#all this to say is that I think people should give Niss reasons to hate his siblings outside of 'Oh he's just like his dad :)'

[rainyday-deer]

❌Do not repost!

Yeah. That's probably it. (And Niss was defs squinky.)

The instance of their death is a mix of Arackniss and Angel's old deaths, and the death we were given for Angel most recently! Obvs it's just speculation on my part.

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

Wife’s Hilda Rewatch - The Nisse

Oh lmao I watched this episode WEEKS ago and only remembered I had this sitting on my drafts now. At this rate season 2 might be released before I finish the rewatch.

I shall now begin this post by bitching. The name of this episode on Portuguese literally translates to THE GOBLIN. GOBLIN. WHY??? That’s so bad omg

It’s amazing how Hilda and Frida were in very bad terms but then Hilda just shows up at her house like “yeah there’s this badge that you can’t miss Imma help myself to your room now k”. Y’all be fighting with your best friends without giving them a profound psychological analysis of why you did what you did in order to make up? Wild. You need at least one heart to heart and you can’t change my mind.

*cries*

*cries harder*

*JUST FULL ON SOBS BECAUSE THE ONLY THINK THIS CHILD WAS PROMISED IN RETURN FOR LEAVING THE WILDERNESS WAS FRIENDS AND NOW HER FRIEND GROUP IS SEPARATED THIS IS NOT FAIR*

Hello! My name is Librarian’s wife and I hate tumblr! I was writing about this episode, and tumblr deleted it! So I wrote it again, and tumblr deleted it again! So now I’m kind of angry and will just pretend I never wrote those things, okay? Sorry!

Does Kelly feel worse (or at least more annoying) than Pigtails marra for you as well? I mean, there’s a huge difference between “It’s just no fun scaring someone who isn’t afraid” and trying to break Frida psychologically.

Okay, this one paragraph is being written as I edit this post, weeks after I wrote most of it. I took a picture of Johanna and Hilda being an adorable family but I don’t know what comments I was going to make about it. Regardless, I think you should get the chance of seeing them.

Them!!!

“There are no dangerous creatures in these woods, I’d know all about it.” Raven Leader says confidently, about the woods where the marra gather. Way to go, Raven Leader. Way to go.

Quarantine has us all like

——————————————

STOP for a few seconds. This is the “let’s appreciate the Hilda colour pallete” time

Thank you for your attention. Now back to the episode.

——————————————

David confronting people is the best thing ever. All I want in season two is more of it.

Listen, I know this was shorter than usual. Between tumblr erasing what I wrote and me having watched this weeks ago and only editing the post now (that’s the reason why there’s no score today. I forgot what I wanted to point ou 😅) this rewatch probably wasn’t as fun as the others but I’m hoping we’ll have a better one for the grand finally of the rewatch

[windwardrose]

The Scorpio Races Festival writing challenge...9.5? 10? (I know not)

Race’s in four days.

The third day before the Races, Niss woke up sick and thirsty and dry-mouthed, her joints stiff and her head aching, her arm throbbing when she moved it unthinkingly. Early morning light stabbed into her eyes and she spent a few half-remembered minutes stumbling around; thinking back she recalled standing in a strange bathroom and splashing water on her face, lapping it up from her hands and tasting the salt from off her skin and hair. The eyes in the mirror stared out from sunken pale sockets.

She slept most of that day – sometimes next to Casey on the bed, it being convenient, and later in a tattered armchair by the window. Neither the doctor nor anyone else seemed inclined to chase her out, or else they told her to leave and she fell asleep before she remembered to obey.

Bren Darvin came at noon and stayed, his plaid mainland coat traded for a shapeless woolen jacket and his hair jagged and messy. The look in his eyes reminded Niss of the look in Casey’s the night of the Festival.

In the middle of the cold gray afternoon Niss woke and saw Bren poking the fire in the woodstove with the tongs, fitfully. He must have felt a notice on him, for he turned his head.

“They said you saved Casey,” Bren said.

“I tried,” Niss said. She fumbled for the glass of water someone had left at her elbow; she was in the chair by that time.

Bren’s mouth quirked up.  “Thank you.” And then, “It’s my fault, really. I left the island. And now she rides that stupid savage beast I hauled out of the sea, back when I was a kid and thought it would fix something.” His shoulders slumped. “She’s got me trained. This’s my third year coming back to see her race.”

“I don’t think she rides just because of you,” Niss said. The water cleared the dusty taste in her mouth. “At least she wouldn’t have to. I figure she’s got her own reasons.”

“What do you ride for?” Bren said.

Niss took another swallow of water.

“Because it’s beautiful,” she said.

“Beautiful?” Bren’s voice was incredulous.

“It’s like the Gloria and the sea and the evening star,” Niss said. “Like things that are made and meant.” Her voice seemed disconnected from her, floating out in the middle of the air. The ache traveled up and down her arm like the ebb and flow of the tide. “The capaill run and we ride them; it’s how it’s meant to be, and to do well what you’re meant to do, that’s beautiful.”

It made her cringe to remember it later – saying things like that to a stranger. Fear and what came after it would do that to you, aside from the dizziness of blood loss. But even when she thought of it later she couldn’t disagree with what she’d said.

 The second day before the Races, Niss’s parents turned up.

Word of her misfortune would ordinarily have reached them sooner – Thisby gossip being as it was – but news of injured riders from the beaches was barely even news, here in the bloody end of October. Niss didn’t mind the mercy of an extra day, so that she could be on her feet again properly by the time Mum swept in.

It took Mum five minutes to notice Casey and Bren, but when she did, things happened quickly.

“Is that the girl you saved from her capall, Niss, love? And you, young fellow – you’re her brother – oh, Jack Darvin’s grandchildren – of course. Condolences for your dear grandfather. I didn’t know you were back to the island – oh – for the races, of course…”

Dad arched an eyebrow from where he stood in the doorframe, but he was smiling. Niss smiled back, cautiously.

Somehow within the hour the doctor was explaining to Mum that Casey shouldn’t be moved yet, and Mum was telling the doctor that there wasn’t any sense in sending the girl back to her boarding-house in this condition; and she, Ann Vesper, would not abandon a poor child in such a moment; the doctor should be sure that Casey Darvin would have a place to go once she was better. And Bren and Niss ended up getting Mum’s command to come back to the Vesper house for dinner, which Niss refused on account of not knowing if she could walk to the end of the block at the moment, and Bren accepted, very hesitantly.

Dad left the room last, after Mum had hurried Bren out amidst a flurry of friendly questions. He looked from Niss to Casey and back to Niss.

“You’re a brave girl,” he said to Niss, “and I don’t mind saying I’m awfully proud of you. I shouldn’t call you brave just for being a rider in the Races – but for being a rider and for doing what you did.”

Niss squirmed, as much as she comfortably could. “I wasn’t brave,” she said. “Just didn’t have time to be scared till I was already there.”

Dad laughed, kindly, but then his face grew more serious. “You’ve heard what the doctor says about your friend.”

“Some,” said Niss, a little lick of fear cold inside her all of a sudden.

“Time’s what will tell.” Dad crossed the room, then, for a quick moment and bent to kiss Niss on the forehead. One rough hand rubbed softly across her hair. “You’re my brave wild girl, Niss Vesper.”

“Love you, Dad,” said Niss into his flannel shirt-front, under the warm touch of his hand. Then, “I’m still going to ride. I don’t know where they’ve put Seal though.”

Dad laughed again, and Niss felt it as well as heard it.

“If Owen Keifer’s got my message yet, your capall’s going to be in our back pasture waiting for you. Your mum’s going to fuss like a damp cat, but I still know how to manage a water horse.”

“Just don’t try to put a saddle on her,” Niss said. “Seal hates saddles.”

 The last day before the Races, Niss woke in the small dark hours of the morning to some indefinable change in the air of the room.

“Hullo?” she said into the dimness, suddenly afraid though she could not tell why.

The answer came half-breath, half-sound, from the bed an arm’s reach away:

“Hullo yourself.”

Niss sat up, then, wincing. The light took a moment longer to scrabble into existence; when it was on, Casey’s wide feverish eyes flicked away from it, bright blue above her hollow cheeks.

“You’re all right,” Casey murmured.

“All right enough.”

“Good.” Casey paused then, a sharp shallow breath that turned into a cough. And then, “Moonset?”

“Back in the sea,” Niss said.

“Blast,” said Casey, with surprising feeling in the whisper. “I am a nitwit.”

Niss leaned forward. “No, you just had your capall try to eat you, like a couple hundred Thisby folk have had happen to them for as long as time. You can catch another one, you know.”

“I was just now getting that one to run straight,” Casey said. She twitched one side of her mouth, something like a smile. “Bren’s here.”

“Yes. I mean, he’s gone now, but he was here and he’ll be back.”

“Here and back,” muttered Casey. “How very like Bren.”

Outside the curtains, the dawn must have been coming, for the room was beginning to gray. Niss waited, because Casey’s eyes had slipped shut again, and listened for her friend’s soft ragged breaths.

“The Races are tomorrow,” Niss said. “You’ve been – asleep for a bit.”

Casey’s eyelids flickered, her mouth shaping a word Niss couldn’t catch.

“I should tell you I’ll win the races for you, shouldn’t I?” Niss found the words pouring out of her, like a loosed spring unwinding. “But I don’t think I will; maybe you would have won, though, and maybe you will next year, you’re a better rider than I. I don’t care about the winning, not really. But I do mean to ride.”

Shyly Niss reached out, then, and touched her fingers to Casey’s hair, brushing through the salt-matted strands. Casey turned towards Niss, ever so slightly, resting her head against Niss’s hand.

And all of a sudden Niss was angry at time, at the clock, at the dawn, at the waves on the beach that washed every mark off the sand no matter how deep it was graven: angry most of all at the small dark corner of herself that believed nothing would last, angry because it was right. Because there was nothing you could do about things really, in the end, if something were to leave you.

Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away, she’d sung in the church choir. They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day…

A month of fleeting across the sands, like seabirds into the sunset, and this was where it got them – alone together in the dark before dawn, Casey fragile and mortal under Niss’s hand, every breath shaking through her. It didn’t seem fair. Nothing seemed fair.

“Do not die,” Niss snapped. Her voice shook. “Do not dare die. I’m going to go ride Seal now, and I’ll come back tonight, and then I’ll ride in the Races and come again tomorrow night. All right?”

“All right,” Casey said.

In Niss’s mind the song played on, endless and brilliant as the new sunlight she walked out shakily into a quarter-hour later. O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come…

Niss squinted against the sun just as Casey had squinted against the lamplight. Thisby was coming awake around her, doors and windows opening. Soon there’d be people down at the beaches… She wondered if she could find someone to give her a lift up to her parents’ place; walking might take a while. And then to try to find a path to get Seal down without running into any strange capaill on the way. That would be impossible, likely. And tomorrow there’d be no more escaping from strange capaill, so she’d best get used to the idea.

Nobody seemed immediately around on the street to give her a lift, so Niss decided she had to start walking and hope for the best. Her footsteps caught a rhythm as she set out, boots on cobblestones, singing with the tune in her head.

…Be Thou our guard while life shall last and our eternal home.