#She saw things in the wilderness up north | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

myownwholewildworld · 6 months ago

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wherever you go (a joel miller's ff) - chapter 3

chapter 2 | series masterlist | main asterlist | chapter 4

pairing: outbreak!2003!joel x f!reader.

summary: you're at your wits' end with joel. so you have to do something about it.

warnings: 18+. nsfw. mdni. mention of sarah's death. probably absolute filth. some slapping. explicit smut with a plot. softdom!joel. biting. masturbation (m and f). finger sucking. unprotected piv. a bit of ass play. pet names (darling, sweetheart). sir kink. a slight breeding kink. some violence towards the end. reader is female, no other description given. reader is mid-late 20s, joel is 36. no use of y/n. joel's and reader's pov.

a/n: buckle up, my friends. i apologise in advance, but this has been coming for the last two chapters lmao. who am i to deny them? no one. all interactions welcome! enjoy and thank you all for reading! <3

w/c: ~3k.

It had been a week since Joel almost lost his mind, and he still couldn’t comprehend what had possessed him to do such a thing. For a split second he had lost control of his own actions and gave in to his yearning. A yearning for human connection he did not know he had. The last few months had been living hell, to say the least.

Every time he closed his eyes to try and sleep, Joel could only see Sarah’s face. Her smile, her warm hugs, her giggles, her vivacity. And then, the light abandoning her eyes, her blank expression, her limp limbs as he would press her dearly against his chest. The desperation he felt then had still not deserted him. He had been a man of God because that was what his family had imparted him, but since Sarah’s death his faith was wavering. Why would God take her away from him? Sarah was an angel sent from above, she should have not suffered such demise. So, either God was a cruel entity, or an imaginary one.

That night Joel did not even attempt to get some rest so decided to do the first night shift instead. They were still at the same cave as it had proved to be a good spot to rest up and plan what their next steps would be. Tommy had suggested they checked out the quarantine zones the government had set up in big cities, but Joel was not so keen on the idea. In the last nine months since the outbreak, they had been witness to too many ungodly acts ― all committed by the living, not so many by the dead.

That was why they were in Ouachita National Forest, further north than what they were a few months ago. They were still debating whether they should head towards Kansas City, Chicago or remain in the wilderness. Although resources were scarcer, so were the clickers. They had not encountered too many people either, which, considering their past experiences, it was a good thing. No one could be trusted anymore.

Joel sat down on a tree stump by the entrance of the cave, rifle on hand. He had his worn-out, unbuttoned military jacket on as temperatures dropped considerably after sunset. The night was so quiet it felt eerie. He could not see anything when he looked up as the treetops fully covered the night sky. He assumed it would be a starry night, clear of clouds. He kept his mind occupied with made-up scenarios to avoid drifting away into Morpheus’ world.

Hours had gone by when Joel heard the slight twitch of a branch from behind him. He rapidly stood up, gripping the rifle with tension. When he turned around and saw you, he clicked his tongue with disdain.

You were too sleepy to pick up on his rude gesture. You stretched your back, which hurt like hell. You had tried to fashion some sort of cushioned bed with leaves and grass, but your makeshift bed was still hard as a rock.

“What time is it?”, you asked grumpily.

“Not sure, around four in the morning?”, he answered without looking at you while he sat back down.

“You have a wristwatch, don’t you know how to read the time?”, you said sneeringly to get some sort of reaction out of him.

“Huh, you’re so fucking funny I’d laugh if I could”, he rolled his eyes in annoyance. “It’s broken”.

You looked at him in silence, as you had done many times in the last week. You didn’t understand how this man could kiss you like the world was ending and then, a second later, he would pretend you were nothing more than an annoying moth flying around him.

It infuriated you. He infuriated you.

He was there as if nothing had happened between the two of you, while you just woke up because of a very realistic dream. Or should you say a nightmare? Your body had some unreleased, built-up tension that was damn hard to ignore. You blamed Tommy for interrupting you ― had it not been for him, you might have known what it felt like to be under Joel. Or on top of him.

You shook your head, angry at yourself and at the man in front of you.

“Sure is, I bet they didn’t teach you how to read the time when you went to school, hmmm, when? Back in the 50s?”, you teased again.

He stood up, leaving the rifle on the ground, leaned against the stump.

“Seriously, what is your fucking problem?”, he growled, his fists tightly closed on his sides.

Finally ― a breakthrough.

“My problem?”, you chuckled. “You are my problem, Joel Miller. Are you telling me you have forgotten about what happened a week ago, huh?”, you ventured.

“What happened a week ago was a mistake, that is what it was. I don’t even know what kind of demon possessed me, because I wouldn’t even touch you with a ten-foot pole”, you could almost hear his teeth grinding against each other.

His words hurt you, but they made you even madder. Who did he think he was anyway?

“You are a fucking mistake. And what you say is complete bullshit. Do you think I have not noticed how you look at me when you believe I’m not paying attention? You pretend you are not interested, but you need a goddamn reality check if you really think so”, you snapped back, the palms of your hands tingling ― you wanted to punch him so bad.

“You are frigging delusional, darlin’. You are the only woman I have seen in the last few months, it’s not like I have much to choose from, do I? It was a desperate move, nothing else. Stop imagining things―”.

That was it. He had crossed a line. So you slapped him to shut him up. His rugged face turned ninety degrees with the force of your blow. His cheek reddened slightly.

And then you grabbed him by the neck of his flannel shirt, forcing down his face towards you so he would not have time to react. You were going to prove him who was right ― and it wasn’t him.

You kissed him, separating his lips with your tongue. You outlined his top teeth with the tip of your tongue and then he let you in. You would have smirked if you could. You mapped out his whole mouth with quick but insisting twirls, Joel following your lead. You helped him remove his jacket.

One of your hands was still holding onto his plaid shirt while the other travelled south. You could swear Joel had stopped breathing, but you distracted him by breaking the kiss and looking at him with intent. His lips were parted and wet with your spit, slightly red. You grazed the prominent bulge on his jeans with the palm of your hand, biting your bottom lip down when he heavily sighed with some relief before he trapped your mouth with his again.

You let go of the flannel shirt to work on the buckle of his belt, unfastening it with some difficulty. Joel groaned loudly when you pulled down from the brim of his jeans to bring them down just below his ass, giving you plenty of access. One of Joel’s hands darted to your neck, circling your throat with the span of his fingers and squeezing lightly. Not to the point where you couldn’t breathe, but to the point where it made the whole experience even more pleasurable.

You moaned while your hand trespassed the elastic of his underwear and dipped your fingers down. You grabbed his manhood, already hard and leaking from the tip. You smiled as your thumb rubbed the precum against his sensitive skin and then slowly started to pump him. You had not seen his cock yet, but judging by the girth of it, you were not to be disappointed. You put some pressure on his shaft before upping the rhythm of the pumps.

“Fuck it, fuck this”, Joel wailed as he broke off the kiss.

For a second, you thought he was going to push you away.

His mind was spinning like a Ferris wheel coming off its hinges. He was mad, utterly mad. He shouldn’t but wouldn’t stop. Not now when you had enticed him this far. His dick was pulsing in your hand, and he was panting like a thirsty dog which had not tasted water in days.

He grabbed your adventurous hand and forced you to take it out of his briefs. Then he pushed you towards a fallen tree nearby. Joel was right behind you, his manhood hard pressed against your ass as he bit your neck, then pecking it where he had marked you. He took off your shirt before you could complain. You wore no bra, so when the cold air touched your sensitive nipples, you sighed. Joel’s hands were resting on your hips, but both quickly moved upwards until they gently cupped both of your breasts. He massaged them with care while he left a path of kisses on the side of your neck.

Then his left hand ventured south at the same time he twirled your right nipple between his fingers. You whimpered audibly when he dunked two fingers in your wet slit. He traced you up and down, your knees trembling with delight. Your cunt was so soft with your own fluids that it felt like velvet. Joel wondered how it would taste if he flattened his tongue against the damp skin and fucked you with his tongue. He groaned at the thought, and instead he paid special attention to your clit with his dextrous fingers. Your back arched, your ass touching his bulge ― you unconsciously wiggled your hips to grind on his cock. Then he tested your entrance with one fingertip, circling it slowly, while your bottom lip was quivering.

“You want this?”, he said in a coarse voice.

You nodded.

“Speak up, sweetheart”, he demanded.

“Yes, please, sir”, you whispered.

You closed your eyes and suspired loudly when his ring finger got greedily engulfed by your dripping hole. He started slowly, then fingered you relentlessly with two digits, to the point where you had to grasp his wrist to steady yourself. He curved them towards the front of your insides, stroking the right spot. You couldn’t help but watch as his fingers disappeared between your soaked folds. Your mouth shaped a perfect ‘O’ before you let go and came violently on his fingers. But Joel gave you no truce, he carried on masturbating you until you orgasmed twice more in quick succession with tears in your eyes. Your cunt was gushing for him ― you could feel the trickle of your cum going down your inner thighs. Your knees bended and you almost fell to the floor, but Joel held you by your hips with the firm embrace of his right arm.

“Good girl”, he purred in your ear, offering you his wet left hand.

You wrapped both of your hands around his wrist to hold it in place and sucked on his fingers with wanton need, his digits touching the back of your throat. You showed him explicitly what you would do to his throbbing dick if you had the chance. You licked him clean, tasting yourself on him.

Joel understood exactly what you were doing, feeling the tip of his cock touching his lower belly. He pushed down your trousers and underwear in one swift movement. Joel placed one hand on your back to make you go down on your knees. You kneeled on the ground, and he did so behind you. You put your hands down on the fallen trunk and looked over your shoulder for a minute. Joel had freed his dick, and he was holding it from the base. For a moment you wondered if it would fit, and you bit down your lip at the idea. You felt hypnotised by the sight, pondering how it would feel against your tongue, its glans pushing past your uvula, suffocating you.

“Lean forward for me, darlin’”, he muttered, and you happily obliged with dreamy eyes.

You rested your left cheek against the fallen log in between your hands, ass up in the air. You heard the rustling of leaves as Joel positioned himself right behind you. He placed his hands on your butt cheeks and cracked them open to have a peek. Joel groaned at such blissful picture. He could see your pussy literally throbbing for him, beckoning him like a siren a sailor. What a sight to see, he thought. With a pained huff, he let go of your buttocks and guided the tip of his dick to kiss your entrance. You hissed with pleasure. Finally, you thought. But he didn’t go in ― instead he trailed the tip of his cock along your slick cunt a few times.

“Joel, please, I beg―”.

“Shh”, he hummed at the exact time he went back down to your needy hole and pushed in his tip. Your flesh parted to make way. Your pussy was aching for him, burning to feel him inside. You have never felt this aroused in your life.

He took his sweet time, caressing your clit again as he went in inch by inch until his whole length was inside you. He stayed there for a long minute, letting you get used to him filling you up entirely. Your pussy choked his manhood at irregular intervals ― you just couldn’t control your own muscles anymore. It felt like heaven for both of you.

Then he moved back slowly, his shaft almost slipping out before he pushed back in with brute force. Joel freed your clit from his touch to grab your hips and started fucking you mercilessly. He found a devilish rhythm and you just went along with it. Both of your moans could be heard from yards away, as well as the squelching sounds coming from where you two connected ― luckily for you, Tommy slept like a log.

The roughness of the wood scratched the skin on your cheek, but you didn’t care. It felt too good. Your fingers clutched, trying to hold on to something as your body was being rocked by Joel’s thrusts, an orgasm creeping up on you. And then you came again, almost screaming into the dead of night, like you never came before. You could feel your whole cunt squeezing him uncontrollably, your clit burning with electricity. You felt extremely overstimulated, but you let Joel ride you to find his own release.

Joel’s eyes had rolled to the back of his head ― he had never felt this horny before. This damn woman ―you― was doing something to him, albeit he didn’t know what. He felt your inner walls tightened firmly around his cock and he almost lost it. Every time he locked eyes on where you two met, seeing his shiny dick pulling out of you, he thought you the most beautiful woman in the whole world.

His balls were so tense he feared he was going to spill his seed in you. But he found the last bit of sanity within him ― as much as he would love to claim you for himself, he couldn’t. And so, he pulled out just in time, lodging his shaft between your buttocks. He put his hands on each side of your ass to squeeze his manhood in the fold of your skin. He leaned forward, his chest against your back, to bite you between your shoulder blades before straightening himself again. Joel pumped himself a couple of times in between your buttocks and came on you abundantly. What a waste, you thought out of nowhere.

Both of you stayed in the same exact position for a hot minute, breathing heavily with effort. You were the first one to move, although your limbs felt like jelly. You grabbed some leaves and cleaned the cum off your lower back as Joel watched you avidly.

Joel stood up and pulled up his briefs and jeans, while his mind was racing with doubt. He shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have let it go this far. What was meant to be a lesson for you, ended up being a lesson for himself too. Concealing his concern, he offered a hand to help you get up. You gladly took it and proceeded to clothe yourself again, being fully conscious of Joel’s hungry gaze.

You smiled at him.

“That was fun―”.

“A mistake”, he cut you off before you could say anything else.

You were left speechless. What did he just say?

“Are you fucking shitting me right now, Joel?”, you shouted at him. “Because if you are joking, I swear to God I will―”, your anger was raising up fast.

“No, I ain’t joking, we shouldn’t have done this. You don’t understand, I’ll just get you k―”.

“JOEL!”, you screamed at the top of your lungs when you suddenly saw a man a few yards behind him.

Before Joel could grab the rifle, a gunshot was heard and impacted on Joel’s right shoulder. He fell to the ground in agony, and you hastened to kneel beside him. Blood was quickly soaking his flannel shirt.

“No, Joel, please―”, then you felt someone pulling your hair back and yelled in pain. “Let go of me, you jerk!”. It was a different man.

The first man who had shot at Joel came towards you. Joel tried to sit up to fight back, but the man with the gun hit him in the head with the grip of the weapon and Joel fell back down on the dirt.

He was not moving. Was he dead? No, he couldn’t be. You felt the bile rise up in your throat but managed to hold it.

“Joel, Joel―”, you said with tears running down your cheeks.

“Shut up, bitch”, said the second man before slapping you.

You fought them back with all you had, but in the end, they hit you in the head too, rendering you unconscious, and dragging you away.

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happysparklingshadows · 1 year ago

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A Certain Hunger (3/?)

Chapter 2 ✿ Chapter 4

Summary: Everyone is trying their best out in the woods, and it’s paying off with finding the lake and then finding an old cabin. The only problem is that every step you take you are reminded how dire the situation with the sense of dread a mummy in the attic gives.

Pairing: Surviving!Poly! Yellowjackets x reader (slow burn)

Warnings: Description of Death and Suicide, internalized homophobia, General emotional distress, and getting kissed while your eyes are closed.

Taglist: @g1rlsriot @zhivaxo @icabrth @h-doodles @somethingred7 @mika-kc @frasersgf @yaakooi @vstblrblog @jax1118 @oakwave @mmiah @dvrkhcld @wandasmainho @thewinterlunarhalo @vstblrblog @bbbexee

Word count: 14.3

‘96

The forest air was crisp and fresh as twigs snapping under your weight-birds' chirping in the trees above. It was very peaceful in an odd way for you. You have only been out in the woods for three days now, and although you were anxious about when the rescue team would find you the entire time, the environment was overwhelmingly beautiful and familiar. It's just a North American Forest with all the usual creatures like back home in New Jersey. All the lush green and brown overcome your senses with the natural odor of the wild it was comforting and made you think of your dad. It felt like you were with him somehow as you and Taissa walked through the brush to find a water source early in the morning. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, letting it out.

“Doing yoga over there?” Taissa teased as she walked beside you on the unbeaten path of the forest ahead of you. A breeze hits you both in the direction you are walking.

You chuckle and shake your head to her, “No, I am just taking in the smell. The deep forest has a smell to it. It has like this rich dirt and plant smell.”

Taissa scoffs and shakes her head at your words, and she doesn’t understand why you are so calm about the woods. Tai was trying her best not to freak out about the fact she was currently trapped in the wilderness, and she just looked over to you and saw you just calmly walking in the greenery. “I never saw you as an outdoorsy kind of girl.”

“I’m not.” You say, very tired of the topic with the other girls. “You know me, and I am more into Journalism.”

“Yeah,” Taissa says as she looks over at you, pointing a finger, she remembers as she says, “Aren’t you going to NYU for journalism?”

You chuckle and look to your feet, seeing a familiar vine slowing your walking. “Yeah, I mean, go into where your good. I think I am pretty good at journalism.”

“Wanna be like Jay Lenno?” Taissa asked as she followed your movements, her eyes scanning around to see why you slowed down. “What?”

You point to the ground, and you crouch down to the vine. You follow the vine a few inches, and white berries with black that hang gently from a black vine. “Tai, Look," You urge with a wave of your hand to Tai. Taissa looks over your shoulder as you explain, "These are Rabit food berries, at least that is what my dad calls them, and are poisonous but can be used for bail for anything.” You say as you start to pick off the white berries. “Good news is that they normally grow around water. So, hopefully, we are close.”

“Oh, foesue,” Taissa says as she leans down and looks at the berry. She takes one in her hand and investigates the little thing. “These are called Rabbit food?”

“Not formally. But that is what my dad calls them.”

“You’re dad knows a lot about this stuff.”

You forced a smile and nodded; you didn't want to talk about your dad.

As you stand up, a sharp pain shoots through your neck, and it causes you to yelp, "Ow!".

"You okay?" Taissa asked with her eyebrows furrowed in concern. You still have black eyes from the crash, and you still look like you took a beating.

"It's okay. It's just my neck is still sore. Please don't worry about it." You sigh as you put the white berries in the bandana Natalie gave you that first night. Taissa and you both walk forward toward the breeze with more confidence that you will find water.

You and Tai had a somewhat complicated relationship. Tai was second to become valedictorian, and you always seemed competitive. Tai would ask you what you got on tests and essays, comparing the results to see how to spark more rivalry. There wasn’t much there, to begin with. Still, fighting with someone with your wit was fun because there would be no other competition if it were about physical ability. Taissa never took things too far with how you two fought for the top spot. Tai bit her tongue when it was called over the intercom two weeks earlier that you were the one giving the speech at graduation. Taissa wanted to break her pencil because she had worked so hard and never got to be better than you, but she always knew you were a worthy opponent. Taissa was your friend like the other senior yellowjackets. Still, your relationship was more superficial with her than with Shauna or even Misty Quigley. There was an air of performance and a level of standoffishness.

“Congratulations on the Valedictorian spot again,” Taissa says softly to you. You were always so pretty to her.

“Thank you, Tai!” you said happily. You were very proud of yourself for that, and you look over to her and say, “I guess it’s pretty good that we both are here to make sure everyone’s head screwed on right.”

Taissa chuckles at your joke as the both of you see the lake off on the horizon on the hill. It looked like someone would have to go down the hillside, and a few miles past a little more forest, you would get to the shore. Taissa doesn’t say anything before she runs ahead of you, closer to the hill's edge.

You sigh as your feet beg you to stop moving and lie down. You needed to keep moving, and you needed to make sure everyone was okay. You had reminded yourself of everything your father said in passing on your many trips, and you knew a big one was water and then shelter on the list. The last couple of days has made you more adventurous than you ever like to be, as you had to do something as the anxiety was eating you alive. You speedwalk behind the very fast Tai, who stopped at the treeline that dropped off into a beach.

“If it weren’t so deep in these woods, it would be a private beach,” you thought as you panted behind Taissa. The air was sweet and relaxed with the breeze of the tide, and it didn’t stop the drop of sweat that rolled down your neck.

“Fucking finally,” You sigh out with a groan. You look around the water and see lily pads a little ways off, and on the side are rocks that a small turtle rests on. The lake looks promising and has everything that the group needs right now.

Taissa doesn’t show much emotion toward the water; more of a confirmation of its existence. She turns back and pulls your arm to walk the other 6 miles back to the plane. You while as you follow behind her, she says, “We have to tell the others and move camp there.”

You felt yourself pause a little bit at the way she said that. It sounded like a demand, and injured people couldn’t travel this distance without the whole team working together. There was a confirmed 15 people alive from the plane crash, luckily, all your friends survived with some injuries, but 4 of them were working with painful wounds. Ashely, a sophomore, was burned so badly on her face that her cheek is producing puss now; Misty is sure it is third-degree. Ashely has been in and out of pain and can’t walk even though she is fully intact, and couch Ben is working with one less leg.

“Tai, I don’t think we should move so quickly.” You say as you walk behind her, both determined to meet the others.

Tai scoffs and looks over her shoulder with a narrowed eye, “Why’s that? We’re running out of food and water by the hour.”

“Yes, but people aren’t going to do it so quickly. We have to think about the injured-”

“We’ll carry them, and we can’t stay put, (y/n).”

You roll your eyes as you say a little more transparently, “Tai, you are not going to make people want to move with that approach.” she stops herself to look at you. She is annoyed, and you can sense that you sigh and explain, “People are still in shock, okay? A fucking Plane crash happened, and no one has fucking found the box. Everyone is emotional about it still, and we cannot come at them like it’s a demand. Everything is different now, and we all need some time.”

“Then, they can stay there until rescue gets here.” She stood firm. She put her hands on her hips as she looked at you with a tilted head.

You feel yourself get even more frustrated, and you start to say with a sterner voice, “We’re not leaving anyone behind. We are leaving altogether or staying together, Tai; there is no other way it will work.”

“Okay, what do you think we should do if you think my idea is bullshit.”

“I don’t think your idea is bullshit, but it is insensitive to the people who just fucking lost everything.” You whisper yell to her, not even wanting the chance that someone could hear your argument from the camp. “The guys lost their dad, and we all lost someone we knew in the crash, Tai. People are emotional, and people are scared. We have to be united when we tell them about the water. We introduce it gently and let them all decide when to go.” Tai grew quiet as she looked at you, watching you continue. ”I think we should hold a vote on when we should go because you are right,” You nod to her, and Tai seems slightly taken back that you would tell her, “I think we should move to the lake.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We need to bury the bodies.” You remind as you walk up a slight incline in the path. “We can leave after we bury them or tomorrow morning. It’s not a question that we are going.”

“So, the ones that want to stay have to move with us.” Taissa agreed with a slight nod of her head. She then says as if it was a little painful. “You’re right.”

“Okay, So we will do that.” You diplomatically ask her again for confirmation before you start planning your morning announcements to the team. “We have food and water now; We need to build a shelter of some kind.”

“You think we will be here that long to need it?”

“No, I hope we won’t.” You say back, your voice trying to stay positive. “But what if a storm comes by? We’re not in a good place for that, even with the plane, which I don’t think I would even want to step in again.”

“Agreed… But how do we build a shelter? We'll make a teepee or something?”

“I am thinking like dig out and skinny fallen tree logs because this place is covered with them. And figure it out together because I don’t know everything.”

Taissa chuckle and shakes her head. She sarcastically says, “I don’t think that is true.”

“Trust me, I don’t.” You chuckle back and continue your way back to camp.

After walking for another 30ish minutes on your aching feet, you finally reach the group. Excited and happy to finally have some good news for them.

Van, Laura Lee, Travis, and Natalie have been working for a few days on digging pits. Today they were digging the last ones, trying to give their friends and even the people they didn’t know a “right” burial, as Laura Lee had Insisted we give them. A few days earlier, She came to the group while you were giving a morning announcement and said that anyone that is “abled body needs to help because this is the right thing to do. God would want us to do it, and I think even they would want us to do that.”.

And you did. How could you tell Laura Lee she was wrong?

You're panting as you stop walking and lean against a tree by the primary fire. The other girls work on their little things, discuss what they plan for the summer, and other helping others feel better with their wounds. Another pain shoots through your neck again as you turn it too quickly to the left to look around. You calm your breathing from your long hike and feel yourself have enough air to be okay again.

“Okay, let’s eat before I start talking.” You announce to the team as you pull out the ration box, and Van follows behind you, kneeling down to take inventory.

“This is all we have?” Jackie asks.

“Yeah,” Van says.

“We just have to ration. We split everything in half and eat until we don’t feel hungry. Let’s cut them up.” You say, reassuring everyone. You smile and say, “These are really calorie dense, so we will be okay."

Van comes closer to Shauna and shows her how to cut the rations. Shauna is listening to this very intently, and she starts to cut. You hand the water bottle to Akilah and say, “Split the water up evenly."

Shauna says to Jackie beside you, “Close your eyes and pretend it’s bacon.”

Jackie eats it; happily, she always was a food person. You remember when you were in middle school, and her mother passed out from too much Xanax, so Jackie cooked a late-night dinner that would make her mom go crazy to see her eating more than an almond before bed. Jackie made pizza out of dough in the fridge and stuff lying around, and to this day, you think it was the best pizza you ever had. You chuckle as you eat your share of the Mary cakes.

“I am more of a pancakes and syrup girl.” Jackie jokes as she finishes her breakfast of a Mary Cake. You chuckle and nod, “I am feeling pancakes too, Jackie. Shauna is just a carnivore.” You joke.

Shauna purses her lip and holds in a laugh at the joke, shaking her head. Jackie laughed and nodded, “You remember when Shauna ate that burger the size of your head?”

You all laugh at the joke, and you nod your head. You feel your first moment of ease. You didn’t feel pain in your neck and in your heart. Shauna laughed this time and covered her mouth, “Oh my god, it was like she unhinged her jaw!” You reminisce and laugh.

Jackie starts to scratch her thigh again, and both you and Shauna give her a look.

“Hey, Misty said, don’t scratch. It can get infected.”

“If poison Ivy’s what kills me out here, then I deserve to die.” Jackie joked. You pushed her arm and gave her another look.

“Hey, no pessimism. You’re too tough to die from poison Ivy… But please don’t go to the bathroom before you wash your hands.” You warned lightly with a chuckle.

“What will happen if I go to the bathroom, (Y/n)?”

“You will get it on your pussy girl.” You say curtly because you didn’t want to sugarcoat poison ivy on your vagina. “It would be excruciating.”

“Would you know?”

“No, I am not stupid, though.” You chuckle and smile at her. You take a drink of your water and eat some berries. Unaware behind you that Travis was stealing more than his share.

“Hey!” Akilah says to him as he walks over to her and steals a whole Mary cake.

“What are you doing?” Van asks.

“Uh, maybe you didn’t notice, but we’re in a situation here, Flex.” Lottie insults as Travis walks off with a whole Mary Cake instead of a half one.

“Don’t,” Natalie warns sharply.

Travis turns back and glares at all of us.

“Who died and made him king of snacks?” Lottie whispers to the group.

“His dad, Lottie. His fucking dad.”

“Nat’s right. We should cut him some slack.” Jackie remarked to the group.

“I guess it’s fine if we all starve to death as long as Travis’s feelings are okay.” Mari sassed.

“We’re not gonna starve to death. Okay? When the rescue team gets here-”

“IF it gets here.” Van cuts in on Jackie to make her point of pessimism.

“Okay, we’re not going say that.” You sharply say to Van. She looks up at you, surprised you spoke up at the moment. You shared a look of her telling you that you can’t say that, and you continued to speak. “We’re not going to kill the hope around here, okay? We must be there for each other right now, but we must be smart. Travis will not do that again because we need to ration. You’re right, Mari. But look around, you guys,” You stop to put your arms out like your dad once did when you were young. Everyone looks around like you said, “It’s summer in a fertile forest. We’ll be okay. We just need to be smart.”

You say as you put your backpack on your shoulders and look at the others. You stand up and say, “We’re all we have right now. We all survived a plane crash. We’re all on edge and emotional. We all must acknowledge that and try not to take things personally until the rescuers come, okay? Because I am a fucking wreck right now, and I know you all are too. We can do nothing but work together and be there for each other. Let’s try our best and be nice to each other now because if anyone will ever understand what we are going through is except each other.”

“Okay, Let’s do it,” Jackie says as she looks up to you with a smile. The others agreed with some groans and complaints, but they agreed.

“Okay, everyone, on another subject, Me and Taissa found a lake when we went out this morning. We saw it over the hill and thought we knew how to get to it from there. It looks about four or five miles away.”

“Do you think we can hike it, (Y/n)?” Shauna asks skeptically.

“Yes, We need to help Coach Ben and take turns carrying him, but we can make it. It’s a little rocky and goes uphill a few times, but yeah.” You say with a smile and look around the team. All seem ready to move and get some distance from the plane; however, Jackie is seemingly fighting with herself about how she will speak. “But, I want to leave it to the team to decide when we should go. We need to go to the water, but should we go after the burial or tomorrow morning?”

“Uh, we, uh, we can’t-we can’t just leave,” Jackie spoke as she awkwardly rose from her spot. She is hesitant.

“Jackie, I know it is scary. But we only have two days of water and don’t have enough food to go around. If it takes them a while to find us, they'll look for the closest body of water for us.”

“But what if the rescue team comes?”

“We’ll leave an SOS on the plane saying we are at the lake and make an SOS on the lake to let them know we are here.” You said before Taissa was going to speak. You didn’t want to kill hope; you didn’t want to kill your own, you just kept it together like you know how.

“What do you think, Coach?” Laura Lee asked him. You follow her voice to him, and you see Misty beside him.

“I don’t-I don’t know,” He says, “I mean, you’d have to leave me behind, I guess, but whatever-”

“That is ridiculous. That is never going to happen.” You shut him down and continued on to your point. “We will build a stretcher out of what we have lying around. Misty took a first-aid class, and they have shown you how to do it, right?”

Misty’s eyes widened that you were speaking to her in the circle like she was important. She smiled shyly and, slightly embarrassed, said, “Kinda-”

“Then we will make one and take turns-”

Jackie laughs in disbelief that we are still talking about leaving. “No. This-This is bullshit. No. No way.”

“Okay, fine. All in favor of waiting here until we don’t have any water?” You say, still twisting it to go to the lake. No one but Jackie raises their hand, she looks over to Shauna, and she doesn’t still. Jackie lost control of you, and now Shauna. She looks around, and no one does. Eventually, Mari and Laura Lee raise their hands.

“All in favor of going to the lake?” You say you raise your hand as Taissa beside you does as well. Everyone else raises their hand.

You nod your head and say as Jackie quiets herself in anger. “Alright, we’re going to the lake. All in favor of leaving tomorrow.”

Jackie, Laura Lee, Mari, Coach Ben, and Misty raise their hands.

“All in favor of leaving after the burial?”

Everyone else raises their hand. You nod again. “Alright, we are leaving after the burial. The vote is in. Let’s pack up our things, eat before we leave, get anything we can, and we will all help Misty with the stretcher. Okay?”

Everyone says “Yes,” “Sure,” and nods. Everyone leaves to do their jobs as Jackie seems to sulk away, and Shauna, knowing she angered Jackie, goes off to help Misty.

You look over to Jackie, who is sulking and feel really bad. It felt like a pit was growing just a little more in your stomach.

“Jackie-”

“Leave me alone.”

“I’m not like that, Jackie, you know that,” you say as you sit beside her. She is having a hard time right now, and you know she is more anxious than anything. You always knew how to talk to Jackie. “I’m sorry that we have to leave the plane.”

“I don’t think we should go. What if they get here and we’re not here?”

“Well, We’ll make a sign on the plane that we’re at the lake, and then we can make a sign at the lake. If anything, they could see the shore of a lake more than in these dense woods.” You say and look up to the leaves, it’s tough to see the sky, and even with the trees that cleared for the plane, the sky was not clear. Just the ribbons of light that sneaked in between the leaves. “Look up.”

Jackie looks up and looks at the trees. “A rescue plane or helicopter would have difficulty seeing the crash because it would look like a natural opening instead of a crash landing. But if there is a big opening and three signs, we were here. They will know we are here, you know.” You reassure.

Jackie nods but still looks conflicted. She itches her under the thigh and just sighs, “Fine. Whatever.”

“It sucks, I know…” You say as you look at her hand travel to her thigh. You then say, “Do you have anything for that? Do you want me to take a look to see what it is-”

“No, It’s fine.” Jackie declared and looked at you pointedly with her big eyes.

“Okay…” You say, but you move to your bag next to her, pull out your bottle of lotion and put it at her feet. You get up and move to see what you can do before the burial.

Jackie sighed as she took your lotion and put it on her thigh, it was Eczema cream, and it soothed the poison ivy on the back of her knee and thigh. She sighed in relief and felt more at ease with her childhood friend, “Still in the trio.” Jackie thought as she reluctantly spread the moisturizer on her rash.

Van, Misty, and you finish placing the last pile of dirt on the dead. Your hands felt like everything you touched was a dream. Almost everything was surreal. Even the greens around you seemed alien right now, and you didn’t have the will to speak. “Not now, not right now.” You remind yourself as you pat the dirt on Coach Ben’s leg. Tears fell mindlessly down your cheeks. You didn’t have the strength to hold back your tears, wordlessly putting the makeshift shovel onto the ground and standing next to Shauna and Jackie.

“Before we took off, I heard Reachel say she would see Oasis at the meadowlands next month. She was really excited… And she is never gonna hear “Wonderwall” again.” Van spoke when we all stood around the homemade gravestones made from scrap metal.

“Come on.” Laura Lee gently urged everyone. “Let’s join hands. We’ll pray for them. ”

You grab onto Shauna’s hand, feeling the soft skin of her palm and fingers as you squeeze her for comfort as she does the same. A familiar ritual of you ever since you two were children, holding and comforting. You hold Jackie’s clammy delicate hand, she squeezes your hand, and you squeeze back. Holding the hands of the girls you played with in the sandbox when you were just a little girl felt more reassuring than you thought. Seeing your closest friends were safe and holding hands together made you feel so much relief. Knowing that so many people, 23, have died in a crash that should have killed you all sobered your happiness.

“Rachel, you just moved up from JV, so we didn’t know you. But, in Trig, you never confuse your secants and your cosecants. You seemed really smart. Anyone else?”

“I saw her carry a flute case once,” Van blurted out.

“She wore Revlon Goldpearl Plum. She let me borrow it at Homecoming last year.” You added as fat tears rolled down your plumb cheeks.

“Oh, Lord, please accept Reachel Goldman into your arms so she may fill your kingdom with music.” Laura Lee said with closed eyes, and yu felt your heartbreak at those words. Rachel’s family probably would have agreed with Laura Lee and would have been happy to know people cared for her enough to give her a respectful burial. Still, they didn’t know she had died. They’re probably hoping she is alive, thinking that somehow like you, she was standing fine, just needing to be found, but it would never happen. You felt a sob nest in your chest. “Please accept Coach Martinez into your glory, too—and flight attendant Janet, Pilot Robert, and Pilot Fred. And the people we didn’t know the names of, please allow them everlasting peace. Even though I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death, take them into your kingdom, Father. Reunite them in your love. Amen.”

Everyone prayed, “Amen.”

Taissa left the circle alone, and everyone started packing for the journey to the lake.

‘21

Shauna Jeff is cheating on me, and he is telling me anything. Just keeps saying that he is staying back for the data inventory. You Okay You Wow You You need to get proof. I would follow him and see what is up. And if he is, then you get even girl. Shauna You read my mind lol Shauna By the way, Callie wants to know what you think of her Instagram post. Shauna I don’t really know what she is talking about? You Girl, she looked great. I didn’t comment on it like I normally do lol! Tell her I think she looks gorgeous in purple! Shauna What did she post? You A coffee shop pic with her boyfriend. She was wearing a little purple sundress!!! You Very pretty!! 💕🫶✨ You Go on Instagram and like it for her Shauna Girl what You You are too attached to Facebook Shauna Don’t tell me what I am You Shauna, you need to use other social media to see all your cute daughter's pictures and stalk her location. Shauna You can do that??? You Fuck yeah, why do you think I have a fucking Instagram lol Shauna Does Jeff have one? You It looks like you got a lead Shipmen Xxx

“(Y/n), your quiet back there? How is your dating life going?”

Natalie scoffed and looked over to Misty in the passenger seat. You sat behind Natalie in the car with your attention on your phone. You used yourself as a buffer for Misty to talk to and for Natalie to speak when she wanted to, but it seemed very noticeable when you silenced yourself.

“Um… Happily single right now and longtime committed to my purple rabbit.” You joke to Misty as you put your phone in your purse.

Natalie chuckled at your comment, and Misty seemed unhappy with how vulgar you were.

“Seriously, you haven’t been out dating anyone? You look amazing for your age.” Misty reassured you that it was why you were not looking out there. Acting like she didn’t know why you were so closed off from ever having to learn another person intimately again and why you would naturally be turned off from it.

“I know I do. My tits still sit on the top of my chest, just sometimes when I sit down, they hit my stomach.” You joke again about age with the two other women. Both laughing at the truth of the comment, Misty snorts a little and fixes her classes. “Tell me about it!” Misty laughed.

“How long till, uh, we get to Travis’s?” Natalie cut in and asks, clearly not enjoying her time in the car with either of you.

"Uh, Three hours and 24 minutes,” Misty reports, and Natalie sighs deeply at the answer. “I-I totally get it. You know, not dating anyone right now. At our age, it’s like all the available ones are crumbs at the bottom of a chip bag.” Misty chuckles. Misty looks down at her phone and says a soft, “Oh. Mostly.”

Natalie scoffs as Misty texts the other person on the phone, “Got a whole chip?”

You chuckle at that, and you see her eyes looking in the review mirror at you. Your eyes meet for a second.

“Just a friend. For now.” Misty chuckles, then laughs softly as she texts the other person at the end.

You looked out the window as you watched the trees passing you by, not hearing any more of the conversation that had lulled now. You felt happy that Misty found someone. But you wanted to cut the person's throat on the other end. Would they hurt Misty? Make Fun of her? The thought of Misty getting used or taken advantage of makes you feel a part of you digress and growl. Something primal and not right, but you can’t stop how familiar it all feels and how safe you are in Its presence.

Natalie drives to a gas station before you can cut yourself out of your thoughts. You remain quiet as your phone vibrates with more texts from Shauna. You couldn’t muster the will to look down at them right now.

“I’m starving,” Natalie says as she takes the keys out of the car. “You want to go grab something while I gas up?” Natalie asked. Her voice gave off the edge and some kind of motive behind them. And Misty was too smart not to catch that.

“Oh!” Misty says and fixes her glasses, “Well, I don’t know what you like. Maybe you should come with me,” She smoothly lied.

You slightly smirk because you knew from reading the room that Misty was scared that you and Natalie would ditch her.

“Chocolate’s good.” Natalie bluntly stated. It didn’t ease the tension.

“Um. well, there’s dark and milk and white.” Misty listed

“Surprise me.” Natalie smoothly stated as she looked Misty down a little. Her black-lined eyes give her a sharper tilt to her gaze. She looked like she could take a bite right out of you.

“Okay,” Misty said very fakely. It caused you to chuckle and grab the back of the headrest of her seat. You lean forward and touch her shoulder.

“I’d like some spicy peanuts and maybe something salty.”

Misty grimaces as she looks at you with a pointed look, “Spicy food? We have another 6 hours on the road there and back. Let alone the time we will spend seeing Travis!” Misty countered you.

You raise an eyebrow and say, “That was very rotten of you to say that.”

“That was not rotten to say that- you know what! I will get you something good.” Misty says as she exits the car, looking cautiously at Natalie again.

Natalie scoffs as she sees Misty walk away, and she immediately starts looking into the glove box of the minivan.

“Okay.” Natalie mocks as she starts to look around the car as Misty walks into the station

“What did she do?” You chuckle humorlessly as you lean against the leather seat.

Natalie doesn’t speak to you as she looks in the front and into the glove box. She pulled out a car plug that had the words Porsche on them.

“Fucking knew it.” She whispers to herself and throws it back. She looks at you and says, “She fucking took my spark plug.”

‘What?!” You say as you lean back up forward.

“Misty can’t be trusted… That little snake.” Natalie sighs to you as she turns to look at you.

“When has anyone trusted that Misty Quigley wouldn’t do something crazy for attention.” You lamented with her; you took a deep breath and told her in the sense of trust between you two. “You should have known better than letting her think you want her back in some way.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. And because you did, I did. So here we are.”

“I didn’t need you to come to save me. Just back off. I am here to check on Travis, and you can go back to your fucking cave.”

“You shouldn’t have let on you were looking for him, you gave Misty enough to follow you, and you should know better. We all know your dirt, and we all know you, whether you like it or not. You are a fucking bomb waiting to go off, and you have been running away for a long time.” You hiss at her and look at her sharply in the eyes. Her baby blue eyes stare back at yours. An old familiar primal surge comes over you as you feel like you have been in this moment before.

“Well, I don’t need any fucking help, and I don’t need you telling me about Misty Fucking Quigley.” Natalie spat at you as she left the car with a slam of the door.

You sat in the car with pursed lips. You didn’t like the energy that was in the car anymore. You didn’t know why you had an outburst like that with her. But how fucking dare she talk to you like that. You have been kind to her, and she has been an asshole to you all day; you have had it.

Misty returns to the car with a grocery bag and jerky in the other. Misty chats with Natalie outside the car before she comes into the car with a snarl.

“Someone is in a bad mood.”

“A fucking horrible mood.”

“Do you need to curse so much?”

“What did you get me, baby cakes?” You changed the subject as you looked over her shoulder. She hands you two bags and an icy bottle of water. It is honey-roasted peanuts and Chipotle Jerky. You smile because at least she got you something spicy, and a craving was honored; she was very kind in her odd way.

“Aw, Misty, this is perfect, thank you. You’re right. I would have had a stomach ache if I ate all the spicy nuts.”

“I know.”

“Shh. Silence.”

Misty chuckles as she takes another bite of her jerky. You rip open your bag and greedily take the spiced meat to pieces into your hand. You sink your teeth into the dried beef as the strains separate in your mouth, with each muscle strain salted and flavorful. It was sweetly smoked by some kind of wood as the cayenne and chili danced on your tongue. It was similar to a Mexican taco you had in upstate New York that wasn’t that authentic but something that made you come back for more. You moan as you relish in the guilty pleasure of still loving a good piece of jerky even after everything that happened. Sometimes your thoughts haunt you. “What if I liked it?” you thought sometimes as you chewed down on the juicy meat that reminded you of them.

“Misty, try some.”

“I don’t like spicy food, honey.” Misty’s voice was plain with reticence as she took the meat from your fingers.

“Try it, please, Misty.” You say a little sweeter, and you eat another yourself.

Misty takes the piece into her mouth as Natalie enters the car; she sided eyes both of you as she says, “Jerky, really?”

“Yeah, it’s good.” You say back to her with an old tone you had thought you had lost. It felt odd having two of your old friends back, and it made some things come out of you again.

“Your right, honey; that is not bad.”

“Right!”

‘96

Soon after the burial, people grouped up and prepared to leave from the plane to the lake. You walked in the back with Jackie, for a while, and Mari. The beginning of your hike was comprised of Mari talking to you and Jackie about Theo Stevens in her Bio class, who has been giving her a lot of side eyes, which as a good friend you feed into her fantasy that he was “so checking her out.”

The hike took as long as you remember, but it seemed longer for the whining of Jackie and Mari, who seemed to bond significantly on the trip through their complaints. Every step felt like a mile. Sores on your heels and big toe, but you didn’t even have the energy to voice your pain. You can see Coach Ben struggling for the last 40 minutes with Misty and Marissa ahead of you, the two girls having trouble moving him. It felt like complaining about a hang nail to someone with a bullet wound; it didn’t stop Jackie and Mari, but it sure as fuck stopped you.

After a while, you and Taissa were sure you were off the trail you found earlier, but you were going in the same direction; you two came to the conclusion that you all would “eventually get to the lake.”. Tai insisted that she would keep leading the hiking party and she could do her own thing with Van beside her.

Every other minute, You take your pocket knife and cut a heart on the trees to make a guide back to the plane, and suddenly a rotten horrendous smell comes to your nose. You gag to yourself but caught the ears of Jackie and Mari behind you.

“What?” Jackie huffed as she looked over your shoulder to see your twisted face.

“I don’t know, You don’t smell that?” You ask.

Lottie and Jackie, now even Tai notice that the back has stopped. “Smell what?”

“I don’t know-” You started and were cut off by Natalie.

“Holy shit.” She says, taken back. You look at what she is talking about as all the yellowjackets walk forward, a gutted bear. The sound of flies and maggots comes to your ear before your eyes can register what is in front of you as you all continue hiking. The chest of the black bear was torn open down to its navel, small and large intestines sprawled out of the wound with semi-dried blood seeping out of the pores of the organs, innards from up in the cavity shredded down to the bottom. The beast was abused by whatever killed it before it died from the exposed flesh under the thick brown fur. A crow proudly sits on top the dead animal, picking on the remaining leftovers of meat.

“Oh, God, I’m gonna puke,” Jackie complained as she walked behind you.

“What could have done that?” Shauna queried the group, her brown eyes looking straight at the bear. Worry set in her eyes.

“Probably wolves. They move in packs and fight in packs. Nothing can survive them. Not even a bear.” You say, offhandedly, something not too problematic because it was only natural for wolves to be in these woods. You kept walking.

“They can kill a fucking bear?” Natalie was amazed and horrified.

“Oh, yeah. Wolves can kill anything if its pack is big enough.” You say your eyes haven’t moved an inch from the bloody bear. You blink a few times before you snap out of it. You start to lead the hiking team, “Let’s get moving. We’re almost to the water.”

“What do we do if wolves come, (Y/n)?” Misty asks you. She stares at the bear before looking forward again. Everyone seemed to be engrossed with the brutal proof of nature’s violence, it’s ugly and gross, but it was real. It seemed more natural to you than you being in those woods.

“We are a big pack ourselves. We would probably scare them away if we sitck together. Let’s not get too worried… We should only worry if it’s a pack of 30 or something.”

“Very comforting.” Natalie snarked as she walked ahead of you. And you didn’t have the energy to say anything more. You just look at your feet and walk, letting yourself be quiet momentarily.

The woods always had that kind of power. They make you still for a few moments to just breathe and let it in. It makes you think clearer because of the green, or the breeze, of the freedom in the trees. It used to make you quiet and grateful for the peaceful views, but only now, it seems to ground you differently.

You miss your mom and dad. You miss your mom a lot and just want to call her. To tell her that everything was okay, that you were okay. That everything was just a stupid mistake and you were alive, and coming home in a few days. Your mom should have taken her medicine a few hours ago, and what if your dad couldn’t give it to her? What if your dad was off at work, and they both don’t know anything yet? They will find out in a few days when none of you return. Or do they know this story? Is it all over the news with your parents demanding answers, worried sick about you? You know how much they love you and how much this hurts them because it is hurting you. It hurts more than your black eyes and your achy neck.

A sinking hole.

It felt like a dreading hole that burrowed into your chest. It felt neverending, and it caused your breathing to hurt.

Worst of all, when you felt the sharp jolt of pain of neck when you moved your head to the side too much or too fast, was becoming overbearing. Every deep breath or pant causes a pain to spread down your upper back. It was getting to you as you felt a thump with every step. You wanted to float in the water; sweat was on your brow and collecting in your shirt.

You just kept walking with your eyes on your shoes, looking at the moss and dead leaves, when your thoughts wandered. Thankfully, Van stopped your thoughts by finding the lake and screaming for everyone to follow her.

“Come On, Let’s go!” She squeals with the others. Shauna, Jackie and you just followed behind with a second wind of excitement. It felt like running with marbles in your shoes at this point, but you couldn’t seem to care as the water welcomed you with open arms from the Sun’s heat. Van starts ripping off her shirt as she runs in front of you. She takes the scrunchie out of her hair and haphazardly throws it with her shirt. You start laughing out of happiness, and before you can even think, before the words of your father come to mind, you take off your backpack and throw your luggage with it. You stop at your personal pile, snatch off your shirt, and tug off your bottoms.

Behind you were the girls that ran past you. Their eyes seemed to be engrossed by the view in their way. Many have known you for a long time, some from childhood, and they have never seen your body. Brown, green, and blue eyes are all seen to scan you as the first- and second-year students happily stripped to swim in the lake. The girls didn’t know what to do besides study the curve of your side, the way your body naturally plumped in places. It was beautiful. The way that your back seemed more sensual from this angle of your bending down to put down your shirt, then when you sway your hips side to side to tug the bottoms off of yourself, seemed to make a reaction out of some of them.

Misty, helping bring Coach Ben to the shore, felt a mass tingling at the sight alone. She saved the image in her mind forever. Shauna swimming out with Lottie, Laura Lee, and Van all seemed to lull their splashing as they tried to call to you but were silenced by how your skin looked bare in the sun for a second.

Shauna was breathless and nervous, guilty of what she did and what she felt for Jackie. Now something new came over her for you again. She wanted to bury it like she buried her feelings for Jackie. Shauna looks away quickly.

Lottie studied you without shame; she always knew of the pneumatic way your body was shaped and hidden underneath your clothes. However, she was ashamed of herself and didn’t want anyone to see her seeing you like that. She thought they would see she was in love with you with just one look.

As you pass Jackie, Mari, and Natalie, when Travis splashes them with the cold water, saying a blunt, “Travis, no one likes you.” before diving into the cold lake. Natalie scanned down your body. She has always admired you and your kindness, but as you made fun of Travis it made something tug in Natalie’s chest. Nat always knew that if there was a girl she would be with, it was you. She cowardly looks away and talks to Jackie and Mari. Natalie hides in the conversation with them about Travis. How he is hot, Natalie disagrees and wants to say something about you but bites her tongue.

You swim over to Shauna, Lottie, and Van and splash water onto them. Giggling and laughing out of control. You start playing tug of war in the water with Shauna on your shoulders. Shauna sightly squeezes her thighs and muffles your ears, she feels you against her, and she quickly moves to her position like she is adjusting her seat on your shoulders.

You and Van hold eye contact; she smiles at you widely and happily. Her emerald eyes shine back into your (e/c) eyes, and a small conversation is shared without words. It was just a little humor between you two, it made you happy, even when you and Shauna were pushed back into the water. Van is laughing and loving spending time with you but is happier that she won. Vanessa and Taissa share a look together, as Taissa rebraids Akilah’s hair. For a long time, they had been together, and for a long time, you seemed to be the only subject the two seemed to avoid speaking about. But when Van looks over to Taissa, who was checking you out just as much as Van was, the two seem to realize something at that moment.

You swim away with Lottie after everyone gets tired from playing. You two just float lazily in the water, holding hands. You feel relaxed for the first time in days, and the neck pain subsides. Lottie lets go of your hand to swim slightly off, but she stops. Standing on the sand with her toes buried into it to stand firm as she watched something in the distance, you stood yourself and saw a shining reflection of something in the trees.

“Guys!” Lottie shouts. She points with a wary smile, “Look.”

Everyone sees what you see. It’s a cabin up the hill to the left. It felt like some kind of prayer was answered this morning. It makes you smile and laugh manically as you quickly swam back to the shore. The others follow behind you with hope racing through them. You tell everyone as they are on shore.

“Okay, we found something up that hill. It’s some kind of reflections of a window. So, injured, rest here, and we will check it out and see if it is okay to go into. Misty, Uh, honestly, Anyone who isn’t a senior, stay here with the injured and rest. Senior Yellowjackets, Let’s check this place out!” You say excitedly and tell the girls, “We’ll come get you as soon as we know it is safe to go in there.”

“Girls, be careful.” Coach Ben says to you guys as you start running away. He doesn’t care much at the moment was you all run off, he is lost in his own head.

You and the others start running up the hill with your shoes wet from the lake and your clothes sticking to your body from the water. You and the other seniors rush up the incline to what could be the only break you have found in these dense woods.

‘21

As you expected, you were arrested shortly after when Natalie smashed the window of Travis's front door when you got there. It felt wrong going into his home unannounced, let alone breaking in, after not seeing him in decades. Misty was being a little detective and Natalie looked a little emotional looking over her old best friends things. You were out of place, you and Travis have no connection outside of the crash. It felt like how it did many times out there in the woods, a dulling and distance that you built to cope with the horrors out there. But, it never left you after you were saved. You felt this way sometimes when you get too stressed or sad. You‘re on autopilot and you don't act out of character, even when you are fully checked out. When you check back in after your adrenaline dies down, you were sitting next to Misty and still talking. Misty was talking about her bird, Caligula, and how because he is a Hyacinth Macaw that he couldn't eat most bird seed. Natalie was out taking her first call.

“How is your dad doing?” Misty asked next to you. “I heard you put him in a nursing home.”

“Yeah, He started needing medication a lot and constant care. But he is still doing good for a 89 year old.”

Misty nods, “He is a good guy. He always helped me with my car when I came over.”

“I mean, how could he be not friendly to you? You were the one to come over to see his weird daughter.”

“You weren’t weird!” Misty protested and turned to look at you. Her ashy blonde curls bounced. “You were so cool! I came over every night!”

You chuckle, and you bump shoulders with Misty. You say to her, “We were weird together. Thank you for being my friend back then.”

“I am still your friend.”

“I know. I want to be close again.” You confess to her as you look into her brown eyes. She is flustered, and you can tell, “You have no idea how much I missed you in New York, Misty. I didn’t have my friend-” You stop yourself from getting emotional. You remember leaving for NYU in 2002 and how you had to leave your home.

“I-I would like that too.”

“You remember when you fed me soup after my neck surgery?”

Misty chuckled, fixing her glasses, “You spit soup on me.” She laughed.

“You made me laugh!” You giggle at her and lean on her shoulder again. Your neck aches slightly from the angle, but it didn’t hurt like when you were younger.

“Alright, Misty Quigley, you have your phone call.” The police officer cut into the conversation and held Natalie by the arm as he walked her back into the cell. Misty left, and You were left with Natalie.

You feel yourself come back to your body when you realize you will be alone with Natalie again, and right now doesn’t seem like a good time to be chatty.

“I don’t try to be a bomb, you know.” Natalie said to you randomly as she leaned against the wall. She is finally talking about what you said in the car.

There is a moment you don’t know what to say. You didn’t even know if this is still real anymore. You simply say, “I know you don’t, Nat.”

“You were right. I shouldn’t have given Misty enough to follow me so you and her didn’t have to be in all this mess.”

You look at her with more softness than you want to. You felt a tenderness to the sound of her voice still. After all this time, Natalie still had her way with words to make you miss who she once was. Primal and passionate, with no fear except death. A free time and a time that seemed to linger in the words you spoke together. The roles you played never left your head, even as you saved yourselves in your own ways, and it still lingered in the way you talk together.

“Uh, I don’t mind.” You joke as you smile at her, trying to make things better. You don’t know why she left you alone that night years ago, and you didn’t even want to know. You want her to be okay. “I would rather be here with you than you be alone.”

Natalie scoffs softly to herself and looks at her shoes, “Don’t say that.”

“Why?”

“You shouldn’t be here. You, out of everyone, don’t need to be here… I'm sorry.”

“All forgiven if you get us out of here.” You say and look over to the cops that work at their desks. You know you should be mad, even vengeful, but you couldn’t bring yourself to feel any of that. “I haven’t lived in a while. I have been a hermit for the last 20 years. This doesn’t hurt me too much.”

“All forgiven?” Natalie raised an eyebrow. She looks at you sharply at your choice of words. It seemed to hit something inside of her that she didn’t want to have poked.

“I-I didn’t mean-”

“We’re not there anymore, (Y/n). You don’t have the power to forgive anything. Or anyone.” Natalie said as she felt the need to remind you of your own part in the past. As someone who was ashamed and scared but always forgave others. You made them feel forgiven for something more significant. But you didn’t have the power. You never did. You can’t forgive the sins you all have done.

It eats you whole.

“You’re right. You’re not forgiven, Natalie.” You chided as if you had no control over your tone and words. It felt exposing to have her see through you and see you still holding onto the comfort in your old power. The power in who you thought you were when you 18, with the powers that you all thought you found in the mountains, that had never truly left you. But you know she hasn't let go of the past too. “I don’t have the power to do so, but you have wronged me like many others. You can’t make my forgiveness anything more than it is, You already did that, and it didn’t take you that far, don’t make me your scapegoat again.”

Natalie scoffed as Misty came back with a smile with the same police officer. “Looks like it’s your lucky day. Someone posted your bail.”

You didn’t even feel real. You weren’t supposed to be here.

‘96

Your feet are numb as you try to run stiffly beside the other seniors to the cabin up the hill. The only sign of human hands that have ever touched these woods for what seemed to be thousands of miles. As you all rush to the wooden door, you start screaming, whining, moaning, crying for anyone there to help.

“HELP! HELLO! WE NEED HELP! ANYONE HOME?!” you yell to the cabin. You and Jackie work on the door. You look behind you and see Lottie looking on with horror at the cabin, scared of it.

You and Jackie overpower the door to open with teamwork, and your weight on it. It opens to old dusty decorations and furniture laid out in the space like it was once a home of some kind as you cautiously entered the home.

“Hello? Is anyone here?” Jackie called out into the home.

“Maybe they just went on a hike?” Mari asked behind you, walking further into the home.

“Yeah, like a decade ago.” Jackie sassed. “It reeks in here.”

Cobwebs and a sour smell you couldn’t place lingered in the home. It smelt like old antiques and some kind of leather. The rotten smell of wood or meat from long ago stained the atmosphere. It was creepy and old, with bones of deer on the mantle placed above the fireplace.

“You two, look in the Pantry for any food. Everyone else, look around for stuff we can use,” Taissa says to the girls in the cabin; Travis walks in from the door. “First aid, Flashlights, tools.”

Jackie walks out with a can of beans in her hand. She starts to open it as she walks into the living room. “What the hell? Jackie, that’s not your personal buffet.”

Jackie stills and gags, dropping the rotten beans onto the floor. They shined with a green hue that made you want to gag yourself. “See, this is why we should’ve stayed in the plane!” She snaps to you.

You look at her wide-eyed and say, “Yeah, well, we didn’t. We all decided to leave. A can of rotten beans is why we should have never found the cabin?”

“This is a fucking nightmare.” Jackie storms out of the house with a stomp with every step. She is not having any of this.

You and Shauna share a look, urging her to go follow Jackie. Somethings never ends, like you two always having to comfort jackie after she freaks out.

From the back of the kitchen, Van calls out to the group with a massive pile of Playboy Magazines before slamming them down onto the dusty kitchen table. Dust flies into the air like smoke from a fire. “Well, hello.” Van comedically calls, “Don’t worry, guys. We might be stuck in the middle of nowhere, but there’s porn.”

You giggle and walk over to the magazines, seeing tits and thin women posing on pages. Not your thing, but seeing boobs and the female form that wasn’t your friends was excellent. “Nice tits.” You say as you scan the pages of the old 1968 issue of Playboy.

“Holy shit,” Mari says as Natalie and Akilah look over Van’s shoulder to view the porn. It was kinda freeing to be so openly entertained by porn with your "normal" friends. The friends don’t feel like their cheeks are burning or that they feel turned on by how some of the girls smile on the paper, but they all seem to like it nonetheless—admiring the beauty of another woman.

Travis looks over, eyeing up what we got, and acts like he is not interested with an unmistakable shine to his eye.

“Hey, this guy kind of looks like you, flex.”

“If only any of you actually looked like her.”

“Well, talking like that is why you are a virgin and will always be a virgin, Travis.” You joke back to him, looking over the pages.

“Do guys, like, actually jerk off to this stuff?”

“Nah, We-we hate that shit. You know, you can’t even tell what her favorite book is.” Travis lies, trying his best to seem like a sensitive and not meatheaded guy, but at the end of the day he is just some guy who looks boobs. Because you know that you will be touching yourself later to those images, and you don’t doubt he will.

You laugh loudly at his words before he can speak more, or the others can either. You slam the magazine down and wipe a tear that formed from his atrocious acting. Van is trying and failing to hold in her laughs, Mari and Akilah giggling. As you leave them alone, you just snicker, “I’m checking out the pantry.”

You chuckle to yourself as you look around the empty cabinet. In the corner, you find a comforting sight. It was a fishing pole, a fisher box, and two rolls of big fishing line. It looked like something you would find in your dad’s garage. Your dad liked to work in there with his truck. He would handle work at his workbench and play old music on the radio. He fished for a living, always smelt of the sea and cigarettes. The image of your dad sitting on the bench smoking a cigarette as he works on something your mom bought from Goodwill, as he just quietly did his task. Sometimes he would feel you staring at him and let you sit on his lap as he worked, holding his tools, and you just loved sitting against his muscular chest as a kid. You and your dad were best friends when you were little, you were his little helper, and you never were more grateful as you found a food source for everyone. Yeah, the rod is a little rusted and old, but you were sure you could find some oil and something to scrub the rust away.

You, alone, keep looking around the near-empty cabinet, and you notice the stairs that go up to a door for an upper floor. You don’t think much before stepping up the steps, the girls talking and walking around in the other room.

You don’t think much before you put your hand on the old handle of the attic door, and you don’t think much as you open it that it’s empty at first glance. You look to the ceiling as you step up the steps, half your body in the level before you look around the ground, and your eyes stop on a shape in the back of the room.

Your heart stops.

The girls voice sounds like echoes down a few feet from you.

The sweat on your brow dries to a cold sweat.

Your eyes widen as a gasp holds in your throat, your mouth open as a scream is stuck inside you, a hand covering your mouth.

A man's mummified body sits in an old rocking chair with a hunting rifle in his hands. His head was opened from the back, and it was clear as day what his fate was. The man had shot himself in the mouth, and he was never found until you opened that door. The smell of leather and decay was strong in this room.

It was the fate you felt in your bones that was now yours.

“(Y/n)-” Van says behind you, and you quickly shut the door with a bang, and you turn to look at her. Her lighthearted face drops as she looks at your face. She cringes at the loud sounds of the bang. “(Y/n), What’s wrong?”

“Um, I need to call a meeting.” You rush as you leave the cabinet and grab Van’s firm bicep. She was flexing her arm as she quickly followed you, and you quieted and seemed unable to speak.

“Guys!” Van called for the others as she followed you. You look at the others with a pale face. You felt scared. But you couldn’t let go of the only shelter in the woods. Everyone, worriedly, circles you.

You couldn’t do this anymore.

This is so fucked up.

Fat tears fill your eyes as you look at each of the seniors, croaking, “There is a dead body in the attic… He killed himself decades ago-”

“What the fuck!” Natalie whispers to herself, completely freaked out.

Jackie says with eyes like saucers, “Are you fucking serious, (Y/n)?!”

A chorus of shock and disgust, and you let your tears fall, but you pull yourself together very quickly. “Okay. Okay.” You start as you wipe a tear with your palm. “The cabin is in fucking great condition for being left alone for so long. It needs little fixes. We need this cabin to survive before the rescue comes and gets us.”

“No, (Y/n), I say no. We’re going back to the plane.”

You feel your patience run thin as you tell your childhood friend, “Jackie, we have no other choice. This is the first shelter we have found here, and you are telling me we shouldn’t sleep somewhere warm and dry at night?”

“No, We shouldn’t sleep in a house with a fucking dead body!”

“I agree! This place has such a bad feeling.” Lottie says.

“No, we need to stay here. This is a fucking home. We need this.” Taissa fought back.

“Okay, Let’s vote. All in favor of staying at the cabin.” You say and raise your hand. You, Travis, Taissa, Van, Laura Lee, and Natalie. The ones against were Jackie, Shauna, Lottie, Mari, and Akilah.

Majority rule.

“We need to do this the right way. We need to bury him.” Laura Lee says to the group. She nods to the cabin and says, “There is a shovel in there.”

“Can you and Van start digging… I don’t one the others to see this. Anyone go tell the others to come if you want, and you can leave to get everything and the stuff at the lake if you don’t want to see this.” You ramble. You knew what you had to do for the group. This is your only chance of survival, and your dad’s voice echoes in your mind.

A dull feeling comes over your neck. It felt like a hand comforting a pain underneath.

“I need help moving the body. It's ancient…”

“I’ll come,” Taissa says, putting a hand on your shoulder for comfort. You only then realize you are staring a thousand miles away and look at her face.

“Me too.” Shauna jumped in, she comes closer to you and holds your hand.

“Shauna-”

“I’m not letting (Y/n) do it alone, Jackie.” Shauna pleads to Jackie as she comes over to you too. Her warm brown eyes hit your face, and her arm wraps around your waist in a hug.

Jackie, Mari, Lottie, and Travis leave to get the others and everything left behind on the shore of the lake. You soberly enter the house and quickly walk up the stairs to the attic. You confront the sour smell of mummification as you stop at the door to the second level. Taissa and Shauna were behind you, not wanting to do the dirty work that was about to happen.

You take a deep breath as your father's voice comes to your mind.

“You’re not a little girl. You can’t cry anymore.”

Don’t cry.

You take another deep breath and ball up your fists. You rush over behind the chair of the corpse.

You push the chair, scraping on the floor, eerily groans in the home. You hold your breath, keeping out the dirty air, as you push it toward the stairs.

Shauna and Taissa gasped like you did when you first seen him as you pushed the chair to the door. Their hands are over their mouths, and they watch in horror as you move infront of the body.

You try to keep your eyes off the body, but you can’t help but glance up at his face.

Empty eye sockets look back into yours. They were burning an unsaid truth of the two of you.

This was your fate if you were never found.

You grab under the arms of the body, and you lift the body with surprising ease. The leathery and weathered skin of the body rubbed against the soft skin of your hand. You felt the epidermis of the skin slide unnaturally from the muscle of the body, it slip with the pressure of your hold. It shook you to your core. You quickly pull the body down as you move down the latter steps. You don’t say a word before Shauna and Taissa grab a limp of the leathery body to help you carry it down. All of you run outside with the very light body.

The skin was flaking off with every step you took.

As you walk outside, Van is working double time, throwing the dirt behind her to make a 4 foot grave. Laura Lee took Van to move as they both, with horror, looked at the three of you carrying the body and laying it gently down into the grave.

As you crouch with the other two, you can’t help but have a sob come out of you as you let go of the body. This was someone. This was a man, a son, maybe a brother, father, or husband. And he is a fucking mummy in the Canadian forest out in the middle of nowhere.

You slump down from your exhausted legs, laying beside the hole in the ground, and cry infront of the other girls. This was all too much. You just wanted to get away from all of this. You get up and try not to touch your face before you can at least put on some hand sanitizer.

You stand still as you try to swallow the tears. You look up into the sky, hoping that all these feelings can get you out of it. The blue sky seemed to urge you to pray to something for help. It worsens as you look up because the fat tears fall down your cheeks.

You look at the other girls as you try to stop your sobs and walk away. You walk behind the cabin and cry into the air as quietly as you can. You never wanted to know how a mummy felt. You wished he never was in there. You wish you were never in these woods. You wish you were home cuddling with your mom in her bed in the living room. You weren’t supposed to be here.

You see Van and Shauna come from the side of the house and turn to see you, both deeply worried and with tears in their eyes.

You welcome Van and Shauna into your arms as they do you. You don’t stop the tears as you cry into Shauna’s shoulder like a little girl again. Vanessa kisses your forehead and says into your ear, “It’s all okay now. He is buried and gone. It’s all okay.”

As the night settled, the tingling inch on your skin didn’t. The girls around you slept, Shauna beside you and Jackie beside her. You slept in the dark corner of the living room of the cabin. It was a very emotionally high day for everyone. From the hike, and happiness of finding the cabin, to the horror of seeing the mummy. You didn't feel like you were really processing anything really afterwards, because you didn't even react when Coach Ben had a freak out and punched Misty in the nose.

Your hands twist the semi-rusted fishing pole together. It was still in great shape but needed some TLC. You lined the wheel, put on a bait without the hook, and had the white berries from the morning. You felt hope come over you slightly as it looked familiar and good. You weren’t the best at fishing, but you knew how to do it. “I can do this. We got food and water.” You thought and sighed.

You place the rod against the wall as quietly as possible, not to disturb the others' sleeping. You needed a moment. The air was too thick in there. So stuffy.

You slip out of the room without a creek and feel the cool spring breeze hit your face. But as you walk around the porch on the other side of the house, you confront the back of Lottie.

“Hey, what are you doing out here. Having a hard time sleeping?” You ask Lottie as you come up behind her. You stand beside her as she crosses her arms and looking into the wilderness.

Lottie looks at you with manic eyes and says, “I just have a bad feeling about this place.” She whispers to you emotionally. Like she was scared to say anymore.

“Yeah, it is pretty stinky.” You joke and sigh as you lean against a pillar. “And there are spiders that could eat your face… But it’s our only choice to sleep somewhere warm.”

Lottie isn’t convinced, and you feel slightly annoyed as you sigh, “Lottie, I am not letting you sleep out here for bad vibes. I am sure we can find some stuff in the woods tomorrow to help clean the place of all the bad vibes”

Lottie looks over to you with her eyes looking unmoved. She doesn’t want to move.

You approach her and grab her shoulders to look at you, “Lottie, close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Just close your eyes. And take a deep breath of air.” You say, eyes closed, and take a deep breath of air. “Let’s both just ground ourselves for a moment.”

You hear Lottie take a deep breath with you. And you two do this back and further a few times.

"Just feel the wilderness with you. It breathes you in as you breath it in." You say and take the finally big breath with her.

Before you can open your eyes, you feel lips against your own. You open your eyes to see Lottie kiss you with a hand coming up to cup your face. She sucks onto your lip sweetly and leans into your body against the pillar. She quickly pulls back and says, "Sorry-I’m sorry I was so wrong for that-”

“No!” You squeaked, your body feeling hot as she kissed you. You look at her guilty face and think it was a straight girl wanting comfort. You get it. The kiss was nice. “It’s okay. Let’s just act like it never happened, okay? No weird feelings.”

“No weird feelings,” Lottie says back to you with a smile. The both of you walk back into the new nest the Yellowjackets have claimed as their own.

‘21

After getting let out of jail, you were silent. You didn’t want be here anymore and just being near Natalie made your blood boil. You don’t really respond to Misty pretending to be Natalie to get Kevin, the one who posted your bail, and you just shrug when Natalie looked to you for support when she got upset. You sit in the back seat again as the two women figure out where Travis worked, you shook your head because you had a bad feelings about all of this.

And you were right. When you three got to the construction site, you found Travis hanging from a CAT crane with thick metal chains as his rope.

You never liked Travis as a person, you sympathize and understood but never liked him. You felt yourself completely freeze that the sight of the man. You immediately started to sob without being able to stop yourself. Misty stood still for a moment when she seen him but she quickly tried to stop Natalie from seeing him, “Nat.” She says as she grabs Natalie’s arm, failing from stopping Natalie from seeing the lifeless corpse of her former lover.

You know Travis. You knew him better than most, but not as much as Natalie. Natalie crashed to the ground with her hands covering her eyes, she violently sobs into her hands. Misty grabbing her shoulders, and you stand a foot away with your hand over your mouth.

Fat tears fall from your eyes as she quickly try to knell down to Natalie, “Natalie, don’t look, we need to go.” You say as you rub her back. Forgetting all the hostility and resentment you held for her in the moment, just comforting your friend.

Natalie cried harder for a moment, your words reminding her this is real, and the sound of sirens ring out from far away on the road. The police were coming and they were going to see women they arrested earlier at a crime scene, so Misty then said panicked, “Natalie we need to go!”

Misty puts her hands on Natalie’s shoulder again but this time Natalie pushed her off in a huff, her face red and wet. Natalie stood up with a sob as she walks back to the car, Misty tries to come to her again but Natalie pushes her harder away. You follow behind them closely and sit in the back silently as you cry.

The ride back home was long and quiet. Not even Misty tried to break the slience until we were an hour away from home.

Misty was very tired and wanted to go home before she wouldn’t have any sleep for work the next day. You sweetly told her you understood, and Natalie dropped her off at her cute little house. Misty opens your door with a smile, and she hugs you before you can get your keys out; you close your eyes and hug her back.

“You are leaving me with Natalie.” You whisper into her ear, groaning that you have to spend more time with Natalie when you want to be far away from her.

Misty chuckled and rubbed you back up and down with her tiny hand, a mocking pout as she said, “You’ll be okay for another twenty minutes, honey. You got this.”

You smile, pull back, and say to her as she enters her house. “I got this.”

And as you thought, you didn't have this. The drive with Natalie is at tense as you thought it was as you drove down the drive to Natalie’s hotel. You felt dirty for how you spoke to her. It was so wrong what you said, and you said it because you believed it. Every word you said had venom.

And the worst part is that Natalie isn’t even mad. She is a fuck up. She fucked so many things up, and just because you owe her your life, it didn’t mean how she acted was right. How she acted to you since she knew you have never been fair, and she knew that. She couldn’t help it. She never wanted to see you leave her, so she left you first, and Natalie needed you to stay away from her heart which always seemed to bleed when she saw your beautiful face. You never did make her feel judged. You made Natalie feel checked. And she didn’t want to feel that all the time, but she also knew she needed that now more than ever. She is lost. Travis is gone.

You feel the urge to speak and be honest. For a moment, you see blonde hair in the corner of your eyes and the awkward teenage nervousness with the coolest girl in school. But you knew her. This is your Natalie. You must explain yourself before not seeing her again; You know what is on her mind now that Travis has killed himself.

“I don't think that I have ever really gotten you, Natalie…” You confessed with a prolonged breath. You felt a weight come off you when you just said it plainly to her, and a sadness tugged on your twitching eye. Knuckles white, holding the wheel as you continue in a calmer breath, “You change all the time and I can never get a clear look at who you are. Like if I thought you were a solid, you are actually a gas, but before I can accept that, you become a solid again. I may not be the most accepting, but I have always tried for you. Because the one thing I know about you that never changes is that I love you, and you love me in your own way.” You almost whisper at the end; your eyes peek over to see her staring straight into your face.

Natalie was silent as she watched you, she knew she was that way, especially towards you—her doe. “I’m sorry, (y/n). I never meant to hurt you.”

“I know. I know, Nat. That is why I never closed the door to you.” You say as you pull into the hotel. You wanted to say more and let the years of frustrating confusion and love just come out. But you know better. You know Natalie, and you know yourself. This is as far as it will go. “I told you back then, and I will tell you now, I will always love you."

You look over when you parked and finish what you said, and her face looks like something came over her. Natalie usually was guarded and cagey when she was emotional. But, in this moment of honesty with you, it felt good even though it was not all good.

You and Natalie were the only reason that the yellowjackets' survived. The pride of it sank from the weight of the price that it was to survive out in those cold woods. The decisions, the projects, and the goals twisted and darkened with the reality that once was. Natalie was your rock as you were hers, but you were more of an island that housed the girls lost at sea with a lighthouse welcoming them with a smile. Natalie always envied that about you, never to admit it, but to be able to comfort the way you do.

The nights Natalie cuddled into your stomach for warmth, how her lips kissed your skin gently with reverence of the world, and how she held your face to have you fed.

You know her best and worst, just as Natalie knew yours.

“I’m sorry,” Natalie whispered, trying her hardest not to let the tears fall.

You felt your nose tingle and your chin quiver as you look over at her, water lining your eyes. You were slightly overwhelmed with emotion, longing for a different ending to your story and mourning the girls that once were you two.

You whisper to her, “I love you… I want you to love yourself to be better. Not just the rehabs and the AAs, but, like, better, Natalie. I had to do that. I was locked in my house for years before I thought about being “normal” again.”

“I have never been normal.” Natalie jabbed as she took off her seatbelt. But she didn’t move from her seat because even she knew this needed to be said.

“No, you are cool. That was better.” You chuckle lightheartedly, trying to ease the weight you feel for her. The regret never fail to get you emotional. Natalie chuckles, and then she starts to cry quietly. “You know I am always there even if we are miles away, okay? I am still the same (Y/n).”

You put your hand to rub her back, and she lets you. She cries in her hands for a few seconds and doesn’t push you away.

“I don’t know what you think of me, and I don’t really care. I need you to know that for me knowing you has been so important to me. Thank you for being exactly who you were and are, Natalie Scatorccio."

Suddenly, like she remembered why she was there, she opened the door and left the car coldly, without a word.

You take a deep breath, close your eyes, and nod at the behavior. You love her but can’t help; she wouldn’t let you. It’s a lost love for a good reason. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking break your heart. You take another breath and tell her, even though she can’t hear you, “It’s okay. I get it, Natalie.”

You pull out of the parking lot and don’t want to be on the road anymore. And you drive to the closest place you know and park in front of their house like you usually do.

You knock on the door politely and feel yourself mask the sadness until you can talk about it better. You look at your old watch, the handy-down watch your dad gave you on your 30th birthday; seeing it was 10:30 pm, you sigh when you hear the footsteps at the door.

Warm brown eyes look into yours, and your lower lip quivers slightly.

“Hey, Stinky.”

“Hey, Smelly.” You smile and lead forward to Shauna, Hugging her deeply.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were coming tomorrow? Callie is at Ashley’s, and Jeff is “at work” and-”

“I just wanted to see you.” You sniffled and pulled back, giving her a tight-lipped smile, “Coffee?”

“Fuck yeah, let's have some coffee.” Shauna smiled, pulling you into having your weekly gossip and venting session with her best friend early.

As your body walks into Shauna’s home, someone watches the back of your head as you enter the house. Their eyes looked onto the back of your body. She remembers you, thinks about you often, on that day at the lake, and how you swam beside them and laughed. You tried your most challenging at that time, and she remembered how beautiful you were when you became someone who saved everyone. You were a crucial part of her survival, the whole pack's survival. She leaned against the white leather seats of the van, and she lit a cigarette as she watched you do your weekly routine with Shauna. Her fingers rub the leather wheel of the car, and her knuckles are white as she holds in something darker that has plagued the last 25 years. She was fucked up, and she knew it. She wanted to own you. She would be lost without you to ground her, to reassure her of reality and what it meant to be free now. The urge to go out of the car and try to get you back, pull into the car to keep you once again. She says softly, with her eyes blinking uncontrollably, “Goodnight, (y/n), Goodnight.” they then start the black van and drives out of the suburb.

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officiallyossy-haywooddent · 5 months ago

Text

August 29th.

This is a fanfic / open rp starter so it’s kinda long. The writing might not be great, sorry.

TW for child death, loss of a sibling, minor mentions of bad parenting, minor drug use, minor toxic relationship

Every year without fail the week of August 25 was maybe the worst week of Ossy’s life. Every year they’d go through the same calls, same arrangements, same people. It never changed, even if their life circumstances did. Every year they would end up with a crown of flowers and a box of Halloween candy, completely and utterly alone.

It had been the same when they were eight and had been flown home from camp to give their testimony to the police. It had been the same when they were twelve, reeling from the loss of their brother and best friend and so, so many others; lost and alone in the middle of New York.

It had gotten worse when Ossy was thirteen, their palm sliced open over a marble altar, clasped in the hand of their best friend somewhere in the wilderness of the Yukon. Being fifteen in Gotham would be no different.

—

August 25.

It began, the preparations; the prayers. They called Frank first. Ossy hadn’t talked to him in years when it had first happened, he’d left the island with his mother to live with his grandmother in Vancouver, and they’d drifted apart.

A three hours on the ferry was a long time to travel to see someone, it wasn’t like they’d been good friends. They’d been five and eight, quietly talking in the forest behind their school every couple of days. That was all, Ossy didn’t think they’d ever speak to him again.

Then came the second war. He was there; they weren’t. He stopped by the med bay, asked where they’d been. They answered. He’d talked with them for hours, but he would always have to leave.

Nevertheless Ossy picked up their phone, dialled his number. They let it ring, once, twice. They hung up. It wasn’t right to bother Frank nowadays, and he hadn’t really known her anyway. Most people hadn’t.

They ordered a bulk box of Halloween candy. It would arrive in two days. They wished it would never come.

—

August 26.

Ossy’d found a place that did rush flower arrangements. They ordered three flower crowns, one for them, two for her. The place they’d gotten it, Belle Flore, was this tiny shop in North Gotham that imported seeds from everywhere in the world and grew all the flowers in a grow room above the store. The clerk, a red-headed guy probably less than a year older than them named Rhys, had been nice about the whole thing, suggesting an arrangement of Pheasants Eye, Prince’s Feather, Baby’s Breath, and Buttercup.

The combination was odd but sweet, symbolic. Buttercup had been her favourite after all. The crowns would be done in three days, the 29th.

Ossy would pick it up in the morning, flowers were always better fresh.

They spend the rest of the day asleep. The tranqs they’d gotten from Peter were nice, though they’d had to ration them out. They’d told him 2 wasn’t gonna be enough.

August 27.

Ossy sleeps through the day. They don’t move, but it’s fine. They don’t need to. Sleep is quiet, calming. Hypnos must have taken pity of them, each dream is an altered memory of their life before everything, a kinder one.

August 28.

The phone rings five times before going to voicemail, their mums soft voice letting them know to leave a message and that she’d get to it in the morning. She wouldn’t, not when she saw the caller ID.

“Hey, mum. It’s me. I just wanted to say I’m sorry, and I’m..I’m doing something for the 29th. You can always join me, I’ll pay for your flight and everything.”

Ossy pauses, taking a shuddering breath. It’s been a while since they’ve cried properly.

“…I miss you. And Grandpa. I’m sorry..about everything.”

They hang up quickly, regretting every second of it. She’d just delete it when she saw it, she always did. They leave the message anyway.

The package with the candy arrives at the manor, nobody asks what’s in it. Ossy doesn’t know if anyone even noticed it arrive. They request the day off tomorrow from the Deli, Mr. Maroni approves it. He’s been nice since he found out about the mugging, probably thinks they’re still scared of doing the night shift. They are, but they wouldn’t tell him that.

The night roles around and they pop the second half of a tranq. They don’t know if they want to wake up in the morning, sleeping away the 29th doesn’t sound half bad. It would be mean though, she would never have done it. She didn’t sleep, it was genetic. The gene had skipped Ossy.

August 29.

At 5:30 AM they show up at Belle Flores, it’s the same clerk, Rhys. He quietly hands over a pastel blue box with a subdued smile. He knows what the crowns are for, they’d told him. It’s easier to talk to strangers about these things.

Ossy stops back at the manor, grabbing the cats before hopping on one of the busses. They need to get out of the city again. Sometimes Gotham, with its constant noise and soaring buildings, felt like a maze. This then made them the rat, trying to find its way out before getting zapped.

The concrete held an energy they could never quite get used too. Ossy missed the blue pine of the salmon and rain forests; trees so large and thick they muffled everything within their shade, where oceans crashed against the conifered cliffs of their piece of home. They’d stolen that line from John Vailant.

The bus pulled to a stop outside a rocky beach. The cats had been quiet for the ride, good travellers. Ossy realized she’d never gotten to meet them.

They set up camp on a fallen log near the tree line, setting up a fence so the cats could be let loose to roam. Two of the flower crowns were laid side by side, the third resting on their head. It was good work, better than either of them had ever been capable of.

Ossy sat there for a while, listening to old songs they had long forgotten the words to, taking two bowls and pouring them full of the candy. It was stale, but that didn’t really matter. Stel had always saved her Halloween candy until Easter. They ate quietly, watching the cats play fight.

Ossy wasn’t sure how long it took for them to break down but they’d like to think it was close to an hour, a respectable amount of time to hold vigil before they imploded.

It was stupid for them to think they’d escaped it, moved past it. Not her death, no, they could never get over that, but being alone each year.

Not even having a picture of the family together. It was starting to get to them. Ossy would never admit it but they were starting to forget her face. People had always said they’d looked similar. They could never believe it. Stel had been good, so much better than any of the rest of them. Ossy would never be sure how she came from a family like theirs. Truth be told, they weren’t even sure what they looked like anymore, but that had little to do with the comparisons.

Ossy pulled out their phone, dialling half the numbers in their phone before deleting each one. They didn’t want to feel the need to explain it all to anyone. Deanna had told them to stop over analyzing their emotions, it wasn’t actually a form of processing apparently.

Finally, they landed on someone they wouldn’t mind calling. The gnawing sensation in their gut growing ever stronger as the phone rang, the soft click of the receiver letting them know there wasn’t really a way back.

“Hey.”

#angst #open rp starter #open dc rp #open pjo rp #oc fanfiction #oc angst #mun is tired and can’t decide if they like this or hate this #but go apeshit if ya’ll want #dc rp blog #dc rp #gotham city #pjo rp blog #crime alley #gotham reports #maroni’s deli #bruce wayne #park row #red hood

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lovelyladyabsinthewrites · 20 days ago

Text

From the Ashes Part.48

Pairing(s): Pairing(s): Rhaegar Targaryen x Lannister!Reader, one-sided!Jaime Lannister x Lannister!Reader, Jaime Lannister x Cersei Lannister

Warnings: slow burn fic, changing povs, MC'S POV

Words: 5341

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16 Part 17 Part 18 Part 19 Part 20 Part 21

Part 22 Part 23 Part 24 Part 25 Part 26 Part 27 Part 28 Part 29 Part 30 Part 31 Part 32 Part 33 Part 34 Part 35 Part 36 Part 37 Part 38 Part 39 Part 40 Part 41 Part 42 Part 43 Part 44

Part 45 Part 46 Part 47

While you waited for Lady Nazneen to be brought forward to you, timidly, you attempted to recline your back against a finely pillowed couch that took residence in Master Batur’s personal lounge room. A crackling hearth reached spindly fingers out to you in a feeble attempt to warm you. Would the dropping temperatures of Asshai be capable of rivaling those of the North? You had never personally been there, but Jaime and Rhaegar had told you stories of the perpetually cold land. The Wall, where many criminals resided, bordered the wilderness that lay beyond and was encrusted with thousands of years' worth of ice.

You wanted to crawl against Latilth and siphon off her immense warmth. She had kept you warm all through the night. How Inniros had slept through the night without snuggling with the dragon, you didn’t know. Perhaps he was used to it from his childhood living in the mountains.

He sat in the room with you along with Loviisa, the silent Ulian and Rhiannon whom Master Batur deemed less of a threat opposed to her other temple companions. While Rhiannon was tempted to bite back at that slightly deprecating comment, she didn’t want to risk it if she was being allowed to go with you.

“Any advice on Lady Nazneen before I meet her?”

Loviisa lowly chuckles. “From what we saw, you have nothing to worry about when Lady Nazneen is concerned. Her acolyte Syzhal though, well, she’s a bit-“

“Tightly wound?” Inniros takes the words right out of her mouth making the blue haired darkin form a smile as her response. “She’s always acted so superior because she’s the first student ever to train under Lady Nazneen.”

“Even worse is that her powers are actually awe inspiring.” Groans Loviisa.

“I’m guessing no one has really changed since you were last here?” Rhiannon, watching their playful banter and the returned smile from Ulian, put her at eases. Not all darkin were as unsettling as that Qheen or Master Batur. Even after acknowledging that you were the reincarnation of Azor Ahai didn’t make him warm up to you exactly. His responses were snipped and curt in his usual manner. The one thing that has transformed was the mild respectful tone that lay underneath his outward bitterness.

He and Loviisa confess that it was comforting in some odd way to come back after so long. At least the Manor of Shades hadn’t succumbed to the passage of time. Ulian though was one reminder that time did hold sway in the Shadowlands. Apparently he had been a young boy when Inniros had left and only slightly older when Loviisa had departed. Now he was a proper young man. Ulian had blushed and made more hand gestures that only the other darkin understood. Loviisa who sat next to him gently elbows him in the side. The three darkin there appeared warm with one another. Growing up in the Manor of Shades may not have been the easiest childhood, but they had survived it together.

“Jalsolin is pleasant at least.” Loviisa hums. “Bright like fire.”

“I knew you liked me all long, Lovii.” You and Rhiannon turn around to find someone leaning against the back wall. Neither of the darkin there seemed too surprised, having already sensed his presence. His hair was like fire. Not a dark red like Inniros’, but it held hues of orange and yellow; only contained by a simple hair tie. His face and arms were splattered with freckles and scars that raced against his skin. One especially large one sliced across the bridge of his nose and across his cheek barely stopping at his ear.

His disfigurement did little to dim how dashing his smile was. While he wasn’t as handsome as your Rhaegar or even like Jaime, Jalsolin had a charm that was entirely his own. He even somehow managed to warm up the desolate room with his personality as he made his way around the couch to finally drop to one knee in front of you. “I’ve been waiting to meet you since I felt you and your group enter the Shadowlands. Azor Ahai Reborn, the greatest honor to finally meet you.”

Definitely all charm, when he registered Rhiannon’s presence you noticed his facial expression freeze for a split second. His rich brown eyes widen and even if Rhiannon wasn’t aware in that moment, you knew what his expression meant. You must have had the same expression on your face when you first met Rhaegar. Love at first sight. Jalsolin had immediately been smitten by the red priestess who sat next to you.

Rhiannon on the other hand observed him with amusement. No other darkin she had met had been quite this friendly. They had all been reserved during the first introductions. Her own honey hued pools take him in for his unique features yet didn’t notice the warmth that sprung on his freckled cheeks.

Jalsolin quickly schooled his features, his lazy smile returning as he kissed your hand. “And who is your red companion?”

A smile curls at the corners of your lips. “This is the red priestess Rhiannon. Not just that, but she is my greatest friend. I consider her my sister.”

She looks at you warmly, touched that you would admit it to everyone in the room of your special bond with her.

“Rhiannon.” He sighs at the way her name rolled off his tongue.

You wanted to giggle at how obvious the attraction he had for your friend and how oblivious she was. Even Loviisa held a hand in front of her smirking lips. Inniros and Ulian merely roll their eyes, perhaps used to Jalsolin’s tendencies.

The heavy oak door groans as someone from the other side opens it. A tall, statuesque woman is ushered in. Her long dress trails behind her, Master Batur easily sidesteps around it so he doesn’t tread upon her fine fabric. She towered over everyone there yet her grace was still retained as she swoops into a curtsy.

“I am the Lady Nazneen.” Waves of her mauve hair trail over her shoulders and curtain her features as much as her half veil did that obscured the lower half of her face. “Our kind have been awaiting your arrival for centuries.”

Her eyes were a brilliant green, more rich and mossy than your own. Even Cersei’s wouldn’t be able to compare to such precious gems that took home in Nazneen’s sockets.

“The wonders you have already brought to the manor are even more than we could imagine. I have not seen a dragon up close in years and your’s is by far the most beautiful. You even managed to put Batur in his place.”

The master grumbles at that. “Watch it, Nazneen.”

Lowly chuckling, she rises to her full height. You had never seen a woman quite her height. Hells, even Yophiel couldn’t compete with her.

You stand from the cushions and return the courtesy of a bow. “A great honor for me to meet another master darkin. I’m excited about meeting more shadow dancers. I was told you have another pupil.”

Something like a disgruntled scoff makes her face tense. “Syzhal was supposed to be here already. That girl does like to test me.”

“Most of the darklings do.” Batur shot a look at Inniros who impassively stares back at him with that single blue eye of his that eerily held the same shade as Batur’s. The tension didn’t last long; skilled in diffusing the situation, Nazneen sweeps along the room over to Inniros.

“My, what happened to your hair? Last time I saw you, you had such lovely red locks.” Nazneen clicks her tongue against her teeth as her long fingers brush against Inniros’ short, red tufts. It had grown quite a bit during your sea voyage, but it was nowhere as long as it had been before.

He still hadn’t told you who exactly had forcefully sheared his head, but you had a feeling that members of the Fiery Hand had a great deal to do with it.

“Consider it an induction into the Red Temple.” Is all he mutters.

Prickling at the mention of the temple, her eyes were drawn to the red priestess sitting next to you. Rhiannon straightened up, putting on an expression of radiating dignity and strength. She would not quaver in front of such a domineering woman. She hadn’t in front of the other darkin and refused to now. You envied and admired her self-confidence.

“Yes. . . I had heard you brought members of the temple with you. The others-“

“Are in the tower.” Inniros says. “Qheen has his shadows monitoring them. As you probably are doing right now.”

An arched, finely sculpted eyebrow lifts at someone younger than her interrupting her. Yet his words settle her down. Nazneen rolls her shoulders and turns her face back to you.

You felt an urge to defend them. The Red Temple had, after all, housed and fed you, taught you how to finesse your skill with a blade so that you could thoroughly protect yourself in any given situation. It had been your lone bastion in the world. The only other place that had treated you with such kindness was Dragonstone. Back in the days when you had Thalina and Rhaegar and even his mother Rhaella. “I assure you, this visit is one of only friendship. I know the history of the darkin with the church. Like I told Master Batur, what they did was a horrible act against you.”

Her eyes revealed the sad, hidden smile that was cloaked by her veil. “Yes it was. But it wasn’t Azor Ahai’s fault and it isn’t your’s. We anticipate joining you once more on the battlefield. When the time comes.”

Heart swelling with joy, your smile is full blown. You had succeeeded. Much sooner than you had anticipated too. You could go back to Volantis and see your brothers. And. . .

And you were that much closer to returning to Westeros. Returning to Rhaegar. You had told Jaime that that would always be your goal. And now since the word had spread of you and Latilth, the news must have reached Westeros. That is if the civil war didn’t interfere. No more news had come, not since Ser Barristan Selmy.

Instantly your hand went to grasp Rhiannon’s awaiting one. She gave it a tight squeeze to signal her own happiness of returning sooner than scheduled.

“Now, may I meet the hatchling?” Nazneen says, excitement in her voice betraying her.

“Really? You don’t think Aegon was the greatest Targaryen king?” Rhaegar appeared surprised that you did not share the common opinion of Aegon the Conqueror being the greatest in his family lineage. You instead had picked Jaehaerys. That was who you wanted to name your son after. The child in your womb was beginning to make your abdomen swell along with the attention Rhaegar had been giving you.

Lyanna was an unspoken phantom that still lurked in the corner of your mind. So many times he had apologized for hurting you. You knew it was never his intention and he had proven how true his apology was time and time again.

Your wounded heart was still healing but the baby you wer anticipating made everything prior feel so inconsequential. Nothing else mattered anymore now that you were going to give Rhaegar an heir so soon into your marriage. This baby would literally be your pride and joy.

You admire the sight of your beautiful husband as he’s leaning against the trunk of a tree in the main courtyard of the Red Keep. Thalina was off in the distance; needlework for the baby kept her busy. Tyrion sat at her feet, reading a book. All seemed perfect. You wanted this to last forever. “Well, Aegon may have united the Seven Kingdoms, but Jaehaerys established and kept the peace. Never again has there been a reign like his. I mean. . . I’m sure you’ll be just as kind and just when you become king.”

He sets aside his harp and places the palm of his hand against your belly. So warm his hands were that it even reached the baby for you felt a tickling in your tummy. The grand maester had said that it was a sign that the baby was kicking.

Rhaegar felt it too for his eyes grew and shined. “I think he agrees with you on the name. Very well, Jaehaerys it will be.” He grins and pulls your face towards his for a kiss. You cherish the kisses he gifted you.

You didn’t know what they meant exactly, but you would accept them selfishly. He was acting like the husband you wanted. To you, you didn’t feel like it was faked. There was a part of him that truly loved you. But it didn’t escape you that the fact of the matter was that he possibly still viewed you as the little girl he met in Lannisport. Maybe even like a little sister. That didn’t quite make sense either since he still had sex with you almost every other day. Unless those were out of duty and pity. You weren’t an expert on the mind of a man. Asking Jaime about it was out of the question. He still hated Rhaegar for what he had done and you were not yet ready to face him about Cersei.

Rhaegar pulled away from you and smiled down at his hand on your stomach. “Prince Jaehaerys. Third of his name. There are too many Targaryens named Aegon anyway. Who needs another Aegon when we can have another Jaehaerys.”

Your eyes snap open to the darkness that was wrapped around you. Tucked securely under Latilth’s wing, Rhaegar’s words ring in your ears.

Fear gripped you. What if the two of you were both changed too much that whatever love he once held for you was gone? That would break your heart all over again. War changed people, that much you knew. And you were no longer that sweet little mouse he saved from a den of lions. You were much more than that now although you would never forget those painful years spent alone in Casterly Rock.

You turn against your makeshift sleeping bag, lifting Latilth’s wing with your back as you squirm out. While she kept you warm you needed fresh, cold air to cool down your burning face. A few moments after, you hear Inniros move out from under Latilth’s other wing where he too had been sleeping.

“Are you okay?” Both of you had willingly chose to sleep outside again to keep Latilth company. You couldn’t sleep in the room Batur had provided you with good conscious. It was too quiet and too lonely in there. You had grown accustomed to sleeping in a jam packed room with Inniros, Rhiannon, Melisandre, Weles and Ray along with your fast growing dragon that had still been small enough to sleep under your cot.

”Yeah. Sorry, did I wake you?”

“A little but that’s okay. I’m naturally a light sleeper.” Inniros stood next to you and looked up at the star filled sky. So many that they reminded you of the beads in the wedding gown you had worn. Everything else in Asshai was scary except for the night sky. By day it appeared sullen and overcast, but at night the clouds parted to reveal its wealth in stars.

Much like Inniros. This man who had been hired by your sister to kill you was now one of your most trusted allies. “Guess its an occupational hazard, huh?”

Lowly chuckling, Inniros nods. “Yes. And from living under Batur’s roof.”

“Do you regret the childhood you had?”

“Absolutely not.” It came out of his mouth before you could even finish your question. “While I would have very much liked my mother to be alive, it’s because of my childhood that I’ve honed my darkin powers. All that hardship and pain gave me the tools I needed to claim my freedom.”

You couldn’t agree though. Your life, while you were still terrorized by Cersei, had been astronomically better when your lady mother was still alive. Nothing was the same and each day you longed for her guidance and gentle hand. Especially when matters concerning the heart arose. She had always given such great advice. You felt lost when she died.

Behind you, Latilth stirs letting out a low cooing noise. Her head lifts up like she’s beckoning both you and Inniros to go back to sleep. You laugh in unison and appease her. Your hand runs over the smooth scales on her nose as Inniros affectionately pat her on the neck. She settles back down and opens up her wings for the both of you to return.

You pause for a moment and look over at Inniros who is crawling back to where he had been sleeping.

“I’m scared about seeing my husband again.”

That made him halt and backtrack. Even Latilth looked at you and lowered her wings.

“Before everything happened, I thought that maybe he was beginning to love me back. But too much has happened between then and now. I’m worried that he won’t love me anymore.”

“If he doesn’t then he’s a fool. Love is not something that disappears with death. Now that he knows you’re alive, it should be reinforced.” Inniros pauses with his hand on one of Latitlh’s spikes that lined her jaw. “Relationships in general aren’t my area of expertise. But that much I know is true. Even after my mother died, I never forgot the love i had for her and the love she bore me.”

Yes, Joanna had been very much the same. “You had a good mother, Inniros.”

His gentle smile took you by surprise. “I know.”

Looking back at the mountain range that hid the castle, you close your eyes. “Ray and Rhiannon will be leaving tomorrow morning to give the captain of our ship a heads up of our return. Any idea of how long their preparations might take?”

Inniros sighs just thinking about it. “The crew is afraid to even set foot in Asshai. To replenish supplies we’ll probably have to stop somewhere else for a few days. Maybe in Leng or Yi Ti. We definitely can’t go far. It will take probably another four days to reach one of them.”

There was still a long way to go before you saw Rhaegar again. You decided it was for the best. It would give you more time to figure out what you would say to him and a list of scenarios that could play out.

“If your husband is smart, then he will be waiting for you with open arms.” Inniros hesitantly adds before crouching back down to get under Latilth’s wing.

They were worries to have another day. There was nothing you could do now but prepare and deal with the other problems at hand. You completed the task of stretching a friendly hand out to the darkin. Now you had to convince at least one or two of them to go with you back to Volantis and make the long journey back.

Ray and Rhiannon left earlier that morning to inform the captain of your eminent departure. Inniros and Loviisa left with them as extra backup if they encountered some demented Asshai’i creature. The entire trip to and from would take hours.

In the mean time, you and Weles ran drills in the mountain courtyard as Melisandre silently watches from the sidelines. Jalsolin and Qheen also stood in observation as you wield Lightbringer with fluid efficiency. Latilth crows happily above as she spreads her lavish wings. It may have just been you, but you could have in the three short days you had been there Latilth had grown exponentially. The beating of her wings sent powerful gusts that whipped your short hair around your face.

Maybe it was whatever ancient magic that the Shadowlands held in them. You did spot the carcass of some horned animal in the small nest Latilth made herself so she was definitely hunting the local wildlife.

“Remember, nuha kosh, steady and easy breaths only. In through the nose and out of the mouth. Conscious breathing.” Weles reminds you when he notices fatigue sweating on your face. You nod with steely focus and readjust how you were inhaling. While your attention was solely on Weles, a newcomer to your impromptu training ring catches your eye.

Jalsolin calls out to the figure. “Syzhal! We missed you last night. What on earth were you so busy with?”

Lady Nazneen’s other pupil.

Scars of all sorts devastated her face to a disfiguring degree, her dark eyes void of life as they move from Weles, to you, to Latilth. “I was in the study.” Her entire being prickles immediately at the sight of the red woman. The crinkling of her nose tugs at one of her scars and twists it.

Weles, while having no affection for Melisandre, would stand up for any member of the Red Temple. Especially one as renowned as she was. He takes a calculated step to obscure Syzhal’s view of her. This posture was enough to intimidate anyone except maybe a darkin. Only the tattooed on his face and the blessed metal of his weapons kept Syzhal from taking immediate action.

Cold eyes turn once more to you. Her bangs were cut in a perfect, straight line above her brows. The rest of her deep brown hair coiled around her shoulders in a braid. “Azor Ahai.”

“I actually go by (y/n).” Putting Lightbringer back in its scabbard, you boldly out your hand, the one with the scar that ran across your palm.

She looks like she’s about to recoil, but Jalsolin clicks his tongue against his teeth. “Remember what Lady Nazneen told you. Play nice.”

Whipping a sharp glare at him, Syzhal all together steps away from you. “Don’t chastise me like I’m a child, boy. If you ever paid attention during Master Ameer’s lessons, you’d be wary too of trusting anyone from the Faith of R’hllor.”

“That was in the past.” Jalsolin grumbles with a roll of his shoulders. Her combative tone had Jalsolin on the defensive. Qheen was taking pleasure in watching his fellow darkin squabble. Like he thrived off of conflict. You were still trying to figure out the masked darkin as he hadn’t spoken a word to you but you learned from Inniros that Qheen could indeed speak. Unlike Ulian who physically could not. He’d been born a mute but for a darkin that was even more fortuitous.

She lets what Jalsolin said soak in. Folding her arms in front of her chest, she lets slip a sigh. “I suppose we have to trust that Master Batur knows what he’s doing. If he believes in this sunny haired child, then we must abide by his word.”

Melisandre appears like she wants to say something in retaliation but you quickly shake your head at her in warning. Meekly, she obeys and stands down along with Weles.

Turning on her heels, Syzhal stalks back to the front door of the Manor of Shades without so much as looking back.

Jalsolin runs his fingers along his forehead. Apologies fill his eyes. “Wish I could say she wasn’t normally like that. That’s actually Syzhal on a good day.”

“No, it’s alright.” You understood what your presence and those of the red priestess and priest meant here. It threatened their very existence. You knew, of course you did, that High Priest Benerro must want to control the darkin like the temple tried to do hundreds of years ago. Having the darkin in their military could flip the tables and make them seen as a power figure. You wouldn’t let that happen. You planned to tell him so once you returned to Volantis. The darkin were sworn to Azor Ahai, not the church.

Weles mutters something to himself in Valyrian as he swings his blade through the air, imagining it was the disrespectful darkin female. “Are there any other darkin we need to prepare for?”

Grinning at the obviously stressed soldier, Jalsolin puts on an easygoing smile. “Ah don’t worry, general. Only three others are missing. Most likely they’ll meet us there in Volantis.”

The reminder that the darkin were going back with him to the temple has Weles making a sour expression but he refrained from saying anything.

He goes on. “I’m really excited. I can’t say I’ve ever been to Volantis before. We tend to stay away from countries that house any semblance of R’hllor followers.”

“It’s a beautiful place. I’d say the Red Temple has become more of a home for me than I’ve ever had.” You reply with a smile and swipe your hand over your sweaty brow. Before Syzhal had interrupted you were getting quite the needed workout. Training at the temple gave you much appreciated structure and you found your body getting restless without at least some form of exercise.

Being on the ship was torture, and due to your nausea, you weren’t able to train much. While the past two days allowed you to test your skills, you missed the relative repetitiveness that drills offered you.

“It must be true then for you’ve probably been to as many places as I have.” True when speaking of Essos, there was still much of Westeros you’d never been to. That would definitely have to change when you returned to Westeros.

By then you hope Latilth will be large enough for you to mount. It would be easy to travel all of the continent on dragon back.

You envision yourself riding atop of Latilth with Rhaegar behind you as you tour the Seven Kingdoms.

If. . . If he wasn’t already remarried to Lyanna Stark. You would have to wait until your return to find out. The news Selmy brought said nothing of a new potential bride. Back then, no one knew you were alive, so you made yourself come to terms with the idea that Rhaegar might have a new wife. Especially if he was now campaigning for the throne, a queen candidate would be required. Perhaps to make close allies, Rhaegar was forced into taking a daughter of a ruling lord to marry.

You worry that with the opportunity your death granted him, Rhaegar would follow his heart and finally proclaim his love publically to Lyanna Stark. If that was so, then all his touches, all the kisses he left upon your skin, really meant nothing.

The child you would have had would have meant nothing.

Jaehaerys.

Jaehaerys wasn’t an accident though. He was your blessing. Always had been since the moment you discovered you were pregnant. Whatever Rhaegar had thought of Jaehaerys, you hadn’t cared. He was someone who would be entirely of you.

Latilth’s exciteful cry snaps you out of your somber thoughts to crane your neck up to the sky. She was piercing through the sky with ease and indeed made holes in the large clouds. She punches through them like a needle through fabric.

In a way, Latilth was sort of like your child. She hatched in your arms, small wings pressed tightly to her sides as she curled tightly against you.

And what a beautiful child she was.

Wind gusts from her landing has your hair whipping your cheeks. Sharply. Melisandre nearly stumbles from the moving of the ground when Latilth made contact. She’s practically singing, at least that’s what you thought she sounded like. There were so many strange sounds that Latilth was capable of producing.

“ Skorkydoso iksin se jēdar, ñuha prūmia?(How was your flight, my treasure)?”” You reach your hand out to run your palm along her bumpy scales.

Her purrs make her body wiggle in delight as she presses into your hand. You would have never anticipated a dragon being this loving. Westerosi historians did claim that a bond between dragon and rider was a strong one, developed far before the rider actually takes their first flight.

Those had all been Targaryens though. A bond between a dragon and someone who wasn’t of Old Valyria was unheard of. And as far as you knew, the Lannisters had not intermarried with the three-headed dragon before.

“Can’t say I’ve seen a dragon as docile as this one.” Comments Jalsolin as he takes small, tentative steps forward; he almost appears shy to encounter Latilth. “What lovely scales she has.”

Her egg had been even more lovely, resembling a massive opal. “Yes, each like a tiny gemstone.”

“You mentioned three others. Are there only twelve darkin that reside here?” Weles asks brusquely. The temple had been hoping on more.

Jalsolin shakes his head. “Our numbers have always been small. Since the days of Azor Ahai. Too many darkin in the world could lead to unbalance.”

Pausing to mull the numbers over in his head, he turns to the red lady. “Will a dozen be enough?”

From Melisandre’s face there was doubt. “Not ideal but it will have to do.”

It may not have impressed either Weles or Melisandre, but you thought a dozen darkin would be more than enough to defeat the Others when that prophetic day came. Then again, you didn’t know the numbers that the offending army would have under their belt.

Inevitable war was in your future. The most important of all battles for it could mean mass extinction. What you learned in the Red Temple could hardly help you mentally manifest an enemy you had never seen before. Priests and priestesses read you passages regarding your foe. They brought with them freezing cold gusts of wind that wrought the world into a hellish winter. In their ranks were the dead risen back to life and other creatures that were born of nightmares. Fire seemed to be their biggest weakness.

Perfect. You had plenty of fire.

“Not for lack of trying to induct more darkin. That’s why the other three members aren’t here. They’ve been traveling Essos for years trying to find more darklings. It’s a thankless job and incredibly disappointing. Ulian was the last child with darkin power to be found.” Jalsolin explains with a hint of remorse.

“Jalsolin! Qheen!” Came the short barks of Master Batur. In seconds the two men snap into attention. “There’s a disturbance coming from the eastern mountain range.”

Nodding his head, Jalsolin addresses the old master. “We’ll look into right away.”

Master Batur watches them with stony eyes as they pass by him to get back to the Manor. There were many secret passages that led to inside the mountain where there were numerous exits only the darkin could find.

Latilth got his attention for she bore her teeth at him in warning. It would take some time for her to warm up to Master Batur and vice versa.

“What kind of disturbance is it?” Security was high on Weles’ priority list. He knew no place was truly impenetrable, but he at least thought the Manor of Shades would be pretty close to it.

“Sometimes we get lurkers.” The darkin master replies nonchalantly, like it happened frequently. A sense of dread lingers in the air though.

The part inside of you that wanted to learn all about this strange land wanted to ask him what he meant by lurkers. What kind of monsters had he encountered?

You were silent though because if you were being honest with yourself, you didn’t want to actually know. What you had seen in that decrepit city told you of what type of beast resided there.

Hours later, Jalsolin nor Qheen had returned but Rhiannon and the others had. They looked utterly weary.

You stand up from your chair and hurry over to them. “What happened?”

Rhiannon didn’t even have the energy to pretend to be positive. “We have a problem.”

Your heart slams to the bottom of your stomach. That was the last thing you wanted to hear.

Taglist:

@boywivlove

@esposadomd

@domoron

@yentroucnagol

@enchantingcupcakecollectionfan

@bregarc

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sabraeal · 1 year ago

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The Vagrant's Season, Part 2

[Read on AO3]

Written for @onedivinemisfit for her birthday! This is part of Annie's Shapeshifter AU; a prequel to this piece, filling in the weeks from when Obi arrived in The Valley to the start of mating season. There are a half dozen version of the song I adapt for Shirayuki in this, but I referred to two specific ones to cobble together this one: Marianne Lihannah's and Pernille Anker's. There is also one line from this folk song in the last scene!

“You’re a shy little one, aren’t you?” The vixen doesn’t stoop or sing-song, not like how the menfolk would when they saw him like this, just a shadow and a snout hidden amongst their shrubbery. A good thing too; if she shrilled the way the goodwives would, calling him a sweet pup and lille vennen and gutten min, he’d have skittered away faster than mice in a pantry.

Instead her voice is soft, riding the same rise and lull as her song, and her hands never pause in their picking. A practiced motion— reach, pinch, twist; reach, pinch, twist— that never falters, even when she slants him her curious glance. “I mean you no harm. There’s more than enough for the both of us here, if we only take for the needing.”

Ah, now that stings him, just a little. He’d seen her sorting out her tubers and berries that first time, plucking the bounty he’d meant to have all to himself until spring, and well— he’d scampered off, sure, half-scared of even a wilder’s shadow, but he’d come back too. Gave himself two good hands to pillage with and glutted himself on what she’d left behind, sure he’d find some other hole to weather out the last of winter.

Even with no stars yet in the sky he knew the footfalls that would take him toward Yuris, toward Tanbar, toward any place but that little glade and the vixen whose scent lingered on every leaf. And yet honey and bitter greens never quite left his nose, turning his paws in circles, spiraling him back to this very clearing, over and over. Spirit-blind he may be, but let it never be said Obi couldn't take a hint from one, when it was given.

“It’s warmer here in the sun.” Her tone is conversational rather than cajoling, and Obi’s tempted to take the invitation. Spread out his shorter legs, cramped from where he’s been camped in the bushes, waiting for her to finish her picking and sorting. Maybe even see if she might feed him from her hands, the way the young girls did at the village outskirts, too young to know the difference between a fox and a pup. “I know fur so fine as yours must keep you warm even in the snows, but it’s quite nice to have the light on you.”

She breathes in, misting the air with her exhale. “You can almost believe it’s spring.”

It will come soon enough; he smells it on the air even now, the promise of plenty enough to make his belly tremble. A few more weeks and he could eat his fill, strengthen up for whatever journey still laid ahead. Nice as it might be to survive on the outskirts of the Valley, growing fat on their game and forage, that sour scent in the north will mosey its way down here sometime this summer. Unpleasant as that dog smells, he’ll be needing to deal with the Keeper, trade with the other wilder in his pack. Maybe even mate, if he could find a vixen to stand him.

This vixen sits back on her heels, sigh as sweet as her scent wafting up from her lips. “Well, that’s that then. Guess we won’t meet today, little one.”

Toes curl beneath her, and with the sort of limber grace village girls lacked but wilder women possessed in spades, she bounces up to her feet, basket teetering on her hip like a smile does on her lips. “Maybe next time, then. Be a pity for neighbors not to get along with each other.”

When he steps out of the brush, it’s on two legs, one hand scratching at the nape of his neck.

“Get along,” he mutters, shoving a berry into his mouth. It breaks sour over his tongue. “See how long that lasts.”

There’s no convenient cave to make his camp, no abandoned lean-to left by a less wary vagrant passing through to warmer climes, but Obi does find a hollow not far from the vixen’s glade. An old yew, wider than two of him together could wrap around, beginning to rot from the inside. The sort of thing the volva would have clucked their collective tongues over, proclaiming that its spirit was sick and frail, a terrible portents for the future of their community.

But for him it’s only a tight squeeze on two legs and a cozy hideaway on four. Keeps him dry at least, and warm when the winds blow, though even as he drifts asleep, he hears the wood creaking like their voices, stay too long as a little one and you’ll be wild in truth.

It becomes habit to watch the vixen about her business; mostly small, letting his dark fur hide him among the shadows even as she tries to call him out from cover, her sweet smile more tempting than even the berries she offers. As it warms he sheds that skin more often, letting his legs stretch until he smells herbs on the wind and hears the first strains of her honeyed songs.

It’s inevitable that at some point, he forgets.

The dawn breaks warm that morning; the first tease of true spring before the spirits unfurl their sleeping tendrils and wake in truth. At least, so the volva say; Obi’s never seen a lick of them as long as he’s lived. Blind, they called him, but if it’s the price he pays to walk comfortably among the townsfolk each winter, he’ll pay it gladly.

There’s a tree at the edge of the vixen’s glade, an old birch so piebald it’s half shadow itself, its spiny little leaves coming in strong with the first hint of winter’s breaking. They don’t grow like this near the menfolk— there it’s straight little stands of bone-white trunks, but here, it’s a gnarled, knotted mess of a grandmother, so thick and bent from reaching out toward the light the glade promises that a body could get lost trying to find their way through its branches.

He sprawls his across one so thick it could be its own tree, legs dangling as wild as tangled ivy. Dappled in the sun’s light, it’s a cozy enough spot to let his blood warm up to the promise of the day. His head tips back, eyes fluttering closed, and ah, if he lets his mind drift enough, he can fool himself into thinking the volva are shuffling after him still, looking for that lazy boy, more scent than sense—

“The kit is placed in her cradle, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing.” Breath tumbles out of him in a snort, rousing him in shorter order than the vixen’s song, so close each word comes as a caress instead of a whisper on the wind. “Her mother cares for her, trouble, trouble, trouble.”

Already he reaches for his smaller body, eager to put fur over flesh and scamper into cover, but—

“Sleep now, sleep now” —copper flickers over bush tops, like a bullfinch buzzing over the brush— “in the arms of the mother tree, keep watch, o spirits, and hold this kit safe.”

For as many times as he has seen her, it’s always been with a little one’s eyes, limited to the muted grays and dunny browns they can create. Enough to get the idea of most wilders on whom he’s let his gaze linger, but this vixen— her hair alone is red and gold together, an autumn forest ablaze and yet tame beneath her hands. And when she lets her eyes skim over the brushline, looking for him…

Green. The same as the leaves that flutter between them, hiding him from sight. He hunkers down, belly to branch, and bides his time.

The vixen lingers longer as the weather warms, shedding her heavy cloak before she settles in to work, spreading it beneath her knees. There’s more for her to do now; with the snow near half melted, more greens unfurl between her visits, and the thin stopgap of winter berries turning into a bounty of sweet spring fruit. She sorts them as she works, each kind going into their own cloth before she rolls them up and tucks them into her basket, humming with satisfaction.

Most days he keeps her company as a little one; it delights her to coax him out step by step, creeping closer and closer to sharing sunlight. But more and more often, he lingers, watching her with wilder eyes as she goes about her business. Wonders, sometimes, if her pelt is just as bright as her hair when she trots about in her smaller form, if the gold would shine the way it does in the morning sun.

When she settles herself today— I shall give to my sister my seven gold rings, all under the linden so green— it’s with two baskets, one set in front and the other just behind. No difference between them that Obi can see, no reason one berry goes in one and not the either, just one plump little fruit, one after the other. Each one leaves juice smeared across her fingertips, so ripe his mouth salivates just thinking of how they’ll taste on his tongue, of how they’ll burst beneath his teeth.

“You know,” she calls out, her mouth hooked in the wryest of her smiles. “It’s polite to announce yourself if you’re going to linger in a vixen's territory. Especially a dog like yourself.”

Obi blinks between his branches, glancing from left to right, but there’s no dog for her to be talking to, not unless—

He glances down, right to where she stands, staring square at him through the branches. “You might introduce yourself at least. Now that I know you haven’t gone wild.”

His arms fold and his chin tilts, the way that makes most dogs shy from his company, let alone the wiser vixens. “I’m not the sort a vixen like you would want to know.”

Her jaw sets, even as that smiles pulls sweeter. “I think that’s up to me, isn’t it?”

Obi has to admit, she has a point there.

“This is my territory you’ve been lingering in, after all.” Her shrug is a soft bounce of her shoulders, but her scent presses heavily around him. Her territory. Unmated female she may be, but he is an unmated male, living on her sufferance. “I should know who I have the pleasure of sharing my patch with.”

“No point,” he sniffs, tilting his chin higher. “I’m just passing through.”

“For three weeks?” Her mouth twitches, not from fear. “I think that’s a little more than passing through.”

Ah, he hadn’t realized she’d be counting. “Just until there’s forage elsewhere.”

By the cock of her hip, he knows his excuse is as thin as tissue, ready to be torn under her able paws. “A name might be nice. I can’t just call you vagrant this whole time.”

“I have lots of names.” One for each year he’s wintered over among the menfolk. But they’ve always slipped off him like his fur does his skin, never sticking the whole season. Eirik had been the one he gave Goody, a smile on his lips, but she shook her head the way the menfolk always do, as if they already knew it doesn’t fit. “Which one do you want?”

The smile he gives her is all teeth, but she doesn’t flinch like she’s supposed to. No, she just furrows that brow at him, concerned. “The one you want to give me.”

His shoulder burns even beneath his hand. “I already said I wouldn’t be around long.”

“Fine, Vagrant it is then,” the vixen sighs, tucking her plants against her waist, tying them to the space under her belt. “I hope you have a nice day, Vagrant.”

It’s not until she’s gone that he realizes she left one of her baskets behind, but when he goes to call out—

Well, it seems he never got a name either.

#obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #shapeshifter au #the vagrant's season #my fic #ans #the two songs referenced in this are Gjendine's Lullaby (Gjendines bådnlåt) and Ye Ride So Carefully (I Riden Så)#Gjendines is a famous Norwegian milkmaid who ended up teaching her songs to Edvard Grieg #who eventually collected them into Opus 66. the last movement of which is this lullaby #if you play civ 6 you might recognize it 🤣#Ye Ride So Carefully is an older folk song- the one i link is not in modern Swedish but a much older version #i had to steer a lot of my folk song usage MUCH older since otherwise i ran into lots of like #singing about the village. and the sheep. and the barn! lots of fish too #which just wasn't gonna work for the little forest-bound foxes #if you decide to listen to the whole thing it's actually considered a song that may have predated Christianity in Scandinavia #and then was later changed to include Christian symbolism along with the old norse ones #there is a LOT that i could go into here about the meaning of the song BUT it doesn't actually have much to do with the story #SO JUST ENJOY INSTEAD 🤣

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darry-rules · 10 months ago

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Abandoned by Dandy

You may have heard about the Dandy Corporation’s modern-day ghost towns. A company as large and as long-lasting as Dandy Co. is bound to make a few mistakes, and when they do, it’s often cheaper to just ignore them than to throw good money after bad.

One such misstep was the “Pirate’s Atoll” resort in the Caribbean. It didn’t start as a ghost town, of course. Cruise ships would drop hundreds of passengers off at the resort to relax in luxury. The resort had a tiki bar, a small collection of exotic animals, and daily live pirate shows. You can find these facts, and even a few photos, if you know where to look it up.

Dandy Co. blew over $30,000,000 on the project. That’s not a typo. Thirty million dollars. Then, without warning, they completely abandoned it.

Blame was placed on the cruise lines, which were contracted to provide a licensed Dandyland theme. Apparently, they tried to renegotiate fees in a predatory manner. They knew the resort would be useless without the ships, and that Dandy had a lot to lose. Local staff on the island were also blamed for showing up late and having a poor work ethic.

That’s where the truthful nature of the story ends. It wasn’t because of greedy cruise lines, and it most definitely wasn’t because “those dang foreigners are so lazy”. No, I very sincerely doubt that those excuses hold water.

Why? Because of Primeveire’s Palace.

Near the beach side city of Emerald Isle in North Carolina, Dandy began construction of “Primeveire’s Palace” in the late 1990s. Conceptually, it was going to be a lush, medieval forest. The aforementioned palace would sit at the center and house the guests.

If you’re unfamiliar with the titular character, you may remember the classic story, “The Noble And The Knave”. However, most people probably know her from the decades-old Dandy cartoon of the same name. Primeveire is a young lady from a royal family, exiled into the primitive wilderness by a cruel nobleman. There, she befriends various woodland creatures before being rescued by a reformed highwayman.

Primeveire’s Palace was a controversial undertaking from the very beginning. Dandy bought out a ton of high-priced land for the project, and scandal surrounded some of the purchases. The local government claimed “eminent domain” on people’s homes, then immediately sold them to Dandy Co. One home had just finished construction when it was immediately condemned with no real explanation.

The land that had been seized was supposedly intended for some sort of highway project. Knowing full well that this was a lie, people starting calling it “Lemming Lane”. A play on their mascot, Lucky Lemming, and the legend that the creatures took paths to their own demise.

Then, there was the concept art. A few stuffed shirt types from Dandy Co. held a city meeting.

They intended to convince everyone that this project was going to benefit them. It would increase tourism, bringing extra customers to local businesses. They revealed the concept art with a flourish and accompanying upbeat music, sure it would impress their audience. When people saw the garish, technicolor eyesore of a building, the surrounding tribal wilderness, and staff members dressed in “wild savage” loincloths and masks… suffice to say everyone flipped their shit.

We’re talking about a magical castle of sorts, an arcane forest, and half-naked servants. Not only would this be in the center of a relatively wealthy, historic area, but also one below the “Bible Belt”.

Magic, talking animals, and exposed skin were highly controversial at that point in time. One crowd members stormed the stage, in fact, managing to break a presentation board over his knee.

Dandy took the community and essentially broke it over their knee in response. Houses were razed to the ground. Land was cleared. There wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do or say about it. Local television stations and newspapers were against the building of the resort, at first. Then, some corporate connections between Dandy Co.’s media holdings and the local news venues came into play. Their opinions soon turned on a dime.

But I digress… Remember Pirate’s Atoll in the Caribbean? Dandy sunk all that money into it, then split at the first sign of trouble. The same thing happened with Primeveire’s Palace. Construction was completed, and visitors stayed at the resort with little to no problems. The smaller surrounding communities were flooded with traffic and the usual annoyances that came with an influx of lost and cranky travelers.

Then… it all just stopped. They shut it down and nobody knew what to think. Still, though the lack of answers was confusing, residents were pretty happy to hear the news. Dandy’s loss was hilarious and wonderful to a large group of people who didn’t want this in the first place.

Personally, I hadn’t given the place a second thought after hearing it had closed over a decade ago. I live about four hours from Emerald Isle, so I only managed to hear the rumors and rumblings. No first-hand information made it my way.

Then, I found an article from a blogger who had explored the Pirate’s Atoll resort. He posted detailed descriptions of the crazy shit he discovered there. Everything left behind was smashed, defaced, probably ruined by disgruntled former employees. Hell, maybe people came from miles around to wreck the place. They were probably just as angry about Pirate’s Atoll as folks here were about the palace.

There were even rumors that Dandy Co. had released their aquarium stock into the local waters when they closed down. This would’ve included a variety of dangerous, invasive species, including sharks. Who wouldn’t want to take a few swings at them after that?

The blog post about Pirate’s Atoll got me thinking. Even though many years had passed since it closed, I figured it might be interesting to do some urban exploration at Primeveire’s Palace. I could take some photos, write about my experience, and pretty much copy what this other blogger had done long before me. I might even be able to take something home as a memento.

I can’t say that I hurried there. It took me around a year after I first found that blog post. Over that time, I researched the the resort… or rather, I tried to. Naturally, no official Dandy-related website or resource made any mention of the location. They had all been scrubbed clean.

Stranger still, it seemed like no one other than myself had thought to talk about the place or even post vacation photos from there. None of the local news sites contained one word about the place, though that could be expected since they had all swung Dandy’s way. They wouldn’t be allowed bring attention to the embarrassment.

More recently, I learned that large corporations can actually ask search engines to remove search results. From what I’ve heard, they don’t even need to provide a good reason for the removal. Looking back on it, that’s probably what happened. It’s not that there were no posts about the resort, but that their words were simply made inaccessible.

So, naturally, I could barely find the place in the end. All I had to work with was an old-as-Hell map I received in the mail back in the ’90s. It was part of a promotional brochure that had been sent out to people who had recently been to Dandyland. My family had visited the park in the late ’80s, so we were on the list. I hadn’t intended to keep the brochure, but it got shoved into a box with my childhood comic books. I only remembered it existed a few months into my research, and then it took me a couple weeks to get around to visiting my parents and finding where it had all been stored.

After I found the map, I was sure the difficult part was over. However, on my way to the resort, I found that the locals weren’t going to be any help. Most were transplants who had moved to the beach in recent years. Others were old residents who sneered the second I spoke the word “Primeveire” or, worse yet, “Dandy”.

The drive took me through an inordinately long corridor of overgrowth. Exotic plants had run rampant and overpopulated the area, mixing with the native species that were desperately vying to reclaim the land. I was in awe when I finally reached the entrance to the main resort. The tremendous, monolithic wooden gates still stood, their supports cut from what seemed like giant sequoias. The otherwise majestic gate was gouged by woodpeckers, and the base was slowly being eaten away by burrowing insects.

Hanging at face-level was a sheet of metal. It was some random scrap, with a hand-painted message scrawled in black paint. “ABANDONED BY DANDY”. Clearly, this was the handiwork of some past local or employee who wanted to voice their own small protest.

The entrance was open wide enough to slip through, but not wide enough for a vehicle. So, grabbing my digital camera, a flashlight, and the brochure, I set off on foot. Flipping the paper over displayed a layout of the resort itself, though the landscape was a little less friendly.

The inner grounds were just as wild as the entryway. Fruit trees stood untended and ragged among piles of their own stinking, bug-riddled rot. There was a strange clash between order and chaos, as carefully planted rows of perennial flowers fought for space with tall weeds and stinking, blackened mushrooms.

All that remained of any smaller outdoor structures were piles of broken, charred debris.

Something that seemed to be an information booth was now a chopped-up heap of wood and splintered information boards. What vandals hadn’t ruined was ruined by inclement weather.

What struck me as bizarre, was a large statue of Princess Primeveire which stood prominently within a courtyard in front of the palace. She was frozen in a delicate wave toward no one, staring into empty space with a demure, slight smile as generations of bird shit covered her crown, hair, and dress. Ugly, thorny vines entangled her platform.

I approached the building. Any colors left were washed out, sun faded, and much of the plaster meant to simulate stonework had cracked from exposure. Where the paint hadn’t peeled or chipped away, there was copious amounts of graffiti.

The front doors weren’t just left open, they had been taken completely off of their hinges and were seemingly stolen. Above the gaping maw where the front doors had been, someone had once again painted the phrase, “ABANDONED BY DANDY”.

You’re probably waiting to hear about all the awesome stuff I saw inside the palace. Forgotten valuables, derelict cash registers, a full-fledged secret society of homeless cannibals… but no. The inside of the building was so stark, so bare, that I think people may have even stolen the moulding off of the walls. Anything that was too big to steal like counters, desks, and giant fake trees rested in an empty echo chamber. Every step I took was amplified like a slow rat-a-tat of a machine gun.

I checked the floor plan and headed to the specific locations that seemed interesting. The kitchen was as you’d imagine. It was an industrial food prep area with rows of various appliances. No expenses were spared. Every glass surface was broken. Every door was knocked out of its frame. Every metal surface was kicked and dented. Worst of all, the entire room smelled like stale, acrid piss.

The walk-in freezer, not even remotely cool at that point, had row upon row of empty shelves. Hooks hung from the ceiling, most likely for hanging cuts of meat. As I took in the sight for a moment, I noticed that several of them were swinging. Their movements were so slow and small that it was almost impossible to see if you weren’t paying attention. I briefly considered that it had been caused by me moving through, but they were moving in areas I hadn’t even been to yet.

The public bathrooms were in much the same state. Just like the Pirate’s Atoll resort, someone had methodically smashed each porcelain commode with whatever was available to throw. About a half-inch of stinking, stagnant water had pooled on the floor, so of course I didn’t stay for long. What’s odd is that the toilets and sinks (and the bidets, yes I went in there) all dripped, leaked, or just flowed freely. It seemed to me that the water should’ve been shut off quite a long time ago.

There were plenty of hotel-style rooms in the resort, but I definitely didn’t have time to look through them all. The few I did peer into were similarly destroyed, and I wouldn’t have realistically found anything interesting in them. I thought I could hear a television or radio in one room, since it almost sounded like there was a conversation going on inside. It was like a whisper, but looking back it could’ve just been my own breathing echoing in the silence. Maybe it was just entirely a trick of the mind.

It sounded like an exchange between two voices.

1: “I didn’t believe in it.” 2: (Nearly inaudible reply.)

1: “I didn’t know that. I couldn’t know that.” 2: “Father told you.”

1: (Nearly inaudible reply, similar to weeping.)

I’m aware of how ridiculous that sounds. Still, I suspected there might’ve been something running in that room – or worse, some meth heads who had holed up there and probably would’ve knifed me.

When I returned to the front of the palace, I figured I hadn’t found anything of note. The trip had been a waste of time. I was going to drive straight home again, rather than booking a hotel room, so I couldn’t even consider it a one-night vacation.

As I looked outside, I noticed something in the courtyard that I must’ve missed before. It was something that would give me one really cool thing to show for all my trouble, even if it was just a picture. A life-like statue of a python, maybe fifty feet long, sat coiled up and sunning itself on a large, graffiti covered rock. It was almost time for the sun to set, so light was falling onto it in the perfect way for a photograph.

I approached the python and snapped a photo. I stood on my toes and snapped another. I moved in closer to get the details of its face. Slowly, casually, the snake lifted its head and looked directly into my eyes. It turned, slithered off of the rock, across the grass, and into the tree line. Its head long disappeared into the woods before its tail even left the sunning spot.

Dandy Co. had released all of their exotic animals onto the grounds. Right there on my floor plan map was the reptile house. Of course, I should’ve expected it. I had read about the sharks at Pirate’s Atoll, and I should have known they would do this.

I was dumbfounded. Utterly stupefied. My mouth must’ve been hanging open for the longest time before I came to my senses and snapped it shut. I blinked stupidly for a moment, then backed toward the palace, away from the snake. Even though it was gone, I wasn’t taking any chances and retreated to the building to gather my wits again.

I looked for a place to sit down and breathe. I had always had an unreasonable fear of snakes… of anything with scales, really. At that point, my legs felt like they’d become jelly. Of course, there was no place to sit down unless I wanted to recline in broken glass and a leaf carpet crawling with insects. I could’ve hauled myself onto a desk, but it probably would’ve collapsed from age.

I had seen a receding staircase in the lobby and decided to have a seat there until my pulse stopped pounding in my ears. The stairs were far enough from the front of the building to be somewhat clean, other than a startling accumulation of dust. I pulled a wedge of metal off of the wall and used it as an improvised seat cover. Once again, it had been painted with the “ABANDONED BY DANDY” motto I had become accustomed to.

The stairway lead down to a below-ground level of the building. Using my flashlight, I could see that the stairs ended at a metal mesh door with a padlock. A sign on the door, a real sign unlike the hastily scrawled ones, read “Mascots only! Thank you!”. That perked up my spirits for two reasons.

First, a mascots-only area would definitely contain some interesting things back in the day. Second, the padlock was still in place. Nobody had gone down there – not the vandals, the looters, no one.

That was the one place I could actually explore, and perhaps find really unique stuff to photograph or even steal. I had come to the palace with the decision that it was okay to take something back for proof. After all, the owners clearly didn’t care.

I didn’t have much hope of breaking the lock. The ravages of age weren’t powerful enough to corrode the metal that much. What I could do, however, was separate the plate that held it in place from the damaged wood of the wall. The screws pulled free easily once I applied enough pressure. Either others hadn’t thought to try bypassing the lock, or it was still too solid when they had tried.

The mascots-only area was a startling and welcomed change from the rest of the palace. Every second or third florescent light was illuminated, though they flickered and faded randomly. Nothing had been broken or stolen, though time and desertion had taken their toll. Tables bore notepads and pens. Clocks hung on the walls, frozen at different times. There was a punch-in clock, complete with filled-out time cards. Chairs were scattered around, and long rotted-out food and drinks sat on counter tops. It was like one of those post-apocalyptic movies where everything is left in a state of evacuation.

As I wandered the maze-like sub-basement hallways, the sights became more and more disquieting. Further in, desks and tables were knocked over. Scattered papers had melded with the damp floor, and a large expanse of fungus was slowly overtaking rotted carpeting. Everything was just… squishy. Anything made of wood disintegrated into mush when I applied even the least amount of force. Clothing items left hanging on hooks simply fell to moist threads if I tried to remove them.

One thing that got on my nerves was that the light became more sparse and unreliable as I proceeded. It wasn’t dark enough for a flashlight, but not bright enough to be comfortable. The depths of the sub-basement grew dank and suffocating. Eventually, I reached a bright yellow door with the words “Mascot Prep 1” stenciled on its surface.

In my excitement, I all but yanked off the doorknob. I figured that room held the costumes, and I definitely wanted a photograph of that twisted, stinking mess. Try as I might, whatever angle or trick I tried, the door wouldn’t budge. That is, until I acknowledged defeat and began to walk away. That was when there was a slight popping sound, after which the door slowly creaked open just a bit.

Inside, the room was completely dark. Pitch black. I used my light to search for a switch on the wall by the door, but there was none. As I focused on the walls, I was jarred out of my concentration by a sudden and piercing electrical buzz. Rows of lights overhead suddenly flashed to life, flickering and fading like the others I had passed.

It took a second for my eyes to adjust, and it seemed as if the light was going to keep growing in brightness until the bulbs exploded. Just when I thought it would reach that critical stage, they dimmed a bit and steadied. The room was exactly how I had imagined it. Various Dandy character costumes hung on the walls like strange cartoon cadavers suspended from invisible nooses.

What I found odd, and what I really needed to make a record of, was a Lucky Lemming costume at the center of the room. Unlike the other costumes, it was lying on its back like a murder victim. Its fur was matted and shedding, creating bare patches.

What’s worse, however, was the coloring of the costume. I think mold and mildew must have taken root, seeming to turn it into a photo-negative version of the actual Lucky Lemming. Black rot where he should have been white. White fungus filaments where he should have been black. His clothes seemed faded and bleached, the opposite of their their usual hue.

The sight was so off-putting that I postponed looking at the thing again until I was ready to leave the room. I took a picture of the costumes hung on the walls. Upward angles, downward angles, side shots to show an entire row of frozen, putrefied cartoon faces. The occasional missing eye made it all the more grim.

Then, I decided to stage a shot. I was going to place one of the bedraggled character heads on the slick, grimy floor. Reaching for the headpiece of a Loopy Loon costume, I carefully removed it so it wouldn’t fall apart in my hands. As I looked into the face of the wide-eyed, moldering head, a loud clattering sound made me jump with fright.

Looking down at my feet, I saw a human skull now resting between my shoes. It had fallen out of the mascot head and cracked into several pieces. The empty face stared up at me, jaw detached.

I dropped the costume head immediately, as you’d no doubt expect. I moved for the door, but something stopped me. I looked back to the skull and felt a flush of anger. I had to take a picture to show the world. I’d need proof of this, especially if the Dandy Corporation was going to somehow make this all disappear. I had no doubt in my mind that Dandy was responsible for this, even if it was just gross negligence. Whatever happened, this was the real reason the resort had closed.

I was the only one who knew. Me.

As I contemplated the implications, that’s when Lucky… that photo-negative, opposite-character in the middle of the floor… started to get up. First sitting, then climbing to its feet, the Lucky Lemming costume, or whoever was inside of it, stood on over-sized, unsteady feet. All I could do was mumble “No…” over and over again as its false face stared me down with an inoffensive, pleasant expression.

With shaking hands, a violently thrashing heart, and legs that had once again turned to jelly, I managed to lift the camera. It took all of my strength to raise and aim it at the thing that was quietly sizing me up, head tilted. The camera’s screen displayed only dead pixels in the shape of the thing. It was a perfect silhouette of the Lucky Lemming costume. As the camera shifted and shook in my hands, the dead pixels spread, marring the screen wherever Lucky’s outline appeared.

The camera died. It went blank and quiet. It was broken. I raised my eyes once again from the black screen to the costume in front of me.

“Hey”, it said in a hushed, perfectly executed Lucky Lemming voice, “Wanna see my head come off?”

It started to pull at its own head, working clumsy, glove-clad fingers around the surface of its neck with clawing, impatient movements. It was like watching a wounded man trying to pull himself free from a predator’s jaws. As it worked its digits into the fabric flesh, rolling rivulets of thick, curdled, yellow bile spilled from what seemed like wounds. At least, it looked like bile. Infected blood? Pus?

Vomit? I had zero interest in finding out.

I turned away as I heard a sickening tearing of cloth and flesh. I only cared about getting away.

Above the doorway out of the room, I saw a final message clawed into metal with fingernails, or possibly bone. “ABANDONED BY GOD”.

The picture files in the camera were irretrievable. I never got my head around writing the blog entry about what happened. After I ran from that place, fleeing for my sanity as much as my life, I knew why the Dandy Corporation didn’t want anyone to know about this place.

They didn’t want anyone like me getting in, because they didn’t want anything like that getting out.

#creepypasta fandom #creepypasta #creepy pasta #creepypasta fanart

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aaimasqtch · 2 years ago

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Ptitheros Worldbuilding - Species

Rubasyn Basic Info

Rubasyn History

The history of the rubasyn species traces back to the E.D Era, mid-way through, during the complications within Chaveri when the dragons and gryphons were becoming a bit violent towards one another despite Edenlline's commands to make them stop. The brewing distaste within the large kingdom was resulting in many gryphons and dragons leaving to seek out a life beyond the cities and out in the dangerous wilderness. Edenlline, feeling hatred towards herself for not being the object that kept the kingdom together (feeling awful that her kin were leaving for the danger outside over Her just because of some discourse), she brought in a new creature that would fill the void she was experiencing.

A weak creature originally called the rubus, a scavenger animal of the northern plains and mountains that cleaned up after others but could never hunt for itself; Edenlline saw the helpless rubus as a perfect new addition. They were changed up a bit- capable of speech, personality, given all the things She gave her dragons and gryphons, and cared for in Chaveri.

Rubasyns posed no threat to anyone, they were just a toy that Edenlline used to feel like she had complete power over something, but she ensured from the rubasyn kin's eyes She looked like a saint that they couldn't live without.

A millennium went by, deep into the C.D, something began to change. The discourse between dragons and gryphons was over, rubasyns abundant, and the city was enjoying the time within a peaceful century, but the rubasyns started to think. A group formed in the darkness, lead by a rubasyn who had been wronged by Edenlline after working closely beside Her for many years. The texts had been read, some of the Cardinal's personal notes, and the rubasyn needed to share the information it had uncovered. Things about where they once were and why their history is so short in Chaveri compared to the dragons and gryphons, and, especially, why rubasyns weren't allowed to live anywhere outside of Chaveri. Information spread, rumors were passed and an abundance of rubasyns who had the same sensation of feeling trapped but never being able to put it into words joined the growing group that were now hellbent on getting out of Chaveri and learning why they were so enclosed in the first place.

Many rubasyns retaliated against Edenlline in the way they felt was most appropriate; by leaving Chaveri and not returning unless the answers they wanted were received. At first, the low numbers did nothing- those who left gained no attention from the Cardinal, for she felt what they were doing and had no wish to get involved with something so insignificant- they would come crawling back, She knew.

Unfortunately, Her decision to ignore the group made matters worse. It painted a picture worse than before to the rubasyns who weren't against Her, many-if not all important rubasyns now viewed Her as uncaring towards their kind since she had let those, weak and unknowledgeable, out into the wild without a smidge of regret or ruling to come back into the safety of her arms.

The uprising began, not against the North Cardinal's will to trap the rubasyns, but her un-willingness to protect those who had lost faith. For was she not the protector of those in Chaveri, of the North, what use was following Her if She did not do as expected of Her as their overseer?

More and more rubasyns became part of the initial group, now known in the history books as The Coil Leaiv, and left Chaveri in spite.

It was enough. Edenlline wanted nothing to do with them anymore, they no longer served the purpose or filled the void in her heart that they were supposed to- so she let them go, left them to their own devices. The rubasyns who remained in Chaveri continued life as normal, under her protective gaze and amongst the many dragons and gryphons.

The rubasyns who had left, especially the ones early on, inhabited the North Shrine Plateau and northern coast of Dark Briar Grove for many years. It was a dangerous place, the coastline ragged and the plateau so out-in-the-open - rubasyns were small, a quick snack to a monster, so the "traitors" struggled to retain their dignity and safety far beyond Chaveri. But even Edenlline knew they wouldn't dare back down and come back. Not now, not when they've come so far.

Although dragons founded the towns in the Braeyc territories, it was the rubasyns who grew the settlements into places larger than tiny, starving villages. They inhabited the place, their population decent and happiness barely stable- but the eventually one of the head figures of the surviving Coil Leaiv was informed of a place beyond imagination. A glider (a rubasyn with the webbing trait) had come bearing news from his fantastic travels farther northward, investigating the infamous purple shores of Pselle, he had caught wind and was gifted the sight and adventure amongst an uninhabited world in the sky.

The headfigure thought this was ridiculous at first, for floating islands across Ptitheros were merely tiny bites of land that had a bit too much aura caught in their soil- they could never be sizable to live upon. The glider denied and denied this negativity, he ensured he saw a place from what could have only been pulled right out of the Sallenin dreamscape. Some other rubasyns, along with a trusted dragon and lefiká for flight safety reasons, were sent out with the glider to make sure all he had said was true.

Indeed it was. Word spread quickly upon their return. This must be their reward, the headfigure believed, for their struggle and bravery in the face of a god. Almost all rubasyns from Braeyc left for the floating islands, via boat or gliding, some even making use of transportation spells. Although incapable of flight, the glider had explained there was a beautiful spiral of clouds raining down from the west end of the island. "These clouds, they cradled and lifted you, showing you the world of wonder you had been missing."

He wasn't far off, the whirlpool had such a strong updraft that simply holding a blanket above one's head to catch the air was enough to bring anyone to the island's surface. More rubasyns from places across the plateau and deeper within the grove eventually scampered to the island as well, they desired the lands they now felt they were entitled to.

These floating isles became known as the Isles of Nox, eventually shortened to Nox. Rubasyns took over the lands, building villages, then towns, then cities, expanding and expanding while using the safety of the unknown and uncharted lands as a crutch to avoid other Ptithians. Any and all non-rubasyns who came to the island without permission were kicked out, forcefully if need be.

Nox prospered as a self-contained and independent kingdom. Its markets were limited but the rubasyns did not see this as an issue worth opening up to the world. No, they dealt with it and continued on with their lives, watching the ants beneath them and building upon new grounds of science, technology, and engineering. Their little world did not run on aura magic as much as the other species and kingdoms, so the smart creatures improvised and invented things to rival the genetic magic and flight capabilities the other Ptitheros species had been blessed with.

Nox's cities grew, and rubasyn's grasp on engineering using aura in more artificial ways flourished. Factories were made to produce things in large amounts, or craft things that their small clawed hands could not. Inventions, ideas, culture, it all rose to new heights, the rubasyns had created a small world of their own that rivaled the strongest fellow kingdoms. They had confidence, and they never once needed the aide of a Cardinal to achieve it.

The central government of Nox had always been unstable leading up to the eventual opening of the kingdom's gates. A mayor and a knowledge group ran the isles, the group grew to be known as The Lace, and they seemed quite non-intervening. A bit too lax, which allowed for unwanted associations to grow in the underground of the cities. This would prove troublesome later on.

1820 C.A, the year the kingdom opened. Markets were failing within the cities, demand was not being met, and outer travelers had been coming in due to an agreement with the renown Exploration Guild. Stories, news, and items from the other kingdoms and settlements were filtering into Nox and the mayor had no means of stopping it, so he did what was only rational: expand his people's horizons. Nox became open-trade to the rest of Ptitheros, in turn their technology and ideas were shared as well. A jumpstart for the rest of Ptitheros, new inventors and scientists got their hands on the new technology and aura-usage capabilities and advancements began to skyrocket. It would be another few decades until other species were allowed to live in Nox, but the first steps were necessary.

2081 C.A, one of the underground, dangerous groups of Nox known as the Lace-Ups join with the Radicalized Tucruit cult in Tucruitora to pull off The Raining Fire (the Sequn Genocide).

approaching the present

Present day Nox, a wondrous sight. All creatures live in mostly harmony but it is obvious rubasyns run the entire show on those islands. Still the heavy bulk of the population, along with most residents being Unaffiliates, a very uncommon thing before Nox became a kingdom. Nox is still run by a mayor and The Lace, the mayor's name is Mayzon and The Lace members remain unknown to all but him. All species are allowed to live and work in Nox, hybrid children are protected under law like all the rest, and the standard of living thanks to ever booming new technology continues to rise and stay one step ahead from the rest of the world.

As of present day, it is also important to remember that rubasyns are not pinned to Nox. Many families from the North went elsewhere or stayed where they were, resulting in rubasyn populations all over the map. Like all species, rubasyns can be of any affiliation, any culture, it all depends on where they were born and who they were born to- some seek out a life all their own too. The stereotypical rubasyn is the snide, machine-specialist Nox rubasyn with no respect for the gods, but to place such a stereotype on every rubasyn one may come across is rude and closed minded.

#worldbuilding #fantasy #fantasy art #writing #fantasy worldbuilding #art #my art #ptitheros

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eregyrn-falls · 9 months ago

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Anyone who would like to have these points emphasized to them should look up a couple of books that I read cover to cover and really enjoyed* (for certain definitions of "enjoyed"):

"Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite"

and

"Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon"

Both are by Michael P. Ghiglieri, along with others more specialized in those parks. They are both just basically "here is every single death (and quite a few disappearances) recorded in the park, and a sometimes brief, sometimes longer write-up about the circumstances of each". They're hefty books, but still, in the 100+ years that these parks have existed, it's a finite number, you know? And they're both VERY readable.

I happened to read them both after visiting Yosemite, but before going to the Grand Canyon; so that when I took a trip to the latter, I made sure to drill into my friends' heads "DO NOT EVER leave one person out of your sight", because the main takeaway from those books is, "And they were never seen again, and their body was never found." One of your hiking companions might sit down on a trailside rock to rest for a little bit and tell you to go on, they'll catch up, it's only a half a mile to the end of the trail... do not fall for this. It won't hurt you to sit or stand with them for a while until they're ready to go again.

But mostly the phrase that I made sure stuck in everyone's head was, "Do you have enough water? No, you don't -- here, take some more." Especially in the desert southwest parks (where we went during summer), but this goes for most parks if you're hiking in warm weather.

Because another salient example was that when we arrived at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and were walking into the visitor center, there was a big sign on a stand right beside the door, and it said (to paraphrase), "Are you in good enough shape to run a marathon?" It went on to report that, not that long before, a woman who had run the Boston Marathon was visiting the GC and went for a hike with a friend. Like MANY PEOPLE, they underestimated the distances (especially common in the desert parks, where you can see for a long way and you are bad at estimating how far away some of the things you can see actually are), and underestimated how much water to take with them, and underestimated how warm out it really was. They hiked for too long and didn't drink enough, and started to experience heat exhaustion. The marathon runner went into heat stroke sooner, IIRC. She sat down in the shade, while her friend tried to hike out to find help. The friend did make it out and survived. The marathon runner died.

The point being: even if you are young and very in shape and athletic, you can still make some very unwise decisions when you head out on a hike into the wilderness. Most people who visit the parks are NOT nearly that in shape or athletic, and they are often making bad decisions, too. Bright Angel trail is the most well-known trail from the South Rim of the GC down to the river. It's 7.8 miles down. (Another sign we saw frequently in GC: "Down is Optional; Up is Mandatory".) There is a park ranger who is stationed to hang around the first few hundred feet of the trail, where it finally just goes below the rim, and their sole purpose is to stop tourists who are descending the trail wearing flip-flops and carrying one (1) 12 oz. bottle of water.

Another anecdote: on the same trip, at the end, two of us went to Mesa Verde NP in Colorado. When we arrived, there were signs posted on basically every building door with a photo of an older man, who had gone missing only the week before. Obviously, the signs were to alert people to watch for anything unusual that might help find the guy (who by that point was probably no longer alive; and in fact it would turn out, he definitely wasn't).

This was Dave Stehling, who was 51. He was there with his wife and elderly parents. They all stayed around the visitor center, while he decided to go on a short, paved quarter-mile hike to a look-out. (Mesa Verde mostly consists of the mesa top, and most trails to see the cliff dwellings and other sights drop down into the canyons. The park is a maze of deep canyons and steep drops from the mesa.) He did not take water with him, although the temps were 90-100 F that day. His wife described him as a little directionally challenged sometimes; but he was on a very short and clear path near the visitor center. An extremely easy hike. Witnesses placed him as having diverted onto the longer (2.8 mile) Petroglyph trail; either he took a wrong turn, or he decided he wanted to see the petroglyphs. Even that longer trail should only have taken a hour to walk.

He disappeared. Despite a massive search (made difficult by the terrain), his body was not discovered for 6 more years. He was the subject of theories about paranormal activity by David Paulides (the guy behind Missing411, who is the source of a LOT of conspiracy theories about people going missing/dying in the national parks/public lands and the NPS covering it up; most of his theories involve Bigfoot, and/or portals to other dimensions, sometimes both). And yes, Stehling's disappearance seems to defy logic. How could you go missing on a short trail, where there is a very finite area into which you might have fallen, and not be discovered by a huge search and rescue effort?

But I've read enough about this kind of thing by now to have read statements by people who work in SAR. And one of the take-aways is that until you experience it firsthand, it's hard to appreciate how difficult it actually is to locate a person who is lost in the wilderness. There are multiple stories about volunteers who played the role of the victim in SAR training -- who would just go out and lay down in the woods and be still and quiet, while a search team tries to find them. And they consistently report the searchers walking past them within touching distance, but not seeing them. (Usually, that has to do with underbrush, but it's also just a testament to how much a body can blend in with its surroundings even if you would *think* it would not; even if you'd think the clothes or something would stand out.)

Stehling's body was found a little over 4 miles away from where he'd disappeared. It seems like he had fallen, probably sustained injuries, but tried to hike out of the canyon he'd fallen into by following it downwards. (I'm not sure that an autopsy was ever released, which is why I don't know if he sustained injuries or not; but in a fall like that, it does seem very likely.) He might have been unconscious during the height of the searching, hidden in dense, scrubby vegetation. In June, he would have had to hike further to finally hit running water. But in the temperatures they were getting at that time, he almost certainly succumbed to hyperthermia.

All of this is just to emphasize what's said in the posts above and in the replies or other posts. A lot of tourists visit the national parks, and they think the word "park" means that it's a tame, safe environment. So many people express shock at the idea that the environment and landscape can hurt them, even though the NPS does post warnings all over the place. They don't take the idea of hiking seriously, and often don't have the right supplies or equipment. They don't realize that even the shortest, friendliest-looking trail can have hazards. They think a running stream looks inviting and they'll just dip their feet in to cool off, and don't realize how fast the current is running or how slippery the rocks are. One of the shortest, flattest, best-paved trails in Yosemite (from the ring road to Mirror Lake) has a sign right by the road warning people that there may be mountain lions around, and not to allow children to run ahead, or trail behind.

And yeah: BISON. And bears. Just yesterday I opened my weather.com app on my phone and on the front page is a video story about some tourists who dragged two black bear cubs out of a tree so they could pose with them to take photos. (This was NOT in a national or state park, but is still an example of people being idiots about interacting with wildlife.) The cubs got away quickly, and authorities "decided not to press charges because the cubs were released quickly". (They should have pressed charged, ffs.) These people will likely never appreciate how lucky they were that the mother bear did not show up.

You really don't need Bigfoot to explain weird disappearances, or paradoxical undressing (something that regularly happens as hypothermia sets in). You don't need holes between dimensions to explain how someone wasn't found by SAR, but their body was later discovered in an area that had been searched previously.

All you need to know is that in 2023, across all of the properties in the national park system, there were 325.5 million visits; an increase of 13 million over 2022 alone. The total population of the United States is 333.3 million. I wish we had a way to estimate how many of those millions were unprepared for the wilderness, but who took risks they shouldn't have anyway. I'd be willing to bet that number is pretty high.

You can't have *nearly the population of the U.S.* venturing out into the wilderness and not expect some of them to die or go missing. Honestly, the surprisingly thing is that it's as relatively rare an occurrence as it is -- deaths and disappearances in the parks still make national headlines.

Any conspiracy theory about people going missing in National Parks is automatically silly to me. Like "Why are National Parks such a hotbed of disappearances???" because they're full of idiots. You've got thousands of people who've never pissed outdoors in their life wandering around the woods/desert/mountain with zero experience and zero gear and zero understanding that this place can kill them. You don't see as many disappearances in wild areas because people don't go to them unless they have some background knowledge. Whereas you get tour buses full of old folks and suburban families shuttling people into National Parks 365 days a year. If you took the same amount of buffoons and dropped them in the actual wilderness the disappearances would be significantly higher than at the parks. Use your brain.

#national parks #(whoops sorry; pressed the 'special-interest' button there and i became an unskippable cut-scene #although thankfully folks CAN skip since you can just scroll on past)#long post

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fordecree7 · 6 months ago

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THE BIBLE BOOK OF GOD

Jeremiah 3

3 “If a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her? Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers; and would you return to me? declares the Lord. 2 Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been ravished? By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers like an Arab in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your vile whoredom. 3 Therefore the showers have been withheld, and the spring rain has not come; yet you have the forehead of a whore; you refuse to be ashamed. 4 Have you not just now called to me, ‘My father, you are the friend of my youth— 5 will he be angry forever, will he be indignant to the end?’ Behold, you have spoken, but you have done all the evil that you could.”

Faithless Israel Called to Repentance

6 The Lord said to me in the days of King Josiah: “Have you seen what she did, that faithless one, Israel, how she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and there played the whore? 7 And I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me,’ but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. 8 She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the whore. 9 Because she took her whoredom lightly, she polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and tree. 10 Yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares the Lord.”

11 And the Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. 12 Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say,

“‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the Lord. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the Lord; I will not be angry forever. 13 Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the Lord your God and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice, declares the Lord. 14 Return, O faithless children, declares the Lord; for I am your master; I will take you, one from a city and two from a family, and I will bring you to Zion.

15 “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. 16 And when you have multiplied and been fruitful in the land, in those days, declares the Lord, they shall no more say, “The ark of the covenant of the Lord.” It shall not come to mind or be remembered or missed; it shall not be made again. 17 At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the Lord, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the Lord in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart. 18 In those days the house of Judah shall join the house of Israel, and together they shall come from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers for a heritage.

19 “‘I said, How I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beautiful of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me. 20 Surely, as a treacherous wife leaves her husband, so have you been treacherous to me, O house of Israel, declares the Lord.’”

21 A voice on the bare heights is heard, the weeping and pleading of Israel's sons because they have perverted their way; they have forgotten the Lord their God. 22 “Return, O faithless sons; I will heal your faithlessness.” “Behold, we come to you, for you are the Lord our God. 23 Truly the hills are a delusion, the orgies on the mountains. Truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.

24 “But from our youth the shameful thing has devoured all for which our fathers labored, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters. 25 Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us. For we have sinned against the Lord our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.”

Jeremiah 3

Diane Beauford

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codexassassin · 9 months ago

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Animus Session: 105

Lati Rutelveson learns she had given birth to a possible Prussian Monarch in Germania in 1343 BCE

Not born from assassin and or templar heritage she "married" a young man who had a mysterious past, who unraveled their marriage long before he actually spoke of doing so. She never knew a thing of it, but he was a Templar.

She gave birth to a young son who only lived to his eighth year but warned her to an impending doom to her estate and her wellbeing, thus ending all future visits with her son then aged five.

He took her son from her to be raised by "Christian Monks" wanting him to be raised by the Priesthood. She was allowed most of her freedom and never saw him again, except during some holidays as well as visits from her son, so he could at least know his mother.

She told her estate people and they vanished into the Germania wilderness where she, as a man, began training as a vicious assassin.

In 1338 BCE, bands of assassins from her branch, broke upon the templar lands, slaying her son in the process. A Man with a prophecy, he would later return as a teen to be raised by "Great Grandparents" from her side, and train alongside his own mother, now his "sister" in the creed.

With this young man, he became a wizened, well trained, Assassin and Germanic "vude" which is something related to an "Alazar"

An "Alazar" here is like a type of ruler, or clan leader. The mother became a "Wis" or a "Clan trainer" of the people and their assassin lineage was like a Germanic Amazon Warrior, with some borrowed south African culture. They were classified as "aborigines" and considered to be offshoots of the Sanhedrin peoples.

They ended up leaving Germania when they felt the threat had ended, with the son going one way and the mother and the others to the north. I want to say this was the year of 1315 BCE, and thus moving into steppes landscape around the 1310 BCE area.

Around 1303 BCE there was an earthquake in the area, destroying the area * (I've looked on the search engine and they say there are no known earthquakes from the time period, because it is an early period of history. They point to 1303 CE or AD in Crete having a huge one with a tsunami. But there were no waves with this)

Having been older now, at least 85 years of age, Lati ran outside when the earthquake begin and fell into a large hole that opened up breaking her neck and shoulder on impact beneath the "Slovakian Steppes". She only still looked 35 years of age, however.

A Search shows now what is considered Slovakian Steppe Country.

A Map showing Germany and Slovakia in modern day times, the son or brother journeyed to the south, towards "Sabahrah" and they went to "Rah" in the north.

The main food seemed to be steppe veggie like lettuces and cabbages and Gazelle, which was plentiful in the steppe country. However, eating this meat the meat, will change who you are and make you "comfortable" which is not known to be an Assassin emotion or way of life for too long, but there was no war at the time of their occupation.

Life vanished in this entire area for about fifty years, so devastating was the earthquake.

I asked DALL E3 to help pinpoint dress code.

*Never mind the dude holding a gun. I liked his head dress.

#Early Germany #animus sessions #history #europe #earthquakes #codex assassin #assassinscreed #fanbased #nothing is true?#assassin dress #send asks

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afeelgoodblog · 2 years ago

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#061 - The Best News of Last Week - October 31, 2022

🎃 — Happy Halloween! Let’s read some good news to start the week!

1. A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View — in just 5 years humanity has cut expected warming almost in half

Nice to see balance coming in on this stuff. The situation is *not good*, but the reporting and social focus until now has been “…and therefore you are doomed.” This causes apathy, just like when people say “all politicians are the same” when they are very clearly not.

We need to focus both on how bad things are, but also the solutions for how we get through this. They exist, and we can have them. It’s going to be a life-long fight, especially once you realize that certain people make a lot more money if you think you’re doomed.

2. Germany plans to legalise recreational cannabis

Germany’s coalition government has agreed on a plan to legalise recreational cannabis use among adults.

Possession of up to 30g (1oz) for personal use would be allowed. Licensed shops and pharmacies would sell it.

3. Hundreds of rare birds rescued from island cut off by Hurricane Ian

Volunteers helped transport the flock from a bird sanctuary to a temporary new home, where they’ll stay until bridge access can be restored to Pine Island.

The birds have been relying on food donated by wildlife officials since Hurricane Ian hit, but the supply of fruit, peanuts and other edibles would soon be hard to come by because of the downed bridge and the scarcity of gasoline on the island. In the hours before the storm, the sanctuary owners herded their flock of birds and packed them into their home to shield them from the ferocity of the elements.

4. A train passenger saw a woman waving for help. It was a hiker who’d been missing.

An injured hiker near Silverton, Colo., was rescued earlier this month after a train passenger spotted her from the window. She was frantically waving on the other side of a river, having just spent two days trapped in the wilderness with a broken leg.

The rider alerted the crew of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge diesel engine №461, according to the San Juan County Office of Emergency Management. They then notified the train inspector, Delton Henry, who was in a motor car behind them.

5. Same-sex marriage is now legal in all of Mexico’s states

Lawmakers in the state of Tamaulipas voted Wednesday night to legalize same-sex marriages, becoming the last of Mexico’s 32 states to authorize such unions.

The measure to amend the state’s Civil Code passed with 23 votes in favor, 12 against and two abstentions, setting off cheers of “Yes, we can!” from supporters of the change.

6. North Expedition finds cache of cameras on remote Yukon glacier, 85 years after mountaineer left them behind

A DeVry “lunchbox” camera left behind on Mount Lucania in 1937. An expedition team recently uncovered the camera along with other artifacts stashed by legendary mountaineer Bradford Washburn 85 years ago

The team recovered a portion of Washburn’s cherished aerial F-8 camera — a format he would later become known for worldwide — as well as two motion picture cameras and old climbing gear, tents and cooking items. (That included part of a T-bone steak, Post noted — “They were eating pretty well out there, it appeared.”)

“It was just the full array of gear from what they were using in the 1930s,” said Post, a professional skier and mountain explorer.

7. Ray of joy: Nasa captures image of the sun ‘smiling’

That’s it for this week. If you liked this post you can support this newsletter with a small kofi donation:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

#best news of last week

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thelustybraavosimaid · 3 years ago

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Some thoughts:

I often see this passage being used as an example of Jonsa:

"Ser Sweetrobin," Lord Robert said, and Alayne knew that she dare not wait for Mya to return. She helped the boy dismount, and hand in hand they walked out onto the bare stone saddle, their cloaks snapping and flapping behind them. All around was empty air and sky, the ground falling away sharply to either side. There was ice underfoot, and broken stones just waiting to turn an ankle, and the wind was howling fiercely. It sounds like a wolf, thought Sansa. A ghost wolf, big as mountains. (Alayne II, AFfC)

However, often in George's writing is the wind described as "howling like a wolf." A few examples:

"It was the cold," Gared said with iron certainty. "I saw men freeze last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. (Prologue, AGoT)

Above Snow, the wind was a living thing, howling around them like a wolf in the waste, then falling off to nothing as if to lure them into complacency. (Catelyn VI, AGoT)

He bewitched them, Alayne thought as she lay abed that night listening to the wind howl outside her windows. She could not have said where the suspicion came from, but once it crossed her mind it would not let her sleep. She tossed and turned, worrying at it like a dog at some old bone. Finally, she rose and dressed herself, leaving Gretchel to her dreams. (Alayne I, AFfC)

That night the wind was howling almost like a wolf and there were some real wolves off to the west giving it lessons. (Arya VIII, ASoS)

Meera's gloved hand tightened around the shaft of her frog spear. "Who sent you? Who is this three-eyed crow?"

"A friend. Dreamer, wizard, call him what you will. The last greenseer." The longhall's wooden door banged open. Outside, the night wind howled, bleak and black. The trees were full of ravens, screaming. Coldhands did not move. (Bran I, ADwD)

The only one who actually hears a wolf's howl is Daenerys, literally in the same book and within a few chapters of Jon receiving his Ides of Marsh:

Off in the distance, a wolf howled. The sound made her feel sad and lonely, but no less hungry. (Daenerys X, ADwD)

Another reasoning for Jonsa is this passage:

Drifting snowflakes brushed her face as light as lover's kisses, and melted on her cheeks. At the center of the garden, beside the statue of the weeping woman that lay broken and half-buried on the ground, she turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes. She could feel the snow on her lashes, taste it on her lips. It was the taste of Winterfell. The taste of innocence. The taste of dreams. (Sansa VII, ASoS)

These descriptions are exceptionally similar to Theon's:

Outside the snow was coming down so heavily that Theon could not see more than three feet ahead of him. He found himself alone in a white wilderness, walls of snow looming up to either side of him chest high. When he raised his head, the snowflakes brushed his cheeks like cold soft kisses. He could hear the sound of music from the hall behind him. A soft song now, and sad. For a moment he felt almost at peace. (A Ghost in Winterfell, ADwD)

Jon/Theon confirmed lmao? (What would that pairing be called? Simply Theon? Jeon?)

But seriously, funnily enough, Theon once had dreams that he would marry Sansa. So Theonsa mfn confirmed:

Arya Underfoot, he almost said. Arya Horseface. Robb's younger sister, brown-haired, long-faced, skinny as a stick, always dirty. Sansa was the pretty one. He remembered a time when he had thought that Lord Eddard Stark might marry him to Sansa and claim him for a son, but that had only been a child's fancy. (Reek I, ADwD)

The only Sansa pairing George really had confirmed in an interview was SanSan, where he admitted that he was playing around with it in the books, that "there was something there," and has SanSan artwork on his wall in his house so 💀💀

#anti jonsa #anti jonsa stans

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luna-writes-stuff · 3 years ago

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Chapter XV

A Kili X OC fanfic

Previous chapter // Next chapter

Tw: Arachnophobia (mention of spiders, not yet real spiders), description of phobia, not a simple fear. Raewyn swears. Dwalin being a bitch (instead of Thorin). References to a panic attack (thanks to fear)

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Every badass character needs a unreasonable fear to make them more human….right?

(deleting this gif as we speak. fucking hate these arachnid demons)

"The Elven Gate." Gandalf announced, stepping off of his horse.

The forest did not appear as anything Raewyn had expected. And she had expected a lot of things. Yet none of them came close to what she saw in front of her. It seemed as if the top of the trees had been melted off, the branches close to falling off as the once green grass had turned into a somewhat swamp-like design. An immediate wave of discomfort washed over her. Bilbo visibly shivered in front of her, having noticed the distressing feeling too.

"Here lies our path through Mirkwood." The wizard continued.

Mirkwood; a fitting name for a forest this ill. Raewyn remembered the tales of the Great Greenwood, and she knew how the people had begun to change the name over time, but she had thought it was merely a hyperbole. But it seemed as though it wasn't.

"No sign of the orcs." Dwalin mentioned. "We have luck on our side."

Gandalf gazed towards the horizon, spotting Beorn scouting the area, but not looking quite alarmed yet.

"Set the ponies loose." He concluded. "Let them return to their master."

And so the company did. The dwarves began to dismount the ponies, taking off their baggage as they gently removed the reins. Raewyn was quick to loosen her pony, setting it out into the wilderness.

"This forest feels sick, as if a disease lies upon it." Bilbo remarked, speaking Raewyn's unspoken worries. "Is there no way around?"

"Not unless we go two hundred miles north. Or twice that distance south." The wizard explained, gesturing towards the line of trees.

And with those words, Gandalf walked towards the gate, as if inspecting its structure.

"What is he doing?" Bilbo whispered to Raewyn, but all the ranger could do was shrug, oblivious to the actions of the man she spent her childhood traveling with.

"How's your leg?" Fili interrupted, nearing the pair as he secured the knives around his body.

"Better." Raewyn answered curtly. When the blond dwarf raised his eyebrows at her, she let out a sigh, nodding her head towards the injured leg.

"It's obvious there's a wound there, but at least I can walk again." She tried to soothe.

"And your hand?" The dwarf went on. Raewyn shot him a nasty look, not used to the sudden fuss around her, and - in all honesty - it was bothering her. She could manage easily. They shouldn't be worried about the state of pain she was in.

"Nothing I can't handle." She spoke, flexing her hand slightly, the leather around it moving with her.

"Not my horse!" Gandalf suddenly called, running to Nori who was about to finish unsaddling his horse. "I need it."

Both Raewyn and Bilbo frowned at his words, the pair simultaneously stepping closer to him.

"You're not leaving us?" The hobbit wondered, nearly offended.

"Where are you going?" The ranger asked shortly after, not giving Gandalf the time to answer Bilbo's question.

"I would not do this unless I had to." The wizard spoke. "And I fear more pressing matters have come upon me."

She scoffed at his answer, shaking her head. Before she could protest at him, the wizard spoke up again.

"You've changed, Bilbo Baggins. You're not the same hobbit as the one who left the Shire."

Though Bilbo seemed flattered at the words, confliction ran through his head. He turned around quickly, but upon finding no one in ear shot beside the grey pilgrim and the Asha, he turned back to his company.

"I was going to tell you... I found something in the Goblin tunnels." He stuttered out, his hand reaching inside his pocket, a gesture that did not go unnoticed by the two travelers.

"Found what?" Gandalf pressed, a smile on his face. "What did you find?"

Bilbo's fumbling seemed to intesify, before it stopped all of the sudden. He took another look towards Raewyn and Gandalf, but glanced back at the ground upon finding both their eyes on him.

"My courage." The hobbit muttered, letting go of the ring that had fallen into his reach.

Gandalf's eyes lingered on Bilbo's pocket, but unlike Raewyn, he seemed to understand what was happening. And he decided to cover for the poor creature.

"Good." He praised. "Well, that's good. You'll need it."

With a final nod, he walked away from the two, nearing Thorin. But Raewyn was nowhere near done with him yet, stumbling after his strides, trying to get to his horse before he could.

"I'll be waiting for you at the overlook, before the slopes of Erebor." Gandalf announced to Thorin. "Keep the map and key safe. Do not enter that mountain without me."

A last sigh escaped his mouth, noticing the familiar figure of the ranger approaching him. "This is not the Greenwood of old. The very air of the forest is heavy with illusion. It will seek to enter you mind and lead you astray."

Now, Raewyn stood beside the king, possibly the closest they've ever stood next to each other, but neither of them seemed to notice.

"Will you answer me?" She huffed, pulling on Gandalf's sleeve, giving him a demanding and intimidating look. One that nearly made Bilbo shrink in his shoes. And he had not been the one receiving it.

"Where I go does not concern you now, Raewyn." The wizard spoke, his words coming out as calming as possible, but it did nothing to soothe the Asha's mind.

"I think it is, since you were the one supposed to be leading us to this mountain, yet you are now leaving without any warning." She argued.

"Thorin will do well to lead the group. He will know where to go." The wizard shook off, ignoring her question.

"Gandalf, why must you leave?" Raewyn persisted, now growing more worried about his cryptic words, instead of growing angry.

"Keep Bilbo safe." The wizard continued. "And stay brave, Raewyn."

With those words, he wheels his horse once more, looking back towards the company, where Raewyn still stood aghast.

"No matter what may come, stay on the path!" He announced, before riding off, back to Beorn's house.

"Gandalf!" Raewyn shouted, already taking off after his horse, no longer worried. A hand grabbed the back of her armor, the hold not strong enough to make her stop, but it was enough to let her know someone was trying to halt her.

"Don't run off too, please." Bilbo pleaded, dropping his hand from Raewyn the second she looked at the hobbit. The ranger frowned at her friend, taking a hopeless look towards Gandalf, who had nearly been out of sight.

"Stay brave..." Raewyn mumbled, shaking her head. "Stay brave?" She repeated incredulously, throwing her hands up in frustration. "What kind of advice is that? Stay brave?"

"Raewyn?" Bilbo tried, doing his best to calm the ranger down.

"Oh yes, Raewyn. You stay brave. I will leave you with these dwarves while I run off to have a drink with my wizard friends. You got this, right?" She mocked, glaring at the disappearing form of Gandalf.

When she looked back at the company, she saw Bilbo looking at her, his eyebrows raised in wonder, both as if questioning her if she was again and in surprise by her sudden mocking talk.

"Sorry." She whispered, looking back at the company, half of which had been staring at her while the other half was busy inspecting the gate.

"Come on." Thorin decided to speak up. "We must reach the mountain before the sun sets on Durin's day."

"Durin's day." Dwalin confirmed, making other dwarves hum in agreement.

"What garbage advice is that?" The ranger mumbled to herself, still stuck on Gandalf's words.

"Let's go!" The bigger dwarf continued, walking to his king, urging him to lead the way.

"This is our one chance to find the hidden door." Thorin explained, walking onto the path, looking behind him to make sure everyone was following him. And even though Raewyn seemed to follow, her head was elsewhere. Even he could see that. But for once, he decided to shut up about it.

"He's doing this to teach me some kind of lesson." She muttered, mindlessly following the group, Bilbo right at her side. "What do I look like? Four?"

"The path goes this way." The leader announced, but it went unheard by the Asha, who just walked behind the dwarves in front of her.

"Oh sure, stay brave. Yes." She mimicked Gandalf. "Because you obviously did not throw yourself at the asshole that terrorizes Middle-Earth with his stupid oversized dog a few days and almost got yourself killed. Obviously that wasn't brave enough."

"Raewyn?" The hobbit coaxed, looking up slightly to face his friend.

"What, Bilbo?" She demanded harshly, giving him an accusing look, forgetting the fact that the hobbit was her friend, and not her enemy. Bilbo winced at her tone, taking a step back, simultaneously getting closer to the Durin siblings behind them. Upon noticing his shrinking under her gaze, she closed her eyes tightly, unclenching her hands, which had unconsciously balled up into fists.

"I'm sorry." She apologized, trying to soften her gaze. "I'm afraid I'm a bit frustrated."

"A bit?" Kili decided to joke, but it did not fall into the right ears.

"Test me again, Kili, and I will tie you to one of these trees and leave you here until I find the will to travel by this dreadful forest once more." Raewyn threatened, narrowing her eyes at the dwarf, who seemed to quiet down at her words.

"Maybe you should take a deep breath." Fili tried.

"Do you want to end up chained next to your brother?" Raewyn retaliated. "I'm sure you'd make an amazing meal for the wargs. I dare say they'd love dwarven royalty."

"Asha." Thorin warned from the front of the group, no longer ignoring the argument going on in the back.

"Oakenshield." Raewyn shot back, glaring daggers at the dwarf.

"Raewyn." Bilbo spoke again, his voice now persistent, as if he was no longer talking to the dangerous ranger he met weeks prior. The woman looked down at the hobbit, the daggers from her eyes slowly disappearing again. She would not murder company members in front of the hobbit, she had promised herself that the moment they met.

"Gandalf hasn't even been gone for a minute and she already lashes out." Dwalin mumbled, as if Raewyn could not hear him. But she did. And just like that, her hostility was back.

"You want to reconsider these words, sir I-scowl-a-lot?" She scowled, not intimidated by the appearance of the obviously larger dwarf.

"What will you do?" He taunted.

The ranger let out a mocking laugh at his words, her hands already reaching towards her daggers. And that was all it took for Bilbo to back up again, wandering closer towards Fili. She had already unsheathed a dagger when Kili launched himself at her, ripping the dagger from her hand.

"Raewyn! Hey!" He scolded, shooting her a disapproving look. A look with which Raewyn did not quite know what to do.

"Let them be." The dwarf insisted, turning the dagger in his hand, holding the blade as he offered the handle to her. Raewyn glanced at his hand, before meeting with his eyes one more. With a scoff, she accepted the dagger back, sheathing it back around his belt, taking a last nasty look towards the two dwarves behind Kili.

"We move on." Thorin declared, turning back around as he resumed to lead the group.

The rest of the journey had been awfully quiet. Though Gandalf's words had died on Raewyn's mind, her agitation with Dwalin had not. The entire trip, he kept looking back, making sure the ranger did not do anything stupid, and it was bothering her to no end. Thorin had thankfully been quiet as well, so she only had one dwarf to glare at.

Kili had now been walking beside her instead of Bilbo, casting occasional glances towards Raewyn's hand, which seemed to sway dangerously close to her daggers every so often. And as he noticed it, he would nudge her side slightly, trying to point out something in the forest to get her mind off of Dwalin's silent threats, but after a while "look at the shape of that tree" became a repeating sentence, and no longer caught her attention.

That was, until the dwarf suddenly stopped, holding a hand in front of the ranger, making her stop too. Before she could speak a word, Kili held a finger to his lips, pointing towards something in the distance. Raewyn's eyes followed the line of his finger, until it landed on a beautiful, white buck. The dwarf dared to risk a short look to Raewyn, but as he saw her intrigued eyes, he proudly looked back at the animal, glad to have finally seen something to distract her.

But the distraction was over before anyone could relish in the sight of the animal, a stray arrow lodging into the tree next to it, scaring the creature off. Thorin. Of course.

"Move on." He mumbled, not looking at his company, instead focusing on the road before him.

As the dwarves trekked on, the air seemed to grow thicker. The trees appeared darker and the sun had seemed to disappear altogether. The path they walked kept shrinking with every step they took, the plants finding their way onto the road, growing in between the stones.

"This way." Dwalin instructed, using his hammer as a broom, trying to find the tracks.

"Air. I need air." Bofur complained, shaking his head in tiredness.

"My head, it's spinning." Oin agreed.

Raewyn blinked her eyes tightly, ignoring the protests in her head, taking a look at Kili. Upon noticing his same tired expression, she glanced behind her, seeing Fili and Bilbo reluctantly following the company. But as her eyes wandered around, a hand made contact with her shoulder, pulling her back, the movement startling her.

"What's happening?" One dwarf shouted. When the ranger gazed at the company, she noticed they had stopped walking. And that she would have been walking into Ori, had Kili not pulled her back.

"Keep moving!" Thorin commanded. "Nori, why have we stopped?"

"The path.... it's disappeared." The said dwarf spoke incredulously.

"What's going on?" Dwalin grumbled, pushing his kin to the side as to see the front of the row.

"We've lost the path!" Oin revealed once more.

"Then find it!" Raewyn shouted from the back, not excited with their words.

And then she saw it. The huge cliff in front of them. A cliff in a forest? She did not even know they had climbed up. But she would have noticed it, right?

"Find it. All of you look." Thorin urged. "Look for the path!"

Sighs ran through the company as they wandered back, fatigue settling in even more with the weight of losing their tracks. And to add to the shelves, the dwarves began to walk off of the path, now heedlessly looking for some sort of trail back to their road. Raewyn automatically followed the group, silently hoping to be out of this awful forest as quick as possible.

And then her heart stopped.

In front of her, hanging from tree to tree, was a spider web. But not the one where house spiders live. No; these were giant spider webs. As if Ungoliant herself had come back from the dead and wandered the forest. The stories she grew up suddenly delivered shivers to her spine. Absentmindedly, the ranger took a step back, stumbling into Bilbo, who fell over behind her.

"What's wrong?" Fili asked, helping the hobbit up. Kili followed Raewyn's gaze, and quickly came face to face with the giant webs.

"That's going to be a problem." He mumbled, turning back to the Asha, who had yet to speak up.

"We shouldn't be here." She whispered. "We shouldn't be here!" She now yelled, drawing the attention of the company. "We haven't walked here. The path is not here."

"Yes, we have been." Dori countered.

"No, no. We surely haven't." Raewyn shot back. "I think I would remember."

"I've seen this turn before." Bofur now agreed.

"You haven't, trust me." The ranger assured, shaking her head in protest. "We should turn back. Go back to the path we just left. Maybe we missed a turn."

"We have walked here before." Thorin now spoke. "We passed this rock earlier. We are on the right path."

Multiple dwarves loudly agreed, ignoring Raewyn's words. Before she could utter another word, the group began moving again. None, but the three in the back noticed Raewyn frozen to the ground.

"Come on." Kili persuaded quietly.

"No." Raewyn shook her head, taking another step back. Bilbo was quick to move this time, letting the ranger pass.

"Raewyn, please." The dwarf continued. "We'll lose the group otherwise."

Again, she violently shook her head, looking around in paranoia. The thoughts about what hid in these forest suddenly began to loom over her, scaring her to no end. Orcs, trolls, goblins and wargs she could handle, but nothing feared her more than the idea of the creatures that wandered here. She desperately tried to blink the thoughts away, yet as she looked at the giant webs again, she let out a short yelp. A sound that surprised all four of them.

An arm suddenly came into her vision, ripping her out of her thoughts.

"They won't find us if we're quiet." Kili offered, nudging his arm towards her again. Raewyn stared up at him, a new form of fear clouding her eyes. One that Kili absolutely despised to see.

"We have to walk. Thorin will leave us otherwise. We won't stand a chance if it's merely the four of us." He gently explained, taking his time, while Fili and Bilbo began walking towards the company slowly, their eyes still on the two left behind.

Conflict ran through her head. She knew Kili was right, but she absolutely did not want to do this. Not even in her dreams. Not for a million gold pieces.

"Please." The dwarf pleaded, gesturing towards his arm once more.

Raewyn let out a heavy sigh, looking down at her hands. If she was on her own, she was sure to be lost. Her best option was to stick with Kili for the moment.

So, with shaking hands, she reached for his arm, clinging onto it as if she would not care who saw. Her body moved closer to Kili's, trying to find some way of grounding. The two of them slowly began to walk, the weight in Raewyn's feet heavier than it had ever been. As if every step was guiding her towards her death and she was aware of it. And that was exactly what it felt like.

She dared to risk a look forward, finding Bilbo an Fili now back at the company. Bilbo's hand began to reach for one of the webs, and Raewyn's heart skipped at the sight.

"Bilbo don't touch that!" She warned, but the hobbit had already touched the fabric, the vibrations sending themselves through the entire forest. Raewyn closed her eyes tightly, unconsciously resting her head against Kili's shoulder, trying to shield herself from reality.

"Oh, you absolute fool." She whispered, shaking her shoulder as unpleasant shivers ran down her back, goosebumps forming on her skin.

"Look!" Ori spoke wearily, picking up something from the ground.

"A tobacco pouch." Bofur cheered. "There's dwarves in these woods."

Raewyn slowly opened her eyes at the sound, tilting her head upright again. She noticed the hatted dwarf taking the pouch from the youngest, looking at it with much interest.

"Dwarves from the Blue Mountains, no less. This is exactly the same as mine."

Bilbo huffed at his remark, and Raewyn would have too, had it not been for the new found fear settling inside her heart.

"Because it is yours." The hobbit sighed. "You understand? We're going in circles. We are lost!"

"Oh, no." Raewyn mumbled, looking around as if she was trying to find something, oblivious to the fact her hands had been clinging around Kili's arms even tighter.

"I told you we had walked here before." Thorin announced, looking at the ranger, who was clinging onto his nephew, but she paid him no heed. She had more pressing matters on her mind. And even to Thorin, it was obvious something was scaring her. But fatigue had clouded his mind, not feeling the energy to taunt her right now.

"We're not lost." Dwalin denied. "We keep heading east."

"But which way is east? We've lost the sun." Oin protested.

Bickering settled amongst the company again, disagreements heard throughout the forest.

"You said we'd be quiet." Raewyn whispered, shaking her head. "Shut up!" She ordered the company, but her shouts turned into whispers compared to the volume of the group.

The ranger tried stepping back again, but Kili wouldn't budge, forcing her to stay in one place.

"Kili, please." She breathed, trying to pull him along.

"They won't find us." He began to soothe, but it did not work. Not to the state of panic Raewyn had now found herself in.

She could no longer hear Bilbo's announcement, or the fact he decided to climb onto a tree. She was desperately trying to get away, but she could not bring herself to let go of Kili. He would be killed off like the rest. She could not let that happen.

"Spiders are natural hunters." She whispered. "They know we're here."

Her heart began to speed up rapidly as she began to gain the feeling of being watched. She forced herself to believe that it was simply her paranoia and the pressure on her lungs, and not the fact that something was actually out there. She shot a look towards Thorin, for once hoping he was the one looking at her. Anyone but the thing she thought it to be. But it appeared as if her hope was forfeit, for Thorin was looking amongst his kin. A dreadful feeling entered Raewyn's system.

He felt it too. It wasn't paranoia.

Something was there.

"Kili." She mumbled urgently, tugging on his sleeve, looking into his eyes.

"It's okay." He tried.

"No." She whispered. "No, it's not. They're here."

Fresh tears of fear spilled over her cheeks, and Kili's heart sank at the sight. His free hand ran to her face, trying to wipe away the droplets. But all it seemed to do was worsen Raewyn's state. Her breathing came out rapid, though she tried to maintain the eye contact with Kili. She'd rather look at him than her surroundings at the moment.

"Enough!" Thorin shouted. "Quiet! All of you!"

That seemed to silent the crowd. Everything that was heard was the heavy breathing of the dwarf and the distant hiccups of Raewyn, who was trapped in her own world. She continued to look into Kili's eyes, trying to not let her gaze linger elsewhere. But she couldn't.

For a moment, she thought her heart had stopped right there, right then.

Not once had she held the feeling stuck in her body now. The fear surging through her body had never been this bad before. Because, as much as she wanted to continue looking at Kili, right above him, she saw that what she dreaded most.

Above him, hung the leg of something that could never be described as natural. It was terrifying to her.

She swallowed thickly, freezing in Kili's hold.

"We're being watched."

——

Taglist: @errruvande @m-sterboggins @radbarbariancupcake @deathofafangirl01 @writingawaymylife @chaoticpaintsplatter @spidergirla5 @justnerdystuffs @fallenangeloflight @the-cranck-hobbit

#starcrossed losers #tolkien #kili x reader #the hobbit #fili and kili #kili durin #kili #kili imagine #thorin oakenshield #kili x oc #bilbo baggins #gandalf the grey #desolation of smaug #raeli #raewyn supremacy #kili x raewyn #raewyn asha

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pillage-and-lute · 4 years ago

Text

The Stars Are Not Wanted Now

Was this among my list of WIPs I posted recently? No. Not at all. Because it popped into my head fully formed and hurt my feelings so I decided to make it everyone’s problem.

TW: Believed character death (not real) ,grief, discussions of hallucinations.

Title cheerfully stolen from W. H. Auden’s Funeral Blues

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It took Geralt almost an hour to realize what he’d done. He’d sat and stewed and wished his tearducts would give him more catharsis than a handful of small drops. He wanted to sob, really cry, eyes red and face wet, but his body let him down. He stared for a while at the dirt. At the footprints in the dirt.

They weren’t his. They were from Jaskier’s stupid shiny boots. Impractical boots that gave him blisters, but he’d only had enough money for one pair and he needed ‘court boots’ apparently. And he was walking down the mountain in those silly boots and a doublet that wouldn’t keep him warm as the mountain air chilled with night and Geralt had just let him go. Geralt had made him go. He didn’t have any gear, they shared gear and Geralt had made him leave.

Geralt’s slow, witcher heart beat double time as he realized he might have murdered his bard.

Roach huffed at him for being gone so long but he shushed her and loaded her up as quickly as he could. He needed her, and Jaskier needed him.

Geralt followed the footprints like a bloodhound, eyes and senses searching, but his mind wandered behind. Their relationship was such an odd one, Jaskier always traveling ahead or staying behind. Bards needed audiences and witchers needed wilderness, but they were never more than a few days from eachother, and every town Geralt went into he could be sure Jaskier was there. There had been exceptions of course, when bardic festivals or court appointments swayed Jaskier’s path, but he always came back. It was down to the separate nature of Geralt’s Path, with the capital P, and Jaskier’s path. Bards traveled between towns, straight shots, rarely sleeping rough, so his bard didn’t need gear, and it would only slow him down. Witchers wandered, fighting a monster here, collecting potion ingredients there, and coming to towns only for contracts and coin.

Geralt’s eyes scanned every inch of the track, never missing the boot prints, noting the depth of them, the scent of sadness lingering. A human would have missed the single, red thread caught on a bush, the shade of Jaskier’s stupid, too thin doublet. Geralt’s fingers plucked it from a branch.

He remembered how, in the first years of their acquaintance, he’d watched the bard walk away each time, believing he’d never see him again. But Jaskier had always come back. He’d circle around or wait in the next tiny village, playing ditties for barmaids and he’d greet Geralt with a smile that struck something sensitive and previously well protected in Geralt’s chest. Slowly Geralt had started expecting Jaskier’s presence and those treasured smiles.

It had come with detriments, that was true, Jaskier talked so much Geralt wondered how he found the air and he was foppish and disinclined to wake before noon. It was just that, so slowly that Geralt didn’t know how it had happened, those faults found favor in Geralt’s eyes.

And now he’d told Jaskier he was a burden. That he wanted him gone. As Geralt had grown to treasure his bard he’d stopped expecting Jaskier would leave him and started fearing he would instead. Geralt had just been the creator of his own nightmares, doing to their friendship what wind, weather, time, and age could not.

That was the thing, Geralt thought as his eyes scanned the trail, near invisible in the dark. Age. Jaskier was forty at least. Crow’s feet, Yennefer had said. He would have to leave Geralt sooner or later, settle in some city and see him only if Geralt sought him out. The impending end to their precious routine rolled Geralt’s stomach and took over his thoughts. Now, though, well, how weak was a forty year old human? Strong enough to go down the mountain in the dark? It seemed so, which was frustrating. Geralt was going as fast as he could while tracking Jaskier’s every footstep, but even his magical eyes only saw so much in total darkness. Jaskier was hiking blind.

A new scent drifted to Geralt’s nose. Wolf. A mixture of fur and wilderness and wet dog.

And blood.

Geralt let go of Roach’s reigns, sprinting as best he could, letting his nose lead him. He could smell blood. He followed it into the trees, crashing through the brush, careless of the briars that tore at him. He didn’t even smell his own blood, it didn’t matter, he didn’t care. All his senses narrowed down to the smell of Jaskier’s blood and...

and his eyes saw red. a torn doublet,

Geralt lurched forward, hoping, praying that it didn’t mean what he knew it meant. He clutched the rags to him and he stumbled. His foot hit something.

A boot. A stupid, shiny boot and it reeked of blood. Geralt let it fall from numb fingers. A tiny beam of moonlight struggled down, gleaming dully off of leather. Geralt knelt before the instrument case, smelling blood on the strap, feeling the contours of it. When he lifted it it was heavy. Jaskier had died alone on a vicious mountainside, devoid of his beautiful doublet and his lute.

Geralt felt a puff of breath on the back of his head. Roach had followed after him, picking her way through the forest in the wake of his mad dash. He pressed his face into her mane and finally felt tears flood his cheeks. She settled beside him when he no longer had enough water to cry and he just stayed there, knelt between tree roots and bushes, cradling the lute and a scrap of doublet that still smelled like chamomile.

He didn’t move until dawn.

When the runny light of morning came Geralt just moved on. Whatever had happened to Jaskier’s body, he couldn’t see it. Of course the bard deserved a proper burial, and Geralt cursed his weakness all the way down the mountain, but there mightn’t be much of Jaskier left to find. Geralt felt sure that if he saw his friend like that he’d simply lay down next to him and die too.

He already felt like he might.

Geralt moved on, physically. He moved around, slinging Jaskier’s lute up with his saddlebags. He wandered between towns and fought monsters, going north in a roundabout way. Going home.

Kaer Morhen was going to be cold that year, it always was, and Jaskier was never there, but without the hope of Jaskier’s smile in the spring the cold seemed to have taken residence in his soul.

Geralt wasn’t eating well. He couldn’t bring himself to do more than chew a few pieces of dried meat. He drank a lot and didn’t sleep and took too many risks when fighting monsters. It was foolish, he knew, it was how witchers died, getting sloppy like that. He did it anyway. And on the rare nights he did sleep, he clutched the tattered piece of doublet. The chamomile scent was slowly fading and Geralt feared when it left entirely. It and the doublet were all he had.

In light of all of this, Geralt wasn’t that surprised when he finally lost it. He heard music in a tavern and it sounded like Jaskier. Every bard sounded like Jaskier now. There were no instruments, just an achingly familiar voice. Of course, Geralt still had the lute.

When he walked into the tavern and saw a bard turn, saw Jaskier smile wide at him, Geralt didn’t even flinch. His medallion was still on his chest. This was no ghost, he had simply lost his mind.

Geralt sat at the bar without looking away from the apparition, and his heart swelled as it sauntered towards him. Jaskier looked so lifelike, so alive. There wasn’t a scratch on him. He was exactly the bard Geralt remebered, no crows feet to be seen. He was dressed in blue, not unlike when they had first met. Geralt’s heart twisted as he remebered all things he’d said, and, even worse, the things he hadn’t. His heart was thundering in his ears, blood rushing, everything else tuned out. It didn’t matter that Geralt had gone crazy, Jaskier was here and so beautiful and Geralt loved him so much that it hurt.

“Mind if I join you?” The hallucination said. Geralt just stared. He wasn’t going to talk to it, there were enough rumors about witchers without the townsfolk knowing he was crazy.

“C’mon, now, Geralt,” the faux Jaskier said. “You wouldn’t keep a man with bread in his pants waiting.”

Geralt just stared as the bard pulled a half-eaten roll from his pocket and winked. The hallucination stopped smiling, shoulders slumping. “I’ll go,” it said.

“Stay,” Geralt whipsered immediately. He was alright with going crazy because this last bit of comfort was so tantalizing, so real Geralt could almost reach out and touch. “Please,” he said, even quieter. “I’m sorry.”

Jaskier beamed and sat and ate and Geralt wondered idly who the bartender served in place of the man he knew couldn’t be there.

Geralt had thought the hallucination would be gone in the morning, but the vision of Jaskier was standing by Roach the next day, a travel bag over one shoulder. Okay, Geralt’s brain was in it for the long haul. Fine, but there had to be rules. That momentary weakness last night couldn’t happen again. He needed to get to Kaer Morhen soon if he wanted to beat the snows and there could be no distractions. So, no talking to the bard.

It was very hard not to talk to the hallucination. It traipsed and danced and prodded and teased, but when it got not even a hum in response the exhuberance dimmed. That was horrible. Geralt didn’t need the reminder that he’d hurt Jaskier’s feelings, he’d already killed him. The proof was walking right beside him.

Something in Geralt felt healed, though. It was why he didn’t try to fix this. Having Jaskier, even if it wasn’t real, was nice. He wondered what would happen if he reached out and kissed the bard. It was his hallucination after all. The thought, though, that he would reach out to Jaskier, who looked so real and alive, and feel nothing but air....Geralt would rather go through the trials again. It would be like losing Jaskier all over.

One night, when the hallucination reached out for the instrument strung on Roach’s saddle Geralt tensed. Some part of him believed that if this shade of Jaskier was reunited with his beloved lute he’d go, dissappear and leave Geralt all alone again. He didn’t, of course. This wasn’t a spirit, Jaskier wasn’t tied to this realm by the lute. He was a figment of Geralt’s tortured mind.

He played Toss a Coin and Her Sweet Kiss. As far as Geralt knew, Jaskier hadn’t finished the latter, but his imagination finished it anyway. It hurt to hear Jaskier singing about love unrequited, it was obviously about Yennefer but that...that wasn’t Geralt’s love. Geralt’s love had be eaten by a mountain. Red sky at dawning, Geralt had had enough of red. It didn’t put him in mind of Yennefer’s lips or of rubies or harpies or anything else, but Jaskier’s doublet, the scrap still hidden in Geralt’s bags, and some words. “See you around, Geralt”

The apparition continued to play, but Geralt turned his face away. Maybe this was torturing him for killing his only blessing.

At the crossroads of the northern mountains Geralt paused. He had been walking besde Roach, resting her for the trek up the Killer, with Jaskier’s lute across the saddlebags and his hallucination trailing along behind. This was where Jaskier always parted from him in the autumn, and the hallucination stepped forward, reaching toward the lute on Roach’s back. Geralt felt ice down his spine.

His hallucination was going to leave, of course it was, Geralt had never brought Jaskier to the keep, but to be there all winter without this small, fake comfort would kill him.

Geralt wrapped his hand around the lute strap, ready to pull it from the nonexistant fingers of his dead companion. “No,” he said.

He slung the lute over his shoulder and walked toward the Killer, praying that his failing mind wouldn’t choose now to become sane. To his relief, the hallucination followed.

On the way to the keep the vision changed into a warmer cloak and gloves and Geralt marveled at the detail. He wondered if he wasn’t dead himself, or asleep and simply dreaming, but he kept going up the trail, hearing the crunch of Jaskier’s shiny boots on frost. The vision talked and Geralt loved its voice and cursed the sound.

Night was falling when they reached the gate of the keep, and Geralt could see three lit lanterns, one for each brother and another for Vesemir. He paused, watching the lights come closer. He drew a breath, in through his nose, smelling pine and chamomile, out through his mouth. He couldn’t let the others know. He had to pretend that the ghost of all his regrets wasn’t doggin his steps. He flexed his fingers on the strap of the lute.

“Don’t just stand there, idiot, get in here, it’s cold,” Lambert called. Eskel smiled at Geralt and took Roach’s reigns, cooing to her as Geralt followed Vesemir and Lambert into the hall.

The fire was lit and warmth seeped into Geralt’s numb fingers and toes. Vesemir raised an eyebrow at him.

“Aren’t you going to introduce your guest?”

“What?”

“Vesemir shook his head. “Gods almighty, Geralt, I didn’t raise you boys with much manners but I thought you had some.” Then Vesemir turned to where the vision of Jaskier stood. “You Geralt’s bard?” he asked.

“There’s no one there, Ves,” Geralt hazarded.

Vesemir scowled at him. “Stupid prank to play on your old teacher. Never get an apprentice, lad, they’ll take your sanity and all your time.” That last part wasn’t aimed at Geralt. It was like someone had poured fire into Geralt’s veins.

“You can see him too?” he asked, quietly.

“What game are you--” Vesemir began, but Jaskier’s eyes had gone soft with understanding.

“Oh, Geralt,” he whispered.

Geralt stretched out one shaking hand and caressed his bard’s chilly cheek. Jaskier leaned his face into it and brushed a kiss against the palm. “I’m so sorry, dear heart,” he said, stepping closer to Geralt and wrapping his arms around his neck. “I should have known something was off.”

“You were dead,” Geralt said into the crook of his neck. “There was blood and your doublet was shredded, and you left your lute behind.”

“You truly thought...all this time? Geralt, I thought you knew,” Jaskier said, warm breath brushing Geralt’s ear. To his surprise, Geralt was crying, tiny, bare tears and shoulders shaking.

“Knew you were alive?”

“That too, but dearest, I’m a changeling, on the mountain I...I was so sad I just wanted to run away, and I was so tired, so I became a wolf.”

“Changeling...you’re fae?”

“Only half,” Jaskier said. “Or less, I’m not sure, but I can change into all the animal of the forest.”

“You never have.”

“It’s a painful feeling and you can’t play a lute with wings or paws but I was overwhelmed so I just...oh darling I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean for you to think--”

“I smelled blood.”

“My boots, you told me to buy the practical ones, but I didn’t listen.”

Geralt pressed his forehead against Jaskier’s and felt the warmth of him. “You’re alive,” he said. “You’re real and you’re alive.”

“You thought all this time I was a ghost?”

“A hallucination,” Geralt said. “A good dream, or torture for killing my...”

“Killing your what, darling?”

“Killing my love. Letting my greatest blessing be taken from my hands. I thought it was penance, my love.”

Jaskier leaned in and kissed Geralt softly. His lips were soft and perfect and too chapped to be a dream. His breath tasted like the jerky they’d eaten on the trail and it was real. When he pulled away Geralt leaned back in and kissed him again.

“Nothing I said on the mountain was true,” he mumbled against dry lips. “Not a word. I love you more than life itself.”

“I love you too,” Jaskier said. “And I won’t leave again, not even if you tell me to.”

“I won’t,” Geralt said. “Never again.”

#geraskier #the witcher #geralt of rivia #post mountain #jaskier #geralt x jaskier #angst with a happy ending #fake character death #tw: grief and mourning

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