With this mind, we began thinking where we could find a location that provides a hostel circuit worthy of our cause. After some microbrew infused research sessions at McKay’s Taphouse, it was decided that Vietnam and Thailand were the destinations of choice. Enter Deadly D’s “Plant the SEADD Tour 2018���. Both countries attract hostel goers from around the world. If you can accept that your life for the next month plus will consist of dorm style living with complete strangers, you will be introduced to a magical world that can only be discovered by stepping out of your comfort zone. Knowing that booking shows in such a foreign land would be difficult, we figured the environment would help streamline the process. With so many new people with insider tips, local staffers that could point us to the closest open mics and nightly activities such as pub-crawls accompanied by late night karaoke and freestyle cyphers, we figured we’d have little issue unearthing opportunities. So we decided to commit ourselves to find out and booked our flight to Vietnam. A week before we set out I received a message from an old high school friend that read, “What time does your flight land in Ho Chi Minh? I’m picking you up”. As it turned out my buddy Matt now lived there. Seeing our flight arrived at 1am, having a familiar face greet us upon arrival was a much better introduction to this new land than deliriously showing up at an airport with no idea of where to go. After a quick stop at Bui Vien-the street that never sleeps-for a beer and a banh mi, we crashed out a Matt’s apartment to rest up for our first day in the nation’s capital. The first question raised in the AM was “Holy shit. How many people live here? And better yet, HOW MANY SCOOTERS ARE THERE?!” Turns out 8.5 million residents followed by 7.5 million motorized bikes. And by the looks of it, they all run and I swear they ALL do at the same time. It’s honestly something you must witness in person. Seeing how that many motorists, driving from all directions, can actually make it work. It’s the definition of organized chaos. The way it was put to me, “You can only focus on what’s directly in front of you. Don’t worry about what’s behind you because everyone there is doing the same thing”. Regardless, we figured it would be best to save our first scooter experience for another city. One amazing aspect we discovered out there was the local expat communities (expats being individuals now residing in a country they weren't born in) and their willingness to help fellow foreigners navigate this distant land. Utilizing each city's expat Facebook group page turned out to be one of the most useful tools during our trip. In Ho Chi Minh City-or Saigon if you will-this process linked us up with our first show, only 2 days into our journey. Given the opportunity to link up with Ass Kicking Crew, the city’s #1 B-Boy posse, we couldn’t of asked for a better introduction to the local hip hop scene. Welcomed with open arms we were invited to play a show at Cipherz, a venue owned and operated by one of the crew’s OG’s Style D. The talent and humility of these cats was unreal. Representing hip hop in such a way that the US did in the 80’s, they could do it all. MC, DJ, break, graffiti. All 4 elements were on full display. Gary learned some new tricks on the tables from his new friend Phu. I was passing the mic back and forth with B-Boy Xell. Shit was ill. After many Larue beers and a spread of local street food, our first show in Asia came to a close. But not before we were invited to the weekends festivities: Ass Kicking Jam 2018. HCMC’s annual B-Boy summit just happened to fall on our first weekend and we had no idea what we were in for. Bringing his Canon 80D, Gary figured this would be a prime opportunity to put his videographer skills to the test. With over 150 break dancers from Vietnam, Germany, Ukraine, Australia and beyond, what we witnessed was something even a camera can’t properly describe (though we will try.. Video coming soon!!). The creativity, originality, pure dexterity and stamina exhibited was incredible. We got to see the lil’ homie Xell take on and battle the entire Ass Kicking Crew as his initiation into the group. Proud to say he succeeded and we were able to witness history. Even Phu who informed me that he doesn’t break and just cuts records proceeded to get into the action. Our first stop was insane. Alright, Vietnam. We see you. From there we took a jumper flight to Da Nang. Hostel on point. Hopped in on a food tour and pub crawl to get the lay of the land. It was here where we worked up the courage to attempt our first scooter excursion. We'll be okay if we can make it out of the city to the coastline where traffic is a little less intimidating right? Wrong. Within minutes we were convinced we would become one of those horror stories you hear of tourists who get acquainted with pavement in a bad way. Luckily this wasn’t the case and we finally made it to the beach unscathed. Good thing we did because this led to the most amazing jaunt up Monkey Mountain and built up a confidence to utilize the most effective mode of travel in SE Asia, which we capitalized upon the rest of the trip. Equipped with a GoPro on Gary’s helmet we scooted on down Hoi An. Took a pit stop at Marble Mountain, pulled some touristy shit and let go paper lanterns in the Thu Bon River via longboats and partied after hours at Tiger Tiger 2 Bar with our new friend and local guide Nguyen AKA “call me Justin”. After a late night cruise and Gary’s abrupt brush with death as he stepped off a cliff when attempting to take a leak, we made it somewhat safely back to the pad. From there we proceeded north to Halong Bay, where we kayaked through caves and explored lagoons surrounded by islands occupied by communities of monkeys. We paid a local fisherman to take us and our newly formed production team of youngin’s from the Netherlands to a deserted dreamlike island for a music video shoot. Captain Bird took to the air for his drone’s inaugural flight. Vietnam is insane y’all. It’s such a beautiful place and the people are incredible. Visiting a place with a history coinciding with our own in the way that it does is humbling to say the least. Taking a walk through the war museum or a Buddhist orphanage to visit with kids still being affected by the tragedies their country faced due to our past influence, you can understand why emotions can run a little high at times. We will forever be grateful for all we experienced in this amazing place. We could of spent our entire tour in Vietnam and still not even come close to seeing it all. But this would have to wait; we had to pick up our singer in Bangkok! So off to Thailand we go! Having lived there once upon a time ago, Lydia would not only act as our fellow bandmate but as a personal tour guide and translator as well. Which was great for a couple of clueless tourists. Another perfect timing “yeah we meant to do that” realization was that we showed up during the Thai New Year, Songkran. As a nation we should take notes because we’re doin’ it all wrong. Seeing entire cities engaged in an all out water gun warzone is waaaay more fun than fireworks. Especially spending it in Bang Saen, a place where locals who seem to have never seen white folk go for the holidays. Pure unhinged, positive energy. We then made our way to the jungles of Chiang Mai, hit up the all night hip hop club “Spicy” and swam with elephants. Yeah you heard me. After we said peace out to the big homies we had to catch a flight back to Bangkok for one of our more influential shows. Connecting with SuperFly, Freshly Squeezed Sounds and everyone at Live Lounge BKK, opened up a world of possibilities for when we make our return trip. Nearing the end of our tale we decided on our next destination. With Lyds headed back home it was up to us to finish this thing out strong. We'd be put to the test as we dropped our pin on Phucket and the infamous Bangla Road. Booking our stay at Slumber Party hostel, we discovered it lived up well beyond what its name might imply. This is where you go to party. This is where you go to dance at clubs with a capacity that could squeeze in all of Bellingham, a place that can really make you feel your age. I’m proud of how we faired. Well there we were. Finish line in sight. A little over a monththat felt like a lifetime yet went by in the blink of an eye. We returned to HCMC for a final farewell jam session with our Ass Kicking brethren before we headed home. Though this felt like home too. Guess that’s why we do this. Always trying to find that Highway Home. Guess that’s why we’re already planning the next journey. ‘Til next time friends. ~Deadly D Article Link: https://www.deadlyd.com/news/deadlydseasiatourrecap

[daniel-browne]

The Tower of Song Has a Vault

Recently finished Sylvie Simmons’ I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, a book I should have read a long time ago. There are loads of anecdotes I’d never come across before (the Iggy Pop cameo is worth the price of admission), but what surprised me more than anything was how many Leonard Cohen songs have gone unreleased over the years.

My image of Cohen the songwriter—one that he himself reinforced in any number of ways—has been of the anti-Dylan, a perfectionist toiling for years, decades even, to hone a single song, discarding countless verses that failed to meet his standards. Simmons doesn’t contradict this image, but she does dispel the misconception (which, for all I know, was mine alone) that Cohen’s perfectionism meant that the songs we hear on his fourteen studio albums were the only ones he was able to finish.

Of course, I was aware of a few scattered orphans: the two new cuts that appeared on The Best Of Vol. 2, the bonus tracks tacked onto the reissue of Songs of Leonard Cohen, the 17-minute “Blues by the Jews” (a.k.a. “Billy Sunday”), which I encountered on the Rare Songs bootleg. But the fact that there weren’t more out there, even on bootlegs and reissues, seemed to confirm that Cohen had given us all he had.

Simmons’ research makes it clear that isn’t the case. I don’t have the book in front of me, but I believe she names at least a half dozen outtakes from Songs of Leonard Cohen besides the two that made it onto the 2007 reissue. Songwriting became a more torturous undertaking for Cohen in the years following his debut, and the amount of scrapped material shrank accordingly. Nonetheless, Simmons doles out more than a few tantalizing references: the European-only single “Do I Have to Dance All Night”; early, unrecognizable versions of favorites like “Anthem” and “A Thousand Kisses Deep”; an unrealized album project, Songs for Rebecca; even a complete set of recitations of the poems from the Book of Longing.

It’s interesting that Prince’s legendary vault has been the subject of so much speculation, controversy and covetousness in the year since his death, while Cohen’s archives have gone, near as I can tell, almost entirely unremarked on. That probably has at least something to do with the lack of intrigue concerning the status of his estate. You’d think that very lack of intrigue—Cohen did all his recording for a single label and his heirs were closely involved in his creative process in later years—would present an opportunity, but if anyone’s talking about a commercial release of the lost work Simmons documents, they’re doing it very quietly.

One possible hurdle is that Cohen’s vault is more notional than actual, hardly the temperature-controlled sanctum sanctorum Prince installed in Paisley Park. The dogged bloodhounds at the Leonard Cohen Files, which the man himself was known to haunt, report that Cohen lost the Songs for Rebecca tapes, while the Book of Longing recordings have deteriorated past the point of viability. But is this a good enough reason to give up on the idea of a bootleg series for Cohen fans? Surely, someone else (producer John Lissauer?) has a copy of Rebecca. And, as the 2014 restoration of Dylan’s Basement Tapes demonstrates, even the cruddiest sound quality can be conquered these days through a combination of doggedness and digital wizardry.

Perhaps the bigger hang-up is the notion that Cohen, who was notoriously hard on himself, wouldn’t have wanted what amount to pages from his sketchbook to see the light of day. After all, he decided against releasing them during his life, and Simmons writes that he personally put a stop to Sony’s reissue campaign after the first three albums because he felt that the bonus tracks compromised the integrity of his original artistic statement.

This is a tough one. If Cohen specified that he wanted his unreleased songs to stay unreleased, I suppose there’s not much to be done about it, at least in the short term. (Time has a way of rendering these questions academic. If a previously unknown work by Shakespeare or Beethoven came to light, would we let the artist’s wishes stand in the way of its release?) There are a few handy bootlegs out there--thanks to the good folks at Cohencentric--and that would have to do.

Having said that, there’s no evidence Cohen categorically opposed efforts to rifle through his back pages. For one thing, he was familiar not only with The Leonard Cohen Files but Cohencentric, as well, and he apparently voiced no objection to its Other Songs project. Simmons even contributed liner notes to the second volume, something I can’t imagine she would have agreed to absent Cohen’s blessing.

As for his concern about the reissue-with-bonus-tracks approach, there’s a simple solution: rather than treating the unreleased songs as add-ons, collect them into their own box set or series of stand-alone compilations, a la Dylan’s Bootleg Series. (If Cohen had been more prolific, it might make sense to pair each album with a second disc of extras—see Costello, Elvis—but assuming Simmons managed to unearth just about everything there is to find, then a single, comprehensive box might do the trick.)

Cohen’s vault may not be as deep or fascinating as Prince’s, but like Prince, he was one of the most important artists of our time. The way I see it, his output is worth knowing and honoring in its entirety. Not every song met his standard of perfection, but hey, didn’t someone once say, there is a crack in everything?

***

So what would a Leonard Cohen bootleg series look like? I went through this exercise with respect to Prince a while back. Here now is my best-case scenario for Cohen:

--Poetry: Before we get to the music, consider this: Cohen published 11 books of poetry, including the anthologies Selected Poems and Stranger Music, each of which included otherwise uncollected work. Of these, only four are currently in print. This is mind-boggling to me, given that Cohen is one of the most well-known and beloved figures in recent history to make his name as a poet. I’ve been lucky enough to snag vintage copies of many of these books over the years, but the two I’m missing, Flowers for Hitler and Parasites of Heaven, are currently going for anywhere from $75 to $650 on Amazon. I can appreciate a good fetish object as much as the next fan, but I’ve never really approved of artificial scarcity. As a first step in honoring Cohen’s legacy, let’s get all of his written work back on shelves.

--Studio recordings: When it comes to archival releases, I’m generally more interested in songs I’ve never heard before than alternate versions of songs I already know. Cohen’s case is somewhat different because, as I mentioned above, certain songs went through radical transformations over the course of many years. Who knows if there are enough different versions of “Anthem,” say, to fill a whole disc, the way a recent Dylan set included a whole disc of “Like a Rolling Stone” takes? Who knows if such a thing would even make for compelling listening? (I skipped the “LaR” sessions.) We do know that Cohen expressed an interest in letting fans into his creative process, posting poems and songs in draft form to the “Blackening Pages” section of the Leonard Cohen Files and later going back to make revisions. “I want to send, among other things, the first manuscript scratchings for Suzanne and other early songs,” he said. “I'd like to make the process clear, or at least throw some light on the mysterious activity of writing.” Demos and outtakes of finished songs, while not my bag, are at the very least of historical interest and could help round out a box set. Highlights from the David Crosby sessions that first came to light on the Songs from a Room reissue would be an obvious candidate. I’d also be keen to hear early attempts at the songs from Death of a Ladies Man before Phil Spector got his jittery hands on them (I believe at least two were a part of the Songs for Rebecca sessions.)

--Live recordings: If you ask me, there’s more than enough live Cohen product on the market already [UPDATE: This Pitchfork piece, while informative, doesn’t persuade me otherwise]. He could be a great showman, but he wasn’t exactly Dylan, twisting his songs into strange new shapes from night to night. In many instances, the most significant variation is in the between-song patter, which could take on a hypnotic power of its own. There are exceptions, though. A number of bootlegs feature old pop and country chestnuts, socialist hymns, even Yiddish ditties getting the Cohen treatment. It would be nice to have those collected in one volume with the sound cleaned up, a kind of companion to the Basement Tapes. The 1972 Tel Aviv concert, which found Cohen facing down overzealous security guards in a sequel of sorts to his famous Isle of Wight performance, is worth a full commercial release. His revelatory summit meeting with Sonny Rollins—almost certainly the greatest musician he ever played with—on the Night Music TV show makes you wonder if there’s more that didn’t make it to air. Similarly, if another epic improvisation like the delirious “Please Don’t Pass Me By” is sitting on a shelf somewhere, I definitely want to hear it.

--Other artists: Another tidbit I gleaned from Simmons’ book is that there’s a small handful of songs Cohen gave to other artists and never recorded himself (or recorded but never released): “Priests” (Judy Collins), “Summertime” (Diana Ross), “Song for Bernadette” (Jennifer Warnes), “Way Down Deep” (Warnes again), and “It Just Feels” (someone named Sylvie Marechal). There’s also Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot,” which takes its lyrics from Cohen’s novel Beautiful Losers. There’s even a song Simmons overlooked, “Come Spend the Morning,” which was cut, in different versions, by both Lee Hazlewood and Engelbert Humperdinck! A collection of this stuff would make a fun alternative to the many inessential tribute albums out there and serve a useful purpose since these songs are little known and, in the case of the Hazlewood track, out of print. Throw in some choice bits from the gonzo movie musical Night Magic—a collaboration between Cohen, who wrote the lyrics in Spenserian stanzas, and Lewis Furey, “the Canadian Lou Reed”—and you’ve got yourself a party.