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scullysexual · 1 year ago

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You're Never Just Anything To Me (5)

@today-in-fic | ao3 | Prev. Chapter

A look into Mulder and Scully's relationship starting from Millennium going all the way up to Requiem.

V. The Amazing Maleeni.

Over time, the physical wounds heal but the mental ones still remain, lingering at the edges. Scully appears subdued, not quite smiling the way she used to- the smile not quite reaching her eyes like it did. Selfishly, he wants the old Scully back. Unfortunately, Mulder doesn’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.

Scully has laxed her “weekends only” rule, however. She’ll come round on a random weekday to discuss a case. When the case has been discussed she’ll let Work Stuff meld into Us Stuff, she’ll let him hold her and cuddle her. She might, if he’s lucky, let him kiss her too. She never stays. They talk, they cuddle, they kiss, they eat and she always leaves at the end of the night.

Mulder wants more. He wants to talk to her about stuff not related to work, he wants to share his interests with her and hers with him. He spends the rest of the week thinking of things that could be done covertly. By Saturday night, he’s finally found it.

“How about we start a movie night sort of thing?” he asks, broaching the subject cautiously.

Scully rolls onto her stomach and rests her chin on his chest. “Huh?” she asks, her post-orgasmic haze slowing her brain down.

Mulder chuckles. “Movie night, Scully. We watch movies. Maybe take it in turns or something?” His hands stroke up and down her naked back as she thinks.

“Who’s apartment would be watch at?”

“Maybe whoever’s turn it is to pick, we watch at theirs.”

Scully hums. “I guess that could be fun. When were you thinking of starting this?”

“Next Friday?” he poses.

“And who gets to go first?”

“Well since it was my idea…”

Scully sits up all of a sudden, the sheets pooling around her waist, Mulder’s eyes fall to her exposed chest for a moment.

“Rock, Paper, Scissors,” says Scully.

Mulder’s eyes are pulled back up. Scully has her hand out, fisted, waiting.

“Really?” Mulder asks with a bewildered grin.

“Yes.”

He laughs. “Okay.” And holds out his own fist.

Her scissors cut his paper. Mulder let her win, delighting in the way she has a little celebration.

Movie Night is official and she gets to decide the first movie. His hands at her waist and his mouth against hers he mutters, “It just better not be a horror movie,” before they succumb to their desires once more.

…

The Cali case seems a little bit hokey. An amateur magician beheaded on Santa Monica Pier. While decapitation was no laughing matter, a crime was still committed, it seemed to lack the heaviness of most of their over cases. To Mulder, it felt like the perfect distraction, a chance to get away from it all.

They had been stuck at home for the most part. Catching up on paperwork or investigating small local cases. The weather had been miserable and there were rumours of a Budget Meeting for them in the future. California sun sounded appealing.

They pack their things, meet at the airport, board the flight just before lunchtime and land in Cali that same afternoon.

…

She seems happier here. There’s the hint of the old Scully trying to pry herself out. She seems to glow, her smiles reaching her eyes again. Maybe she’s okay.

He wants to savour it. He changes their flight, books an extra day out here. They leave their current motel room and check into another; one room this time, the name simply Mulder. A thrill runs through him.

They wander the pier not as FBI agents conducting an investigation but simply as people. Two people in love. He holds her hand, he kisses her in public. No one seems to care. The world doesn’t end. She once asked him to get out of the car and Mulder thinks, watching her as she looks around in awe, basking in the joy and laughter that surrounds him, that maybe he could this time.

He wastes some money on the mini games trying to show off his athletic ability to her while she watches all the while he continuously misses the bucket, the ball bouncing off the bottom of it each time. She declines her turn and Mulder uses it up instead. The ball goes in and he wins her a dolphin, she’s his lucky number.

They eat overpriced fries and hotdogs for dinner while dangling their legs off the side of the pier. She info dumps on him about dolphins and he listens to every single one of them even though he already knows them all.

He kisses mustard off the side of her mouth and when the sun starts to set he takes her back to their motel. They break their second rule and neither of them seem to care.

…

Scully knew what Mulder was trying to do, why he picked this case, why he made them stay the extra day. She had fun today. She’s had fun all week, actually. Getting out of DC had been good for her. Scully regards the cheap little dolphin he won her and hugs it to her chest. Mulder snores lightly behind her, she watches the waves rolling back and forth from the little armchair, a light breeze rolls through the open window and she tucks her knees under the hem of Mulder’s T-shirt.

Los Angeles isn’t San Diego but being back in California for the first time since Christmas 1997 has a melancholic feeling passing through her. Since the discovery of her infertility she tried to not waste time thinking about babies. The failed adoption of Emily and Emily’s subsequent death soon after, the whole thing seemed impossible. She couldn’t give birth to her own and she couldn’t adopt.

She stopped taking birth control. She and Mulder don’t use condoms and he doesn’t pull out. They didn’t even discuss it, she realises. They didn’t need to.

She presses a hand to her stomach, flat as it’s ever been. It’s been three months, they’ve had numerous sexual encounters. If her body worked properly, would she be pregnant now, she wonders.

Maybe it was all a blessing that she couldn’t get pregnant. There was no reason to worry, no tablets to remember to take, no condoms to fumble about with. To have sex and not worry about any repercussions was, in many ways, freeing. A pregnancy wouldn’t go down very well with the FBI anyway.

But still she wonders if it’s worth it. She longs to watch her body change, to feel a baby growing beneath her skin, to see the proof of her and Mulder’s love right there.

She wonders just what their baby would look like. Boy or girl? Brown hair or red hair? Blue eyes or hazel eyes? Tall or short? Her or him? Maybe a mixture of both, she’d like that. A perfect balance of them both. He’d make a good father, Mulder. And she…she likes to think she’d make a good mother.

The tears are falling before she even realises, dropping from her jawline onto the dolphin and Mulder’s T-shirt below.

“Why are you crying, sunshine?”

Mulder is standing in front of her, she didn’t even hear him get up. Concern is on his face and he crouches down to her level, wipes a stray tear away.

“I want something I can’t have,” she says through sniffles and tears.

Mulder looks at her confused, trying to understand.

“What do you want?” he’s asking. “I’ll give you anything. Just say it, Scully, and I’ll get it. Right now if I have to.”

She laughs because he really would but this he cannot and it makes the tears fall harder. Scully falls into him, clutching at him.

“I want a baby,” she whispers.

The words hit him like a ton of bricks, his heart twisting and shredding to pieces. He feels like an ass.

“Oh, Scully…” he says. His face presses into the crown of her hair. “I’m sorry.”

They stay like that until she quietens. When the tears have stopped and she is beyond exhausted. Mulder carries her back to the bed. When he lays her down she looks at him through tired, hooded eyes, miserable.

“I ruined your day.”

He is furiously shaking his head. “You haven’t ruined anything, baby.” He lays down next to her, spooned behind her and kisses her temple. “We’ll figure something out, Scully,” he says. “There’s gotta be options for us.”

Us.

“You want a baby, too?” she asks turning towards him.

He is quiet. She tries to read his face but it is unreadable. Finally, he says.

“Whatever you want, Scully, I want it too.” He kisses her chastely.

Scully considers that for a moment. Of course children is a big ask of somebody. To introduce a baby into their lives would change everything for him. It would mean getting out of the car. She surveys is sleep-slack face for a moment, suddenly not as exhausted as she was mere moments ago.

Could he really do that, she wonders. Is she and their potential future together really enough?

#the x-files #the x files #txf fic #xfiles fanfiction #soss #season 7 #scullysexualwrites

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bd-z · 2 months ago

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The Eaton Fire is still scary as fuck but my Red Flag warning is lifted and most evac zones above me are lifting.

The air quality still blows for L.A.

As far as I know, most of my friends, fam and co-workers are safe but the loss of so many towns…. It is gonna be a rough rebuild.

My heart goes out to the Palisades Fire folks. Their’s is getting too close to Santa Monica

To those not in this area or are not watching it, at one point there were 7 active fires at a time with those crazy Santa Ana winds!

This was earlier this week

(not pictured here, the Divide Fire between Hurst and Lidia. The Creek Fire and the Kennith Fire above Palisades. there were many small ones that popped up over the last few days. Some overlapped in time frame, some didn’t)

This is today

(I’m trying to hide my location dot. Sorry for the cropped view on the full maps. Not that most of you know where I am anyway 😂)

As for my work and stomping grounds. Bar Sinister, Escape Hotel, Beetlehouse and my studio, the Sunset Fire was close but those buildings were safe. Thank the spooky gods for that.

Anyway, all good here. I am still watching the fire progress. Hopefully they get contained soon and we can start healing out here.

I hope my fellow Cali habitants are safe and out of the smoke.

Sound off to let me know you are fine. Lots of love.

#los angeles #wild fire #fire map

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flavjourneys · 2 months ago

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Cultural Aspects of Malibu: More Than Just a Beach Town

Malibu, California, is celebrated for its stunning beaches and luxurious homes, but its cultural significance runs much deeper than its postcard-perfect scenery. This coastal gem has a rich history, a thriving arts scene, and a laid-back yet sophisticated vibe that attracts people from all over the world. Here’s an exploration of the cultural aspects that make Malibu a unique and enduring symbol of Southern California lifestyle.

1. Historical and Indigenous Roots

Malibu's name originates from the Chumash word Humaliwo, meaning "the surf sounds loudly." For thousands of years, the Chumash people lived in harmony with the land and sea, creating a rich cultural heritage that is still honored today. Visitors can learn about their history at places like the Chumash Indian Museum in the nearby Santa Monica Mountains.

Spanish colonization in the 1800s introduced new cultural layers, leading to the establishment of ranchos, some of which evolved into the Malibu we know today.

2. Hollywood’s Playground

Malibu has long been synonymous with Hollywood glamour. Starting in the 1920s, stars like Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin built retreats along the coast, establishing the area as a sanctuary for the entertainment elite. Today, Malibu remains a favored spot for celebrities, with its beachfront homes often featured in films, TV shows, and glossy magazines.

Landmarks like the Malibu Pier and Point Dume have appeared in countless productions, adding to the area's mystique. The Malibu Film Society and local screenings at Malibu Cinemas keep the connection to Hollywood alive.

3. Surfing Culture

Malibu is considered the birthplace of modern surfing culture. Surfrider Beach, near the iconic Malibu Pier, is one of the most famous surf spots in the world. In the 1950s and 1960s, Malibu became a hub for surf movies and beach culture, solidifying its status as a mecca for wave riders.

The Malibu Surfing Association hosts events that celebrate this legacy, and the laid-back surfer lifestyle continues to influence local fashion, music, and art.

4. Art and Music Scene

Malibu’s natural beauty has inspired generations of artists and musicians. The area boasts a vibrant arts scene, with numerous galleries and studios showcasing works by local and international talent. The Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University features rotating exhibits and a permanent collection of modern and contemporary art.

Malibu also hosts music festivals and intimate concerts, often held outdoors to take advantage of the scenic surroundings. Local venues and events, like Malibu Bluffs Park concerts and beachside performances, reflect the community’s love for art and music.

5. Cuisine and Dining

Malibu’s dining scene is a cultural experience in itself, blending local ingredients with global influences. Restaurants like Nobu Malibu and Geoffrey’s Malibu offer fine dining with breathtaking ocean views, while casual spots like Malibu Farm focus on fresh, organic fare.

Farmers’ markets, like the Malibu Farmers Market, bring the community together, offering local produce, handmade goods, and a taste of the area’s agricultural heritage.

6. Environmental Stewardship

The culture of Malibu is deeply tied to its environment. Residents and organizations are passionate about preserving the area’s natural beauty. Groups like Heal the Bay and Surfrider Foundation lead efforts to protect the coastline and marine life, while local events promote sustainability and conservation.

This environmental consciousness is woven into the community’s identity, influencing everything from building practices to beach cleanups.

7. Community and Philanthropy

Despite its reputation as a celebrity enclave, Malibu has a tight-knit community that comes together during times of crisis. Wildfires, such as the devastating 2018 Woolsey Fire, have showcased the resilience and generosity of Malibu residents. Local organizations, churches, and schools often host fundraisers and volunteer events to support recovery efforts.

Annual events like the Malibu Chili Cook-Off and Taste of Malibu bring people together to celebrate local food, art, and culture while raising money for charitable causes.

8. Wellness and Lifestyle

Malibu’s culture emphasizes health and wellness, influenced by its serene environment and active outdoor lifestyle. Yoga studios, wellness retreats, and organic cafes abound, catering to those seeking physical and mental rejuvenation. The Malibu Lagoon State Beach and nearby hiking trails offer perfect settings for meditation, exercise, and connecting with nature.

Conclusion

Malibu’s culture is a rich tapestry woven from its indigenous roots, Hollywood glamour, surfing heritage, and deep connection to the environment. It’s a place where natural beauty meets human creativity, and where a sense of community thrives despite the challenges of fire and nature.

Malibu is more than a destination—it’s a way of life, embodying the spirit of freedom, resilience, and artistic expression. Whether you’re strolling along the iconic pier, surfing the legendary waves, or exploring its vibrant arts scene, Malibu leaves an indelible mark on all who experience it.

Thank you for reading.

#malibu #beach #holywood #spotify

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technical12 · 9 months ago

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What makes the sound bath experience in Malibu so unique and transformative?

The sound bath Malibu is unique and transformative due to its serene coastal setting and the high quality of practitioners in the area. Nestled between the majestic Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Malibu offers an idyllic backdrop for sound healing sessions. The natural beauty and tranquility of this location enhance the meditative and therapeutic effects of the sound bath. Participants can deeply relax and connect with nature while being enveloped in the harmonious vibrations produced by crystal bowls, gongs, and other sound healing instruments. The peaceful environment of Malibu creates a perfect escape from the hustle and bustle of daily life, allowing for a more profound and immersive healing experience.

In addition to the picturesque setting, the expertise of sound healing practitioners in Malibu sets these sessions apart. Many practitioners in this area have extensive training and experience, ensuring that each sound bath Malibu session is of the highest quality. These experts often combine traditional sound healing techniques with innovative approaches to create a personalized and deeply impactful experience. For those seeking sound healing in Orange County, the proximity to Malibu offers an accessible retreat where they can benefit from these exceptional sound bath sessions. The combination of a stunning natural environment and skilled practitioners makes the sound bath experience in Malibu a truly unique and transformative journey for mind, body, and spirit.

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taylogbusinessspaces · 1 year ago

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bohemian-barbie · 3 years ago

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Heartbreak in July 5

You huffed as you tried bringing up the last two boxes into your new apartment. Why you thought saving the two heaviest boxes for last was a good idea is beyond you but you were determined. At least until your foot caught on one of the steps and you completely wiped out. You sat there for a moment to wallow in your misery before you had to get up. You did however make enough noise for someone to come out and check on you.

“Hey are you alright?” You hadn’t looked up at the stranger yet but a masculine hand entering your field of vision caught your attention and you made eye contact “um yeah I’m fine honest, I’m just clumsy by nature” you laughed and accepted his hand to help you stand up “you’re the new girl right? Apartment 3C?” You dusted yourself off “yep that’s me. I’m y/n” “well it’s nice to meet you y/n, I’m Tom” you smiled “it’s nice you meet you too” he looked down at your discarded boxes “could I help?”

You thought it over “I really want to be a feminist and independent and say no but they are really heavy and help would be great” he lifted both boxes with ease “no problem” you both walked to your apartment and you let him in “just set them anywhere”. He placed them in the living room and then faced you “well I’m sure your boyfriend wouldn’t be too happy to see a strange guy in your apartment so I’ll head out” your demeanor instantly changed and your heart ached “I um I don’t have one-we just broke up” he looked shocked “Oh. I’m sorry” “oh don’t be, it was for the best”. Tom nodded his head “well I certainly won’t be the jerk that asks you out on a date just yet but maybe I could ask you out as a friend?” You nodded “yeah, I could use a friend”.

****************

Days had turned to weeks and weeks had turned to months and next thing you knew, it was winter. You were finally settling back in to the SoCal lifestyle. Your heart still hurt from time to time but as the days passed you found yourself healing more and more. Tanner still tried talking you into moving back to the east coast but you just couldn’t see yourself there anymore. She was persistant, you’d give her that. When she wasn’t trying to get you back to the east she was updating you on the group.

Zac and Addison had broken up but decided to remain friends and he apparently decided he was moving to Australia which you couldn’t really contest because glass houses and what not but you had made your protest to your best friend about his decision. Tanner and Henry got engaged and decided to live in England full time so they moved to a place just outside of London and she always saved Chris for last. She made it her mission to keep an eye on him. Tanner informed you that he was still single and has barely left Boston to which you were surprised but then again, you weren’t really dating anyone either.

Tom had started to become a close friend. He was sweet and made you laugh. He’d keep you distracted but Chris always seemed to creep back into your thoughts.

Today was another one of Toms’ attempts to keep you distracted. You were walking along Santa Monica pier until you spotted the cutest stuffed dinosaur and Tom was determined to win it for you and after six attempts it was yours. You giggled “You really didn’t have to do that” he shrugged “I wanted to see your pretty smile” you couldn’t help but blush a little

“Y/n?” You looked for the person who called your name and your eyes widened when you saw Scott “oh my god” you walked over with Tom following and gave Scott a big hug “wow Tanner told me you moved here but wow” he glanced over at Tom “and who’s this?” For some reason you suddenly felt guilty “This is Tom, Tom this is Scott” they shook hands and Tom looked at you “I’m gonna go get us something to eat, pizza alright?” You smiled “pizza sounds great” he said bye to Scott and walked away.

You hugged the dinosaur a little tighter “is he okay?” Scott sighed “no, he’s a mess and me calling him an idiot every day doesn’t help either but he is. Anyway I’m glad you’re moving on, how long have you and Tom been dating?” You shook your head “oh no, we aren’t dating. He’s just a friend” Scott nodded “well he seems pretty smitten with you”. You shrugged “he’s just being nice” “you’re still in love with him aren’t you?” Your eyes watered “so much that it hurts”. You both stood in silence for a beat until you spoke “I think I’m gonna go look for Tom but it was really good to see you Scotty” he nodded “you too y/n”.

*************

Shortly after eating, you and Tom left and now he was walking you to your door. “So who was Scott exactly?” You looked up at him “oh um Scott’s a friend” he nodded “how do you know each other?” You sighed “he’s my ex boyfriends brother”. You both stopped in front of your door “oh um I guess it’s good that you’re still friends?” You shrugged and looked down “I guess”.

Tom put his finger under your chin and lifted your head up, you locked eyes for a moment until he leaned in and gave you a kiss. You pulled away “I um-“ you shook your head “I’ll talk to you later okay?” With that you went inside and shut the door quickly. You turned and leaned against the door and slid to the floor and sobbed. You took a few minutes to compose yourself and took your phone out and called Tanner.

It rang for a few seconds until you heard her sleep filled voice “y/n?” You started sobbing again “I miss him”. You heard shuffling and a door closing “oh honey, what happened?” You recapped the entire day to her “and yeah. I just-“ you started crying harder. “Okay sweetie, you need to breathe for me. It’s gonna be alright”. She put you on speaker and pulled up her text messages.

It was silent for a few moments “Tanner?” She turned her attention back to you “I’m here. Look why don’t you just decompress and don’t think to much about what happened okay?” You felt a little annoyed. It wasn’t like Tanner to just blow your feelings off. You nodded even though you knew she couldn’t see you “yeah. Okay. Sorry I woke you.” With that you hung up.

You sighed and wiped your tears away. You checked the time on your phone and saw it was nine pm. You felt exhausted so you decided to just go to bed.

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halothenthehorns · 2 years ago

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How Do You Say Gods

Chapter 18: WE SHOP FOR WATERBEDS

Will, apparently, was a lot more stubborn than Nico would have given him credit for as he persisted, "Hey Nico, you haven't eaten since we've been down here." He hadn't even taken a cookie when Magnus brought them in! He did his level best to sound casual, and unlike Tethys, his clinical tone was pure warmth of concern. "Sure we shouldn't take another break? Hell, we must have been at this most of the day, I sort of want some sleep myself-"

"I said I'm fine Will," Nico said sharply. "We all need to get out of here already."

He expected the son of Apollo to look away and let it go. Instead he was frowning right back and watching him with a very intense expression.

Thalia was sort of worried if she didn't keep reading Nico was going to cut the guys head off, and they were all so busy watching the exchange nobody noticed Alex's guilty look at the bag as Thalia read the chapter title. "That is going to be Percy's idea," she accused.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Percy gave her a pout, "who doesn't love sleeping on those? Maybe we get a free nap that isn't in a venus flytrap and a time-redo."

"Um, sane people who don't want to get seasick in their sleep," she scoffed before starting.

Will acquitted, for now. He'd let this book finish, they did need to get out of this Titan's palace and Percy back to camp, but he'd take the book away before it was done so that he could talk to Nico and make sure he knew he wasn't fooling anyone. His healing touch worked best skin to skin, but you didn't need the gift of Apollo to sense the darkness coming off of him. He would tell Nico once and for all he did belong at camp and make him promise to get his butt there from where ever he was to give it a real shot, one whole summer, and a checkup at minimum that wasn't administered from Tethys.

It was Annabeth's idea.

"That sentence would never get a chance to end badly if you read it like that," Alex laughed at how proud Thalia sounded for such a start.

"And yet I don't disagree," Percy was still smiling along despite the sarcasm.

She loaded us into the back of a Vegas taxi as if we actually had money, and told the driver, "Los Angeles, please."

The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized us up. "That's three hundred miles. For that, you gotta pay up front."

"You accept casino debit cards?" Annabeth asked.

He shrugged. "Some of 'em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe 'em through first."

Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card.

"Zeus's socks, that whole thing was actually useful if this works," Thalia said mildly.

Nobody agreed with her, even she wasn't so convinced her status would leave her immune to try and risk such a reward for that price.

He looked at it skeptically.

"Swipe it," Annabeth invited.

He did.

His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity symbol came up next to the dollar sign.

Jason let out a throaty whistle, the magic of that casino really was beyond comprehension.

The cigar fell out of the driver's mouth. He looked back at us, his eyes wide. "Where to in Los Angeles... uh, Your Highness?"

"The Santa Monica Pier." Annabeth sat up a little straighter. I could tell she liked the "Your Highness" thing. "Get us there fast, and you can keep the change."

Maybe she shouldn't have told him that. The cab's speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through the Mojave Desert.

'Guy was trying to outstrip Apollo's bus,' Thalia grimaced to herself at the thought of being in that car, but she was still trying to read robustly, the only one trying to put on a cheery attitude as the last chapter had still seemed to upset all of them for one reason or another.

On the road, we had plenty of time to talk. I told Annabeth and Grover about my latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more I tried to remember them. The Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited my memory. I couldn't recall what the invisible servant's voice had sounded like, though I was sure it was somebody I knew.

"Wait, what! You didn't mention that!" More than one person shouted at Percy.

He tapped his temple a few times, really trying to concentrate, but ultimately shrugged and said, "sorry guys, if I did in that dream, it must have been distorted by the time I woke up. It just sounded flat, general, male or female, I got nothing."

"Damn Crooked One is right, being able to mess with that," Alex sighed.

"Thalia sounded off too," he tried to explain. "She sounded, younger, different, it might just be the dream or because of time, I don't know," he spread his hands in apology.

"It's okay Percy, nobody blames you," Thalia assured.

The servant had called the monster in the pit something other than "my lord" ... some special name or title...

"The Silent One?" Annabeth suggested. "The Rich One? Both of those are nicknames for Hades."

Jason smiled absently, Pluto didn't seem so out of character at least.

"Maybe ..." I said, though neither sounded quite right.

"That throne room sounds like Hades's," Grover said. "That's the way it's usually described."

I shook my head. "Something's wrong. The throne room wasn't the main part of the dream. And that voice from the pit ... I don't know. It just didn't feel like a god's voice."

Annabeth's eyes widened.

"What?" I asked.

"Oh ... nothing. I was just-No, it has to be Hades.

Something about this obviously wasn't right. Magnus wished his cousin would trust her instincts more, because this question definitely needed a new angle of approach.

Maybe he sent this thief, this invisible person, to get the master bolt, and something went wrong-"

"Like what?"

"I-I don't know," she said. "But if he stole Zeus's symbol of power from Olympus, and the gods were hunting him, I mean, a lot of things could go wrong. So this thief had to hide the bolt, or he lost it somehow. Anyway, he failed to bring it to Hades. That's what the voice said in your dream, right? The guy failed. That would explain what the Furies were searching for when they came after us on the bus. Maybe they thought we had retrieved the bolt."

I wasn't sure what was wrong with her. She looked pale.

"But if I'd already retrieved the bolt," I said, "why would I be traveling to the Underworld?"

"To threaten Hades," Grover suggested. "To bribe or blackmail him into getting your mom back."

I whistled. "You have evil thoughts for a goat."

"As oppose to the non-evil thoughts of regular goats?" Jason asked.

"Look into the square eyeballs of those things and tell me they have mercy," Percy had seen one on a school trip to a petting zoo, and he wasn't taking it back.

"Why, thank you."

"Compliments?" Will muttered, but hey, whatever worked for him.

"But the thing in the pit said it was waiting for two items," I said. "If the master bolt is one, what's the other?"

Grover shook his head, clearly mystified.

Annabeth was looking at me as if she knew my next question, and was silently willing me not to ask it.

"You have an idea what might be in that pit, don't you?" I asked her. "I mean, if it isn't Hades?"

"Percy ... let's not talk about it. Because if it isn't Hades ... No. It has to be Hades."

Wasteland rolled by. We passed a sign that said CALIFORNIA STATE LINE, 12 MILES.

I got the feeling I was missing one simple, critical piece of information. It was like when I stared at a common word I should know, but I couldn't make sense of it because one or two letters were floating around. The more I thought about my quest, the more I was sure that confronting Hades wasn't the real answer. There was something else going on, something even more dangerous.

"More dangerous than facing down the god of death?" Magnus confirmed.

Nobody answered him, because it existed all around them. If a Titan could hide them away from gods, than clearly even Zeus wasn't the top of the power chain.

Percy was starting to sweat, he had his head in his hands and was shaking it slowly side to side as he longed to hear the obvious out loud, but his friends weren't obliging. Will was fidgeting with guilt, Nico would have loved nothing more than to be the person to explain to Percy for once, but Thalia was stubbornly going on and determined to read this as cheerily as possible if she had to threaten a laugh out of her friend on every page.

The problem was: we were hurtling toward the Underworld at ninety-five miles an hour, betting that Hades had the master bolt.

"You know what I've yet heard," Jason pointed out, "a strategy on how to get it back from him! Ask nicely?"

The sarcasm slipped out of Alex without restraint, "I'm sure if they just confront him, the lord of the underworld will offer it back with an apology."

"Annabeth kept mentioning Persephone might help us," Percy shrugged, speaking to his lap. Not that this idea had ever gone past praying for guidance, it being summer. "In case you hadn't noticed, we were kind of making it up as we went."

"Remind me to never go on a quest with you," Jason rolled his eyes.

"Aren't we technically on one now?" Will grinned.

"Oh gods no, don't even joke about that," Alex scoffed. "This was far from voluntary!"

"We didn't even get our own prophecy," Nico agreed blandly.

Will sighed in relief Nico was still just talking at all while Thalia finally got back to ignoring them properly.

If we got there and found out we were wrong, we wouldn't have time to correct ourselves. The solstice deadline would pass and war would begin.

"The answer is in the Underworld," Annabeth assured me. "You saw spirits of the dead, Percy. There's only one place that could be. We're doing the right thing."

She tried to boost our morale by suggesting clever strategies for getting into the Land of the Dead, but my heart wasn't in it. There were just too many unknown factors. It was like cramming for a test without knowing the subject. And believe me, I'd done that enough times.

Magnus had no clue what he was talking about there, he missed school and spent most of his time in the library when he could just to pretend he still had some normal kind of schedule.

The cab sped west. Every gust of wind through Death Valley sounded like a spirit of the dead. Every time the brakes hissed on an eighteen-wheeler, it reminded me of Echidna's reptilian voice.

At sunset, the taxi dropped us at the beach in Santa Monica. It looked exactly the way L.A. beaches do in the movies, only it smelled worse. There were carnival rides lining the Pier, palm trees lining the sidewalks, homeless guys sleeping in the sand dunes, and surfer dudes waiting for the perfect wave.

Jason swallowed such a feeling of homesickness it should have been palpable. The sense of wrongness for all of this had never truly left him, even after all this time, and now more than ever as he tried to inhale and catch just a tiny wisp of a memory. Nothing, as blank as ever.

Grover, Annabeth, and I walked down to the edge of the surf.

"What now?" Annabeth asked.

The Pacific was turning gold in the setting sun. I thought about how long it had been since I'd stood on the beach at Montauk, on the opposite side of the country, looking out at a different sea.

Hearth smiled at such a small comparison, when he'd had the same thought traveling the world tree. Yggdrasil left no doubts it was all connected.

How could there be a god who could control all that? What did my science teacher used to say-two thirds of the earth's surface was covered in water? How could I be the son of someone that powerful?

"You're really still questioning this, after all you've done so far?" Magnus chuckled.

"Hard to let go of your past," Percy whispered, head still in his hands. He missed his mom like a physical ache, he wished Annabeth were here now to call him a seaweed brain and promise him he hadn't been the cause of the end of the world. He enjoyed Thalia's company, all of theirs, but it wasn't the same.

I stepped into the surf.

"Percy?" Annabeth said. "What are you doing?"

I kept walking, up to my waist, then my chest.

She called after me, "You know how polluted that water is? There're all kinds of toxic-"

"I'm sure it wouldn't make his head any more dense," Thalia smiled like Annabeth was here, she could perfectly imagine that aggrieved look on her face anyways.

"I will find a way to make acid rain chase you," Percy promised, finally looking up with a casual smile. He asked her to pause and went to fetch a coke. He came back with a glass full of blue soda and took several sips before waving her on for whatever was next. (How the beverage was staying in the glass and not being mixed with the ocean was not a question any of them were going to ask anymore than why the food was perfectly cooked and didn't taste like salt before.)

Will watched Nico watch him critically now, actively trying now to figure out what that expression on the son of Hades's face was. Not quite longing, not quite hatred, just something like he was demanding a question Percy was unintentionally ignoring as he sorted his own past out.

The son of Poseidon was a roll with the punches kind of guy, he could laugh and shrug anything off so long as he was the one in danger. Nico most definitely needed to get something off his chest about him though. Will now at least had the start of a suspicion Nico was trying to pretend otherwise and it wasn't working so well for him.

That's when my head went under.

I held my breath at first. It's difficult to intentionally inhale water. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. I gasped. Sure enough, I could breathe normally.

I walked down into the shoals. I shouldn't have been able to see through the murk, but somehow I could tell where everything was. I could sense the rolling texture of the bottom. I could make out sand-dollar colonies dotting the sandbars. I could even see the currents, warm and cold streams swirling together.

"Wow," Alex said in appreciation. She'd turned into ocean life plenty of times and swam around in Massachusetts Bay, but that was nothing comparable to the notion Percy was connected to the whole sea like this.

I felt something rub against my leg. I looked down and almost shot out of the water like a ballistic missile. Sliding along beside me was a five-foot-long mako shark.

"I'd say cool, but also, gah," Jason pointed out.

"I'm just sticking with cool," Percy grinned.

But the thing wasn't attacking. It was nuzzling me. Heeling like a dog. Tentatively, I touched its dorsal fin.

It bucked a little, as if inviting me to hold tighter. I grabbed the fin with both hands. It took off, pulling me along. The shark carried me down into the darkness. It deposited me at the edge of the ocean proper, where the sand bank dropped off into a huge chasm. It was like standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon at midnight, not being able to see much, but knowing the void was right there.

"Thank you, I now never want to visit there," Jason frowned all the more at falling such a height with no clue when you'd impact.

The surface shimmered maybe a hundred and fifty feet above. I knew I should've been crushed by the pressure.

Alex opened her mouth but Thalia was still reading.

Then again, I shouldn't have been able to breathe.

She nodded and closed her mouth back while Percy rolled his eyes.

I wondered if there was a limit to how deep I could go, if I could sink straight to the bottom of the Pacific.

"We're not actually sure where Oceanus's palace is," Thalia said, "but we think it's somewhere in the Mariana Trench. Of course you could just be under the same protection as us, but I think the answer is just yes," she finished with a shrug, not divulging she was so confident of this because he'd been in Poseidon's palace as well, and as far as she knew, his father had done nothing to increase his gift to safely be down there.

Then I saw something glimmering in the darkness below, growing bigger and brighter as it rose toward me. A woman's voice, like my mother's, called: "Percy Jackson."

As she got closer, her shape became clearer. She had flowing black hair, a dress made of green silk.

The nereid was back, and Percy leaned over Thalia's shoulder eagerly to find out how much she'd share with no catfish and garbage to interrupt the message this time.

She pushed his face back away and threatened, "you try peaking ahead mister and I'll give you a nose piercing, I'll even let you pick the arrow."

He huffed and greatly considered taking the book back just to prove his point, but he also wouldn't put it past Thalia to manage to shoot him before he found out anyways.

Light flickered around her, and her eyes were so distractingly beautiful I hardly noticed the stallion-sized sea horse she was riding.

"You seriously make being the son of Poseidon sound like the coolest thing ever," Magnus sighed.

"I don't think we can trade dude," Percy chuckled.

Jason bit back the snide comment nobody would ever ask to be the son of Neptune, just the idea made him smirk, and yet he'd only heard of Percy in combat and knew him to be a formidable foe without the extra of seeing such creatures. It was the utmost disconcerting.

She dismounted. The sea horse and the mako shark whisked off and started playing something that looked like tag. The underwater lady smiled at me. "You've come far, Percy Jackson. Well done."

I wasn't quite sure what to do, so I bowed.

"Always a safe place to start!" Jason looked relieved he'd finally showed a normal response, and it wasn't even to a god!

"You're the woman who spoke to me in the Mississippi River."

"Yes, child. I am a Nereid, a spirit of the sea. It was not easy to appear so far upriver, but the naiads, my freshwater cousins, helped sustain my life force. They honor Lord Poseidon, though they do not serve in his court."

"And ... you serve in Poseidon's court?"

She nodded. "It has been many years since a child of the Sea God has been born. We have watched you with great interest."

Suddenly I remembered faces in the waves off Montauk Beach when I was a little boy, reflections of smiling women. Like so many of the weird things in my life, I'd never given it much thought before.

Alex was rubbing her temples at this boy. "I swear if we weren't reading your thoughts I'd be questioning if you had them."

"Not everybody can have the magic of Cosmo and Wanda," he snipped right back.

"And you accused me of making bad references," she raised a brow at him.

"You do have sudden-memory-itis quite often," Magnus sided with her.

Thalia cleared her throat heavily while Percy turned to her in betrayal. "I'm under attack and you want to read!" If she was trying to impersonate Annabeth she was doing a great job of it!

"I have faith you can withstand the barrage," she chuckled.

"If my father is so interested in me," I said, "why isn't he here? Why doesn't he speak to me?"

A cold current rose out of the depths.

"Do not judge the Lord of the Sea too harshly," the Nereid told me. "He stands at the brink of an unwanted war. He has much to occupy his time. Besides, he is forbidden to help you directly. The gods may not show such favoritism."

"Even to their own children?"

"Especially to them.

Jason was staring down at this tattoo again, but he had a feeling like this wasn't really news to him. Just a sense, and not a reliable one since he'd woken up here and hardly anything matched up with the way he was 'supposed' to feel.

The gods can work by indirect influence only. That is why I give you a warning, and a gift."

She held out her hand. Three white pearls flashed in her palm.

"I know you journey to Hades's realm," she said. "Few mortals have ever done this and survived: Orpheus, who had great music skill; Hercules, who had great strength; Houdini, who could escape even the depths of Tartarus. Do you have these talents?"

"Urn ... no, ma'am."

"Ah, but you have something else, Percy. You have gifts you have only begun to know. The oracles have foretold a great and terrible future for you, should you survive to man-hood. Poseidon would not have you die before your time. Therefore take these, and when you are in need, smash a pearl at your feet."

"What will happen?"

"That," she said, "depends on the need. But remember: what belongs to the sea will always return to the sea."

"What about the warning?"

Her eyes flickered with green light. "Go with what your heart tells you, or you will lose all. Hades feeds on doubt and hopelessness. He will trick you if he can, make you mistrust your own judgment. Once you are in his realm, he will never willingly let you leave.

'Ironic, since he doesn't want his own son there,' Nico clenched his hands up, spirits of the drowned made a wailing noise only he heard but they all felt a sudden cold rush. He exhaled slowly and carefully though and it all settled back down to be forgotten again.

He felt Will's eyes on him this time though and studiously ignored the nosy boy.

Keep faith. Good luck, Percy Jackson."

She summoned her sea horse and rode toward the void.

"Wait!" I called. "At the river, you said not to trust the gifts. What gifts?"

"Good-bye, young hero," she called back, her voice fading into the depths. "You must listen to your heart." She became a speck of glowing green, and then she was gone.

I wanted to follow her down into the darkness. I wanted to see the court of Poseidon. But I looked up at the sunset darkening on the surface. My friends were waiting. We had so little time...

"What does it say about my life when Ares was the better interaction!" Percy burst out in frustration, he felt like slamming his head against a wall to get rid of this headache. How was it possible river water had cured him of chimera poison but his head was pounding so hard in his own domain!

"I know Percy, I'm so sorry," Thalia sighed, she would find some way to get revenge on whoever had done this to him.

I kicked upward toward the shore.

When I reached the beach, my clothes dried instantly. I told Grover and Annabeth what had happened, and showed them the pearls.

Annabeth grimaced. "No gift comes without a price."

"At least you were handed them and didn't have to hunt those down too," Alex offered.

"I'd still keep the receipt," Jason grumbled.

Magnus had a bad feeling about them though, as he more than anyone vividly remembered what Percy was going to the Underworld to really fetch. There were three pearls, and he intended to come back with four people...

"They were free."

"No." She shook her head. "'There is no such thing as a free lunch.' That's an ancient Greek saying that translated pretty well into American. There will be a price. You wait."

"The one prize Annabeth will not win is most cheerful award," Will chuckled.

On that happy thought, we turned our backs on the sea.

With some spare change from Ares's backpack, we took the bus into West Hollywood. I showed the driver the Underworld address slip I'd taken from Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium, but he'd never heard of DOA Recording Studios.

"Which is really saying something since recording studios have to be a dime a dozen out there," Percy frowned.

"I get the feeling this won't be the kind mortals can find," Thalia kindly reminded.

"You remind me of somebody I saw on TV," he told me. "You a child actor or something?"

"Uh ... I'm a stunt double ... for a lot of child actors."

"Oh! That explains it."

We thanked him and got off quickly at the next stop.

We wandered for miles on foot, looking for DOA. Nobody seemed to know where it was. It didn't appear in the phone book.

Twice, we ducked into alleys to avoid cop cars.

"Can I veto out of my own future quests?" Percy groaned for every part of this being as hard as it was possible to be.

"You wouldn't even if you could," Thalia chuckled.

I froze in front of an appliance-store window because a television was playing an interview with somebody who looked very familiar-my stepdad, Smelly Gabe. He was talking to Barbara Walters-I mean, as if he were some kind of huge celebrity. She was interviewing him in our apartment, in the middle of a poker game, and there was a young blond lady sitting next to him, patting his hand.

A fake tear glistened on his cheek. He was saying, "Honest, Ms. Walters, if it wasn't for Sugar here, my grief counselor, I'd be a wreck. My stepson took everything I cared about. My wife ... my Camaro ... I-I'm sorry. I have trouble talking about it."

"There you have it, America." Barbara Walters turned to the camera. "A man torn apart. An adolescent boy with serious issues. Let me show you, again, the last known photo of this troubled young fugitive, taken a week ago in Denver."

The screen cut to a grainy shot of me, Annabeth, and Grover standing outside the Colorado diner, talking to Ares.

"Who are the other children in this photo?" Barbara Walters asked dramatically. "Who is the man with them? Is Percy Jackson a delinquent, a terrorist, or perhaps the brainwashed victim of a frightening new cult? When we come back, we chat with a leading child psychologist. Stay tuned, America."

"If I can have one good thing come out of this," Percy found himself saying not to anyone in here, "let it be this guy taking a plunger next!" He did not mean the kind with a toilet. He found himself actually thinking of Poseidon, whatever faith he had in his father after that meeting with the nereid, despite his hopeless brain, seemed to have been brought out. His dad hadn't broken a vow in almost seventy years before meeting Sally, surely he must have some care for what his son and beloved mortal were putting up with now that he was taking even the most minor interest in their life?

For just a moment, the water warmed, like dipping your toe into a hot bath as it washed around him. Percy smiled softly, and then blinked in surprise to see nobody seemed to have experienced the feeling. 'Thanks dad,' he grinned for the soft feeling of a promise.

"C'mon," Grover told me. He hauled me away before I could punch a hole in the appliance-store window.

"At least save that for Gabe's store when you get back," Alex agreed vindictively.

It got dark, and hungry-looking characters started coming out on the streets to play. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a New Yorker. I don't scare easy. But L.A. had a totally different feel from New York. Back home, everything seemed close. It didn't matter how big the city was, you could get anywhere without getting lost. The street pattern and the subway made sense. There was a system to how things worked. A kid could be safe as long as he wasn't stupid.

"Only if you grew up there," Jason argued at once, "sounds more like a map to a deathtrap between every alley." Enemy territory, his mind was whispering, he knew he'd never traveled there before and didn't want to now.

"I'll always take the big apple over the city of angels," Percy said, "considering this mess." He didn't even have all of his memories back and he had uneasy feelings about California, especially as he glanced at Thalia and was very convinced this was not a welcome state for more than this quest.

L.A. wasn't like that. It was spread out, chaotic, hard to move around. It reminded me of Ares. It wasn't enough for L.A. to be big; it had to prove it was big by being loud and strange and difficult to navigate, too.

Jason still looked grumpy for some weird reason, why he would take an attack on this state as personal as Percy had gave a bit of a clue where he might be from at least.

It only made Thalia's skin crawl as she again glanced at that oddly specific scar on his lip, and now he was apparently from California!

She glanced at Nico and wondered if she should be worried about a ghost haunting them thanks to her.

I didn't know how we were ever going to find the entrance to the Underworld by tomorrow, the summer solstice.

We walked past gangbangers, bums, and street hawkers, who looked at us like they were trying to figure if we were worth the trouble of mugging.

As we hurried passed the entrance of an alley, a voice from the darkness said, "Hey, you."

Like an idiot, I stopped.

"Admitting to your idiocy doesn't make you less idiotic," Alex frowned.

"So much for New York smarts," Magnus agreed.

"Don't make me separate you two," Percy grumbled inaudibly while they grinned at each other.

Before I knew it, we were surrounded. A gang of kids had circled us. Six of them in all-white kids with expensive clothes and mean faces. Like the kids at Yancy Academy: rich brats playing at being bad boys.

'Are they going to offer to sell him a water bed?' Hearth smiled.

Magnus rolled his eyes, he knew his friend wasn't that naïve, but he was curious how that was going to play in at this point.

Instinctively, I uncapped Riptide.

When the sword appeared out of nowhere, the kids backed off, but their leader was either really stupid or really brave, because he kept coming at me with a switchblade.

I made the mistake of swinging.

The kid yelped. But he must've been one hundred percent mortal, because the blade passed harmlessly right through his chest. He looked down. "What the ..."

I figured I had about three seconds before his shock turned to anger. "Run!" I screamed at Annabeth and Grover.

We pushed two kids out of the way and raced down the street, not knowing where we were going. We turned a sharp corner.

"There!" Annabeth shouted.

Only one store on the block looked open, its windows glaring with neon. The sign above the door said something like CRSTUY'S WATRE BDE ALPACE.

"Crusty's Water Bed Palace?" Grover translated.

"Ha, it was Annabeth's idea," Percy jubilated as he finally got a shot back at somebody here, even Thalia.

"You started it by stopping, you didn't win anything," Thalia wouldn't give in.

It didn't sound like a place I'd ever go except in an emergency, but this definitely qualified.

"Running from mortals qualifies as an emergency?" Will confirmed.

"World War Three is on the horizon and you're on a deadline, but sure this is the priority," Thalia agreed.

"Let's see you two at this!" Percy sighed, but he had an annoying feeling they would just fine. He really wished Annabeth was down here to argue with them properly, but she also might spend the entire time on a presentation with slides he thought fondly.

We burst through the doors, ran behind a water bed, and ducked. A split second later, the gang kids ran past outside.

"I think we lost them," Grover panted.

A voice behind us boomed, "Lost who?"

We all jumped.

Standing behind us was a guy who looked like a raptor in a leisure suit.

"Hang on!" Magnus raised his hand, paused for a moment with his eyes completely glazed over, before nodding and dropping as he finished processing. "Okay, I'm good, continue."

Alex was laughing remorselessly while Hearth was regretting having asked about dinosaurs right now as odd as that seemed to him too.

He was at least seven feet tall, with absolutely no hair. He had gray, leathery skin, thick-lidded eyes, and a cold, reptilian smile. He moved toward us slowly, but I got the feeling he could move fast if he needed to.

His suit might've come from the Lotus Casino. It belonged back in the seventies, big-time. The shirt was silk paisley, unbuttoned halfway down his hairless chest. The lapels on his velvet jacket were as wide as landing strips. The silver chains around his neck-I couldn't even count them.

"I'm Crusty," he said, with a tartar-yellow smile.

I resisted the urge to say, Yes, you are.

"Explain to me again how you mouthed off to Mars but not wana be mobster number five?" Jason asked.

"No, you guys lost your rights during this chapter," Percy scoffed. "You'll get them back when you stop criticizing the twelve year old's."

"Oh, so, never," Alex shrugged without concern.

"Sorry to barge in," I told him. "We were just, um, browsing."

"You mean hiding from those no-good kids," he grumbled. "They hang around every night. I get a lot of people in here, thanks to them. Say, you want to look at a water bed?"

I was about to say No, thanks, when he put a huge paw on my shoulder and steered me deeper into the showroom.

There was every kind of water bed you could imagine: different kinds of wood, different patterns of sheets; queen-size, king-size, emperor-of-the-universe-size.

"And none of them would still contain some people's inflated egos," Thalia smirked, imagining Hera for starters as someone she wished she could drop from the pantheon for such misfortunes.

"This is my most popular model." Crusty spread his hands proudly over a bed covered with black satin sheets, with built-in Lava Lamps on the headboard. The mattress vibrated, so it looked like oil-flavored Jell-O.

Nico's mouth ticked, just the smallest hint of a smile as he couldn't deny how cool that kind of sounded.

Will let out a sigh of relief he'd deny he'd been holding as his demeanor finally relaxed even just a bit from the cold aura he'd gone back to giving off from back at the start.

"Million-hand massage," Crusty told us. "Go on, try it out. Shoot, take a nap. I don't care. No business today, any-way.

"Um," I said, "I don't think ..."

"Million-hand massage!" Grover cried, and dove in. "Oh, you guys! This is cool."

"I'm gunna kill Grover," Jason frowned, this had trap written all over it, and not just because it was the chapter title.

"Nobody kills my satyr but me," Percy defended, but it was half-hearted at best as he wanted to smack him for this too.

"Hmm," Crusty said, stroking his leathery chin. "Almost, almost."

Crusty, the named nagged at something in Nico's mind, something to do with beds, he was sure he had a card over that- not that he cared.

"Almost what?" I asked.

He looked at Annabeth. "Do me a favor and try this one over here, honey. Might fit."

Annabeth said, "But what-"

He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and led her over to the Safari Deluxe model with teakwood lions carved into the frame and a leopard-patterned comforter.

Thalia's smile was flickering like a bad reception, that bed sounded awesome and something she'd put into her tent, she might even need it as she tensed up again feeling another fight coming. Annabeth had never mentioned this place at all, which meant nothing too important had happened here...

When Annabeth didn't want to lie down, Crusty pushed her.

That snapped everybody to attention, Magnus's hands balled into a fist as he now easily imagined locking this guy in a freezer no matter what he looked like!

Percy's hand was now fisted around his pen, but his fingers were trembling to much to take the cap off. They hadn't seen how fast this guy moved, he'd never get Riptide out in time. He needed Annabeth for this one!

"Hey!" she protested.

Crusty snapped his fingers. "Ergo!"

Ropes sprang from the sides of the bed, lashing around Annabeth, holding her to the mattress.

"That's not what that means!" Magnus yelped in surprise.

"This is not time for a vocab lesson!" Thalia snapped back.*

Grover tried to get up, but ropes sprang from his black-satin bed, too, and lashed him down.

"N-not c-c-cool!" he yelled, his voice vibrating from the million-hand massage. "N-not c-cool a-at all!"

The giant looked at Annabeth, then turned toward me and grinned. "Almost, darn it."

I tried to step away, but his hand shot out and clamped around the back of my neck. "Whoa, kid. Don't worry. We'll find you one in a sec."

"Let my friends go."

"Oh, sure I will. But I got to make them fit, first."

"What do you mean?"

"All the beds are exactly six feet, see? Your friends are too short. Got to make them fit."

"Procrustes," Nico realized. Ugh, what a useless card, it was only available in the water deck and leveled out the playing field to- he forced his brain to stop, again. Why did such childish thoughts have to keep lingering.

"Mythomagic?" Will confirmed. Nico flushed and didn't answer, but he was sure he recognized that now familiar rise and fall of excitement. "You might have to teach me how to play, sounds like this game could be a lifesaver."

Nico didn't answer, but he was side eying Will again as each wondered of the other what his problem was.

Annabeth and Grover kept struggling.

"Can't stand imperfect measurements," Crusty muttered. "Ergo!"

A new set of ropes leaped out from the top and bottom of the beds, wrapping around Grover and Annabeth's ankles, then around their armpits. The ropes started tightening, pulling my friends from both ends.

"Don't worry," Crusty told me, "These are stretching jobs. Maybe three extra inches on their spines. They might even live. Now why don't we find a bed you like, huh?"

"Percy!" Grover yelled.

My mind was racing. I knew I couldn't take on this giant water-bed salesman alone.

"Not with that attitude!" Alex groaned. "You're surrounded by water in those beds, try drowning him!"

"He might charge me for popping them," Percy said with a straight face, not at all blushing for not even thinking of this.

He would snap my neck before I ever got my sword out.

"Your real name's not Crusty, is it?" I asked.

"Legally, it's Procrustes," he admitted.

"The Stretcher," I said. I remembered the story: the giant who'd tried to kill Theseus with excess hospitality on his way to Athens.

"I'm suddenly thankful Oceanus hasn't tried that tactic," Magnus muttered.

"Yeah," the salesman said. "But who can pronounce Procrustes? Bad for business. Now 'Crusty,' anybody can say that."

"You're right. It's got a good ring to it."

"Procrustean does not mean pandering Percy," Magnus sighed.

"You can read the dictionary to me later," Percy lied.

His eyes lit up. "You think so?"

"Oh, absolutely," I said. "And the workmanship on these beds? Fabulous!"

He grinned hugely, but his fingers didn't loosen on my neck. "I tell my customers that. Every time. Nobody bothers to look at the workmanship. How many built-in Lava Lamp headboards have you seen?"

"Not too many."

"That's right!"

"Percy!" Annabeth yelled. "What are you doing?"

"Don't mind her," I told Procrustes. "She's impossible."

"You're lucky she's being strangled or she would have drop kicked you to that bed," Thalia said confidently.

"She still might if I don't rescue her in time," Percy nodded.

The giant laughed. "All my customers are. Never six feet exactly. So inconsiderate. And then they complain about the fitting."

"What do you do if they're longer than six feet?"

"Oh, that happens all the time. It's a simple fix."

He let go of my neck, but before I could react, he reached behind a nearby sales desk and brought out a huge double-bladed brass axe. He said, "I just center the subject as best I can and lop off whatever hangs over on either end."

"That is a terrible sales pitch!" Jason yelped.

"I agree, let's see if I get through to him," Percy groaned.

"Ah," I said, swallowing hard. "Sensible."

"I'm so glad to come across an intelligent customer!"

The ropes were really stretching my friends now. Annabeth was turning pale. Grover made gurgling sounds, like a strangled goose.

"A true noise of terror I'm sure," Will nodded.

"So, Crusty ..." I said, trying to keep my voice light. I glanced at the sales tag on the valentine-shaped Honeymoon Special. "Does this one really have dynamic stabilizers to stop wave motion?"

"Absolutely. Try it out."

"Yeah, maybe I will. But would it work even for a big guy like you? No waves at all?"

"Guaranteed."

"No way."

"Way."

"Show me."

He sat down eagerly on the bed, patted the mattress.

"I am almost insulted he fell for that," Magnus frowned.

'Monsters still have the same essence we all do, to be seen,' Hearth smiled.

"No waves. See?"

I snapped my fingers. "Ergo."

Ropes lashed around Crusty and flattened him against the mattress.

"Hey!" he yelled.

"Center him just right," I said.

The ropes readjusted themselves at my command. Crusty's whole head stuck out the top. His feet stuck out the bottom.

"What a hypocrite, I was imagining him being six feet perfectly at least," Magnus frowned.

"We don't question the monsters faulty logic of not following their own rules," Percy shrugged.

"No!" he said. "Wait! This is just a demo."

I uncapped Riptide. "A few simple adjustments ..."

I had no qualms about what I was about to do. If Crusty were human, I couldn't hurt him anyway. If he was a monster, he deserved to turn into dust for a while.

"You drive a hard bargain," he told me. "I'll give you thirty percent off on selected floor models.'"

"You've got to admire he's still trying," Alex said.

"I'm almost tempted to take that deal and still lop his head off," Thalia agreed.

"I think I'll start with the top." I raised my sword.

"No money down! No interest for six months!"

I swung the sword. Crusty stopped making offers.

I cut the ropes on the other beds. Annabeth and Grover got to their feet, groaning and wincing and cursing me a lot.

"You look taller," I said.

"Puberty," Will said tragically, "girls are always taller than us when we need it least."

"Yes, I'm so sure that was it," Percy laughed in relief.

"Very funny," Annabeth said. "Be faster next time."

"You're welcome," Percy smirked like she was here now to roll her eyes at him again.

I looked at the bulletin board behind Crusty's sales desk. There was an advertisement for Hermes Delivery Service, and another for the All-New Compendium of L.A. Area Monsters-"The only Monstrous Yellow Pages you'll ever need!" Under that, a bright orange flier for DOA Recording Studios, offering commissions for heroes' souls. "We are always looking for new talent!" DOA's address was right underneath with a map.

"It's the little things about this mess that get me," Jason nodded, "you guys have almost literally stumbled into everything helpful."

"Never underestimate the power of the fates," Thalia shrugged.

"We get none of the credit here?" Percy pouted.

"Three percent," Jason mocked.

"Come on," I told my friends.

"Give us a minute," Grover complained. "We were almost stretched to death.'"

"Then you're ready for the Underworld," I said. "It's only a block from here."

"I wonder if he gave discounts for mileage," Thalia said while looking around at Nico curiously. He'd offered to take the book from her last time, but she didn't want to force him back to talking if he didn't want to yet.

PJOPJOPJO

*Now is the time for the vocab lesson. Ergo means therefor, but in Greek, it means work.

#Percy Jackson #PJO #Thalia Grace #Reading the books #fanfiction #How Do You Say Gods #big three's kids #Nico di Angelo #Will solace #solangleo #solanglo #jason grace #alex fierro #magnus chase #Gods of Asgard #Hearthstone

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joshjacksons · 4 years ago

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Joshua Jackson interview with "Mr Porter" (2021)

Minutes before Mr Joshua Jackson joins me in a booth for a Friday afternoon drink at a vibey hotel bar in Santa Monica, he’s confronted by his past. Or rather, a woman in her early twenties who is binge-watching Dawson’s Creek, the teen show about a close-knit group of high-school friends coming of age in a sleepy American town, which made Jackson incredibly famous between 1998 and 2003. The series, which also made household names of Ms Michelle Williams and Ms Katie Holmes, went off air 18 years ago, but is now streaming on Netflix, to the bemusement of Jackson, who played lovable rogue Pacey Witter. “This girl was like, ‘Are you...?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes, I am. He got old. I’m sorry to break it to you,’” he says, before ordering an iced tea and a charcuterie board to tide him over until dinner time. “It always surprises me when young people say they’ve just got into Dawson’s Creek. I’m like, ‘Is it a costume drama to you? Do you feel like you’re watching a historical documentary?’”

The idea of a Friends-style reunion episode or a Sex And The City revival feels equally far-fetched to Canadian-born Jackson, now 43 and wearing it well in a pale green linen shirt and tailored linen trousers by Oliver Spencer that complement his fading brown hair and Cali-tanned skin.

“I don’t know why you’d want to [bring it back],” he says. “Nobody needs to know what those characters are doing in middle age. We left them in a nice place. Nobody needs to see that Pacey’s back hurts. I don’t think we need that update.”

And Jackson doesn’t need Dawson’s Creek. From Mr JJ Abrams’ sci-fi series Fringe (2008-2013) to the Golden Globe award-winning The Affair (2014-2019), from Ms Ava DuVernay’s ground-breaking true-crime drama When They See Us (2019) to the recent Ms Reese Witherspoon and Ms Kerry Washington-produced Little Fires Everywhere (2020), he has commanded the small screen – with a collection of dynamic and diverse work – ever since.

His latest role as Mr Christopher Duntsch, the Texas surgeon convicted of gross malpractice when 33 of his patients were left seriously injured after he operated on them and two of them died, in chilling Peacock crime drama Dr Death, is only stepping his career up another gear.

“I’ve never played anyone irredeemable before,” says Jackson, who is joined in the eight-part series (based on the 2018 Wondery podcast of the same name) by Messrs Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin. “He is charming, gregarious and has a high-level intellect, but he’s also a misogynist, probably a sociopath, certainly a narcissist and a complete incompetent who is incapable of seeing himself.”

If Duntsch is terrifying, then Jackson’s portrayal is even more so. The artist formerly known as Pacey is virtually unrecognisable (thanks to prosthetics) in the opening scene, but the real challenge for Jackson was allowing himself to view someone who is so “spectacularly evil” as a human being in order to walk in his shoes. “It’s a more damning portrayal of the man to make him into a human being, rather than just make him the bad guy,” he says. “He really believes he’s the hero, he’s the genius and that he’s the victim, so once I got past my own judgment, all the other things fell into place.”

Jackson might have his pick of stellar roles – and challenges – now, but it has not happened by accident. Take it from someone who has been in the business since landing his first job aged 14 in Disney’s live-action movie series The Mighty Ducks, opposite Brat Pack alumnus Mr Emilio Estevez.

“You try to make it look like it happens accidentally,” he says, “but there is no way to do this and not be ambitious. I’d say I’m extremely ambitious because I’ve been doing this cutthroat job for nearly 30 years. I’m in the pay-off phase of my career now. One of the benefits of surviving for as long as I have is you get to learn from your own mistakes.”

Such as? “I wouldn’t say, ‘I wish I hadn’t done that,’ because it all becomes bricks in a path, but [after Dawson’s Creek] I was not choosy enough about the things I was doing. You get stuck. You start trying to perform the performance you think people are hoping to see you do. I was so used to working all the time that I just worked all the time. There was definitely a conscious moment in my mid-twenties when I realised I wasn’t really enjoying the work that I was doing. My manager at the time just said, ‘Take a breath. You’re burnt out.’”

The turning point came in 2005, when Jackson was offered a role in the two-hander Mr David Mamet play A Life In The Theatre, opposite Sir Patrick Stewart. “God bless him, Patrick could have made my life miserable because I had no idea what I was doing, ” he says. “I hadn’t been on stage since I was a kid and now I was in the West End in over my head. But it reminded me that I actually enjoyed being an actor, that it’s not about the red carpet or travelling around the world. What I really enjoy is working on good material with good people.”

It’s no surprise Jackson’s time on Dawson’s Creek led to a career crisis. From the ages of 19 to 24, he lived with his fellow cast mates in Wilmington, North Carolina, filming day in, day out, in an arrangement he likens to college. “You get to the end and they’re like, ‘Here’s your degree. Go live now. You’re an adult. Go out into the world,’” he says.

But most graduates don’t have to deal with global fame. “It’s transitory. You’re only ever cool for a moment and then you become much less cool. I was always pretty dubious about flatterers,” he says, recalling a time he was stung in London in the mid-2000s. “I went on a date in Hyde Park with a woman whose name I will not use – she was socialite-famous – and she was acting completely bizarre, looking over her shoulder the whole time. I came to find out that she had hired a photographer to follow us through the park and gave a whole story to the tabloids about how I was going to meet her family.”

It was his growing fortune, rather than fame, that caused Jackson the most anxiety. “Suddenly, at 19 years old, I was making more in a week than most of my friends’ parents would make in a year,” he says. “It was lovely to have the money, but it was that feeling of nobody is worth that kind of money. You feel like a fraud and it took me a long time to forgive myself for not being the thing that I was perceived as.”

Born in Vancouver, but raised in Topanga, California, until he was eight (before moving back to Vancouver following his parents’ divorce), Jackson bought his childhood home in 2001 and lives in it today with his wife, British Queen & Slim actor Ms Jodie Turner-Smith, and their 15-month-old daughter.

“My father unfortunately was not a good father or a husband and exited the scene, but that house in Topanga was where everything felt simple, so it was a very healing thing for me to do,” he says. Fast-forward to 2021 and his baby daughter now sleeps in her father’s childhood bedroom. “There was a mural of a dragon on the wall in that room that I couldn’t believe was still there, years later. The owner [who sold him the house] said, ‘I knew it meant a lot to somebody and that they were going to come back for it some day.’”

Becoming a first-time parent during a pandemic sounds stressful, but it afforded Jackson months at home with his wife and child that his normal work schedule wouldn’t have allowed.

“I now recognise how perverse the way that we have set up our society is,” he says. “There is not a father I know who works a regular job who didn’t go back to the office a week later. It’s robbing that man of the opportunity to bond with his child and spend time with his partner.”

Despite his obvious career ambitions, fatherhood has changed Jackson’s priorities in “every possible way”, he says. “It’s 100 per cent changed how I approach my work and my life. That has been made so clear to me in this past year. For me to feel good about what I’m doing day to day, my family has to be the central focus.

“There are plenty of things left for me to do, but now the thing that gets me excited is experiencing the world through my daughter’s eyes. I can’t wait to take her scuba diving. I can’t wait to take her skiing. I can’t wait to read a great book with her. I’m not worried at all she’ll be a wallflower. She’s been a character from the word go.”

Jackson met Turner-Smith, 34, two days after his 40th birthday. He had been single since his 10-year relationship with German actress Ms Diane Kruger ended in 2016. “I was not looking to fall in love again or meet the mother of my child, but life has other plans for you,” he says.

The couple met at a party. Turner-Smith was wearing the same The Future Is Female Ejaculation T-shirt Ms Tessa Thompson’s character, Detroit, wears in the 2018 film Sorry To Bother You. “That’s what I used to break the ice. I shouted, ‘Detroit!’ across the room. Not the smoothest thing I’ve ever done, but it worked. We were pretty much inseparable from the word go. It was a whirlwind romance and I can tell my daughter I literally saw her mother across a room and thought, ‘I have to be next to this woman.’”

A self-confessed “useless” shopper, Jackson gives his wife full credit for his current wardrobe. He is jewellery-free, apart from a wedding band and a gold signet “JJ” ring on his little finger (a present from his wife), and discovered tailored sweatsuits (by Stampd and Reigning Champ) in the pandemic.

“Jodie has influence in the way that a wonderful wife encourages you, through love, to dress well. She was like, ‘We’re going to throw away all the sweatpants from your past and I’m going to get you some that actually make you look like an adult male and you will still feel comfortable around the house,’ and I’m like, ‘What an amazing idea!’ Who knew you could get sweatsuits that actually look good on your body?”

Jackson’s style has evolved, he says, “from slovenly teen to it’s-nice-when-your-clothes-actually-fit-you”. The penny dropped after he auditioned for his former co-star Estevez, who was directing the 2006 Mr Robert Kennedy biopic Bobby. He said to me, ‘You only got this job because I know you. You came in here to play a very well-put together 1960s political operative and you’re wearing jeans and a hoodie.’

“I had to grow up a little bit. We are very much raised in Canada to never, ever show off, so it took me a while to recognise it’s OK to look good when you go out.”

Still, when you’ve grown up in front of the camera, “every pimple literally documented”, and lived (very successfully) to tell the tale, you can probably be forgiven for the odd fashion faux pas.

“I wore a silk Ascot to an event once in Paris and I still have nightmares about it,” he says. “I looked like Fred from Scooby Doo, but you live and learn.”

#joshua jackson #interviews #jodie turner smith #dawson's creek #dr death #fringe #emilio estevez #mr porter #patrick stewart #michelle williams #katie holmes

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creativethreadcoaching · 3 months ago

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Finding Inner Peace- Exploring the Transformative Power of Sound Healing Meditation in Santa Monica

Nestled along the golden shores of California, Santa Monica is not just a haven for beach lovers and outdoor enthusiasts. It is also a sanctuary for those seeking holistic wellness and inner peace. One practice gaining prominence in this serene city is sound healing meditation, an ancient technique that marries the vibrational power of sound with meditative practices to foster emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being.

The Essence of Sound Healing Meditation

Sound healing meditation is more than just listening to soothing tunes. It is a deeply transformative experience where specific frequencies, tones, and vibrations are used to promote relaxation, reduce stress, and restore harmony within the body and mind. This practice dates back thousands of years, rooted in cultures that revered sound as a healing modality, from Tibetan singing bowls and ancient Indian chants to Aboriginal didgeridoos and shamanic drumming.

Modern science has also acknowledged the power of sound therapy. The concept of entrainment, where the brainwaves synchronize with external auditory frequencies, is pivotal in explaining the calming effects of sound healing. This synchronization can lead to states of relaxation, creativity, and even heightened awareness, making sound meditation a profound tool for personal transformation.

Why Santa Monica?

Santa Monica's tranquil beaches and wellness-focused community make it the perfect backdrop for sound healing meditation. The city's ethos of embracing holistic health attracts practitioners and seekers alike, fostering a thriving community dedicated to mindfulness and healing.

From the gentle crash of ocean waves to the rustle of palm fronds, Santa Monica’s natural soundscape already offers an ambient experience. Integrating structured sound healing sessions amplifies these benefits, creating an immersive journey into inner peace.

Benefits of Sound Healing Meditation

Sound healing meditation offers numerous benefits for the mind, body, and spirit:

Stress Reduction: The soothing frequencies help lower cortisol levels, promoting relaxation and reducing the impact of stress.

Improved Sleep: Sound healing can ease insomnia by guiding the brain into deeper states of relaxation, such as delta waves associated with restorative sleep.

Enhanced Focus and Clarity: The practice promotes mental clarity and sharpens focus, enabling practitioners to navigate their daily lives with ease.

Emotional Release: Many participants report releasing pent-up emotions and experiencing a sense of catharsis during sessions.

Physical Healing: Vibrational frequencies can stimulate circulation, lower blood pressure, and even reduce chronic pain for some individuals.

Spiritual Connection: The meditative state induced by sound therapy often helps individuals feel more connected to their inner selves and the universe.

What to Expect in a Sound Healing Session

Whether you are a first-timer or a seasoned meditator, sound healing sessions in Santa Monica cater to all levels of experience. Here’s what a typical session may involve:

Setting the Ambiance: Sessions often take place in serene environments, such as yoga studios, wellness centers, or even beachside locations. Dim lighting, candles, and calming aromas like lavender enhance the atmosphere.

Guided Relaxation: The practitioner may start with a brief guided meditation to help participants settle into the moment.

Immersive Soundscapes: Instruments such as Tibetan singing bowls, crystal bowls, gongs, tuning forks, and chimes are played to create an intricate web of sound. The vibrations penetrate deeply, aligning chakras and promoting energetic balance.

Integration and Reflection: After the session, participants are encouraged to rest and reflect, allowing the healing effects to integrate fully.

Popular Sound Healing Venues in Santa Monica

Santa Monica offers a plethora of venues and practitioners specializing in sound healing meditation. Here are some popular options:

The Sound Bath Studio: Known for its expert practitioners and tranquil setting, this studio offers group and private sessions tailored to individual needs.

Beachside Meditations: Several practitioners host sound healing sessions directly on the beach, blending natural ocean sounds with healing vibrations.

Wellness Centers: Places like Namastday Yoga and The Mindry provide curated sound healing events, often combined with yoga or breathwork.

Community Events: Keep an eye on local event listings for sound healing circles or meditation workshops.

How to Prepare for Your Sound Healing Journey

To fully embrace the experience, consider the following tips:

Wear Comfortable Clothing: Loose, comfortable attire allows you to relax completely.

Bring Essentials: A yoga mat, blanket, and water bottle are often recommended for comfort.

Set an Intention: Reflect on what you hope to achieve—be it stress relief, clarity, or emotional healing.

Arrive Early: Give yourself time to settle in and acclimate to the environment.

Incorporating Sound Healing into Daily Life

While guided sessions offer a profound experience, you can also integrate sound healing practices into your daily routine. Here’s how:

Use Sound Apps: Platforms like Insight Timer and Calm feature sound healing tracks for relaxation.

Practice Mantras: Chanting mantras like “Om” creates internal vibrations that can be grounding.

Create a Personal Sound Sanctuary: Invest in instruments like a singing bowl or tuning fork for home use.

Testimonials: Voices from the Community

"Sound healing meditation has been a game-changer for my anxiety. The sessions in Santa Monica, especially those by the beach, leave me feeling grounded and rejuvenated," shares local resident Sarah K.

"I attended my first sound bath at The Sound Bath Studio, and it was transformative. The combination of crystal bowls and gongs created a symphony that resonated deeply within me," says Jack R., a yoga instructor.

Final Thoughts

In a fast-paced world filled with constant noise and distractions, sound healing meditation offers a much-needed retreat. Santa Monica, with its vibrant wellness culture and stunning natural beauty, provides the perfect setting to explore this ancient practice.

Whether you’re a long-time resident or just visiting, immersing yourself in sound healing meditation could be the key to unlocking a deeper sense of peace, balance, and well-being. Take the first step on this harmonic journey and experience the transformative power of sound.

#Sound Bath Meditation #Sound Healing Meditation #Stress Release Meditation #Sound Therapy Meditation #Performance Anxiety Therapy #Sound Healing Meditation Santa Monica #Sound Therapy Meditation Santa Monica

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snarkwrites · 4 years ago

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01 & 02 | home; juice ortiz.

Notes:

.... and apparently, my brain yearned to write angsty and kind of tragic things. I really haven’t written much for sons of anarchy beyond a few little short things here and there so.. be warned. I’m gonna loosely follow some of the things that happen on the show timeline, but.. this one might take longer to write / post / update because I’m going to try to watch SOA again as I do this. Try being the operative.

So uh.. buckle up?

Also.. I haven’t made a cover for this yet. or a soundtrack. And this is c

Pairing:

Teller Morrow OFC x Juice Ortiz.

Summary:

“Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends always belong, and laughter never ends.” “A house is made of bricks and beams. A home is made of hopes and dreams.” “Home is not a place…it's a feeling.”

“Home is wherever I’m with you.”

Years ago, Hazelynn Teller (Morrow) left Charming behind. She turned her back on everything in search of something.. anything that felt like it fit. But nothing ever did. After a series of events cause her to re-evaluate and she finds herself returning to Charming, can she fix everything she broke when she left?

And again I ask.. why must my summaries suck? I swear this might possibly be better than the summary.

Warnings:

Injury / accident tw - for this chapter only. Mentions of a genetic heart defect / a newborn in NICU. fighting / violence tw - duh, this show was pretty damn violent and there’s no way I can escape having at least some of the major stuff that happened present. slow burn and angst. because people don’t just fall back together and feelings aren’t magically healed. eventual filth. any other triggering things that arise I’ll warn in those chapters. These are just the ones I can think of, immediately, right now.

Other Stuff:

[ faq - tag list doc ]

Tagging:

@brithedemonspawn

@chasingeverybreakingwave

@kyleoreillysknee

@rampagewriting

@sassymox

@twistnet

ONE.

The phone ringing had Jax Teller sitting up in bed. He grimaced at the pounding hangover and he reached for his cellphone, answering.

“Are you family of Hazelynn Teller Morrow?”

“She’s my baby sister, why?” Jax wasn’t getting a good feeling at all. The woman on the other end of the line sounded so formal and her tone was so clipped. Unconcerned. It was his own personal experience that usually, when you got a call like this in the middle of the night, nothing good ever came of it.

What the nurse told him next left him reeling.

“There’s been an accident. She’s been admitted to Santa Monica General. Her daughter is in the NICU.”

“You said Santa Monica General, right?” Jax was sitting up in bed now, trying to get his heart down out of his throat. He was slipping out of bed, grabbing for his jeans on the floor. “Are you sure there isn’t some mistake? My sister, she… She doesn’t have a kid. Not that I’m aware of..” He was hoping against hope that there was a mistake somewhere, but the nurse spoke again.

“Your sister was in labor and on her way here to give birth when the accident occurred. We had to induce labor. Given the state your sister is in, we’re calling the family since we have no way to know who the baby’s father is… Just to err on the side of caution.”

Jax’s stomach rolled. Tara hugged against him from behind. “What’s going on, Jax?”

Jax shushed her, listening to the nurse detail his sister’s injuries and the fact that while they were trying to save his niece she slipped into a coma and had yet to wake up. When he hung up the phone, he swung at a wall.

“Jax?”

“I have to go pick up my mom.” Jax grabbed the keys to his bike and rushed out of the house, firing it up.

The entire drive across town to his mother’s house passed by in a daze. He didn’t even remember what color the stoplight had been when he went through it, only that he was sitting in his mother’s driveway only three and a half minutes later. Rushing to his mom’s front door. Pounding on it to wake her up.

Gemma threw the door open, a brow raised at Jax when she saw him standing on the other side. “Jax?”

“Mom, it’s Hazelynn… The hospital in Santa Monica called me.”

Gemma’s mouth opened only to close again. It was probably one of very few times over the course of his life that Jax Teller had actually seen his mother speechless. Or about to cry.

“What happened? Jax, talk to me. Talk to me now.” Gemma demanded, her voice shaky. Jax took a few deep breaths and put his arms around his mother, explaining what the nurse told him when she’d called. Gemma’s tears started to fall and she bolted back into the house, shaking Clay awake.

Clay grumbled at the early hour but sat up.

Looking as if he’d vomit as Jax repeated everything the nurse told him for a second time that night.

“I’ll drive. Neither of you are in the shape.” Clay was up and getting dressed on auto pilot, stopping at one point to question, “They say whether she had anybody there with her?”

“The whole reason the nurse is calling family is because she was coming to the hospital alone because she’d gone into labor. They can’t track down a father.”

“Oh, I’ll find the bastard.”

“Clay…”

“I’m not kidding Gemma.” Clay’s fists clenched and he took a few deep breaths.

“We’ll just get there and assess the situation. Go from there. She needs us.” Gemma gave Clay a firm look of warning and it seemed to get him reasonably calm.

The next few hours were sitting in silence in a waiting room. Endless pots of shitty break room coffee. Gemma jumping every time someone coded.

And finally, around 9 am, a doctor got around to them.

Hazelynn was awake. And her vitals seemed steady.

“Can we go back to see her?”

“In an hour. We want to make sure she’s up to it.”

“What about my niece?”

“One at a time. I’ll send a nurse over to get you prepped to go down to NICU.” The doctor promised, setting off to go and track down a nurse.

The nurse showed up a few minutes later and Gemma stood, the shock starting to subside but only slightly. As they walked back to the NICU nursery, the nurse told Gemma that they’d detected a heart defect and Gemma explained that both herself and her granddaughter’s uncle suffered from similar.

“We’re not supposed to let anyone back here that isn’t a parent until 8 pm.. But given the circumstance…”

Gemma thanked her and stepped into the room, taking a seat in the chair in the corner. The nurse brought over her granddaughter and Gemma took her in her arms.

“Oh sweetie. Everything is going to be okay.”

But Gemma was afraid. So very afraid.

XXX

“ You don’t have to leave town, Haze.”

It was the last thing my brother said to me. He’d hugged me. Then my mom hugged me and wiped at her eyes. Made me promise a thousand times to call and come back to visit. I promised her I would, even though I knew deep down I’d be limiting myself to calls only.

If I went home to visit, I might not ever leave again.

And I didn’t want to be like all the other girls I went to school with, settling down and settling for whatever came their way.

I left town with all these big ambitions and plans. And one by one, life knocked them right out from beneath me. Life tried again and again to break me but I was too stubborn to be broken.

But this last blow.. This last blow was too much.

The nurse came in to check on me and the first thing I demanded was to know if my daughter was alright. The second and a half it took the nurse to tell me that my daughter was alive and currently down in NICU was the longest second and a half of my entire life and the second I heard the nurse tell me that my daughter was alive and I hadn’t lost her, I broke.

Sobbing. Grateful.

If I’d lost her… I shoved the thought out because I just couldn’t.

“Wait.. NICU… What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with my baby?”

“The doctors detected a heart defect.”

I took a shaky breath. I’d been warned by my mom that there was a possibility that any children I had could end up with the heart defect, even though it managed to skip over me. At my last checkup, my doctor had been concerned about the genetic heart defect present in my brother and my mother. Nothing had shown up in any of the tests they’d been able to do at that point, so I’d been hopeful.

I nodded. Taking a few deep breaths. Moving to sit but wincing when a wave of pain washed over me.

The door to my private room opened and my brother stepped in. My birth father Clay standing behind him.

Jax rushed over to the bed, putting my legs back into it. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m going to see my daughter. I.. She needs me, Jax.”

“She needs you healthy, darlin.” Clay spoke up quietly.

Awkwardly, I let him hug me. Things had always been tense between us. More so when the truth came out that he was my actual father. It had thrown my entire life in a tailspin back then and while I’m not proud to admit it at all, I’d went full on rebellious. Refusing to acknowledge him.

But he’d kept trying.

“I couldn’t even keep myself from crashing a fucking car. I failed already. She could’ve died.” I was full on sobbing now as everything hit me. I looked from Jax to Clay and asked quietly, “Where’s mom?” I.. Need to see her.”

“Your mom’s down in NICU.” Clay explained, doing his best to give me a reassuring look. Wincing at the way my forehead was stitched. “Least you got the Morrow hard head, huh?” he tried to joke. Jax gave him a warning look, but rather than stubbornly refuse to go along with it like I used to in all of Clay’s past attempts to bond with me over the years, all I could do this time was nod. Mutter quietly, “Thank god.”

My brother cleared his throat.

“What about the father?”

“What about him? He’s married. Dropped me like a bad habit when he found out I wasn’t getting rid of the baby. Only after he tried to pay me off.”

Jax’s fist clenched and I shook my head. “I’m better off… I.. I mean I think I am.” my words fell away and I leaned my head back against the pillow behind me gingerly.

“You didn’t have any friends you could get to drive you?” Clay questioned. I shook my head, not bothering to open my eyes. “I’d just moved here. I was.. Working up the nerve to come home. I didn’t really know anybody.”

“So the kid’s dad is elsewhere?” Clay questioned further. I could just tell by his tone that he was already thinking of the best way to make the situation right. To make the father of my child pay for being an actual piece of shit.

“Clay, whatever you’re thinking, don’t. Leave it alone, sir. Not everybody has to pay for their wrongs your way. The bastard will regret it one day when she grows up and she’s amazing and she didn’t need him. I don’t want the guy near me.”

It didn’t stop the look in his eyes and I sighed. Appealing to the last card I held that I thought might work. “If you care about me at all and you still want to be a part of my life, sir.. You’ll leave this alone. I just… I want to put it behind me.”

I let out a ragged breath and searched his eyes. When he seemed to relax and grumble while shaking his head, I relaxed. It felt as if he were going to let it go as I asked. Maybe going away had changed things just a little.

Jax spoke up quietly.

“ You scared the fuck out of me.”

“Try being me.” I muttered quietly, letting my brother hug me, holding on just a little tighter.

The door to my room opened again and my mother stepped in. She didn’t look like the same carefully put together woman I remembered. She looked like she was drained. Scared to death.

Suddenly, I wanted to go back in time and punch my younger self in the throat. How could I have ever thought that just because I was a reminder of the affair my mom started with Clay Morrow before Jax’s father passed away that she cared less.. Or that me being around was just painful for her to begin with?

I felt worse than I’ve ever felt before.

Jax stopped my mom, asking if she thought they’d let him go back and sit with my daughter. My mom led him back out in the hallway, probably to go find the NICU nurse on duty and find out the answer, and this left me and my birth father alone together.

“I know we never got along real good, kid.”

“I’m sorry.” I blurted it out before he could say anything else. “I was messed up, okay? The way it came out… The way it made everyone fight… I just.. I don’t know.” I dropped my gaze to the thin white blanket over my legs and Clay sighed.

“If you want to come home… It’d make more sense, I’d think. Gonna be damn hard to help out with my grandkid when you’re all the way in Santa Monica. And I’m not about to let my daughter take all this on by herself. We clear, Red?”

I mulled it over. It wasn’t something I’d already been heavily leaning towards for the better part of a month now. I’d just been too scared to pull the trigger and do it.

“Yes sir.” I answered, managing a smile.

My mom stepped into the room, door shutting behind her quietly.

“I cannot wait until you are away from this hospital. Do you know how fucking difficult it is to get anybody to answer a simple question?” my mom muttered, leaning down, hugging me tight. Fussing over a stitch on my forehead, grumbling “They didn’t even attempt to close this properly. I’ve seen bikers at Sturgis do a better sew up.” and making me laugh. Just a little.

She pulled away from the hug and brushed some hair away from my forehead. “Sweetie, I..” she started to say something but I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Mom. For everything.”

“I’m sorry too. I didn’t know you felt the way you felt until your brother threw it up right after you left. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Don’t start crying.” my mom was reaching for a tissue, gingerly dabbing it at my eyes. “The important thing is it’s behind us. Okay?”

I nodded.

“You’re moving back to Charming.”

Normally, my mother making demands would’ve set me on edge. But I wasn’t that same angry rebellious girl anymore. And deep down, I was starting to realize just how much I loved and needed my family, especially right now.

Warts and all.

“Okay.” I managed a weak smile.

“Was she okay?” I asked quietly after another tight hug that had me wincing just a little and reminding her gently that I was one giant ache. My mom smiled and nodded. “She’s as beautiful as you, sweetie. And despite the family flaw striking again, I think she’s a fighter already. Have you got a name?”

“ Emma Sophia.”

My mom smiled at that. I figured she would because Emma was basically just Gemma, shortened. And Sophia in tribute to all the old movies she used to make me sit through with her when I was younger, after an actress named Sophia Loren.

“I like that, sweetie.”

When she was sure Clay wasn’t actively listening, she whispered quietly, “And the father?”

“Is not an issue. Nor will he ever be one. I got him to sign away paternal rights.”

“You’re sure.” My mom asked again and I nodded. “He was married, mom, I... “ I trailed off, waiting for a lecture. Instead, my mom sighed and nodded. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”

And for the first time in years, I really believed she was right. Maybe everything really would be okay now.

The doctor came in to check on me again and check my vitals and after doing that, he turned to address my mother and Clay.

“Mother and baby’s vitals are holding strong and steady. I’d say that if the pattern continues, we can release Mother by the weekend.”

“What about my baby?” I spoke up quickly.

“We want to keep your daughter for observation. I’d say at least another two weeks.”

I took a few deep breaths, starting to panic a little. Wanting to cry. My mom grabbed hold of my hand and repeated calmly, “Everything will be fine. They kept your brother just as long.”

I nodded, even though the thought still scared the hell out of me.

TWO.

The Welcome to Charming sign passed by and I smiled a little. Emma was sleeping in the carrier. I was almost home.

And hopeful.

Just as I turned down the road my mom lived on, my cell phone buzzed. I switched the call so that it went through my radio to answer.

“ Exactly how big is too big for a stuffed animal?” Jax asked and I groaned, shaking my head at the question. “What have you done, Jax?”

“There was a unicorn.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.. Remember that one Clay won you when you were twelve? This one makes two of that one.”

“Where the fuck am I putting this?”

My mom spoke up from the background. “We got it in the nursery. Barely. I told your brother he’s not allowed near the stuffed animals anymore.”

“In my defense ma, it’s my niece.”

I parked behind the motorcycles lining my mother’s driveway. Tensing just a little when I recognized Juice’s Dyna Glide parked next to Tig’s motorcycle.

And as soon as I saw him, it was like everything froze. I wasn’t ready to face him. Especially not when I considered that it felt like someone had just knocked the breath right out of me. As I walked past him, I didn’t dare look over.

I couldn’t do it, no matter how badly every part of me wanted to. My brother and Opie came over, arguing about the unicorn, Opie nearly lifting me off the ground in a hug. I reached back into the car, killing the engine and shutting the driver door. Making my way to the backseat and unbuckling the carrier.

“Awww. She’s even got the same chubby little cheeks, man.” Opie chuckled, elbowing Jax who nodded. I smiled and as soon as Emma started to wake up and cry, I dug around in my diaper bag for the bottle I’d pumped for her at a rest stop.

Sitting the carrier on the trunk of the car, I unfastened Emma, pulling her out.

Instantly drawing over at least ten gigantic bikers. Watching them fuss over her had me laughing and smiling a little.

Juice hung back. Leaning against the tree in the yard with a tire swing. Watching. Like he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to come over with everyone else.. Near me. Or whether he wanted to just leave.

When he started to make his way over after Chibs stopped to whisper something in his ear, I swallowed hard. The guys had gone back to the grill set up behind the house by now. It pretty much left me sitting in the passenger seat of my car finishing up feeding Emma. Humming softly as I did so.

Humming what used to be the song that Juice and I dubbed ‘our song’.

“Visiting? I’m surprised your man let you come by yourself.”

I glanced up at Juice, taking a deep breath. Bracing myself for all the anger and bitterness I thought I’d find waiting in his gaze. Surprised when all I found instead was concern. Maybe a little hurt.

But deeper down, the same way he always used to look at me.

“Juice..” I started, but I went quiet. I didn’t know what to say. There was so much I wanted to say but it was probably beyond too late for that.

More than anything, I wished I had a rewind button.

What if I hadn’t left town? Ran from the way I felt about everything back then?

“I had a while to get over it.” he muttered, gazing at me. Going quiet. “Jax told me why you had to go. I fuckin hated it, but I had a while to get over it.”

I nodded.

Somehow I got the feeling that he was pretending it didn’t kill him. To save face.

Kind of exactly like I was right now.

“You could’ve said somethin, ya know?”

“Juice..”

He shook his head and took a deep breath. Leaning against my car. Staring up at the bright blue of the sky overhead. “It’s over and done with though.”

My stomach churned. I wasn’t sure if what he was saying was a good or a bad thing. Seeing him again after all this time, I wasn’t even sure I wanted it to be over.

Because when I left it all behind, I hadn’t just left behind a family that actually loved me, I’d left him behind too.

And looking at him now. With a more adult perspective… I suddenly found myself wondering if leaving him behind had been the biggest mistake of my life…

“Do you want to hold her?”

Juice eyed me but nodded, reaching out for her. “Hey pretty girl.” he muttered, smiling a little. After he held her for a few minutes, he placed her back in my arms.

And as he did so, the touch lingered as we locked eyes.

“I missed you.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“I barely survived.” Juice answered, biting his lip as if he wanted to say something else. He turned and walked away and I spent a few minutes trying to pull myself back together again.

It had been harder seeing him again after all this time than I thought.

Harder to resist him. Harder to shove down the surge of emotions. Harder to try not to think about just how much I still loved him and harder to swallow the fact that by now, it was probably too late.

I got the feeling that it was only going to get so much harder.

And I sighed, because every part of me wanted to hold out hope that there was still something there but I had to accept the fact that I’d probably lit a match and set everything on fire when I left town back then. That there wasn’t any hope to be had.

That Juice was done with me.

And that hurt more than I was prepared for.

I shoved it all out of my head, wandering over to where my mom sat. Giving Tara some serious side eye.

“He had to bring her.” my mom was glaring in Tara’s general direction. Rolling her eyes as Tara carried Abel around. Everything Tara Knowles did annoyed my mom. That much hadn’t changed at all.

“In his defense, mom, she’s kind of his old lady.” I pointed out quietly. Taking a sip of the pink lemonade she’d pushed in my direction.

My mom shrugged, grumbling under her breath. Probably something to the effect of she wouldn’t be if my mom had her way about it. I sat down next to her at the picnic table and she peeked in the sling I had Emma strapped into. “Hey sweetie.” she cooed.

Emma grinned up at her, sleepy eyed. After a few seconds, my mom spoke up.

“Speaking of old ladies… If you’re wondering. Juice doesn’t have one.”

“Mom, I.. we both know I ruined everything there when I left.” I sighed, shaking my head no. Trying to cut whatever crazy idea she was formulating out before it took hold. Somehow I got the feeling that it was too late for that. My mom, being the meddling mom she’s known to be at times, she was going to try to shove me right through the ‘healing process’ over the end of my last breakup.

My mom shrugged, shaking her head. Quick to protest, “You never know.”

I didn’t say anything. For one thing, I was trying to get my head around my mom seeming to push me towards Juice. I hadn’t really thought she liked him all that much back then. I know Clay didn’t particularly care for him.

XXX

Juice wasn’t listening to a word Chibs said. Chibs caught sight of the direction he was staring in and he chuckled to himself, nudging Juice in the side, nodding in Hazelynn’s direction. “Go over n’ try t’ talk.”

Juice shook his head. “Every time I think about it, I remember that she’s the one who thought she was too good for any of this and left. Without a good bye. What’s done is done. I wasn’t good enough for her then, why do I wanna be good enough for her now, huh?”

“Maybe it wasn’t that at all.” Chibs butted in. Grumbling as he took a drag of his cigarette. The kid wasn’t listening. He wasn’t stopping to think about everything that unfolded prior to Hazelynn’s decision to leave. Chibs went quiet. He knew better than to try reasoning with the kid. Juice was a hard headed little shit.

“Look at me, Chibs. We both know it was.” Juice insisted, shaking his head sadly. “I tried to be good enough man.. I just fuckin wasn’t.”

Chibs brushed off the statement, putting it down to Juice’s recent downward mood swing and tension. The guy had been down about a lot lately. Like he had a million things on his mind. If Chibs ever tried to bring it up, Juice dismissed it. Stating he didn’t want to talk about it.

Juice bit his lip. Staring at Hazelynn. Sighing as he stubbed out the cigarette he’d been smoking. Every part of him was still drawn to her. If he could, he’d go over. He’d tell her that he still loved her, he’d never stopped.

But there was so much going on right now.

The biggest part of it being the secret he was being forced to keep. Just the thought of the betrayal he was currently being forced to carry out against men he thought of as brothers was enough to have him tensing up all over again. Any second, they’d figure out it was him. None of the guys in Samcro were that stupid. Even the ones who acted like they were.

Sooner or later, everything would come out.

And Juice Ortiz was living with the weight of that dread and his secrets and decision every single day.

,, I just have to stay away. Keepin her at arms length is keepin her safe.” the solemn thought weighed heavily and he tore his eyes off of her.

Somehow, he got the feeling that would be easier said than done.

#juice ortiz fanfiction #juice ortiz fanfic #juice ortiz fic #my writing ; juice ortiz #my fics ; juice ortiz #my fanfiction ; juice ortiz #// HEAVY ANGST WARNING #injury / accident tw

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thestarkerisobvious · 4 years ago

Text

The Thing That Lives Under The Bed -- The Conclusion

art by @starker-sorbet

a snugglefic for @mrstarksbaby

This it the Coda for The Thing That Lives Under The Bed.

Did you wonder what Peter and his friends did once they got their hands on ALL those spellbooks? Did you wonder what would happen to those spirits trapped in the books, calling for Peter to set them free? Maybe you were curious what would happen if Peter performed the spell of the Kings of the East and the King of the West, splitting Tony in two?

I will be posting one chapter a day #OnHere, in honor of the place where the story began.

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

Adulthood

Angel In The Darkness

In addition to realizing that he is in love with the thing that lives under his bed, Peter Parker and his friends have also discovered an underground library full of spellbooks, spirits calling out to be freed and the promise of any number of superpowers.

You may be wondering what they did next.

This is not the answer to that question.

The drumming had begun, which meant the Disciples would begin the dance of Evorá, or at least, a modified version of it. Rumor was the whole ceremony was going to be shortened considerably, due to the fact that the High-High Priest had other engagements tonight. Multiple engagements. That was a problem, because it meant Angel had no idea how much time he had. When the Evorá dance began, it should have given him seven minutes, minimum. He was certain he could cover a lot of ground in seven minutes. He was determined.

Slipping into the forest that surrounded the ceremony field was easy. Far too involved in their complicated ritual, walking and chanting and lighting the torches in the interlocking triangles (cleverly paved with expensive mosaic stones, a gift from one of the many wealthy practitioners of the Lavern Post Healing Center) no one was likely to notice if one of the audience members slipped into the darkness. Especially one skinny, ragged barefoot kid. Angel might not have enough time, but he had some time.

He ran.

It was with some sadness that Angel fled from the Post Compound – it wasn’t exactly a bad place. It had been his home for so long, for longer than he could remember, really. Once upon a time he had said he never wanted to leave there, and Peter Parker, the founder of the entire kit and kaboodle, the High-High Priest himself, had assured Angel that he never had to leave. Not like the other practitioners, the pilgrims from Santa Barbara and Palm Beach and Manhattan. All of them said they wanted to live at their Winter retreat (or their Spring retreat (or their Autumn retreat, depending on why they came, what kind of healing they needed) but Peter Parker had said that Angel was different. That Angel could stay.

And there were so many people at the Post Compound that Angel cared for. Loved, really. Not High Priest Matthew, of course, who scared Angel badly and was constantly trying to control how much he ate, and not Dr. Wickham who shooed him away whenever he entered the room and never let him help. Certainly not Anton, who never spoke to him and always warded him off with a jealous glare.

But Mark and John were always good to him, most of the time (Mark and John were really Sarah D. and Monica. But all the Disciples had two names.) Laura Foster was also sweet to him, always had a kind word or two for him, even if she was kindly telling him he couldn’t eat.

Yes, those that would talk to Angel were sweet to Angel. Not like Anton. No one was sweet to Anton. Anton, who never seemed to stop arguing, who only existed to play devil’s advocate. Angel was everybody’s angel. And Angel loved them all.

And there were so many places within the compound that he hated to leave behind. The rows of tiny cabins filled with wealthy clientele cheerfully “roughing it” in efficiency rooms with minifridges. The underground Chapel of St. Cyprian where jaded New Yorkers found themselves weeping with joy and never knowing why. The secret libraries where only the first- and second-circles were allowed to go, but he was allowed to pour over the magic books for as long as he wanted. He loved those ancient books, loved to brag that he could read them all (and had read them all) Loved to be sent to look up some obscure spell or journal entry when one of the Disciples, and sometimes one of the second-circle magicians, remembered to ask him.

Angel loved being helpful.

He wasn’t being helpful now. His absence was going to be noticed at some point, and that was going to disrupt the ceremony. He didn’t allow himself to look up into the sky to see if the fairy-lights had started. If they had, that meant the joining had begun, and then… oh High Priest Matthew was going to be so angry when he found out. Angel shuttered at the thought of it. The High Priest had a terrible temper (that’s why his OTHER name in the compound was The Hulk.) Matthew’s servant, Firedrake, was even scarier. Angel couldn’t stand the idea of facing either one of them.

But there was nothing to be done about it now, so he ran faster.

The drums were ending behind him – that meant that the reading of the prayers had begun. That meant he might have another half-hour, if all the prayers were read. Puck and Oberon would step into the circle first. But when evil-eyed Anton stepped into the middle of the circle… that’s when they would notice Angel was missing. Another half-hour. Even if they read the prayers very quickly. Some parts of the ceremony couldn’t be skipped over. Angel knew. Angel had read all the books.

He was whispering the prayers even now as his swift feet took him out of the woods and straight into a moonlit patch of ferns. He moaned in relief as he ran…

…only to cry out loud in despair as his feet took him just as quickly past the ferns and into a field of ragweed.

No, no, no ! Angel fled the ragweed to the first clear patch of grass that he could see – ragweed was deadly to anyone trying to avoid detection from the Disciples – but that just took him to a patch of moonlit sand. He moaned in despair as his bare feet sank into it. He covered his mouth with both hands in a vain effort to hide the sound.

He had fucked up.

He was trying to bear north. The ferns should have given way to the ditch which would have given way to Witch Road. From there, if he could have stayed on the pavement, he might have avoided detection and headed straight north. He could have been well past the border of the Parker land before they even knew where to start looking for him…

But instead he drifted too far south. He wasn’t on his way out of the Parker property. He had stumbled right into the edge of Lovesick Lake.

In the near-full moonlight he saw all of it, those peaceful, serene knolls and gentle hills and berms that the Lavern Center patrons loved to stroll upon on pleasant nights in autumn and in Spring. Not as many in the summer. (Dr. Cyprian didn’t do his healing work in the summer.) And there weren’t many visitors on winter nights. Everyone staying at the Lavern Post Healing Center knew to avoid the woods on winter nights, if they didn’t want to run into the ghost of Evan Post. Everyone staying at the Lavern Post Healing Center knew that the Post property was haunted. It was the first thing they told you in the shuttle when they brought you here. It was on the brochure.)

There was a man standing a few yards away from him now, a young man Angel’s age (although certainly dressed better than Angel was.) He stood, unsure, upon a steep knoll, looking helplessly over the lake, clearly lost. Angel turned automatically to back the way he had come to hide himself. He didn’t like talking to the guests at the Healing Center when they got confused -- wasn’t supposed to talk to them, anyway. All Confused-Guests were supposed to be gently directed to Laura Foster or to her servant, who would explain to them, calmly, that they had come to the Center to participate in Dr. Cyprian’s legendary “Memory Therapy,” and direct them to the notes they had written to themselves in case they had forgotten that fact. 80% of the patients that participated in the “Memory Therapy” chose to keep some if not the entirety of their memories, choosing, after much self-examination, to hold onto the painful past in order to also retain the strength and compassion those painful life-lessons those memories were tied to. But as for that other 20%, well, Laura Foster was best and handling those.

But Angel couldn’t disappear into the brush the way he had come. He turned back to face the lost guest… only to realize there had been no one there. Angel dashed up to the knoll in confusion, but the young man was gone.

Instead he saw, stretching out all around him, the beautiful grassy banks known as the Moonlight HIlls. This was the romantic place where more than a few visitors to the center had enjoyed in the wee hours of the morning, to hook up with other visitors, or to mope over the hookups that never happened. This was Lovesick Lake, the place where you were SUPPOSED to come and sit on a green hill and look out over the water by moonlight to moon over that special person you couldn’t have. Although Peter Parker only called it “Virgin Lake.” Because, he joked, more than a few male individuals had lost a specific type of virginity to other male individuals on its moonlight shores.

There were two male individuals right now, Angel saw, holding each other and kissing in the darkness. Angel dashed silently back toward the water to avoid them… only to look up and see he had been mistaken again. There was no one there. Only shadows in the moonlight. He groaned. He was completely alone.

He groaned again when he saw where he was standing. Of course. The exact place where Peter Parker had famously made Matty the first Disciple. He had accidentally ran straight to the very first place they would come look for him the moment they noticed he was missing. This was Lovesick Lake. This was the Moonlight Hills. This was where everyone came to mope when they were heartsick. Of course this is where he would be.

He turned around and started to hurry away from the lake. Before him lay the dark road through the forest, the path that would lead directly back to the ceremony fields where Peter Parker and his Disciples were praying.

Angel thought he heard a rustling through the trees. In a panic he turned and ran pell-mell back to the water. Dammit, he could WADE half way through the lake, certainly it was shallow enough, and when he got to where the lake began in earnest he would swim across. He could make it to the other side.

Couldn’t he?

He groaned in frustration. He didn’t feel like swimming in the middle of the night, of course he didn’t. He was shaky and hungry and scared . But if he didn’t keep moving they would catch him and take him back to the ceremony. He had to escape.

He could swim all the way across the lake, he was sure of it. Panic and adrenaline would carry him all the way. He was skinny, but he was strong. And he was determined. He took three bold steps forward…

…and pulled up short the moment his bare feet touched the water.

The summer night was still, and yet the water was lapping loudly at the shore. Was that normal for a still night? Didn’t the wind need to be up for the water to be lapping that quickly? In despair Angel searched his memory… god knew he had been sitting on these banks, night after night, mooning over the man he missed so badly… weren’t the waves lapping then?

He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember. His thoughts raced as he desperately tried to think, but when he reached out for information, it simply wasn’t there. He had sat here on lonely nights, he was sure of it. But suddenly he couldn’t remember where he had sat, or how he had even gotten here, or how he had gotten back. The only thing that came to mind was the picture of the two men kissing in the darkness, the men he had seen before. The older man strong and confident, the younger man, almost a boy, moaning and clinging desperately to his lover with bony arms. He had only seen it for a second, but he had seen it so clearly. He couldn’t remember who the men were, or why the memory was important.

He only knew that, in the silence of the moonlight now, the lapping of the water sounded far too loud in his ears. Something must be moving underneath it. He thought the water would be safe, if they hadn’t noticed he was missing. But if they did notice, and if Monica had sent Liard after him… wouldn’t jumping into the water be the worst possible thing to do?

The men kissing on the hillside, he spun around to ask them for help, but they disappeared the moment he looked for them. They weren’t there… they were just dreams, or the ghost of dreams. Turning around in helpless circles, he realized what a terrible mistake he had made.

Dammit why, why, why hadn’t he just chosen to hide among the tiny cabins? They were all empty now, the wealthy clientele who had insisted on staying into the summer (and had paid too much to be denied) had all moved out for the two days needed for the ceremonies. Angel could have stayed hidden in those dark alleys between the rows, escaping detection until morning. They wouldn’t have thought to look for him there. Even Anton might have failed to look for him there. Instead he had come here, and now…

…and now there was nowhere left to go.

He looked at the troubled lake, then looked to his left. There the famous dead oak loomed menacingly against the black sky. He certainly couldn’t go that way – it was lit up by a row of tiki torches that marked the border. The few guests that were left at the Lavern Center had moved to the South House, partying the night away in their tents and pavilions as they waited for Peter and The Disciples to finish their summer rituals. They had been allowed to stay because they had promised to stay beyond that row of torches.

Vainly, Angel fought the panic.

It wasn’t working. He was trapped.

He had hoped that the distraction of the complicated ceremony – the Meeting of the Four Kings was an extremely complicated spell, written by Dr. Wickham himself – would give Angel the time he needed to slip away. But what was he thinking? All four Disciples were here tonight, as well as Peter Parker himself. They had all come home, and now? Along with Laura Foster that made six powerful magicians, each with multiple spirit-servants. Not to mention the lower, second-circle magicians that might have decided tonight was the night to start showing off what they had learned.

And in a few moments, they would all notice that Angel was missing.

Angel might have been safe from Firedrake in the darkness – but dammit the spirit could easily travel through the lamplight that glowed on Dead Oak Hill. He could avoid Firedrake as long as he didn’t try to circle around the lake to the south, but he could never go back north. The ragweed was Sarah D’s favorite plant, and it would whisper his location to her immediately. Plucky, her servant, could move among plants of every kind, but ragweed was its favorite. Then there was the little matter of the high weeds that could easily turn into arms to wrap around Angel and pull him down to the ground until he was caught. (Peter had forbidden anyone from saying it out loud, but everyone knew. Sarah D had become an expert at tying a man down when he didn’t want to be there.)

Firedrake could move through the lamplight. Plucky could move through the weeds. Liard could move through the water. He could avoid the high weeds and he could avoid the lamplight, but how the hell would he avoid Dr. Wickham’s servant Robin?

How did you run away from air?

Dammit he had to be safe in the water… didn’t he? Surely Monica was far too busy using Liard to help her with the complicated ceremony, surely she wouldn’t send her spirit away from her on such an important day. It had to be the water. He had no other way to go…

…but when he turned toward the lake again he saw Matthew’s Rock waiting for him and it filled him full of horror and dread. He could only see the tip in the lapping water but he knew… he knew what was underneath.

Tears were streaming down his face as he fought to catch his breath. He wasn’t trying to fight the panic anymore. The panic was winning. His breath came in desperate gasps and hitches. His chest ached. His knees were buckling underneath him. It was all he could do to keep standing.

And then he heard the trees shaking behind him.

They had sent someone. Not a spirit, a person. Angel could hear them leaping from tree to tree.

Angel closed his eyes tight and prayed to St. Cyprian. He prayed it wasn’t High Priest Matthew. Or worse, quarrelsome, sharp-eyed Anton. Maybe it was someone gentle like Monica or Laura-Bee. He prayed it was Laura. Laura had a ghostly spirit named Moonlight, and while Moonlight could make you walk through fire if it told you too, Laura could make you feel perfectly content while you did it.

The last tree shuddered and bent as the magician jumped into it, then jumped from it. It was one of the men. He hung from a bent branch for just a moment, before somersaulting into the air spectacularly, landing in a perfect superhero pose in the sand.

All five of the original magicians could run as fast as any vehicle. Each had clocked in at 70 miles per hour. Sometimes they had races for the amusement of the second circle. But there was only one of them who insisted on traveling by jumping from tree to tree.

In the pale moonlight, Peter Parker rose to his feet. He was alone.

Angel burst into tears.

#The Thing That Lives Under The Bed #Demon!Tony #TheWitchwayWritesStuff #Starker #Tony Stark/Peter Parker #Peter Parker/Tony Stark

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meditationnearme · 4 years ago

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Is This Crazy New Treatment The Cure To Your Insomnia? - how do you reduce stress

NuCalm promotes itself as neuroscience-backed tension and sleep technology. In practice, though, it simply helped me nap. I recently awakened from a delightful 20-minute nap. Really, it was more of a 10-minute half-nap half-trance, preceded by ideas of what I required to accomplish today that slowly liquified into the types of non-sequitur visions that take place because earliest phase of sleep.

In some way, this was rejuvenating. For the last week, I have actually been checking out the NuCalm system. According to its website, NuCalm is "the world's only trademarked neuroscience innovation clinically shown to deal with stress and improve sleep quality without drugs." It includes a neuroacoustic software application app utilized for 20- to 120-minute increments, an eye mask and the abovementioned processing discs, and in practice includes listening to ambient, cinematic sounds (comparable to this) with your eyes closed and a sticker label stuck to your inner arm.

Each of the elements are designed to set off the body's parasympathetic nervous system, which aids with recovery and relaxation. The disc is created to launch gamma-aminobutyric acid, a neurotransmitter that inhibits cortisol and adrenaline. With this and the app, NuCalm halts your body's tension action and therefore the mental and physical toll tension can handle the body.

military, 49 sports teams and in over a million surgical treatments. Some dental offices even utilize it for clients who hesitate of the dental expert. NuCalm's 'bio-signal processing disc' Although the product is touted as a way of possibly healing the body from injury, addiction and physical concerns, it appears predominately useful for relaxation and anxiety.

By this procedure, my use of NuCalm was a success: After my 20-minute session this afternoon, I certainly felt far more refreshed and awake. While a few of my sessions kept me conscious the whole time, I at least felt a bit more relaxed than previously. At the start, I 'd believed I was supposed to treat the session like a meditation, preventing letting my ideas roam.

Why I was so focused upon events of this age during my session is a secret to me, but regardless, I think I still dropped off to sleep for about five minutes. Unusually enough, a FAQ section of the app states that memory recollection is a typical characteristic of "theta brainwave variety," and that recalling memories in this phase allows you to dissociate negative feelings from them.

Overall, NuCalm did enable me to take best little afternoon naps in a structured method. I am decent at sleeping as it is, but I do believe something about NuCalm, whether it be the discs or the noises or the timer, made those naps more effective than usual. One glaring problem with NuCalm, nevertheless, is its rate.

Perhaps as I keep utilizing it, I'll find that this is a totally reasonable expense for the advantage of much better relaxation, health and sleep. At this moment, however, I 'd pay possibly $10 a month. The app likewise requires some major upgrading, as it presently only uses 3 various session types (recharge, reboot and rescue) at differing lengths and with a rather cumbersome layout.

Instead, it feels rudimentary, with lesser parts of the app like the post-session debriefing FAQ totally nonfunctional. I have actually taken some fantastic naps this last week, and I'll keep utilizing NuCalm for this function. It's a nearly simple and easy way of fitting 20 minutes of pure relaxation into my day. Whether those bio-signalling dics do anything, I'm still suspicious in addition to a cleaner app, I 'd need to get a bit more trust in the science to pay $60 a month.

Magdalene Taylor is a junior staff writer at MEL, where she began working two weeks after finishing college. Her work is a mix of cultural analysis and service, covering whatever from reconsiderations of low-brow hits like Joe Dirt and Nickelback to modern disability issues, OnlyFans and the kinds of small concerns about life like why baby carrots are so wet.

According to the company, thirty minutes of NuCalm is equal to 2 to 3 hours of corrective sleep. The NuCalm website boasts that the de-stressing treatment takes simply 2 minutes to administer and less than 5 minutes to accomplish its effects, making it the extremely meaning of a quick repair.

With its sleek website and claims of high-tech, borderline-magic outcomes, I half expected my NuCalm experience to occur in the literal future or, at really least, a center that reeked of sci-fi vibes. I believe I was imagining a workplace that looked like the ship from Passengers and a large set-up reminiscent of the memory-implanting tech from Total Remember or possibly even a coffin-like pod directly out of The Fifth Component.

My NuCalm treatment was not administered on the set of a motion picture, but it also wasn't administered in a dental expert's workplace. On the early morning of my visit, I drove across Los Angeles to Santa Monica to the workplaces of an authentic medical professional to the stars, whose Hollywood customers includes starlets, authors and motivational masters, and who boasts know-how in energy medication, integrative medication and bioidentical hormone replacement treatment.

Rather, my NuCalm experience began in a (actively) dimly lit waiting room that looked more like the living-room of an eccentric, well-traveled college professor than a medical center. The doctor was fashionably late not with another patient, simply in getting to the office. While the tardiness might usually have actually frustrated me, here, it appeared like part of the experience, almost like a sneak peek of the outcomes of the high-tech treatment that awaited me.

Throughout a quick consultation, the physician discussed the NuCalm procedure and summarized the science behind it (more on that later). The gist of the system, I learned, was this: I would chew a tablet of gamma-Aminobutyric acid, or -aminobutyric acid (or GABA, for short), a repressive neurotransmitter suggested to decrease activity in my nerve system.

I would listen, through headphones, to binaural beat music music with two various balanced pulses that activates Alpha and Theta brain waves, which are connected with the very first stage of deep sleep and meditation. Likewise, I would be blindfolded. And, in Doc Hollywood's workplace, I would do all of this while lying on a waterbed although the waterbed, I learned, is not a standard or needed element of the treatment.

I was led to a small exam space (or, possibly, a large closet), where I was offered a big GABA tablet and told to chew but not swallow it while the medical professional marked time the binaural beats and connected the Biosignal Processing Disc to my wrist. Lastly, after what seemed like a much longer duration of time than it possibly could have been, I was informed to swallow the GABA vitamin sludge, which had the artificially sweet, fruity taste and distinctly milky taste and texture of Flinstones vitamins that are a couple of months past their expiration date.

The NuCalm treatment itself was completely pleasant. The music was calming but interesting (I've since registered for a binaural beats playlist on Spotify bless the web). The milky, orange-adjacent taste of the GABA tablet didn't remain in a particularly noticeable way. And the waterbed was warmed, that made for a relaxing place to lie down and rest.

What am I doing incorrect? Why don't I feel calm? If science can't make me chill TF out, am I just a lost cause? Perhaps if I do a body scan, I'll be able to feel the results. That's a good concept. I'm going to do a body scan. This will resemble mindfulness on steroids orange-flavored, healthy steroids.

I am broken. I was wrong. It was not practically over. Maybe it's the kind of thing you can't feel in the moment, however I'll observe a substantial distinction when it's over. I have a lot work to do. Stop thinking of work and being stressed. That beats the entire purpose.

I asked how typically he advised that individuals come in for NuCalm treatments and he stated that it differs, but that some individuals "need it daily." I couldn't help however think, based on my experience and the lack of concrete outcomes, that that appeared excessive. He handed me some research study further discussing the science behind NuCalm prior to rushing off to his next appointment, and I left sensation disappointed and a little anxious about my failure to feel less distressed through the treatment.

For the record, it's not. I discovered the experience to be a little New Age-y in practice, however the system really is based in science. Drawing from neuroscience research into the patterns the brain goes through throughout natural periods of relaxation, every component of NuCalm is created to simulate that process and prompt a stressed brain to switch gears to a more relaxed state.

NuCalm works specifically on the body's inhibitory system, the GABAergic system. This gadget is bio-mimetic in that it resets the naturally taking place negative feedback loop of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which when properly functioning is expected to shut down and stop releasing cortisol from the adrenal glands after the end of a stressful occasion.

Individuals in this state are physically not able to have a distressed reaction. Within moments of application, users will start to feel remedy for the 'fight-or-flight' considerate nervous system action and their tension hormonal agent (cortisol) levels will start to decline as the HPA axis is hindered." Here's a quick breakdown of the science behind each phase of the NuCalm process.

It's really the primary repressive neurotransmitter system in brain circuits. Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid is a relaxation neurotransmitter that the body produces naturally when we're preparing yourself to sleep, so the strategy of utilizing GABA supplements to signify the brain that it's time to relax makes good sense. What's not completely clear, nevertheless, is how effective oral GABA supplements remain in triggering those advantages.

While some studies have actually revealed that GABA can cross the blood-brain barrier, others have shown the opposite, suggesting a possible placebo result behind perceived benefits of the supplements. Researchers agree that more research is needed to figure out how useful GABA supplements really are. According to NuCalm's website, the disc "simplifies the process of triggering the parasympathetic worried system, by tapping into the body's Pericardium Meridian with specific electromagnetic (EM) frequencies." The disc (which, again, was a round sticker, about the size of a quarter, that was used to the within of my wrist) was, undoubtedly, my greatest source of apprehension at the same time, and NuCalm's official explanation of the science behind it highlights the most Brand-new Age-y vibes of the company.

It is hypothesized that if you can restore the frequencies that take a trip through the Meridians you can reinstate ideal physiology. Each NuCalm disc holds the EM frequency patterns of GABA and its precursors to provide a pure biological signal to your body. When put on the within your left wrist, at your Pericardium-6 acupuncture point, the disc sends a signal to the pericardium of your heart to trigger regional parasympathetic nerve fibers, which then transfer the signal to your brain telling it to increase vagal nerve output and start the process of decreasing the body.

In 2017, Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP promoted a $120 brand name of bio-frequency stickers, leading to a short-lived viral moment for the tech. Sadly for proponents of the devices, the action wasn't fantastic, with Mark Shelhamer, previous chief scientist at NASA's human research division, significantly decrying the GOOP-endorsed product as "snake oil." Although the NuCalm site describes that "each disc holds the electromagnetic frequency patterns of GABA and its precursors to provide a pure biosignal to your body," it's unclear exactly how putting the sticker on your wrist sets off that shipment.

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elliot-elliot · 5 years ago

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Things i forgot about in PJO/HOO

TLT:

Percy accidentally fired a war cannon into a school bus

He also accidentally made his entire class fall into an aquarium tank thing

Grover cries when he’s frustrated

Grover has a note excusing him from PE “for the rest of his life”

Halfway though the school year their old math teacher had a nervous breakdown

Once, Percy told Grover that he didn’t think mrs Dodds was human and Grover was deadass just like “yes. You’re right” completely seriously

Chiron has tournament days where he would dress up in Roman armor

Percy assumed all the weird weather was because of global warming

Percy called his English teacher an old sot

Grover is a terrible liar

MASSIVE BLUE SOCK

Grover’s bladder acts up when he gets upset

Sally’s parents died in a plane crash when she was 5, and was raised by her uncle who didn’t really care about her

Sally wanted to be a novelist

She had to quit school her senior year to take care of said uncle, who got cancer

Gabe made Percy provide his gambling funds, and Percy said that if he didn’t, Gabe would “punch his lights out”

Percy has nightmares about Mrs Dodds

Percy genuinely liked Yancy Academy

Percy did the warding off evil gesture towards Gabe, and the screen door shut so hard “it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the stairs as if he’d been shot from a cannon”

Percy was stalked by a cyclops in 3rd grade

In preschool, he strangled a snake with his bare hands, and his mom found him playing with it like a rope

At the cabin, grover cursed in Ancient Greek, and Percy understood it perfectly

Percy thought Grover was a donkey from the waist down

Percy tried to get the Minotaurs attention by waving his red rain coat

Percy said he would rather live on the streets or pretend he was 17 and join the army if it meant not living with Gabe

Percy said that Mr D looked like a Cherub

They have satyrs at most schools

There was a different Latin teacher for the first week of the school, but Chiron convinced him to take a leave of absence

Mr D plays pinochle with the satyrs

There’s an orientation film

Grover eats mr D’s Diet Coke cans

Probation in the 1900s was Zeus’s punishment to Mr D

Percy likes basketball

Percy tripped when coming into the Hermes cabin for the first time

Most teachers are literally monsters

For a mortal, nectar and ambrosia turns their blood to fire and their skin to sand

Clarisse calls Annabeth “wise girl”

Percy accidentally sprayed Annabeth with toilet water

Chiron told Percy that he might be considered a myth in 2000 years

Luke pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and Percy thought Luke was gonna gut him

Percy is really good at canoeing

Luke’s the best swordsman they’d had in 300 years

Percy was able to disarm Luke on his first try after he poured water on his head

Hitler was a son of hades, since WW11 was the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of hades on the other

Houdini went on a quest to the underworld

In capture the flag, clarisse tried to cut Percy’s hair

Percy apologized for the water healing his Injuries

Someone left a newspaper about Percy and his mom going missing inside his doorway

Mr D wanted to Spontaneous Combust Percy

It’s illegal to make copies of Zeus’s lightning bolt

CHB has a hydra head from Woodstock

The oracle told Percy the prophecy through the image of Gabe and his friends

Grover eats pinochle cards “like potato chips”

Luke made Percy blush almost as much as Annabeth blushes when she’s around Luke

Chiron told Percy only to use his sword in emergencies

Mortals aren’t important enough to be killed by celestial bronze

Percy was famous for loosing pens at school

Annabeth was explaining the Athens rivalry thing to Percy, and he was like “they must have really liked olives” and Annabeth got mad and then he was like “Now, if she’d invited pizza—*that* i could understand” which made her even more mad, and Argus then winked at Percy

Annabeth gave Percy her hat so he could escape off the bus

Grover was gonna defend himself from the furies with a tin can

Grover ties Mrs Dodds’s legs up with her own whip

Percy told Mrs Dodds to eat his pants in Latin

Medusa turned Grover’s uncle to stone

Medusa is/sounds middle eastern

Percy told Medusa that they were from a traveling circus, and when they were alone Annabeth told Percy “your head is full of kelp”

Grover told Medusa that he takes vitamins for his ears

Satyrs can’t get migraines

Percy fucking mailed Medusa’s head to mount Olympus, and he signed the package “with best wishes”

GLADIOLA THE FUCKING PINK POODLE

Annabeth appeared on her dads doorstep in a golden cradle

Annabeth calls Grover “goat boy”

Percy hates confined spaces

I JUST REALIZED THIS HIS FIRST OUT OF 2 (i think 2?? Maybe there’s more??) TRAUMATIC ELEVATOR EXPERIENCES

The chimera has a rhinestone collar that says “Chimera— rabid, fire-breathing, poisonous— if found, please call Tartarus—ext. 954”

Echidna told Percy what she is— the mother of all monsters, and Percy was like “isn’t that a type of anteater”

The chimera poisoned Percy

Percy jumped from the arch assuming that it would kill him, in order to protect the mortals that were on the arch

Percy fucking lit a lighter at the bottom of the Mississippi

The campers were taking sides— Zeus or Poseidon

Gods can’t steal each other’s items directly

Percy said the leather on ares’s motercycle looked like “Caucasian human skin”

Percy said that ares’s was handsome

Percy said he broke clarisse’s spear and ares was like “oh dope”

Ares threatened to turn Percy into a prairie dog

Ares gave them a bag of double stuffed Oreos

Percy thought that the reason he could talk to zebras but not lions was because of another learning disability

They released a zebra into Las Vegas

Percy snapped Annabeth out of the lotus haze by looking her in the eyes and saying “spiders. Large, hairy spiders”

Percy threw away ares’s backpack, but once they left the lotus hotel, it reappeared on his shoulders

THE WATER BEDS

The lotus card had infinite money, and the cab driver referred to her as “your highness”, which Annabeth likes

They let the cab driver keep the (infinite) change

When at santa monica, percy looked out at the ocean, thought about how 2/3rds of the world is covered in water, and wondered how he could be the son of someone so powerful

Percy just. Fucking walks into the water and annabeth is like “percy what the fuck are you doing” and headass just keeps walking until he’s fully submerged

A mako shark nuzzled him like a dog

Percy used to see sea spirits smiling at him in the waves at Montauk beach

Houdini could “escape even the depths of tartarus… damn, talk about foreshadowing

Percy told the bus driver he was a stunt double for a bunch of child actors

Percy said L.A. reminded him of Ares

They got attacked by a gang

CRUSTY

Percy tricked crusty into getting into his own beds, and percy then cut his head off

Grover told Charon that all 3 of them drowned in a bathtub, and Charon looked mildly impressed

Percy bribed Charon into letting them in

Percy’s Traumatic Elevator Experience count so far: 2

The river Styx is polluted

Annabeth held percy’s hand on the boat

Thomas Jefferson is a judge of the underworld

Grover compared Asphodel to standing in a wheat field in Kansas forever

Cerberus is a purebred Rottweiler

Annabeth played fetch with Cerberus

Annabeth promised Cerberus that she would come back and play fetch with him again

Cerberus considers Annabeth a friend

Percy saw things in the Fields Of Punishment that he “didnt want to describe”

Percy said he wanted to go to the Isles of The Blest when he dies

THEY ALMOST FALL INTO TARTARUS.

Percy said that Hades’s eyes reminded him of Hitler’s

Percy wondered if Hades’s underwear was made of trapped souls like his robe was

Percy interrupted Hades to tell him that Charon wanted a raise

Hades threatened to “stop death”

PERCY TOLD HADES TO PLAY WITH CERBERUS MORE

Annabeth gave percy her necklace to wear for good luck (with fighting ares)

Percy jumped over ares on a 6-foot wave

Percy fucking told the entire city of LA that they could get a free appliance, and he gave them Gabe’s phone number. Fucking love this kid.

Finally, a non-traumatic elevator experience

Zeus went to purify his bolt in the waters of Lemnos

Podeiden told percy that his rebelliousness was because “the sea does not like to be restrained”

Poseidon said that sally is a goddess among women

Gabe fucking made Sally go to work when she got back

Percy didnt know that Gabe had been hitting sally, until he saw her flinch when Gabe raised his hand

Poseiden sent him Medusa’s head back to use against gabe

The ares cabin made Percy’s laurel and painted “loser” on it

Sally sold her “sculpture” to an art collector in Soho, got a new apartment, and started going to college

The Soho gallery called the sculpture “a huge step forward in super-ugly neorealism”

Percy told luke he misses being on the quest

Ares caught luke with the bolt and helm

Grover “confused the (flying shoe) curse”

#pjo #percy jackson #percy jackon and the olympians #things i forgot #the lightning thief #heros of olympus #rick riordan #uncle rick

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