#Songs of Our Ancestors

[rastronomicals]

11:46 PM EST November 5, 2024:

Steve Miller Band - "Song For Our Ancestors" From the Compilation album The Best Of 1968-1973 (September 24, 1990)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

★★★★★

Originally from Sailor, released in October 1968.

File under: San Franciscan Psychedelic Blues

--

  <500x500>

[bittsandpieces]

lockscreen, last photo I took, last movie I watched, and last song I listened to!

@vampireghoul thank you for the tag my friend!!

Aaaand I'll tag @sluttybeanbabe, @echosofthesidhe, @hold-me-close-and-bloodied, and @deputy-h if you guys would like to share 🩷🩷🩷

[wanderxdusk]

Chak Chel by Ganja White Knight

[fakevariety]

this play is a bit of a disaster guys 😭

[useless-catalanfacts]

Something very strange happened, and I think we need to have a talk about the way some people who don't know about Catalan culture misrepresent the Tió (our pre-Christian Christmas present-bringer, a log who poops presents 🪵🎁).

I have a relative who is a teacher in an adult school, she teaches Catalan language (mostly to immigrants). Some days ago, they were doing an activity about Catalan holidays, and two of her students said that Tió should be banned and that it's the worst thing they have ever heard. My relative was very shocked and asked why they could say such a thing (imagine, it's like saying Santa Claus should be banned in the USA). Their reasoning was that they completely misunderstood everything about it. These people are native Spanish speakers and assumed that the Catalan word "tió" (meaning "log" 🪵) means the same as the Spanish word "tío" (meaning "uncle"), even though both words are pronounced differently. They believed that the Tió represents a man and that we tell children to beat people up, so much until they poop themselves, threatening them to give us things. They said it promotes violence to children and that it's disgusting. Nothing further from the truth.

This is not an isolated incident because a few days ago I saw a post on Tumblr repeating this same mistake. I texted the person who posted it saying that it's not called "Poop Uncle" but "Christmas Log" and they said that this was what they were taught by their teacher (this person is from a different continent), and haven't taken down the post. I have also seen comments on Instagram repeating the same and making fun of how gross and violent it is.

The real meaning of Tió

The Log is a way of symbolically passing down our relation with nature. This is how the tradition works:

In early December, we get a log and bring him home. We take care of him: we keep him in a warm place, with a blanket over him, and we feed him things like orange/clementine peels and walnut shells. On Christmas day, all the family comes together. Children get wooden sticks and go get ready in another room, meanwhile adults place presents under the Log's blanket. Children come back and hit the Log while singing a song. There are many local variants of the song but they all come down to asking the Log to poop us good food. When they have finished singing the song, the children remove the blanket and discover the presents that the Log has pooped. Years ago (now this is only done by some farmer families in rural areas, but back in the day this was generalized), the Log was burned in the house's fireplace and its ashes were spread on the fields, believed to act as a magical fertilizer.

Notice what this whole "ritual" has been about: we take care of nature, nature takes care of us, we are part of a whole and there's no real difference between "nature" and "us" because we all give life to each other. After the winter rest, we wake up nature (the Tió) so it will bring fruits and light again.

We take a log from the forest and bring it home. We do this for the Winter Solstice because it's the time of the return of light and the rebirth of nature after the winter sleep, and wood symbolizes the most important things for human life: food, warmth and light. It's difficult for us to imagine nowadays because we are used to electricity, but for our ancestors who only had oil lamps, fire and candles, darkness was almost absolute for many hours in winter, and that's why the Winter Solstice was very important because it meant that light is coming back. We want something from the Log, his fire will allow us to cook, it will give us light, and keep us warm. So we offer him the same: we feed him (notice what we feed it, too: a kind of compost, which is complimentary to human food), we keep him warm, and we love him. Then, we hit him with sticks (mimicking the motion of cutting down a tree) and ask him to give us food, and he does. Then, our ancestors used to burn him for warmth and light, and then take him back to plants spreading his ashes so it will give life to the fields. Which in turn will give us food again, which we will poop and it will fertilize plants again. And it's a cycle that never ends, we're all part of a whole.

We give to the forests, the forests can grow with the remains that all living creatures leave on its ground: leafs, excrements, the remains of parts of our food like nuts and fruit peels. These things give life to the forest. And the forest gives life to us: gives us fruits and wood (=light and warmth). We take these things, and in return we give to forests once again.

Nowadays, the part about warmth and light is often lost to kids, but the part about food is still obvious, even if subconsciously. This is why the Log is not the horrible barbaric tradition that the "haha poop and violence" crowd would make you believe.

And don't get me wrong, it can still be funny! We're the first ones to make jokes about it. And you can, too! But don't spread false ideas: the Spanish word "uncle" appears nowhere near this tradition because it doesn't have anything to do with uncles nor with Spanish-speaking cultures. It's called the Christmas Log (Tió de Nadal, Soca de Nadal, Tronca de Nadal, Tizón de Nadal, etc depending on the area, all meaning "Christmas Log") and it's celebrated by the Catalan people and a part of the Occitan and Pyrenean Aragonese people. The word "poop" (as an imperative verb, as in "please poop for us") appears in the song, but not in the name.

I know that, now that misinformation has gone viral, a post won't stop it. But I hope at least people with a genuine interest can learn some more. By all means, keep laughing! Make all the memes you want! But knowing the whole story will give you understanding. And, please, don't argue in favour of banning our cultural practises, we've had enough of that for centuries.

[lycandrophile]

in 2024 i want to see more songs sung in t voices, more grown-out t scruff, more hairy tits and top surgery scars, more gay sex involving t dicks and pussies, more cutting each other’s hair when the hairdressers can’t get it right, more helping each other with t shots and sharing extra bottles of t gel, more passing down binders and post-surgery pillows like family heirlooms, more crackly laughs and excited voices that don’t know how loud they are now, more proudly showing off phallo scars like we show off top surgery scars, more teaching each other how to shave and tie a tie and all the other things our dads didn’t teach us, more sheer shirts over post-op chests, more skirts and short shorts on hairy legs, more moving the fuck out instead of living with transphobic parents, more breaking up with partners that wanted girlfriends not boyfriends, more pregnant dads, more twinks turned into otters and bears by t, more scars and binders on the beach, more romanticization of t dicks and meta dicks and phallo dicks, more rage and resistance against anyone who would try to rob us of our history or our ancestors, more pride in complex manhoods and queer masculinities, more getting louder every time someone tells us to shut up about the things that are important to us, more searching for transmasculinity in every piece of media and injecting it into anything that failed to consider us, more cuntboys and boygirls and transfags and butch dudes and transsexual men, more jumping headfirst into masculinizing transitions, more delighted reactions to realizing “holy shit i think i’m actually a guy”, more trans manhood and transmasculinity as force of nature and fundamental truth and fact of life that cannot under any circumstances be ignored.

[serpentface]

WE WERE ONCE GEESE

A story explaining the origins of the far southern Tamitiil people, and how they stay in their lands year-round through the harshness of the polar winter while other feathered creatures fly north.

---

Many, many lifetimes ago, our people were geese. We had short little legs and webbed feet to swim in the sea, beaks good only for eating grass, and wings that let us fly whenever and wherever needed.

This was very important to the rhythms of our life. Every winter, we would journey far north to distant lands where the days are warm and the snow never falls. Every summer, we would return to this land to mate and raise our children.

We built our summer homes on the high cliffs of a mountainside, safe from the foxes, cats, and humans who walked beneath. Our cliffs became great cities bustling with life. We carried up sweet grasses to eat and we fermented summer berries into wine to drink. Our men danced in the sky, not on land, and our women chased off hawks and gulls that threatened our children from above. We sang to the sun like we still do today, though our voices have changed.

Among our goose ancestors, there were twin brothers, Chliletiisma and Chlilalok.

Chliletiisma was a gentle and kindly soul, renowned among his people for his generosity and beautiful singing voice. Chlilalok was clever and tricky and generally regarded as a scoundrel. In spite of their differences, they were hatched from the very same egg, of one mind and one flesh. They could not bear to be separated. They shared a mate each season, and raised each other's children as their own.

One year, Chliletiisma and Chlilalok paired off with a woman named Amlitl, and they had a clutch of ten eggs that hatched into ten healthy boys. This was a cause for celebration, but the joy was short lived. The winter came early that year. The first icy winds blew in from the sea when many of the goose children were still in their baby down. And yet all the goose people felt the tugging in their veins. It was almost time to fly north to follow the departing sun.

The children of some families were ready for flight. Their fathers and mothers leapt from the cliffs, and so the goslings followed. They flew down, shakily at first, from the mountain to the sea. There they would gain strength for the great flight north.

The children of many families were not ready for flight. Their fathers and mothers leapt from the cliffs, and so the goslings followed. One by one, they would plummet to the ground, and there be eaten by the fox and the cat who waited beneath. Their parents circled above, but there was nothing more to be done. They left singing songs of mourning on the great flight north.

Eventually, the twins, Amlitl, and their children were the last family left on the cliffs. All ten of their children had hatched late, and they had none of their flight feathers. They would not stand a chance at surviving the departure from the nest, much less the journey north.

Amlitl despaired for her children, but she could not wait any longer.

“It’s over,” she said to her mates. “We need to leave them behind or we'll perish here ourselves. It's no good for us all to die."

There was harsh, brutal wisdom in her words, but few men can bear to hear such wisdom when it comes to their children. The twins refused, and Amlitl left without them.

And so Chliletiisma and Chlilalok stayed behind with their ten children after all the other geese left. The winds changed from a gnawing chill to a biting cold, and the first snows soon blanketed the lands. And still the children were not ready to fly. Even if they were, it would be too late. Not even the twins, with their powerful wings and warm feathers, could hope to survive the winter storms that would block their way.

The children shivered in their baby down, and the body heat of their fathers was scarcely enough to keep their crevice nest warm. Chliletiisma began to pluck feathers from his stomach to line their home and to warm his children against his bare flesh. The days grew ever darker, and their nest grew ever colder, and he plucked more and more of his feathers until he had nothing left to give.

One bitterly cold day, Chliletiisma's spirit was cut from his body and he fell dead. Chlilalok and his ten children sang songs of mourning all day, and they all tore feathers from their faces and tails in their grief.

The eldest moon Talit looked on the gentle twin with kindness, and so he snatched him up in his jaw and placed him into the sky. The star Chliletiisma still stands there today.

Chlilalok realized his children would have no hope of surviving the long winter if he just stayed in his nest. Chliletiisma's feathers were just warm enough to keep them from freezing, but they had little stored food remaining and all forage was buried beneath the snow.

There were other peoples who lived in this land throughout the winter, and those who seemed to thrive were the hunters. Chlilalok decided that he had to seek them out and learn from their ways. He packed a satchel with a little grass and a bladder of wine, said his goodbyes to his children, and flew out into the darkness.

He first came upon a young fox, who was chewing at an old rabbit carcass that was little more than bones. Even a little fox could be a dangerous foe, but would rarely face up against a full grown goose without the advantage of surprise. Chlilalok puffed himself up as big as he could and approached with a strut.

"Hail, cousin!" He said amicably.

"Hail, cousin." The fox said, with a curious tilt of her head. "What are you still doing around these parts?"

"My people have banished me from our winter home, I fear," Chlilalok said. "All a big misunderstanding, but it matters little now. I'm starved half to death, and here you are, healthy and strong. How do you survive the winter?"

The fox sat on her haunches and swished her long tail.

"Quite easily," she said. "Winter might be tough on you grass eaters, but I have the teeth of a hunter. I can eat anything I can kill."

She yawned, showing off her wide jaws full of small, wickedly sharp teeth.

"I hardly need them, though. I'm the best hunter there is. My legs carry me swifter then the wind, and I can sneak up on my prey silently enough that they never even see my teeth."

"…Like so," came a voice behind Chlilalok.

He turned his head, and there was another fox! She had crept up behind him without so much as making a sound. Outnumbered, even by these two young, inexperienced foxes, Chlilalok was not so confident. He had to think fast.

"Wait!" He said. "The two of you could certainly overpower me, but I won't go down without a fight. I could break those swift legs of yours with my wings, and then you won't be able to hunt at all."

"That would be a shame…" the first fox said.

"…But I think it's worth the risk," the second fox said, stepping closer.

"Hold on," Chlilalok said, and he turned his back to the foxes and pretended to rummage around in his satchel. Instead, he picked up a smooth white stone from the ground and presented it to the foxes.

"This is my only child, still in the egg. I will give it to you without a struggle if you let me go," he said.

"That is a mighty big egg…" said the first fox, licking her lips.

"…We'll take it," said the second fox.

Chlilalok, head bowed in a show of sorrow, placed the stone before them. The foxes fell upon it eagerly and shrieked as a few of their teeth broke against it. They fell to the ground, moaning and groaning, and Chlilalok swiftly grabbed up their teeth and flew away.

He next came upon a cat in his prime, prowling at the base of the mountain in search of any leftover gosling carcasses. The cat was the biggest creature around, and Chlilalok wasn't taking any chances. He fluttered up top of a large boulder, out of the mighty beast's reach.

"Hail, cousin!" He said from his safe distance.

"Hail." The cat said grumpily, annoyed at this clear mockery from a potential juicy meal. "What's a goose still doing around here? Why haven't you fled north with the rest of your cowardly people?"

"That's just the thing- my people are horrible cowards. It embarrasses me, frankly. I've stayed behind to learn teachings from far braver peoples such as yours."

"I can give you a few teachings right now if you come down from that rock," the cat said, impatiently twitching his long tail.

"I never said I wasn't a coward," Chlilalok replied. "I just have one question to ask. How do you survive the winter?"

The cat yawned and stretched, exposing his massive teeth and long, hooked claws.

“It’s easy. My fur keeps me warm, and I have plenty of options for food. My claws can kill anything that moves." He yawned and stretched again. "I'd be just fine without them, though. I’m the strongest beast that has ever lived.”

“The strongest ever?” Chlilalok said. “I don’t know about that. The first goose once lifted this very mountain and placed it here so my people would have a safe place to raise our babies. I’ve never heard of a cat accomplishing such a feat.”

The cat shook with laughter. “A goose? Lift this mountain? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“The stories are quite firm in this matter,” Chlilalok lied, “but if you’re truly stronger than even the first goose, pushing the mountain over will be no trouble for you.”

“You’re damn right it won't,” said the cat.

He hoisted himself up on his hind legs, and pushed at the mountainside with all his might.

“I think it’s starting to give,” he huffed, as he scrabbled and scrambled against unyielding stone.

The mountain, annoyed at this minor nuisance, sent a pile of rocks crashing down upon the cat. He yowled in pain from beneath the rocks, and Chlilalok quickly snatched a few of his claws and went on his way.

The cat found his way out eventually, but the rocks had bruised his skin and severed his tail from his body. Even today, his descendants bear the spots of his wounds and the tiny stump of his lost tail.

Finally, Chlilalok came upon an old human, sitting outside of his hut and whittling strange carvings into bone. The human was a large and fearsome creature that wore the cat's skin as his own, but his people mostly hunted and fished the sea and did not often trouble the geese.

Chlilalok approached with caution. "Hail, cousin!" he said.

"Hail, cousin," said the human. "You're certainly a strange sight in the dead of winter. What's keeping you here?"

"I injured my wing and my people had to leave me behind. It's been dreadful, and I've come to you for advice. How do you live through the winter?" he asked.

"Come to my hut and I will show you," the human answered.

Chlilalok nervously followed the human into his hut, and the answer soon became apparent. At the center, an oil lamp wicked with moss burned as warm and bright as sunlight.

"I stole fire from the sun long ago," said the human, shrugging off his catskin. "It burned off most of my fur, but that hardly matters. The fire keeps me warm on even the coldest days."

It was clearly true. The human was as ugly and naked as a baby sparrow without his furs, and yet he stood comfortably in the presence of the flames.

"…I don't truly need it though," the human continued. "My hands can carry weapons that put the cat's claws to shame. I can wear his furs and go out to catch my prey even in a blizzard."

He paused to scratch at his great, whiskery beard. "Though I'll admit, I've been unlucky in my hunts up until now. I think I'm just going to eat you."

Chlilalok thought quickly, and produced the bladder of wine he carried in his satchel.

“Cousin, if you’re going to eat me, at least be civil about it. I am your guest, after all,” Chlilalok said. “Why don’t we share a drink beforehand?”

The human could agree that some level of propriety to his unfortunate guest was warranted. He handed Chlilalok two of his great ivory cups and watched with curiosity as the goose poured the wine. The human had never tasted such a thing before, and took great pleasure in the way it calmed his mind and warmed his belly. He drank and drank until he flopped onto his back and fell asleep. Chlilalok then crept to the fire and carried a lit clump of moss away in his beak.

And so Chlilalok had taken the teeth of the fox, the claws of the cat, and the fire of the human. And he brought back the wisdom of valuing these gifts, for even the fiercest and strongest of peoples struggled in the winter, and their troubles were only deepened by foolishness and vanity.

But by the time he reached his nest, he was exhausted near to the point of death. Chlilalok taught his sons the use and wisdom of his three gifts, and then his spirit was cut from his body and he fell dead.

The eldest moon Talit looked on Chlilalok with admiration, and so he snatched him up in his jaw and placed him into the sky. The star Chlilalok still stands there today, right next to his twin.

The ten brothers took their father's teachings to heart. They donned the teeth of the fox and became like her, able to survive on the flesh of animals in the cold times when all plants die. They wore the claws of the cat and became like him, capable of fighting with great ferocity and bringing down prey and foe alike. They learned to tend the human's fire and became like him, always having a place of safety and warmth to retreat to in the long night. And they used these gifts with wisdom, always thoughtful of how precious they truly were and bearing them with great gratitude.

And so they became the first Tamitiil.

When our cousins, the geese, returned, they were surprised at what they found. The twins' children were still alive, but they were changed. They had the teeth of the fox and the claws of the cat. Their wings were small and they could not fly, but they could climb and run and leap more than well enough to make up for it. The geese greeted these new relatives as friends, and the two peoples mingled for the summer.

The Tamitiil brothers divided themselves into pairs, and each pair took a goose woman as a mate. When winter came yet again, they could not fly away with the geese, but they didn't need to. They built their nests as huts and warmed themselves with fires. Like Chliletiisma, one man in each pair stayed with the children and plucked feathers from his belly to line their bed and warm them against his skin. Like Chlilalok, the other man in each pair left the home to search for food throughout the winter. The people became clever hunters who kept their families well fed with game, and nurturing fathers who tended warm homes and raised healthy children.

They lived this way for many years, until they had their own women and no longer took geese for mates. And we have lived this way in the lifetimes and lifetimes since, greeting our goose cousins when they return for the summer and staying where they cannot through the long, cold dark.

[grecoromanyaoi]

i made a post like this a few years ago on another blog but anyways. you DONT want a hanukkah section at walmart. you DONT want hanukkah hallmark movies and shitty songs. you DONT want hanukkah to be sold to you. you DONT want hanukkah to be commercialized as the "jewish christmas", you DONT want it to be commercialized at all.

you want to celebrate the spirit of hanukkah? rebel. protest occupation. protest genocide. protest imperialism. protest religious coercion. fight for indigenous rights and religious freedom. fight for it, like our ancestors did.

[chanaleah]

Today's Israeli claim to self-determination has no sense, since the vast majority of Israeli are Askenazi. They are litteraly mixed! And, have emigrated back to their land after over A THOUSEND YEAR. How can we still take seriously a claim to a land, you, supposevely, have habitated after a thousend? Gheddafi was right. Israel is a Rhodesia who has been succeful to replace the native population with white Europeans. Again, Askenazi are to be considered white Europeans, as they lost all of their middle eastern traits and completely mixed up with Europeans

again y’all let’s use our bestie Google!

the vast majority of Israelis are not Ashkenazi, which again, you would know if you took 5 minutes to do a quote Google search. But that doesn’t matter, because indigenity doesn’t expire.

Again, indigenity doesn’t expire.

The ancestors of today’s Ashkenazim were forced out of our land and prevented from coming back. But they never assimilated, and this can be seen in the food we cooked, songs we sang, and languages we spoke and prayed in.

How long must someone be prevented from returning to their land before they lose their indigenity? Are the Cherokee no longer indigenous to the southeastern US because they’ve been forced out of their land?

Not to mention that Jews maintained a consistent presence in א״י throughout the diaspora despite the constant empires trying to force us out.

Furthermore, while indigenity is not determined by genetics, genetic studies consistently show Ashkenazi Jews as plurally Levantine, and most every other Jewish diaspora group’s DNA is majority Levantine. This is corroborated by pretty much every reliable study of Ashkenazim.

Also, self-determination doesn’t require being an indigenous people. For example, Italians aren’t considered an indigenous people, but they do deserve self determination, and they currently do self determine in Italy. Jews have remained a distinct ethnoreligious group for around 3000 years, so just like any other ethnic group, we have the right to self determination. And our right to self determination doesn’t and shouldn’t alienate the rights to self determination of any other group.

Your blood quantum BS isn’t appreciated here, anon.

[fairyminnie444]

𝕷𝖆𝖜 𝖔𝖋 𝖆𝖘𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

му ρσѕтѕ ✮⋆˙

your subconscious is simpler than you think it is

you are NOT persisting if you are checking 3D and waiting for you DR!

you don’t try to manifest

Embodying the reality of your imagination

Manifesting is instantly

how should I see the role of other people in my reality?

ENDING the cycle of main frequent doubts that arise in our minds once and for all

“At your command”

EIYPO explained for you to understand and absorb

do you sometimes have that feeling that you NEED TO DO SOMETHING/TAKE ACTION to receive what you want?

“BIG” manifestations

What’s the “secret”?

Why You Can Change Your Physical Appearance and Overcome the Limitations of Biology

Why Others’ Manifestations Can’t Block Yours

I already know everything!! How do I apply this to my routine?

The “Sabbath State”

Yes, it’s perfectly okayyyy if you forget or get distracted by your routine.

affirmations to make it easier and “faster”

the ultimate post u need to LET GO

understanding your EGO so you don’t let it hold you back anymore

how to feel your desire in a natural way even if it seems unlikely?

even a negative view of circumstances can lead you to a positive one

manifesting $100,000 is as easy as manifesting $1

you already understood that! you are already there!

𝕔𝕙𝕠𝕠𝕤𝕖 𝕪𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕕𝕖𝕤𝕚𝕣𝕖 𝕒𝕓𝕠𝕧𝕖 𝕒𝕝𝕝 𝕟𝕖𝕘𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖 𝕔𝕚𝕣𝕔𝕦𝕞𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕔𝕖𝕤

manifesting is supposed to be fun, light and easy!

~bad moments~ along the way happen, instead of ignoring them how to deal with them?

Act like the GOD you know you are.

Breaking Free from the Need for Proof

࣪˖ ִִֶֶָָ࣪☾.࣪˖ ִֶָ𝓐𝓢𝓚𝓢 ࣪˖ ִִֶֶָָ࣪☾.࣪˖ ִֶָ

i want to increase my height

what if my desires stay in imagination ans never externalize?

can we manifest multiple sps?

time travel (2)

What if others also try to manifest my celebrity sp…

how do you/did you convince yourself that manifesting/LOA is real

dealing with the 3D when it comes to using LOA (living in the wish fulfilled)

doubts affect my manifesting?

How does one take a very famous person « off the pedestal » in order to manifest them?

I want to change my birth name but i have to sign documental stuff

How I could live in the end when revising smth that if materialized would totally change my live in the 3d?

SPEC method

will it still manifest what we want even if we don’t have a clear picture on it?

I need help with my imagination.

how do i know if it's just taking its time or if i'm doing something wrong?

Can you go deeper into days/weeks of the 3D not changing and how to persist throughout the whole day when you're doing things?

What are your thoughts about getting back people who have p@ssed away? REVISION

YT Channels (sub, meditations, mentors)

I want to manifest the absence of something I've been experiencing for a long time (health and wellness related).

work on my self concept / deal with people who criticize or make me feel drained

simple breakdown to help you manifest your SP even if it feels delusional right now

trying to manifest a modeling career

manifest changing appearance and dna, but i also want to change my past to always have been this appearance and my parents too

everytime i think something is "never going to happen" or "hmm i've never seen xyz" it ends up happening?!?!

How can I manifest when I absolutely don't believe that I can?

how can i use daydreaming and listening to songs while manifesting?

someone asked me about my sp. what should I do in this case?

why is consuming more information about this law considered to be coming from lack when doing something in the 3d that "opposes your desire" not considered to be coming from lack?

I have too many things to manifest so what should I do? advice to me in harsh way

struggle with is my celeb sp and my dream job

how would you manifest hectochromia eyes?

EIYPO everything like a puppet and me it’s master pulling the strings? Does it mean that “ancestors,” “angels,” etc. are not existent, only me?

Why Some Manifestations Work Effortlessly

advices for manifesting with mental disorders

can manifest such extreme beauty that everyone in a shopping mall turns to look at me. Even though I'm not the standard and I'm common

I’m manifesting a new face, but visualising it doesn’t make me feel anything?

how do i make sure that happens for certain? i'm scared it won't

What do you think about manifesting being immortal?

+ tips on manifesting a bf/significant other

struggling with feeling the feelings and believing that it’ll happen.

I can never manifest anything related to MONEY purely

date with the guy I like However, I am a very physically insecure girl and I am too scared and nervous.

i dont know what i did wrong, i really thought this would work, i was sure about it but it didn’t and i can’t helped but feel discouraged

I have a fear that some of my manifestation will dissapear

If everything we are seeing in the 3D is assumptions we made through our life, why does sometimes when we are like 100% sure of something and then we figured it is not?

was confident, my affirmation was "no matter how and what, i have all A's" but alas i did in fact not get all A's.

i WANT to see a people who actually manifested things that changed their past, their reality

i wanna manifest more lenient parents

I’m religious so I believe in a higher power/god, but I do still believe in my own power/ Will this hinder my manifestation process because I believe in a higher power?

What am I doing wrong? SP related

how can i.. like manifest or just "undo" it??

I want to manifest my natural hair color being blond, but i have black hair and also my parents, do i have to detail everyone in my family who is blonde for my new genes?

I feel like I can't anymore, that I'm giving in… I feel stuck

i’m really confused in the living in the end thing and others things in my manifestation

I simply want to be like those people who are successful in curing their illnesses

what do you recommend me doing to change my birth year while not ignoring the reality and still living in the end?

Can our negative thoughts manifest if we think them for a long time and then stop thinking them?

How to use chatpgt to clear doubts and manifest

Tips for beginners

why do some people's jokes manifest if they don't assume those jokes are true?

how to stop paying attention to old failed attempts

How do you deal with hopelessness or desperation.

i’m scared that my fears will manifest itself and it’s out of my control

waiting mode

I feel guilty wanting to manifest

I try to live in the 4D but catch myself expecting the 3D to immediately reflect it

࣪˖ ִִֶֶָָ࣪☾.࣪˖ ִֶָ PART 2 ࣪˖ ִִֶֶָָ࣪☾.࣪˖ ִֶָ

[rastronomicals]

1:52 AM EST January 11, 2025:

Steve Miller Band - "Song For Our Ancestors" From the Compilation album The Best Of 1968-1973 (September 24, 1990)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

★★★★★

Originally from Sailor, released in October 1968.

File under: San Franciscan Psychedelic Blues

--

  <500x500>

[jupiterianguru]

entry 001: messages from your ancestors

            ྀི❀⋆.ೃྀི࿔*:･

author’s note — while tarot can be a tool, you are in control of your own life. life is NOT linear and there’s no black and white answers to anything. take what resonates and if it doesn’t make you feel good, then let it go.

—

one:

the sun + 7 of cups reversed + ace of wands rx

additionally: 8 of swords + the moon rx

song from the ancestors:

these ancestors may have used their hands to create or build. i feel like you come from a lineage that has creative abilities, maybe you tend to have a lot of inclinations towards creating art or even simply appreciating art. there's natural talents or gifts for creation present here for sure.

they're giving you the green light for something. there's a feeling that you must get started on something but you might not know how, in what direction, or what resources to use. there's a mental blockage or a creative blockage if you will. you know, it's said that the throat chakra (responsible for authenticity and expression) is connected to our sacral (responsible for our emotions and creativity). i mention this for a reason, stay with me now. it's almost like you want to get started on said thing but each time you want to begin, your brain starts to bring up unnecessary, negative chatter. you get stuck on the how's, the ifs, and the buts. in turn, you find yourself stuck right before a point of creating. keeping you paralyzed with a feeling of being so close yet so far. spoiler alert: these thoughts are distractions from something deeper. here is where that throat chakra and sacral chakra connection comes in.

you're not doing anything wrong, matter of fact this is apart of your creative process. not only that, your healing. a big part of these thoughts are a core belief that is wanting to be acknowledged and seen. it's not that you're missing the gift, talent, or resources because you possess everything you need to move forward and create. but rather the blockage is coming from emotional needs that have been suppressed. i feel like the individuals that chose this pile are big intellectualizers and have labelled themselves as "self-aware." i'm not saying you're not self-aware. you most likely are... but the problem in this is that you do not allow yourself to sit with your emotions. when you hold space with your emotions, you are allowing yourself to come as you are. there's no good or bad emotions when sitting with them, you simply acknowledge them as emotions that are valid and natural. no matter how complex they may seem, we humans are complex and yet there's normalcy in the fact that we are so complex... you see. nothing is black and white.

give yourself a break and let yourself feel the frustration, the boredom, the angst, the sadness, etc. it's trying to tell you something. it's only when you sit in stillness that you will conquer the chatter and eventually get to where you want to get to. don't force yourself to create. you will get their on your own.

the reason i feel like this was an ancestral message is because i feel like some of your ancestors did not allow themselves to feel and eventually gave up on their craft. leading to a lifetime of regret. the good news is you are aware of this. sit your ass down and ask yourself why you are feeling what you're feeling.

this message especially reigns true for those who have been having or started this year off emotionally turbulent.

thank you. sending you love.

 

    ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

two:

10 of cups + knight of wands + knight of pentacles

additionally: ace of swords rx + king of cups

song from the ancestors:

these ancestors feel like people that moved from the heart like genuine passion and love for the world and others. very generous. i also hear laughter so perhaps some of them were jokesters, pranksters, or just simply people who loved to make others smile. i'm hearing that song from tangled "when will my life begin?" despite the happiness exuding from the outside, theres a sadness i feel within. maybe some of the individuals in your lineage never truly got their "happy-ending." whatever that meant for them, it could be that they had a dream to get married and never met that person. or if they did get married, it ended in divorce or tragedy. or maybe their dream was to go to college and become a professional, but they didn't end up finishing or have the resources to go. this is a general reading so of course it varies but the jist of it is that their dreams were either short-lived or couldn't happen at all.

there's a dream that your heart is set on. my grandma told me once that if you desire something so much that it makes you cry just thinking about it, it's meant for you. your ancestors are acknowledging that you have everything you need to obtain this dream. it may not seem like it to you but they have a birds eye view and they're saying that it's in you. but goddamn, you gotta really believe in it.

perhaps you're just starting to realize that this is attainable or you're starting to take steps towards this dream but it feels like such a far journey. it could be overwhelming, sometimes you may have bad days, or you just feel like there's no support and it's lonely. honestly, you guys may catastrophize the situation a bit sometimes. like just cause you have one bad day, week, or even a month doesn't mean all of a sudden your dream is gone or you're not worthy of it anymore. this is called a journey! your journey to your dream is not a easy path, duh, then the dream itself wouldn't be rewarding.

little mini story (i promise it's relevant): when i first read someone for the first time and found out of my healing abilities, i read them for two hours straight and afterwards i just cried pure tears of joy for an hour saying thank you to my team and creator. out of everything, all I could do is bask in that gratitude because it felt like all my pain, my suffering, my joy, etc. lead me to that moment. it was worth it. i've been on my journey for years now and i often go back to that memory, especially when i feel like my heavier days and emotions have consumed me.

this is how it should feel for you. you want this so bad for a reason. sometimes you may go through upbeat and fast times, it may feel like you're working towards something or what you're doing is beneficial to your dream but other times it may feel slow, down, like every step you're taking may be directionless. this is normal! this is how it should feel! despite what those people who have what you want portray on socials, it's a journey. everyone wants results so quickly now without putting work in, without enjoying the journey. this causes faulty foundations and unaligned outcomes. not everything is meant to be fast moving, positive, or happy all the time. you don't have to be in that energy all the time to be worthy of it. embrace both of these moments in the journey and trust that the seeds you have planted are growing. you don't plant a seed and watch it grow right? you nurture it, give it love, care, and trust that it will grow.

when you're lacking clarity or are doubtful, remember to be like the king of cups. move with these emotions rather than stay stuck in them. the king of cups shows us that we can be patient with ourselves and our bigger emotions but not let them consume us or cloud us. having a bad day? take a walk, a bath, spend time with family, friends or a pet. soothe yourself and don't let one bad day dictate the rest of your journey, you won't always feel like this and your situation won't always look like this either.

this message reigns true for those who have a dream pertaining to building a family, community, getting married, etc. your dream will be prosperous, stable, and so emotionally-fullfilling. it's possible the individuals that picked this pile may have came from less fortunate circumstances or just didn't get dealt the best cards in life. just because you came from that, doesn't mean that is your fate. you will make your ancestors proud and all past versions of you proud.

thank you. sending you love.

         

    ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

three:

page of cups + 4 of swords + the empress + the hermit

additionally: the high priestess rx + 6 of swords rx

song from the ancestors:

these ancestors carry a heavy energy pertaining to surviving. they never gave themselves a break simply because they couldn't. they needed to work to survive. i feel like crying for this lineage because that's all they knew is how to work their ass off until they were so tired. solely because their life depended on it or their children's life depended on it. health complications may be significant. you may be more susceptible to feeling the effects of stress. you may have things like back pain, insomnia, weight fluctuation, etc.

sit your ass down and rest. the end. that's the message.

no but really, if you're wondering why you don't see progress in any area of your life, it's cause you're not listening to your body and resting. you don't know when to quit and just unwind. let your body rest. let your mind rest. everything is always go go go. and it seems like even when you do rest, it's like your spirit doesn't rest cause either your mind is still running 80 mph or you feel guilty about resting itself. there's a lack of playfulness in your life right now. it's dull and you're probably going through the same routine day by day. I'm here to tell you, nothing won't change, if you don't change.

you are worthy of rest! you are worthy of being kind and gentle to yourself! I know our capitalistic society (if you're in the states) likes us to equate a "productive" life to having your to do list with ten thousand things on it but what if I told you rest was also productive? no? not comprehendible? well, it's time to break down that belief.

let your inner child come out to play! what is one thing you always wanted to see or try? sign up for that pottery class or simply go visit a local park that you've never gone to. if you don't have resources or time to do so, then find ways to switch up your routine like drinking a new coffee or opening a window and smelling the fresh air. find a step in your old routine to kick out and break that loop.

the fact of the matter is you're tired. you have seemed to lost the spark in you. maybe you don't even recognize who you are anymore, where you're going, or why you're doing this for and it's not cause of the work you're doing but rather not listening to what your body needs. prioritize your sleep and take a warm bath. I like working with the spirit of lavender for this so sometimes i'll sit with her though tea, a spiritual bath, or even smoking her. tip: add chamomile for a more gentle, warm hug type of feeling. remember to pray, meditate, or set your intentions. gratitude is so important when working with our plant relatives and their spirit.

you will not move forward or see progress if you don't do this. point blank period. this pile's ancestors talk a very matter of factly. but it makes sense as it seems urgent in a way. you have done enough and the work you are doing whether it's actual physical work or even just emotional work is so important! they're so proud of you but understand that they have worked so hard to be able to give you the privilege of slowing down and resting. do what they could not do!

this message reigns true for those who seem to be workaholics, have mommy issues, or come from a one-parent household. whoever you are, you're someone that can't sit still and you're being asked to do this exact thing. smell the roses, look how far you've come, you deserve this! also, hot baths, hot tea, anything warm or hot is recommended!

thank you. sending you love.

:)

[mylight-png]

Today, my school's Chabad held a Jewish joy/pride festival right in the middle of campus. They set up a bunch of booths with Jewish activities. There was a booth for braiding challah, making bracelets with our Hebrew names, various Jewish pride stencils to spray paint Chabad shirts. There were tables to pick up shabbat candle kits or wrap teffilin. Jewish music played loudly (but without disturbing nearby classes of course) and people were dancing along to songs like Am Yisrael Chai, I'm a Jew and I'm Proud, Very Narrow Bridge, and other blatantly Jewish songs.

Most of my friends and I couldn't stop smiling. This spot in campus where just last year people were shouting for the destruction of our homeland and our families and us, after nearly a year of being shamed for our Jewish pride and being told we shouldn't be proud, and so much time spent on a campus filled with hate, we were bringing joy back to campus.

I feel like most of my latest posts have been fairly negative. It's hard not to write my heavy heart onto the screen, especially after the murder of Hersh and the other hostages, and just everything going on overall. But this festival reminded me of how much power Jewish joy holds.

If you're feeling upset about the war, I'm with you. Few days go by without tears shed or pain felt. But remember that being Jewish is infinitely more than antisemitism and loss. Being Jewish is joy, and it is pride. We are our ancestors' wildest dreams, we are all miracles, and we cannot forget this for a single moment.

Be joyful in a world filled with sorrow, and bring light with you wherever you go.

[theblvcksupreme]

“NEVER ASK PERMISSION FOR SOMETHING THAT ALREADY BELONGS TO YOU” - BEYONCÈ, COWBOY CARTER TOUR.

Country, Rock & Roll, Hip Hop, R&B, Jazz, Soul, Funk, House, Disco… ALL Created by Black People. All BELONG to black people. Even when white people continue to TRY to revise history, even when our genres and instruments and songs were stolen, It’s still Our History, Our Legacy. Of course over the years others have been apart of it but the fact remains the fact it came from us from OUR struggles, OUR heartache OUR PAIN! We don’t have to beg or plead with anyone to allow us to make music in the genres created by OUR ancestors. I’m thankful to Artists like Beyoncé who is making it her mission to make sure our culture, history and people will not be erased. Not anymore!

[captain-joongz]

Wonderful nothing

this is a part two to Deserve you <- read this part first!

Pairing: brother-in-law!Seonghwa x f!reader

Genre: smut, dark

Summary: Months later, still reeling from your experience on your wedding night, you try to go on about your life as best as possible, but Seonghwa seems to be a little too damn adamant on messing with your life. Between juggling your husband's inappropriate behaviour and suspicions, and dodging your family's over-bearing questioning, could the edge the two of you keep dancing on be getting a little blurry?

Word count: 26.3k words

Warnings: infidelity, mentions of drugging (not of MC), implied sexual harrasment and predatory behaviour towards employees (by the husband), obsessed seonghwa, so much breeding kink you guys, this whole fic is just hwa trying to impregnate the MC, deepthroating and face-fucking, fingering, degradation/humiliation kink, possibly strange physics around fucking on a table (please suspend your disbelief lmao), back-shots, a bit of manhandling?, yujun being an ominous prick, i hope that's all???

A/N: here it is, folks - finally! i've genuinely put my soul into this piece and agonised over it being as best as possible, so i hope it lives up to the expectations! i might go through it again tomorrow and edit a little more. title taken from Glass Animals' song Wonderful Nothing. thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy!! <3

“I’m just telling you to prepare you,” my mother’s grating voice carried around the sitting room, and I fought to keep my eyes from rolling where I sat collapsed in a fancy settee, “She will be asking. And it’s not like the rest of us aren’t curious too. You’ve already been married almost nine months, and still nothing.”

I shook my head, cradling my glass with vodka juice closer to my chest, and doing my best to ignore the line of questions I’ve been met with non-stop for the past few months.

Why am I still not carrying Yujun’s heir?

At first whenever the topic came up I just tried to play it off, smile and laugh and tell them we still had time, that it’s going to happen eventually. Now I just pretended not to hear mostly.

“After the… display… the morning after your wedding, we all thought you’d be pregnant by now,” my mother continued musing, tone seemingly light but carrying a pang of bitterness to it, just like it always did when she chastised me for not being good enough. It didn’t use to be as often as it was now, and I suspected she felt pressure from the Parks and desperately hoped I wouldn’t embarrass our family in front of them. I stayed quiet, though.

Of course I’d never say it, but discreetly to myself I often thought the same. I was also surprised that after the night with Seonghwa I didn’t get pregnant – but I didn’t. And I wasn’t about to mention anything, because I didn’t want to bring any more attention to that cursed day. I couldn’t forget it, but I sure could still pretend it never happened.

“Sometimes it takes a little time,” I voiced out loud instead, not turning around to face her. I kept my focus stubbornly glued onto the wall where a huge Park family portrait hung, an old oil painting with a single man in a uniform standing prickly by a fireplace, face all tight and stern. I knew that fireplace – it was in a room just down the hall, in Yujun’s father’s office. When we were introduced into this room for the first time, Mrs. Park excitedly chattered off about which ancestor of theirs it was, but I zoned out and didn’t listen to a single word. Since then I wondered many times whether it was Mr. Park’s grand-father or great grand-father, and I used it as a distraction every time I found myself in this salon. Just… staring at his unfriendly face, trying not to think about bringing disgrace onto his bloodline.

“Yes, but it’s been months,” my mother stressed, and I could perfectly imagine the displeased expression on her face she wore whenever I talked back to her, “Now would be the perfect time to announce news like that. If you’re not pregnant by the end of the first year of marriage, the Parks might start to worry about your ability to fulfil your duty to your husband and this family.”

I wanted to scoff at those words so bad. I hated that dated mindset, and I hated that my position in this family was hanging by a thread because of it. If I failed to deliver an heir, the Parks would push for a divorce, and my family wouldn’t be able to survive such an embarrassment, even though we no longer lived in Joseon. This was the 21st fucking century, and yet this whole situation was still being treated as if we lived in the 1760s.

I might have as well been shoved into a rice chest too.

Sometimes I almost wished I could tell her the truth. It would be worth it for the immediate satisfaction, that’s for sure, but it would fuck over my life spectacularly. And I knew I couldn’t count on any of these fuckers to have my back.

I often wondered about how she’d react to that, though. Well, mother, of course I’m not pregnant. The last sexual encounter I had was fucking my brother-in-law on my wedding night while my husband, his brother, puked his guts out in a bathroom on the ground floor.

Clutching her pearls wouldn’t even begin to cover it. She’d probably get carried out on a stretcher. And still no grandbabies – just shameful.

And in the months after the wedding it turned out that being married to the youngest Park was just as nightmarish as I thought it would be, if not more.

He drank often, and no matter what he did he couldn’t beat out the smell that carried everywhere with him, that he was steeped in. He wasn’t unattractive by any means, he definitely had a certain young chaebol charm, but he constantly smelled of sweat, stale vodka or whiskey, and cigarette smoke. The men he spent his time with were loud and obnoxious, and the exact kind of company that would strike a pang of fear in any woman. I certainly did my best to never be alone in a room with them, and I never left my drink out of sight either.

I didn’t know the full extent of his activities, and I didn’t want to.

And he didn’t care for me either, thankfully. The only time I even existed in his mind was when he returned home drunk and horned up, pressing up against me and mumbling drunkenly things that turned my stomach with his breath smelling like garlic and pussy. It was a miracle he didn’t make me throw up on a nightly basis.

Yujun, just like me, was very aware of the ‘duty’ to have children we faced, and always brought up the topic when he wanted a quick fuck.

So I had to take matters into my own hands.

Growing up in the higher echelon of society often left you with many very useful contacts in your phone. A lot of people of the same age all grew up together through our parents’ endless parties, galas and fishing trips, or whatever else they thought of to chase away the boredom, where we watched them drink and make fool of themselves like they weren’t the people running the world. That left us with a sort of quiet camaraderie – we shared many thoughts and opinions of them, but we still had some time left before we had to go and become them.

That means that when I contacted Jeong Yunho, a son of our family’s private visiting doctor, who went in his father’s footsteps and recently finished his degree to join his family’s practice, he was more than welcoming to my odd requests. All it took was a nice check, and he was writing me prescriptions for whatever I needed.

And what I needed were pills that quickly knocked someone out and lowered their sex drive.

So that whenever my husband dearest came home in the mood, I slipped him some in his water, took him to the bedroom and played up our interaction until he passed out, and then in the morning I pretended we fucked the whole night.

Yujun didn’t question his lack of memory, as he himself was aware he was most probably drunk and high on all kinds of stuff, and he was the kind of man whose ego far overshadowed his intelligence, so all I had to do was pander to his delusion of grandeur and sexual prowess and he left the house feeling like a god of sex while I was blissfully left alone.

But obviously that wasn’t something I’d boast about to my mother. Or anyone else for that matter, not even Seonghwa.

Seonghwa who’d be annoyingly smug about such information. Seonghwa who’d take it as an invitation to come over and fuck me all night instead of Yujun. Seonghwa who I didn’t see much in the past months because I did my damned best to avoid him.

Seonghwa who was stepping into the room right behind his mother just minutes later, as if I summoned him with my gloomy pondering.

I immediately swallowed down the last of my drink I had and prepared myself for the fucking show, because no way we’d have to spend hours here together. My mother was already standing, a fake wide smile plastered to her face as she greeted Mrs. Park loudly – who of course wore a very similar expression. I managed barely a smile as she half hugged me, keeping a few inches between us, while she pretended to kiss my cheeks (like I had fucking rabies). It was a hilarious charade, and I’d laugh at it too, if I was a little more drunk and cared a little less about my mother’s opinions.

Seonghwa greeted my mother similarly, but to me he slowly walked up and quickly grabbed my wrist to lay a single deceptively gentle kiss to the back of my hand. He did it quickly, not lingering or making a show of it, and I was at least a little thankful for that with both of our mother’s eyes boring into us. His gaze was dark though, and I saw the amusement and twisted excitement bubbling in it, reminiscent of how he looked that night. He knew he had me where I couldn’t avoid him.

And I knew I was in deep shit.

Because this was the look of a man determined to get what he wanted. And I knew what Seonghwa wanted maybe a little too well.

“Thank you for inviting us, Yeongja-ssi,” I heard my mother say just as Seonghwa stepped away and the rest of the world snapped back into place – now that the man wasn’t sucking all of my attention in like a black hole.

“Of course, you’re family now!” came a faux cheery reply, and I prepared myself for the most boring, awful afternoon in my life.

We were currently away from the city, sitting in the Parks’ family summer residence where they apparently spent a lot of their time when they weren’t needed around their businesses. It was march now, and Mr. Park invited my father, and the rest of us by default, to join him on his first hunting trip of the year, as the residence came with a hefty amount of land primed to be the best hunting grounds.

So now I was stuck in this fucking house, looking at all the pompous architecture and interior design, while the men ran around the forest for days and shot at everything.

“Aren’t you supposed to be hunting?” the question slipped out of my mouth before I knew what I was doing, and I realised it was the first proper thing I said probably all day. My tone wasn’t very friendly, but if the two women caught that, they said nothing – though they did turn to us curiously, watching our interaction.

The man in question grinned at me though, very amused by my somewhat hostile stance, and shifted where he sat on the dark blue sofa across from me.

“I will be joining them tomorrow,” Seonghwa answered easily, “I just got here an hour ago, and I’d like to rest for a bit.” It was a very diplomatic answer, very polite and bland. I hummed, looking at him very pointedly for a moment longer, before I turned to pour myself another glass.

“So, Y/N,” Mrs. Park eagerly took the opportunity to talk to me while I seemed more open to conversation, “do you have any happy news to share?”

Sighing, I settled back into my own settee with a fake smile, ignoring how Seonghwa’s eyes ignited with the mention of the topic.

This was going to be a long day.

I wouldn’t quite say I was snooping, but I found myself wandering around the house even through the spaces I definitely wasn’t allowed to, and I knew that. Like right now, where I stood in the middle of the aforementioned study, taking in the stupid fireplace in real life so I could compare it to the painting later when I was dissociating from yet another conversation about jewellery. I wasn’t interested in the paperwork laying on the desk of the office, but I knew Mr. Park would have a seizure if he knew I was so close to all his business bullshit.

That’s why the moment I heard a floor creak just a few steps away from me, I was jumping guiltily and spinning around to the door with my heart wildly beating out of my chest. The sudden movement caused me to spill some of my drink, and I felt the icy sticky fluid running down my fingers onto the floor.

When I saw who stood there though, I both relaxed and panicked further. A very different kind of nervosity took a hold of me as I breathlessly watched Seonghwa leisurely stroll into the room, dark eyes trained on me unblinkingly.

I saw his gaze flicker to the floor briefly, lips quirking up at seeing the mess, before he whipped up a cloth handkerchief and kneeled down right by my feet to wipe it away. He did it all so quickly I found myself flinching back, stumbling away from the crouched man until my back hit the table behind me, much to his entertainment.

My mind very unhelpfully supplied a mental image of the last time I had Seonghwa kneeling for me, which had me cursing myself while I fought to unclench my thighs. The man no doubt saw me squirming though, judging from the amused smirk he had as he stood up again.

He was wearing his hunting attire – looser trousers with knee-high boots and a tweed jacket over a white shirt, all in black so that the red tie popped out with the sudden splash of colour. It complimented his figure, of course it did – just like everything the man wore, and he knew it.

“Didn’t you say you were going hunting today?” I tried to bite out with hostility now that we were alone. Our mothers decided to have a last-minute shopping spree, searching for new dresses to wear at the first feast of the season that would close out this trip in a few days. I respectfully declined, though the politeness took a lot out of me, so I dedicated the rest of the afternoon to sulkily wandering the halls not speaking to anyone.

“I was,” the man answered smoothly, gesturing to his clothes, “obviously.” He took a few more steps towards me, and I couldn’t help but fixate on the wide-open door of the study. Couldn’t he at least close it if he wanted to do this right now?

 “You’ve returned with your bounty, then?” I asked then, cold sweat pouring over me at that. If Seonghwa was back, that meant everyone else was likely too. More curious eyes to stumble upon this scene, which was just awesome.

“Only me,” came his swift answer, as if he saw right into my mind and read all my worries, “I told them I’m tired of the outdoors and I’m going back for a quick late lunch with mother.”

“Your mother isn’t here,” spilled out of my mouth quickly – like I was actually hoping for him to take that information and decide to leave again, “They went into the city.”

Seonghwa only grinned my way though, that beastly edge shining through his carefully constructed indifferent mask. His hands were lazily locked behind his back and it gave him an almost whimsical vibe. Like a fairy, here to fuck up my day.

“I know.”

Well, it seemed it was as easy as that.

At this point it would take Seonghwa only two more steps before he was all pressed against me, and I nervously gripped the edge of the desk I was leaning on. I fucking hoped he wouldn’t – there were always people running around here. You were never fully alone in this house, whether it was the maids, or the two servants, or the kitchen staff or even the three fucking chauffeurs killing time outside with a very bored gardener, the chances of no eyes being on you in a house like this were critically low.

Seonghwa seemed to be deliberating on that as well, because I did see him hesitate for a moment, almost turning as if to check the open door, before he ultimately threw all that out the window and swiftly moved towards me until I felt his firm sculpted chest and stomach pressed into my soft lines.

I found myself gasping, even though I saw it coming the whole time – I knew he was going to do it, and I still startled when I felt his hands grasp at my waist. His warm breath hit the crook of my neck, his cheek almost pressing to mine as he moulded himself over me just like that night in the hotel. I wasn’t sure if my heart beat so fast I could barely register it or if it stopped all-together, but I sure wasn’t breathing as my skin broke out into goosebumps at physically feeling Seonghwa release a breathy chuckle against my neck.

“I hope you haven’t forgotten what I promised you before, doll,” he whispered sensually, pressing his hips harder into mine like he was trying to remind me. As if he needed to remind me – as if I wasn’t thinking about it all the time anyway, even though I haven’t seen his face for weeks.

One of his hands smoothly glided over my stomach until it possessively rested on my lower belly, right over where my womb would be, and I finally stuttered out some breaths.

“This right here is mine,” Seonghwa’s lips brushed over the sensitive skin of my ear before he bit down gently, “and I intend on delivering.”

Just as quickly his hands suddenly slid down to the back of my thighs and before I knew it, he was pulling me up onto the table and slotting his hips between my legs hard. I floundered for a moment, hands shooting up to stabilise myself and grabbing onto his shoulders, which was probably something he was very happy about.

I wouldn’t know, I was too busy gasping at the feeling of his already hardening cock pressed tightly into my clothed sex. Not even my startled limbs stopped him from grinding against me slightly to drag out the sensation though. I felt the way he squeezed at my thigh before one of his hands flew up to tangle into my hair, tugging me to his sinful mouth.

I’d like to believe I gave in so easily because I was confused, or surprised. I’d like to say I received him so quickly because my mouth was already open on a gasp, but in my heart I worried whether those were true.

Seonghwa didn’t waste time (he never did, he was very efficient in everything he did) and immediately dipped his tongue deep into my mouth, hungry mouth kissing me all messy and wet. This time when I gasped, he swallowed it down with a quiet groan, hand tightening in my locks and pulling slightly to pry me more open for him.

Just as I fully registered what has happening, realised I was quickly overheating, a wave of staggering warmth spilling over into me from his heated form pressed so close, and I grew dizzy – and then he was suddenly gone, a few steps back and looking perfectly put together except for his wet swollen lips and wild dark eyes. He didn’t even breath hard, though his pants bulged out obscenely, betraying that he was affected by this little tryst too, just like I was.

I sat on the desk, confused and aroused, thighs splayed open wide and chest rising and falling rapidly with my laboured breaths. I felt the spit cooling in the corner of my mouth, the wet feeling bringing embarrassed flush to my face.

I felt my core throbbing too, my traitorous cunt calling out for him to come back (she remembered well) and make it all better, but the man was already walking out of the room with a pep in his step, a shit-eating grin on his face and a sparkle in his eyes – while I struggled to pull myself together.

The glass I brought my drink in was overturned on the desk, swaying back and forth on its side, and the cold liquid was seeping into my pants and the carpet underneath. I wondered how I didn’t even feel the wetness, but I did have bigger problems at the moment.

With a curse I jumped down and tried to salvage the mess, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Especially not when I finally walked out of the room to find someone more qualified to deal with the ruined carpet and ran right into a red-faced blushing maid who couldn’t even look into my eyes as she rushed in to deal with the aftermath.

My heart sank, and I hoped that the staff here was as tight-lipped as ours, because I sure as hell wasn’t ready for this all to fall down on my head yet.

I didn’t see Seonghwa for the rest of the day after that – the man didn’t even show up at dinner, claiming to be too tired and needing to retire early. When I retreated to my room that night I found myself creeping through that house like a scared little mouse, paranoid that that he was behind every corner just waiting to jump me.

It was very fitting that we were here for a hunting trip – because he did feel like a hunter, only his prey wasn’t out there in the woods. It was sleeping in the house with him.

Yujun managed to stumble into the room late into the night even here, though I had no idea what could have been keeping him while we were staying in a house in the middle of the woods (maybe it was better to not know, now that I thought about it). When he clambered into the bed, for a moment I froze and laid still, waiting for what he’d do next. As every evening, I had a preventative spiked glass of water standing on the nightstand – if he as much as bumped into me, I’d be turning around to offer it to him with a sweet wifely smile, pumping it straight into his throat if I had to.

Thankfully the man seemed to be exhausted and he just shuffled around for a moment before stilling and falling asleep almost immediately. I had a sinking feeling I knew what that meant, and I could only hope that whatever unfortunate woman he had come across was alright. Disgust coiled tightly around my stomach and suddenly the idea of sharing a bed with this man was making me so sick I almost threw up. Automatically I sat up, feet hitting the floor before I even fully thought of what I was going to do.

I was just about to sneak out and leave the room to go take a breather, when I remembered Seonghwa’s predatory smile as he leisurely walked out of the study earlier that afternoon. Better not leave the room actually, not while he was in the same house at least. I cringed at that and sank back into the soft bedding.

What a fucking life I was leading. I was getting pretty sick of tiptoeing around everyone like that.

So I just turned my back to the man I married and tried to pretend he wasn’t there as I forced myself back into sleep.

I wasn’t sure when exactly I was pulled under, but when I jerked awake in the morning I was already alone. All traces of Yujun ever being there the night before were gone, and the sun was sneaking in through the folds of the curtains. The hunt has already begun.

Both my mother and my mother-in-law acted normally, and even though the one unfortunate maid that was saddled with dealing with the aftermath of my indiscretion with Seonghwa yesterday couldn’t quite meet my eyes, I assumed no one else knew. The day dragged on, painfully slow and tense, as I laughed dutifully with the older women’s chatter and ignored their little probes trying to get me to talk about my married life.

By the time the evening rolled by, I was drunk, cranky and exhausted of all the social interactions. During dinner Seonghwa kept his dark gaze trained on me, making me squirm with unease under the suspicious eyes of my mother. As I walked to my bedroom, I stopped the maid as she walked by and pressed a couple bills in her hand, avoiding her confused face. When Yujun came, I gave him his water and waited until he passed out.

Same shit, another day.

The next few days went by both terrifyingly slow and shockingly fast, like the universe was pulling me into both directions. For most of the time, I just felt strangely suspended in some cosmic in-between. I was struggling to connect to the other two women even before, but now that Seonghwa routinely made his presence known I felt even more distant from their dreary bullshit. Our fathers and my husband spent their entire day gone or butchering their bounty, and even during the night Yujun rarely bothered me – either too tired or just not in the mood ‘for my bullshit’, as he lovingly put it.

That left Seonghwa – my loyal shadow, my curse following me around, the ghoul, the phantom. He made it a game for himself to mess with me. Since the incident in the study he never got quite as close, but I saw his amused smirks whenever he brushed against me while leaving a room, or whenever his hands lingered on my body just a touch too long while no one was looking.

The man used his unfavourable position well to get his way. The invisible wall between him and all the rest of the family was even more painfully obvious the longer we spent with them, felt in all those awkward glances and stuttered half sentences. Seonghwa was always sort of falling through the cracks of the Park family, stalking the halls and rooms like a ghost of mistakes past.

Mrs. Park could barely bear to look at him for too long, and Mr. Park hated that he deserved to be respected, especially when faced with his other son’s never-ending disappointments.

That allowed him to slip through their awareness, linger on the edges of everyone’s consciousness like a forgotten thought you can’t quite get rid of, and it haunts you with its elusiveness.

Seonghwa only made his presence known when he absolutely had to, he used their niggling unease at his presence to find easy excuses to leave – to just… fade away without a trace. No one missed him when he wasn’t there – only relief was left in his absence. Their reluctance to see him and perceive him gave him plenty of opportunities to do his wrongs in plain sight knowing everyone was wilfully not paying attention. Seonghwa had it down to science.

And very rarely, I’d see his eyes flash with hardened pain. The kind that never leaves your heart, coming from wounds that cut just a little too deep to heal. In those times I found it in myself to pity the man, and I hated him for it.

But slowly I found myself realising that the same glass wall that kept Seonghwa detached from others was keeping me detached from them as well. I was caught with him on the other side, and the way we both disappeared into the background, blended into the wallpapers, was a truly disturbing experience. Like we were existing outside of their time and space.

All the burning looks exchanged, the agonising brushes of skin against skin – it all went unnoticed. And I felt so alone, so alone and left with a beast hungry for my blood, hunting me in plain daylight – and yet no one saw.

I knew Seonghwa felt emboldened by this. It was all written clearly in his wicked grins.

He liked to tease it out, play with me sweetly, but I could see he was gearing up to pounce again. His eyes sparkled with terrible excitement whenever he caught my gaze across tables, rooms and corridors, lurking by corners with dark eyes watching my every move.

By the last day of the trip I was fidgeting with unease, unable to sit still and jerking at every rash movement. It had my mother strictly reprimanding me, sending me warning glares and constantly reminding me to act like a lady. She thought it was the alcohol, and it wasn’t lost on me how she watched me disapprovingly whenever I got up to get myself a fresh glass of something – even though all of us were doing nothing but drinking and gossiping.

The men for a change spent that whole day in the kitchens to prepare their bounty for dinner, and their boisterous laughs carried through the whole house. Their great spirits were no doubt also supported by a hefty amount of liquid courage, but I didn’t see my mother casting disgusted glances their way. Hypocrite.

Seonghwa came in with a platter of cheeses and fruits, passing by me with a hungry expression on his face before he schooled it into a polite smile for our mothers. I couldn’t believe I sincerely didn’t see it before, when I was planning the wedding. Now it was all I saw, and it made me want to run.

With the evening approaching it was like I could physically feel the anticipation rise. The tension felt thick enough to cut, thick enough to taste it on my tongue every time I opened my mouth. Thick enough it got me wondering whether the others could sense it too.

I’ve never been too great with polite small-talk, so I spent the dinner quietly chewing through my food listening to whatever the topic was discussed at the time distractedly. Seonghwa was surprisingly chatty that evening, and he seemed to be in a great mood – which stupefied everyone else present at the table, as they were used to the way the man usually kept himself at a distance.

Only I knew that it meant incredibly bad things were about to go down in this fucking house.

Unfortunately once the women got tired of keeping their attention on the very male oriented conversation of their husbands and sons, they shifted their focus back to our little corner. I lasted all of three not so very subtle remarks about how a nice little retreat like this was the perfect opportunity to get pregnant before I was shooting up on my feet and excusing myself to the bathroom with a tense smile.

My mother’s eyes firmly gestured towards Yujun, but I ignored her rapidly souring expression and left quickly. What did she want me to do? Get pregnant by him right here on this table? (fate has a funny was of unfolding)

The long-haired man who was the reason for my unease in the first place was also subtly watching me, though for the first time I found his face unreadable. That unsettled me, and I basically ran out.

I stalled for as long as I could, but it ended up only buying me twenty minutes of peace before someone sought me out.

When I heard slow unhurried footsteps aiming towards the bathroom I had hidden in, I was already steeling myself for it being my mother. It didn’t surprise me – I kind of suspected she’d end up blowing up at me one way or another. If it wasn’t about my lack of children or the lack of desire to rectify it, it would definitely be about the very impolite behaviour I exhibited as it threatened to give Mrs. Park the wrong impression. Personally, I didn’t give a fuck about Mrs. Park’s impression of me – it’s not like she could do anything worse to me than what I was already involved in.

Wanting to avoid that conversation for as long as possible, I bent over the sink and scooped up the running water to bury my face in it.

I realised I was wrong about my assumption the moment I felt two strong hands settle on my waist as a wiry body pressed up against me. I knew those hands. I knew that body.

Startled, I jerked up – already knowing whose eyes I was going to meet in the mirror. In my haste I ended up barrelling into his chest. The man took it all in his stride though, and his arms swiftly moved to wrap around my waist. Shamefully, it was a touch I was intimately familiar with, even if we haven’t interacted in that way for months.

Seonghwa was smirking back at me where I was gawking at him in the mirror – and I quickly got reminded just how shameless the man was. A little further behind his shoulder I saw the door wide open, again. The loud voices and laughs carried through the hallway easily; after all the terrace wasn’t that far from where we currently stood.

“What the hell are you doing?” I hissed out aggressively, but did nothing to shake him off. He stared at me for a few long seconds before I was suddenly being spun around. My back hit the counter, but it was hard to focus on anything but the demanding mouth that was abruptly descending on mine. Tongue swiftly swooped inside my lips, punching a little dazed gasp of surprise.

Just as quickly he was pulling away. His hand grasped onto my jaw, keeping my head angled in a way he liked. Gaze dark, it slid across my features in an appraising way, like he was looking at a painting.

“I’m fulfilling my promise,” came his answer finally. Seonghwa didn’t bother lowering his voice, he was as comfortable as ever where he started pushing me down towards the ground. And it took me about four seconds to realise what he was doing – and promptly I started blushing.

I allowed myself to hit the floor with my knees, but as soon as his hand came back to grasping me, I started resisting. I threw a stormy glare up back at him and jerked my head to the side. A spark of arousal flashed through his eyes and I saw his lips twitch in a smirk. Anger pulsed through me.

“Why the fuck are you doing this?” it came out a lot tenser, my voice low with all the frustration that has been building up in me since we got to this fucking house. That finally got a reaction out of him – for a split second it was like a shadow passed over his face, eyes darkening with something different than the anticipant arousal I usually saw painted there.

Then the man leant down, his long black hair sliding down shoulders and hanging in the space over me. His otherworldly beautiful face was twisted over me, sneering with all the emotion in the world.

“Because I want to,” he whispered, voice underlined with something beastly, “and because you’ll let me.” Then his hand was back, man-handling my face towards his crotch. I swallowed the shame that bubbled up at his words. I wish I could argue back, but even now I wasn’t pulling away as Seonghwa pushed me against himself, letting out a sigh of relief. He was right, and I didn’t want to bring more attention to it – though he felt the lack of resistance in me.

But as long as we didn’t talk about it, everything was normal, right?

With a bit of alarm I realised that Seonghwa was already hard, pants straining and tenting with his beautiful length. I remembered it well, I even remembered trying to suck it in my hazy state and Seonghwa stopping me, promising me a next time.

Well, here he was. A man of his word.

But even harder was the realisation that I could feel wetness sticking to my panties. I’d slicked up for him, and all it took was a bit of force and some mean words. Humiliation burned in me, and it was making my cunt throb even harder, already crying to be filled with something before he even started doing anything.

So instead of focusing on that, I casted another look towards the man, this one teary and resigned and aroused. Pleading. It was just as much me wanting to get it over with and as it was squirming with anticipation.

Seonghwa took one look at me and scoffed, lips curling into an arrogant grin – though the way arousal swirled in his pupils wasn’t lost on me. As always, he was a man of action. His hands made quick work of the pants fastenings, pulling the fabrics down. I was so close that the moment his cock sprang free it smacked lightly into my cheek. 

Just as I remembered it, it was pretty and long, not as quite thick, but nicely curved. Seonghwa watched me with amusement flicking behind all that lust, entertaining himself by circling his hips so that the head of his cock smeared against my face. I flashed him another irritated glare, if only to see him slowly get more riled up. He was enjoying my rebellion, and as excitement slowly settled into my stomach, I worried I might too.

The door was still wide open, and our families could still be clearly heard from where they sat and conversed while the atmosphere in the bathroom felt almost too quiet. Something silent pulsed between our gazes, something almost like a secret being shared.

Seonghwa caught onto my strategy quick. I wasn’t sure if it was all written in my eyes – I found it a little scary how easily he could read me sometimes, but I could sense the change in him. The moment he decided he wasn’t going to let me play him like he wanted to play me. His hand came back to my face, grasping my jaw tightly like before. But this time his touch swiftly moved. I had only a second of warning before he was stuffing his fingers in my mouth, firmly prying it open and keeping it that way.

There was no supressing the shudder that went through me, neither the tiny moan that clawed its way out of my throat at the roughness of his touch. The man didn’t bother telling me to be quiet, not with that self-satisfied smirk on his face. I bet he couldn’t care less about the kind of mess I made, he probably wouldn’t even give a shit if someone walked straight in and saw. That thought terrified me, but like always when this man was involved – I did nothing to stop him (truly a self-fulfilling prophecy).

He must have decided that there was enough waiting though, because suddenly there was a cock sliding into my mouth. Seonghwa’s hand kept my jaw open to fight against the flinch of surprise, but I still gasped, my eyes flying up just in time to see his beautiful face screwed in relieved pleasure.

Seonghwa gave me a few seconds of calm before he was pulling back and smoothly sliding back in, the cock filling my mouth up completely. A hum of contentment escaped me on instinct and I sank into the feeling, eyes falling shut. Two or three more thrusts came in easy and soft, and then his fingers slipped out of my mouth and gripped my hair instead.

Seonghwa was a relentless lover, all powerful thrusts and rough sighs of pleasure. When he fucked you he possessed you, owned you, held you in ways that moulded you to his satisfaction. And what was more – he wanted to see you know it. This encounter was no different.

He didn’t let me pretend for long. Before I knew it, his strong grip was forcing my head back, pulling until tears pearled up at the corners of my eyes. His hips were moving in languid smooth glides, contrary to the harsh thrusts he was delivering to my mouth. I only took it for a few more moments before I was blinking open to give him another stern glare – which was much harder to do with his cock sliding into my mouth until I felt it hitting the back.

He groaned out the second our eyes met and I choked on the head, pulling back only to thrust even further in with a provoking grin. Upon my gasp a flurry of saliva spilled out my lips, dribbling down my chin and throat. My mouth was so full my head was spinning with it; I was barely breathing, puffs of air escaping me in uneven bursts, and all I could hear were Seonghwa’s stuttering quiet groans. All I could feel was the way he throbbed on my tongue, the way he tasted of salt and musk. Then he was overriding all of my senses.

As he jerked forward to sink into me once more, his hand flexed in my hair and pulled. I felt my eyes roll back into my skull as my mouth stretched open on a moan. Seonghwa’s cock slid in deeper than before and I gagged on it, feeling my mouth and throat so full of him I couldn’t think about anything else. The tears that lined my eyes before were now freely falling down my cheeks. I could see it his gaze that it was exciting him even more, could hear it in the way his breath hitched in the middle of a muted groan. He was watching me with twisted awe, dark satisfaction creeping into the sharp edges of his sneer.

This time when he pulled out he gave me a few seconds to cough and wheeze and swallow, and I felt my knees throb now that I wasn’t getting distracted by everything else. The coldness of the floor was seeping into my bones, the hardness pressing into the soft skin there. The harsh line of the marble counter was digging into the back of my head, right underneath where his hand gripped me. Clinking of cutlery against porcelain carried through the air, the easy conversation just a few metres away still going uninterrupted and creating a steady hum beneath the cacophony of the quiet huffs and groans filling the little room we were in.

We were both breathing hard, but something very different reflected in Seonghwa’s face. Something that pushed my heart into overdrive with sharp notes of unease. Something that wasn’t there the last time I was with him – something that shifted from cruel to obsessive.

When he gripped my jaw again, eyes darkening with lust, I opened my mouth automatically, which pleased him. I didn’t want to like that, didn’t want to like pleasing him – but the way my stomach fluttered betrayed me. I knew, and he knew.

Seonghwa always just seemed to know, no matter how much I hid.

Taking a little step closer he pressed up against me fully, and when his cock slipped into my mouth this time, he barely had to move. With one hand he kept my hair in a tight grip, pushing the back of my head against the counter – and the other slowly migrated towards the porcelain sink above me, gripping it and leaning on it to keep the circling of his hips smooth. On every stroke he filled my mouth to the brim until I felt his sack press into my chin, all messy from the mix of my saliva and his salty bitter precum. I felt the sticky mixture sliding down my throat into my cleavage from where I choked and gagged.

The flavour of him exploded my senses, pushing me down, deeper into the pulsing pleasure.

“Asking me why,” the man suddenly muttered, breathless and wrecked, hands flexing and hips rough, “like you don’t watch me with those begging eyes.” His hand moved from my hair to wipe away the tears sliding down my cheeks. He abruptly kicked up the pace and the hands I’ve kept uselessly buried in the fabric of my dress subconsciously flew out to grab onto his thighs. I heard his voice break off into a tight moan and answered in my own, the flames of my own arousal pulsing through me with revenge out of nowhere – my own lust catching up to me so abruptly it knocked me off my axis.

“Acting like you don’t- don’t know… deep down- …that you’re mine,” he was getting tongue-tied with the exertion, and I knew just how close he was by how chatty he was getting. The truths always rolled off his tongue easier right on the cusp of painting me with his cum.

“B-because no one else- no one else sees you-” He was getting frantic with his pace, hitting the back of my throat with the head of his cock and stuffing it as far as my body could accept it. I was trying my best to breathe through my nose and keep my throat open, but my senses were getting so overwhelmed, my head spinning and dizzy, face all wet and body shaking. My juices dripped down my thighs, cunt pulsing and squeezing, but I didn’t have the capacity to do anything about it, not with how Seonghwa overruled my every thought. I whined, deep and long and needy, and felt his cock throb and jump while he moaned high in the back of his throat. “No one else sees you- like I do.”

Cum exploded into my throat, abruptly and without any warning, thick spurts quickly filling up the whole cavity. I choked on it, but my instinct kicked in and I started swallowing, though thick globs still slipped out of my mouth and joined the mess on my chin and neck, mixing in with the shiny cooling spit. I still felt him throbbing, his whole body tense and shaking over me, quiet whines escaping him as he tried to stifle himself.

Seonghwa held me in place for several long seconds before his body relaxed, and he slipped out of my mouth with a satisfied sigh. I got all of four seconds to take notice of my wheezing breaths and wet face and neck, mouth still knotted with the thick liquid that was now dribbling down all over me. Seonghwa cared for none of that.

His eyes flashed, and then I was pulled up to my feet and onto the counter. My head still spun, mind too gone to be fully coherent, but I knew I shouldn’t even bother closing my legs – not when the man was already prying himself in between them, pushing them roughly to the side.

When Seonghwa kissed me, all I could focus on was his pleased hum at the taste, the shudder that ran through him, the way his heavy breath hit me with wanton sighs while our tongues mingled. One of his hands sneaked down to grab my thigh and the other didn’t waste any more time, plunging right where it wanted to be.

His fingers skirted around the edge of my soaked underwear for a fleeting touch and then two of them were plunged deep inside me. Both of us groaned at that, a little too loudly for the circumstances – probably way louder than we could afford, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to care and I knew Seonghwa just didn’t. His eyes were eating me up, filing the interaction away, hungrily flitting over my face slackened in ecstasy. Our faces were so close our noses brushed each other, hot breaths mingling and sounds of pleasure almost harmonising. Like they were coming from the same source, from some hive-mind that distributed this depraved indulgence equally between us both, no matter who touched who and how. The intimacy of it all, that was what tore my heart up the most – and yet I still couldn’t force myself to look away from his beautiful sharp face coloured with bliss.

The patience from before has dissipated it seemed, because Seonghwa didn’t pause to let me adjust, didn’t even let himself think about. Instead he started up a quick rough pace, ramming into me with force that always left me breathless, pads of fingers a little too happy to find that magic little spot deep inside me and rub it endlessly.

I felt like I was losing my mind, the way the pleasure rushed my bloodstream and my brain, my body could barely process the sudden onslaught of sensations and it shook, shook against him like I was going to tremble apart. Seonghwa’s hand didn’t stop for a single moment, the wetness streaming around his fingers and splattering on my thighs. The squelching sound felt so loud in that little bathroom, especially with how enthusiastic his movements were.

I tried to strain my ears to see whether the others were still entertained by each other, but I couldn’t focus on them, not when Seonghwa’s fingers curled inside me, not when his thumb pushed on my already sensitive clit, not when he dived into the crook of my neck to kiss and nibble on the skin there. I felt my thighs shake, my knees lock, as the wave surmounted, as it grew and grew until I couldn’t take a single breath without risking crying out loud enough for the whole mountain to hear.

My cunt throbbed and pulsated around his digits, swallowing every inch. I was never more aware of how beautiful and strong his hands where than that moment, when they were bringing me to heaven and back in a bathroom barely a hallway away from our families.

Seonghwa chuckled at me as he watched me slowly, deliriously cum on his hand, while I fought to keep my head on straight enough to not moan out. The tension that was mercilessly rising, filling me to the brim and making my legs shake, released in a big boom, like a star exploding into a supernova. Like a star being born. I felt like I was on the cusp of a cosmic event.

My back arched violently and I threw my head back with the ecstasy, eyes screwed shut and mouth hanging wide open with a silent scream. One that I managed to swallow down with the last strands of sanity before it all drained out of me – and all that was left was just a wave after a wave of relief, all pumping out through my throbbing contracting hole.

Seonghwa’s fingers still moved gently, sliding in leisurely to prolong the sensations and to keep me full. I wasn’t ready to be empty, it would take me a while before I came back to myself and realised who I was fooling around with and where, but until then I desperately clenched on them, begging them to stay firmly lodged in.

And Seonghwa indulged me with soft croons, mouth now travelling down my throat to the crook of my neck, smiling and humming into the skin in a manner that was supposed to be calming, but I in my mind couldn’t interpret it as anything but mockery. Soft, sweet mockery that seeped into me, equal parts soothing and maddening.

When I came back to myself I was slumped into his embrace, head aimlessly lolling around on his shoulder while he entertained himself by kissing all the skin he could reach without dislodging us. My brain came back online with a few grumbles before I started slowly pulling away. This wasn’t the time or the place for gentle sweet nothings.

Seonghwa clocked in my change and moved accordingly, but as the bastard he was he took his damn sweet time pulling out, savouring each inch his fingers caressed on the way. Making me feel him till the last second. I ignored him and attempted to stand back on my feet, only to find them weak and shaking

I ostentatiously ignored him as I turned around to check myself in the mirror, but I couldn’t escape his gaze through the reflection. His eyes were like black holes, gravitational pull dragging me into them, devouring me raw. The strange glint returned to them as they roamed freely over my form, taking in my messy make-up and glossy eyes. My face wasn’t wet anymore, but I felt the grime of the dried saliva and cum still sticking to my skin.

When his eyes flitted over the carnage left behind, they sparkled with pride. My stomach swooped, falling through the floor all the way down to hell. I could barely breath under such appraising gaze.

Then they jumped to my eyes, watching me for a second before the intensity of his expression melted off into a little smirk, and he turned and left. Again. Walking through those open doors like nothing happened, like nothing was wrong.

He threw one last dark greedy glance over his shoulder and then he was gone.

I did all I could to not collapse under the strain of all that, shaky hands curling into fists by my hips while I stared at the empty space the man occupied up until a few seconds ago. I could still feel the endorphins rushing through my blood from the orgasm, but now that all was said and done all I could do was continue moving forward.

So instead of breaking down, instead of charging out of that stupid fucking room and punching Seonghwa right in the face in front of everyone still covered in his cum (which is what I kind of wanted to do) I turned my eyes to myself and did my best to salvage what I could while my heart raged in my chest.

Any thought that sneaked into my head I snuffed it out, quieting all discord before it could worm itself under my skin. Almost a terrifying clarity took over me, the silence of my mind making the aftermath of what happening feel even worse. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape it.

I did it again. I did it. Again. With Seonghwa.

I squeezed my eyes shut. Breathed slow through my nose. Tightened my grip over the cold porcelain, trying to ground myself into the density of the material. Into the solidity of the floor under my feet (solidity of the floor under my knees) where I stood (as I kneeled). I squeezed harder. It wasn’t helping.

My body felt strangely light with the absence of Seonghwa’s possessive hands grabbing onto me, and I almost swayed when I pushed away from the sink to walk back onto the terrace to finish the meal. I was stuck with the image of his dark hungry gaze tattooed onto the back of my eyelids, and any time I pushed my fingers through my hair to straighten it I wanted to tug on it as he did, to remind myself. To relive it. I was sick.

When I sat back down into my seat, it was like stepping into a parallel universe. Even my mother seemed to forget I was gone for such a long time and nobody spared me a single glance. The feast has moved on and most of them were now nibbling on a dessert, but I wanted to eat myself away from this so I reached for the leftover meat and potatoes.

God knows what the conversation was about – I certainly wasn’t listening. I clocked in the buzz and hum of it happening, I heard the sounds of plates and dishes and cutlery, of chewing, laughing, teeth clanking. But I didn’t hear.

Everything just felt so normal. I felt like melting. I wanted to melt. My mother threw me a disapproving glance when I reached for more food (so she did see me) and I ignored her as usual. No one else turned, not even Seonghwa – who was now back to quietly enjoying watching everyone else exist from a safe distance.

His eyes didn’t stray to me a single time. I huffed quietly and ate with maddening anger burning me from inside out.

He didn’t look at me again, not that evening and not the day after when we left. I burned.

It was a week and a half later when I started realising something was wrong.

Yujun begun spending a smidge more time at home, the reasons for which were a complete mystery to me at that time – and not like I cared much, since he kept out of my way for the bigger part (which itself was strange). I did notice how he seemed to watch me with a touch of suspicion though. Nothing specific, just… mistrust. At whatever I did. However I moved.

Each day a catalogue of all the things he could feel suspicious about ran through my mind. Did Seonghwa say something? Did he notice anything during the hunting trip? Did he find out about the pills? Was this about the wedding night?

There were too many things I had kept from him, too many things I did that were wrong, and the possibility of him finding out about any of them was frankly terrifying. Yujun was unpredictable and violent, and that was scarier than Seonghwa’s uncertain threats.

And when he came into the bedroom to sleep, even smelling of alcohol, he barely ever bothered me – not even once did he ask for sex, and that was completely unprecedented for my husband. The little pills I’ve grown so reliant on when dealing with him sat untouched hidden in my closet and somehow that made me feel more worried than when I used them on him almost nightly. It felt like the calm right before the storm.

I kept going on with my days, of course I did. What other choice did I have? Yujun’s eyes followed me everywhere, as soon as he got home, and shadows passed over them, darkened them (they were nothing like Seonghwa’s, nothing like his hungry dark orbs). I saw in his gaze how he was trying to figure something out. Like I was a puzzle.

Honestly, it was the most brain activity I’ve ever seen him do, and we’ve been married for almost ten months at that point.

But not knowing what it was that set him off put me on edge. I had no idea what to hide from him, what not to do. Not that there was anything to do about anything concerning Seonghwa. The man went back to his games and hasn’t spoken to me since we left their summer mansion. Not even a glance on the way out, like his fingers weren’t still wrinkled from my pussy. Not even one of his infamous smirks.

It made me strangely upset. Made my heart feel strangely heavy.

Mrs. Park has recently taken up the hobby of making very ugly jewellery, and of course, had to turn that into a ‘small home-run business’, acting as if her husband wasn’t one of the richest men in all of Korea and didn’t finance the whole thing. My own mother in her infinite wisdom thought that having to spend my days with my mother-in-law would finally pressure me into pregnancy – since there was no way she wouldn’t be asking every day, at this point I was surprised she wasn’t full on asking about her son’s dick performance and cum consistency (actually, maybe that was a good thing, because I had that kind of information about the wrong son) – but she took it on herself to rope me into helping her.

God damn me for ever telling my mother I found arts and crafts relaxing.

So now I spent my afternoons sitting in her dust pink saloon toying with pearls and pulling them on strings while listening to her complain about every person that’s ever crossed her path, and desperately ignoring all her attempts to probe into my marriage.

And even then I haven’t seen Seonghwa once.

I made the mistake of asking her about him one time and her expression as she told me he was just ‘busy’ was enough to make me not ask again. Not that I really wanted to know about him (I told myself), but just like before – his sudden disappearance after all the shit he said during our last time together was unnerving me.

What was his plan here? What the fuck did I get myself into?

With dodging Yujun, silently trying to cut out my mother’s bullshit out of my life, having to wait hand and foot on my mother-in-law and fearing what Seonghwa was going to do, I felt like losing my fucking mind. Within ten months my life spiralled completely out of control.

I was nothing but a pawn to them, nothing but a vessel with purpose. Get the family money, birth a child. Take revenge.

I lived in a house with a man I didn’t trust and feared what he could be capable of. I kept putting these misplaced feelings of sympathy on Seonghwa, when he didn’t give a shit about me any more than all the other people in my life.

He was not my friend. He wasn’t even on my side – Seonghwa was always on his own side, and no one else was allowed there. No one sees you like I do, my ass.

No, we were both alone together. That’s all that was. I was handy to him. A useful toy. And just as he said – I’d always let him. Because – just like he said – no one else saw me. So I just kept going, stewing in it all, each day almost physically feeling a bit of my sanity escape me.

And then one day I realised what was going on with Yujun.

All it took was coming home earlier from his mother’s house and going up the stairs too quietly. I knew the second I saw him staggering out of a guest room with his pants half undone – I knew. He started coming home more often because I was rarely there. And some poor maid most likely ended up paying for that.

History does repeat itself, as Kendrick Lamar once said. Sometimes it doesn’t need a reason. He hated his brother for being a bastard, and here he was – tempting the same fate.

He didn’t notice me – because of course he didn’t, he wasn’t the most aware person on his best days, and lately it’s been weird between us. I was half-hidden behind our very decorative banister too, which was just pompous and pretentious enough to hide me out of the clear line of sight while still giving me ample opportunity to peek.

Yujun disappeared into his office. I got up from the stairs and sprinted into the guest room.

I hated being right. Well, at least that day in that instance I did. She was a pretty young thing, with big fearful eyes and long straight hair, so thin I was worried she was going to faint on me when she noticed my form looming in the door like a cryptid. She looked weary though, holding onto her loosened uniform with something heavy settled in her limbs.

For her, it was a day of realisations too, it seemed. And a wife coming home just seconds after her husband fucked you, that’s a bad one. Not many great outcomes out of that one.

She looked to me with tears, the panic taking over her features as she jumped to conclusions about what I’d no doubt do to her for this. I guess that rich ladies weren’t the best clients when their husbands turned out to be cheating bastards unable to keep their hands to themselves. If I was anyone else, she’d be right to be terrified.

But I wasn’t like Mrs. Park that even after years of getting rid of her husband’s unscrupulous affairs and intimidating away poor women that found themselves in the crosshairs of their broken marriage, still ended up with a bastard child always mocking her failure.

And I wasn’t like my mother either – that didn’t speak about it, but even after all the talk she did about me having to sleep with my husband still sighed with relief when my father chose to enter someone else’s bedroom. I guess that she found paying his affair partners away easier than fucking him herself – not that I’d wish that kind of fate on anybody.

“Did he hurt you?” were the first words out of my mouth, and I saw her form tremble. She shook her head once, unsurely, and then twice more with conviction. Tears spilled down her cheeks and her mouth was glued shut with terror. I hoped my own disgust over my husband wasn’t overshadowing my judgement, but I worried for her.

“Are you sure?” This time she didn’t move, just stood there and stared at me with devastated resignation creeping into her eyes. When her lips finally unsealed, all that came out was a sob.

“Am I getting fired for this?” Her cries were getting loud enough to draw unwanted attention, so I quickly turned to slam the door shut. Yujun would now either be drinking or having his post-nut nap anyway, but I didn’t want to risk him hearing us have this conversation. It would be for the best if he didn’t even know I was home yet.

I shushed as gently as I could with the urgency that now ran through my veins, and she immediately shut up, still waiting for the big blow out. Walking closer I took her in – she really couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. She was a new face too, I haven’t registered her around the house much yet, way too used to the older Mrs. Kim that worked for us for all those long, long months.

“What’s your name?” I wanted to get the most important thing out of the way first, and slowly build up to this conversation to ease her mind a bit, but I wasn’t sure how much I could actually get through to her.

“Ha-eun,” she sniffled as she said it, hand going to wipe away the mess on her face, and I handed her a handkerchief. Ha-eun still eyed me with suspicion, but she seemed to have calmed down significantly. Her uniform was still a little messed up from where my husband presumably got his hands on her, and it made for a miserable picture.

“Ha-eun, are you alright?” The girl just kept staring at me, like she expected this all to be a trap, but eventually she nodded. It didn’t seem very convincing, but I didn’t want to push her too much until she fully calmed down. Which didn’t seem to be something she was capable of in that moment.

“I can’t lose this job,” she suddenly sobbed out again, shaking hands grabbing onto me like a follower onto a messiah, praying hands begging and tugging, “my mother-“

“Ha-eun!” I raised my voice lightly and the girl stopped her crying for a moment to look at me, big wet eyes expectantly watching my face for clues. I tried to smile at her, just to be reassuring. Based on her trembling form, I wasn’t sure how successful I was. “You’re not losing your job.”

Once again she nodded and then as if the words caught up to her, she did once more, lips shaking to hold in her distress. She was a bit taller than me, so when I grabbed her shoulders to look properly into her eyes I lost a bit of the effect having to look up, but she honestly looked like a drowned kitten, so it didn’t matter much at all.

“I’m going to ask for the last time,” I didn’t try to sound threatening, but it was surprisingly difficult to word things well when we both were running on very different but definitely very intense emotions, and I didn’t want to push if it turned out she really did like him, “Did he… push you? Or pressure you?” After all, just because I’d rather set myself on fire than touch him didn’t mean everyone else thought that too.

For a few tense silent seconds I felt like the asshole in the situation. Maybe it said more about me than it did about Yujun the way my mind immediately jumped there. I guess he did have a certain charm to him (if you didn’t inspect him much closer) – I could see how he could mess with a young girl’s heart, promising her riches and comfort and a few sweet words, even though he constantly smelled like booze and cigarettes. The Park genes and bank accounts definitely did a lot of heavy lifting, but still. For a split second a certain young handsome face framed by long dark hair flitted into my mind (his fingers in my hair, his hands on my hips) and I shook my head to dislodge the claws he sunk into me, blinking the unbidden memories away.

But then the girl in front of me started crying again, and my heart broke for her.

“I- I can’t lose this job…” That was answer enough. I shook with the sudden uproar of rage taking over me. In my own home. I was sharing a bed with this man. Lived in the same house. He was supposed to be getting me pregnant (I was so glad he wasn’t – I never wanted to carry his spawn). I could scratch myself out of my own skin with the crawling feeling of being married to someone like him.

I had to put my own disgust on pause though, because witnessing my meltdown was the last thing Ha-eun needed right now.

Still I couldn’t stop a very worrying thought from fighting its way to the forefront of my mind.

Yujun fucking someone else in our house and coming to our bed already sated, not asking me to fuck him – that meant he knew to a certain extent that I had been lying to him about our sex life – since he stopped trying to get anything out of me. He probably didn’t know about the pills (otherwise he’d already make a scene) but he must have known I was somehow manipulating him. He most likely also assumed I was getting it elsewhere.

That’s why the suspicious glances. I was right – this was all going to crash down and burn around me faster than I was ready for. I had to do something – but what? That was the golden question.

I wasn’t fucking built for this.

“You’re not losing your job,” I managed to push out through the turmoil, mind half gone, and the girl latched onto that, latched onto me, like it was a saving grace. She thanked me, she thanked me for what she thought was me letting her get assaulted two bedrooms over from my own bed.

“I’ll get you a new job,” I promised, grasping onto her hands so she couldn’t pull away in shock, “a better one, away from all this.” More mistrust, two steps back after the progress we just made. Fear. But I didn’t have time to deal with that right now.

I had to figure out how to help us both.

The next few days were tense in the house, tenser than ever before. I called Mrs. Park and let her know I wasn’t feeling well and not wanting to make her sick I’d stay home for some time until I was sure I wasn’t contagious anymore. She hardly seemed to care, offering me barely a half of a sentence of reassurance before hanging up to go do her own thing. I kind of wanted to cuss her out, but her not caring was the better option of the two. She could have been showing up on my doorstep with chicken broth or some shit. Even though it stung a little, I still had to count my blessings that she wasn’t some helicopter parent.

Yujun was the bigger problem currently. Sometimes during the first two days of us awkwardly hanging around the house he figured out I found out about the affair and now was getting pissy about me cock-blocking him. He stomped around the house throwing hateful glances around like a toddler, embarrassing both himself and me. When he knew I was home, he was locked in his office. He didn’t sleep in the bedroom anymore (I had no idea how to let him know that wasn’t a punishment).

I had no idea what he thought he was going to accomplish with this, but to a man who probably always got what he wanted was throwing tantrums most likely the only way to show his displeasure about not getting his way.

The thing I really struggled with was delivering on my promise though. As I grew up, I cut contact with a lot of people I used to hang around when younger, so there weren’t many ‘friends’ I could ask for a favour and know that I’d be handing Ha-eun over into good hands. My parents were out of the question, because my mother wouldn’t let me deal with it this way. She’d make Ha-eun’s life living hell until she herself wanted nothing to do with any of us. I could never tell her why I wanted our maid to go work for them, and she’d never accept a new person without an explanation.

I messaged Yunho, as at the time he was the only person I was sure about having some manners around the circles in which I ran. He texted back within hours that their house was full, but he’d ask around. A polite version of ‘no, and don’t bother me with it anymore’.

I stubbornly ignored the fact that there was a person I knew that I was decently close to (if you could call us that) who owned a literal hotel, but where I stood right now – I’d rather chew off my own hand than to contact him. It didn’t take very long for me to get desperate though.

Yunho did actually end up asking around, which pleasantly surprised me, but most of the people around us couldn’t care less or didn’t want to get involved in a drama like this. Because a woman getting rid of a maid from her house could only mean one thing, and the fact that I was so vocal about it was seen as very embarrassing and humiliating. They’d for sure laugh about me in private, but wouldn’t do shit outside the bounds of their very comfortable lives.

I knew I couldn’t push it any further just a short few days later though, when while walking down a hallway I heard Ha-eun protesting to someone. With my hackles immediately raised, I stomped over to the room it was coming from.

Our living room was spacy, full of air and light, with minimal décor. I actually kind of hated it, but it wasn’t my house, not really – not in all the ways that mattered, and I didn’t exactly care for re-decorating, so I just let it be. Ha-eun was clearly just in the process of dusting one of the decorative bookshelves when Yujun approached her. He was standing firm and not swaying at all, which honestly surprised me to see. I couldn’t off the top of my head remember when I last saw him closer to sober than tipsy.

The maid saw me first, cause my husband was angled more to have his back to me, and she immediately fell silent, sizing me up with a guilty look on her face and reflected in her teary eyes. It took Yujun all of three seconds of the awkward silence to realise what was happening, and when he turned around he was already scowling with anger.

My gaze slid down his form. He was gripping her wrist, not very gently. As he stood there, stewing in his anger, I shot one pointed glare at his hand, and he dropped it. The room was so quiet I could hear all of us breathe, as we just stood there and glared at each other. Then Yujun just stalked off, breezing past me with a stormy expression on his face, not saying a single word.

I waited until I heard the door to his office slam shut, the boom reverberating through the whole house, before I redirected my attention to the young woman. She was shaking, holding her wrist. There were red imprints on it. I wanted to storm upstairs right after Yujun and beat him to a pulp.

“Go home for today,” I told her, as calmly as possible, and she nodded, “Don’t come in tomorrow. I’ll text you the details of your new job during the afternoon.” She nodded again, this time more fearful, but didn’t argue with me over it, something very resigned settling in her features. I figured that at this point risking losing this job without having a fall-back was the better option to dealing with the man.

The house was eerily silent while I got myself ready to leave, and I casted a few curious glances towards the closed locked door my husband disappeared behind. I was getting really fucking tired of policing everything that happened in these halls, and the prospect of this being the rest of my life made me want to burn it all down. For now though, I’d keep that in the arsenal of options.

As I was walking out of the house knowing full well where I was going, to who, and what was going to happen, I really couldn’t fucking believe I ended up having to resort to that. I kind of hated it, actually – because it felt like this was truly unescapable, like Seonghwa was right when he looked at me like he was inevitable. I hated proving him right. But if he could use me to his means, I could definitely use him for mine. At the end of the day, he did want something from me, and I could do something with that.

I haven’t been to Seonghwa’s hotel since that fateful night, but still as I walked inside the restaurant seemed almost uncannily familiar. I really didn’t want to think about that day though, so I pushed those thoughts aside and steam-rolled towards the reception.

I was worried whether Seonghwa would even be here, and what would I even tell the poor guy sitting behind the counter. How do you storm into a hotel and demand to see and speak to the owner? I kind of wished I’d exchanged numbers with him back before everything happened (though during these months I found myself grateful for not having that connection to him, I couldn’t imagine what he’d be sending me), but now suddenly asking Mrs. Park for his contact info wouldn’t go unnoticed. It’d be weird, and she’d be asking why I wanted to speak to him. No one ever wanted to speak to Seonghwa. No one ever asked for him. He just was everywhere, ready.

And it must have been some sort of black magic, some sort of a cursed sixth sense – because as I was walking up to the reception counter, preparing myself to demand to speak to him – there he was. Casually standing around talking to one of the employees. As I said – just there, ready. Like he sensed I’d be searching for him. Like he knew my life devolved into spinning in his orbit.

It was strange how quickly things could descend into madness – and I haven’t even interacted with the man for weeks at a time.

He had a small soft smile on his face, the polite kind you put on when speaking to people you didn’t know well. No matter what I thought of the man, I had to give that to him – he knew how to wear that mask. How to pretend he was human, just like everyone around him. When he looked at you with that pretty face wearing a gentle smile and spoke softly, you’d trust him with anything.

Seonghwa was what people imagined the devil to be. And I felt crazy for being the only one aware of it, like he was a blind spot. Nobody wanted to see, but I had to – I had no other choice. He showed me, he chose me to know.

The moment his eyes caught mine he was immediately tuned to me, face open and curious, painted with shock. At least I could say I surprised him once.

I walked up, and not bothering with any pleasantries just said: “I need to speak to you.”

All of the employees standing around eyed us with curiosity and interest, probably not used to their boss being spoken to in such manner. I bet most of them didn’t even know who I was, that I was technically his family. Seonghwa’s only answer was his smile shifting a little into the vaguely savage grin I was more used to, and he simply gestured for me to follow him. I did, still not saying anything further.

Seonghwa’s office was sleek and elegant, decorated minimally in mostly black and white with some warm accents to offset the emptiness. It fit him well – pretty but hollow. We both walked in confidently, acting like we were nothing more than simple acquaintances. I hoped my face didn’t betray anything, but I knew the man could probably see the anger swirling somewhere deep within me.

He knew very well what he did and what were the circumstances we parted on, it was all written into his amused smirk as he lead me down the hall.

The lock on the door clicked quietly, but I clocked it immediately, already accustomed to how he did things. This was his turf. He’d close and lock the door. No one interesting to catch the show here – quite the opposite actually. Just a bunch of people trying to make it through their shifts.

Seonghwa was already grinning as he sat down behind his dark desk, a knowing expression settled on his face. I wondered how he knew it’d end up this way. But I guess that when you have no one else you inevitably end up going to the one person you know will indulge you, no matter what.

“What can I help you with?” the cheer in his voice kind of undermined the way he tried to sound professional and business-like, and I fought off a sneer at the blatant display of giddiness. Seeing him, what I wanted to do next required to swallow down my pride, but I could do it.

It definitely wasn’t the worst thing he’s ever made me swallow.

“I need a favour,” I told him point-blank, finding no reason for beating around the bush, “No questions asked.” The man hummed, folding his hands on top of the sleek surface. He gestured for me to go on.

“What kind of favour?” I realised this might have been the only time we actually had a conversation without any sexual undertones, and the normalcy of his tone was almost weirding me out.

“You’ll employ a maid here,” I laid it out for him, giving him no space to protest (not that I thought he would, this was prime opportunity for him), “with proper rates. A good stable job.” That had Seonghwa snorting sardonically, eyes twinkling with condescension. I wasn’t sure whether it was aimed at me or Yujun, but it still made the fire within me roar with barely contained rage.

“Well, that didn’t take long,” he drawled out in that awful mocking voice, “How pregnant is she?”

“Hopefully not at all,” I glared back at him and he smirked right back.

“I see, so just preventative?” he asked jovially, white teeth flashing me with that beastly smile he so often wore.

“I couldn’t care less about what he does and with who,” I fired back immediately, feeling myself get all worked up over this again, “I’m worried about her safety.” He just hummed again, watching me for a few tense seconds, before he opened his arms wide as if stretching them.

“You know what I want in return,” he spoke it so smoothly, like it was the easiest thing in the universe. I supposed to him it might have been, because he demanded. He wouldn’t be hit with the consequences nearly as bad. I frowned at him.

“Is there ever anything else that you think about?”

“Not with you in my sight.” His expression was playful, with a small grin pulling at his lips. Was he fucking flirting right now? Under the intensity of his gaze I couldn’t help but blush slightly at the words, but immediately cursed myself for even listening to such bullshit.

“Do I though? Know what you want?” I shot back, walking a little away from the table to look at the shelves with displayed trinkets. It was mostly photos of Seonghwa with influential people and certificates and awards the hotel won, but there was the stray flower or a piece of art. “It doesn’t feel that way to me.”

To my side the man hummed thoughtfully, leaning comfortably in his chair. “I always thought I was rather clear about that,” he rumbled back, voice taking on a little more seductive tone. But I willed myself not to buckle, not today.

“There’s a lot of people to fuck and entertain you, I’m sure they’d indulge you,” I tried and failed to keep the bitterness out of my tone, and saw Seonghwa frown slightly.

“None of them are you,” he said plainly, like it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

And now it was my turn to scoff and laugh at him with scorn, lips curled in a way that betrayed just how he affected me, just how mad I was going. “Please,” I sneered at him, sharp teeth on display, “don’t make me laugh.”

Seonghwa looked at me wordlessly for a few silent moments, processing the rawness of my emotion in the face of his desire, and then he patted the table in front of him, leaning back into his chair and spreading his legs wide. I watched him for a moment.

“Come on, come here,” Seonghwa said finally when I didn’t move towards him. Seconds ticked by as we were locked in a stalemate, just watching each other – but I never saw his resolve waiver. He’d already become so confident I wouldn’t refuse he didn’t even seem to be worried about whether I’d come to him or not. I tried not to think about that as I finally moved towards the empty space with a sigh.

His hands were on my hips before my ass even hit the wood of the desk, where I leant on it in between his open legs. They reverently caressed my sides, sliding up and down gently and with devotion that put me off, knocked me slightly off kilter. I felt his warmth seep into me, the weight of his hands comforting in a way that unnerved me. I knew then, that I missed it. I felt too loose without him holding me, untethered to the ground.

I’d come to the realisation that I liked the dizziness stemming from his scorching touch.

I watched him as he lost himself to the feel of me under his hands, eyes glued to where he touched, half-lidded and wanting, shrouded in a mist of something almost adoring. My heart sped up under his attention, as it always did – and I was getting tired of the never-ending cycle of shame and guilt that would be no doubt hitting later.

He was either a damned good actor, or this was spinning out of control way too fast (like everything else in my life).

“What are you doing?” I asked the man, and the exhaustion came through in my voice, “What is all of this really about?” At first it seemed like he didn’t hear me at all. He sat still, hands in motion and gaze trained to them, like he didn’t register anything that happened outside of that. Then his hand slowly slid over to my lower abdomen, in a gesture that was by now awfully familiar and made my heart quiver with some sort of macabre suspense.

“Family,” he answered simply, eyes rising to meet mine slowly (so open and wide and telling), “Revenge.” He kept the eye contact, to a point it made me uncomfortable – and yet I couldn’t pull myself away from him, couldn’t break the connection that was struck up between us. “But you already knew that.”

“Revenge…” I tried out how the word tasted on my tongue. Like ash. Like heartbreak. Loneliness. I looked at the man and he was still watching me, steadily returning my gaze. His eyes almost felt hollow in a sense, and I felt that terrible surge of pity again.

“You want a family?” I didn’t even know what I was saying, didn’t know where I was steering this conversation – just that it was all dangerous territory. I should have already known by then. Give him an inch, and he takes a mile (and gets you pregnant). Seonghwa didn’t answer my question though, not really. He just leant in into my stomach, putting his weight on me. I fought off the instinct to bury my hands into his long locks, but I couldn’t stop them from gently settling down on his shoulders. He kept looking at me with those huge eyes, clouded with something I couldn’t quite name, and stayed stubbornly silent. I sighed.

“Why me?” That was the million-dollar question. Why me? This felt beyond what happened between us that first night. That was revenge. Whatever was happening now was a whole different beast.

“You see me.” Something scalding hot poured into my veins, like molten gold – and I couldn’t tell whether it was dread or delight.

Before I could process his words, come to terms with my whole world tilting starboard, Seonghwa was standing up. His body moulded over mine, nose bumping into my stomach and my breasts as he went up, momentarily burying into my neck before his face was suddenly all up in mine.

From this up close I could fully take in his striking features. The blemishless honey-toned skin, dark chocolate eyes, sharply cut cheekbones. The intensity of him burned from here, and I loved getting scorched. I loved the heat.

His hand came up to slowly, gently caress my face, and I let him. I held still for him, lulled in by my treacherous heart. This was all doomed, all of it and both of us. I didn’t even know if he was telling the truth. I never knew if he was telling the truth – that was the trade he was in. A double agent, always working towards some deeper harsher goal.

Nice words were weapons. Seonghwa knew how to wield them.

His thumb passed underneath my eye, pressed lightly into the soft, thin skin. His lips parted, tongue darting out to wet them. He watched the path of his fingers, hypnotised.

“Your eyes,” Seonghwa whispered to me sweetly, “they don’t look through me.” I sighed again.

“Seonghwa-“ But he didn’t let me speak – didn’t let me finish that thought. He was pressing in closer (I wasn’t even aware that was still possible), and our eyes met again.

“Just let me have this,” he said simply and then he was leaning in, lips sliding across my cheek until they found the corner of my lips and settled there gently. I had a split second to make my decision – and I did. My heart trembled and for a brief flash I thought – what about the things I want to have?

But still it wasn’t all that hard to turn my face slightly until our mouth slotted into each other, fitted like they were always meant to end up there. I was used to unyielding ferocity when it came to kissing Seonghwa, but this time he slowly dipped his tongue in my mouth as if tasting me. I matched his energy, I always did (or I tried to), and savoured him.

He kissed me like you’d enjoy fancy wines – sipping leisurely, experiencing, dipping yourself in slowly, submerging your senses in one at a time. Digging for sweetness, appreciating the sourness. I sighed and hummed into his mouth, and he swallowed that down too, like appetisers.

When his hands came up to my thighs to push me onto his table fully, I was already going myself without even needing his direction. He trained me well (history did repeat itself) – I found myself in the same position as on his father’s table all those weeks ago. But this time it was Seonghwa’s office, with his door locked and determination to see this through at an all-time high.

I also didn’t waste a second and threaded my hands into his silken shirt, pulling him with me as I used the momentum to lay down on the table. Seonghwa followed loyally, gracefully bending down to loom over me without breaking the kiss. The only evidence of the movement was the deep breath he released into my mouth as his tongue suddenly dipped deeper, and I moaned quietly into him. I felt his lips stretch into a satisfied smile, fingers digging deeper into my flesh where he clutched at me.

Feeling generous, I went with the flow without waiting for his cues, keeping him glued to me as the kiss devolved more and more into something messy and wet and loud. He shifted closer and our bodies aligned well enough for his hardening bulge to press into my core – so I did what any rational person would do in that situation. Let go of all thought and went to wrap my legs around his hips to pull him closer, feel him drag against me.

The man only chuckled in response, a light sound that carried a hint of arrogance to it (a sound I was beginning to crave), and pushed my legs away. Before I could react he was dislodging from me, pushing me into the table as he straightened and looked down at me. Excitement fizzled through me and I found his eyes easily – they read as much lust as mine must have, dripping with intent.

In a sense, it was liberating. To let go of everything, leave the world behind a door and just feel. I turned off all the things in me that related to anything in the outside world, and let him dip me into debauchery once more.

“You’re such a lazy girl,” Seonghwa whispered, teasing, “You have it too easy with me, don’t you know? I spoil you too much…” His hands slowly moved up my sides to my breasts, each grabbing one roughly, just feeling their weight. I gasped at the touch and my back arched up on instinct, pushing myself more into him. He chuckled again, this time much darker.

“Always just get on your back or your knees,” each word was underlined with a squeeze until I twisted underneath him, desperate, “Always let me do all the work. Do you think you deserve to have it so easy again?” I was barely paying attention to his words, instead focused on how his lips moved – their tantalising drawl, the way they curled so deviously, sensuously. Everything about him was so indecent, so seductive – it was enough to drive a saint mad.

And I was the farthest thing from a saint.

When I failed to respond to him, Seonghwa smirked – like that was the excuse he was waiting for – and stepped back, completely disentangling our limbs and bodies. I put all of my will into not whining for him pathetically. That would inflate his ego, and I wasn’t about to contribute to that. I already did too much for this man’s confidence.

“Get up, darling,” Seonghwa ordered, strict and no-nonsense, like a man expecting to be obeyed no matter what. And I was nothing if not eager to please. I was on my feet quickly, so quickly that my head spun for a few brief seconds and I had to clutch the table for support.

Seonghwa either didn’t notice or he didn’t care, because he was more occupied with pushing me out of the way and situating himself to sit and lay down on the table himself. With his height it was a bit of an awkward position – his feet brushed the floor in an arch that didn’t look very comfortable and his head hung over the edge on the other side, but he looked perfectly comfortable if the shit-eating grin on his face was anything to go by.

One of his hands swiftly patted his lap and he winked at me. “Come, climb on top, doll.” He wanted me to ride him on his office desk. I felt my cheeks heat up, but I still wordlessly undid my skirt and let it drop to the ground. Seonghwa’s sparkling eyes glided over the exposed skin of my legs, but I didn’t give him much chance to ogle before I was propping myself up on the table and settling down in his lap. His hands automatically shot out to grab onto my hips, and in this position I was directly on top of his now hard-rock cock.

Before I could stop myself I was gyrating on him, chasing the faint sparks of pleasure it provided. I was too tired that day to pretend I wasn’t enjoying myself, or to fight this out of some misplaced loyalty and shame. I spent months escaping this and here I was anyway, back in his grasp – so why should I care for propriety at this point?  

I set up a nice rhythm and just let myself go, let myself drown in that tidal wave of looseness of muscles and limbs that pleasure always brought on, with my head empty of all except his hands on me.

“W-what are you even talking about?” I stuttered out, eyes closed and head thrown back, living through the feeling of Seonghwa’s hands on my hips dragging me onto his cock again and again, “See you? I ca-can barely stand to look at you.” That drew a deep rumbly chuckle out of the man, so low I felt the vibrations reverberate through me where I sat on top of him.

I didn’t know why I felt the need to return to this now, but the unfinished conversation niggled at my insides – we were so close to some monumental revelation, right on the doorstep of a revolution. I couldn’t let him kiss it away.

“That’s a lie, darling, and you know it,” he purred back at me, draping me in sweet velvet as his hands moulded me to his liking, “Your eyes can’t ever stop following me when you’re with me. It’s exhilarating, knowing how much you need to see me.”

And the thing was – he was right. I never did not look at him. As soon as he entered a room, I was aware of him from beginning till end, of every little thing he did or said, even of how he breathed. How he looked when happy, when sad, when angry, when mischievous. He was like a lure – your eyes just couldn’t pull away.

A fly in a spider’s web, spun round and round and round, dazed with poison and consumed, slowly, deliciously. That’s how it felt to look into his eyes.

And yet he was right – I did it every single time.

“Then what was all the shit during the hunting trip about?” I asked breathlessly, hips stuttering as I was getting distracted again, “All the talk you did then, about owning me, huh? You always humiliate me. Scorch me and then walk away, make me feel like a piece of shit, make me feel angry. Make me hate you.”

“Welcome to my family, doll,” he sneered at me sardonically, hurt pulling at his features. So much pain and anger in one person, it almost seemed impossible – and yet here I was, face to face with it.

He beckoned me with two fingers, and like a puppet on a string I leant in towards him, settling down on him chest to chest. The scowl disappeared as quickly as it came, melted into a teasing grin while both of his hands slowly crept up my outer thigh until he was playing with the seat of my panties with his arms wrapped around the back of my thighs.

All incentive to finish the conversation left me, burying those uneasy feelings away under the wave of desire that consumed me.

I felt my core throb and squeeze at his touch, anticipatory and already slick where his fingers met with bare sensitive skin. I shuddered on him at the feather-light teasing touch, the way he skimmed around the wet pink flesh without really committing to a place to touch to drive me insane, and I throbbed even harder as another wave of slick rushed out of me.

Seonghwa took his sweet time coating his fingers in my wetness, playing around, occasionally pressing on my clit to hear me keen into his neck. The wave of want was rising in me, nothing in me but the mindless desire to feel full of him, for him to quench that need to feel pleasure from any touch he’d bestow on me.

My hips moved almost on their own, shuffling and straining to lead his fingers where I wanted them, but they stayed ever so elusive. I heard the man chuckle into my hair and rose my head to look at him.

The look in his eyes was much darker than the playful grin stretched on his lips, and that’s how I knew he’d cave in soon. Because no matter how much Seonghwa tried to keep his cool and stay in control, I saw how easily he slipped into the haze, how he lost himself in lust when a wet pussy was presented to him.

He couldn’t ever resist the pull.

And just as I thought – the moment our eyes met and the arousal flared between our gazes, his fingers were very decidedly sliding through my folds and slipping inside. He started off with two right away, and even though I’ve been getting wetter by the second, it took a bit of work to stuff them both inside – but then he took up a slow, intense pace, stroking inside with firm motions that left me feeling how the waking fire begun licking up at my tummy.

I sighed and moaned, eyes falling shut with the surge of sensations. I let my head fall back down onto his chest, burrowing into his crisp clean shirt and drowning in his spicy woodsy perfume that overwhelmed my senses.

Relief. All I could feel was immense relief, wrapped nicely in a touch of building ecstasy as Seonghwa gradually sped up his hands, fucking into me with more and more force. My pussy squeezed around the digits, felt every inch, ridge, knob. I loved the way they reached so deep inside, and I let him know by moaning out louder every time they bumped into the bundle of nerves deep inside of me, while the palm of his hand pressed down on my clit with every thrust.

I wasn’t sure if it was by the position, where I was all spread for him with my legs splayed wide over his hips with my back arched and ass on display, or by the situation itself (or because it’s been so long since I last had him), but I could feel the orgasm building in me faster than I was used to. It was honestly kind of humiliating how easily he could break me down in the most primal and primitive way the moment he got his paws on me, with nothing but a couple of well-aimed strokes.

Seonghwa didn’t seem to plan to let me have this without him though, because as soon as he felt me tightening around him as my moans carried higher and higher, he pulled his fingers out. I raised my head immediately with a disgruntled moan and it was enough to just catch a glimpse of his self-satisfied smirk before his arm sneaked around my waist and pulled me closer to his neck.

I was confused for a moment, head buried in his hair and taking in the scent of him, when I felt his hand messing around somewhere on his lap and I realised – he was trying to open his pants without pushing me away. The dress pants perfectly hugged his waist (a man like him wouldn’t wear anything that wasn’t hand-tailored to him) so I didn’t even have the sounds of a belt buckle to go off of. I only knew he succeeded when he moved both his hands down and started shuffling around to pull the pants down.

It was actually quite funny, and I released a few amused chuckles at his struggle. Which did not go unnoticed.

Before I registered him moving, I was being pulled roughly to sit on his very naked and very hard cock, the length throbbing underneath my wet core. The moment I could get any kind of stimulation again, the amusement was long forgotten and I didn’t waste a second and started writhing on top of him, jerking my hips unevenly back and forth and drenching us both in my wetness.

A half of a strangled moan escaped Seonghwa before he caught himself, hands shooting out to grab onto the meat of my hips to stop the movement. His nails dug into the skin there with the strength of his grasp, the sting heightening the pleasure and making everything richer. For a brief moment our eyes met, his darkened with so much potent lust I shuddered, and then he was pulling me up to get me on his cock.

It took a few tries and both of us were already half mindless at this point, but when I felt him slip inside it was like finally getting a sip of cold water after wandering through the desert for days, weeks. Months. Almost nine months.

It was like coming home, and I could cry with the relief.

I went to grab onto his shoulders but was met with heated fabric instead – and suddenly came to the realisation that he hasn’t undressed again. Agitated, I started tearing into his buttons, probably taking some out with the force I used to open his shirt and slide it off his shoulders and arms until the sleeves hung over the side of the table.

Seonghwa’s beautiful sculpted chest came into view, and I remembered back to that night – when we were in a similar position and he buried himself in me, in kissing me, marking me, biting me. My hands reverently glided over the darkly flushed skin, worshipping all that deadly strength hidden under the softness and grace, and the man let me. He watched me, hands pulling me firmly onto his lap, as I was swallowed into that haze.

And when I leant down to lick at the skin, he didn’t stop me. With every tentative flicker of my tongue, every shy kiss or a shallow bite I distributed, he sighed gently and stayed still, taking my worship with impatient grace.

The room was quiet except for our pronounced breathing, nothing seeping in from outside – not through the door, not through the walls. Our eyes met, my hips jumped, he groaned. There goes the silence, I thought as I swirled my hips on him, savouring the feeling of his cock lodged as deep inside me as it could go.

The table creaked and for a split second I worried if it could take us, but then Seonghwa was using his hands to help me move in little circles, subtly pulling me faster, faster, until my brain felt scrambled at how his tip grazed and pressed on the delicious little spot all the way inside me. Neither of us said anything, but neither of us broke the eye contact either. We just moved, instinct overriding all else.

His scalding hot skin underneath my body was beginning to burn into me in such a familiar way I sighed at the sensation. I closed my eyes and let the press of our bodies speak for itself, my face subconsciously finding the crook of his neck to bury myself there and cover myself in him.

My hand slid down his side, feeling each rib on its journey. Seonghwa, for someone so bitter, was always so full of life – and only here, like this with him, I could feel all that life spill into me through our touch. I never felt quite so alive as when I felt his chest expand with pleasured breaths underneath the pads of my fingers. I heard him sigh out, and something on the table cluttered. It was a soft sound. I wondered what he saw, what he looked at.

His hands on my hips tightened before they slid up and slowly tugged off my own shirt, which I completely forgot I still had on. Instead of raising my arms (which would mean not touching Seonghwa), I squirmed and wormed until it fell down my arms onto his stomach before I quickly threw it off to the side. I was expecting him to for my bra next, but he didn’t. When his hands caressed their way back down, he grabbed onto my hips with such a force I felt his fingers dig into the meat of my ass.

His hips pressed up, and where I still held onto his waist I felt his back arch off of the table lightly with such a quiet groan I would have missed it if it wasn’t for the silence in the room. And just like that fire roared in me again, arousal pouring over me like hot summer air – pushing its way into my lungs and stealing my breath, covering me whole.

I gradually sped up, kept going with every little moan it punched out of me, every sigh of pleasure it earned from him, until I was riding him in earnest to the symphony of the table shifting on the floor and the wood of it creaking softly. Until I felt his cock slide out and then hammer back in with every new maddening swirl, especially when Seonghwa started working his hips in earnest too.

That’s when I finally opened my eyes again – when his first thrust knocked the breath out of me on a surprised moan, and I scrambled to find purchase on the smooth planes of his torso. His gaze was trained on me, right where I left it, dark pupils blown wide as he took me in while I moved on top of him.

Maybe someone would call this nothing more than cheap thrills – but there wasn’t anything that felt cheap about this. It felt like more than it should have been. On the contrary, these were very expensive thrills – expensive with consequences among other things.

We fell into a rhythm very quickly, bodies moving in tandem, thrust for thrust and groan for groan. The terrible sound of wet skin clapping against wet skin thundered through the office, but I didn’t have it in me to feel embarrassed about anyone outside hearing. Not when I heard that desperate edge in Seonghwa’s moans, not when I felt myself squeeze again and again around his throbbing length, when it filled me so good, when the pleasure was making it hard to think of anything at all.

I was blanking, mind wiped of anything other than his dark eyes boring into me. Seonghwa rearranged his grip on my hips and then he was railing into me from bellow, punching desperate moans out of my throat. I let gravity help me, pull me down onto his cock, and his hands to pull me back up, only to drop me down once more. The force of it all turned everything very loud, the quiet atmosphere now broken with how close we were to ruining each other.

Though Seonghwa would no doubt argue that he’s already ruined me a long time ago, the silly egotistic man he was.

The dark-haired man groaned very loudly, completely unabashed in his pleasure. I felt his fingers slip around with sweat, I even felt it trickling down my back, felt it where my ass met his thighs, felt it clinging to my pubes, to my arousal. I could smell it on us, in the air. Saw it wetting his hair when I finally brought myself to focus back on him.

Seonghwa glistened, and the desk shook, and our eyes rolled back, and the pleasure built. It was all so overwhelming. So close to bursting. I always felt close to bursting at the seams around Seonghwa. 

One of his hands slipped down between us to bump around my pussy and press onto my clit, but it was so hard to do with the pace and the wild thrashing of our bodies, so it only served to tease me more than offer relief. I still took it, happily, needily.

“You know, though-“ Seonghwa gasped out – and here it was again. His never tired mouth, so eager to spill all those truths the moment he got his cock in me, always needing to share, to be heard. And I listened. “You know…hhhng- that you’re mine.”

The way we breathed so hard prevented me from reacting in any way except for my eyes snapping to his blown-out ones. They were wide and honest, a mockery with almost a touch of desperation. But so, so open in a way only sex could bring out.

“I don’t- belong to anyone,” I struggled to speak through the rising fire consuming me from the inside out, I could feel my climax building with every thrust, every stroke, every time his cock hit me just right. Seonghwa’s expression betrayed just how close he was getting too – not even the cocky smirk he tried to send me could hide how his lips curved into moans, or the way his hazy eyes slipped closed ever so often.

My thighs were killing me, burning and screaming with every movement, but the peak was just there, right around the corner. I gritted my teeth and ground down with determination. Seonghwa’s grip tightened and the man groaned desperately, eyes almost gone, but soon his mouth was running again.

“Y-you don’t have to wear my mark- to- to- know it’s there,” as he pushed the sentence out through the strain, his chin jerked to where my hand laid on his frantically jumping chest. The one where I wore my rings, which glittered under the light and shone with beautiful contrast to his honey skin.

I wanted silver. I liked it more. It was the only thing that went my way this marriage. The only thing in which someone cared for my opinion. I watched the diamond sparkle as my hand slipped on his sweaty chest. I could see his wild eyes trained on me obsessively from the corner of my eye, taking in my reaction.

I willed my hips to slow down, to take their time and leisurely bounce in his lap, but the intensity of the encounter still continued rising, and at this point there wasn’t anything any of us could have done to stop our oncoming orgasms. Seonghwa’s brows furrowed together and his breath hitched, but he quickly matched my tempo. The force of his thrusts were still enough to knock groans out of me on every stroke, and now with us going slower it’s like I felt his cock even more viscerally.

It was so hard to think about anything else, my mind was overheating under Seonghwa’s skilful hands. The man was too good at reducing me into a mindless animal, swaying and writhing on him with only goal in my mind – and the singular consolation prize was that he was just as gone, face flushed and eyes dazed.

“You- you k-know,” I stuttered out, pushing my brain to work so I could push this weight back onto him, to get back at him as always – cause that’s what we did, we provoked the other until we hit a truth that then couldn’t be hidden anymore, and everything became much too real. And I was about to do it again – unleash something that deep down we both must have realised long ago, but haven’t spoken into existence yet.

“You know, that even if- you get me preg-nant,” my tongue and lips were not cooperating with me, so heavy and useless with the bliss coursing through my veins I could barely stammer the sentence out, “it won’t- it won’t be your child.” It was a whole mouthful, but so was Seonghwa.

The man’s eyes ignited with something that made me shiver, that put a little bit of fear back in my heart when it started growing so comfortable with the pity he elicited. It’s like he kept tricking me into forgetting what he did, what kind of person he was. And I kept falling for it, until the wolf under his skin showed his teeth again and I knew, that I fell deeper each time.

Seonghwa’s hands came back to grip my hips, harder this time, until his fingers dug deep into the soft skin and flesh there, like he was clawing at me. I released a whimper at that, and my hips stuttered, almost distracting me from what I was trying to do with my words – and he knew that, that arrogant fucker.

He pulled me onto himself harder, slamming me onto his cock as he thrusted up, his tip ramming into the sweet spot. The room was overcome with the squelching sound of my wet pussy as he pounded away, the slapping of damp skin and my moans hitting crescendo.

This orgasm felt like a freight train, rushing towards me where I laid tied up on the tracks. I knew it would hit me with a force that would tear me apart, I knew it was inevitable and so close. My stomach tightened and cramped, pussy pulsated. I felt his cock throb too, almost bursting. Everything around me sped up, twisted around, melted and deformed. I could feel my world getting crushed under the pull of Seonghwa’s specific brand of ecstasy.

“But I’ll know,” the man under me rushed out, eyes blown wide and so, so wild. Our gazes met and it was like everything snapped into place, I couldn’t pull away from him even if I wanted to. Our bodies collided, again and again, and again. I couldn’t hold back my moans, feeling the pleasure rush through me, faster and harder, making my blood boil in my veins.

One of my hands slipped down between our bodies, desperate to give me the last push I needed, to continue where Seonghwa left off. He didn’t care for it, didn’t smirk or grin, didn’t chastise me, no smart remark or anything. His whole body shook beneath me, just as desperate as mine to finally hit that high.

“We’ll know,” he gasped out just as I felt myself slam into it, bliss pouring over me and burning me to crisp, like a lightning hitting me. My thighs shook and my toes curled, as I cried out loud enough to have the whole building hear. I didn’t care, not when Seonghwa’s gaze was still on me, still drinking everything in, hungrily scarfing down all my expressions and sounds, or the way my pussy squeezed around him in a way I knew drove him absolutely crazy.

“We’ll know,” he groaned again and finally his eyes rolled back in bliss, mouth open on his beautiful high-pitched moans. His cock twitched and spurted inside me, filling me with warmth, with life. But I still didn’t stop my hips, like I ran on residual energy and the inertia pushed me forward until I milked him of everything he had. His hips strained too, instinctually driving deeper as he spilled himself, pushing me onto him to prevent me from bucking off his cock.

The table absolutely shook under us, creaking for its damn life, before we both hit stop and fell down, tired and sweaty and breathy, a tangle of wet limbs and hair. The room smelt kind of horrendous, but I hardly cared with my faced plastered to Seonghwa’s chest that jumped up and down jerkily with every desperate breath he drew in.

I was almost surprised there wasn’t steam rising from our bodies, because the heat was encompassing, settling over us alongside the calm and stillness that overtook everything; now that all the energy was released.

As soon as I started being more aware, I realised that Seonghwa’s hands were now mindlessly caressing over my hips and back, fingertips lazily pressing patterns into my heated flushed skin. We both still tried to catch our breaths, and I found myself guiltily liking the way we rose and fell in tandem with each other, making me think back to that expensive bathroom – to the way Seonghwa’s eyes reflected so much pleasure, like I was the one touching him and not the other way around. A hive mind of bliss.

And thinking back to that time, today I couldn’t quite bring myself to pull away like I did then, full of anger and frustration. I liked the way Seonghwa coddled me after, how he held me close. Like this mattered, like we mattered. Like we weren’t two absolute fuck-ups playing with something way beyond our powers. Well, maybe not beyond his powers, but I surely felt like a fish out of water here.

Neither of us said anything, the silence stretching to a point that we both knew it was a conscious decision instead of a by-product of our little tryst. I could feel the way the dark-haired man’s fingers stilled here and there, as if waiting for me to tear myself away and march out of this room, like I would have in the past. Like I should have, really.

The position couldn’t have been comfortable for him at all, with this head and legs hanging off awkwardly off the desk, but he didn’t seem to be too perturbed by that. Quite on the contrary – there was something almost content about the way he messed with my hair and hummed under his breath more to himself, almost as if forgetting I could hear him.

Once again I got the all-consuming premonition that this was about more than just envy and revenge. Something changed. Something. During the first night, his eyes spewed hate, and his tongue spat pure poison all nicely wrapped up in sweetness. He aimed to hurt, to humiliate, to let me know just what he thought of us both and what this was about for him.

Today his hands gripped at me with air of possessiveness and pride.

That thought was what finally propelled me to get up from him, even though the way our skin peeled away from each other where it matted together by dried sweat actually made me sad to be losing that contact, and the movement only ended up pushing me further into his lap and onto his soft cock.

There was a sigh from the man, one that wordlessly spoke of the same regret I was beginning to feel over tearing the comfort away, but otherwise Seonghwa continued to hold his tongue, not losing a single sentence. He watched me though, as he so often did and as I so often tried to ignore (even though I already knew that was an impossible task).

Somewhere in the room a phone started vibrating, generating a loud and distracting hum as it skittered off over the floor. None of us looked towards it, we just sat there and pretended we weren’t casting curious glances towards each other, asking what now.

Seonghwa’s hands settled over my hips again, gripping and pushing again, and then I could feel it – his cock slowly twitching back to life, valiantly fighting to harden again. I rolled my eyes at him and scoffed, and he only grinned. It felt too light of an interaction, and that was wrong.

The last words he said slammed into me like a brick wall, suddenly and overwhelmingly, and my heart stopped for a moment when I finally found the brain power to dissect them. My pussy longingly throbbed over his length, and Seonghwa groaned lightly, but I still forced myself to move up and start climbing off.

I caught a glimpse of Seonghwa’s confused eyes before he scrambled to follow after me.

“What-“ his words got interrupted by the phone setting off again, loudly demanding attention with an incoming call. With a bit of start I realised it must have been my phone, since the noise was coming from the direction of my discarded handbag. That couldn’t mean anything good.

No one ever called me for anything good.

I ignored whatever it was Seonghwa was about to try and bend me to his will with and moved to go get it, only for him to swiftly plaster himself completely to my back, naked skin to naked skin. He must have lost the pants somewhere along the way, and his fingers were already sneaking up to undo my bra while his other arm snaked around my waist to steer me back to the table. Only now he was pushing me to bend over it, just like I was expecting him to do back when he first beckoned me to come closer.

Maybe that’s why I went so easy.

So easy, it was so easy to let myself be pushed into the wood, so easy to wordlessly spread my legs wider before he even pressed closer, so easy to clench around his thickness when he effortlessly slid back in without an ounce of resistance.

So easy to cry out softly with the first thrust and sigh under the gentle patterns his hands drew into my back and hips. Any rational thought I managed to cling onto in those precious moments between the all-consuming inferno that our interactions always devolved into, those where all gone now, pouring out through my ears while the lust and arousal flared up so intensely it choked me up. Or it might have been the way Seonghwa wasn’t pulling any punches now that he was back in power.

The phone started vibrating and humming for the third time before it fell silent for good, but all I could see behind my eyelids was Seonghwa’s face as he was cumming under me with a smart retort still hanging onto his lips. I had a feeling the way his hips rammed into me now was the new smart retort, this one very pointedly telling me it’s no use trying to run away from the pleasure.

And even now he wasn’t holding back on those sounds, letting it all flow out his mouth freely and unabashedly, like he craved the whole hotel to know just how much he was enjoying fucking me behind everybody’s back. The way he was holding onto me, pushed me into the wood, pinned me under his weight, and I just stood there with quivering trembling legs and let him ravage me, unsure whether the wetness sliding down my thighs was a new wave of arousal or his previous load. I thought to myself that he probably liked having me that way, but then all thoughts melted away and all that was left was pure bliss.

This time things were escalating even faster, spiralling into another mind-numbing climax before I even really had time to process the situation we found ourselves in. It was like I was three times as sensitive, especially to the way he clung onto me desperately, like he couldn’t handle the thought of me walking away before giving him a full chance to take me as many times as our bodies could take.

This time around Seonghwa fucked me like he wanted to prove himself to me, and I found I might have been a little too receptive to that from how fast I was ready to come around his cock again.

Then, the landline on the table started ringing, and ice filled my veins. This was no coincidence.

Seonghwa didn’t even stutter in his pace as he leant over me to reach it, and for a few seconds I fell into the wishful thinking that he was just going to decline the call. But then the click of the phone being picked up rung through my ears and I damn near held my breath.

Suddenly I was hyper aware of all the sound in the room – the still creaking desk, though it was much quieter than when we laid on it, the absolutely debauched wet squelch as Seonghwa happily pounded away into me, the way our breathing couldn’t quite hide the exertion. There was no way the person on the other side wouldn’t be able to pick up on these, but I still prayed.

“Yeah?” Seonghwa already sounded so incriminatingly breathy with that one word, and I squeezed my eyes shut while I willed myself to keep completely silent. Then he was chuckling. The phone hit the table next to me, and I was suddenly able to faintly hear the man on the other side.

“Was Y/N there today?” Yujun growled into the receiver in his usual irritable tone. My heart dropped. What the fuck was Seonghwa doing?

I flailed under him as quietly as I could without actually audibly panicking, but he only leant on me harder, keeping me still and pushed into the table as his hips took on a much harder pace, taking the time to pull out almost all the way before slamming in hard enough to have me knocking into the wooden edge in a way that elicited both a tang of pain and boundless pleasure. Stars danced in front of my eyes and my hands shot out to grab onto the opposite edge to ground myself against the onslaught of sensations, internally cursing Seonghwa to high heaven and back.

“She was,” the man in question answered, and I imagined he’d be giving me a cheeky look, lips turned into a satisfied smirk, if we were facing each other. Instead I focused on pushing my face harder into the unyielding wood, hoping to at least muffle myself a little bit. Somehow, it felt like that only made it worse though.

I was surprised Yujun didn’t notice the huskiness of Seonghwa’s voice, didn’t hear how winded he was getting, how he was fighting to not trip over his tongue, didn’t hear the panting in-between his words. Or maybe it was just me who was always so tuned in to him, who couldn’t not notice every single thing he did.

I wondered how he looked right now. What was the expression on his face. Did his lips curl in a manner that was much crueller than when he spoke to me? Did his eyes look at me like we were both in on the secret and not like I was the tool?

(How did he truly feel about me?)

“She left right after she asked her favour,” Seonghwa said next, tone as level as he could hold with his hips still wildly pistoning into me, and I swallowed down the gasp of surprise at him lying for me. I didn’t think he’d sell me out, but straight up lying that I had already left? I wasn’t expecting him to go the extra mile.

On the other hand, if he wanted me to carry his child and pass it off as Yujun’s, he couldn’t exactly have the man know this was going on.

There was a beat of silence on the line before a bit of a technical buzz carried through, along with the man’s angry inhale.

“And did you grant her the favour?”

I wished so bad I could have seen Seonghwa and not be buried head first into his desk. I tried to turn around, just enough to catch a glimpse, but he was still pinning me to the wood, now almost mindlessly that he was focused elsewhere. His hips slowed down too, shallowly fucking into me and using just enough force to tease the current of pleasure underneath the surface. For the first time I didn’t think he was doing it on purpose, not when I felt his fingers twitch with annoyance where he held me.

“Of course I did,” Seonghwa’s tone was stone-cold, cold enough to almost instinctively make me shiver. I’ve never heard him like that, he always put on his ass-kissing tone whenever he spoke in front of his family. He sounded sleazy, maybe, but never this hostile.

It reminded me of our first night, when he’d get angry with me for mentioning his brother. I guess that was just a bit of his true self he didn’t mind showing. Though, through today I’ve probably seen a couple of other parts too – oh, the privilege.

Yujun on the other side growled, frustration dripping off of him even through a phone. “Stay the fuck out of my family’s business,” he gritted through his teeth, and I imagined his handsome face all screwed up in a grimace. When he acted like a petulant child, he just had this look about him, and I couldn’t unsee it. Somehow he even looked like a five-year-old throwing a fit, it was crazy. And hilarious. When it wasn’t happening to me.

Seonghwa wasn’t as amused as me though, that much was clear from the shaky inhale I heard behind me. His hips even jerked forward with that sudden rush of anger, and I bit my lip until I swore I could feel it tear to stop myself from moaning out loud.

I fucking couldn’t understand how he kept his composure.

“Your family’s business? I’m family too, Yujun, be so kind to remember it,” Seonghwa spit out with vitriol I haven’t witnessed from him yet – I was slowly beginning to realise that what I thought was his worst behaviour might have been him being nice, actually, “And it’s good that I took care of it, before it became a problem. Who do you think would end up having to deal with it anyway once your mother caught wind of what was going on?”

But those words were fighting words, and they had the stick in Yujun’s ass on fire real quick. With the sound of violent movement on the other side of the line, I was pretty sure that had this been a face-to-face conversation, he’d be throwing a punch right about now. My husband just was that way, always hitting first and thinking later. And Seonghwa just seemed really good at pushing the wrong buttons.

“You? Family? A fucking half-blooded mutt off the streets?” now this was real anger in Yujun’s voice, coming from a deep dark ugly place inside him, a place that grew from being coddled too much while being hated at the same time. “You’ll always be beneath me, Seonghwa, you better remember that.”

All the tension and air I’ve been holding back released in a barely audible gasp at the turn of the conversation. Seonghwa behind be grinded to a halt, like the meaning of the words took a second to truly catch up to him. Silence took over, deep uncomfortable tense quiet that settled over us like a blanket made of sharp rocks, and for a moment nothing moved. I didn’t even dare to breathe.

“I would have dealt with it myself.” My husband’s grating voice cut through the atmosphere, completely oblivious to the bomb he set off on my side of things. A conceited arrogant little tiger, pissing into a dragon’s river.

“I know what it looks like when you ‘deal’ with things,” the dark-haired man’s response was scathing in tone, condescending and full of scorn, but it did set him back into motion. I didn’t realise the intent behind his hips in that second, but I knew exactly what he was trying to do a moment later when suddenly they barrelled into me with such force I felt my entire core squeeze down and ignite through the torrent of painful pleasure.

Even the best trained soldier wouldn’t be able to keep that moan from clawing its way out of their throat. It rang through the room, loud and clear and desperate, as my head spun with barely contained delirium, followed by a quieter drawn out whine when the man took the opportunity to grind his hips into me and torture that sweet receptive spot even more.

He himself released a little pleased sigh, like he was also finally more attuned to the burning need for stimulation after teasing it out for the both of us to fight with his fucking brother over the phone.

Mortification set in, rapidly growing into anger like I haven’t felt in a while. That fucking dick did that on purpose. He wanted to get back, and he fucking played with both of our lives – I could even almost remember the exact moment he decided what he’ll do out of pettiness – when he took a breath right before speaking.

I wanted to turn around and hit him, to push him away and scream at him, to pull his beautiful fucking hair and spit on him, but Seonghwa did no longer care for the phone call and pounded away, chasing that rush and unabashedly groaning at every squeeze my cunt gave him. And all that came out of my mouth instead of screams were angered moans.

“You fucking pig,” I heard Yujun spit out in disgust, his voice buried under the hum in my ears, the crackling of pleasure overriding my brain, head stuffed full of cotton and no thoughts beyond finally getting that second orgasm.

I didn’t even notice when the line started beeping, signalling the call had been ended, not when Seonghwa was suddenly pressed into my back, cackling like a fucking maniac – like he didn’t just gamble with everything for the cheap satisfaction of pissing off his brother. My lips pulled into a grimace, teeth snapping through the groans as I was so mad, so mad I could cry, burst out, but I just couldn’t stop chasing that high.

I would have fucking died for the bliss he offered.

“What kind of a husband,” Seonghwa gasped into my ear gleefully, “doesn’t recognise his wife’s moans?” There was a murmur of something more, but I couldn’t make it out through my insides melting under him.

“Yujun- Yujun’s never fucked me,” I gritted through my teeth, words moulded around moans and sighs. I felt the table move and shake under us, especially since Seonghwa’s been just gaining speed and power, pounding away until I was so overwhelmed with all my senses I fought to just get those words out. “O-only you, only- you-“

I had no idea why I felt the need to emphasise that – out of all of the things I wanted Seonghwa to hear, the ones that would make him even bolder definitely weren’t the ones that should have been falling from my lips. But then he gasped behind me, growling so low in his throat it sounded like a prattling purr, and I was lost to my spinning head once more.

I felt his hands tighten around my hips, felt his burning body, sweaty chest melted into my back, muscles on his thighs jumping with every thrust that sent them hitting into mine. His winded breath in the crook of my neck, slick lips sliding over the skin in a messy half-kiss.

“O-only me,” the words sounded like they were punched out of him, and he pressed closer, desperate to merge into me, make us two parts of a whole – something no one else in our lives ever gave us before, something no amount of discount affection could buy – something only him promised with the fire behind his eyes.

I arched under him, presenting to him and pushing back into his thrusts, eyes rolled back and a continuous ringing sounding through my ears.

“Only me!” he might have been shouting, but it felt like a whisper against my overloaded senses, I felt it more than heard it, before the orgasm was slamming into me violently and robbing me of the last breath I had left. I registered my mouth opening on a wheezing scream, I felt my toes curl where they dug into the floor, hands clasped into the wood of the desk where I had to be leaving imprints and scratches at this rate.

My whole body seized as ecstasy exploded over me and everything went white for a few seconds. I distantly registered Seonghwa’s hips jerking as he pumped me full of his cum for the second time, his damp breaths hitting my back where he laid his sweaty face onto my shoulder blades.

I felt melted. When the waves of the climax finally started mellowing, leaving me standing on shaky legs with my fingers hurting and red from how hard I gripped the table. I was sliding on the smooth surface, feeling an immense heat coming from inside, while my skin started feeling the coldness of the air in the room.

Where Seonghwa touched, everything felt even more amplified, but I was relieved to hear he was just as wrecked by this experience. It was easy to tell – the man that was all about composure and staying in control was crumpled behind me, panting heavily and mumbling something I was too fried to comprehend.

It took us a long time before either of us felt composed enough to talk – at some point Seonghwa gathered enough wit and energy to move us into his chair, and I found myself in his lap, back to stomach, heart to ribs, mouth to ear. And we just sat silently, soaking in the atmosphere.

I knew something heavy was about to be said. Or done. A world was about to crash down, and we sat there, naked and blissed out, careless and cruel and stupid. His fingers curled in my hair, pushing the strands around gently. I didn’t know Seonghwa was capable of gentleness, not true gentleness at least.

I didn’t want to look at him, I didn’t want to see the expression he wore on his face. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I knew seeing it would change something in me, and I didn’t want that. I was quite comfortable in my well, but what laid beyond the walls – that was all wilderness, all Seonghwa. He prowled those parts, like a hungry desperate wolf.

But maybe I had more dog in me than I thought.

Maybe he was right, and maybe he saw the same beastliness flash in my own eyes when he looked at me. Maybe that’s why he never looked away. Even now, I could feel his eyes burning into the side of my face, always so starved of attention.

“That was more than reckless,” I whispered finally, breaking the pattern of soft breathing that was filling the room with at least some presence, “that was dangerous, Seonghwa. Stupid.” I felt something clawing at my throat, some emotion I wanted to swallow. Desperation and disappointment – that for every revealed truth, there was an act of madness, for every inch given a mile was taken.

The man rumbled beneath me, but otherwise showed no indication that my words even reached his ears. My heart sank. If my life became the equivalent of being stuck on a deserted island, why was this the man that had to sink with me?

“He’s never fucked you?” he asked only, something almost proud shining through in his voice and I sighed.

“No.” Petulantly I didn’t want to give him more if he didn’t even work for it a little bit. I only got a chuckle in response.

“He’s been bragging about it, you know? About fucking you almost every night,” Seonghwa stated, hand now idly tapping small rhythms into the meat of my thigh. Something bitter crept into his voice. I rolled my eyes.

“Of course, that’s what he does,” I spat out, not giving a shit about censoring myself about the kind of feelings I had when it came to my husband. After all, if there was anyone who’d understand, it would regrettably be Seonghwa. “He’s never even come close.”

I stilled a little in his arms, deliberating. The words sat at the tip of my tongue, the admission of what I’ve been doing ready to slip out, but I hesitated. Seonghwa sat beneath me, patiently waiting. But really, what was one more leap of faith?

“I give him pills,” I confessed, for the first time putting my actions into words and speaking them out into the universe, “they knock him out. Then I just lie in the morning.”

A beat of silence, and then he was laughing – slow and disbelieving at first, but gradually gaining in volume and mirth as the words set in. I felt him shake whole, vibrating with joy. I did feel a bit of shame, but mostly at admitting something so embarrassing to him. His hand came up to caress at my cheek, and I let him.

“My my, you’re definitely very resourceful,” something to genuine happiness shined through his tone, and the warmth it spilled into my chest legitimately surprised me. This wasn’t that kind of affair, never would be. Still, even those feelings opened a pool of acid in my stomach, I couldn’t make myself move, to pull out of his willing arms.

Everything felt so different from our two other encounters, and I was so confused. I couldn’t even tell if this was real, or if I was just dumb and desperate enough to fall for anything.

I didn’t try to chastise him again, I knew there was no point. He’d only hear what he wanted to hear, so I just let it go and swallowed my feelings down. Like I always ended up doing.

Seonghwa chuckled, purred, and I spiralled.

When I got home that evening, it was with an achy back and an armful of shopping bags just in case. I doubted Yujun really cared about where I was, but since I was ignoring his phone calls the whole afternoon, I wanted at least a bit of reassurance I’d have an alibi to fall back on.

Coming back to a silent house knowing it wasn’t empty was quite depressing. The tension was thick in the air, the unsaid words painted all over the walls, soaked into the carpets and carved into the wooden furniture. They’d most likely find their way into my ears, if not today, then definitely later – throughout my very long, very unhappy life and marriage.

Shockingly I found Yujun sitting in his office. All I saw was a glimpse of his angry face through the open doors as I passed on the way to the bedroom, and I already knew tonight wasn’t going to go very well. I took my time changing into comfortable home clothes, ignoring streaks of dried cum coating my thighs, or the way I could still almost smell and taste Seonghwa on my skin.

I needed a shower. I needed to not feel him anymore.

When I walked out, Yujun was already waiting for me leaning on the doorframe of his office, watching me darkly. It wasn’t a suspicious gaze, I had no reason to suspect he knew, but I still felt my heart stutter and my palms grow clammy.

It was impossible to hate Seonghwa when he was with me, but it was impossible to not when I was faced with the consequences of his rashness. His eyes haunted me, flashing through my mind that last tender look as I was walking out of his office, the one that almost sold it to me. The one that almost felt like…

Yujun cleared his throat, and I pulled my attention to him, willing my eyes to look and see him, and not his brother.

“So this is how it’s gonna be now?” I turned my head to him fully, cocked to the side like I was trying to figure him out, like his anger was puzzling to me.

“What exactly are you talking about?”  I tried to respond as neutrally as possible, giving the man an unimpressed look. He didn’t like that very much, it turned out.

“You have no right to stick your nose into my business,” he seethed, taking a few threatening steps towards me, finger in the air pointing my way. His words sounded suspiciously close to what he told Seonghwa, but I buried the memory away as soon as it appeared. I stumbled a couple steps back, heart palpitating in fear, but I doubted he’d actually do anything. “If I knew you were gonna be a fucking cockblocker, I’d be having way less fun where you could see. Funny, I didn’t take you for the jealous type.”

That had my hackles rising too, real quick, and I barrelled the few steps I took back towards him, my own face screwed up in a grimace.

“I don’t give a shit who you fuck, Yujun,” I spat at him, pointing right back, “I don’t give a shit where or when or how you do it. But I’m not going to stand by when you harass our staff. Our staff! If you want to be a fucking pig, do it outside!”

To this, he said nothing. He just stared at me, his red angry face twitching as I refused to back down. Seconds ticked by tensely, like sand trickling through an hourglass, so palpable and concrete I could feel it physically. We were closer to each other than we’ve probably ever been, and I was not enjoying myself. But thankfully, neither seemed to be Yujun, cause only a couple moments later he scoffed and walked away without a single word. It was only when he reached the door to his office that he turned around with a scathing look and said: “The only thing I’m curious about, my dear wife, is who you’re fucking.”

Then he was gone with a slam of the door, swallowed by the room in a blink of an eye. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest, beating so hard I was having trouble catching my breath where I felt it pounding against the bones. I was dizzy, barely able to tell up from down when I stumbled back into my bedroom.

I thought that Yujun must have had his suspicions, but this felt like a warning. And my husband felt reckless in a way that Seonghwa couldn’t rival either – it always felt more chaotic, like he could take out anybody without a single care. There was at least a semblance of order in what Seonghwa did, even if it made sense only to him. With Yujun though, once he got that look in his eyes, anything could happen.

And I didn’t know if he was warning me because he wanted to scare me, or because he had found out. My only consolation was that if he did know, he’d probably blow up all our lives for it. Petulantly angry Yujun, silent treatment Yujun, those were positive signs.

The following weeks didn’t treat me very kindly. The constant stress of the tense atmosphere in our house was taking its toll on me, even though my husband went back to spending most of his time elsewhere and only returning home to sleep off hungovers or to be a cloud of misery and scare off our personnel.

I constantly felt sick, shaky and tired. I barely slept, I was paler than usual and found myself frequently lost in thoughts. My mother kept getting upset with me over it, so at least something in my life hasn’t changed.

Seonghwa disappeared again.

Yujun hasn’t entered the bedroom since I first found out about the maid, and while I viewed that as something positive, it turned out – fate and life aren’t as easy as that. You should always remember. Whenever you least expected, even the best of things can turn around and fuck you over.

A little over a month after this encounter, after a month of a silent home, tense angry glares, hate and spite, my nausea kept escalating until I was forced to visit a doctor by my mother, who was worried that if I was seriously ill, my chances of pregnancy would decrease even more drastically. Always so lovely to know your family cared for your health.

That’s why she was there though, that fateful day.

Not wanting to die just yet, I did go to my doctor at her insistence and asked for complete bloodwork tests to be done. I had no idea I was about to step into the biggest trap of my life, when I walked in a week later, mother in tow, mumbling something under her breath – something no doubt very not nice or polite, knowing her – and so I ignored her.

When it came time to enter the office, I reluctantly let her tag along as my doctor gathered the needed documents. In those few last moments of quiet and calm, we both shuffled around the room looking at the displayed posters and models, trying our best to not converse with each other.

Then the doctor walked back in, and something in her wide blinding smile already put me on the edge. Bad premonition settled into my stomach, further aggravating the sensitive organ until I almost felt I might need to go throw up right there and then. I took that feeling of sickness and clung onto it, keeping it rolling through me to remind myself why I was here – because I was tired of feeling ill all the time.

Still, in that moment, irrationally I couldn’t help but think of Seonghwa and his fascinated eyes when he watched me get bred by him, and I felt my heart squeeze with anxiety. I shook it off and took the offered chair, my mother still leisurely walking around the room for a moment longer before she found the appropriate amount of attention was on her and sat down.

The doctor just watched us happily for a moment, happily shuffling the papers around, before she energetically clapped her hands together, making me jump slightly in my seat.

“Congratulations, Miss Jang,” she exclaimed cheerily, and I felt like I got sprayed with a bucket full of ice cold water, all at once freezing in my chair completely. My mother still hasn’t caught on, thinking she might be congratulating me for being healthy, but I knew. I walked in with a bad feeling, I walked in thinking of the man who talked about nothing else but getting me pregnant – I knew already what she was going to finish her sentence with.

“It must be very happy news for you, since I see here that you got recently married!” the doctor continued full of joy, completely oblivious to the two very different reactions going on in front of her.

“Oh!” my mother blurted out, finally catching on to what the doctor was trying to say in the most elaborate way ever, “Oh, Y/N!” For the first time in months true joy spread through her expression, and it made me feel sicker than I already was. I guess two people were getting what they wanted, then.

“Yes, congratulations,” the doctor repeated, again, and finally said the quiet part out loud, “You’re pregnant! It might be a recent development, I’ll make you an appointment with our clinic’s gynaecologist, he’s the very best in the game.”

At this point my mother was excitedly prattling off something, looking at me with relief as she took the news in. She started asking something about that doctor, but I could barely comprehend what was going on.

All I saw in front of my eyes was Seonghwa. What would he say? How would he react? Christ, what about Yujun – he knew we hadn’t slept together in weeks, maybe he even started suspecting it’s been months. He alluded to me having an affair. He’ll fucking kill me once he finds out.

This was the moment I realised I was sitting in a car just about to drive off a bridge. Time stopped, and I just stared over the edge, to the abyss below. In my mind I was there, tasting the damp air on my tongue. Everything was caving in. I felt my chest squeeze tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe.

My mother tugged at my arm and said something, but I didn’t hear a single word, so I just nodded. She smiled and pulled out her phone, almost instantly excitedly running her fingers over the keyboard. Great. God.

What was I supposed to do now?

As I sat there and watched her shoot a message after message, press call and boast to everyone, only one thought dominated my mind.

I had to speak to Seonghwa. As soon as possible.

thank you for reading, darlings! let me know in the comments/reblogs or through asks if you liked the story! i love reading your opinions and general screaming into the void haha!

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[uzumaki-rebellion]

A Gathering of Waters by Uzumaki Rebellion

Characters: Elijah "Smoke" Moore and Elias "Stack" Moore (characters in the Michael B. Jordan movie "Sinners"). Taiwo Moore and Cash "Big Smoke" Moore (OC).

Warning(s): Mentions of Hoodoo, Yoruba Orishas, Mississippi Share Cropping Life, a Stillborn Death, Supernatural Elements, Slight Romance (if you squint), Sex, Some Violence, and Angst. Pre-Sinners movie.

Summary: Clarksdale, Mississippi. 1897. Taiwo Moore recently gave birth to twin boys, Elijah and Elias. Haunted by lucid dreams foreshadowing danger for the babies, Taiwo hopes to use conjuring magic to protect her sons from the supernatural tricksters who want to snatch the children's uncertain futures away.

Word Count: 15.1K

"Come to your river, wash myself

I will come to your river, wash myself

I will come to your river, wash my soul again"

Ibeyi – "River"

Ibeji

Taiwo Smoke carried her babies low and heavy in the first five months of her pregnancy. Hummingbirds followed her around as she hung laundry all of November, fluttering their rapid wings near her ears before their winter migration. All signs that twin boys were coming in the early spring. During their first year of life, otherworldly tricksters soon plagued her days and nights, trying to steal her babies, Elijah and Elias.

The boys tore out her body with the force of the raging storm that rattled their newly built tenement cabin. Rainwater fell from the sky in an icy deluge as if the mighty Mississippi River had flipped upside down and emptied itself over their heads. It threatened to overflow the section of the Big Sunflower River near their home surrounded by a thick forest that tapered off into the cotton fields her family sharecropped.

Taiwo's husband Cash stood watch at the front window, plucking on his banjo, staying alert for signs if they needed to move to higher ground because of flooding. When they were courting, he used to brag that he could play his banjo and stop raindrops in mid-air if he wanted to. But they needed the rain this year after a long drought, and Cash played a soft song for her birthing time to soothe and coax the babies out.

Elijah came out first in a rush of warm birth waters, eyes closed and mouth silent. The midwife, his grandmother that shared the same name as his mother, had to make sure he was breathing because his entry into the world was much too calm for a rainy night. Elias, on the other hand…well, that one roared out of her aching vagina two minutes later, wailing and shaking his wet, blood-smeared limbs in protest. His eyes were all wide open and searching around for the culprit who interrupted his secure peace in the womb.

Wo-Ma, as the younger Taiwo called her mother, chuckled and rubbed the traces of blood and pale, greasy coating of the vernix caseosa into Elias's skin. They wouldn't wash the babies off until after twelve hours or more. Wo-Ma said it protected the baby's ruddy complexion, and they needed time to adjust away from their old home in the belly slowly as they entered the new one outside of it.

"This one here is Taiwo, in honor of all the Taiwos in our bloodline," Wo-Ma said. "And this loud baby over here…he is Kehinde."

The name Taiwo meant "the firstborn to taste the world" in the old language of Wo-Ma's ancestors. They came from some long gone and often mis-remembered part of West Africa where Orishas still wept for them. Passed down generation to generation that revered the numerous double births in their family as blessings from the divine twins—Ibeji—Taiwo's people always named the first twin that way. The second twin was always called Kehinde and nicknamed Meji. Wo-Ma said it meant "two" or maybe "second". Language of the old world faded, and so did accurate understandings.

Elias still fretted, refusing to latch onto her left nipple.

"He carry fire in his mouth," Wo-Ma said.

Taiwo nodded and glanced at Elijah. His nature, the opposite of his fiery younger brother, reflected the energy of the unseen depths of big water, lying cool and calm. Wo-Ma studied Elijah's features first and then Elias's.

"Mirrors of each other. Gonna be hard telling them apart until we know them real good. But I'm prepared," Wo-Ma said, walking over to a bureau.

She opened a drawer and pulled out two white, hand-sewn birthing gowns. One had red stitching of little stars; the other blue.

"I give them the colors to match their natures. Blue for Elijah…and red for Elias."

"Mama, how you have those colors ready before they were even born?"

"All twins in our family come out this way. One is always blue, and the other is always red. That's how it be."

"So you were the red one?"

"Sho'nuff. The way I was taught is…twins are divine gifts. They tell the world that you have abundance in store for you. Each twin is fire or water. I was the fire. When you and your twin sister were born together, I knew you were water."

Taiwo noticed the shadow of her husband shift the light of the kerosene lamps in the small bedroom. His tall, sinewy body filled up the room like an extra wall, but his eyes looked small and helpless in the glow of fireplace light from the next room. The lush hair on his head was as soft as fresh cotton bursting from its boll.

"You alright, Taiwo?" he asked.

She smiled. Wo-Ma had already cleaned and covered her lower half. The room smelled of afterbirth, sweat, and tears. Taiwo sat upright with both babies propped under each arm. Elijah suckled a heavy brown breast, and Elias kept fretting. She watched her husband's eyes water with his question.

"I'm fine Cash…we're all fine."

Cash let out a loud exhale and sat next to her on the lumpy bed to look at his boys. He leaned the banjo against the mattress. His fingers trembled as he touched the new life they created. He was terrified of losing Taiwo since her own twin sister, Kehinde, had passed away giving birth to a stillborn a year ago in a Philadelphia hospital.

She gazed at Cash's face that she went soft for at an informal dance where she hiked up her legs doing the cakewalk with him. He had bright, playful eyes and a seductive smile. A true ladies' man that sent hearts racing across three plantation properties. She hoped their babies would have his sun-burnt umber skin color and full lips. Their soft tufts of black hair laid flat on their tiny scalps, looking like her daddy Papa Will who probably worried about her back at her parent's old shack. He was half Choctaw and told her it was bad luck for a man to be around a woman giving birth. Wo-Ma said that was a lie. He feared watching her struggle to give birth to his first grandchildren. They were only the second generation of children to be born free in their family. Papa Will's own Choctaw grandfather owned him until the end of the Civil War when Freedmen slaves and Black mixed bloods could claim their own lives for themselves.

"Cash, I want you to say their names first. They hear you say it, and they'll grow up strong and handsome like you."

He grinned and his lips curled into a half moon. She glanced at their firstborn and Cash looked down at the baby.

"Hello Elijah Smoke…and hello to you too, Elias Smoke."

Wo-Ma lowered her eyes. The corners of her lips turned down with disappointment.

"Wo-Ma, me and Cash think the boys need Christian first names. Times are different and it might be hard for them to carry our old names without people looking at them funny."

"You mean white people," Wo-Ma huffed.

Cash lifted Elijah from her breast. The baby looked so tiny cradled in the nook of his arm. He grinned so hard that Taiwo could see the gums above his teeth.

"Elijah Taiwo Smoke and Elias Kehinde Smoke. They still carry the names Wo-Ma, just in a new order," Cash said.

Wo-Ma fixed her lips into a delicate smirk after hearing the boys still kept the naming tradition for twins.

"Lemme go fix you some soup. Don't worry none if the babies don't eat a lot right now. They may wanna sleep the next few hours," Wo-Mo said.

She lifted a bucket from the floor where she tossed their shared placenta. Taiwo would bury it in the yard once the rain stopped. Wo-Ma headed for their stove in the other room, humming to herself.

Cash lowered his head and kissed her on the forehead. He never displayed too much affection around her parents. Especially Wo-Ma. He was still nervous around his mother-in-law and the quiet Hoodoo power that resonated within her like a hidden torch.

"Tell the boys how we met," Taiwo said.

She loved listening to Cash tell stories. He could spin a tall tale like a spider weaving intricate patterns in the corners of their cabin or relay the juiciest gossip from town about the white folks as if you'd been there to watch it all play out. He'd keep a porch full of drunk men enraptured for hours, all animated a full of charisma. The tone and lilt of his voice gave her shivers whenever he sang songs to her in that romantic, delta-born cadence of his.

He glanced at Elias as he rocked Elijah.

"No, I think you should tell them. I want to hear how you see it."

"I might fall asleep in the middle of it," she said.

"Well, if you do that, I'll pick up the rest and finish it for them. Deal?"

She nodded.

"Elijah…Elias. You see that banjo? Your daddy used that thing to win me over."

Taiwo could see her reflection in Cash's soulful brown eyes.

"He saw me dancing in a ring of young ladies at a barn dance over on the Lexington plantation. Your daddy played his banjo so good to try and impress me. He could make those strings talk! Uncle Beatty played his harmonica…there was a jug player and Mr. Abe played an old washboard. The fiddler sounded so pretty mixing in with the banjo. Oh! I had so much fun that night. Dancing around a fire and relaxing after a hard harvest season. There was only one problem…"

Taiwo looked at her babies and wondered if it was okay to mention her dead twin sister. They would never meet her, and she hadn't been gone that long in order for Taiwo to say her name out loud without tears welling up. Elijah opened his eyes for the first time, and she took it as a sign that the boys wanted to know everything.

"The problem?" Cash said, urging her to continue.

"Your daddy thought I was my sister, Kehinde. See, he met her earlier that day at the merchant store. He invited her to come out and sees me dancing in the ring… thinks he knows me already!"

Cash chuckled, showing gums again. She warmed up to the telling.

"He asked me to cakewalk to the next song he wasn't playing the banjo for and we gets to kicking our feet and strutting with everyone. Ooh lawd, I had so much fun dancing with him! I took a break to get some water from the well at the back of the barn, and when I come back, he's dancing with my sister!"

"Honest mistake."

"We had on two different dresses!"

"I was looking at faces, not dresses."

"Mmhmm."

Elias opened his mouth and his tiny pink tongue flicked in and out. She offered him a nipple again, and this time he eagerly took it. His plump cheeks hallowed, trying to get the hang of sucking. Taiwo rested her fingers above her nipple, helping him secure his mouth on her. He gurgled and suckled while she gently stroked his hair.

"Boys, trust me," Cash said. "I couldn't tell them apart. They both had their hair out, all long and big, like giant black rain clouds all the way down to their waists. I ain't never seen that much hair on a woman in my life!"

Cash reached out and touched a thick rope of hair that hung down her side. Elijah squirmed on his father's arm impatiently, wanting the story to go on. He was learning Taiwo's voice outside of his womb water. Her husband put their firstborn against her other breast and watched boy boys feed from her. Fatigue settled on Taiwo's shoulders.

"Well, then…I marched myself right up to him and said, 'Now you after my sister?' If y'all coulda seen his face…my word!"

"I honestly ain't know there were two of 'em. I just thought it was strange how your Aunt Meji could dance so good one minute, and then the next time, she got two left feet and lost all sense of rhythm."

"Your auntie was a terrible dancer. We looked the same…talked the same…even walked the same…but that girl could never catch a beat to save her life!"

Taiwo laughed, and it was the first time she'd laughed with a memory of her sister. Progress.

"After we cleared up the confusion and Meji stopped fussing with Cash, I danced the rest of the night with him. The only time he let go of my hand was when he had to play the banjo, but he kept his eyes on me, studying me hard so he'd know he had the right one. Now your auntie, she stayed upset for a couple of months until she found her own beau and ran off to Philadelphia. Ain't a finer man around than Cash Smoke. I loves every part of him."

Cash darted his eyes away, embarrassed by her words. She never understood why he acted so bashful about her bragging on him. He truly was a fine catch. Even though he was married to her nearing three years, she still caught other women eyeing him, wondering if he was a tip toeing man. He wasn't. Although he'd still drink a bit of corn liquor with his friends, hoot and holler at celebratory gatherings, he was always straight and narrow with her. His personality often outshined his good looks, and she couldn't get mad at other women for desiring that type of heady concoction. Hell, even men wanted to be around him all the time. Something about his nature attracted people to him.

The day she knew for sure she was making babies, she cried and walked all the way to the cotton field to tell him. He shouted so loud and bragged all nine months about having children coming from her.

A lot of men tried to court Papa Will's girls. She and Meji were hard workers, sturdy in the hips, and as pretty as the dusk at twilight. Only Cash stole her heart. The way he played his banjo with tender care showed her how he would be with her.

"That's the long and short of it. Been a good three years for us. The rains have come back. We have this new cabin your daddy built for us. Now that we have you two, I see only more wonderful things coming our way."

Wo-Ma swept back in, carrying a steaming bowl of chicken and potato soup. Cash stood from the bed.

"I'ma go on over to see Papa Will. Let him know the boys got here safe and you're resting," Cash said.

He lifted a coat and his dark brown hat from a chair in the bedroom. Glancing back at her, his eyes softened.

"You look real pretty feeding them like that, Taiwo. I'm mighty proud to be your husband."

Wo-Ma grinned and sat at the edge of the bed, holding out a spoon to her filled with chunks of chicken and broth.

"Be careful, Cash," she said.

He tipped his hat to her and set off into the rain.

Taiwo's tired body settled into a deep and restless slumber after eating the soup. She flailed in the bed and Cash had to wake her up because she kept hitting his arm in her sleep, waking him.

"Taiwo, you're dreaming," he said, shaking her awake.

His dusky eyes held her gaze in the kerosene light. The babies were in the main room with Wo-Ma, where the fire still crackled near the hearth where they slept to keep warm.

The ends of Cash's hair still held the corkscrew curls from the rain when he went to see her father hours ago. Wo-Ma hustled into the room wearing her long white flannel nightgown.

"Taiwo? Are you in pain?" Wo-Ma asked.

"No, Mama. I had a dream. A bad one."

Wo-Ma crept closer to Taiwo's left side of the bed and touched her forehead.

"What did you dream about that has you so upset?"

"Upset?"

Wo-Ma wiped tears from Taiwo's cheeks.

"Quickly child, before it fades," Wo-Ma said.

Taiwo touched her face, surprised to feel wet teardrops pooling under her lids. She closed her eyes and the remnants of the dream came into tight focus, like she was still bound to it by tenuous silvery threads.

"I'm near the old Indian mounds…and I can hear the rushing of water coming close…but I caint see it none. It smells wet all around me…there's no sunlight, but there ain't really no darkness either…just gray…all gray, and I see a tall man. No…not a man…wait…it's a man, but he's like a rabbit, Mama. Head of a jackrabbit, all furry…all over, but he stands tall on two dark furry legs like a man. Right next to him is a bear…large and black and he's standing upright, too…with eyes like a man looking right at me…they comin' toward me and I caint move, Mama…I caint move…!"

Cash hugged her tight against him and rocked her in safety and comfort. The heat from his body reassured her that the dream world had vanished. But she could still smell the scent of icy river water in her nostrils.

"What it mean, Wo-Ma?" Cash asked.

Wo-Ma placed her hands on her thighs.

"It means we gotta keep an eye on them twins. She done seen Brother Rabbit and Brother Bear. They only come when we need protectin'."

Wo-Ma rubbed her brow and sighed.

"Keep them babies indoors until I put things together for 'em, hear me?"

"Yes, ma'am," Cash said.

Taiwo touched her breasts through her gown.

"Babies are ready to eat," Taiwo said.

Elias's loud squall echoed in the next room.

Wo-Ma brought them back into the bedroom. Taiwo fed them and rested her head on Cash's shoulder. But Wo-Ma paced all that night burning small bundles of sweetgrass in the fire until the rain finally stopped.

2. Meji

Taiwo used her long, nimble, chestnut brown fingers to wrap Elijah in a snug baby blanket. She swiped his forehead and hair with a pungent golden oil she made for her sons.

"This one here gonna be a charmer, Taiwo."

Taiwo's best friend, Mavis, held Elias in her arms. The little brown bundle squirmed in Mavis's hands. After three months, Elias had become the more attention-seeking of the two boys. The loudest crier, and prone to seeking her breast milk again, even when his belly was bloated and hanging out of his baby shirts, Elias could never settle down like his brother and give her one moment of rest without fussing to be picked up and played with. Elijah often scrunched his face up whenever Elias's antics annoyed him. Despite being identical in every way, Taiwo only needed to glance at their impish eyes to know who was who.

"Here, give him to me," Taiwo said.

Mavis handed the boy over and Taiwo clucked her tongue to catch his attention. Big, shiny brown eyes peered up at her. Elijah rested cozily next to her hip on the bed, bundled up tight from the morning draft sneaking under the door of their cabin.

Taiwo smeared more prayed over cotton-seed oil steeped with marigold flowers across the second born baby, and wrapped him carefully. She placed him next to Elijah in their crib.

"Hopefully, they'll go to sleep soon. Call me if they get hungry," Taiwo said.

Mavis rubbed the protruding bulge in her expectant belly.

"Girl, I don't know how you handle two at a time. Having one soon is making me nervous for all you gotta do for 'em," Mavis said.

"You get used to it."

Taiwo went back outside. The clean clothes and sheets she hung up earlier to dry flapped gently in the breeze. Two neighbor's children she looked after while their parents worked the fields lingered near the side of the cabin playing with ants. The June sun hung above them in a pale blue sky with no cloud in sight.

A giant black pot boiled above a fire pit. Filled with white sheets, she stirred it with a large smooth stick. Wo-Ma taught Taiwo how to make money cleaning clothes for the white townsfolk. She had plenty of customers to keep her busy during the week while she babysat, too. She hired Mavis to watch over the twins so she could keep working while Cash tended to the fields. They were saving to buy a plot of land for themselves, and that would only happen if Taiwo kept working. White women in town hired out for everything: childcare, cooking and cleaning, plus their laundry. But they still had the nerve to call Black folks lazy good-for-nothings while they sat indoors pampered. Even the white tenement farmers near them acted like they were better than negroes while they walked around barefoot and unclean with lice in their stringy hair and bedbugs in their mangy clothes.

Wo-Ma said the more well-off whites were no different with uncleanliness, hence the boiling of their laundry to make sure nothing jumped onto Taiwo's clothes. She always greased her scalp down with added cornrows and a hair covering to prevent lice from trying to latch onto her hair.

All morning she boiled clothes, scrubbed them in a tub near the creek water before rinsing them clean, and toting them back in a wagon to the cabin for line hanging. In between those chores, she fed her babies, and shared an early hearty lunch with the older children and Mavis.

While packing up a hot lunch of stew and rice for her husband, she debated about bringing the boys with her in the wagon after they finally went to sleep.

"The babies are sleeping Taiwo, don't wake them. It took me a long time to get Elias quiet," Mavis groaned.

Cash loved lunch visits with his sons, but Mavis was right. If Elias slept well for the next two hours, she could spend some time with her husband alone. Maybe even sneak in some kisses.

She took a deep breath and left them behind. The grandmother of the young girl and boy she cared for came to get them early after cleaning a home in town all morning. Taiwo grinned, carrying a small basket of the stew and rice with leftover bread baked the night before. A jug of cool well water tapped against her thigh. She changed into a pretty dress for Cash, and took off the scarf on her head, letting the four long cornrows bounce on her back. Her body healed enough so they could be frisky again if they wanted. She missed grown up time with her husband.

Taiwo headed toward the far end of the cotton field where she could see her husband in the distance. Cash worked their large plot, weeding and tilling between the rows. It would be a plentiful harvest that year, according to him.

"My stomach just started grumbling," Cash said.

He tossed down his hoe and kissed Taiwo on her lips. She handed him the fresh jug of cool water and he guzzled it down, wetting his lips.

"You didn't bring my babies?"

"They sleep."

Cash's eyes grew wide with surprise.

"What?"

"Mavis somehow got them down in their bed. They look so cute. Big chubby cheeks."

He looked inside the basket.

"There was some stew left? I thought for 'sho Mavis would eat it all up."

"I hid it from her before she could."

They sat on a blanket under a tree where Cash rested throughout the day from the heat. Taiwo watched him eat and lick his fingers, dripping with brown gravy meat. He rinsed off his hands with some of the jug water.

"I'm making fried chicken tonight," she said.

"Oh, yeah?"

"I cooked okra, and I made some cornbread."

"In between all that washing?"

"Yeah. The Claytons are gone this week visiting relatives, so that freed me up with less work today. I'll have a lot to do next week when they return…that'll make up for the loss."

"I'm renting out Brownie Boy to Pete next month for some late planting. His mule died this morning. He can't afford a new one, so I offered Brownie."

"As long as it's Brownie and not Esther."

"Nah, Esther ain't going nowhere. She only likes me and won't pull a plow for anyone else."

"People thinkin' we're rich now since we got Esther."

"It's because of them twins bringing good luck. Just think…a month ago Jake Mathis went on to glory, leaving us Esther, them chickens, and five pigs. Man turns one hundred years old the same day our sons are born and promised to give us all he owned after seeing them one time. Ain't that somethin'?"

Cash stared at her.

"I like this dress on you."

He fingered a button on the top part, admiring the yellow color, and glanced over her shoulder to look at their home further away.

"We're by ourselves," he said.

His seductive eyes drank in the new shape of her figure the babies gave her. He kissed her lips softly and waited for her to allow more to happen. She encouraged it with a slip of the tongue in his mouth and they remembered the touches and sighs that led to them having babies in the first place.

They pulled off their clothes and made love under the shade tree.

Taiwo ignored the discomfort of the hard earth pressing into her back. The strain of arousal lining Cash's face stoked her passion. His dick was harder than the wooden stick she used to stir laundry. He moved above her like a desperate man in need of release.

"Taiwo," he grunted, thrusting to the hilt.

To lessen the chance of impregnating her again too soon, Cash pulled out when he reached his brink. Taiwo scrambled to her knees before he ejaculated on her stomach.

"Whatchu doin'?" he yelped.

She held his erection by the root, took a deep breath, and put her mouth on the wide head. Cash held still and gasped loud enough to arouse her more. She wasn't concerned with her own orgasm. Her focus was on pleasing her husband with something new in her repertoire.

Mavis told her all month about the rumors of a woman named Ruby Lee who blew into Clarksdale stealing husbands. She was known to do nasty things for money that had men far and wide sneaking around with her. Taiwo ran into her once in passing after a church service where she noticed the menfolk cutting eyes at the woman, and she at them. She had voluptuous breasts like Taiwo, but lacked the pretty face to seem like a threat to most women. But she had a sway in her wide hips and fleshy lips with a penchant for what Mavis gossiped about: sucking dick.

The filthiness intrigued Taiwo. Putting a mouth on a man's privates was scandalous. Unchristian-like. She imagined Ruby Lee sitting in a church pew with a pungent whore's breath full of semen. Nasty work.

However…

Listening to Mavis screech about Ruby Lee riding on a horse-drawn wagon throughout Clarksdale selling her granny's laundry soap and hair grease forced Taiwo to turn her attention to Cash. He hung out with the men who enjoyed Ruby Lee's favors. Had he been tempted to see what all the fuss was about? Last Friday, after delivering laundry with the mule Esther on her own wagon cart, Taiwo noticed a wrapped chunk of laundry soap left on her kitchen table. She made her own laundry soap and questioned Cash immediately.

"Oh, that soap gal… Ruby Lee… left free samples. I told her you made your own, but she insisted I try hers," Cash said off-handedly while sharpening their house knives with leather.

"She insisted?"

"She gave it to me and I said 'thank you' and put it on the table for you."

"And then?"

"And then what?"

Cash's eyebrows fixed themselves into two diagonal black lines on his forehead.

"Did she come in the house?"

"For what?"

His tone eased the height of her up-raised shoulders. He genuinely looked perplexed.

"To see the babies or something?"

"The boys were asleep. I don't know her well enough to let her in anyway."

Taiwo's relief tampered down her suspicions. But the woman did come to their home without her there. Brazen.

Ruby's snooping around Taiwo's hearth planted a defensive seed in her gut. Cash was the best looking man in Clarksdale, Black, white, or Native. Those extra pigs, chickens, and two mules probably made him appear enticing and flush with extra cash to toss around. Plus…men were weak.

Ruby could catch Cash at a gathering on a porch somewhere where Taiwo wasn't around. If he were playing his banjo at a jump-up, drinking a little bit, and not rushing to come home, a wily woman could take advantage. She tried something to ensure Cash would have no desire to stray.

The taste of his dick in her mouth mixed with her natural lubrication created an intoxicating sense of power. Cash groaned deep in his throat and she lowered her lips further, sliding them down the slick girth as she whimpered, adjusting to a male organ moving against her tongue.

She went down too far and gagged when his tip hit the back of her throat. Fighting her gag reflex, Taiwo raised back up, and went down again, making sure not to go too far. He hissed when she grazed dick skin with her teeth. She pressed her lips tighter around his penis and bobbed her head as she worked her neck, hoping that was the correct form.

"Taiwo…where you learn that girl? Huh? Keep sucking…keep sucking!"

Pleasure rippled all across her skin and her pussy throbbed, enjoying his pants and pleads to keep going. He shouted God's name and her mouth filled with his release, the blast of warm semen coursing down her throat.

She swallowed every drop.

Removing her mouth from his dick, she looked up at his face. Cash's eyes had narrowed and his brows furrowed looking down at her. Still panting, he stared at his dick as it turned soft in his hand.

"You like that?" she asked.

He threw his head back and looked up at the tree canopy. Laughter fell from his lips.

"Yes," he said.

He touched his chest.

"My heart is beating so fast right now," he said.

A coy smile lifted her lips. She pulled her clothes back on.

"Wayment…it's your turn. I gotta make you feel good, too," he insisted.

"Later," she said. "I have to go check on the babies. I was gone longer than I planned."

Cash reached for her arms and pulled her in close.

"Later, huh?"

She nodded. Reaching for the jug, Taiwo discreetly sipped water and rinsed her mouth. The taste of semen was something she'd have to get used to.

Taiwo meandered back to the cabin carrying her basket and jug.

The hairs on her arms rose, and she stopped walking. She turned to face the direction she came from, and the air crackled with a charge of energy that rushed across her entire body from head to toe, giving her the sensation of being folded inside out like the laundry she cleaned all day. The surrounding colors became saturated and objects in her sight came into sharp focus, as if she stepped into a freshly painted landscape. Her tongue felt thick and burdensome in her mouth. A scent of lavender perfume crinkled her nose, and the familiarity pumped the blood faster in her veins.

Kehinde.

That's what the air smelled like for seven seconds: Kehinde's perfume that her lover bought for her before he swept her off to the east, and an early grave. The odor permeated her dreams the last couple of weeks and it didn't startle her like a portent of grave circumstances in her sleep like it did now. In dreams, anything was possible. But in a waking state? No one else wore that particular scent of perfume. It smelled of sickly sweet foreboding. Only Kehinde—

Taiwo glimpsed a floating blue orb of bright light darting past her cabin. She dropped her basket and jug on the uneven earth and dashed for her home.

Coming upon the outhouse, the wooden door flung open, and Mavis stepped out. She rinsed her hands with a bucket of water left by the outhouse door and shook the excess away.

"Taiwo?"

Mavis stopped shaking her hands and stared at Taiwo.

"You done feeding them already?"

Taiwo ran around the side of the house, searching for signs of flickering blue amidst the flapping of cloud white sheets. Mavis approached her.

"You alright?"

Taiwo touched her arms. The hairs there still reached for the sky.

"I came back from being with Cash…"

Mavis's lips pressed into a line and she glanced back toward the rows of cotton plants.

"Came back?" Mavis huffed, "But you were inside a minute ago, feeding Elijah—"

The pitiful, wailing sounds of her babies pierced the air. Taiwo rushed past Mavis and ran up the porch steps. Bursting through the door, she noticed her rocking chair still moving near the open window. Elijah was face-down on the floor wearing only his cloth diaper, struggling to lift his weak neck up with a tight face bathed in hot tears.

"Why is he on the floor?!" Taiwo shouted.

"I didn't leave him there. You fed him in the chair and told me to take a break. I just went to relieve myself!"

"Mavis…I came back from the field! I didn't…"

Mavis's eyes were round and wide. Her small mouth twitched, and she wrung her hands. A creeping dread cooled Taiwo's forehead. She lifted Elijah and put him back in the crib next to Elias.

"This heat must be getting to me. I probably should rest…"

She touched the baby all over his exposed skin, checking for bruising or itchy, red bites from pesky chiggers that irritated everyone during the summer. He looked fine, and she gave him kisses to soothe his fright at being left unattended on the hard floor. Her fingers trembled when she sniffed lavender on his hair and cheeks. She crossed the room to dig into a coffee can hidden behind a small bag of flour above her stove. Pulling out Mavis's pay for the week, she handed over three coins, and took a deep inhale to calm her nerves in front of her friend.

"I'm gonna stay inside and sleep with the boys. You can go on home now. I'll be fine until Cash comes back."

"What about the laundry? Want me to take it down later?"

"I can do that. Go on home…and thank you for watching them today. Appreciate it."

"Is something wrong? Are you feeling sick?"

"A little under the weather. I'll be fine after I sleep a bit."

Mavis looked unsure, but she patted Taiwo's arm and left the cabin.

Taiwo fetched a clean cloth and used it to wipe down the twins with marigold oil all over. She grabbed some braided sweetgrass from above the fireplace mantle that rested in front of the small wood-carved Ibeji figures Wo-Ma gave her after the babies were born.

They rested snug inside a brown and orange beaded pouch. One identical figure represented Elijah and the other Elias, and as long as she kept those totems together safe, the old spirits from Africa would intercede on her children's behalf if needed. Using a match to burn the sweetgrass, she smudged the totems and the entire interior before quickly moving outside with the burning plant bundle. She circled the cabin three times, waving the smoke around, creating a sacred barrier.

Glancing around, she checked for any signs of her twin sister. The last time she laid eyes on her, Kehinde had worn a pretty golden yellow dress with her hair pinned back from her face. She glowed with love in her eyes, and Taiwo missed her dearly. Her twin flitted in and out of her lucid dreams, a pleasant memory occasionally since she gave birth. It made Taiwo feel like she could visit with her sister from time to time, and that their bond had never truly broken, even in death.

She allowed the last of the sweetgrass to burn up on the ground in front of the bottom step of the porch. Instead of sleeping, she ironed sheets and dresses, and when she needed to urinate, she skipped the outhouse and pissed in a chamber pot, dumping the liquid on the ground in a line from the porch.

When the last of the laundry finally dried, she put the babies in her small wagon and kept them right next to her as she pulled down her last items of the day, along with clean diapers. She remained vigilant as the sunlight faded. Frying the chicken Mavis plucked for her, Taiwo prepared dinner and had food on the table right as Cash dragged in, stretching his back and rubbing his stomach.

They ate together, and he noticed her tense stance between bites of cornbread and fried okra.

"What's troubling you?"

Taiwo swallowed her food.

"Tired, that's all. So hot today."

"No hotter than it was yesterday. The boys give you trouble?'

"No. They've been good. Elijah wasn't too hungry for his dinner."

"What about Elias?"

"His usual self. Want more?"

Cash pushed back his plate.

"Nah, I'm full. Good meal, thank you, honey."

Taiwo grinned. She stood to collect their empty plates, but Cash gathered them up and washed them for her.

"Go get some sleep early. I'll put everything away and look after the boys."

She kissed his cheek and changed into an old slip for her night clothes. Her breasts ached from Elijah not feeding from her and she rubbed her nipples, wondering if she should try to feed him again. Cash walked back into the room carrying their eldest.

"He's moving around like he's hungry," he said.

Taiwo took Elijah in her arms and sat on the edge of the bed, revealing a breast for him to take. He latched onto her and suckled for a few seconds before he pulled away, bursting into tears. His face turned a raging red-brown.

"What's wrong, huh Elijah? You're hungry. Come on and eat."

Elijah turned his face away from her breast and Taiwo checked his diaper to see if it needed changing before bed. He was clean and dry. Cash came back into the room and looked at their son.

"That cry doesn't sound so good."

"He won't eat, but he's hungry."

"Is he sick?"

"He doesn't have a fever…"

Taiwo cooed and gently rocked him, but Elijah would not stop wailing. She stood and walked around their bedroom, giving comforting words. He kept screaming.

"Elijah, please…" she said.

Elias heard his brother and started fussing in the crib. Cash looked after him and Taiwo clucked her tongue, hummed, and bounced him against her breasts. Nothing worked. It was too soon for teething. She stuck a finger in his mouth and rubbed around his gums. He started sucking on her finger, thinking something was on it, and then erupting into earsplitting shrieks.

She took him into the main room and held him near his brother who stared at him with enormous eyes from Cash's arms. The moment Elias heard another shriek from Elijah, he joined right in.

"Let's put them in the crib together," she suggested.

Side by side, the boys continued squawking like frightened birds in a nest. Cash brought out his banjo and started plucking a lullaby for them. Elias jammed his tiny lips together and whimpered, his discomfort broken by the sounds of his daddy playing music for them. Elijah kept screaming.

And then he stopped.

Tears like dewdrops shined on his heated brown cheeks, and his wet eyes looked past her to the corner where he finally cracked a smile, the pitiful whimpers no longer escaping his mouth. His face became bathed in a radiating blue light that danced across his plump cheeks. Cash didn't see it at all.

Taiwo's body thrummed with the sense of being folded again, like someone squeezing her body in on itself. Elijah laughed, but he didn't laugh for Taiwo. He laughed for the entity that joined them in the room. Someone who stepped through the void when they shouldn't have.

The scent of lavender pervaded the front room.

"You smell that?" Cash asked, sniffing the air.

"Yes."

"Like flowers."

"Lavender."

"Yeah, lavender."

Taiwo reached out and grabbed Cash's shirt sleeve, stopping him from moving.

"Keep playing music for them," she whispered.

She focused her eyes on the Ibeji above the fireplace.

"Sing to them."

The tone of her voice prompted Cash to play a soft tune, and he sang about summer sunshine and marigolds. While he entertained their twin sons, she turned to face her own twin.

Mustering the poise and strength of Wo-Ma, Taiwo uttered a spell of protection that she learned as a child to ward off unwanted ghosts, because that was needed as she locked eyes with Kehinde standing in the corner. Her sister looked as alive as the last day of her stay in Mississippi. A blue ring of ghostly flames surrounded her form. The banjo music sounded like it was in a vacuum and far away as Taiwo stepped into a tear of the ancestral realm. No warmth emitted from the blue fire, only a bone-deep cold that divided the living from the dead.

"You shouldn't be here, Kehinde. Not like this. Dreams are one thing, but here? In the world like this?"

A ripple in the ghostly fire made Kehinde look fuzzy before she snapped back to full clarity. The dead twin stared past Taiwo and fixed her gaze on the crib.

"I lost my baby," Kehinde gasped, reaching her arms out, not for her sister, but for the boys.

"I know, and I'm sorry, sister. We miss you, but you caint be here."

"You have two…lemme have one of them. I'll take care of him. See? He wants me…he cried for me, not you."

Kehinde touched her left breast, and milk leaked from it, wetting the ghostly dress.

"He so cute, and quiet and he took my milk. He knows me now—"

"Meji, you must go."

Taiwo clutched at her mojo bag around her neck with her left hand, and outstretched her right, pointing three fingers at Kehinde's face.

"Ibeji will keep us from all harm…they will watch over our lives and your comings and goings both now and forevermore…"

"Taiwo, please, let me have him. You can keep Elias…"

The brightness of Kehinde's skin dulled, the crisp outline of her form slowly faded as Taiwo stepped forward holding tight to her mojo, and her fear of unwanted spirits. Her voice rang out true and clear. Meji wasn't welcome there. By the time she reached the exact spot where Kehinde once stood, her sister had vanished back into the void, and Taiwo's skin stopped prickling with gooseflesh. The tear in the void had sealed back up.

"Thank you…thank you…" she murmured.

Turning back to Cash, she listened to him finish his song. Both boys had calmed down. She joined her husband at the crib and looked down at two peaceful little faces.

Taiwo sought her mother the next morning, and Wo-ma gave her a block of indigo, some milk, and a bag of lemons. She spent the morning mixing the items into a thick paint of haint blue that she brushed all over the front door and the porch steps. After the first coat dried, she painted another layer to keep Kehinde out of her house.

Wo-Ma didn't act surprised when Taiwo told her about Meji. She seemed prepared for it actually, like she'd been waiting for the day to come and had the supplies ready just in case. Cash didn't question her about it, accepting that she and her people did different things because of Hoodoo. No one spoke about it out loud, and he knew that people sometimes visited Wo-Ma for "special" talks in her home with Papa Will. Even her father went off to spend time among the old Choctaw Indian mounds to commune with nature and his own people's spirits.

She didn't tell Cash about seeing her sister, and her prayer the previous night sounded no different from the ones he heard her saying on any occasion when she sought help for a problem. In his mind, he probably thought she was praying for Elijah to get better.

Unfortunately, he didn't.

Day by day, he grew weaker from not taking her milk. After two days, his body became thinner than his brother's and she asked for Wo-Ma's help. By the fifth day, his diapers didn't fit. The sweetgrass, haint blue paint, and spells worked to keep Kehinde out of the house, but it didn't stop her connection to Elijah who didn't even want Taiwo picking him up anymore, his fretful eyes searching for an elusive new mother who abandoned him to the mundane world. Wo-Ma moved back into the house and gave her various spells to cast for her son, but nothing worked on their side of the veil. Elias thrived, getting fatter and happy while Elijah withered down to where she could see gauntness in his cheeks. They tried feeding him cow's milk diluted with water and mixed with honey. The boy ate nothing and didn't want to be touched by people. He cried during his diaper changes and cried whenever he looked around the room for Meji.

"He tasted your sister's milk. She created a bond with him I caint break just yet," Wo-Ma said.

Taiwo's mother sat in the kitchen area and cried, unhappy that she couldn't save her grandchild from her own dead daughter. Seven long, worrisome days had passed.

Cash pretended to stay strong, but each morning he hugged Elijah as if he wouldn't see him again by his noon lunch. He spent most days rushing back and forth from the cabin and the field, barely getting any work done to sustain them as a family. Taiwo told her laundry customers that she was too sick to wash clothes. She worried about their finances dwindling. Papa Will even broached the topic with Wo-Ma of preparing for another death in their family if Elijah didn't get better. He thought she didn't hear him as they whispered in the front room while she rested in her bedroom. Wo-Ma scolded him for saying it and stayed up every night on the front porch meditating and praying. She threw conjuring bones on the kitchen table every morning, seeking answers until she finally found one.

When Taiwo thought she had to give up hope, Wo-Ma took her and the babies outside, washing them thoroughly in a tub. She made them wear all white and packed them into her mule cart and carried them off to her shack. On her kitchen table, unwrapped and hardened from two decades of burial, sat a gray mass.

"That right there wrapped you and Meji in me before your birth. We must take it to your daddy's people…their sacred place where the power is stronger. I'll break the bond there," Wo-Ma said.

She took out her pouch of bones and threw them on her table next to the dried placenta of Taiwo and Kehinde. Pieces of rabbit, raccoon, and chicken bones scattered in a wide arc. Wo-Ma read the bones and Papa Will burned sweetgrass to maintain a connection to the spirit world his wife tried to pick a message from.

"Come, we have to go now. We'll go on the river and not by foot. Meji caint cross the water to get him out in the open before we reach the mounds," Wo-Ma said.

Papa Will tucked some tobacco inside his shirt wrapped in an old kerchief. They left Cash behind to watch over the home he built for Taiwo, and ventured to the river with the babies to catch a flatboat that would carry them upriver to the Indian mounds.

Elias fussed inside the basket Taiwo used for their travel bed while Elijah's gaunt face remained quiet. They arrived at an empty landing in the late afternoon. Papa Will paid a wagon driver passing by to carry them in the sweltering sun a little ways ahead. They soon trudged through a dense meadow where a male Choctaw elder with a weathered, light brown face stood watch, guarding the area. Papa Will passed on the tobacco and a few coins. The elder accepted the offering without a word and led them toward where they wanted to be, like some clandestine meeting in broad daylight. Along the edge of a row of tall, poplar trees, three Choctaw women tended to pulling weeds in a clearing. A sizeable mound of green covered earth rose out of the ground like the curve of a whale's back surrounded by smaller mounds the size of hitched wagons at cardinal points.

Papa Will spoke to the women privately, and they accepted something from him that Taiwo couldn't see and left the clearing silently.

"Feel it?" Wo-Ma asked.

"Yes," Taiwo answered in a reverent tone.

The earth hummed with a sound that no human could hear, but Taiwo and Wo-Ma sensed it on their skin like subtle vibrations itching the flesh. It nipped at them in waves.

"There is a mighty power here. The old ones in this place say the door is here. We need them to close it for her," Wo-Ma whispered. "Put the basket there and keep close to your babies."

Taiwo set the basket upon the soft earth and Papa Will lingered near it, his watchful eyes stuck on the largest mound.

Wo-Ma prayed out loud for a long, long time. Her voice carried a beseeching quality, and it echoed across the mounds until she began speaking in tongues, the language of spirits. Papa Will burnt sweetgrass and left the smoking bundle two feet in front of Wo-Ma. Eventually, Wo-Ma's incoherent speech slowed down and sounded like plain English again. She pointed to the twins.

"See here…these my grandbabies. Freshly born and new to this world. My dead daughter, Kehinde, has a hold on one of them and she won't let him go. He's dying. Hear me? Little Elijah. I need your help. You my husband's people…his kinfolk. Will, he's Chahta Lusa…Black Choctaw. His papa come from you…tell them, Will."

Papa Will, who didn't like to talk much, shuffled forward and pulled off his hat. He held Wo-Ma's trembling hand.

"She's tellin' the truth. Aia-ali. I am from this place…this…yakni."

"Show 'em, honey," Wo-Ma said.

Papa Will pulled out a small paring blade and cut his palm open. He knelt down and squeezed his hand in a fist, letting his blood drip onto the ground. The brown dirt absorbed the scarlet liquid until there was nothing visible. Taiwo handed her father a handkerchief, and he bound up the wound.

"See? He yours, and these babies here are yours, too. Meji…Kehinde, she yours…Taiwo is yours. But Kehinde won't leave Elijah be. I need to bury her spirit here, where the barrier is stronger."

Wo-Ma gestured for Taiwo to show Elijah. Her oldest son hovered on the precipice of a cold, untimely death, and her hot tears fell on his face. She wiped them away.

"Wo-Ma, look," Taiwo said.

A flickering blue ball of light swooped down from up high and hovered in front of Wo-Ma. It was the size of Taiwo's good china plate that she cherished, passed down from her great-grandmother.

Papa Will lifted Elias and crept away with him as they had planned, to keep the spirits from mistaking him for Elijah. He left Taiwo to guard her firstborn. She smothered him down in marigold oil and herbs, his sickly expression worrying her more.

A disembodied voice called out from the blue orb that floated before them like a small alien sun.

"Wo-Ma…please…let me have Elijah…"

"No. I love you, Meji, but he caint go to where you are. That's not fair to your sister. You can watch over him, but you caint keep him for yourself. He don't belong to you. I gotta plant you here because you're killing him."

Taiwo held her son against her chest, feeling a new flow of tears running down her cheeks.

"This my baby. He came outta me…you caint just take him Meji!"

The shriek of her voice made Wo-Ma wince and Elijah wiggled in her arms from the sound of pent up rage.

"I want him!" Meji screamed.

The orb of watery blue light surrounded Elijah and ripped him out of Taiwo's arms. The boy's weak body floated out of reach above Taiwo's head. She jumped up several times, trying to grab him.

Wo-Ma settled onto her knees quickly and dug a hole in the ground with her bare hands. She unwrapped the placenta bundle, cut it in half with her own small knife from her conjure bag hooked to her dress belt, and buried it carefully, smoothing the dirt above it. The conjuring spell she spoke with a ferocious tone frightened Taiwo.

The orb froze in place, and Elijah stayed suspended in the air.

"Wo-Ma, noooo!" Kehinde shrieked, her voice shattering the peace of the woods and scaring birds out of the trees.

"Stay…behind the veil…you will not come for Elijah or anyone else again!" Wo-Ma shouted.

She poured an oil from her work bag over the small mound of dirt that held the placenta half that belonged to Kehinde.

A crack of thunder rattled the sunny sky above them and a silvery lightning flash from out of nowhere slashed across the glowing blue ball. Elijah fell down into Taiwo's outstretched arms. He hollered like he had seen too much for his itty bitty age and Taiwo offered him a nipple and he latched on to it and sucked away, his chipmunk cheeks puffing in and out. She cried out with joy.

The pungent odor of sizzling ozone drenched the air and Taiwo witnessed the rippling of the scenery in front of her, as if she'd taken her hand and swiped it across water and the reflection there spiraled out in layers then snapped back to normal like the sudden slamming of a heavy door.

"Don't move yet. We don't want to attract others who may have slipped through," Wo-Ma warned.

Silent and immobile like statues, they remained in place until the scent of the otherworldly had passed.

"Will she stay gone, Wo-Ma?" Taiwo asked.

Wo-Ma nodded confidently.

Taiwo carried Elijah against her breast and fed him all the way back home.

Cash met them at their front door and cried like a baby himself once the healthy color returned to Elijah's cheeks. They all breathed easy, listening to the squalling noise he did, announcing he wanted more milk to drink down into his undernourished belly. Cash kissed Taiwo all over her face and held his son close between feedings.

When they placed the well-fed boys in their bed together, the little ones faced each other and gurgled peacefully.

But Taiwo kept painting the front door and the porch steps with fresh coats of haint blue every two weeks. She kept them coated down in protective oils, too.

Just in case.

3. The Watermelon Man

At six months old, the twins were fat, heavy, and the most adorable babies in Clarksdale. Taiwo was a proud momma and Cash a proud papa.

Hard work during harvest season and nursing hungry boys kept her days hectic. But Cash had her busy in the evening too, wanting to touch and kiss her as much as possible. The babies learned to sleep through the night, so that meant Taiwo had time to be up under her husband hot and sweaty like they did before they had the boys.

Cash started dreaming about opening a juke joint. Taiwo would've preferred a small mercantile attached to their cabin, but Cash doubted they could rely on a steady harvest to support a store's needed goods and buy property at the same time. He also thought it unwise to compete with the white landowner, who also ran his own mercantile operation that kept sharecroppers in debt through overpriced goods and freely given, unrepayable credit.

Taiwo didn't want to wash clothes anymore. She desired more time with her babies and friends.

"You'll have plenty of friends if we put up a juke. Corn liquor is cheap and easy to make and free money is better than borrowed money from a cracka bank," he said.

She worried about the stigma.

Cash's family already hated that he married a Hoodoo woman from a long line of Hoodoo women. His people were stalwart Christians that looked down on her already. Opening a juke would make it seem like she was leading him further astray from the Lord.

No one in his family gave her credit for keeping Cash on the straight and narrow. Before he married her, he'd been on the run for some nefarious dealings in New Orleans. Rumors said he killed a few people over gambling and women. Cash was what the folks were calling a wandering bluesman, and that was sin enough in his mother's eyes. His family accused her of putting a root on him, tricking him to stay under her. Taiwo could only laugh at that. Whatever devilment he got into in his past was already in him. Taiwo tamed him of all that wandering, but let him keep singing. He sang songs of fucking, fighting, and losing good women. Field hollers and spirituals never came out of his mouth anymore. Her husband told bawdy stories with his banjo and looked forward to teaching his sons how to play. As long as he kept the foolishness in the music, she didn't mind.

One early morning Taiwo drank a special herbal mixture that her mother instructed her to drink if she wanted to prevent having more babies too soon. Cash did his best to pull out or use her mouth for his release, but he was a horny man in love with his wife. Taiwo got it in her head that she'd probably end up pregnant come winter when there was nothing to do but wait for spring to arrive again during the long, cold months. The twins were already a handful and she couldn't bear carrying another child so soon like most of her friends did.

She sipped on the concoction, then busied herself making corn cakes. Twins making it to six months could only be celebrated by gifting friends the fried goods from her skillet to share in the abundance of the Ibeji. Mavis stopped by with her newborn, eager to have a taste of the food herself fresh from the stove.

She fried all morning, and after the cooling time, wrapped up several piles of flat circular cakes to deliver. Mavis left after her fill, taking a few extras home to her husband.

Taiwo bundled the twins up in her small wagon next to the three plates of covered corn cakes.

"You takin' them hoecakes now?" Cash asked.

He rinsed his face from a leftover bucket of water on the porch.

"Yeah, I should be back in a few hours. I think it's time for the boys to get some fresh air and let people see them."

"Wo-Ma okay with that? Thought she wanted them kept indoors for a few more months."

"We can't hide them in the house forever. Besides, Elijah has healed up nice and plump again. He's strong and I want them both to get some sun along the way."

Cash stepped from the porch and kissed her forehead.

"Keep 'em in the shade if it gets too warm and rest if you need to."

"I will."

Taiwo clasped the handle of the wagon.

"And don't buy up all that penny candy from Mrs. Morgan if you see her. I know you'll pass by them people selling at the crossroads."

"One little bag…I promise."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

Taiwo tied her sun hat tighter under her neck and blew him a kiss. She tugged on the wagon handle, rolling the babies behind her.

The fall sunshine on her skin felt pleasant. It wasn't too hot for the twins, so she loosened up their swaddling, letting fresh air pour over them. Warm yellow rays added more color to their cheeks. Their eyes stared up at the big blue sky until she moved them closer to the trees as a few mule-drawn wagons rattled by on their way to town. She fanned her face from the gnats that flew under the tree canopies and stopped to check her babies as dust kicked up from the road along with more foot-traffic and carts. Strangers fawned over her children and she kept on her journey.

A few vendors peppered the way, some selling fish sandwiches and slices of sweet potato pie. She didn't see Mrs. Morgan out with her sugary sweets and kept walking the path that led to her friends.

She noticed an old man with balding grayish-white hair selling watermelon slices. The bright red of the innards dotted with vivid black seeds drew her near. A pile of watermelons sat stacked neatly on the side of the road with an old blanket, keeping them from touching the ground.

"I gots the sweetest, juiciest watermelons you'll ever taste!" he blurted to every passerby.

Taiwo had a taste for something sweet. Most of the vendors stayed out until late afternoon. If she couldn't have candy, then some sweet bites of watermelon would do. The watermelon man sliced chunks for customers who sampled his goods, and their smacking lips convinced Taiwo it was worth buying.

"Hey, pretty lady. Come on over here and try summa this melon. The best you ever had, I can promise you that!"

He sliced a fresh melon in half, and then carefully cut the green rind from the fruit.

The younger man next to him selling green apples looked annoyed. His baskets of fruit didn't attract as much attention from buyers.

"I have errands to run. I'll be by later," she said.

Her feet still carried her over to look at the fruit up close.

"Here, try a piece. I bet I can fit a whole watermelon right in your wagon…oh my, what do we have here? Are those twins?"

Taiwo grinned.

"Yes, my boys."

"Fine looking ones, too," he said, peering down at their chubby faces that peeked out at the fascinating new world.

Taiwo eyed the watermelon.

"Here."

The man handed her a chunk. She popped it into her mouth and it burst with a flavor so sweet and cooling that she gasped with delight. Some of the juice ran down her chin and she wiped it with her fingers.

"So good!' she said.

"Told ya."

"Ain't seen you 'round here before."

"I'm just passing through during the harvest. I heard the folks around here ain't had good watermelon in ages."

"Where you from?"

"Oh, from here and there…everywhere," he said with a sing-song voice.

Taiwo studied his face. Dark brown skin like the tobacco her daddy smoked. Teeth worn down and yellowed. Just enough wrinkles to obscure his true age. His overalls were clean, no trace of dust or dirt, and his shoes were made of sturdy dark leather that looked brand new. Both of his eyes were clouded over with a gray film, and she wondered how well he could see with them. Unlike the other vendors, he didn't have a wagon to move his product. Nor a wide cart he could pull himself.

"Here darlin', have another piece," he said, carving another chunk for her.

"I'll get some on my way back home," she said.

The large knife in his hand made her nervous with his poor eyesight.

"I'll be here waiting for you…and these cute lil boys."

Taiwo pulled her wagon and trudged away from the watermelon man and carried on about her business.

She stopped at her friend Louise's house first and gifted her with the most corn cakes since she had six children and a husband. They chatted for a few minutes and she let Louise hold each twin. Next, she walked over to her childhood friend Ora's home, where she lived with her parents and husband. Ora also had a baby a month older than Elijah and Elias, and the women traded baby tips on keeping rashes at bay and also looking out for constipation.

Her last delivery was to a cousin on her mother's side. Flossy didn't bother waiting to eat the corn cakes. She poured honey over them and feasted on two before her husband and children returned from fishing.

"If I don't eat some now, won't be none left when they get back," Flossy said.

Taiwo visited with her the longest and fed her babies. While she changed wet diapers, they talked about family, the weather, and the harvest party a mutual friend was throwing in a week.

"Girl, I ain't been out dancing in so long," Taiwo sighed.

"Let my oldest Peaches watch the babies and you and Cash come out for a good time. She fifteen and responsible. You can feed them here and come out with me and Dexter for a few hours. Be good to see you out. We'd love to hear Cash play. He still talkin' 'bout opening that juke?"

"He is. But I would rather we open another business."

Flossy ate another corn cake and put the rest inside her oven for safe-keeping. They hugged and Taiwo retraced her steps toward home. The boys slept soundly with the gentle rocking motion of the wagon and the humming she did. She stopped to cover them with another blanket as the air grew cooler.

Most of the vendors had left the crossroads, and the few remaining packed up and rolled away in carts and wagons.

Not the watermelon man.

He stayed soliciting and slicing chunks.

The old man sniffed the air before she approached him.

"I can smell those sweet babies. Such a delicious aroma. Are you ready to buy from me pretty lady?"

Taiwo didn't like what he said. She kept her sons hidden from him.

Cautiously, she moved her wagon further into the road and away from the vendor. He held out a thick slice of watermelon for her to take.

"No, thank you…I don't have any money on me today," she said.

The grin on the old man's face faltered. He sniffed the air once more and his nostrils twitched like a feral animal smelling the subtle whiff of prey.

"Well, I'm sure you'll be by here again with those babies. Why don't you take a whole one home with you?"

"That's a kind offer, but I'm not sure when I'll be back again."

She kept moving until she passed him. He pointed the knife at her.

"I have no problem with you paying me later. I'll be here for awhile. Good business in these parts. Maybe…maybe you could let me hold one of them babies, huh? They are so cute…and fat."

He ogled Elias. She pretended not to hear him, as if the people leaving the area further ahead distracted her.

Pulling the wagon faster, she quickly forged on. Once she had some safe distance between herself and the watermelon man, she breathed a little easier and her chest didn't feel so tight. She glanced over her shoulder and didn't see anyone following her.

Her shoulders relaxed the closer she came to familiar landmarks. She closed in on their plot of sharecropping land.

"Taiwo!"

The anger in the voice calling to her from the dense trees near the right side of the road didn't stop her from moving. Papa Will taught her about answering strange voices she didn't know. If she looked, whatever called her would know she was the owner of the name. If she answered, it would follow her home. Or worse.

She walked faster.

The wagon shook the boys awake, and they babbled at her.

The dark nature of that faceless voice propelled her to go even faster.

She reached her home and carefully lifted her children. Entering the safety of the cabin spilled relief throughout her rigid body. She kissed the boys and fed them in her rocking chair while watching for any signs of trouble through the window.

Cash walked in from the bedroom and looked at the kitchen table.

"No candy?" he teased.

She shook her head.

"What's the matter? You look spooked."

"An old man selling watermelons scared me."

"How?"

"He acted strange…well, he said something strange, and it bothered me. He said he could smell my babies. But I wasn't close enough for him to do that. The boys were covered up. I hadn't even got close enough for him to know I was there. He made me feel uncomfortable… I could feel the badness in my stomach and chest."

Cash rubbed his chin and concern crossed over his features. He sat down and spoke with a steady voice.

"Did you show him the twins?" Cash asked.

"He saw part of their faces."

"Ben came by here right after you left. He dropped off some tools and told me about a baby that was stolen over in Rolling Fork four days ago. A mother turned her back on a man selling pecans for a minute and her baby was gone from her yard. Next time you go out, I'm coming with you."

Taiwo nodded.

A few days passed by and Taiwo rode with Cash on their wagon to see his parents. She didn't want to be around them and their critical gaze, but Cash didn't want to leave her alone at the cabin with the boys.

Taiwo held the twins on her lap, and the couple enjoyed the outing. They made plans to look for land to buy soon. Cash sang to her and her cheeks warmed up from the salacious nature of the lyrics. Her belly ached from laughing at the humorous way he changed the sound of his voice to sing falsetto like a woman. The babies grinned every time she giggled.

Blinking twice, she nudged Cash's arm.

The watermelon man sat on the side of the road not too far from the crossroads. Another stack of bright green melons enticed buyers, and he used his sharp knife to cut the fruit samples.

"Pretty lady. I see you're back."

His cloudy eyes focused in on the twins. His nose twitched.

"Brought those babies, too," he said.

"That's him," she whispered to Cash.

The watermelon man lifted a chunk of dripping sweetness that trailed a line of juice, looking like pale pink blood on his arm. His body appeared smaller and more hunched over than the last time Taiwo met him.

"We don't want none," Cash said.

He snapped the reins, and their mule, Esther, skedaddled along, pulling them away.

They tried to ignore the sighting of the old man and continued on with their day, but uneasiness chilled their once pleasant mood.

Another week passed and a trip home from church with Wo-Ma and Papa Will in their wagon brought them face-to-face with the watermelon man again. This time, he was about two hundred yards from their home and held one melon in his left hand and the knife in his right.

None of them acknowledged the man, simply passed him right by without a sound, even as he called to them about purchasing his fruit.

"That's who I told you about, Wo-Ma," Taiwo said inside her kitchen.

Her parents drank coffee with Cash, and she fretted over how long it would take for the watermelon man to find their cabin. Cash's forehead crinkled.

"He more different from before. Even smaller…older," Cash said.

"It's a trickster. Not even human, Cash. It used the watermelon Taiwo ate to stick to her. It won't leave until it gets what it wants. There's something about those babies that attracts things that shouldn't be around us," Wo-Ma said.

"What can we do? I done tried every root I know to cast it away from me, but it keeps coming closer," Taiwo asked.

"Give him what he wants. Give him the twins," Papa Will said.

Taiwo balked and stared at her father liked he'd gone mad. Papa Will patted her hand.

"We trick him into thinking he's got the twins. It cain't see good, but it can smell an ant fart."

Wo-Ma and Cash laughed. Taiwo didn't crack a smile.

"He's one of the little people," Papa Will said. "They steal babies and then leave you with one that looks like yours behind. Only that new baby ain't right. It'll suck the life outta you because it ain't a real baby. Just misery."

Papa Will looked at Wo-Ma and winked, then gestured for them all to move in closer around the kitchen table.

"This what we do," Papa Will whispered.

"I hope this works," Cash said.

"It has to," Taiwo answered.

She held onto the squirming bundle in her arms.

"Even if he caint see for shit, he can sure tell a piglet from a baby by how that thing is making noise."

Taiwo glanced at the suckling pig in her arms, wrapped in her children's baby blanket.

"Papa Will said to treat them just like I would Elijah and Elias. Go about my business and let that man see me doing it."

"I should come with you."

"No…you caint. You gotta stay with Elijah and Elias. He'll know we're up to something if you show up. I can do this, Cash."

The second piglet that was also dressed in the twin's baby clothes and a blanket grunted and squirmed underneath the abnormal covering for its smelly skin. For two weeks, they didn't wash any of the children's spare clothing, so their scent would permeate the cotton. Then they dressed and carried the piglets around the house and outside as if they were the babies. Taiwo washed clothes with the piglets by her side. Cash chopped wood and worked on repairs around the cabin to prepare for winter, singing them songs he made up like he did his real babies.

The time came to venture out and lay the scheme on the watermelon man.

Taiwo kissed Cash goodbye, and he pretended to kiss the piglets. Earlier, she let the fat sow in her pen feed them. The trip wouldn't take long. She just had to be seen by the old man taking her children out for errands.

She pulled the wagon and hummed, trying to act normal. She stopped to peer at the piglets, acting like she was checking on their comfort. With each squeal, she pretended they babbled to her, and she cooed and kissed their pink snouts.

Mavis and her husband passed her by on the road.

"Where you headed Taiwo?" Mavis asked.

"Taking the boys for a walk," she said, dashing past them.

Mavis glanced into the wagon but Taiwo didn't give her a chance to ask about seeing the babies. The wagon wheels groaned from the sudden movement.

Her eyes darted from side to side as she sang a lullaby to pass the time. Eventually she glimpsed the figure of the watermelon man squatted on the ground further down the road, shielded by the low-hanging branch of a tupelo tree.

He had no more watermelons. Only the knife in his hand. He scraped it against the dirt between his legs.

"Pretty lady, I'm all outta melons today…and patience, too," he said.

Taiwo stayed calm. His appearance had become sinister, the cloudy eyes sunken in on his face and the aged yellow teeth more prominent in his mouth. Longer. Sharper at the tips. The clothing on his body became ill-fitting and tattered. There were no more shoes on his feet and the flesh of his toes looked like hard ashy stones. Even the tone of his voice had become harsh and scratchy to the ear.

"I'm not buying anything today. I have people to see," Taiwo blurted.

She strolled past him with the wagon and paused for a second, peering into the faces of her piglet children.

"You boys are being so good for me," she said, making sure the old man heard her.

Following Papa Will's instructions, she traveled far from her home to search for foxgloves flowers. Wo-Ma never allowed them to grow around their homes. The small purple bell shapes attracted magical beings, and she was positive that the old man came from the bulk that thrived among the brush area near the crossroads.

It didn't take long for her to find a thick overgrowth.

She tugged on the wagon handle and pulled the piglets into the center of the flowers.

"I'm so sorry," she murmured to the animals.

Lifting her skirt, she walked away from the wagon and acted like she had to urinate behind some trees. Hidden away, she closed her eyes tight and hugged her legs into her chest with her back jammed against the bark.

Soon, both piglets squealed in terror…then silence.

Taiwo waited longer before she emerged from her hiding place. Fear gripped her throat, and she held her breath. From across the way, she could see the disheveled blankets in the wagon. She crept closer.

The piglets were gone.

Taiwo ran back home without looking back.

Cash gripped his shotgun inside the cabin. Elijah and Elias slept soundly in their crib. When Taiwo burst through the door, he jumped up from a chair placed in front of it.

"He took 'em! The pigs…they gone!"

Cash nodded and hugged her with one arm.

"Now we wait until tomorrow," he said.

They slept with their boys between them on the bed. Neither of them could sleep a wink. Every sound outside became cause for alarm. A loon wailing hitched their breath. Crickets suddenly going quiet, their wings no longer rubbing together to chirp mating calls chilled their blood. The baying of a loose hound dog roaming the field wrenched them away from much needed rest.

By the crack of dawn, Taiwo could catnap while Cash stayed alert for signs of the trickster.

She fed the babies early and her parents arrived to lend their support. They would watch the children while Cash and Taiwo fetched the wagon.

"Don't take the shotgun, it'll attract attention," Papa Will said.

Cash lifted his axe from under the cabin and clasped Taiwo's hand.

"You musn't speak at all, not until you finish the task at the river," Wo-Ma said.

The couple set off with the sun on their backs. Taiwo sucked in a nervous breath as they arrived at the place where she left the wagon off-road. Two lumpy bundles rested under the blankets that had been empty before. Cash pointed toward the river and Taiwo carefully pulled the wagon handle.

What rested under the blankets squirmed and elicited throaty warbles trying to imitate the sounds of the piglets. Taiwo's hands shook once they reached the water's edge. She took a small bag of salt from the rucksack she carried and sprinkled it in a large circle around the wagon.

Cash signaled for her to step aside.

He reached down and pulled back the faded blanket.

The abomination in the wagon brought Taiwo to her knees. Even Cash retched. She vomited on the ground and held her nose, the stench so overpowering that her eyes welled up with tears. More bile rose in her throat and she nearly screamed before Cash slammed his hand over her mouth. They couldn't let on that the creatures lying in the wagon weren't their babies.

The putrid odor reminded her of rotted meat and burning sulfur. Twisted bloody flesh made a vile mockery of anything that God had created on earth. Skinless with black worm-like protrusions pulsing all over them, the offerings in the wagon in no way resembled living pigs. More like something had vaguely assembled inside-out beings from scraps of diseased tissue they thought could pass for babies. The worst part was the lifeless, silvery eyes bulging out of the sockets on stalks like slugs seeking moisture.

Taiwo shook Cash's arm and pointed into the wagon.

The creatures changed.

A slow blooming of pink skin crawled across the lumpish muscles and wiggling sinew whose foul odor lessened in the air. The transformation from bloody cryptids into sprightly piglets astonished them. Had they arrived later than they did, no one would've been able to convince them of the deceit.

Cash raised the axe and butchered them.

He hissed when a splash of fluid from a piglet dripped down his arm. It sizzled and blistered with yellow pus oozing from it, and he cried out in pain. Taiwo snatched the kerchief she wore off her head and drenched it in cool river water. She wiped down his arm, but the piglet's blood scorched down into the second layer of skin. Cash inhaled his pain and continued chopping up the bodies, careful to avoid any more pig liquid from touching him or Taiwo.

His work complete, Cash collected kindling, covering the decimated creatures. He lit a match.

The bodies blazed. Taiwo covered her nose and stood back from the dark gray smoke that turned an ominous sanguine color. The red fumes rose high and drifted across the water.

Cash pushed the wagon into the river, and its contents flowed downstream before sinking from sight.

Taiwo let out a loud gasp and moaned into Cash's chest as he held her close. The pain in his arm increased, and he grimaced. She ripped a piece of her skirt off and wrapped the wound. Afterward, she reached into her bag again and pulled out a silver dollar. She planted it in the center of the salt circle and buried it with dirt and more salt. She settled the debt to the old man for eating his watermelon. Taiwo spoke an incantation over it to seal the circle.

"Let's go home…get back to our real babies," Cash said through gritted teeth.

Life went on.

Cash's wounds never healed properly and turned into slippery black keloids that remained as a testament to the watermelon man's attempt to ruin their lives.

Elijah and Elias grew bigger, learned to crawl, and that brought on more challenges to keep up with them. Taiwo's conjuring powers and Cash's watchful eye in the world protected them.

When the twins turned a year old, a great flood swept through Clarksdale. A heavy rainstorm planted its watery arms above them and gathered the power of two mighty tributaries that swelled up the river beds and poured out onto the fertile fields. Many people drowned. The churning, muddy waters damaged homes and washed others away forever.

Taiwo and Cash barely had enough time to gather the children and her parents before the roar of water rushed through the plantation land. They used two wagons to transport people, a few chickens, and their pigs. Papa Will kept them somewhat prepared by reading the weather and water level signs early, forcing them to move inland toward higher ground when others doubted the severity of the storm.

Days later, when the waters receded, they returned to salvage what they could. Taiwo found her wooden Ibeji figures stuck in mud outside their home.

Luckily, the cabin remained despite the water damage inside. Cash figured that the trees and brush helped protect their home from being dragged into oblivion. It would need some rebuilding and fortifying, but at least they had a roof over their heads.

Taiwo gazed at the broken doorway and water-logged porch. A new coating of haint blue was needed. She clutched the Ibeji figures as the twins sat on a dry blanket covering the porch. Stroking the wood, she fretted a little. The figure representing Elias had a tiny nick on the neck. Her finger worried the marking and a sliver of wood splintered and cut her skin. She bled. Sucking on her finger, she glanced at Elias, who crawled across the porch trying to get to Cash, who checked the walls outside. Her youngest grabbed Cash's leg and pulled himself up to stand on his own feet.

Taiwo looked at the wooden figure again.

"Taiwo, hey! Taiwo! Cash!"

Mavis and her husband Roy rolled in on their creaky, mule-drawn wagon.

"We came to check on y'all," Mavis said.

Mavis held her deep brown baby girl Annie on her lap. A yellow bonnet covered the baby's curly hair, and her bright eyes were as big as her smile.

"Hey Annie, you sure is pretty," Taiwo said.

She lifted the girl from her friend's arms and carried her over to the porch where she plopped her rump on the top damp step. Mavis joined her and Elijah crawled over to Taiwo and hoisted himself up by her shoulder. He reached for Annie's bonnet and the baby girl squealed in delight.

Cash held Elias and spoke to Roy, and Taiwo chatted with Mavis. Elijah and Annie gurgled and babbled together as the sun rose higher, drying the water left on the land. Eventually Taiwo lifted the Ibeji figures and took them back inside the house, placing them above the fireplace where they belonged. She didn't bother to wipe the mud off, wanting to keep the memory of the flood on them so she would know her babies survived when some didn't.

Mavis and Roy headed out back to their place. They were part of the blessed few who still had a home to return to.

Taiwo and Cash held their children and watched their friends' wagon get pulled slowly by their stubborn mule.

A breeze blew across her hair, and the stale scent of foreboding returned. Cash bounced Elijah in his arms and Taiwo held Elias close to her bosom. A new flood would come again one day in the future. Not one made from a gathering of waters out of the river, but from a different place. It seeped into her marrow. Taunting her.

A battle was coming.

All Taiwo could do was stay vigilant and love on her babies. Lean on her husband.

She prayed that whatever wickedness came their way, God, her conjuring skills, and calls to their ancestors could withstand it.

It had to. It just had to.

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Author's Note:

1. My story title "A Gathering of Waters" is the Anishinaabeg translation for the word "Mississippi" which they named the Mississippi River after.

2. Ibeji is the term for "Divine Twins" in the Yoruba Orisha Pantheon from southwest Nigeria (Naija!). Their colors are associated with red and blue because they are said to have been born of Shango (the Orisha of thunder, lightning, and fire = red), and Yemayá (The Goddess of the primal waters, nurturing, and protective= blue.)

3. Clarksdale, Mississippi is widely known as the birthplace of the Blues and has its well-known supernatural Black American folk tales and myths about blues singer Robert Johnson and his deal with the devil at the crossroads.

4. There are real Indian mounds throughout Mississippi that are sacred to the original Indigenous Mississippians. Black folks descended from Choctaw people would be known as Chahta Lusa, Chahta = Choctaw and Lusa = Black.

5. Hoodoo (which I practice) is not the same as Voodoo (Vodun), but they both have their roots (like Santeria, Obeah, Lucumi, Candomble etc) under the umbrella of African spiritualist traditions. Enslaved Africans carried their belief systems throughout the Black diaspora. Wherever they landed, they transformed, and synthesized with other African Traditional Religions (ATR) from the other west African cultures they were forced into bondage with, often hiding their old "gods" under new names and new ways of worship. This is why Wo-Ma and Taiwo in my story can have some ancestral memories of the Ibeji passed down to them, but they use Hoodoo methods to work their conjuring after nearly two hundred years of Black people being in America.

6. The banjo is an African instrument carried over from enslavement into the Caribbean and America. Please don't think white Americans invented it. They didn't. It's used so often in country music (that Black people created too) that folks think it's a European instrument. Originally made from gourds, it has been a staple in blues music until we started using more guitars.

7. I will be writing more fics in this world. I want to get another quick one out before I see the "Sinners" movie a few days after it comes out. My fics in this new fandom will be called the "Ibeji Series".