#Where Land and Myth Tread

[marcusmettalus]

Where Land and Myth Tread.

Part 3

(Continued from here)

Ostia Haldus coughed violently as she staggered off the elevator platform, gripping with one hand onto a convenient guard railing as she tried to clear out her lungs. The other elevator passengers were giving the outlander woman a wide berth as they made their way down the platform towards the various arrival terminals surrounding the Space Elevator.

Grand Dame Noémie Durand of Karseille was letting the Imperial guest go through their coughing fit in peace, the air here on Midgård was quite different in comparison to the smog choked Hive Cities that many Imperial were accustomed to, or the factory choked Forge Worlds. Midgård was the capital world of the Kingdom, the seat of power for not only the Riksdag but also High King Surtr.

"Frakk, urgh,, I feel like I might spew in a minute. What kind of machine spirit cursed contraption was that? You said it was an elevator, not a bloody dropper. My heart and stomach just swapped places!" Ostia glares at her supposedly benevolent guide during this trip to Midgård, and now she felt like Noémie was actively trying to make her sick or something.

"Oh do not be so dramatic, it is an elevator for all intents and purposes. It rather jarring for all people when they first take I assure you. The ride up to the space port is much more comfortable I dare say however. Now Ostia cheri, let's keep moving so we don't block traffic. Allonz, Allonz." Noémie hooks an arm with Ostia's free arm, helping the Scion back upright and making their way down the walkways to arrivals.

Ostia grumbled some more under her breath while using the back of her hand to rub off anything from her mouth, giving a short glare at Noémie's very nonchalant approach to everything in life. It's already been one heck of a joy-ride these past few months, and if the galaxy had anything to say about this, it was that the ride was not going to calm down anytime soon. No matter what came round the next bend, it was almost something either a pleasant surprise or a serious head-turner.

Ostia still recalled when Noémie did a tour of the various Knights the various Dynasties of Karseille had in their hold, before getting the real surprise of witnessing the Knight called Dominion move on its own volition and even spoke. Though calling it actual human speech is another thing, the substance and tone was there in its words regardless.

"There should be a little time before we are truly required to make our appearance with the Ambassadors and the High King, so we can take in some sights here within the Capitol. Surely you would like to see something of their unique culture and faith? You are clearly more open minded in comparison to those frankly uncouth Inquisitive types,," Noémie rattles on some more, breaking Ostia out of her thoughts and now aware the duo had already made it through the arrival halls and toll gates. Ostia turned her gaze round to see what Noémie pointed out prior, before freezing in her tracks.

The city outskirts spread out across the valley before Ostia, and perched on the horizon were great edifices of stone and iron, towers and buttresses dotted along various monuments and constructs. Nowhere near the sheer scale of Imperial Hives or the like,, but the breadth of colors and materials mixed in the streets and boulevards, the clearly newer homes and skyscrapers being neighbors with centuries old brick mansions and malls. Ostia felt as if she was looking at an old relic tapestry from a bygone age, a mural depiction of what a civilization from before the Emperor or his like ever came to power. Locked in a time before Imperial modernisation and culture shifts.

On Imperial worlds and stations, one was always reminded of the present wars across the Imperium: vox hailers and Ecclesiarchy priests crowing at the citizens, propaganda and recruitment billboards and vox-net, the flotilla of Imperial Navy patrolling to and from almost every port. But here,,

"Do they even know that there is war going on? Out there in the Galaxy?" Ostia finally spoke, her eyes following the miniatures of citizens milling through the avenues and workplaces. "They know. Every single one of them." Noémie nods solemnly, a more neutral tone in her voice this time as she senses Ostia's mood change.

"But,, this doesn't feel like one being affected by the war. It's almost,, idyllic, calming even. Is this really the capitol?" Ostia still held onto Noémie's for a bit longer as she looked across the expanse of the city. Broad roads of cobblestones, foot bridges of wood and steel crossing over streets and canals, heaving open-air markets dotted through the districts.

"In the eyes of Midgårds people, yes. Kalmaholm was never meant to become a metropolis, but with Surtr's reign and the love of his new people,, it went through changes to accommodate the new center of a growing power." Noémie sighs gently under her breath, a softer gaze across her face as Ostia tries to spot where the High King may have his Palace or such like.

"Grand Dame Durand! What a welcome sight on your return." Ostia and Noémie turned to find the owner of the new voice, and spot the approaching men. Ostia has another heart skip however,, the man in question addressing her guide was not only huge, but had clearly visible neuro-ports dotted along his bared forearms and under his vest collar. Was he an Astartes?

"Ah! Löjtnant Lukas Tøva, so good to see you in warm health. And so well groomed as always, I must compliment you Midgårdians on your spring outfits." Noémie quickly releases her guest and regales Lukas with praise. If Ostia didn't know any better, she might have guessed the Dame was interested in the guy.

This Tøva character stood tall over Noémie and Ostia, easily half a head above R'tan in height though the main difference was his build. A broader chest and shoulders, with an overall heftier stocky appearance than the usual Astartes chiseled image that Imperial Propaganda would have one imagine. Tøva was clad in simple clothing of a dyed leather vest with a long sleeved linen tunic beneath, thicker weave trousers and what appeared to be rubber-soled slippers or shoes. The only thing which made Tøva distinct from his attendets was the metal badge pinned to his vest, with the seal of office he held.

"Hahaha you flatter me Grand Dame. I trust your journey here was without trouble? And I was informed you had brought guests however, ones that were not formally announced till you had already traversed The Veil." Tøva changed his tone while addressing Noémie, while his eyes turned to focus onto Ostia some meters behind.

The hairs on the back of her neck immediately stood on end, breath catching a scant moment when Tøva's eyes locked onto Ostia's. She always felt the gaze from an Astartes was cold or distant, but with R'tan it was vastly different, those held warmth, mirth and tender care. Tova's was something else entirely.

It felt as though Ostia was staring down the barrel of a bolter, having caught the attention of some apex predator in the bushland and locking eyes with them. The eyes were amber jewels beneath the trimmed brow, glinting sharply with calculating intent and precision. Ostia needed to reach for her weapon, her bolt pistol, something in hopes to get those eyes off of her. Now.

"Löjtnant Lukas, please be at ease. No need to scare my friend like so, she is a representative of House Haldus from the Imperium! Her House are allies of mine in this conflict with the enemy. Our, Enemy." Noémie firmly jabs the Astartes in the chest with an scolding finger, not enough to jostle the man but plenty enough to break his gaze with Ostia and scowl a little at Noémie.

Ostia felt her lungs open up again, her sudden tension and axienty melt away just as quickly they were forced onto her. Not exactly the most heartwarming of greetings she has had on a new world, but it wasn't the worst welcome she's had either. Her time here on Midgård is going to be eventful she thought while she cursed under her breath.

"Groxshit,,"

(Ostia Haldus belongs to of course @rowscara!)

[niqhtlord01]

Humans are weird: The place humans dare not tread

Extract from Garth Len’al, chief representative of the Zevalen Union to the Terran Federation Subject: Human Definition of “Death Worlds”

“A “Death World” is considered to be one of our people we think of extreme temperatures or unstable environments. In practice it seems like a standard definition, yet not for every species in the galaxy.

Extreme temperatures mean nothing to humans. It doesn’t matter if it is -100 or 300, they find ways to thrive in these otherwise deadly conditions as easily as one would move through water. Some even go further by using their natural evolutionary traits to adapt and condition themselves. I have seen visual files of humans stripping naked and bathing themselves in snow or laying in the scorching sun like a child in a candy store.

The instability of worlds has likewise not been a hindrance to humanity as had the extreme temperatures. In these situations they see it as a challenge and seek to perform mechanical wonders to tame their new home. On Dorbi II they built massive mobile cities that move between green zones each month to avoid the planets various earthquake seasons. For Timpel Prime they used massive drilling constructs to channel lava flows to create habitable regions for plant life to grow. Most impressive was Havenstead where they were able to artificially induce the coral to grow into massive mountain sized landmasses that reached all the way up from the seas floor to build new settlements on.

So if the standard definitions for a so called “Death World” do not apply, what then do humans considered to be death worlds? Would such a definition even exist in their vocabulary? It would surprise many that humans do have that definition, but it has a much darker and morbid meaning attached that far exceeds our own imagination.

Only one world has ever fit the definition of a “Death World” for humans. It was a world discovered during their golden age of exploration and was found to be full of such nightmares and horrors that all records of its location have been removed from every human archive and data base. It is now spoken of as a legend passed between one human to another, both as myth and warning to never seek it out.

That world has no other name then that of “Garden of Montezuma”.

From all surviving accounts the planet was described as a paradise world. Lush green and bountiful jungles covered the entire planet which supported a diverse wildlife not seen in millennia. Water so pure you could see the bottom of their oceans and skies so breathtaking the stars were said to never have been brighter.

The first colonization attempt was centered on the southern hemisphere with roughly two hundred human settlers to lay the foundation for a colony. The news networks on the human homeworld advocated heavily for the planet and it was expected that within a month of the initial establishment it would quickly grow in size. So when the final day came the colonists were dropped off with all the supplies they would need and a scheduled drop of new materials put in place for one month later.

A month went by and the supply ship returned only to find every trace of the colony was gone.

The area cleared away had been once more swallowed up by the jungles. Vines thick as tree trunks covered the few prefabricated buildings and landing pads that remained making the entire place seem like the ruins of an ancient civilization rather than a month long undertaking. Yet even more perplexing was the complete lack of any of the two hundred colonists.

It was as if the jungle had returned and claimed what had been taken from it.

This brought on a wave of fear for the humans as the sudden mysterious loss went unexplained. Dozens of investigators were sent to the planet while a human fleet did a swing by to scan for human life signs on the planet. Both came up empty and within three months the terran public had moved on to new dilemmas.

Five years went by before a second colonization attempt was made; although this time a detachment of military would also accompany the settlers to the colony. This time a location along the western landmass near the coastline was chosen; far from the original settlement location.

While the settlers got to work on building the settlement itself, the military contingent began work on a series of fortifications that ringed the entire perimeter. By the day’s end the colonists were surrounded in a fortress of fabricated stone, barbed wire, automated turrets, and enough armed personnel to occupy a small city. To add further to this impressive display the original transport ship that had carried the settlers and military forces to the planet remained in orbit and conducted hourly scans of the surrounding area to warn of any potential threats.

Three hours after sunset the transport ship began picking up frantic distress signals coming from the planet. He demanded to know why his scanning officers had not warned him, and to his surprise they were just as blindsided as he was. The scans had revealed no new movement on or within the perimeter for the last several hours when suddenly the communications network was hammered by dozens of distress calls coming from the surface.

They made a direct call to the military commander, Commander Nathan Tole, and demanded an update. When the video feed finally established the captain was saw the commander at the back of his office with two other soldiers hiding behind an overturned desk. The three of them were firing wildly at the doorway, punching holes through the sealed door and making whatever was on the other side squeal in pain.

The roar of sustained gunfire drowned out every attempt of the captain to speak to Nathan, and even if they weren’t the crew doubted he would have answered them anyway. The commander’s eyes were mad with fear as he fired over and over at the shadowy creatures beyond the door.

As the bullet holes became ever wider the door finally gave way and collapsed into the room. Whatever had been trying to get in before now shambled into the room and came within full view of the video feed and made every heart watching the feed skip a beat.

The figures were the colonists they had delivered but they were twisted and deformed in horrific manners. Their flesh had been turned a sickly green while their bones and muscle warped in unnatural positions to make them appear more beast than human. Their uniforms hung from their deformed bodies in rags and shreds, in places their bodies had grown and stretched so violently the growths had burst through them.

Each one was different in their appearance. Some looked almost normal save for their green skin, while others were beyond recognition standing six feet tall and covered in wood like spines.

All of the figures shambled into the room and made straight for the soldiers who continued to fire what dwindling ammunition they had left. Bullets punctured them and green ichor spurted out; yet they kept shambling forward.

The captain watched as one of the soldiers panicked and leapt out the nearby window while another put the muzzle of their rifle under their chin and fired a bullet straight into their head. Only Commander Tole remained as he continued firing round after round until finally the fateful click chimed and the commander was out of ammo.

Flipping the gun over, the commander held it like a club and prepared himself for his final stand. Before the feed went out, he turned to the video screen and said “Do not come here, this place is death”. At the transmissions end the captain began to issue orders for transports to return to the settlement and save the survivors, but his crew informed him that by now it would be too late.

Within another hour the distress signals faded one by one. The captain had his crew tap into the video feeds of the colony and watched the same nightmare play out over and over.  Dwindling pockets of resistance were overrun by swarms of monsters. Several individuals tried to navigate to the landing pads and escape only to be caught and infected themselves.

By the dawn of the next day there was not a single living sole in the entire settlement; and just as mysteriously as the creatures had arrived did they then vanish into the surrounding jungle without a single notice.

From that day forward the planet was listed as officially off limits. To further enforce the restriction a virus was introduced into the galactic positioning net which deleted all records of the star system and its location. Were it not for the recordings the captain made to carry back to terran space there would be no evidence what so ever of this fiendish planet. Yet even now, some sixty years later you still hear stories of humans searching for the lost gardens of Montezuma. The fools know the risk and the tales of horror and yet still go on the quest for it.

Then again, to find the only world that humans ever said was a death world would be a story worthy of tale in of itself.

[witchofthesouls]

Hey, for the other!tfp trio….let's assume that the team remained on really close contact despite the distance after the war (RID 2015 who knows you? Certainly not me). I wanna see a really touching reunion between the bots and their protegees, but here's the twist:

They return to their kids, only to find out that these three are no longer kids, but young adults (maybe late teens for Raf, because our future little Dragon always will be the youngest of the trio) and are no longer humans (cause they have fully embraced their other heritage)

This time-lapse could be explained by either A) the bots spending a bit longer on Cybertron and losing the human sense of time or B) The kids deciding to make a joint trip to elsewhere/the other side after the end of the war, where time doesn't move the same as in the human plane (they went as kids, but elsewhere spit them as grow ups even though this change doesn't make sense to the bots.... because they are seeing things from a human sense of time); now, when exactly these three got lost and then reborn, that's privy to them alone.... I prefer the B) option if you ask me....

Regardless, I think that these three would remain tightly nit, as tight as possible (they could be on the other extreme of the planet or any other plane, and yet they would return to each other...eventually). Cause after all the went through, separation is not an option for them

Reactions and talks/explanations are meant to happen in response to this..... and what roles June, the Esquivels and the Nakadais families had to play in all this

Ohhh, this is interesting. I hinted or understated in some pieces that time can get weird in Elsewhere as a call to the folktales and myths of humans stepping into an otherworldly space to spend a few hours there, and then stepping back to their world to find out decades had passed.

Perhaps it's their heritage, singing in their bone marrow and igniting from the Matrix's influence, June's own presence (haunting and hungry, no matter how muted or how well she hides her own teeth), or a strange combination. Perhaps it's the experiences they shared, forged in fire and blood as Earth's own chaotic nature. But these three are bonded. Intertwined with each other, even across the world.

Distance means both little and much to them now. They ventured onto foreign, alien planets and spaceships, traveled to lands across the world in the blink of an eye, and went on the run from a manhunt.

Miko keeps the Apex Armor and takes it back to Japan. At the right moments and when the urge gets too much to bear, she steps into the sea and goes farther than any of her relatives could go, even the ones that can hold their breath for 20 minutes.

She hasn't been the most filial of daughters, but she is her parent's child. Her sea-blooded mother stole back a human that survived and thrived from Elsewhere and claimed that man as a spouse. Bloodlust and wet works are no distant strangers to her. She's inexperienced but a willing learner. She already cut her teeth on foreign flesh.

Down in the dark depths where there's no difference between going up to the sun and going towards the abyss, but where her steps tread, she meets someone with pearly, iridescent scales across a long, serpentine body and a face so much like her own (and her mother's and her grandfather's and her-) with large, dark eyes with an amber ring.

After meeting the yokai that birthed her lineage centuries ago, Miko finds her way back to the Americas. A blessing and a warning kept in her heart.

(One day, Miko will understand what her sea-blooded mother meant when she told her that her father was a 'good Man.'

Raf's deep fascination (admiration, obsession) with space exploration and technology is taken in stride among the Esquivels. He doesn't raise any suspicion among them because that's how they all are.

He absorbs whatever he can, consuming the hard-earned lessons under Ratchet's care and oft-handed commentary. The Esquivels hunger and Raf is no different as he swallows how Cybertronian theory and application and attempts to further bridge between human and alien equipment.

Raf had found his teeth and his siblings recognized it as their baby brother doesn't disappear on them nor shrink away from their more vicious arguments.

(They are a family whose flesh descended from fire tempered by earth. Raging passion and violent temptations. Wicked protection and immense wrath. Voracious, cruel, and beastly, yet so very kind and vigilant.)

Mama kissed her youngest boy (because Raf will always be her baby boy) on his head and told him to be careful, praying for his safety as he went with Jack.

That protection will save them on a summer trip when Jack retraces his steps to all the places he once called home.

Ever since his mission to Cybertron, Jack dreams of strange, wistful things. An unquenchable thirst, an itch in his bones... he feels bereft for some reason.

He misses Arcee. He misses all of them. But for some reason, Jack still dreams of the timelessness of Cybertron. There's still something that calls to him in that eerie stillness. Not the desolate ruins of alien cities, although they quietly sing between hope and despair, but it's the outskirts that wait with bated breath.

In the summer after graduation, he takes his new-used car and travels across the mainland United States. The windows are down as the radio blares, wind ruffles his hair as Raf laughs and tries to figure out maps since some locations are so off-beat that the GPS can't confirm the coordinates.

Deep in the bones of a decrepit old house he once called a home in his long-distant childhood because June and Jack moved repeatedly, hopping from place to place without rhyme or reason... there are the echoes of a wailing scream buried within it.

A living corpse for a copse of trees that guard the area.

(A mother will tell her son what exactly brews in their powerful blood and what she has done to ensure he grew up safe to make a choice.)

Elsewhere exists in so many ways, shapes, and forms. At one point, the legends and myths had once walked upon Earth and left their marks. Something happened in the unwritten, unspoken past that corralled those legends away.

The trio will venture through the many portals and gateways and have many more adventures as they realize there are far more Cybertronian relics on Earth...

Mermaid queens and Seelie emperors, dignitaries of unearthly shapes painted in enamel and precious jewels, sharp animals with sharper intelligence that speak in prose, the faint imprints in slumbering environments, and empty, the lingering remains of humanity's role among such great and terrible things.

(Humanity was (is) great and terrible themselves.)

(Miko's father is a 'good Man,' and that means something different to such beings.)

"Long ago, Man made peace with Magic." "Long ago, it was decreed that Man would stay."

Time isn't linear in Elsewhere which incorporates so much that a single or several maps would be useless. Time flows in so many directions that it's a constant battle to recognize and travel to and from their own particular section of a river.

Perhaps it's his heritage or a minor blessing from the Matrix, but Jack is more sensitive to flow and can locate the best spots for them to get back to their Earth. To the same week, month, or year they ventured away.

Miko explores her own bloodthirst and prey drive. The singing, thrumming chant in her blood and how the Apex Armor responds to it.

Raf hones his own instinct on his particular guidance to find portals and lucky happenstances. Between him and Jack's instincts for 'shiny' things, little can escape them.

In some worlds, they grow older. Aging and bulking, exploring how to reshape themselves and all sorts of careers. In others, they seem immortal compared to the rapid change around them in a species whose lifespan is a single human year.

"We could be gods here," says a man with a firestorm trapped in his bones and has become a dragon. Not a Dragon because he searches the stars for a mech he once called brother. "Are we not gods already?" The not-man made of shadows and feathers replies. He still dreams of a far-distant metal planet and realizes that it whispered to him back then. "Does it matter," laughs a woman encased in armor that's more like a second skin, tendrils sweeping upon the floor like the gentle motion of a calm tide upon the beach. Pink for her lost girlhood and passion, a warning and a sign from her many great-grandmother. Green as the metal she once called her kin.

When humans are pulled Elsewhere. Three things usually happen: they break there, they struggle or thrive, or they break at home.

"How many times have we done this?" A boy that's not really a boy, who shall become a dragon in so many lifetimes, asks his companions. (Raf keeps his sister's warning close to his heart as she once died in a foreign, strange desert and was resurrected in her own pyre to devour the city that enslaved her and so many countless others. Pilar has become a Dragon and that legacy between mortal and divine shall be her epitaph in a battlefield far sooner than later.)

Ratchet returns. Some things change, while some remain the same.

Jack tastes the grief and repressed anger upon the medic and leaves him be. Raf remembers Ratchet parked in the garbage and keeps the old medic busy between lessons and searches. Miko digs into the festering tangle of emotions, lapping into those wounds as she uses the Apex Armor on the training mats to absorb those fighting skills and grills for information about Cybertron and the rest of Team Prime.

She cares, she really does, but the boys' avoidance of Ratchet's issues won't help anyone, especially if (or when) the medic leaves the planet with no way to contact again.

Ratchet went Elsewhere twice. The first time was a rough pill to swallow as Team Prime never realized its existence. He wondered where the trio had scavenged a considerable amount of Energon crystals and the resources to guard the new base with all the newly acquired. He stiffly apologized to them because he had thrown hurtful words over their travels, calling them "superstitious" and "better than that" and "this is why you never applied yourselves" was the least of the insults. The second time, he realized just how much and fast humans age as he counted each tick on his chronometer as they ventured across new continents and strange seas. Those years and crippling injuries and strange bodies melt away from the trio as they return back to their native Earth and their baseline human form.

June visits them. Ratchet never thought to ask how she found them in Nevada when Agent Fowler would have never told a civilian about them. No one questioned how she managed to bypass all the security with her car.

He tallies all the strange, eerie signs as she leaves hints to solve their challenges, how she seems to appear when food is low and they're too busy to bring anything more substantial than a simple run to the nearest fast food joint or a quick foraging session, how all the security in the world, both Cybertron's and Earth's, cannot track her.

"I am what I need or want to be." The one called June Darby demurely answers.

The only family member of Raf's that Ratchet will officially meet is Pilar whose bones are filled to the brim with rituals, survival tips with monsters, gods, and hostile environments, and formal protocols in so many kingdoms, both dead and alive. She grieves as well. She had given up the Dragon to return home but her memories are bursting full of laughter and people and color when the crumbling ruins the new Team explores are long empty of an extinct people or a fallen kingdom.

"Sometimes I think I carved out parts of my heart and left it there. All I have left are the memories as I'm the only one that remembers the campfire songs and the lessons of all those who helped me."

Ratchet will never meet the Nakadai family face-to-face, but he gets a hint of what they are with all the messages and packages they send their only child. Izumi sends pointers on how to prepare certain sea creatures and how to differentiate the signs of an underwater portal in treacherous waters. Her husband will leave cryptid messages and strange, gold pieces. Sometimes he sends coordinates for Miko to dig up a weapons cache or an informant to cultivate.

Of course, things change when the not-quite-human trio spirit back a Primal Artifact of Quintus Prime...

[meadowziplines]

#IFD2024 Feedback Fest: 10 Dreamling Fic Recs

10 Dreamling Fic Recs // 10 Gen Sandman Fic Recs // 10 Femslash Sandman Fic Recs // 10 Fic Recs For Other Fandoms

I have not provided additional cw's beyond what is in the summary; please check work tags before reading.

I didn't tend to include authors whose works are already quite popular. Also, it was hard picking these and I love many more fics! And feel free to tag in authors whose Tumblr handles I don't know.

(G-M)

[T] Now I Lay Me by Cheshyr/@five-and-dimes (10.5k): Dream is the Dreaming and the Dreaming is Him. So he tries to take one of those out of the equation. (A magical suicide attempt and how Dream's loved ones save him.)

[T] Tread of an Echo by LivingProof (14.1k): Hob Gadling does not free Dream of the Endless from his prison in the Burgess estate. There is no grand rescue. No barging in, guns blazing, no daring adventure, no dashing escape. There is only this, after. Pints in the New Inn and coffee and conversation in Hob’s office and the slow, slow building of a bridge, brick by brick. Hob does not free Dream from his prison. But he might help save Dream, all the same.

[T] Echo of a Myth by LivingProof (64.1k): Dream seeks to neutralize what is left of the Order of Ancient Mysteries. It should be a simple matter. But while the Endless may be many things, they are as prone to repeating old mistakes as anyone. Or: Dream misses another appointment. This time, Hob is determined to find out why.

[T] to make a heaven of hell by katheneverwrites (mandolinearts)/@mandolinearts (5.7k): "Where did you get this?" Hob’s exclamation is almost, almost incredulous. He can see Dream’s handwriting on the paper sticking out. It’s in pencil because Dream preferred saving ink. He would also chew the end of the pencil when he was deeply focused. Hob would never dare mention this to him.

"Found it in the fireplace," the man says as if stating the obvious. The lenses of his sunglasses glint. The sky is still clouded over. "You should know - manuscripts don't burn," he shoots Hob a smirk and hands him the folder.

An urban fantasy AU heavily inspired by the novel Master and Margarita by Michail Bulgakov.

[T] watch the world from the sidelines by hondayotas (11.1k): dream has always been on the periphery of life, never wanting to get his hands messy, but hob gadling is pulling him in more than he'd like to admit.

[T] it is not a language we know (yet) by Chrome (1.2k): “Alright,” Hob said. “So. Decide what sin you’re letting go of, and—let it go. That’s it, huh? It feels too easy.” He broke off a large piece and held it over the edge of the bridge, waiting.

“It isn’t,” Dream said softly.

Notes: Obligatory Rosh Hashanah fic! Shana tovah, friends.

[T] Galaxies on the Floor by aliaoftwoworlds (55.9k): Hob hadn’t planned to confess his immortality to anyone, but it had seemed the right thing to do at the time, and he turned out to be very grateful for it one day as he and his most knowledgeable student knelt on the floor of a classroom beside the smoldering body of a demon, trying to hold down a writhing, shapeshifting creature that usually masqueraded as Hob’s man-shaped lover.

[M] If I Am Nothing, If I Am Trying by Lost_Elf/@lostelfwriting (6.5k): The Endless family has some skeletons in their closets, and they tend to get between Morpheus and Hob.

(this was a gift for me and wahhh <3)

(E)

[E] By the Dead of Morning by Essie (39.7k): When Despair is killed by the Kindly Ones for spilling family blood, she departs to the sunless lands, never to return. Thus, Hob Gadling, a lowly mercenary living in London in 1389, becomes Hope of the Endless.

Over six hundred years later, Death takes him out for a drink, Desire in tow, to the Tavern of the White Horse, where he meets Morpheus, a down on his luck mortal crying into his sangria after a recent break-up. Desire believes that Morpheus’s death wish is genuine and that he will be dead within a year, but Hope is certain the man has too much to live for. Death offers a solution, she will not take Morpheus until he asks for her gift, but as soon as he does, she will grant it.

Hob approaches Morpheus with every intention of winning a bet, but Hob is the youngest Endless by far and doesn’t know the family’s full complicated history. Or their connection to Morpheus.

A reverse-verse, canon divergent AU.

[E] it's warm, the skin i'm living in by hardly_an_escape (2.4k): Hob realizes Dream is being a little… extra creative when it comes to their love life. When he asks his boyfriend what’s going on, some of Dream’s deep-seated fears are revealed. One part fun shapeshifting sex, one part Dream being incredibly insecure, one part immortals being disgustingly in love with each other.

[starblessed-blasterz]

🌟 Cosmic Pokemon Ask Game!

Deoxys: Do you believe in aliens or Pokemon living on other planets? Do you think some cosmic Pokemon origin stories are just myths?

Minior: Do you like sci-fi? What's your favorite movie, show, book, etc?

Cleffa: What's your favorite late-night Pokemon call to listen to?

Staryu: What's a memory you have of a beautiful night?

Solrock & Lunatone: Which is more beautiful to you, the sun or the moon?

Gothorita: What's your favorite constellation?

Porygon2: Would you go to space if you had the chance? Where? How far out would you be willing to go?

Elgyem: Do you think we'd be able to truly co-exist with another human-like society?

Cosmog: Have you ever had any strange encounters with the third poke-kind?

Nihilego: Do extraterrestrial Pokemon or Ultra Beasts gives you the creeps? Which ones?

Guzzlord: What do you think an alien would taste like? Would you be willing to try it?

Blacephalon: Do you think you could deal with being in a spacesuit or not?

Stakataka: What's your favorite planet?

Phermosa: Who's your favorite fictional alien?

Iron Treads: What sci-fi weapon do you most wish you could own?

Iron Moth: Say one day you were taken away by a UFO. What do you think it would be like? How would you react, would you be scrambling to get back to solid land?

[mysticpolin]

Ielele: the nymphs, goddesses, and fairies of the Romanian lands.

In a dream, I found myself on a mountain where the ground was strewn with tiny black flowers, like stars scattered in a sea of shadow. Each flower glowed softly, whispering different stories despite their shared roots in the same dark soil.

A melody wove through the air—so delicate, yet so profound it stirred my very soul. It was a haunting sound that made my skin crawl, a blend of beauty and fear that beckoned me to seek its source.

In a moonlit glade, women appeared. Some were naked, their skin radiant under the celestial light; others wore long, translucent gowns as if spun from moonbeams and dreams. They danced in a circle, their movements a poetic dance of shadows and light, blurring the lines between the real and the imagined.

It is said that in the middle of the night, when the moon opens the door to the land of dreams, Ielele gather in hidden and mysterious places—deep in ancient forests, in moonlit meadows, by serene ponds, among clusters of conifers, along riverbanks, at crossroads, in abandoned houses, or even in the air itself.

There, they dance naked, in long white dresses, or sometimes wrapped in delicate veils that seem to be made of light and mystery, with tiny bells on their feet that ring with each graceful step they take. They stretch out their arms in a silent ritual, bringing with them a fleeting magic, a call wrapped in otherworldly melodies that fade into the night. The roots of old trees and the murmur of streams seem to witness their sacred dance, leaving behind a ring of scorched grass—a sign of their joy and their sorrow.

At times, Ielele appear only as fleeting shadows, vague, ghostly figures that flit through the air, or as passing visions full of joy and light. They are beautiful and enchanting but always out of reach, a forbidden dream that vanishes at dawn, leaving only the echo of their music and the memory of a magical night. In these moments, reality blends with fantasy, and the stillness of the place that was once a magical dance floor is filled with a mysterious sadness, like a secret known only to the moon and the Iele.

Usually, Ielele are not considered evil spirits. They only seek revenge when they're provoked, offended, or seen during their dance. In these cases, they punish the guilty by cursing them after putting them to sleep with their song and the whirl of their dance performed around them three times. In this way, they are similar to the Erinyes from Greek mythology.

Some incantations portray them as follows:

Voi Ielelor “You, Ielelor”

Măiestrelor “Masters of the Craft”

Dușmane oamenilor “Enemies of Humankind”

Stăpânele vântului “Mistresses of the Wind”

Doamnele pământului “Ladies of the Earth”

Că prin văzduh zburați “As you fly through the Air”

Pe iarbă lunecați “Gliding over the Grass”

Și pe valuri călcați “And treading on the Waves”

Vă duceți în locuri depărtate “You travel to Distant Places”

În baltă, trestie, pustietate “To Marshes, Reeds, and Wastelands”

Unde popă nu toacă “Where no Priest Sounds the Bell”

Unde fată nu joacă “Where no Maiden Dances”

Vă duceți în gura vântului “You go to the Mouth of the Wind”

Să vă loviți de toarta pământului. “To Clash against the Earth’s Edge.”

If you want to hear a modern version of this incantation, check out the song “Ielele” by Irina Rimes. It’s a beautiful blend of traditional and contemporary music, and I really enjoyed it.

There is so much more to discover about the Iele, so if you’re intrigued by this story, make sure to Google them and dive deeper into their myths and legends.

Thanks for exploring the world of the Iele with me. I hope you enjoyed learning about these mystical beings. Until next time, may your dreams be full of magic and wonder.

[beshex]

A O’Vampire on the darkest nights. A O’Siren by the scales on her wicked tail. Magic from the kiss of an O'fae. The truth is, they all serve a damned maker. Crafted with brilliance in their eyes, to wander between the realms of the divine and hellish lands. It is said that the others were crafted to survive many of the elements on earth.

"For the feet of angels shall not tread upon the soil of his mortal realm, lest they be ensnared by the wayward strides of the rebellious Lucifer." The others may have once been called "daimons" or even "erebus," creatures that were considered failed creations in the eyes of the heavens. 

"Beware the eyes of 'the others,' for they see beyond the veil of reality, into the dark places where human minds dare not wander." In the present day, The Others traverse the world in small, closely-knit groups. Their nature thrives on unity, and they refer to themselves as "family," with each group bearing the name of their current host. The term "host" designates the oldest living member of the bloodline, who is revered as the central figure within the family. This role is fortified through a blood oath and solemn promises that bind the members together, cementing their loyalty and mutual dependence. Though few in number, The Others have left a significant mark on the mortal world, their presence stirring whispers and challenges to myths and legends. A common misconception in mortal lore is that a “vampire” can turn another with a mere bite—a notion that is entirely mythical. According to the sacred texts of The Others, only those of Eve's bloodline are susceptible to being fed upon. This distinction underscores their unique nature and reinforces the truth of their existence against the backdrop of popular misconceptions. "In the sacred writings of The Others, it is declared that their touch upon the world is a reflection of celestial intent gone awry, their powers both a blessing and a curse." To the celestial and heaven-bound, The Others are known as the damned, condemned to an eternal existence caught between realms. Their souls, possessed by both divine and infernal forces, are cursed to remain forever in limbo. They are neither permitted to ascend to the gates of heaven nor to be punished in the fiery depths of hell. Their fate is a perpetual limbo, a tortured existence where neither celestial grace nor infernal retribution can claim them.

[un-welcome]

Ah, Chairman Squidillius McKraken.

What a handsome fella he is, don't you agree? Such a powerful southern belle, too! But that is very much so besides the point here. This post is made to take a more in depth look into this seemingly power hungry squid and see why his appetite for control is so vast. Let's get started, shall we?

WHO IS CHAIRMAN MCKRAKEN?

Chairman Squidillius Mckraken, or in japanese, Ikakamone-gichō, is the main antagonist of Yokai Watch 1 (both 3-DS and Switch ports of it), a minor, optional boss on Yokai Watch 2, and a restaurant owner in Yokai Watch 3. He is a tall, squid-like yokai with a southern accent known for making sea life based puns. (Mostly squid puns though.) In japanese, these puns are more in line with the sound/word "ika," which roughly translates to cephalopod/squid.

He has red eyes with yellow irises, ten tentacles that make up his hair and beard, and suckers on both hands, which better match the mouth-piece of a cephalopod. These hands drain the life-force out of enemy yokai. His outfit, despite him being a political figure outside of the monarchy, doesn't resemble that of a politician. Rather, it fits more with that of a priest or a pope. The tall hat is the easiest indicator. (See pictures below)

ETYMOLOGY/INSPIRATION

Chairman McKraken has very clear inspirations as to where his design draws from. Biology wise, he looks to be based on a vampire squid or the giant squid. Lore-wise, he stems from the old tale of the Kraken, a Nordic myth said to tear down boats with just its tentacles. This is where the inspiration for many of his physical attacks stem from.

There are many ways to interpret the story of the Kraken. But how do they translate to our dear McKraken? Well, for starters, his massive appetite, and no, not just in a literal sense. He has an appetite for power and a cold, callous attitude towards anyone in his way, which is similar to how the Kraken would seemingly attack ships with no remorse if the boat treaded on its territory in the sea. The Kraken is also known to be very territorial and more than happy to claim more land of its own. This very well translates to the plot of the first game, him claiming the Yokai World as his, even hurting his own family [Squisker] along the way in his attempts to claim his territory in not just the Yokai World, but the Human World as well.

The Kraken itself, however, is based on an actual squid in our realm, which McKraken also draws ties from. The Giant Squid, or japonica Architeuthis, is a carnivorous squid that tends to live near the bottom of the ocean, where it can easily hide from its prey and sneak an attack on them. With two long arms and 8 tendrils it can snatch up prey (usually unsuspecting sea creatures floating a bit above it) and drag it down into its beak and consume it whole. If it goes for larger prey, like other mollusc, there will be something of a struggle, but never one where it doesn't end up on top.

McKraken takes his diet and physique from this beast of a creature. This is also echoed by the fact that his choice of shops to run in Yokai Watch 3 also align with the Giant Squid's diet. (That being sea-life and other squid. What a cold calamari he is!)

RELATIONSHIPS(?)

SQUISKER is who we will be evaluating first. He is the supposed distant relative of McKraken and the 7th circle boss of the Infinite Inferno, just before Wobblewok.

(Fun fact, we only remember this due to how many times we had our ass handed to us by Squisker in Yokai Watch Fleshy Souls. It took us a whole YEAR to finally beat him and nearly beat Wobblewok first try after that. Embarassing, I know. -Grape)

Besides that, he is a relatively tough boss to beat. seeing that he's stuck in his second form permanently while locked down there. Perhaps this a hint at a curse of some kind McKraken put on him when getting him banished? There is no clear answer to that. All that is known is that Squisker was banished for being involved with a crime that McKraken committed during one of his political antics.

Finally, we have DR. MADDIMAN. We'll be going more into detail on him later (in our next deep dive post), but for now, let's see how deeply intwined this mad man really is with political genius.

Dr. Maddiman of the old Nocturne Hospital is a boss Yokai and the one in charge of all the other boss yokai that were faced before him and McKraken in the first game of the series. He seems to be the only one that McKraken hadn't thrown away, even after the loss. It was more or less Maddiman losing contact with him after McKraken's inevitable arrest by Lord Enma. Not much is known about their relationship besides that, though we can definitely say it was closer than others.

MOTIVES? GOALS?

His motives seem to be clear. He feels he is a superior ruler for the Yokai World. He views humans as inferior and views those who surrender their medals to said humans to be the lowest of low, akin to that of becoming a pet. His goal is to change that. He wants yokai to be separated from humans under his rule and will go to many lengths to get it to be that way. Besides that, not much is known about why he wished to separate humans from Yokai. Not even the new information from his friend quest in Yokai Watch 4 explains much. This will likely be bound to change if and when the game gets an English translation.

THOUGHTS?

Overall, McKraken is a decently well written villain and paved the way for other villains in the series to flourish. His lack of a sympathetic backstory allows him to stand out compared to the likes of later main antagonists such as Dame Dedtime and The Ghoulfather. He may not have much, but he definitely gives a lot, and we dearly hope to see and learn more about him in the future. Perhaps another movie? I mean, Agent X just got his own movie, and Maddiman appears in the new Yokai Watch Note, so who’s to say?

Penned by Penny, Grape, Ghoul, and Vinnie over the likes of two months. We’re so sorry it took so long and hope it isn’t lackluster!

[wendybird017]

Our paths will never cross again

And that's the way you wanted it

You never could care less

About the way we ended up

We swim in different circles now

I saw your tracks in snowy ground

And didn't want to follow them

As you fell off the earth

Sightings few and far between

I have no words when they tell me

A figure spotted roaming in

The icy mountain wilds

There was a time I felt for you

Would collect these words like drops of dew

And savor on my tongue in season dry

And I don't know you

I used to like to pretend to

We're nothing but myths now

That neither of us believe in

You hear how I achieved good ends

Out of the mouths of mutual friends

And shrug and raise your eyebrows

In the way you always have

And with that too they carry rumours of

When someone last saw my movements

A shadow treading through the willows

In the forest land

Messages that reach our ears

Are met with an indifference

I never thought I wouldn't care about you

But here we are

Flung to Earth's corners far

We're nothing but myths now

That neither of us believe in

My tongue's forgotten how

To shape your name, the way it sounds

We're nothing but myths now

That neither of us believe in

No muscle memory, no lingering taste

No persistent impulse to pick up your trace

I left you no note, you left me no sign

Of where I plan to go, of what you've gone to find

Sweet indifference

Gentle apathy

Wholesome, quiet dispassion

Restful neutrality

We're nothing but myths now

That neither of us believe in

We're nothing but myths now

That neither of us believe in

[nights-in-knightswall]

In a realm where magic courses through the land and mysteries lurk in every shadow, legendary heroes emerge. Their might reshapes the world, their valor shines in the fray, standing as unwavering guardians. Their honor, bright as their storied triumphs, serves as their shield.

Alongside them, the pathfinders tread silently, their keen gaze and true arrows unveiling the wilderness's secrets. They navigate the untamed with innate skill, discovering routes to fame and danger.

Amidst unending quests, where dragons nest under icy peaks and ancient darkness awakens, these champions uphold the good. Their steadfast spirit and bravery ignite in adversity, leading the charge against formidable enemies and sinister schemes.

Their deeds weave into history's fabric, each adventure a step toward legend, each conflict a tale for the ages. In this land of blurred lines between myth and reality, they stand as paragons of valor, their sagas resonating as emblems of the ceaseless battle between light and shadow, and the unyielding courage of those who confront it.

[ko-fi.com/lorehold]

[thelorehold]

In a realm where magic courses through the land and mysteries lurk in every shadow, legendary heroes emerge. Their might reshapes the world, their valor shines in the fray, standing as unwavering guardians. Their honor, bright as their storied triumphs, serves as their shield.

Alongside them, the pathfinders tread silently, their keen gaze and true arrows unveiling the wilderness's secrets. They navigate the untamed with innate skill, discovering routes to fame and danger.

Amidst unending quests, where dragons nest under icy peaks and ancient darkness awakens, these champions uphold the good. Their steadfast spirit and bravery ignite in adversity, leading the charge against formidable enemies and sinister schemes.

Their deeds weave into history's fabric, each adventure a step toward legend, each conflict a tale for the ages. In this land of blurred lines between myth and reality, they stand as paragons of valor, their sagas resonating as emblems of the ceaseless battle between light and shadow, and the unyielding courage of those who confront it.

[ko-fi.com/lorehold]

[royalreef]

@lastingquiescence inquired: "Hey..." A low, voice could be heard coming from the tall feathered humanoid carrying a dagger. Empty white eyes staring upon the marine lady. He could easily be mistaken by a mindless monster if it weren't for his gentle voice. "Forgive me this is sudden but... wouldn't you happen to be a princess, would you?"

She does not even tilt her head. There is no offering of confusion, no hint of doubt, no slower dwelling upon the question to make it seep into her heart and soul, suck it up through her skin and leave a home for it to live within herself. Miranda does offer a flicker of her fins, a curl to the very ends of the shafts they sit upon, beams upon which the rest of the fin was constructed, but this is all. It's a measly offering, if this was supposed to be odd, or unique, or something that would have suggested that this wasn't just par for the course for Miranda.

But it wouldn't be too hard to suppose either, that Miranda is made of stranger stuff as well. After all, only one of them in this encounter is humanoid, and whatever cry of monstrosity the other carries feels moot against something larger than cry or creed, some vast shadow of experience, of existence itself, which exists outside of every other norm that could be clung to. Miranda is intolerable in her dimensions, utterly alien in her mannerisms. She smiles at the stranger, but this is the pulling of rigid lips unlike anything mammalian over a head built like a brick, long and low and solid-edged, and although perfect in its execution, it is still painted across a surface which no human smile was ever meant to touch.

She is something that makes the brain wheedle at instinct, her shape evocative of entirely different subsets than that which walks upright, where two legs are pillars upon which the rest of the body is supported, familiar dimensions that might have been comforting. She is the body of something different, more ancient when it was coined. The mind races first to animal, but churns deeper than even that, summons images of eyes seen glinting in the water, of a splash and a scream and silence. Of darkness and the things that live in the night, the reasons you do not walk by the river after dark, myths recited to children to ensure they never strayed too closer to the banks, where the land was steep and slippery and they might not come back home. The sensation of a faint something brushing against the inner edge of a leg as water is treaded comes, summoned, unwittingly and uneasily, slick and smooth and so brief that it could have been anything, would have been anything. Grasping hands in murky depths, the faint movement of something larger than life in the distance, the ripple of waves when no one else is around to see them.

Of course, Miranda is still just standing there. Her hands tuck up against her chest, their flat edge pressed smoothly up against her ribcage, offering streamlining. Her legs are short, vaguely uncanny as she stands there, spreading the digits of her back feet to spread her weight more evenly across the ground, clearly with some troubling detail that is not certain enough to give a name yet. Most of her weight is balanced with her tail, spread over the ground less like a proper train and more like a stray tree trunk which was felled in the path, and the rest is carried high in her neck and her head, hovering horizontal to the ground, far away from even the base of her tail.

There is certainly a crown on her head, gleaming slick and fetid, its three pearls crowning her brow burning sick holes into vision, hard and hurting to stare at the longer it goes on, the gold queasy in odd damascus marbling. This time, there is no cuff on her hand. There is no chain running parallel to her body, nothing binding up her tail as thick as the rest of her body, nothing muzzling the head as long as someone else's whole torso. In fact, this time she is quite mobile, and although she stills, there is no suggestion that she might stay that way.

"Yes, but of course!" she confirms, a little flick of the vowels in the back of her throat making them dance. Her voice is low, deep, rumbled in her chest in a way that no human voice was ever spoken or ever will be spoken. It slides through the ear, accompanied by glimpses of broad, triangular, serrated teeth in the mouth through which she speaks, and it touches none of the places language should touch, offers no comfort nor recognition of a self in all the ways she cannot pretend to be human, cannot even make such a suggestion to the idea.

Felids speak like this, maybe, through sandpaper tongues and fangs like steak knives, whispered through the long grass and telling their victims of the way the world will end before they break apart their skulls and expose this truth to them at their core. Cetaceans, perhaps, their voices breaking apart the sea floor with tectonic movement, quakes and tsunamis and geologic time itself flowing in a medium that was only ever intended to contain sound, pouring the experience of watching the formation of the heavens into the poor soul who dared to listen in until their heart pops from the weight. Neither is the voice of what the brain traditionally associates as a person.

Miranda, more aware of herself than anything else, rolls her eyes shut, fluffs the fins at the sides of her face. The tail swishes behind her, drags slow through the dirt with the effort to move something so massive and so thick, making a dry hiss against the ground from the contact. "Finally, someone who can recognize those of proper birth when they see one! I cannot tell you how long it has been — truly, no one here has any hint of proper conduct or manners, they are so very lucky that I am quite so humble as to permit their ignorance!"

[spell-cleaver]

Whumptober No. 18 LET’S BREAK THE ICE “Just get it over with.” |  Treading Water | “Take my Coat”

Read it instead on AO3 or on FFN!

Zev had always hated the cold. But he hated being on a mission with Luke Skywalker more. This was the third time he’d put out a hand to force Zev to stop in the middle of the snowy forest, crouched low on the ground, listening.

“I can’t hear anything!” Zev hissed.

“Neither can I,” Skywalker replied under his breath. “But there’s something ahead, and we don’t want it to hear us.”

“Is this one of those Jedi instincts of yours?” Zev asked, his lip curling.

“Of course.” Skywalker eyed him. He wasn’t as tanned as he had once been, presumably due to the time away from his desert homeworld, but against the dirty white snow jacket, gloves, furred hood and boots, his skin stood out like a splash of colour. “Why?”

Zev shivered and told himself it was the cold. It had bitten through his heavy coat the moment Skywalker had landed them on this ball of ice; if it wasn’t for the goggles, he was sure his eyeballs would have frozen in their sockets. But even through those goggles, Skywalker’s gaze was uncomfortably intense, like he knew exactly what Zev was thinking.

Like—

“Vader does that a lot,” Zev said and made it clear in his voice exactly what he thought of Vader.

It rankled Skywalker, apparently, which Zev took as a win. He’d heard so much about the great destroyer of the Death Star: the man, the myth, the legend. Legends never held up. He was waiting to find out what was behind that uncrackable calm façade.

“You do know that Vader isn’t a Jedi?” Skywalker said tightly. “And that this sort of ability occurs naturally across the galaxy?”

“Jedi or not, it looks the same to me.”

Skywalker huffed to himself and turned away. Zev hated that this kid—who, admittedly, should only be three or four years younger than Zev at most—was being the more mature out of the two of them. He had been a commander after all before he resigned from Rogue Squadron, but still. Zev knew maturity. He knew self-discipline. His dad had taught him enough about that.

“Either way,” Skywalker said, “we need to be careful. The base is just up ahead—”

“And you know that how? We got thoroughly lost in that blizzard.” They’d hunkered down in a tent—Skywalker had meditated all night, who the hell did that—and waited it out, but by now Zev’s map was pretty useless. He didn’t like being useless. It gave people space to accuse him of being dead Imperial weight. “We can’t even see past that bank of trees for the snow.”

“It’s there,” Skywalker said. Maybe he was used to the Rogues obeying every instinct and order of his wordlessly, like good soldiers. He did really sound like Vader when he talked like that.

Zev had met Vader more times that he liked to remember. Imperial Army functions, where his dad would pull around his wife and child as a model soldier with a family; celebrations; parades; awards ceremonies where General Veers was awarded even more accolades. The last one had been the one that the Rebellion hated Zev’s dad the most for: Veers had received a commendation for what he’d done on Hoth, while Rebels hissed vitriol and called him the Butcher. Being the Butcher’s son, even a butcher’s son who’d defected shortly after realising how little his father cared about the Empire’s atrocities, had been less than easy.

At that ceremony, Vader had looked Zev, standing primly next to his father and fiercely missing his deceased mother, in the eye. He had looked from General Veers to his son several times, with enough intensity to knock the breath out of Zev’s chest. Then he had looked away.

Skywalker’s regard reminded him of that. It made him grit his teeth.

“I don’t believe you,” he decided.

“I get you’re new to the Alliance, but—”

“I know how army missions work, Skywalker.” Was he always going to have someone looking over his shoulder like this? Vader, sizing him up beside his father, and inevitably finding him lacking? Skywalker, dissatisfied with his lack of obedience to the ranking officer and leader on this mission?

“You don’t know how the Force works though,” Skywalker said carefully. Everyone Zev had spoken to had said their hero was bright, reckless, a bit clumsy with words and overeager but earnest. A damn hard worker. This meticulous way of speaking to Zev just made him feel like he was being coddled again. “I just wanted to explain it to you, if you didn’t. I get feelings, sometimes—they direct me to where I need to go, though it’s not always where I want to go, and they warn me of danger. And I can sense people’s presences. Life forms.” He noticed ahead of them, still crouching. “There’s a lot of life forms over there.”

“Can you read minds?” Zev asked. He wanted to know if Vader had been able to read his rebellious thoughts on him, like a dog smelling blood.

“Only if I try.” Skywalker seemed to be going for a joke, but he aborted it halfway. “I don’t.”

Zev wished he hadn’t asked.

“We need to get closer, then,” he said instead. “Our mission is to scout out the base.”

“If we get any closer, something will go wrong,” Skywalker said.

“What will go wrong?”

Skywalker hesitated. “I don’t know. But it will. I need you to trust that.”

That was impossible. Zev had been raised in the heart of the Empire. He had weathered the Imperial academy. There was no trusting someone until you saw them crack, and Skywalker was too composed for that. Too heroic.

“There might be another blizzard on the way,” he tried to justify. “We need to move fast.”

“We need to do this right.” Skywalker glanced at him. “If I told you what I suspected, would you listen?”

“Why haven’t you told me before?”

“I’m not certain—at least, I don’t want to be certain—”

“I’m going,” he decided and stood up.

“Veers, no!”

Zev barely made it three paces through the thick, snowy undergrowth before teeth snapped shut around his ankle. He howled.

Skywalker was next to him in a moment; he caught him before Zev fell hard into the thorny bushes; his grip was strong, but apparently Zev’s enormous height and subsequent weight was difficult for him. He struggled with him to the ground. Distantly, they heard shouts.

“Kriff,” Skywalker said. “I was right.”

“About the danger?” Zev spat, glancing down at  the ankle. Kriff—kriff—he could see blood. He could see bone. “You didn’t tell me they’d have a kriffing trap here!”

“It doesn’t look like it’s for humans, it’s for—”

“Animals, I know! I’ve been hunting before!” The Imperials at this base were probably hoping for game to get them through the harsher nights, or just doing it for fun, and they happened to have snagged an Imperial-turned Rebel instead—

“I wasn’t right about the trap. I didn’t know what that was.” Skywalker winced as well when he looked down at Zev’s injury, the metal teeth that went all the way through and out the other side of his squishy leg. “I was right about the other thing.”

“Which is?”

The distant shouts grew louder. They weren’t as distant as Zev had thought, he realised; they were far too close for comfort. Someone had heard him scream. He could hear them assembling.

And worse, he recognised the voice barking orders.

“No one’s sure where that came from, so split up! Two squads to the north. You lot, head west. You—” The voice paused; Skywalker went very still, turning his face away, closing his eyes. Zev watched, but clearly the camouflage against the snow worked. “—take the east side. If there are Rebels here, Lord Vader will want them found.”

Zev felt the colour drain out of his face. “You’re kidding me.”

“I was really hoping Vader wasn’t here,” Skywalker muttered.

“Vader’s here?”

“By the looks of it, Vader, General Veers, and a significant portion of the Imperial Army. There must be something important going on here.”

It wasn’t just the pain putting the nausea into Zev’s stomach. “It’s a strategic planet.”

“Yeah.” Skywalker glanced back. “We need to run. They’re headed this way.”

“Run? I can’t—”

A snap-hiss was all the warning Zev got. Skywalker’s lightsaber wasn’t blue, as Zev had heard; it was green. As green as his mother’s eyes had been. Zev yelped at the sight of it, then stifled himself. Skywalker slashed through the trap, close enough to the exposed skin of Zev’s legs to both burn and freeze it simultaneously and tugged the metal jaws out of his flesh.

Zev did his best, again, not to scream.

Skywalker cut a swath of fabric from his coat and swiftly tied it around Zev’s shin, the blood pumping over his hand, then tied it tightly enough that Zev thought his foot would fall off. His heart was thundering in his chest. Despite all his training, everything his dad had taught him, he had never been injured in the field like this. He did not know what to do.

But Skywalker did. “Run!”

That was one order Zev was happy to obey.

Pain lanced up his leg with every step, until he was gambling, galloping, stumbling through the undergrowth like a three-legged deer. Skywalker had shot off at the speed of light—how could Jedi move that fast—to begin with, but then he dropped behind and kept pace with him. It felt insulting. Zev knew it wasn’t meant that way.

“Keep running,” Skywalker urged, hardly out of breath. He pranced over hidden logs and bushes like they were nothing. “Our ship is nearby. We just need to get out of atmo.”

Zev stared at the lightsaber hilt, beating innocuously against Skywalker’s thigh. A literal sword of light from the stories, the romantic side he’d got from his mother prompted; the scepticism that the academy had beaten into him told him instead about how he’d seen something like that before, as well.

At his father’s medal ceremony, a rich, ornately dressed patron had loudly boasted how much they had contributed to the bounty that was out for Luke Skywalker’s corpse. Lord Vader had wordlessly and gracefully drew his lightsaber and sent their head rolling, bloodless, across the marble floor. They didn’t even have the chance for their expression to shift from that smug, inattentive smile.

What a barbaric weapon. At least a blaster did it from a distance. At least everyone knew to expect them. Why were people who could already kill with their minds allowed to just carry a sword of fire wherever they went? If he ever had to duel Vader, Zev would rather have a blaster at his side. And that might be a possibility they had to encounter, soon.

Skywalker held out a hand to stop them so fast Zev almost crashed past it. A force caught him and set him gently back down on the ground, before he floundered out of the woods and onto what looked like a beach. He picked himself up, grimacing with pain at the trail of bright blood he’d left in the snow like flags in a race, and glared at Skywalker.

“Don’t touch me like that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. There was the earnestness. But the way his head tilted as he scanned the white, featureless horizon, jaw working and brows creasing, undid the effect. He was staring into space again.

What happened, when two unnatural beings like Skywalker and Vader collided? If they didn’t move soon, Zev would kriffing find out, but Skywalker wasn’t moving.

“You said the ship was near,” Zev said. No matter that they’d been hiking for days to get over here. How had they got that turned around? “We need to move.”

Vader was here. Zev did not want to have him root through his mind, stare at him like he had before. He did not want to be the one whose head rolled. Unconsciously, he glanced at Skywalker’s lightsaber again.

His father had spent his life serving under a religious fanatic who made irrational military decisions, he thought, semi-hysterically. Zev was going to die this way as well.

“I misinterpreted,” Skywalker said.

“What does that mean?”

Skywalker pointed straight ahead. Zev peered out of the wood, following the snow plain to the horizon. He saw nothing.

Except, that wasn’t a snow plain.

“That’s a pretty bad misinterpretation, Skywalker!” Zev snapped.

“It’s a narrow channel. The river is usually very still. We can circumnavigate it, like we did when hiking here, or go straight across.”

“It wasn’t frozen over when we landed!”

“It is now.”

“Will it stay that way?”

Skywalker scrunched his eyes shut, reaching out a hand. For a moment, Zev had to stop and stare. Vader was never so obvious when he was uncertain, not from the stories he’d heard. At least Skywalker wasn’t an infallible hero in that, then.

“Yes,” Skywalker said at last, hesitantly.

“You don’t sound like you believe it.”

“It will stay that way if we’re careful. I can guide us over the safe bits; if we stick to the bits that feel safe, we’ll be fine.”

“None of this feels safe!” Zev gestured to his leg. Stars, he should’ve stayed with the Empire. Funnelled his pocket money into the Rebellion instead, or something. What the hell was he doing here? Why the hell had he agreed to go on a mission with this guy?

“We can go back the way we came,” Skywalker offered gently. “I have medical supplies. We can find somewhere to hide, pitch the tent, then I’ll stand watch while you treat your injury more effectively.”

“Yes!” Zev enthused. “Let’s do that.”

“Alright. It’s this way, then.” Luke nodded to their left. “We should hug the edge of the woods, get some more shelter—” He cut himself off. “Get down.”

This time, Zev obeyed fast enough that he didn’t get thrown down by an unseen force. They ducked behind a thorn bush, holding their breaths.

“And you’re sure the footprints went this way?”

It wasn’t near. In fact, through the forest, it would take General Veers quite a trek to get to them. But the voice seized Zev’s heart. Skywalker glanced at him; even through the goggles on his face, his expression was something uncomfortably like sympathy.

Longing, even.

Could he read the inferno of emotions in Zev’s chest? If he could, Zev would need him to unpick them for him.

“Yes, sir. They’re a bit muddled, but there’s a blood trail as well. It got a bit kicked up around here.”

“Then fan out and search this area. They can’t have gone far.”

“Yes, sir.”

Zev whispered, “We’re going across the ice.”

Skywalker glanced at him. “What?”

“I am not staying here to be found. We’re going across the ice. It’s against Imperial policy to follow on foot, and to get speeders they’d have to go back, fix them to deal with the cold, by which time we’d better be across.”

“We will be,” Skywalker reassured. It was obvious this was not one of his premonitions. “Alright. Move slowly. The ice is thick, but it creaks. Our coats should camouflage us.”

“What does a desert boy know about ice?”

“Hoth was a steep learning curve.”

Zev suddenly wondered if Skywalker had watched his squadron die under Zev’s father’s fire.

“Alright,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Zev had never moved so slowly. Every footstep, snow crunching underfoot, was like a cannon bursting from under his toes. The blood that drip, drip, dripped behind him, melting through the top layer of white snow crystals, was fairy tale-esque in the trail it left behind. The only colour in this bleak, monochromatic landscape.

Skywalker stepped onto the ice first. It creaked slightly under his foot, but he spread his weight, his snowshoes doing their job—Zev’s right one had been crushed in the trap, so he didn’t know how he’d manage—and got several metres without so much as a hitch. He beckoned to Zev.

“Come on.” His tone was a murmur, almost. Zev heard it in the rush of cold air against his cheeks.

He followed gingerly. Every tiptoe across the ice felt like inviting doom. Up close, it wasn’t white: it was deep aquamarine, shot through with frost-tipped planes. His own distraught face stared back at him as if out of a shattered mirror. Skywalker’s reflected back as well, upside down from this angle; Zev glanced at his reflection, and for a moment he thought he looked afraid. A crack in the ice bisected his reflection, like he was made of fragments himself.

“Stay low to the ice,” he murmured again. “They’re coming. We need to get into the haze of snow before they get here.”

They kept moving. Skywalker stepped in an irregular, zigzag pattern that made Zev’s head spin, but he knew how to dodge blaster bolts so the logic to it made sense. He followed behind closely.

Wouldn’t the ice, thick as it was, be weaker when he stepped on it, having already born Skywalker’s weight? Wasn’t he heavier?

“What is there to say that where you step is safe for you but not for me?” he asked. “I’m a lot heavier than you.”

“I’m paying attention, Veers. I don’t want you to die.”

“You weren’t paying attention back there.”

“I made a mistake, I’m sorry. This is a fast way to get to the ship.”

“It’s just also a dangerous way.”

“Yeah.”

Zev shivered. But that was his dad back there, searching for the faceless Rebel that had replaced his only son. Their last conversation played on repeat in his head: Veers’s absolutely adamance that Zev was wrong, that Lord Vader’s decapitation of that random Imperial was justified even if neither of them knew the facts behind it, Zev desperately trying to make his father see how the values he had taught him contradicted this.

It was either face the past or risk the future. He had to trust this unnatural Jedi hero. He resented it with every fibre of his being.

But the moment he divided from Skywalker’s forged path, he felt a change in the ice underneath him. It shifted under his step, groaning. His reflection rippled, afraid.

He slipped back onto Skywalker’s path. The faint fall of snow had split them from sight of the shore, Zev’s bright trail of blood leading into a white haze. There was nothing but Skywalker’s instincts to say whether they were heading away from the Imperials, towards their ships, or the wrong way entirely.

“Just to break the ice,” Skywalker said, then winced at his own phrase, “we’re both thinking it. I wanted to confirm. That’s…” He hesitated. “That’s your dad back there, isn’t it?”

“What’s it to you?” Zev bit out, a little louder than he should have. The ice bounced it back at him; he stumbled and heard it crunch, then scrambled away again. Before his eyes, the tiny plate he’d punched loose in his overeager kick bobbed merrily, caved in on all sides, and slowly froze back to the main plate.

“I’m sorry,” was not what Zev had been expecting. “I know it’s hard to have a parent on the other side of the war.”

“The hells would you know about it?”

For a moment, he hoped this would be the moment Skywalker cracked. This would be when he revealed that darker core Zev could tell was there. No perfect mask stayed unscarred for long. Vader’s mask was replaced regularly for the wear it took on the battlefield.

“I’m sorry,” Skywalker repeated.

“Don’t pity me,” Zev said.

“I don’t.”

“Don’t judge me either.”

“You think I would?”

“You’re Luke Skywalker. You wouldn’t understand any of this! You’re too busy saving the day to worry about the grey areas of the galaxy!”

And that was why Zev couldn’t trust anyone perfect. He was antsy around all the Rebel leaders, Princess Leia especially, for how they kept their faces blank and their feelings neutral throughout the war, their masks impeccable. He hated following symbols. They weren’t real people, they wouldn’t understand him, and they definitely wouldn’t try to. They’d just look right through him—or down on him, if they saw him at all. And they took everyone else away.

How many of his friends at the academy had never taken their anti-Imperial thoughts to their natural conclusion because they were so enamoured with the shiny stormtrooper armour? How many people had died for an emperor who sat on a throne and never bothered to look them in the eye? How many fathers had been lost, because they were so loyal to one, impossibly powerful leader, that they refused to listen to their own sons?

It had been naïve to think that the Rebellion might be different, for that. But Zev would be.

Skywalker said, “I understand what people say about me. I don’t like it.”

“They say you’re a hero.”

“Yeah. I’m not going to judge you, Zevulon.”

“If you’re going to be unprofessional and use my first name, it’s Zev. But don’t. Don’t use it.”

There were shouts in the distance. People were onto their trail. Skywalker looked behind them and swallowed.

“You can move faster than me,” Zev told him. “Go. They’re following my trail.”

“We both know that’s not going to happen.” Skywalker’s gaze moved from them to him. “How do you deal with it?”

“What?”

“Knowing your father hates Rebels.”

That was the final straw. Zev stared at Skywalker, silhouetted in goggles and a massive hood against the white fall of snow. The ice underneath his feet was almost luminescent, blue-green and brilliant, with the light that Skywalker seemed to exude just by existing.

“Don’t make fun of me,” Zev said, his voice lower and colder than the bottom of this river. “Let’s get this over with.” He marched forwards, shoving past Skywalker.

“Veers, wait!” Fingers caught the edge of his jacket, but he brushed them off. He wanted to be done with this mission. He wanted to be done with all of this. He never wanted to think about his father again.

The ice cracked. His foot went through. His knee, then waist, then torso followed. When his head hit the water, it was like being folded in liquid nitrogen.

He instinctively gasped for air. Frigid water flooded his mouth, his nose. He coughed and spluttered, eyes streaming even underwater. It was so dark under here, that aquamarine fading to a dark, hungry blue that lurked beneath his kicking boots. His broken snowshoe trembled with how hard he beat his legs in the water, even as the cold bit into the holes the trap’s teeth had left behind; it wobbled some more, then dropped off his boot altogether. He watched it sink.

Everything was so slow. His head was pounding, but… He needed…

He needed to get out of here.

Straining, he reached for the surface. His coat was a dead weight around him; survival training, no matter how abstract it had been to swim leisurely in a pool compared to this, seized the back of his mind. He shrugged off his coat, watching that billow to the bottom of the river as well. When he reached the surface, he extended a hand.

He met only ice.

No, no, no—

How far had he shifted? Was there a current? Had the ice shifted instead? He couldn’t see the hole he’d fallen through anymore. Light streamed into the water in the distance, but it was too far away to make out—was that it? Shadows flickered along the surface. Where was he? Where was up? Down?

He knew where that was. The more he kicked, the more the cold sank into his muscles, and the less he kicked. Slowly, he drifted towards the dark blue embrace.

Thumping. Lots of footsteps, it sounded like—through the water, at least. Skywalker should run. When Vader caught him, he’d kill him.

Bubbles wibbled in front of Zev’s face. His lungs burned. Slowly, his vision went red. Then blue. Then, just before the true blackness crept in, he saw a shadow flicker above in the paler blue part of the world.

A spear of green shot through the haze.

The sight of a lightsaber so close to his face shocked him out of his stupor. He gasped, more water choking him, but it spun around him as neatly as a factory machine. He followed it around with staring eyes, bubbles dribbling from his lips. When he looked up, he saw a perfect circle of white, limned in green. It exploded outwards.

That horrible force he hated so much seized him. One moment he was dying, then he was lying on his side on the ice, retching. That green light had not stopped. It was… warm.

He noticed that where Skywalker reached it out, hovering it a few millimetres above his clothes, steam evaporated off of him.

“This is taking too long,” he muttered to himself, and deactivated it. Zev wanted to protest, wanted the light and warmth back. Skywalker shrugged off his coat. “Take this.”

“What?” But he’d already bundled it around his shoulders. A shock of residual warmth from Skywalker’s body went through his shoulders. “Why?”

“Because you’re half dead.”

“No,” Zev said, struggling to get it out. “Why didn’t you run?”

“Why would I?”

Of course he hadn’t run. He was a hero. But he didn’t look calm and collected now. He was shivering violently without his coat, one of his hands curled limply at his side, and kept looking to the horizon.

“Veers,” Skywalker said.

“Zev.”

“What?”

Zev stared at Skywalker’s lightsaber. “Just—call me Zev, alright? You’ve already saved me twice.”

That got a mirthless smile. “Alright. Zev. Do you think your father will kill you, if he finds you?”

“What?”

“If he finds you, will your father kill you? Rebel or not, you’re his son.”

“Why?”

“Because we can’t escape,” Skywalker said. “You can’t move very far like this. We’d freeze before we got back to the ship.”

“You can still escape.”

“Will your father kill you or not? Or hurt you?”

“No!” Zev said. “I don’t think. No. He won’t.” He was furious at him. But he loved him. Angst about their relationship and Zev’s betrayal aside, he had that low, low bar to count on: his father would not kill him if they ever saw each other again.

Skywalker swallowed. “I have a flare,” he said.

Zev’s eyes widened. “You need to escape. No.”

“You’re sure that your father won’t hurt you?” Skywalker’s voice cracked. And Zev watched, with shock and horror, as Skywalker cracked as well. Hot tears were steaming up his goggles. “That fathers don’t do that?”

“No! Why?”

“You think I’m like Vader.”

“Yes? No? It’s—”

“You should. You’re right. Do you know what he told me when I last confronted him?” Skywalker’s words were an avalanche. “He’s my father.”

Zev watched Skywalker. Skywalker watched him back.

That stare. That alertness, the instincts, and expectation that people should follow them, because they were evidently right. How Skywalker had flinched, revealing that first hint of the darkness at his core, when Zev first brought Vader up.

“He cut off my hand before he told me that,” Skywalker got out. He waved his dead hand. “It’s a prosthetic.”

Zev stared at it. “It must’ve died in the cold ages ago.”

“It did.”

“You’ve only had one functioning hand this whole time and you didn’t say anything?”

“It wasn’t relevant! Your injury was!”

“Vader is your father?” Vader had a son? A Rebel son? One who had an Alive Only bounty on big enough to buy the Empire out from under him?

“Apparently!”

He thought about how Vader had stared at him, at that awards ceremony. Standing tall and proud next to his decorated father: an army cadet, ready to serve by his side. He thought about how Vader had looked away.

Zev reached out a hand to take Skywalker’s dead one. “Send up the flare,” he told him.

“You’re sure? You’ll be alright?”

“So will you.” Zev’s chest ached. That might be from inhaling all that water. “Once they rescue us, we’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?”

“Send up the flare,” Zev insisted. “Now, you have to trust me.”

When Luke looked at him, he was not judging him. Zev didn’t know why he’d ever thought that he was.

This war had left no one unscathed. Maybe Luke, Princess Leia, Zev’s dad, Vader, all the symbols of good and evil he’d ever looked up to, were just much better at hiding it than he was.

Luke fumbled in his bag for the flare. Looked at it in his left hand. “I need you to help,” he said, wiggling his dead prosthetic.

Zev nodded and took the string. Together, they lifted it, aimed, and fired.

It soared into the sky with an ear-splitting squeal. Bright yellow, orange, red: the antithesis to this cold landscape around them. When it exploded, just the sight of the showering sparks warmed Zev, somewhat. So did the distant shouts.

They huddled together on the ice, heat bleeding through each other like hope, and waited for their fathers to rescue them.

[rockislandadultreads]

Nonfiction Thursday: New Social Science Recommendations

The Teachers by Alexandra Robbins

Alexandra Robbins goes behind the scenes to tell the true, sometimes shocking, always inspirational stories of three teachers as they navigate a year in the classroom. She follows Penny, a southern middle school math teacher who grappled with a toxic staff clique at the big school in a small town; Miguel, a special ed teacher in the western United States who fought for his students both as an educator and as an activist; and Rebecca, an East Coast elementary school teacher who struggled to schedule and define a life outside of school.

Interspersed among the teachers' stories--a seeming scandal, a fourth-grade whodunit, and teacher confessions--are hard-hitting essays featuring cutting-edge reporting on the biggest issues facing teachers today, such as school violence; outrageous parent behavior; inadequate support, staffing, and resources coupled with unrealistic mounting demands; the "myth" of teacher burnout; the COVID-19 pandemic; and ways all of us can help the professionals who are central both to the lives of our children and the heart of our communities.

Ghosts of the Orphanage by Christine Kenneally

For much of the twentieth century, a series of terrible events—abuse, both physical and psychological, and even deaths—took places inside orphanages. The survivors have been trying to tell their astonishing stories for a long time, but disbelief, secrecy, and trauma have kept them from breaking through. For ten years, Christine Kenneally has been on a quest to uncover the harrowing truth.

Centering her story on St. Joseph’s, a Catholic orphanage in Vermont, Kenneally has written a stunning account of a series of crimes and abuses. But her work is not confined to one place. Following clues that take her into the darkened corners of several institutions across the globe, she finds a trail of terrifying stories and a courageous group of survivors who are seeking justice. Ghosts of the Orphanage is an incredible true crime story and a reckoning with a past that has stayed buried for too long, with tragic consequences.

Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?

In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.

Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

The Undertow by Jeff Sharlet

An unmatched guide to the religious dimensions of American politics, Jeff Sharlet journeys into corners of our national psyche where others fear to tread. The Undertow is both inquiry and meditation, an attempt to understand how, over the last decade, reaction has morphed into delusion, social division into distrust, distrust into paranoia, and hatred into fantasies―sometimes realities―of violence.

Across the country, men “of God” glorify materialism, a gluttony of the soul, while citing Scripture and preparing for civil war―a firestorm they long for as an absolution and exaltation. Lies, greed, and glorification of war boom through microphones at hipster megachurches that once upon a time might have preached peace and understanding. Political rallies are as aflame with need and giddy expectation as religious revivals. At a conference for incels, lonely single men come together to rage against women. On the Far Right, everything is heightened―love into adulation, fear into vengeance, anger into white-hot rage. Here, in the undertow, our forty-fifth president, a vessel of conspiratorial fears and fantasies, continues to rise to sainthood, and the insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, killed on January 6 at the Capitol, is beatified as a martyr of white womanhood.

Framing this dangerous vision, Sharlet remembers and celebrates the courage of those who sing a different song of community, and of an America long dreamt of and yet to be fully born, dedicated to justice and freedom for all.

[uncrvwned]

serala tw: sexual slavery.

tl;dr. former slave of yunkai, born into slavery. was taught the ways of the seven sighs until she was bought by a pleasure house in lys. she served three years there until she made her escape, cutting out her tear tattoo. she taught herself to use her great curved bow and served with the second sons - first disguised as a man, later revealing her true identity - and then with the windblown, where she grew respected enough to have her own company of archers. generally extremely quiet, controlled, and despises anything reckless or unplanned. available for plotting primarily in essos, but also in westeros.

☼☾ full name : serala, a name that was chosen for her. she has never seen fit to change it; it's as good as any.

☼☾ nickname(s) : sala (sah-lah)

☼☾ title : the nightowl, for her silent tread and deadly sudden strikes

☼☾ age : verse dependant

☼☾ date of birth : entirely unknown; she only knows her age because her first master kept a record of her purchase

☼☾ place of birth : yunkai

☼☾ gender : cis female, sort of (handwaves vaguely. would identify as nonbinary in modern times, has an awkward relationship with her own femininity)

☼☾ pronouns : she/her

☼☾ sexuality : lesbian, demisexual, hesitant about any physical relationship due to her past

☼☾ early life

☼☾ parents : unknown. a slave woman of yunkai bred for the purpose.

☼☾ siblings : many, all unknown. saw her fellow workers at the pleasure house as sisters, but abandoned them anyway, a source of great guilt

☼☾ other family : her company of nightowls amongst the windblown.

☼☾ personality

coming soon!!

☼☾ appearance

☼☾ hair : deep black, thick, always plaited neatly from her face. does not like it being touched and ties it up in a tight bun at the nape of her neck during battle.

☼☾ eyes : dark brown, narrowed, suspicious

☼☾ notable features : her great curved bow of horn and sinew, almost as tall as she is, always carried unstrung like a staff. walks on silent feet.

☼☾ clothing & style : wears dark leathers and soft silk in the warm sands of the disputed lands. chooses soft greys and blues in westeros. likes clothing for comfort as well as practicality, though no one would call her stylish. does not wear gowns unless obliged and is always covered, wrist to ankle.

☼☾ character inspiration :  artemis (myth), inej ghafa (grisha)