#TUMBLR EXCLUSIVE for now

[sandshadow9]

Love Language

“Are you okay? You’ve been staring at that scroll for hours.”

Peril watched as Clay heaved an enormously dramatic sigh and flopped his head on the desk. It hit with a rattling thunk.

“I knoooow,” he moaned, his usually adorable face scrunched in misery. “I’ve been trying to write this letter to Umber for hours but it’s really super hard.”

Carefully, always carefully, Peril approached the desk. The light from her firescales joined with the small halos of orange that flickered from the candles that lined the desk. Beneath Clay’s head was a piece of parchment half filled with his signature left-leaning scrawl. She glowered at it. “Want me to burn it for you? Would that make you feel better?”

The smile that fell across his face was like a summer wind under her wings. “That’s very…sweet, Peril, but I don’t think that’s going to solve my problem.” He lifted his head, his sweet brown eyes flitting across the page sadly. “I just… never really got good at spelling and stuff. I want to get better, but every time I try to write to someone or help a student with their work, I end up getting all confused and mix my letters up.”

Peril leaned over his shoulder, eyeing the evil paper that dared to hurt Clay in any way. The written text had several sections that had been marked out and re-written. At the bottom of the page was a word – at least she guessed it was the same word – rewritten in multiple ways and scratched out every time.

“What’s…gongeous?”

Clay put a talon over his face. “I’m trying to spell gorgeous. I’ve been sitting here forever trying to spell it.”

“Oh!” Peril said brightly, titling her head to the side. “G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S. Gorgeous!”

Clay looked at her wonderingly, like she had just shown him a portal to an endless field of cows. “Peril…yes! Thank you! That’s exactly it!” Quickly he began scribbling down the letters. He smiled down at the parchment, a weight lifted from his wings, and then he looked back at her in a way that stole the breath right out of her chest. “You’re so smart. I wish you could help me write all my letters.”

                                                 ~~~

In Turtle’s opinion, a SeaWing was the perfect dragon for a midnight snack stealth mission to the kitchen. First of all, he could see in the dark so no worrying about slamming into walls or stumbling down the wrong tunnel. Secondly… uh… he didn’t actually have a second point down yet.

The list was still a work in progress, after all.

As he approached the entrance to the library, he noticed that the solid darkness eased into something more shadowy and flickering. Light filtered out of the library entrance and fell over the stone cave in warm puddles of soft orange. Alarmed, Turtle realized someone must have left a candle burning in the library.

Being the self-preserving and heroic dragon he was, Turtle immediately hurried into the library to save the school.

He did not find a candle. What he found instead was a hundred times more dangerous.

Peril was sitting in the library, holding some thin granite slates in her burning talons. Turtle recognized them as the slates Starflight had made so that he could read by touch. Luckily they also doubled as fire-proof reading material.

Peril was studying the text so intensely that Turtle had to clear his throat several times before she looked up.

“Go away. I’m busy,” she said.

“Okay but…what are you doing?” Turtle asked.

“I’m reading the dictionary,” she stated mater-of-factly, “and memorizing the spelling for each word.”

Turtle considered this. He considered it for several minutes, turning it around in his head so many times it made him dizzy. Finally he asked the only question you can ask in this sort of situation. “But…why?”

Peril looked up from her reading, her eyes dreamy and unfocused. “In case… someone needs to know how to spell a word. Then I can always be ready.”

Turtle decided not to point out that there were easier ways to check one’s spelling that didn’t include memorizing the dictionary. But, it was late and he was hungry.  

“Well… have fun with that. I’m off to find some leftover croissants.”

“Bring me back some, would you?” Peril asked, and Turtle stifled a groan. He and his stomach had really been hoping to finish off whatever was left.

But then he turned back and saw Peril, his best friend in the whole world, sitting on her own in a dark room.

He sighed to himself and, being the heroic dragon he was, promised to be right back.

[lightdancer1]

A small Sandman fic

Destruction stood, pacing around his sister, who was sitting on a marble column.

I don't understand how you do it.

She was busy looking at her nails as he spoke.

Everyone gets angry at me for suggesting I want to leave, that I want to figure out who I am when I'm not just the will animating an idea, or part of the universe. How dare I set such horizons?

He shook his head, furiously.

You, on the other hand, give up that power even for a day, live as a mortal. That's how I found you here. You're my sister as a human being. How do you do this?

The girl looked at him.

"I consider it a blessing, Destruction. For twenty-four hours I'm something real. Not something empty."

You literally give everything up! You look like my sister, but you're human.

"Yes, I'm your sister as a human. I actually can hold hands with people without killing them. Breathe, eat. Sleep. Experience every single domain except mine as a human does."

I don't understand.

"You literally want to find out who you are as a person because this conversation we keep having about what it is to be one of the most powerful beings in existence and yet empty never has a satisfactory answer. You are enough of a person to rightly resent being asked to keep six people from strangling each other across the table every time you sit between us."

She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

"I was having a perfectly fine day, here. It's a beautiful day, I was enjoying a fair and a morality play and you had to drag me out here for this?"

You die.

She blinked.

"Yes, that's what a mortal day means, little brother. I die. A lot. I've done this for a few billion years now, once a century. It has no mystery for me. A heartbeat is a wonderful thing. This body...."

She smacked her fist on the column hard enough it bruised, yelping slightly.

"It can be hurt, as I can be hurt. My only complaint is that it's not long enough. A single day is just too short and I have to wait a whole century for another one. Sometimes if I'm excessively bitchy a particular century it's because it's been a bad one at work and my mortal day is the best thing that century."

You die.

"Yeah, we've established that, little brother. I don't get a long time with this, can we please get to the heart of it so I can go back to what I was doing?"

He looked her over. The being who sat in front of him on the column in that dark dress looked like his sister but she also looked like the child his sister appeared to be.

Is it really worth it, to give all this up? Even for a little bit?

Death shrugged.

"The only one who can answer that question, little brother, is you. It's your life. Don't stay on the job, or quit it, because of what the rest of your family tells you."

Destruction gave her a long look.

"That's really the big reason I keep telling you to leave. You keep thinking of yourself as who you are for our family, as one of the Endless. You will never be happy if you keep asking the what ifs. Go see who you are, if you're not Destruction of the Endless. You might be a chef, you might be an artist, you might be a blacksmith, you might be a clown, fuck if I know."

She got up and slipped down from the column, holding her hand (unaware that she'd broken her pinky and part of the bones in her hand, though she would find that hand hurting for the rest of that day). Destruction stood deep in thought.

She turned to look back at him.

"You need this for yourself, little brother. It might be-no, it definitely is selfish. But we're still people, dammit. If you do it, I hope you see that. You, all of you, keep looking at what we do like having power is enough. What good did it do Dream in the Affair of the Helm? Or Despair when she was murdered? Did it stop Desire from losing their relationship with Dream?"

She shook her head.

"Looking at your life as the perspective of one of the most powerful beings in the universe is the wrong way, Destruction. It will give you questions nothing can answer. But that's my view. I'm not you. I hope, whatever, and whenever, you decide you'll find out what's right. But let it be your decision, don't try to put the responsibility on anyone else. You can decide, little brother."

She was gone before the words he wanted to say came out of his mouth.

[lgbtlunaverse]

The world exists in such a baffling state of simultaneous sex-aversion and sex-hegemony. Every social platform on the internet is trying to banish sex workers to the shadow realm but I can't post a tweet without at least two bots replying P U S S Y I N B I O. People are self-censoring sex to seggs and $3× but every other ad you see is still filled with half-naked women. Rightwingers want queer people arrested for so much as existing in the same postal code as a child and are also drumming up a moral panic about how teenage boys aren't getting laid enough. I feel like I'm losing my mind.

[sol-rust]

trimax sketchdump

[traybakedtoffee]

twitter just got banned in Brazil, this is how I cope 😔

[s7ven-art]

Lover's embrace

[trouticide]

drawing a frame from every episode of it’s always sunny season 2 episode 1: charlie gets cr——-d

my very first frank !! :3

[samipekoe]

I miss her...

[ikeameatballspoisonedme]

Do people even play the communist vision quest after the first day

[sopuu]

some stuff from twitter

first two are birthday gifts for @/enden-agolor!

[pudica]

venom

[brandedgun]

So juziful

[xander-wolk]

Suddenly got possessed to animate Alear instead of going to bed

[ragsy]

Wormest Wishes, and Happy Crawlidays! 🪱🐛🪲

I decided to finally get myself back into printmaking this year, and I got it in right under the wire. I also wanted to try 3D printing my block plate, just to see if I could, and... Yes! I can, apparently!

[rubybug]

hello yes I would also like to pat the ruby

Stop you’re spoiling her!!

[lacoones]

baby, I'm a project

✨ spoil me ✨