#also any chance to put glowing hand written letters on a drawing is like a sweet dessert to me >:]]]

[frosted-woods]

listen listen it was just meant to be a quick drawing but my hand slipped a little and i spent waaaaay longer on it than i had planned so @stageturn here's another jon to your collection

wooo here's all stages versions cause i love saving them. also look i'm ALWAYS unsatisfied with any brush i try to sketch with but this time something clicked i had sooo much fun sketching this

[yanderart]

He caught you when no one else did; defeated you when no one else could. Whether you liked to admit it or not, Eraserhead had clearly proven his worth.

So why didn't you prove yours, little villain?

Another portrait for my POV yandere series, this time of Aizawa. Got a few people requesting me to draw/write for him so hopefully y'all enjoy it 🖤

Below the cut, as customary for the series, is a longshot one-shot that delves further into the backstory (Aizawa x Villain Reader, nsfw, dark themes, 8k).

TWs: dub-con, graphic smut, Bad Bondage Etiquette, degradation/humiliation, brat (villain) taming, cumplay and slight bimbofication. Scumbag Aizawa is real.

— — —

   The day you met Eraserhead, looking back, saying your worries had been misplaced would be an understatement. With not being apprehended and losing street cred at the very top of your list, it was decidedly easy to skip over any of the other big red-lettered warnings.

   You first felt the tickle in your nape while you carried your acquisitions across downtown Musutafu, accompanied by the familiar presage of someone watching your every movement. The city around you was bustling, as was the norm, as loud and meandering in its complaints as a chronically diseased elder, yet the alleys you took as shortcuts grew quieter and quieter with each step. 

   It was eerie, alarming, and a platitude of other adjectives you shamefully chose to neglect. 

   “So this is the great V/N in the flesh,” the lazy cadence of someone calling out your alias froze you mid-step, the way his owner dragged each syllable telling you he hadn’t yet decided whether you were worth wasting his breath on. 

   Your body was responding before you even had a chance to properly process the threat, running on instinct and muscle memory as you twirled to face the mysterious man and prepared to...

   “Cute dress, kid.” Eraserhead in the flesh stood barely a few feet away, glowing scarlet orbs illuminating his preternaturally blank expression and transforming it instead into a visage of pure intimidation. “Didn’t pitch you for the frilly type.”

   The growing panic in your chest put a hitch in your breath as you stared back. Yet you couldn’t help but still try, fruitlessly hoping—hands clenched, nails puncturing your own flesh as you tried to force your dormant quirk awake. And all for naught, considering your efforts were only repaid by the hatchet of your sinking realization being buried even deeper. 

   Although, the Pro-Hero also appeared to notice your meager attempts, taking a few steps closer to your form with a condescending gleam in his otherwise somber features. 

   Before you were conscious of what you were looking at (and before you had half a mind to attempt a quirkless attack on the hero), you observed the weapon wrapped around his neck unfolding fluidly, the extensions of fabric reaching out to envelop you in a forceful embrace that left your arms tucked to your sides and your back uncomfortably straightened. 

   “Better to trap you before you get any wild ideas. It’s your fault you’re in this position in the first place anyways,” he was taunting you, prodding you and poking you as you found yourself completely at his mercy, uselessly struggling much in the same way many of your victims had surely felt in their last few moments at your hands. 

   "Eraserhead," his pseudonym resembled an insult on your tongue, your rage and resentment making for rather colorful enhancements. "Don’t you have anything better to do than trapping helpless girls with this weapon of yours? Didn't peg you for a pervert."

   Usually, you managed to reign in some of your nastier attitudes, channeling them into your quirk and the violence you could inflict with it…

   But tied up and under the influence of his own ability as you were? All you had was pettiness. 

   "You can dress up as a civ all you want. Won't be fooling me." He took several steps, closing the distance between you two with barely the hint of a smile morphing his stern expression.  

   You could see the faint stubble on his handsome face from this up close, blood-shot eyes that refused to blink as they studied you in ample detail. Could even see the scar carved onto one of his cheekbones, a textured promise of the fight he had survived and now wore as a medal. 

   Such was your luck, that the Pro to finally catch up with you had to be this rugged scumbag. 

   "I'm not even engaging in any criminal activities, Eraseridiot." Your insult was terrible, but you were never much of a verbal sparrer. Not when you could use your fists instead. "What are you gonna send me to the pigs for? I know my rights."

   And you did. So when the condescension on the lazy hero's face turned into a full-on expression of mockery as he approached your "bag of acquisitions," you audibly gulped. Goddamn stalker couldn't have been following you for that long? Could he? 

    If only you knew. 

   "Then," he held up the bag with an indolent brand of interest, the contents dangling tauntingly from his clutch. "How do you explain this over here? I reckon even dirt like you knows what stealing qualifies as." His other hand dived for the contents and before you could voice any protest, cheeks blushing furiously, a slow hint of a chuckle was bobbing his adam's apple. "It would be a fun thing to peg you down for, though."

   That damned weapon of his didn't give out an inch as you started to furiously struggle, becoming instead impossibly tighter with each futile attempt at freeing yourself.

   "You fucking psycho, is this your sick way of trying to pick me up or something?"

   But your quip did not deter him at all (if anything, it spurred him on). The hand inside the bag tensed for a moment before he was retrieving the sole object inside. To say mortification was written all over your face would be an understatement. 

   A dark pantyhose now hung from Eraserhead's nimble fingers, not a second being wasted by the Hero before he proceeded to bring it up to his face, carelessly stretching the garment until you could see every single one of his features through the sheer material. The way the moonlight caught in it, bouncing off and bathing his patronizing face, made for uncomfortably intimate imagery. 

   (Yet a part of you, one you would never admit existed if further questioned, also could not help but notice the striking attractiveness of it all, making you want to squirm for completely different reasons while the man continued to exert his quirk on you through the fabric of your fucking lingerie.)

   "Gotta say, didn't take you for a pantyhose kind of gal either. Girls like you…" He uttered the last part more like an afterthought, tossing the bag aside before his hands continued toying with the tights absentmindedly. "Are suited for something like fishnets much more."

   By that point, you were sure he was just playing with you. You were such a harmless joke, restrained and showcased like a prize for his viewing pleasure.

   "Reckon you must own quite a few pairs, uh?" He continued egging you on when you failed to give a timely enough answer. 

   (Perhaps the fact that he so easily guessed that detail should’ve been your first real warning, too.)

   Yet you couldn’t help how his condescension and the downright dirty way he stared at you sent dark shivers up your spine, the threat he represented turning strangely alluring under the dim street lights illuminating you both. 

   As a villain, you had robbed, murdered, set people ablaze, and even stolen a popsicle or two from some crying kids. So why were Eraserhead's words having such an effect on you? Why did, a part of you deep down, seemed enthused by the awful way in which he was speaking to you?

   "You don't have any proof I stole them. I just threw away the receipt after I bought them. Very environmentally unconscious of them, too, when electrical ones are a thing."

   Now you were just rambling. What an adorable sight. 

   "Hmm, never thought I'd hear "environmentally unconscious" being uttered by a two-bit criminal." He stopped stretching the lingerie for a moment, thoughtfully scratching at his incipient stubble with his free hand instead, "Are you really trying to sell me the good samaritan angle?"

   To his credit too, he seemed genuinely puzzled by your approach for an instant. Guess even an experienced pro like him still had room to be shocked. 

   "I'm not trying to sell you anything, imbecile." The snobbishly controlled tone of yours was back, the shaking of panic subsiding while you held onto your only hope of leaving this confrontation unscathed. "And my rights clearly state you need proof to apprehend me. Need causality to exert your quirk on me, too, or you would be the one breaking the law." 

   Now, Eraserhead wasn’t annoyed per se. You could tell from what little he had already spoken (and from the myriad of cautionary tales you had been told) that little could rattle the man at all, but your comment definitely appeared to intrigue him. It made you feel like an animal being studied, pinned down, and ready to be dissected for his own morbid curiosity.

   "Isn't this just rich?" His tone was almost lethargic, words dragging on with a faint rumble. "Are you going to run off to the police, then? Tell them how a Pro trapped you and tried turning you in for a very obvious act of theft?", his eyebrows were raised, eyes more awake despite his monotone voice carrying on. "Be my guest then."

   Because of course you were all bark, no bite and he was more than willing to call you out on your shit. So instead of continuing down that route, you decided to veer for a new approach, switching from your assortment of insolent tactics. 

   "Do you get off on this, then?" Your voice morphing into meekness while you adopted an expression of distress, bottom lip jutting out with the sparkle of thinly veiled sarcasm glimmering in your eyes. "Do you like thinking of yourself as the Big Bad Hero, maybe?" And you could tell by the way the incipient smile froze on his lips that your question had caught him off guard. Made you wanna press even harder, "Do you like the idea of taking a defenseless little girl into an alley and showing her just how bad you can be? Maybe planned on teaching me a lesson, is that it?"

   His frown mimicked yours now, no longer any hints of cruel enjoyment on his part. His eyes still glowed red, but he was now squinting ever so slightly, zeroing in on you not only due to the limits of his quirk but also due to the words rapidly continuing to escape your impudent mouth. 

   "Does Eraserhead like to fuck his lays into being law-abiding citizens? Is the power over someone else what really gets you off, perhaps?"

   It was like a spell was cast on the both of you. He couldn't drift his attention, his eyes couldn't stop scanning your face — quickly flickering from the hatred coloring your gaze to the slight quiver of frustration shaking your lips. The hand which he still used to grab your stockings was now a closed fist, knuckles growing pale from the poorly contained strength.

   "Bet you plotted this entire thing, you creep. Wanted to take me behind an alley and show me my place." Your taunts were becoming increasingly more risqué, the anger blurring your sense of preservation—and the hint of something else too, a secret excitement you were unwilling to recognize. "Wanted to have me all submissive and obedient under you, surely. Show me what a scary hero cock can do, is that it?"

   But instead of earning another entertaining grimace, you had a first-row seat to the rapidly darkening expression on his face. Eyes squinted at the same time that the bandages settled even tighter around you, cutting off your breath for a moment before relenting just enough not to suffocate you. 

    And that's when you first felt it for the first time, just when your jests died on your lips and you drank on his foreboding reaction. The grip of Eraserhead's quirk, more constricting than any ropes, wavering faintly around the prison he had constructed around you; the distinct buzzing in your hands returning for a mere instant before flickering out again.

   Now that was interesting.

   "Should watch what you're saying," the pro-hero sounded gruff, voice tinted by a new kind of intensity.

   Like a shark smelling the smallest whiff of blood, you couldn’t help your instincts urging you to dial down. 

   "Always knew you hero types had a hard-on for the power trips. Bet you were using all of this as a decoy. Is this when you strip me and hold me down? When you plow me into the floor of this alley and tell me to "behave or else"?" 

   You knew your jabs were going too far, getting too brazen… yet as much as you enjoyed making the Pro visibly uncomfortable, once he decided to close the distance between you two there was little you could do to stop yourself from flinching. A fire inhabited his expression, the vivid brightness emanating from his stare not only intimidating, but downright frightening too.

   "Are you trying to rile me up?" His hand gripped your face with force, bandages shifting until they were enveloping your neck, holding you up and forcing you to reciprocate his glare, "What do you think will you achieve by antagonizing me even more, V/N?"

   You just looked at him through your eyelashes, still somehow managing to play up the innocent act through the layers of fear settling in. And as expected, it only served to further his irritation, calloused fingers digging even deeper into your cheeks and coaxing the claws of terror to continue trailing their nails all around you. 

   "I’m just trying to understand you, Eraserhead." The way you smiled at him was defiance personified despite it all, your tongue wetting your lips while you caught his eyes following the movement. There was the slightest give of his quirk again, a fluctuation in his concentration informing you that you were finally on the right track. "And I think, given the fact that I haven’t been cuffed yet, that we can both still come to a mutual agreement."

   Fingers twitched around your jawline, muffling your words while your sides were squished together harshly. But even manhandling you, the Hero couldn’t hide the spark in his eyes, an interest you foolishly believed to be ignited by your former comments. 

   "So you are indeed trying to rile me up then." It was an assertion, not a hint of doubt in his leisure intonation. 

   Instead of replying this time, you just slowly blinked his way, observing your imitation of meekness reflected in a gaze that refused to abandon yours. It had been so long since you last tried to play coy, so long since you needed to depend on anything besides your own strength and ruthlessness. You couldn’t help the thrill you got from playing the role. 

   "Think you’ll get me distracted enough to break away, I bet." He was whispering directly against your skin after getting dangerously closer, the heat from his cushioned lips provoking an involuntary shiver. "Do you believe nobody else tried this approach before, little villain?"

   You gulped, feeling caught before you even had time to properly set the stage. 

   "I wasn’t..."

   "Weren’t what, trying to seduce me?" There was a sense of levity hidden somewhere under his timbre, stored between words that kept dragging on in a mantle of aloofness. "Or did you not mean any of your words?"

   When you didn’t reply, you could feel the cruel smile resurfacing against your earlobe. 

   "If I lift your dress right now, do you think I’ll have my answer?" His question sounded almost casual, as weightless as your alias had been when he first called you out. 

   Your heartbeat sang in your chest, an anxious hummingbird trapped inside your ribcage. Because you knew the answer, you both did. 

   When the hand still clutching your bunched hosiery came up to press the fabric against your thighs, you could not help the gasp that escaped you.

   "I bet all those things you were just saying…" His tone drifted off as the stockings were slowly guided up the vastness of your legs, fingers barely grazing you through the thin layer of the stolen undergarments. He was thoroughly teasing you, enjoying the manner in which your expression contorted in response. "You just want me to do them to you, don’t you?"

   Even if you would’ve wanted to object, the pressure of his nylon-covered digits finally reaching your dampened panties was enough to kill any possible refusal. He traced the outline of your slit, soft touches running across it with deceitful lightness, and your mind became positively staggered as you were rendered overwhelmed by his actions. 

   You didn’t have to worry about his next move for long, either, because barely a moment’s notice passed before his entire palm was eagerly covering your crotch. And the new way in which he groped you was demanding, the heel of his wrist putting just enough pressure to drag a shamefully loud mewl from you. 

   The douchebag even had the gall to laugh at your reaction, the sound of his mirth prompting you to writhe even harder as he continued to feel you up through your rapidly soaking underwear. 

   "Knew you’d be a slutty one." His breath was hoarse against the side of your face, the stubble on his jaw scratching against your skin in a way which made you wonder how it would feel pressing elsewhere. "So fucking wet, it must hurt being this eager."

   He didn’t specify what exact kind of pain he meant, whether your growing need for release or the insufferable blow all of this represented to your pride. Somehow, though, you had an inkling that he was referencing both. 

   "Wanna show me just how needy you are?" His words echoed with each laboured breath of his, one of the few signs you had that he was clearly very much into the whole affair despite his detached demeanor. "Maybe you could show me more of your adorable little cries." 

   As Eraserhead rutted his palm against you another time, you found your hips lowering down to chase the feeling much to your own chagrin, more moans making their way out of your panting mouth while he coaxed you to sing the notes of his preferred melody. 

   It was true that you hated his guts… but another fact was that you hadn’t had action in a long while either. Even with the threat of imprisonment hanging over you, you could not deny how desirable the idea to get to cum against that veiny hand of him was, to grip those muscular shoulders as you reached the perdition he was so tantalizingly offering. 

   Decidedly forgotten was your plan of you being the one distracting him. For fuck’s sake, you really were a needy whore. 

   "Why not show me how you cum for me in this alley, if you’re really that desperate?" His words kept getting cruder, his tongue tracing a languid stripe from your earlobe down to the side of your neck, a beautiful path of distractions threatening to dip your sanity even lower. "Be the dirty little villain that I know you are, doll."

   But just as soon as the stimulation was hitting you a second time, so it suddenly disappeared. One second fingers were flexing against your tender flesh, coated by your arousal through the layers of fabric separating you and fluttering with the promise of an impending release, and then the very next instant you were left to whimper (a villain like you, actually whimpering!) in the unbearable wake of their absence. 

   When your eyes searched for the Hero’s again, in his blown out pupils you could only dare interpret part of the enjoyment he was getting from watching you scram for his touch, beautifully bold handwriting spelling out arousal for all to read.  

   Watching you so easily betray your own ego after all of your lip service? More than simple music to his ears, it was an entire sonnet. 

   "But, now that I think of it, you were the one trying to walk away free from this. So why should you be the one getting pleasured?"

   Even in your precarious situation, you couldn’t help rolling your eyes. 

   "Are you fucking kidding me?" Apparently, your discomfort at being denied was enough to forego your better senses.

   The bindings contracted around you in quick response to your insolence, your neck being craned even further and your arms mishandled until they were behind your back instead of at your sides, a sharp pain blooming from your shoulders as you struggled to adjust.

   Treated like this, he really did make you feel like a helpless little doll. (Goddamn, that thought alone was enough to have your juices gushing again, the trails of your excitement starting to make a mess of your inner thighs.)

   "You don’t get it, do you?" He asked in a despondent voice, unblinking eyes still refusing to abandon your face as he elaborated, "you should already be on your way to some second-rate villain prison, cuffed and muzzled and someone else’s problem."

   At his reminder of what you believed to be your impending fate, the mocking pout on your face transformed into a retelling of real horror. Because your spotless reputation was the one trick in your book that had managed to give you a sliver of notoriety over the rest of the unremarkable criminals, much more significant than any quirk or grandiose crime. 

   So for someone like you to lose that? You might as well hang up the villain costume and retire, for all anyone would care. (And yes, you had been called an attention whore a lot throughout your life, but who could blame you when you couldn’t help but thrive on it?)

   Sensing your spiraling thoughts, the Pro raised his eyebrows in an almost pitiful stint, as if he was truly empathizing with the agonized look of your face. 

   "I know you don’t want that, doll." As his declaration dragged on, the grip that had been steadying your jaw was swapped instead for the peculiar feeling of damp fabric —your pantyhose being pushed against your cheek and spreading your own juices around, all while Eraserhead intently studied the new wave of disgust coloring your features. "So why not show me that even a villain slut like you can behave? Give me a reason to believe that and..." The slickered garment was now pressing to your closed lips, your eyes starting to water with the weight of the humiliation you were being made to endure. "Maybe then I’ll consider letting you go."

    You knew he was lying, had every right to doubt the sincerity of his promise and, in its place, conclude he just meant to take advantage of you in your desperate state and then leave you for the pigs to find anyway. 

    You knew all of that, and yet you still opened your mouth and allowed him to do as he pleased. When he worked the pair of soiled stockings inside, you had troubles recognizing the pathetic sight being reflected your way from the wild hue of his gaze. 

   For someone who had always prided herself in being a predator, you had never looked more like prey.

   "Fuck, that’s it, doll." He pushed the piece further with his fingers, forcing you to stretch your lips until your jaw started to hurt from the strain. His fingers swirled inside, pressing the soaked material against the flat of your tongue and instructing you to eagerly lick it.

   You had never felt as debased in your entire life, being forced to choose between savoring your own arousal while tied up in an alley or ruining a reputation you had fought so earnestly to maintain. 

   (And yet your thighs were pressing together now, attempting to create some meager friction to alleviate a yearning that did nothing but shift, demand, grow.)

   "Look at you cleaning up your own mess," he almost sounded proud of you as you kept dutifully sucking, his other hand brushing your hair away from your shoulders in a strangely consoling way. "Seeing you all obedient like this, one could be fooled into thinking there is yet hope for reform."

   By the time the Hero finally took his hand away, bunching up the stockings before fitting them into one of the hidden pockets of his dark costume, you thought you could discern a mocking smile through the clouds of tears.

   "But now, now, doll… are you gonna keep crying or do you wanna try and take proper care of me next?"

   Not finding it in yourself to raise your voice again, you instead opted to wet your lips hesitantly as you awaited for him to elaborate further. There was a question dying to be asked, struggling somewhere alongside the myriad of insolent retorts and insults you wished you could swing the Hero’s way without being harshly reprimanded. 

   "I wouldn’t call that proper exactly," a chuckle reverberated from the back of his throat, gravely and dark as he misrepresented your movements. Fingers still slick from your saliva caressed your bottom lip, massaging it in a way which played straight into the undermining tilt of his words. "Although I’m sure you must be dying to wrap your pretty lips around my cock. Would give you a good reason to stay quiet, uh?"

   You really had been intending not to fall for his obvious goading, not trying to give the Pro anymore reasons to be harsh with you (or even worse, give him an excuse to leave you alone and to a fate worse than his company ever would be). 

   Had tried so hard too, but the cocky villain in you could only take so much degradation before it snapped. 

   "Goddamn it, are you trying to fuck me or bore to death?" As for the slight quivering in your voice, you dearly hoped he wouldn’t pick up on it. 

   Predictably enough, that slip earned you another harsh tug from the capture weapon, your whole body pulled back until you thought you were about to be snapped. 

   "I was just about to praise you for being all sweet for me, V/N." The switch from his pet names to your alias felt like a bucket of ice being dumped on you, voice a slow drawl while he tugged once more from your bottom lip, but this time harsh enough to have you wincing. "I’m trying to teach you how to be a proper girl, so don’t make me regret it. Or would you prefer to go take a prolonged vacation in a holding cell?"

   He already knew your answer judging by the way his eyes coldly studied you, unearthing the secrets you uselessly attempted to hide with an ease that unnerved you (and, as much as you loathe to admit, fascinated you). 

   When he tugged at your mouth again, nails sinking just enough to be noticeable, you knew he was expecting a verbal answer. And a nice one, at that. 

   "Then fucking get on with it…" Words slurred at the end, caught up in the increasingly somber aura of your captor before you swallow thickly, quickly adding as an afterthought, "Please."

   At that, his scowl receded enough for some satisfaction to find its way back into his grimace.

   The more you struggled, the sweeter your surrender became.  

   "Not perfect, but better," he conceded with a thoughtful hum.

   If you had properly studied just who he was beyond his active Heroism, then you would’ve understood just how accustomed he was to insubordination. If anything, your act only served to make him feel more at home.

   You had barely any time to wonder about whatever he had planned next though, because in an instant that damned contraction of his was moving you around once more, twisting you until you were facing the brick wall of the alleyway with heaving breaths. 

   Your legs were now maneuvered until you were forced to keep them apart just a smidgen, the new inviting space between your thighs surely a most intoxicating promise for the sick man manhandling you. And your back experienced pain afterwards too, harshly pushed until you had no option but to allow yourself to be pressed against the dirty walls; As a result, you found yourself with your ass backed up and for the world to see, the frilly skirt of your dress caught somewhere between all the movements.

   Yet even being roughed up as you were, when a hand reached out to tug your ruined underwear away you couldn't help greedily rutting into it, too worried by the fire gathering in your lower belly to care about maintaining a semblance of the reluctance you would later claim to have experienced. 

   It was almost comical for the Hero to observe the pathetic image you were now serving up on an ornate platter —especially when compared to the list of deviant crimes and horrors your spreadsheet of accomplishments preached. For all intents and purposes, you really were a horrible, messed up individual…

   So it was a wonder why his mind had kept supplying him with the same descriptor ever since he first saw you, the same sweet little word that he thought might as well be written all over your skin for how accurate it described you.

   A cute little doll (soon to be his cute little doll). Despite believing himself to be a fairly responsable Hero, the man had never wanted to play with anything as much as he did with you.

   The sound of a zipper being lowered was alarmingly loud in the emptiness of your surroundings, as loud as a wail to your sensitive ears. When you squirmed below your restraints, nonetheless, you could no longer pinpoint whether it was from unadulterated fear or a sick sense of anticipation.

   How easy it had been to break you, even if you would never recognize it openly.

   "Knew you were into it, and now watch your ass trembling in excitement for me." He was chuckling again, not pretending like the cruelty coating his words had any other intention but to degrade you further. It had been just his luck, to find the one villain who just so happened to enjoy it. "I really hit the jackpot with you, didn’t I, doll?"

   When the lewd sound of one of his fists pumping his cock reached your ears, you didn’t even bother disguising the whines of complaint refusing to be contained any longer. 

   "Stop..." Words spilled from clenched teeth, growled out with an annoyance that no longer sought to defy, "Fucking..." but to demand instead, "Teasing."

   "Hmm, that’s cute. Why don’t you try begging me though?" His cadence was growing as bated as his breath, littered by intermittent curses as his eyes dined on the sight of your glistening core, held up and offered up for him to do as he pleased. "Beg for me to use you, and if you put on a good enough show I might just let you off."

   Another shiver rampaging it's way through your body, an exhilaration that could not be entirely pinpointed. 

   "Please…" You started, rough intonation dripping with venom —But Eraserhead didn't seem to mind the sardonic nature of your pleading though, not as you heard the litany of damnations being spilled from his lips. Your shameful excitement, your bitterness, your hatred… he would feast on it all and do it gladly. "Get on with it, bastard. Didn't anyone tell you never to toy with your food?"

   A low murmur was your only response at first, followed by the lewd sound of his pre-cum covered cock being harshly jerked.

   "Hmmm, aren't you being a bit too demanding…" His steps echoed again behind you, his unoccupied hand coming up to massage your ass with a rather firm grip. "Even with the begging, I don't think you've learned your place yet."

    When he planted a slap in the same place he had been eagerly caressing before, sharp and flaring up your nerves with the sting of pain and humiliation, you couldn't stop your scream from turning into a wanton little moan halfway through. 

   Even if he was hitting you, it still meant he was touching you, and so enticingly close to the place you actually needed tended to.

   "Do it…" your breathing was too heavy to speak in full fluid sentences, body flushed and mind filled with the buzzing of desire. "Do it again, fuck."

   You were still not begging him like he asked, but it seemed like your choice of words still greatly pleased him. Another slap rained on your ass, his big warm palm massaging the same reddening spot right after.

   And he kept going, the spanking echoing through your body and sending both pain and pleasured shivers up your spine—lewd sounds mixing in with the increasing pace of his other fist pumping his cock. Even without directly touching you, your pussy clenched and weeped with each firm hit. 

   "Damn, it's my first time meeting such a masochistic whore." Punctuated by his most painful slap yet, the globes of your ass left trembling and a furious shade of crimson to match his lust-filled eyes. "I can see why you've managed to stay free for so long, little villain." The debasement, paired with the pain of his firm strikes, had you moaning even louder. You couldn't even recognize your own sounds, nor the thrills you felt at this entire fucked up ordeal. "Wonder how many other Pros you showed this beautiful sight to."

   Even through the fog of sensations impeding you from being wholly coherent, though, you still couldn't help but want to set the record straight. 

   "None, fuck…" Words merging into another expectant whine when you felt his hand gripping your flesh again, only this time he was kneading you in an oddly tender way —Urging you on, fingers creeping closer to your needy hole. "I'm not… usually in the business of fucking Heroes. Shit, I hate this…" 

   But you didn’t, and when you were surprised by the warmth of his naked erection barely grazing the sensitive outer lips of your cunt, you couldn't help the sigh of relief that escaped you. 

   "Goddamn, V/N, even while you're an ill-mannered brat you still manage to know just what to say." 

   And then the older man was sliding his cock in the juncture of your thighs, teasing your core by pressing against it while grunts began to escape him. You thought you could cry from having him so close yet still not where you wanted him, but then his shallow thrusts against your legs proved to be much more stimulating than you first expected. 

   The fat head of his cock even managed to somewhat stimulate your puffy clit with its movements, pushing in its direction as your essence continued to leak out and cover you both. And It was so absolutely debauched, to think a Hero was using your thighs like a fucktoy while you were tied down and unable to stop it....

   But it felt so good. Even without him actually in you, you had never been this turned on before. 

   "More… ughhh," you were now screaming with the side of your face pressed flush against the disgusting brick walls, needy sounds filling the night and making it privy to your descent into madness.

   Another thrust, this time angled just precisely enough not to caress your pleasurable areas. Punishment, you feverishly thought while you attempted to wiggle your ass, eager to force more of that delicious friction you were quickly becoming hypnotized by. 

   "Now, V/N," his gruff voice had adopted a mocking tone of reprimand as he continued to rut against the soft skin of your thighs. "Haven't I taught you anything, yet? If you want something…" The hand returned to your heated skin, digits underneath you both spreading your pussy enough for the chilly night air to send shivers straight to your core. "You gotta say please."

   And say please you did. Screamed it even, so eager for more and already far beyond feeling any embarrassment. 

   He didn't fuck you, not like you really wanted, but suddenly his thick shaft was sliding between your lips as his capture weapon aided him in angling your body just right, pulsing against your hole while he found a new rythimn. When both of his hands returned, one of them held you back to make the process even easier while the other swiftly joined his cock in tending to your eager pussy.

   So lost were you in the new raw excitement seizing you, in the knowledge of just how messed up you both were for engaging in such debauchery —so distracted that you didn't even notice the faint buzzing returning to your arms, the vibrancy of an old frequency being reactivated and allowed to encapsulate you again.

   (You didn’t notice, but fuck if it didn’t made your orgasm all the sweeter.) 

   You were cumming like that, your moans resembling squeaks, your body feeling closer to a used fucktoy than a human being. The hero kept rutting against you, the joint efforts of his cock and hand mercilessly continuing to abuse your spasming cunt while your cries filled the space with their decadence. 

   You felt dirty, guilty, maybe even a little ashamed as the orgasm briefly gave you a clarity of mind your arousal had clouded.

   And yet, despite it all, it had been the best you felt in years, possibly ever. As the Pro now tugged your hair, forcing you to wrench your neck just enough to look at him over your shoulder, you couldn't help licking your lips in expectation of what he had in store next.

   "You're gonna show me your face next time you come, little villain." He gave you just enough time to nod, eyebrows drawn as your pleasure got impossibly dragged out by the stimulation he still bathed you with. "And you're gonna keep begging me, keep showing me why you deserve to stay free, okay?"

   It was commendable, how collected he managed to sound while thrusting into your thighs like that, the sounds of skin slapping against skin driving each of his words home. 

   "Yes, fuck, whatever you want…" Despite your senses shortly coming back earlier, you were still too far gone to rethink your poor choices. You just knew you wanted more, and so you asked for it. "Just give me more, please."

   So fucking obedient. If your parents could see you know, their failure of a villain daughter being all proper and learning to beg for what she wanted? Well, perhaps saying they'd be proud was a stretch, considering you were also the one getting fucked in the middle of a filthy alley. 

   What you hadn’t expected, however, was just how well your begging would work. 

   Because the next thrust of his shaft was not between your legs, but aimed to finally breach your needy cunt instead, easily filling you up in one go with how utterly soaked in both of your juices you already were. The girth of him had you already clenching with renewed vigor, his hand stopping his assault on your clit just to give you enough time to truly savor the new intoxicating sensation.

   And when your eyes found his again, so drunk on the waves of pleasure you were that you also failed to notice the lack of scarlet coloring the orbs boring into yours, now inescapable voids of dark desire and a type of intense fixation you thought hadn't been there moments ago. 

   (Or maybe it was always there, and you had been too busy with your own turmoil to notice the clues being left by your so-called enemy).

   "Want me to stuff you properly?" His guttural question hit you at the same time as his sharp movements found your tender spot with experienced ease, walls tightening around him while your entire body struggled to continue holding yourself upright, relying more and more on the capture weapon to keep you from toppling over. 

   The binds still hurt from how tightly they wrapped around you, bruises sure to be left on their wake, but by that point you weren't so sure anymore the sting was an entirely bad thing. If anything, it just made the pleasure all the sweeter by comparison.  

   "Want me to fill you with so much cum that you reek of hero cock for the rest of the week?" He laughed while he regurgitated some of your words from earlier, the hand pressing against your lower stomach caressing you with a distinct sense of ownership as he elicited another loud moan with a sharp movement of his hips. 

   Noticing you reacting not only to his actions but to his quips, you could practically hear the self congratulatory smirk as he spoke next.

   "Bet the other villains would love knowing how much of a cockhungry whore you turned into too, doll. Talk about fraternizing with the enemy."

   And he was right, in a way. Because what would your fellow villains think, seeing you being wrecked by one of the most infamous Pros in the business, lowering yourself to pleading and screaming as he rearranged your insides. 

   Would you get called a disloyal whore or just a plain traitor? Not only would your spotless reputation and the myth you had fought to build collapse, but from its ashes your eternal shame could be erected. 

   A shame that would tower over you, looming around you while the eyes of your peers followed you everywhere. You could even picture the jests veered your way, the looks of utter disgust and ridicule...

   Somehow, the idea of anyone finding out only made your screams grow louder, impossibly more fervent. 

   "Fucking… get on with it."

   However, his rhythm was rapidly interrupted after your jab, his cock pulling out almost entirely as your core convulsed with the sudden staggering emptiness it was left to grapple with. More whimpers, struggling against the set of eternally unforgiving ties encasing your body. 

   "But you're making me do all the work, little one" Another slap shook your entire frame as it landed heavily on your still pained cheeks. You were so sore, both from the previous set of hits and from the sheer exhaustion starting to set in, muscles tight and resentful from the awkward positions your body had been manhandled into. "If you really want to continue this, how about you start doing some of the heavy lifting, uh?" Just like before, his palm started massaging the tender spot he had just smacked, fingers digging into your supple flesh being as close to comforting as the Pro seemed capable of. "Show me just how good you can be."

   And you could've argued, truly, could've even attempted to hold onto the last vestiges of your pride…

   You could’ve done a lot of things, but the truth was that when his weapon relented its hold at last, retreating from the underside of your knees and giving in just a smidge for the first time since you had been captured, you didn't waste any seconds before you were chasing after your high with renewed vigor.

   Greedily sinking into him with an obscene sigh, you audibly marveled at the curve of his member being deliciously imprinted in your insides. While you copied the cadence the Hero had previously employed, his grip on your lower belly fluttered, almost like he couldn't decide whether to take control back or allow you to humiliate yourself further with your own zealousness. 

   It seemed like the later prospect won him over in the end though, because he remained almost impassively still as you did all the work needed to bring you both deliriously close to your peaks. 

   The sight must've been spectacular, watching you, renown villain V/N, so thoroughly broken and willing to heed his every command. Impaling yourself on his cock, moaning and continuing to beg him for something you were already taking for yourself. 

   If he died right then and there, he doubted Heaven wouldn't have as much appeal as the scene still unfolding before his eyes. (But again, considering his actions, Heaven wouldn't really be the right place for either of you.)

   You were just about to reach your second orgasm, toes curling inside your shoes, fists clenched and a face that spelt poetic extasis. Angling the way you took his cock, every single movement driving him painstakingly deeper, slamming against a spot that made you imagine the stars falling from the sky all around you, their light being the one bathing you instead of the malfunctioning street lamps. 

   So goddamn close…

   Only to have him pull out again, this time completely. You were clenching against nothing, all stimulation stolen from you, and the bitterness of a ruined orgasm promptly dragged curses and complaints out of you before you could even think to stop them. 

   Eyes searched his, urgently seeking an explanation for his withdrawal only to find his glare fixated instead on that same dirty pair of stockings that had started it all. 

   Eraserhead must have taken the garment out of his pocket sometime while he fucked you, unfolding it from its scrunched up state until the crotch was visibly presented for both of you to admire, dark sheer fabric still stained from a mix of your arousal and spit. 

   When the Pro looked at you again, a beautifully dark smile topped his attractive face. He looked painfully content, the way he studied your own mortified expression reminding you of an artist studying his masterwork. 

   "Only the truly obedient ones get their cunts filled." You noticed then how his other hand was jerking him off again, erection rubbing against the nylon undergarments in a most obscene depiction. Too bad you were too frustrated to appreciate any of it. "I don't think you've… hell, you haven't earned it yet, V/N."

    You didn't even notice you were tearing up from the annoyance until it was too late. And maybe that was what finally did it, seeing you actually crying at his refusal to breed you like the slut you both knew you were, writhing in exaggerated despair as you found yourself feeling jealous of a stupid pair of tights, because not long after your pathetic reaction the man was letting out a pained groan of his own and spilling himself all over the damned garment. 

   But instead of rubbing your wailing in your face after he came down from his own delicious high, last few spurts of cum slowing down to a halt, you were surprised instead by the weapon that had been binding you for the longest time finally retreating.

   As expected, you unceremoniously collapsed to the floor, feet now unprepared for supporting your weight and your entire being wholly exhausted after enduring the roughest fuck you had ever experienced. It hurt all over, although you weren't sure whether your still present longing wasn't what pained you the most. 

   When you looked up to the Pro again, trying to find an answer to the new freedom you were experiencing, you were surprised by having the cum-dripped stockings thrown in your face. 

   And quite literally so, the still wet seed dribbling down your cheek and into your trembling lips, all before you collected enough wits to grab the offending item and pull it down with an expression of unadulterated disgust. 

   "Sorry, doll, but you were pouting so irresistibly," The Eraser user actually laughed, this time the sound coming with an untroubled merriment you did not think he was capable of.

   He actually looked worn out while he tucked himself back into his costume, accommodating the pieces of clothing until all hints from your ravenous affair disappeared. The bandages were wrapping themselves around his neck once more, looking more like an extravagant scarf than the most precise set of inmovilazing gear you had ever endured. 

   However, something about his attitude had you forgetting all about his newest slight, much too worried by a new cause of worry. 

   "Hold on..."

   Eraserhead looked down at you from his place after you raised your voice, urging you to continue as he finished getting himself presentable. The air of nonchalance around him was almost more intimidating than any of the actual threats or vulgar comments he had voiced prior. Almost.

   "Are you…" you swallowed the sudden lump in your throat, voice still raspy and hoarse after what had just transpired. "Are you really letting me go?"

   The man just raised one of his eyebrows at that, eyes crinkling for the first time and looking strangely amused. 

   "Doll, I stopped exerting my quirk on you while I was still teasing you good and proper," he declared bluntly. When his orbs glimmered again, you now felt like an imbecile as you finally realized they had completely lost the reddish hue to them. "So you know what? I thought you deserved to get an out of jail free card for behaving yourself… even if you still need to work some more on your manners."

   To call your shocked expression dumbfounded would be a disservice. 

   When his now bottomless eyes bore into yours for one final time, all you could do was stare back in dazzled shock. Your quirk was back, the Pro himself had just confirmed it, and yet you were still nailed to the spot, still anticipating his next words without even thinking of attacking him in the meantime.

   One little tumble and you were already his brightest pupil yet. He was now so glad to have waited that long, it only made the outcome all the more fulfilling. 

   "You don’t need to be so surprised, Y/N, we'll be seeing each other soon,” He kneeled in front of you for an instant, both hands reaching out to hold up your face in a gesture more resembling a lover than… well, whatever the hell you two were. So entranced you were then, that the use of your real name barely even registered. “It’s been difficult to keep you away from trouble thus far,” his acknowledgment reverberated in the alley, its meaning something else lost to you as you couldn’t help but become entranced by the new peculiar softness he addressed you with, “but getting you like this now, seeing you break so easily… fuck, I’ll mold you right back up, doll, you don’t need to worry your pretty little head about anything else.”

   And just then, for the first time you realized, the Hero’s lips were brushing against yours gently, uncharacteristically careful as he kissed you slowly. Even his hands were tender while they guided you, treating you as if you truly were a doll that could just be snapped with a mere wrong movement. As if he hadn’t just been treating you like a dirty hole for him to use and abuse just short instants ago. 

   But at least he did not seem to care about the mess that was your face at the moment, about the cum stains or the still damp trails of tears. And, for whatever reason, you found yourself returning the gesture in kind, melting into the oddly affectionate touch of a man you were still halfway sure you loathed. 

   Even after he left you, alone and a mess still toppled over on the floor with the shadow of humiliation cloaking your shoulders, your fingers couldn’t help but touch your lips with a bizarre mixture of bewilderment and horror.

   He told me I would see him soon, your mind supplied as you found yourself irreparably fixating your stare on the pair of now completely ruined tights you were still holding onto. The fact that you felt any type of excitement about the notion did not fail to mortify you. 

   God, even for villain standards you were fucked. 

But it was okay, because misery loved company and, with time at his disposal and the right amount of coaching, Shouta was sure he could teach you to properly crave his soon enough.

— — — 

And, 8k of foul smut later, if y’all read through that whole thing... drop by my ask to recieve your congratulatory gold stars! ⭐ (jk but I do appreciate hearing y’alls thoughts, it’s what keeps me halfway productive 🖤)

Last but not least, very special thanks to my best pals @reinawritesbnha​, @snappysnapo​ and @drxwsyni​ (who actually proof read this and helped me out immensely with her Big Brain Feedback. A TALENTED ANGEL). 

[lovethisletters]

Devilish nights || A fantastic 3 one-shot!

I love this idea ngl, I love the dynamic between the three of them! And I tried to do them justice here but... there's definitely a Whole ass ranch for improvement... :C

also Diavolo is Mexa xd

Summary: the fantastic three go to a concert but things don't go as planned.

Additional notes: I was going to make this a comic but decided against it since it was gonna take me much more time to finish it, but perhaps I'll do it as a small follow up to this one-shot.

▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️

There's a reason why the Demon elite are very protective of their private life...you see: everyone has a side of their personality only the ones closest to us are allowed to see and for the demon prince, the avatar of pride and the loyal butler this is no exception.

—Uhhh?!?! You're going out?!!—all 6 brothers questioned in surprise.

—Yes, and I hope that when I arrive, the house is not a mess!— Replied the avatar of pride as he placed a distinctive blue coat over his shoulders.

—Ehhh? Are you going on vacation to the human realm, Lucifer ?! And without me ?! How cruel!—Asmodeus inquired dramatically, hugging his older brother's arm like a child begging his mother to go out and play.

The black-haired demon was unfazed by the avatar of lust childish demeanor, released himself from his grasp with ease and continued with his speech.

—Diavolo has important matters to resolve in the human realm and he needs me and Barbatos to support him, it is not a vacation.—

—I hope all of you behave in my absence; Satan, you're in charge, ”Lucifer declared.

-What?!?! Satan in charge ?! - the rest complained.

—As much as it bothers me to admit it… Satan is the most responsible among you — Lucifer looked at the blonde demon in the eyes — I'm counting on you — and the avatar of pride came out hurriedly before he could even hear the answer of the fourth brother.

—Don't— whispered the avatar of wrath as his lips settled into a sinister smile at the plan that was being formulated in his head.

[…]

—Ahhh ~ finally it's THE day! I can't wait any longer !!!— upon hearing the title "prince of hell" we could normally assume that the person bearing it is someone intimidating, ruthless and rude; but there he was ... the heir to the throne of the Devildom jumping all over the place with immeasurable enthusiasm, glow sticks in each hand and a white shirt with the image of a sun with the face of Luis Miguel on the chest.

—Diavolo, I'd appreciate it if you could calm down a bit.

—Calm down?! Lucifer! I have been waiting for this for years! I will finally be able to be at a concert of my favorite singer from the human realm! Do you have any idea how much I struggled to get these tickets?!?! I had to do it the human way! line and everything!—The redhead claimed at the lack of enthusiasm from his best friend.

—His majesty stopped time and he moved a couple of old ladies to be able to acquire the tickets in the front row; it would be appreciated if you showed a bit of enthusiasm, Lucifer.—Barbatos finally spoke, the same formal and cold smile always etched on his face to which Lucifer could only replay in the same way.

—Oh! I won't let you two ruin my night with your formalities! At least pretend you're as excited as I am!—Diavolo begged but his stoic companions could only mutter a mocking “yeeei”as they waved their respective glow sticks reluctantly and the prince of hell could only roll his eyes.

[…]

Mistakes happen, they happen when we least expect them and even worse; at too inconvenient moments.

—Quick, Lucifer, we're next!— The tallest of the 3 hurried, still jumping up and down.

—Give me a second — The black-haired demon searched in his pockets for the tickets that Diavolo had asked him to keep until the day of the concert because he was afraid of losing them among all the paperwork that week and knowing the responsible nature of his friend he entrusted them to him .

The thing is ... Lucifer could not find the tickets ... and when he realized this, with all the tranquility of the world: he cleared his throat, clasped his hands and positioned himself firmly like a teacher about to explain something to a child .

—Diavolo, in terms of tickets… I forgot the ttickets— At first the prince of hell gave his friend an incredulous look and even proceeded to laugh.

—Sure, stop playing games, Lucifer— the redhead expected a laugh from his friend followed by him handing over the tickets, but that gesture never came.

—Your Majesty I think Lucifer is not joking— Barbatos corrected

And oh my god, have you ever seen a child's face when you take a toy that he just can’t have out of his hands? And then the endless crying begins? Yes, at that moment the heir to the throne of hell simply bursted in tears.

—It’s Okay, your majesty, everything is going to be fine— The butler tried to calm him down by patting him on the back.

—Diavolo, I can buy others, don't worry— But the redhead only limited himself to pointing at the sign above the theater entrance "Sold out" was written in large letters.

—Well… I guess I owe you the next concert, how about we go to your favorite restaurant, hmm? My treat — Despite his offer, his friend only let out a sigh of despair and helplessness.

—You have no idea where you left them?

—Ummm… I guess in my office…

—Tell your brothers to bring them to you! Please!!— Lucifer was quick to dial Satan's number, because by the way things were he would not be surprised if Diavolo's despair at this moment led him to pray.

By pure chance, Lucifer noticed that he had several unanswered messages and calls from one of the angels: Simeon

—You can't reach them?—the prince questioned

Lucifer just stood there, glaring at his phone with a mixture of regret and anger.

"Damm you Simeon" was all that came to mind.

—Oh? Aren't those Solomon, Simeon and Luke?—Barbatos voice interrupted his thoughts.

And sure enough, there at the entrance of the theatre were the inhabitants of purgatory hall, dressed in human world clothing, waiting in line, the youngest of the group with tickets in hand.

—Oh!? I didn't knew they had bought tickets for this!

—They didn't

—How do you know?

—Because those are YOUR tickets!

—What?!?!—Diavolo's confused expression was quickly met with Lucifer's phone right in front of his face, showing him the text messages.

—I'll go get them—but before the avatar of pride could take another step towards the purgatory hall group, Barbatos hand stopped him in his tracks.

—Your Majesty, I believe Luke's birthday is just in a few days and he seems to be enjoying himself, why don't we let them keep the tickets?—the butler suggested politely.

It took a couple of seconds for the prince of hell tho make his desicion, but the smile on the small angel face made all trace of doubt dissipate, and with a heavy sigh he finally spoke.

— leat it be, Lucifer...

—...are you sure of it, Diavolo?

—yes, perhaps next year we'll go together...all of us, right?

Lucifer was surprised but with a small smile forming on his face he said yes.

—Now... who's hungry?! We should go to the fanciest place in town, after all, It's Lucifer's treat!—the prince joked

—Perhaps the restaurant we attended last year would be fine, your Majesty?

—Ah yes! That would do!

And while Lucifer's wallet had started regretting his desicions, he was happy he could spend this evening with his dearest friends.

▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️

I was going to put a drawing of the fantastic three hanging out but I only did Diavolo bc while I was finishing Barbatos and Lucifer my computer crashed and didn't save anything :c

So here's a Diavolo in front of bellas artes to compensate:

If you find any grammatical errors let me know! I'm trying to improve my english and that would help me so so much!

I will forever thank you if you go check out my other profile: @aileysmirnov  where I post things about my OC: edits, one-shots, imagines, art, etc. If you like Greek mythology and the bat family maybe you would get to be as fond of her as much as I am!

Anyway, thank you for reading!

[juuten]

For You | Tenma Sumeragi

@chewie-santatoast​ says:  Merry Christmas! How about ‘secrets’ with Tenten? ❤️💚🤍🧡

Aimee replies: Hello! Thank you so much for requesting! Sorry I couldn’t greet you ‘Merry Christmas’ during that time :< That’s why I wish you a very advanced Merry Christmas! Also, stay safe and healthy!

This fic really took me a while to finish mainly because I needed to revise/shorten lots of parts. But surprisingly, I didn’t stray away from my initial idea when I thought of secrets and Tenma.

Anyway, the story takes place before Act 2. I hope this story will make you smile :D

For ‘A December with You’ event.

Today, Summer Troupe made sure to have the living room for themselves.

Fairy lights hung on the walls, painting the living room with an orange glow. Blankets and pillows surrounded the coffee table with a plate of onigiris on it. However, a winter’s night would never be complete without steaming mugs of hot chocolate. Muku delicately placed three mugs beside the onigiris, Yuki setting down the other two.

“Mr. Triangle!” Misumi grinned at the familiar triangle drawn on his cup of hot chocolate.

Muku grabbed his cup and giddily sat on his star-patterned blanket. "Mine's a crown!"

"The bear's almost like mine.” If one looked closely, a small smile dangled on Yuki’s lips.

Tenma reached for his mug and peeked at what Kazunari drew for him. "Is this a bonsai?"  

"Yep yep!" Kazunari sat on his spot in the living room. Then he winked and made a peace sign. “Kazunari Miyoshi’s latte art, everyone!”

Tenma's lips curled upwards. "Not bad." 

"Yippie! Now everything's set," Kazunari clapped his hands, "Operation ‘Tenten Living as a Non-Celeb: Christmas Edition,’ start!” 

But before Kazunari had the chance to show off his plans, the doorbell rang. Muku, being closest to the door, set down his mug and stood up.

"Who is it?" Muku said as he opened the door.

A brunette man wearing a gray suit smiled at him. “Good evening and advanced Merry Christmas, Muku-san.”

“Ah, Igawa-san! Likewise." Muku politely bowed.

Igawa set down an enormous sack on the ground. It looked like it was about to burst at any moment. "Please accept these gifts for the MANKAI members. Sumeragi-san and I chose them with utmost care." 

Then Igawa placed a thick scrapbook on Muku’s hands. "Also, please give this to Tenma-kun."

Muku obediently nodded. "I will! And thank you so much, Igawa-san!"

Igawa bowed and bid farewell before driving off. Muku secured the scrapbook under his armpit. Then he rolled up his sleeves. Pulling the sack with all his might, he trudged towards the living room.

“Mukkun, are you- Woah! Where did that super-duper big sack come from?” Kazunari’s eyes became as wide as saucers when he saw the boy set down the sack beside the Christmas tree. 

“It’s from Igawa-san and Tenma-kun's parents. They're gifts for us," Muku said in between pants. Tenma made a mental note to call his parents later.

Misumi put a familiar yellow triangle with a Santa Hat on Muku’s palms. “I'll give you Mr. Triangle Claus!”

Muku giggled and said thanks. When Muku returned to his spot, he presented the scrapbook to Tenma. “Tenma-kun, Igawa-san said this scrapbook was for you."

Tenma looked at him with confusion. Igawa always dropped off gifts from fans at his house while he delivered the important ones to the dorms. The gifts for the members were certainly one of those. However, the scrapbook was questionable. He was sure his parents did not make this; their careers always ate almost all of their time. Igawa was possible. However, Tenma knew managing his schedule was currently hectic. He always received more offers for both acting and modeling during the Christmas season. 

Suddenly, another potential person popped inside his head. With wide eyes, Tenma said, “Muku, who did it come from?"

“Um…” Muku flipped the scrapbook. He stumbled upon some initials at the far corner of the scrapbook. “There’s (First Letter of First Name) (First Letter of Last Name) written at the bottom.”

Within a blink of an eye, Tenma grabbed the scrapbook from his hands. All of the Summer Troupe members looked at each other in mild bewilderment.

Kazunari was the first one to recover as he playfully nudged Tenma’s arm. “Hey, Tenten, who’s (First Letter of First Name) (First Letter of Last Name)?”

“S-someone I'm close with!” 

Yuki suspiciously eyed Tenma as he drank his cup. “Hm…” 

Tenma fidgeted under his gaze. “Wh-what is it?”

Yuki placed his cup on the coffee table. Then with a menacing look, he said, “If you don’t tell us who they are, I’ll make you wear that rabbit costume again on Veludo Way. This time, alone.”

Misumi grinned. “I want to see rabbit Tenma again."

“That was supposed to be a one-time thing!” Tenma protested.

“Maybe the money-grubbing yakuza will increase the budget for costumes if I tell him the hack will advertise MANKAI Company this Christmas.” Yuki tapped his chin in thought.

Tenma grumbled. He was always careful to not expose your relationship with him when he was barely prepared. But now that his reputation (dignity) was on the line, he could not remain tight-lipped. Letting out a defeated sigh, he said, “Fine. I’ll tell you.”

Tenma breathed in before saying, “The initials stand for (First Name) (Last Name). It’s my girlfriend’s name.” 

“Someone managed to date the hack, huh," Yuki said.

“What do you mean by that!” The man in question violently reacted.

"Hold up, fam. Since we're on this topic," Kazunari wrapped his shoulder around the orange-haired man and shot him a grin, “we should look at the scrapbook together!"

Tenma glared at Kazunari. “No way. And this isn’t part of your operation or what in the first place!”

"It's fine, it's fine!" When Tenma still had a scowl on his face, Kazunari clasped his hands and pleadingly looked at him. "C'mon, Tenten! Please!" 

Tenma hugged the scrapbook to his chest. He knew he was doomed to be teased once he showed the scrapbook. Knowing you, you put lots of pictures he was unaware that you took them. Nevertheless, this was a risk he would rather take instead of wearing a rabbit costume for the whole Veludo to see. Besides, he trusted that his members would never leak his and your private lives to the public. 

Tenma unwrapped his arms from the scrapbook and placed it on his lap. “Fine. But no taking of pictures or videos.” With that, everyone sat closer to Tenma. 

Tenma’s heart pounded as he opened the scrapbook. A photo of a smiling couple sitting on a flowery meadow filled up the upper part of the first page. Below the picture was a handwritten caption that said, "First date planned by Yours Truly ☆." Then at the bottom of the page, there was a colored drawing of the meadow. Tenma's eyes widened in astonishment. Your illustration looked the same as he remembered. The difference was you put a dried sunflower at the center above the flowery meadow and drew its stem.

"(First Name)'s drawing and design are totes amazing! Kudos to her!" Kazunari said, which Tenma replied with a proud 'of course!'

Muku turned to the orange-haired man with excitement gleaming in his eyes. "Tenma-kun, what did you do on your first date?" 

"Did you find triangles with her?" Misumi asked.

"Only the Trianglian will do that there," Yuki commented.

“We had a picnic, talked and took some photos. Then, uh...” Tenma scratched his head, trying to remember any fascinating but not too embarrassing moments from his first date. "We also played Twenty One Questions.”

“So what do you do?” Tenma asked the moment you proposed this game.

“We just alternately ask each other twenty-one questions and answer them. The questions can be about anything at all!” A mischievous glint passed your eyes, which you covered up with a smile.

Your boyfriend seemed to be unaware of it as he smirked. “I’ve handled many interviews, so this one’s easy.”

“It’s still your first time playing this though. That’s why I’ll start asking you.” You intertwined your hands with his. Then with the most serious face you could muster, you said, “If you meet an alien who lands in Japan, what is the first thing you will give them?”

You tried to hold back your laughter when you saw his dumbfounded face. He was so confident seconds ago, and now, he was a flustered mess. 

You brushed your thumbs on his hands to help him relax. “It’s only a hypothetical question, Tenma-san. You don’t need to think too much about it.”

“Still, how did you even come up with that question?”

You wagged your index finger. “It’s not yet your turn to ask a question.”

“I can’t ask at all?!”

“That’s a question, Tenma-san.”

Tenma groaned, making you laugh. Then he scratched his head. “I’ll give the alien a map of Japan, I guess.”

You frowned. “I don’t know if they can understand our language though.” Then you shook your head. “Well, a map’s still a good choice!”

You squeezed his hands. “It’s your turn to ask a question, Tenma-san.”

Now that Tenma paid attention to it, you still used an honorific for him. It was progress compared to the early days wherein you called him by his last name. At that time, it was so awkward for him; it felt like you two were co-workers instead of lovers. But even now, he wanted you to be comfortable with him. With those thoughts, he said, “You know you could drop the honorific, right?”

You nodded. “I know. But I can’t just casually call someone who I really respect and admire.”

At the corner of your eye, you saw a pair of bloomed sunflowers near your side. You unclasped your hands from his and plucked the sunflowers. Giving one to him, you said with a tender smile, “To my sunflower who I adore.”

Muku tightly hugged his pillow to his chest. “That’s so romantic of (First Name)-san!”

“Yeah… but then she asked another random question for the game.” Tenma sighed at that. Then he looked at the next page. Red painted his cheeks as he saw a stolen shot of him eating your homemade sandwich.

“The sandwich is a triangle!” Misumi grinned.

“You’re right, Sumi! It is!” Kazunari patted him on the back. 

Meanwhile, Yuki pointed at the picture and said, “Hack, you eat like a kid. Look at the crumbs on your mouth.”

“It only happened during that time! Besides… (First Name)’s sandwich was delicious,” Tenma murmured the latter part as he munched on an onigiri.

As Tenma continued to tell what happened in the other photos, his gaze softened. He never thought that he would enter a romantic relationship and last this long. After all, school and his career demanded so much of his attention. But this scrapbook proved him wrong. It carried the many memories both of you made. If he had to choose his fondest memory of you, it would be you watching his performance. Tenma beamed with pride whenever he saw you laughing, crying, or overall getting hooked alongside the audience. It meant that Summer Troupe’s efforts paid off. Moreover, he got to express his gratitude towards you through his acting. Nonetheless, the ambitious actor would never stop improving and showing you the best performance. 

As Tenma flipped to another page, a photo fell out and landed beside Kazunari’s lap. The latter looked down and picked it up. Kazunari stopped chewing his onigiri, his jaw dropping in surprise. 

“OMG! Tenten, you look super cute!” Tenma had no time to react as Kazunari shoved the photo to his face. Tenma grabbed his wrist and pushed his hand out of the way. 

“Kazunari, what-” 

The orange-haired man froze. Out of all the pictures, why did you include this one in the scrapbook? It was a photo he definitely could not show to anyone without stripping his dignity away. But you were an exception since you begged for it as your birthday present. Still, you owning the photo did not mean you could put it without letting him know first! Anyone else could see it the moment the scrapbook landed at the dorm. And news traveled fast in a dorm with many people.

Misumi giggled. “It’s baby Tenma.”

“He doesn’t have the ‘Ore-sama’ air around him yet,” Yuki said as he stared at the photo.

Tenma snapped out of his trance and snatched the picture from Kazunari. "Oi! You don’t need to see it!” 

Misumi tilted his head in wonder. “But it was in the scrapbook.”

"Yeah, but still!" 

Then Muku noticed the black ink on the back of the polaroid. Tugging on Tenma’s sleeve, he said, “Tenma-kun, I think there’s something written at the back.”

Tenma begrudgingly flipped the photo on its back. He immediately recognized your handwriting that wrote the following message:

I hope your true friends will see all of your sides that I love, including this one. 

P.S., Merry Christmas, Tenma-san! I hope you like my gift ♡ 

Tenma covered his face with his hand, trying to fight off the smile forming on his lips.

[kittydemon9000]

SO @blursed-ninjago-ideas​, sorry how long this took! The prompts was Cole turning evil by a weapon, I took that prompt, and only partially followed it. Hope you like it.

—————————

Spirits In My Head And They Won’t Go

The cave was very dark with the only light source coming from the small lamp Kai had lit.

The four ninja had been receiving many warnings, calls, and even letters about the cave and the legends surrounding it, and had eventually decided to check it out for themselves.

The plan had been to stay in one big group, but it seemed like fate had other plans.

Barely five steps into the cave, the floor had collapsed, separating the ninja among the many caverns. The ground was too unstable for Cole to try and open up new tunnels, so he was stuck using the already existing ones.

So now Cole was alone, in the dark, with only a small lamp for light and no idea where he or the others were.

And on top of everything else, his scar was absolutely throbbing. It had since they first entered the cave, and it only seemed to get worse with every step he took. Spectacular.

There were small moments like this where he missed being a ghost. He would have been able to find the others so easily if he could just travel through walls.

Hello.

Cole jumped, snapping his head around trying to locate where the voice had come from.

“Who’s there!” He exclaimed. He didn’t expect whoever it was to answer, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

A friend. Someone who wants to help.

The Voice, if you could even call it that, was strange. There wasn’t any sound to it, but it was clear as day. It was as if someone had written the words in his head, but there were no letters to be seen.

It set him on edge.

“Is that so?” Cole asked. He scanned the tunnel again.

You can’t find me that way.

"Oh, really? Cole said aloud. “Then how can I find you?”

Cole jumped as a ball of small green fire appeared in front of him. Then another. And another and another and another. They bathed the cave in an eerie green glow as a clear line of the strange orbs led further down the tunnel.

Follow the Wisps.

And once you find me, I can get you out.

“And why would you help me?” Cole asked aloud. ‘If that’s what you’re really doing.’ He thought to himself.

“For all I know, you could be leading me straight into a trap. Or keep me down here forever!”

Because I know what it’s like to be left behind.

Those words left a chill down Cole’s spine.

“What…..what do you mean?” He hesitantly asked, swallowing the lump in his throat.

Your so-called friends left you, did they not?

“What are you talking about? They haven’t left me!” Cole exclaimed, anger seeping into his voice.

Take a look.

The wisp closest to him came closer. Cole watched it with hesitancy, reading to bolt at a moment's notice, but much to his surprise, in the center of the fire were the other ninja!

All of them were gathered in a group, seemingly safe from harm. They all had a greenish tint, but Cole choked that up to the green wisp.

“What do you mean we should leave Cole behind!” Jay’s shrill yelling echoed in the tunnel.

Cole stopped. They were going to leave him behind?

“I’m not saying that! I’m just-“ Lloyd said, but he was cut off by Jay again.

“No, that’s exactly what you’re saying!” Jay yelled, taking a step toward Lloyd and jabbing a finger in his direction. “We can’t just leave him in there!”

Cole couldn’t help but smile. “Thanks, Zaptrap.” He whispered under his breath.

“If we go in now, we’ll just get lost!” Lloyd argued back.

“Calm down Jay. Lloyd has a point.” Nya said, placing a hand on Jay’s shoulder.

Those words felt like a punch in the gut. Nya was agreeing that they should leave without him.

Jay seemed to share his sentiment and looked at her with an incredulous face. Nya made a motion to Kai, probably asking him to back her up.

Kai hesitantly glanced behind him. “I’m with Jay on this one. The longer Cole’s in there, the more likely he is to get hurt.”

Then Zane jumped in. “But if we go in now without a plan or more surprise, we could get hurt ourselves.”

The warmth Kai’s words had given him was quickly stamped out by the cold ones of Zane. Yes, he understood that Zane was the logical one…...but was he really thinking that leaving him behind was the best option.

Lloyd let out a sigh. “So it’s decided. We’ll all head back to Master Yang’s temple.”

“No! No, it’s not decided!” Jay shrieked again, but this time Kai was the one to stop him, silently shaking his head with a sober look on his face. He whispered something to Jay, but Cole couldn’t hear. The group slowly walked out of the frame of the wisp, but not before Jay cast one final look back.

The wisp went back to the line.

You see.

Something wet started dripping down Cole’s face, and when he reached up, he found tears.

It was a lie. A trick. It had to be. His friends.....they wouldn't. Not again......right?

But if this wasn't a trick.....and his friends really had left him...... then this was just like the Day of the Departed.

“So how did you get here then?” Cole asked, his voice wavered slightly as he wiped the tears from his eyes. If he was going to be stuck here, he might as we learn things about his only company.

The voice hesitated, before two more wisps broke away from the line, sending another throb through his scar. Much to his shock, the wisps started changing and growing until they took the form of two small children, each one no taller than his waist.

The two were smiling, dancing, and playing in a way that reminded Cole fondly of his own childhood.

I wasn’t always stuck here.

The children were hand and hand as they started running down the tunnel. Not wanting to lose them, Cole was quick to follow.

We wanted to go on an adventure together, experience what the world had to offer.

The two children reached a crossroads, unsure which was to go. They eventually picked the left tunnel. Cole followed, but it was a dead end.

Neither of us knew where we were going, and we got lost.

The two children started yelling at each other, but no sound was coming from their mouths.

Julie wanted to keep looking to try and find a way out while I wanted to stay put.

One of the children, Julie, pushed the other away and stormed toward the tunnel.

“You can stay here if you want,” she said. “But I’m going to find a way out!”

And then all the wisps but the first child disappeared.

I waited and waited, hoping that on the off chance she’d made it out, that she’d come back for me.

The room was much darker with only the one wisp, and it was rapidly growing smaller.

She never did.

The wisp went out.

The only thing left to light the cave was the lamp and Cole’s scar.

Ever since that day, I swore that if I somehow made it out, I’d do everything in my power to make sure no one would be left behind like I was ever again.

The voice let out an empty chuckle, one that struck a chord in Cole.

A rather unrealistic goal, I know.

“I don’t think so.” Cole found himself saying. He felt the confused silence, so he continued. “I mean, it definitely wouldn’t be easy, but I do think you could make a difference.”

…….you really are different than her.

Cole’s confusion was short-lived, as a plethora of wisps ignited around him, giving him a good look at the cave he was now in. Stalagmites and stalactites littered the edges, but the center was different.

In the middle of the room was a small podium with a scythe. It is a dark, black metal with small green gemstones embedded at the end of the handle and parts of the blade. It was an elegant weapon and the designs that littered it were not much unlike the wisps that had led him here.

If you take this weapon, you will be granted control over my wisps, and be able to help the lost spirits, living and dead alike.

Cole couldn’t tear his eyes away from the weapon. Some far off part of him was screaming at him to run away, that this was all a trap that he’d walked into.

But that part was drowned out by his memories. Of becoming a ghost, of the Day of the Departed…….and of the conversation he’d just heard. He remembered the pain of not being seen or heard. Of not existing.

He didn’t want anyone else to feel that.

Cole reached forward and grabbed the scythe.

———————————

PS: I was also able to to a drawing

[shuuenmei]

resolution

BEFORE WE BEGIN:

Admittedly, I didn’t want to reveal this at first but after some thought and discussions, I decided to publish this out. This contains a big part of what I plan for Yuu (Rei) and how “black or white” will run in the future, and because it’s potentially very long, I’m placing this under the cut.

The sound of the clock ticking is the only thing keeping her company as she searched through the library.

Not this book, not that book, not this one either.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed, but she doesn’t care.

She had to keep looking.

She refused to stay helpless and vulnerable like how she nearly died from those vine thorns-

She find herself idly touching onto her neck now covered in the bandages to hide the tiny scars from those thorns.

There’s so many things happening in such a quick span of time she finds herself unable to properly react and adjust how to adapt and survive.

“You were on a near dangerous spot, pup.” The words of her homeroom teacher rang when he was called by the headmaster to check on how severe her injuries were shortly after they brought Riddle back to his senses.

Of how she was lucky to have escaped strangulation when the vines enclosed on her neck.

Of how she nearly died from blood loss due to the thorns piercing her skin.

And the situation now truly sunk on her that she could have truly died not long after arriving in this world.

A deep, deep part of her mind screamed, feeling that for the first time, she wanted to live and survive.

To struggle for survival than to succumb to the temptation of sleeping forever, never waking up.

I don’t want to die I don’t want to die-

“That’s quite a heavy stack of books, little one.”

She couldn’t help but jump at the voice calling her from behind.

Her head turned to see who it was that spoke.

“You surprise me Lilia-san.”

The older student gave out a light hearted chuckle in response.

“It’s good to see you.” He greeted before he wondered. “Now what brings you here to the library?”

“I wanted to look up something.” She answered.

She made up her mind after her homeroom teacher’s diagnosis of her state.

She honestly still feel sluggish from the injuries she had and Professor Crewel issued a permit to Coach Vargas to excuse her (And by extension, Grim) from physical education class until she is fully recovered.

With much time to spare after the rather disastrous duel yesterday, she decided to head over to the library.

There’s something that she wished to know about and if she can’t find what she’s looking for... she’ll just have to make do.

“That’s quite a lot of books you were holding.” He pointed towards the stack of books she was holding.

“It’s fine Lilia-san, I can handle this.” She shook her head as the two started to walk their way towards the table where she placed her bag and some of the books she had borrowed earlier.

“I heard you and your friends called for a duel with Riddle yesterday.” Lilia started once he was seated.

“Ah, so everyone heard about it?”

“It’s quite impossible to not know it, little one.” The old fae chuckled.

She numbly nodded, her hand idly reaching out to her neck as if there is lingering pain sticking to her neck like a phantom.

The fae’s magenta eyes looked at the covers of the books she had brought, now placed on the table.

“Hmm, interesting choices you have there.” With an ever present smile, he used magic to make the heavy books float to his way.

“The Origin of Magic, History of Magic Tools... they all seem to cater towards a specific time frame, to an even older time...” The fae soon implored as he placed the books down. “What has brought you to wish to learn such a subject?”

She pondered for a moment.

Should she speak about it?

She may have only known about Lilia for a few days, a week, even. But she felt that she can truly trust this older student and ask for his aid.

The Headmaster doesn’t seem too keen in watching over her own well being and had a very hands-off approach.

He’s not the kind of person she’d trust her worries of.

In contrast, Lilia, in his own way, had been helping her from the start.

The Headmaster may have tried, but seeing first hand at how he seems to be giving a hands-off approach, how she was told that the Headmaster wouldn’t have rushed her to the infirmary and call for Professor Crewel immediately until the fact that she is nearly dying from blood loss truly sunk in, with the rest of Heartslabyul having to urge him out to get her the aid she needed.

(There’s something about the Headmaster that reminded her of an ill memory of the past, but she has yet to recall the full context of it all.)

Lilia, from the way he speaks and how he treated her, makes her think of the senior as an almost father like figure.

Doting yet keeping a firm watch of those he consider his children.

So she took her chance and spoke quietly.

Of the events that led to Riddle Rosehearts overblotting.

________________________________________________________________

“...I see. That explains the bandages covering your neck.”

She nodded.

“...But pray tell, what convinced you to search for a specific time frame involving magic in the days of old?”

She didn’t say a word to Lilia, deep in thought, trying to think of an answer.

It was a spur of a moment and she couldn’t help but be curious.

Curious to know if there is a point of time where people are not naturally born with magic.

Maybe those of old do magic differently than those who lived in the present.

She also vaguely remember of a story she once read of how people of the past request the world to lend their energy to use magic.

If such method also exist here, does she have a chance to survive?

So she won’t be so weak, helpless and vulnerable like today-

Still, there’s a chance that she won’t be able to find what she searched for.

But nevertheless, she doesn’t want to give up so easily and find a way so she can survive in this unfamiliar world.

She needs to see the end of the tale that she is entangled in no matter what.

She found her answer.

“...I just don’t want to stay weak and helpless as I am right now.”

She spoke and continued.

“After I was told of how I nearly died... I felt myself getting reminded of how easily vulnerable I was as a magicless person.”

She clenched her right hand to a fist, her nails dug onto her skin deep enough to hurt.

“I’m an easy target to the whole school as the lone magicless person. Regardless of how I’m actually capable of being able to fight back, all my skills... they had limits. I can’t always depend on my new friends all the time, and eventually, I’ll run out of options and will get badly hurt like how I did today.”

She had decided, her resolution to her decision firm.

“So I plan to look for an information that can potentially help me survive against other students who would try and target me for as long as I’m here. I refuse to be an easy target just because I’m the lone anomaly of this school.”

That’s all that there is to it.

She wanted to survive longer in a world where she is placed in between many prideful magicians who could potentially end her life with their magic if they so wish it.

Maybe she won’t be a burden to her new friends that way.

She felt Lilia’s silent gaze at her prickling, almost like he is scrutinizing her.

“Do you have an empty paper available to use?” Lilia questioned after a moment of silence.

“I can tear one page off, but what do you plan to use with it?”

Lilia smiled. “You’ll see, little one.”

Despite the fae’s cryptic reply, she obliged and brought out one of her spare notebooks, ripping one of the papers out and handed it to him.

“May I borrow a writing pen as well?”

She wondered where this is going but gave the fae one of her blue pens in the pencil case.

Lilia draw a large set of letters enough to fill a whole paper that is set in a landscape like orientation.

When he is finished, he threw the paper above him and spoke out what sounded like a magical chant in a language she couldn’t recognize.

In response to the fae’s chant, the letters written in the paper glowed, almost like magic, and then the paper shifted it’s shape, shredded into small parts and then rained down on the table, small cuts formed at the empty space of wooden table besides them, as if the paper has turned into small shards of blades.

“Oh, I still had it in me to use them.” Lilia mused at the sight as the papers soon disintegrated into dust, residual magical energy following it. “Well, I shall repair it soon enough lest that young librarian aim for my neck.”

As Lilia reached for his magical pen and used his magic to fix the table, she felt herself feeling awed at the sight of the paper turned to small sharp shards.

“That was just a normal pen right...” She utter out.

She had to wonder how it was possible.

All that the fae did was just drawing rune like letters onto the paper...

“Indeed it is.” The fae answered her.

“I simply use the paper as a medium and the letters as a gateway for magical energy to enter the medium and give form to what the medium will function as.”

The fae’s serene smile remained ever-plastered on his lips. “Simply put, what I did is request for the world to lend me their magic through a medium.”

“...So you used the world’s magical energy instead of using the one that most magicians are born with?”

So such method existed here...

“Bingo, little one.” The fae gave out a good natured chuckle. Elaborating. “Before wands and magical pens came to be, people of days old once used to ask the world to do magic for them. However, this method had since been considered obsolete as society advances due to how many requirements it takes to actually use the world’s magical energy.”

He put the magical pen back into the pockets of his vest. Concluding. “For you, someone who is inherently magicless, this should be the perfect method for you to defend yourself should any of the other students dare to attack you with magic.”

Her eyes lit up. Feeling a glimmer of hope at the senior’s words.

“Are you sure you don’t mind teaching me?”

“Why of course not.” Lilia smiled at her. Reasoning.

“You are but a young lady thrown into an unfamiliar place with little to no contact of anyone you are familiar with, and no way of being able to return to whence you came from. You also happen to be placed in a school of prideful, magicians who can get easily provoked with little prompting, and can potentially harm and give you fatal injuries should they wish to do so. Anyone with a child of their own would worry for you.”

His smile then curved to a frown. “Though I supposed Crowley doesn’t seem to be that keen in regards to your safety following today’s events.”

After what happened yesterday, and of today, she felt what little trust she had on the Headmaster start to crumble.

She can’t completely trust the man anymore after today.

Not when he’s all too content to leave her to fend for her own self outside of providing her the basic necessities and the like.

(Deep down, that unpleasant feeling, almost like seething anger, of a memory she has yet to recall of people acting like the headmaster echoed in her mind)

She soon felt a hand on her head.

She was brought out of her thoughts as she realized that Lilia is patting her.

The gesture felt familiar to her.

Like a parent’s firm hand, guiding and assuring the child.

“The weekend is soon and it’s best that you recover first.” Lilia let his hand go as he advised her.

“I shall be free to teach you how to utilize the world’s magic to aid you for Monday, Wednesday and Thursday after school in the library. Is that an alright time for you?”

“...Yeah, that’s a good time.”

She felt herself smiling wide, almost genuine, grateful for the senior’s help.

“...Really, thank you for this. Lilia-san.”

The Diasomnia vice dorm head smiled back. “It is of no trouble, young one.”

Yep, this is what I planned for Yuu (Rei) in light of Heartslabyul and onwards. She doesn’t stay magicless for long.

This was inspired by the formalcraft concept from the Fate series, where you make the world do the magic for you. Think of it as not using your own MP in video games and use a specialized item that does the magic in RPG games.

Yuu (Rei) is still magicless inherently. So the method only makes her a magician by a technicality. Rather than making her an actual pure magician overnight.

As for why I went this route for Yuu (Rei):

1: The SI in Yuu (Rei) only know Twisted Wonderland based on Pre-release trailers and as such, has zero expectations of what the game would actually be. She doesn’t know that the game was meant to be a Joseimuke genre game with RPG, action and rhythm game mechanics mixed in, and only know based on what she could remember of the original stories the Disney movies are based on and the Disney movies that she remember watching, outside of what she remembers of the Pre-Release trailers. As far as Yuu (Rei)’s impression of the game’s story goes, she thought that she is in an FGO-esque Shounen genre story. So it’s either she stays magicless and die quickly, or survive and get stronger.

2: While yes, it’s established that it’s against the rules to use magic on others for personal fights, the main story proves that a good portion of the NRC student body WILL use magic on others when prompted. Unlike Ace, Deuce and Grim, the canon MC is completely defenseless. Despite Yuu (Rei)’s friendship with the ghosts and her own physical skills in Kendou, every single one of them has limits. Lando isn’t always guaranteed to tag along with her 24/7, someone will use magic to destroy the makeshift sword she had first before beating her down and giving her fatal injuries via magic. Additionally, Ace, Deuce and Grim won’t always be with her, so she’ll eventually run out of options to defend herself. At the end of the day, the real world doesn’t give a damn about what narrative importance you have in the grand scheme of the plot you’re involved in. Yuu (Rei) might be lucky this time, but the same can’t be said for the future.

...Welp.

Anyway, long story short, this is where Yuu (Rei) fully diverges from the canon MC.

I’m also going to start talking, writing and/or drawing stuff for things I plan for “black or white” in the future from here on out so do look out for those!

[rohad93]

Moonlit Masquerade: Ch 8

On Friday Amity is tired, but she relishes every minute she spends at school and not home, because the weekend was looking to be just as exhausting. 

Blue moon masquerades are a Blight family tradition, her parents have been throwing the parties for as long as she can remember and it’s a tradition that they begin throwing these parties at sixteen. With this being the first blue moon since the twins turned sixteen it's finally time for them to do it. 

Normally the two are all about parties, but considering all the rules and protocols their parents have set for the event, any enthusiasm the twins might have had is well and truly dead before the party planning even begins.  

Now it’s just one more thing expected of them and Amity can tell how much they hate it, so she tries to help them with the planning whenever she can.

Someday it will be her turn after all. 

She also still has yet to speak to Luz since Wednesday and she feels bad about it, but facing her is too hard right now, especially when the object of her affections seems to actively pushing her toward this secret admirer she has.

She clutches her book to her chest as she walks down Hexside’s quiet and deserted hallways. 

Maybe Luz is just a pipe-dream she needs to try and forget about. She was never going to have the courage to face her and tell her how she feels, and if Luz had any inclination toward her at all she wouldn’t be advocating so hard for a mysterious stranger. 

Her lips quiver and her eyes burn but she quickly shoves it down. She is not going to cry at school, she’s a Blight!

A mantra she uses to steel herself even as she hates it. 

She shakes her head and continues on toward her locker. 

When she stops to stand in front of it the creature looks annoyed and she realizes why when it opens its mouth unprompted and sticks out its tongue.

She's started to get a little more used to these surprises but the one waiting for her this morning makes her gasp. 

Sitting there on her locker's tongue is a small maroon colored velvet box she knows immediately is a jewelry box. A piece of folded paper sitting beneath it.

She hesitates a minute before picking up the box and the note. Curiosity gets the better of her and she opens the box before anything else and stares wide-eyed and mouth slightly agape.

Nestled within the satin lining is a brooch. 

Fine lines of gold shaped to look like thorned vines twist and loop in random but pleasing patterns, overlapping each other in places. At the center of the vines is a small tear-shaped gemstone in a gold setting. She's not sure what kind, but it's a deep fuchsia color that sparkles and gleams when it catches a stray beam of light from the hallways overhead lights. 

It's beautiful and Amity is in awe of it as she pulls it from its box with hesitant fingers and holds it gently in her hand. She runs her thumb over the hard and smooth facets of the stone, feeling the different, sharp cut sides press into the pad of her thumb. 

The metal is cool and hefty in her fingers and her heart thuds in her chest that someone would go through all this trouble for her.

It's a common misconception among the student body that Amity Blight must be beating suitors off with a staff, but the truth is no one had ever pursued her.

Her family was highly influential and well off, everyone assumed she was above them, unattainable; so they didn't try. Not that she’d done much to change that opinion. 

Of course, when it finally does happen she's head over heels for someone as unattainable as people think she is…

With gentle fingers she puts the jewelry back in its box and finally turns her attention to the piece of paper, unfolding it.

"Amity,

When I saw this in the market I could only think of you. I hope you like it. This is my final gift as your secret admirer.

Even if you can't return my feelings, would you dance with me tomorrow night?

I'll be wearing a black and purple horned demon mask.

~Your soon-to-be-not-so-secret Admirer 

Amity's heart is thumping loudly in her chest, the meaning of the letter is clear. Her secret admirer is going to be at the masquerade tomorrow night. 

She clutches the box in her hands and bites her lip.

Maybe… this was her chance to let go of Luz… 

Her heart aches at the thought, but her mind knows that it would be the better choice. 

Luz is human and while it's rather uncertain right now if she'll ever actually leave the Boiling Isles since the only known portal has been destroyed, Amity's parents would have an aneurysm if they were to ever find out she was in a romantic relationship with a human, the Owl Lady's apprentice no less. 

Despite that, if the opportunity presented itself Amity would still leap headfirst into it without any reservations.

She's never known anyone like Luz in all her life. The girl is kindness and sunshine incarnate, something exceedingly rare in a place like the Boiling Isles. 

She’s made her a better person in the time they’ve known each other. 

Looking back now she finds it hard to believe that she ever hated her.

She looks down at the maroon box in hand and frowns, chest tight. Conflicted emotions run rampant through her mind

For all the things she loves about Luz, of which there are many, she knows that she'll never have the courage to tell her so, and Luz has made it clear in just as many ways that she doesn't see Amity in the same light, and at the end of the day, all her longing and feelings are for not if Luz doesn't return them.

But here, in the palm of her hand, she has a chance at something that might be real and not just a flight of fantasy.  

She takes a deep breath and puts the box and note in her bag and heads to class.

She doesn't see Luz at lunch, for which she is grateful but disappointed. She sits with Willow and Gus when they wave her over.

"Hey, Amity, have you seen Luz today? We missed her this morning," the plant witch asks. Amity frowns.

"No, I haven't seen her all day." 

"She must not be at school today…" Willow frowns.

That's unusual, Luz loves school. Amity wonders if she's sick, but in the back of her mind, she wonders if Luz is avoiding her.

She looks down at her lunch and is suddenly not very hungry, but she stays and chats with Gus and Willow.

~ ~ 

Luz probably should have told her friends that she decided not to go to school today in order to have more time to get ready for Saturday night, but she’s on a deadline, there was no time to go to the school to tell Gus and Willow. She really needed to get a scroll. 

She only has one real problem left.

Hiding her ears.

If either of the Clawthorne sisters had magic it would be an easy thing to cast an illusion spell over her ears, but they don't; so it's not.

She's been leafing through Eda's various magic books, searching for a practical solution to her problem.

So far, no luck.

"Ugh!" Luz groans, shelving the books and stalking to her room, grumbling under her breath. "Why couldn't I have been born with a bile sac!?" she laments, dropping face down onto her sleeping bag.

She’s running out of time and unlike the way she handles most things, no plan, full steam ahead and flying by the seat of her pants, she needs to have this figured out before the party or everything was going to be for nothing! Now wasn’t the time to sharpen her improv skills. 

She has her clothes and her mask, they were easy. She was pretty pleased with herself on that front.

“Aghhhhh” she yells into the fabric before she ran out of air and was forced to flip over onto her back. 

Her time is ticking away and she can’t waste anymore with her frustrations. With a sigh, she hauled herself up and looked around her room, spotting the book about ancient, wild magic Amity had leant her and leaned over to grab it, dragging it into her lap and flipping it open.

She quickly leafs through page after page, hope waning as the minutes turn to hours and the next thing she knows the orange rays of the sunset are leaking through her window.

She sighed and twisted around, trying to relieve the pressure in her back from sitting hunched over the heavy tome for so long.

Maybe she could wear a hat, would it be okay to wear a hat?

She tiredly flips another page and scans it quickly as she reaches for the next but stops. 

In front of her are some illustrations of witches, but unlike other images in the book, these ones have what look like glyphs drawn on their skin; tattoos maybe?

Some of the book is written in a language she knows and some of it is not, and this section is, of course, not. 

But the longer she studies it the more an idea forms.

She sets the book aside and scrambles to her bag for a pen.

With one in hand she moves back over to the book The studies it again before laying her hand flat against its pages.

Steadily she draws the illusory glyph she'd been experimenting with across the back of her hand. She observes the final product and hesitates.

This could be dangerous.

She doesn’t allow the thought to take up much more than a few seconds of her time as she slaps her other hand over the glyph and willing it to do what she wants.

Her hand is enveloped in a light blue glow and when it fades her hand is tipped with long claws, the glyph still visible on the back of her hand. 

She flexes her hand tentatively and slowly a grin begins to split her face.

“It worked… It worked!” She jumps up with an excited whoop. She licks her thumb and rubs at the ink, as soon as the circle is broken the illusion fades with the same soft blue glow as before. She takes her pen and closes the circle back up and casts the spell again, and again, her hand transforms.

Giddy energy is filling her to near bursting as she shoots out of her room and runs into the bathroom.

It's an hour later that King is banging on the bathroom door.

“Other people live here and need the bathroom!” he squeals angrily, stomping his feet.

He almost falls over when the door suddenly swings open just as he’s pounding on it.

“Weh!” He stumbles, but catches himself and looks up, ready to lay his wrath upon whoever is hogging the bathroom but stops short at the sight in front of him.

“Well? What do you think?” Luz asks excitedly, but she doesn’t wait for his answer before bolting down the hall.

“Eda, EDA!” She calls pounding down the stairs and toward the kitchen, where she can hear someone moving around. Lilith looks up from her place on the couch as the girl passes and does a double take. 

“What?” Eda grumbles looking up from the large pot of potions she’s stirring. “Where’s the fir-” she trails off when she actually sees Luz.

She looks totally the same.

Except where once her ears were round, they are now pointed like any other witch on the Boiling Isles. 

“Wha-?” Eda looks at her wide eyed.

Lilith has followed into the kitchen to get a better look at the girl.

“Fascinating, how did you accomplish this?” She leans in close to get a better look. The illusion is seamless and if she didn’t know better she would have never guessed Luz wasn’t a witch.

“Well, you know that illusion glyph I taught you?” she asks and they nod. “Well, I was looking through this book Amity gave me and it showed wild witches with glyphs drawn on their bodies. So I figured I'd give it a shot!” she grins and reaches up to flick the tips of her now pointed ears. 

Eda walks over and turns her around, brushing Luz’s dark hair out of the way, she can see that  drawn on the back of both of Luz’s ears are small illusory glyphs. The older with grins.

“Kid, you’re brilliant.” She ruffled the girl's hair and Luz beamed. 

“Thanks, Eda.” 

“And think of the scams we could pull with this!” She grins and Lillith rolls her eyes.

Luz just chuckles, not even a little surprised.

[writer-k-pop]

Five Petal Flower - Pt. 2

미지의 길을 나와 함께 가시오. Take the unknown path with me. 

Description: [Set in old Korea, think Joseon era} After an attack makes (y/n) do something she never thought she’d have to do, she must be more careful of where she walks at night. But when her best friend, the 5th Prince Tae, gets tangled up in the aftermath of an attack, she has no choice to reveal secrets she wanted to keep secret. Warnings: Swearing, nothing too gory, Genre: Action, Angst, Romance Word Count: 2.9k

BTS Masterlist | Masterlists

"I want to know what the 5th Prince was doing outside the palace WALLS!!" The Crown Prince, Jin, screams at the counselors who have gathered in the throne room.

(y/n) waits outside the throne room, still in her outing wear and cloth mask. Her hands wring together, nervous that she will have to reveal herself to the Crown Prince.

"Your Highness, the civilian who saved the 5th Prince is here." The servant in front of you announces your arrival.

"Let them in." Crown Prince Jin allows the entrance.

The doors swing open and eyes of the counselors, military generals, and princes in the throne room whip their heads to take in the appearance of the 5th Prince's savior.

"Your Highness." (y/n) bows to 90 degrees, hands securely against her stomach.

"So you are the one who saved my brother." Crown Prince Jin inquires.

"Yes." She answer, properly.

"I would like to thank you, first of all, for saving him." The Crown Prince nods his head.

"We," The 3rd Prince, Seok, steps forward, "would also like to thank you for saving our brother." The other princes step forward and bow their heads in gratitude. The rest of the counselor's take note and copy the motion of the princes.

"I was only protecting the royal family. It is but a duty of ours." (y/n) answers. 6th Prince, Ji, cocks his head to the side before shaking away whatever thought he had.

"I understand you already gave information about the assailants to the Royal Investigation Bureau." Crown Prince Jin states, "But I was wondering if there was anything else you could tell us and the military generals that may help us figure this situation out."

(y/n) chews on the inside of her cheek.

"Psst." One of the military generals whispers, "You should probably take off your mask."

(y/n)'s eyes widen, having completely forgotten about the piece of cloth that hangs from her face.

Reaching behind her, she unties the cloth and pulls it off as she explains what she heard that she kept from the Royal Investigation Bureau in hopes to have this chance.

"They said that they were tasked to kill a servant of the fifth counselor's residence along with the family of the servant." (y/n) reports, avoiding analyzing the shocked expressions written on the princes' faces. "The servant was a fraud and the family was to be taken out as well. They were to leave everyone else and get in and get out with no witnesses."

Crown Prince Jin slowly rises to his feet, "(y/n), how-"

"I was out for some night practice with my bow and arrow." She interrupts him, "I had no intention of fighting, killing, or saving anyone. I just wanted some peace and quiet, some time with my own thoughts, your Highness." (y/n) raises her head and meets the crown prince's gaze, "But I do not regret being in the right time at the right place. Rather me there than anyone else."

A servant walks in with a cloth wrapped item. They bow and quickly walk to the first counselor, whispering something in his ear before handing over the item and leaving.

"This is one of the arrows pulled from the assailants." The first counselor announces, unwraps the arrow, and holds it out for Crown Prince Jin to take.

As Crown Prince Jin holds the arrow gingerly, the first counselor continues. "This arrow, along with its brother, were pulled from the bodies of the two assailants who attacked the fifth counselor's residence and the 5th Prince Tae tonight." The counselor turns to (y/n), "Do you claim this arrow as yours?"

(y/n) nods, hesitantly. "They are mine."

The 4th Prince, Joon, points towards a side of the arrow. "We've seen that mark before, haven't we?"

The arrow turns over in the crown prince's hands until the engraved flower is on full display. "The killings from two nights ago. These arrows had the same marking on them."

(y/n) swallows hard, knowing that her gig is up.

"You, you were there two nights ago?" The 7th and youngest prince, Kook, sputters out.

Taking a deep breath, (y/n) stands straighter, "Two nights ago, the attack on the fifth counselor's residence had the same goal as tonight. However, what the assailants didn't know was that the counselor was having a celebration that night that ran late. When they attacked, there were too many people so they aborted." She explains the events she saw that night. "I was traveling along the roofs when the screams turned from joyful to terror. I waited and when they exited the residence, I did what I did." As she continues, tears line the bottom of her eyes with the fear and worry she'd been holding in for the past two days, "I didn't know Prince Tae had snuck out. I didn't know he'd been on his way towards the screams. When I agreed to learn archery, I made an oath to the King. An oath to protect the royal family, the palace, and the country, no matter where I was. Two nights ago, I had no intensions of breaking that oath and protected the counselor's family."

"I am afraid we will have to take away your arrows. You must know that, don't you?" The First Counselor says apologetically, while the princes try to soak in the information thrown at them. (y/n) feels a bit bad for them, learning that their brother's best friend has an oath with their father is not an easy pill to swallow. Especially not after what their brother has been through.

(y/n) nods, "I understand."

"You are dismissed." The First Counselor announces.

Bowing towards the princes, she backs towards the door. Just before she steps out, Crown Prince Jin stops her.

"Does the 5th Prince know?" He asks.

Her hand grips the cloth still in her hand tighter as she turns back around. With a tight jaw, she answers, "No, he does not. And I ask the princes that they not say anything. I will tell him when he wakes up. I need to be the one to tell him. Please, your Highness."

The crown prince sets his jaw and nods in agreement. She walks out of the throne room and heads towards her residence for some sleep that will probably never arrive.

Footsteps rapidly following her make her slow down so they can catch up, whoever they are.

"Were you ever going to tell us?" 7th Prince Kook asks once he reaches her side. 3th Prince Seok appears on her other side.

Not knowing how to answer, (y/n) keeps her mouth shut for the time being.

"Come on, (y/n)." Prince Seok pleads.

(y/n) takes a deep breath before answer, "No. I wasn't." She says honestly, "It was only supposed to be the one night. I was never going to use my arrows again to kill anyone. But Tae, Tae," Her voice starts to tremble and the princes immediately stop her walking to support her, "He shouldn't have been out at all."

"I'm glad that you were there." Prince Seok gives her a side hug.

"Lady (y/n)!" Min comes running into the courtroom, "Lady (y/n)!" Once she notices the princes, she quickly bows in greeting.

Wiping away her tears, (y/n) addresses her servant. "What is it, Min?"

"The 5th Prince is awake," Min informs her breathlessly, "He's asking for you."

"We'll wait out here." Prince Kook says, putting a hand on her shoulder as they stand outside of his room, "We'll see him after you."

"Unless, hyung comes barging in." Prince Seok attempts to make a joke.

(y/n) gives them a small smile before turning to enter the room.

The candles flicker in the night, giving the room a low orange glow. Tae lays on his mattress, eyes clothes and breathing deeply as a nurse wipes his hands clean. The cut on his throat from the knife is covered by a gauze patch.

"Your Highness." (y/n) says softly and bows. "You asked for me."

Tae attempts to sit up but the nurse tries prevent him doing so. Unfortunately, Prince Tae has always been stubborn and tonight's events did not falter that stubbornness one inch. Knowing the nurse will not win against him, (y/n) shuffles over to assist.

"Tae, lay down." She instructs, using his real name, "You're hurt." Her hands gingerly push down on his shoulders and his body obeys her commands. The nurse throws her a questioning look but (y/n) quickly dismisses the nurse before she could ask any questions.

In the silence of the room, (y/n) dips the towel back into the water basin and wrings it out before dabbing at Tae's forehead.

"Say something." Tae whispers, his gaze following her every movement, "Please."

"What do you want me to say, Tae?" (y/n) asks in return. "You snuck out again. After you promised me you wouldn't."

"I know." Tae sighs, "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry?" (Y/n) repeats incredulously, "Tae that's all you can- You could've died out there. I mean, look at you!" She practically screams at him.

"But you were there." Tae mumbles quietly with a small smile, "You weren't going to let me die."

"Of course I wasn't going to let you die! Do you know the kind of fear that ran throu- wait, what?" (y/n) stops abruptly, pulling back and sitting on her heels. "You, you knew?" She asks, meeting his knowing gaze.

Tae nods, "It took me a little while to figure it out." He sits up but (y/n) makes no move to stop him, her eyes glued on the towel clutched in her hand. "I asked Soon about the arrows but he was a dead end. Then I was thinking because the flower seemed familiar to me somehow. Like I've seen it all my life but I couldn't remember where I had seen it."

(y/n) closes her eyes, realizing she'd given herself away to him her entire life, the shock of the reveal quickly taking a back seat.

"And then it hit me." Tae continues, "You were always drawing that exact flower everywhere. In your notebooks, in your letters, in your study books."

"That doesn't explain why you snuck out tonight." (y/n) finally looks at him with a scolding look.

"I was following you." Tae lowers his eyes in shame, "I wanted to talk to you because of the engravings but I saw you sneaking out with your bow and quiver full of arrows so I followed you. I didn't know they would be attacking again."

As the tears build in (y/n)'s eyes, her mind races to find the next step.

"I just wanted to see where you usually go out to to shoot at night." Tae explains, "You always talk about how you go there at night to think and practice and I wanted to actually see what it was like out there."

"And you decided that quietly following me was better than letting me know of your presence so we could go there together?" (y/n) questions, the next step still unclear in her mind.

"By the time I realized I should probably say something, you were already up on the roof and the shouts were rising in volume." Tae reasons. "I'm sorry." He apologizes again.

"Tae," (y/n) sighs, "I don't know if sorry is enough, Tae. You risked your life for something you could've spoken to me about. You broke the promise you made, too. You ran straight into harms way. I had to watch my best friend be dragged away and have his life threatened."

The first tear falls onto her cheek. It burns a trail down her face. "The momentary doubt I had that I could successfully save you. The fear that held my breath, the- And you know the most screwed up part?" She looks directly at him, his eyes following every tear falling from her eyes, his own heart breaking with every tear that hits the ground. "In the moment I shot those men, I wasn't even thinking about the oath I made to your father. The oath to protect the palace, the country, and the royal family. The only thing that was running through my mind was saving my best friend. Not the 5th Prince. My best friend. The man I couldn't bear to live life without."

Tae reaches to wipe the tears from her cheek but she backs away.

Rising to her feet, she folds her hands in front of her, "Tae, in every situation, an archer has two choices. Stay to shoot, or run." She tries her best to control the shaking in her voice.

Tae's eyes flood with tears as he realizes what she's about to do. "Please, don't."

(y/n) sniffles and wipes her tears, "Rest well, your Highness." She bows and quickly leaves the room. As the doors close behind her, she hears the crashing and splashing of the water bin against the floor. Along with the sobs of 5th Prince. She keeps her eyes glued to the ground, avoiding the faces of the 3rd and 7th princes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The sun beats down on (y/n)'s back as she roams the palace grounds. After not getting a minute of sleep last night, she thought staying cooped up in her room wasn't the best idea. Her heart still aches from last night's conversation. Walking away was difficult, but she knew it was the only choice she had, at the time. Between the anger, the worry, the fear, and the doubt, she needed to clear her head but she couldn't do it with him in the room. She had to leave.

"It was my only option." (y/n) reminds herself and kicks the dirt at her feet.

"You said you couldn't bear to live life without me." Tae's voice stops her in her tracks.

She clenches her hands together but doesn't move to face him.

"What did you mean by that?" He asks, quieter.

"You shouldn't be out of bed, and we aren't to be seen together, your Highness." (y/n) reminds him and moves to continue walking but Tae blocks her path. She lowers her gaze to the ground, not wanting to appear rude towards the royal in front of her.

"Do you know why we were told not to be seen together?" Tae questions, waving off her concern.

When (y/n) doesn't answer, he answers his own question. "Because I begged my father to not arrange my marriage, to let me only have one wife. He agreed on one condition. I was not to see the person I wanted to marry for 8 years. And if I still loved her, I would be able to marry her and only her."

(y/n) doesn't hide the tears or the sniffles, "That was a terrible deal." She comments.

Tae chuckles, "In hind sight, yeah, it was kind of terrible deal. But I was determined to marry the girl I love so I took it."

When Tae grabs her hands, (y/n) tries to pull away but Tae's grip only tightens. "You, (y/n), are the person I couldn't bear to live life without." He gives her words back to her. "If I know you as well as I think I do, I know you're scared and angry but you're not sure if you have the right to feel that way."

(y/n) raises her head to meet his gaze. The understanding gaze that always could comfort her even when her thoughts were in the deepest grave. It always surprises her how well Tae could decipher her emotions without her ever saying a word.

"You have every right to feel those emotions, (y/n)." Tae reassures her, daring to wipe a tear off of her cheek. "You admitted something last night that you weren't intending on admitting. You're angry at yourself for saying it but you're also scared of what comes next because you can't prepare for it."

Feeling cornered, but cornered by the right person who won't let her fall, (y/n) admits to what she's been holding in.

"I always thought it was because of the oath I took with your father. That the oath was the reason we weren't to be seen together in public." She explains, "You're right, I didn't want to admit it, but it just slipped out in all the confusion. I was going to tell you. I wanted to. But now that I have, I can't see my available next steps because the answer is in your hands. That scares me. It scares me that this is the one thing I've spent years trying to find the right path for and I still haven't found anything. Once I practically said 'I love you,' I took the first step into the unknown path and-"

Tae presses his lips against hers, stopping her from saying any more. His arms slowly wrap around her waist, pulling her closer and she responds. Finally letting her inner feelings emerge and show themselves after years of hiding.

Pulling away, Tae rests his forehead against hers.

"Tae, we still need to talk about last night." (y/n) declares, "A confession and a kiss aren't going to fix everything that happened."

Tae rolls his eyes, "I'm sorry for sneaking out."

(y/n) shakes her head, "You have to promise me that you'll never to it again."

Tae opens his mouth to answer but (y/n) places a finger on his mouth, quieting his response. "And that you'll never leave my side."

When Tae's boxy smile breaks out onto his features, (y/n) can't help but mirror his expression. "I promise." He promises and pulls her in for a hug.

"I have one more question, (y/n)." Tae holds her at arms length.

(y/n) nods and waits to answer his unknown question.

"Take the unknown path with me," Tae starts, "Will you marry me?"

[amicablestone]

Day 15: Changing Times (not so little Part 2)

[Read part 1]

When Marisa returned from the village, Reimu had prepared lunch. They really did have a lot to get ready, but there was always time for tea.

“So, what do you think?” asked Reimu after they had settled in on the front steps of the shrine, “about Kosuzu, I mean.”

“She’s definitely a smart kid, curious and attentive, but she’s got herself convinced that this is all way harder than it is.”

Reimu nodded. To a point, that was to be expected. Kosuzu had spent her whole life up until this point hearing larger than life stories about incidents and duels in the sky, and now she had to accept that she was a part of that world.

“On the other hand,” Marisa continued, “she’s got a ton of potential, and if she’s already started to fly after just a day of trying...It’s more than I could do on my own at her age.”

Reimu raised a wry eyebrow, “Really? And to think, she didn’t even have to consort with any strange ghosts to do it.”

Marisa laughed “Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, we can’t all be prodigies.”

It was Reimu’s turn to laugh, “You say that like it was all easy for me. I needed help in the beginning too, you know.”

“Oh yeah, your training wheels, I forgot about him! How’s the old fart doing, nowadays?”

Reimu smiled warmly, “Genji is currently enjoying a peaceful retirement, I’m happy to say.”

They lapsed into a contented silence, that was broken when Marisa set down her empty teacup.

“Okay, now tell me what’s really going on. Why the sudden interest in Kosuzu’s progress? Up until now you’ve been happy to let her figure it out on her own.”

Reimu looked down, “It’s just that calling her the ‘little sister of the incident resolvers’ only protects her from the rabble around here, that won’t work against the moon, or hell, or Seija.” she spat the name and then sighed into her teacup. “It feels like every year the world gets a little more dangerous and I’m just not sure if I can keep up. Some guardian I am, can’t even protect one little girl so I ask her to do it herself.”

Marisa punched her friend in the arm. “Don’t give me that. As the number two ‘guardian’ around here I’m uniquely qualified to say that Kosuzu and Gensokyo are both in the best hands possible,” she stood up, “and besides, you know that as soon as she finds out it’s an option, she’s going to throw on that little apron and dive straight into hell. Might as well make sure she can defend herself before that happens.”

The ‘night shift’ at Suzunaan was even more quiet than the day had been. It was always like this when Reimu threw her parties, not everyone went of course, but a lot of the big names did, so all of the little names felt like they could stretch their legs. On nights like this one you could find any number of smaller, seedier gathering dotted around Gensokyo.

Kosuzu knew she should be using this opportunity to catch up on sleep, but she simply had too much on her mind, and when she couldn’t sleep, she read. So with just one candle (to not wake her parents), Kosuzu sat behind the counter (on the off chance a customer did show up), flicking through a field guide to a place called Makai, allegedly the ancestral home of the Tengu.

Kosuzu stopped dead. The way flying felt, the source of her ability, her peepers. She could have kicked herself for not putting it all together sooner. She closed the field guide and gave the cover an appreciative tap, then she set off hunting through the shelves.

Suzunaan had always had youma books; her parents tend to buy in bulk from scavengers and there was nothing particularly unusual about an ‘import’ nobody could read. For just as long, Kosuzu had been drawn to them, she could remember pouring over the strange letters and fanciful drawings before she could understand kanji, let alone high tengu. She had no idea if it was the work of just one, or an effect of growing up around so many, but there was now no doubt in her mind that she had these books to thank for her eyes.

By definition, a youma book is anything written by a youkai, in the modern era they are also almost always the last remaining evidence of their authors’ and subjects’ existences. For a youkai, to be know is to live, so when a youma book is read, its contents are brought to life in a very real way. Some of the books see their new lives as prison and, after a few missteps, Kosuzu had learned to appreciate those types form a safe distance. Most, however, where like the well-worn tome she pulled from a back shelf and practically glowed with gratitude when they where read.

It was the personal memoir of a Tengu scout, if you where feeling particularly uncharitable, you could call it the predecessor to the Bunbunmaru. It didn’t offer any dark secrets or mystical powers, so it wasn’t checked out very often, but it was still one of Kosuzu’s favorites.

She carefully scanned through the dogeared pages. Accompanying bombastic accounts of the scout’s daily life where a number of hasty sketches and there, near the beginning, was a self portrait. It was exactly the figure she had seen when she was flying.

“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you earlier” Kosuzu whispered only a little self-consciously to the image, “but thank you for helping me.”

Book in hand, she returned to the counter and, before she could think better of it, climbed on top. She took a breath and made for the edge.

She stopped just short. The floor of the shop would be much less forgiving than the shrine’s yard, and the noise would definitely wake her parents. That was not a conversation she wanted to have.

She was about to climb down, but then remembered what Mamizou had said. Instead, she griped the memoir close to her chest and tried to hold on to the image of the scout in her mind. She took a step forward.

From the darkened storefront of Suzunaan came the faintest tinkling of bells.

[delicateduckpatrol]

Okay time to post something!

I have started writing a few book but I cant choose one to focus on so I'm gonna post what I have of the stories on here and have you guys pick.

NUMBERO UNO

Untitled

 Anyone caught trespassing on this land will be punished by the The Rat Lord!

A sign warns as a young man enters the woods, bordering his town. The man is quick to find an area to scout out decent food. A tree with sturdy branches on the outskirts of a tiny clearing of tall grass. Having only been eating the scraps of whatever he could find in the back alleys for the past few days. He is willing to receive punishment for trespassing as long as he is able to eat something. 

    “Please give me a deer, a rabbit, hell even a racoon would do, just anything please.” He whispers into his hand, laying down his bow. 

 With the setting sun the night chills, and the animals begin to move. The man listens for a sound but none come and he is alone in the cold.  He waits and waits and the few moments that he has a chance to catch something they are stolen away just as quickly. With frozen fingers he is unable to draw his bow back far enough without it slipping from his grasp and alerting the prey.The man retires for the night and heads back to his shack; he'll try again in the morning.

Now the second choice!

The title for now is rainfall

Chapter 1 

“Where is She Giles? She should be here by now!” I exclaim sighing as we continue waiting for our client. 

“Calm down Miss Raia, Lady Masi will be here shortly!” Giles waves his hand at me, annoyed by my impatience. After some time at the station Giles jumps up and shouts, 

“There! Her carriage Miss Raia!” I turn around to check for myself and sure enough coming down the path a carriage with the clients crest; a swan engraved with gold. I motion for Giles to stand by me as the driver pulls up. As he does he shakes his head at us, saying the his Mistress wants Giles and I to stay at her residence to work on her dresses to make sure there done to her liking.

“If it helps any she also included some material for you to look at on your journey.” I turn to Giles telling him he can stay behind if he wants since I don’t know when we might be back and that traveling to Reif can be a tad dangerous. 

“No, it’s fine Miss Raia if I didn’t go what kind of apprentice would I be.” Giles smiled kindly. The driver told us that Lady Masi has clothes for both of us and she wants Giles and I back as timely as possible. The driver whose name we learned is Hank said that if we leave now we can rest at The Twelve Travelers, and make it back by noon. I thank him and step to go into the carriage. 

“It's no problem at all Miss Raia.” he says as he helps me, Giles soon joins me in the back as Hank returns to his bench. 

“Alright Hank we’re all set!” Giles shouts out the window. Hank grunts and turns us around and as our journey begins we here the crack of the reins.

Chapter 2

“Wow Giles look at these fabrics they must have been so expensive; it’s so considerate of Lady Masi to provide the material.” I smile putting away the light colored fabric. 

“Yes, she probably did that so that she could guilt us into coming.” He snickered. As we near the inn Hank mentioned earlier, the carriage hits a pothole roughly and a small chest falls from the shelf above me onto the bench. 

“I wonder what’s in it? “ I face Giles in glee. I reach my hands for the wooden chest and undo the lock. 

“ Wait wait! What if it’s not for us, Miss Raia what if it’s a government secret and they’ll behead us for opening it!” I give him a blank stare. 

“Yes because, top government secrets are going to be hidden in a jewelry box.” I chuckle at him and open the little chest. A note is layed on top of everything, it’s written in a fine cursive hand. Before I snoop any further I decide that I should read the note out loud incase it actually is a government secret and thus I won’t be executed alone for knowing it...Sorry not sorry Giles.

#3

Untitled

Chapter 1

A Fool’s Beginning  

“Finally done!” a tall woman stands up smiling at the finished room barely believing that she had just moved away from her parents. Her small apartment offered little space to decorate and even less to move; but the woman made the best of it. In the main area she had placed a love seat in front of a small television, the walls a stomach-turning yellow. She tried her best in hiding the color with pictures of her friends, family, and her pets; but alas the color seemed victorious. 

She of course had a lovely bedroom with only the most age appropriate decor; such as a laundry basket that came with a basketball hoop, posters of pairs heros from a show her best friends niece showed her while on babysitting duty, and of course glow in the dark stars on every surface. 

    After placing just a few more finishing touches to her new home the woman peeks at her phone.

“Yes! 11:45 mail should be here!” She runs up to the door then very suddenly turns on her heels and starts walking back into her room with a rather sour expression. 

“There is no need to get locked out on your first day here.” She sighs picking up her apartment keys. Finally returning to the door she opens it and marches down the stairs to grab her mail. A man stood in front of the mail boxes with a stern look on his face as he read a letter.

“What utter nonsense!” The man mumbled to himself, tossing the letter away. The woman walked up and motioned for the man to move. 

“ Oh my bad.” He quickly apologized and stepped out of her way. The woman grabbed her mail from box 5. “Wait box 5 are you new in here?” the man asked excitedly.

“Why yes I just moved in!” She smiled brightly at the man, and extended her hand to him. “My name’s Lydia, and you?” 

“Simon Rogers the name.” He replies gladly accepting Lydias’ hand. “Well Lydia if you every need anything i’m just three doors down on your left. I hope you have a good day.” Simon said before leaving.      

THERE IT IS FOLKS YOU CHOOSE A STORY AND ILL CONTINUE WORKING SOLELY ON THAT ONE AND YES ILL POST HERE

Now if more than one person where to vote I'll take do the story with the most votes.

Alrighty y'all have a great day now!

[feminarrie]

under the same moon - three

a/n: sorry for the wait, loves! i’ve been in a lot of pain the last week, but finally managed to finish chapter three! it’s a little over 2.2k and a whole lot of soft niall! a big big big thank you to @fireawaynjh for beta reading this chapter! 

want to be added to the taglist? send me an ask!

Niall sighs as he gets out of bed, chest heavy and eyes still bleary with sleep. He’d gotten almost a full eight hours last night, but his lack of a consistent sleeping schedule never allowed him a day without some sort of fatigue. And it’s aggravated slightly by Hanna’s presence in his life, but he’d rather lose sleep talking to her than miss out on the small glimpses into her life back home.

He widens his eyes in an effort to wake himself up more, prolonging his blinks to clear whatever blurs his vision. It doesn’t help much, but he hasn’t got time to sit around. He’s got a six hour shift at the record store just a block away from his flat. Plus one of Liam’s friends, Zayn, had asked if Niall would mind recording some of his music. Which, of course, Niall has agreed to when Zayn promised to pay him a hundred quid.

Fingers comb through the tangled mess atop his head, leaving some strands sticking straight up and others flopping down on his forehead. He supposes that a shower was likely a good idea, even if it meant skimping out on a healthy breakfast in favor of an overpriced scone and coffee from Starbucks.

Niall gets up to rummage in the black chest of drawers, finding a pair of black Calvin Klein’s and wandering off into the single bathroom in the flat. He’s grateful that Liam’s likely still sleeping in because he’s genuinely never met somebody that takes so long in the bathroom just to come out looking the exact same.

(Which also frustrated Niall because Liam was already fit. He could get just about any girl as soon as he steps out on the street. So, it really isn’t fair that he makes the water run cold before Niall’s had the chance to shower).

After he’s turned the shower on and while he is waiting for it to heat up to an appropriate temperature, Niall types out a quick good morning text to Hanna.

Good morning, love. Getting ready for work, but hopefully I’ll be out before you’re even awake. Hope your day starts off well!

After he’s pressed send, Niall scrolls through some of his curated Spotify playlists. He settles on one that is a compilation of his most listened to titles and turs it up to full volume. Take It Easy by The Eagles echoes of the white walls of the bathroom. Niall hums along with it as he steps into the shower. Before long, though, his voice is carrying over the sounds of Glenn Frey’s own vocals.

Niall sings his way through two more songs on the playlist before he’s stepping out of the shower. Brunette locks are plastered to his forehead and beads of water travel down the bridge of his nose only to drip to his lower lip. He licks the droplet away as he reaches for the grey towel that’s neatly hung over the metal rod of a towel rack. He uses it to quickly dry off his hair, leaving it in loose curls and sticking up in different directions. His body follows next where he starts from his feet and then all the way to his broad back before he steps outside of the porcelain tub to tug on his boxer briefs.

As he unlocks the door to exit, Niall grabs his phone from the shelf that’s hung exactly in the middle of the two towel racks beneath it. He pauses Jackie and Wilson by Hozier because he’s sure that Liam wouldn’t appreciate the blaring music as Niall makes the trek back to his room.

He doesn’t expect Hanna’s name to pop up on his screen, though. It’s only a quarter past seven in the morning, so he had expected Hanna to be tucked into bed for the night. Especially after she had groaned about needing to get back into a decent sleep schedule before classes resumed.

Sonam and Tyler are back!!! We’re out for Taco Tuesday and dancing!

Wish you could party with us n not have to go to work. ): ): ):

Niall sends a message that tells her that he would much rather be out with them than getting ready for his shift. Especially when his 8am to 2pm doesn’t generate the most traffic or revenue. Instead, he spends the majority of his time typing lyrics down on the notes app or texting Hanna when she’s awake.

He tosses the phone onto his bed and pivots to find an outfit within his closet. It’s mostly an array of deeper tones—browns, navies, oranges—but, they’re broken up with some white graphic shirts and striped short sleeved tops. He settles on a heather grey top that he pairs with his signature black jeans. Niall doesn’t bother with a sleek boot, but picks a pair of worn black Nike SB Blazer Mids.

The clock on his phone reads 7:38am when Niall finally all of his stuff ready to go. A phone charger and notebook thrown haphazardly into his backpack, his wallet tucked into his back pocket. He pulls his beanie and peacoat from their respective hooks just to the right of the door

When he steps out the door, he doesn’t bother to lock it behind him. He figures Liam will likely be leaving in only a few short hours and would need to lock up regardless. Even so, he texts his roommate a reminder to make sure everything is locked up before he leaves. Not that there is much worth stealing, if you asked Niall, but his laptop and guitar could sell for a pretty penny if they were taken.

Their flat is on the third floor, so Niall doesn’t bother with the elevator like he usually does. But, he can see from the electronic numbers that are lit up above the steel doors, that waiting for it isn’t worth it. Instead, he’s jogging down the stairs and pushing the door open to reveal an empty lobby.

With the holidays just passing and the upcoming semester drawing nearer, he had expected there to be more commotion. But, he reasons that it’s likely that most people won’t be leaving for their morning commute for another half hour or so. At least, those with traditional nine to five desk jobs.

Niall doesn’t dwell on it, though. He simply shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat and uses his weight to push open the entrance door.

The wind licks and bites at his skin, dyeing his cheeks and nose a shade of pink. The windburn and frigid temperatures have never been kind to his skin, but Niall has yet to learn his lesson. He routinely leaves the house without a scarf or gloves. Hell, he isn’t even sure if he owns any.

And he thinks about buying them, sure. But, whenever he actually pops into ASOS or TopMan, they’re never first priority.

He’s grateful that the walk to Starbucks is only two minutes because he’s ducking inside before he even realizes it. The smell of ground coffee and pastries occupy his senses. His eyes flitter across the menu as the scents swirl around him, twisting and turning until his stomach makes an audible growling noise.

The line is fairly short, only four others in front of him when he finally decides on his order. He takes the time to dig his phone from his pocket once more, seeing that Hanna had texted him back only three minutes ago.

Really wish you could be here!

You’re all I keep thinking about tbh.

Oops. Gotta go, the tacos are here and I’m so hungry. ):

Niall is smiling down at his screen like a proper idiot. Face lit by the blue light of his phone and teeth on full display. He doesn’t really know what part of Hanna’s messages have him grinning from ear to ear. He knows that, in part, it’s because she’s just so cute. It pains him at times, if he’s honest. Puts his lower lip in a pout because he almost always thinks about how he’d like to kiss her and tell her just how cute she is.

As he rereads the texts again, inching forward as the next person in the queue is ordering, he finds himself reading over the second message the most. Hanna’s admission, though small, has Niall rising up that much closer to cloud nine. He won’t allow himself to take up residence there, for fear that Hanna may not actually feel the same. Even though he’s fairly positive that she does.

He’s satisfied with how he is feeling now, though. He’s warmed by his proximity to the sun. Lightheaded from the fast growing altitude. Weightless as he allows himself to float just beneath the surface of cloud nine.

Niall’s only brought back down to earth by the impatient barista behind the counter. His tightlipped smile is disingenuous when Niall finally steps forward. He pays him no mind, though. Still feeling as though nobody can touch him even though his feet have settled back down on the ground.

He orders a simple black coffee with a few pumps of vanilla syrup and a buttered croissant. Niall pays for both and before he’s even wedged his wallet and phone into separate back pockets, his order is so waiting for him at the opposite end of the counter.

His movements are quicker after he’s noticed the clock. He’s got about seven minutes to make a ten minute walk to the record store. So, he fills the remaining space in his cup with cream before securing the lid and venturing back out into the cold.

One hand is shoved back into the warmth of his coat pocket while the other holds a coffee that would be too hot if it weren’t for the below freezing temperatures outside. The beverage sloshes inside the cup, only contained by the green plastic stopper that Niall had knicked before stepping outside.

He manages to arrive thirty seconds early and with only a quarter sized coffee stain atop the lid. He balances the cup in his left hand while his right digs for the keys to open up the store. They’re deep in the corner of his coat pocket, where Niall’s fingers must pinch and shift them until he can get a decent grasp on the cold metal.

The inside of the store is dark when he enters, save for one neon sign in the back that Niall never remembers to turn off. It hangs above the listening area that is tucked in the left back corner of the store. “Good vibes” is written in all lower case letters and glows pink in the dimly lit space.

Niall thinks the sign is somewhat cringeworthy and hardly fits with the rest of the store’s aesthetic. The open layout is contained by exposed brick and covered with records that are chosen weekly by the staff. What is left of the empty wall space is occupied by signed posters that almost always have a glare from the string lights hung throughout the room.

After setting his stuff down, he flips the black and white “closed” sign, so that it reads “open.” He switches the lights on next before rounding the counter to prepare the register. It only takes five minutes for him to completely settle in. It takes another five for his hands to finally thaw enough for him to grab his phone.

Hanna’s name appears on his screen once again.

hello again. I’m a little drunk already.

margaritas and a vodka cran will do that to ya though.

still wishing you were here!

probably best you aren’t, though.

not the prettiest drunk, you know?

Niall is about to text her back to let her know he’s seen her pretty drunk. He had seen the way her lightly freckled cheeks were flushed and likely warm to the touch when they had first met. Her hair had been tossed up into a messy bun that barely contained her thick brunette hair. Niall had also watched her shovel fries into her mouth without a single breath that night, too.

But, Hanna already sent another message by the time he finished typing up his own response.

can’t have the boy that i like, but have no chance with, seeing me like this.

Niall watches as his cursor jumps backward as he backspaces his message.

Is it too early to be that giddy over such a simple declaration of mutual interest? Niall doesn’t think so.

In fact, he allows himself to float just that little bit more until he is sitting comfortably on cloud nine. He feels floaty and yet, never more anchored down than he does now. Even as his thumbs hover over the keyboard, unsure of how to properly respond, he feels at ease.

He settles for a simple response. Short, clear, and hard to misinterpret.

Don’t say that. Call me when you get home, love.

He types out another message asking her to be safe while she’s out. With an extra reminder to have fun with her friends as they celebrate being back together.

And on the opposite side of the world, Hanna is making her own quick ascension to cloud nine. Even being as intoxicated as she was, she is still capable of reading Niall like an open book. Which is how she feels a potentially blooming relationship should be:

Easy.

feedback? | series masterlist

taglist: @stylishmuser | @exoticniall | @irish-nlessing | @niallersdirtylaundry | @niall-is-my-dream | @fireawaynjh | @starboyhaz | @klairelavarias 

[i-write-shakespeare-not-disney]

Fragile Hearts Ch. 5: It’s Delicate, Isn’t it?

Click the OP if the READ MORE link does not show!

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Feedback is super appreciated!!!!

When morning came around, Pidge had barely managed to sleep. She’d been too anxious, and her stomach was in knots, but she wasn’t sure why. Sam woke up and got ready for the day, but Pidge just paced around and nibbled on a piece of toast until they could leave. Hunk had texted her good morning and it actually managed to soothe her nerves at least for a little while.

Sam, all primped and ready for the day, finally grabbed her keys and her coat and gestured to the door. Pidge followed and felt her hands begin to sweat. She slid into her car and started chewing on her thumb as Sam pulled away from the apartment. She could tell that Pidge was nervous, so she didn’t try to talk to her much.

Maybe Sam knew there was more than Pidge was telling her. She wasn’t stupid and no one got this worked up over a book series. Still, she was kind enough not to prod.

When they reached the bookstore at the mall, Pidge followed Sam through the aisles. She stopped and pointed. “The books should be in there. You’ll notice them easily because they take up a few shelves. I’ll be over here in the textbook section, alright?” Pidge nodded and watched her walk away.

She was close. She was very close to the books. But she couldn’t get her feet to move. It felt like she was back in the bakery, frozen in place as she stared at Hunk at the register. She gulped and shot Hunk a quick text.

@ bookstore..

She tucked her phone away and focused on moving her feet. She scanned the shelves slowly before she caught Lance’s name. Her breath caught and swallowed as she tried to breathe normally. Her mouth felt dry.

She followed the books as they numbered backwards until she reached the first one.

The Galactical Defender Series was written at the very top. This one had a cave depicting a glowing lion drawing and the title Zurtron: An Unexpected Team Book 1. She picked it up and opened the to the first page which had praises for the book. She turned and saw the publishing information. One more page turn and she’d gasped as tears pricked at her eyes.

To the best team in the universe. There’s no one else I would’ve gone to war with.

She stared at the italic letters for a while, feeling her eyes water before gaining the courage to turn the page again. It had a quote about bravery in the center. She turned to the next.

Chapter 1: Signals From Space

Pidge began to read, quickly immersing herself in the words and the memories. He’d written it from his own point of view and changed their names, but it was easy to see who was who. To begin, there were only three characters at the beginning; Leo the narrator, Chuck, and Jamie. The descriptions were so obviously them. Lance had kept Pidge’s character true to her and kept her posed as a boy, but she knew it was her because Jamie was the one looking for his family.

The art was exquisite. Every other page had a colorful rendition of them, even with similar clothing and color palettes.

Before long, Pidge was halfway through the book, reading on about how messy the practices were, laughing and crying at the same time at the inside jokes and obvious jokes Lance had incorporated. Keith and Shiro’s characters, Kyle and Makira respectively were also true to their characters and Pidge didn’t sense any malice around Keith’s character.

The book ended when the first battle was on the verge of starting, ending with a piece of art with each of the five characters looking frightened and ever so young.

Pidge hadn’t realized how profusely she’d been crying until she turned the page to find the acknowledgements. Lance had thanked his editor, his agent, his therapist, his family, his sister-in-law for the art, and his readers. And then-

Lastly, to the friends who showed me the universe. You each taught me different things, whether it was how to be a friend, how to be an adult, how to be a leader, how to be a supporter, or simply how to love unconditionally. And I will never forget any of you. I think of you each every day and I can never thank you enough for all the years we spent together. Maybe one day we’ll reconnect, but for now I hope you all know I keep you close to my heart. A team then, a team now, and a team for the years to come.

Pidge put the book down and held it close, stifling her sobs in her jacket sleeve. She took her phone back out to see a message from Hunk. She responded with a picture of the acknowledgement page.

It was a while before Hunk responded, and Pidge wasn’t sure if it was because he was busy or because he felt as emotionally strung out as her. He called her again and she answered, sniffing. “Hello?” she whispered.

“Was it good?” he asked. His voice was shaking too.

She laughed through the tears and nodded before remembering she actually had to speak. “Yeah, it actually was. He put in everything that we went through those first few weeks. And it’s so funny, Hunk.” She started crying again, unable to hold back her tears. “Your name is Chuck in here. I’m Jamie and I’m still a boy right now.”

Hunk laughed and she could hear him sniffing periodically. After a while of silence, he asked, “Does it say anything about him? Like the short author bios that are on some books?”

“Um, lemme check.” She turned to the back cover and her breath caught.

There was a picture of Lance, long face, all angles and sharp edges. There was the scar on his jaw from one of their missions. He was smiling, hands stuffed in his pockets almost shyly. But those were the same blue eyes and the same tousled brown hair, slightly longer than it had been when she last saw him, looking windswept and unruly.

There was her other best friend.

She chuckled and read aloud.

“Lance Charles McClain is a Cuban author, inspired to write after dealing with heavy post-traumatic stress. He says he’s always felt like he’s a little kid inside and relates well to them with his numerous siblings and nephews. This led him to write his hit series, Zurtron: Galactical Defender, aimed at middle school kids. Still, his easygoing, humorous writing has captured the hearts of kids and adults across the world. Lance now lives in… New York City with his pet dog, Leon. Although he has no social media outlets, he has consistent book tours to greet his young fans.”

Below that was a picture and a small bio of a young woman with long, wavy black hair and brown eyes. His sister-in-law and illustrator. But Pidge was more focused on the last two sentences of Lance’s bio.

“Hunk. He’s in New York. That’s like… a three hour drive from me.”

“Hold on, I’m searching up book signings in New York.” Pidge ran her hand over the cover, struggling to reach up for the next book. She flipped to the back as though the pages could hold new information. She stared at the books and hugged them to her chest as Hunk mumbled. “Okay, so there’s a store on Union Square that’s going to hold some authors. Lance is one of them. They’re going to speak a little then have a break then do some signings.”

“When?”

“February the 24th from like noon to five. It’s a Saturday.”

It seemed so far from now, but the only other option was scouting through the millions of people that inhabited New York city to find Lance. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to focus on school now. She had found Hunk and now they were close to finding Lance. And surely, with the note he’d left behind, he would be glad to see them, right?

“I’m buying the books,” she said, pulling herself up off the floor. She grabbed the first five and checked her account to be sure she had enough. “There’s pictures too. Looks like us when we were younger.”

“I can’t believe he’s an author now.”

Pidge laughed and ran her hand through her hair. “I’m an emotional wreck, Hunk. I’m sobbing in the middle school section of the damn store.”

Hunk laughed, but not teasingly. “Yeah, you’re not alone there. I had to take a very early lunch break when you sent that picture.”

“Shit. I totally forgot you’re working. I’m so sorry.”

“Pidge, we just got one step closer to finding Lance, and you’re apologizing?” She laughed and wiped at her face with her sleeve. “Look, I’ll head over to your place that Friday night and we can head out, stay at a hotel for a night, then go to the signing. How does that sound?”

“Yeah. That sounds good.”

“Okay. I have to get back to the bakery and probably take the chance to actually eat. But keep me updated, okay?” Pidge hummed in affirmation. “What time do your classes end tomorrow?”

“I’m usually back home by six.”

Hunk hummed and then said, “Okay. Well, I have to go. Let me know how the books go.”

She chuckled and patted her stack of book affectionately. “It’s probably all I’m gonna talk about, Hunk.” He laughed and her heart elated at the sound. “Okay, I’ll let you go now. Bye, Hunk.”

“Bye, Pidge.”

He hung up and Pidge went to the cashier to buy her books. As soon as they were bagged, she grabbed the second and started reading.

Sam came up to her a few seconds later and nudged her foot. “Wanna go home?”

She nodded and stood up, reading as she walked with Sam. Sam let her read the ride back and as she went back to the apartment, but after that, she sat down on Pidge’s bed and tapped her shoulder. She hummed, not looking away from the book, even though she had lived it.

Her roommate sighed and tugged the book away, despite Pidge’s protests. “Look, Katie, I’ve known you for a while now. And I’ve tried not to pry too much, but…. I know you’re hiding something. About your past. I’m not really sure what, but I know it has to do with Hunk and the author of that book, and something with that series because your eyes look incredibly red and I know it’s not because you got high.” Pidge narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “I want to be able to help you. But I can’t do that if I don’t know what upsets you.”

She scoffed and shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Honestly, if you’ve hid it this long, I’d be willing to believe anything you told me. I just want to understand.” Pidge looked at her nervously and took a deep breath, keeping her mouth shut. “I won’t judge. No matter what happened.”

Pidge took a breath and let it out slowly. Then she looked at Sam and lifted the book. “These aren’t fictional.” Sam furrowed her eyebrows and looked at the book then at Pidge in confusion. “I lived it. I’m in it. The book, I mean.”

“You’re… in the book?”

“Jamie Gunderson at your service. Paladin of the Green Lion.” Sam’s eyebrows furrowed further as she stared at Pidge. “If you don’t believe me, then ask your brother to tell you what’s happened in the books, and then I’ll tell you what I went through. You can see what parts align and what doesn’t.”

“Um. Okay…. Why don’t you tell me first?”

She shrugged and hugged a pillow to her chest. She tried to explain in a concise way. Why and when she got into the Garrison, how they’d come across the cave, the castle, the lions. How Hunk was the yellow pilot and Lance was the blue pilot. She gave her roommate a gist of some of their major battles, and the major turning points for the team. The time they found out about Keith, when Shiro went missing, when she found her brother, when Keith left to join the Blade. She told her about the time Lance had nearly died and Hunk had been tortured. She told her about Keith and Lance becoming a couple and those little moments she reminisced with Hunk that weren’t all serious and bad. The holidays, the planets, the movie nights, the Space Mall.

Sam had looked incredulous and apprehensive at first, and Pidge was certain she would call a mental institution at first. But once Pidge finished with them returning to Earth and going their separate ways, she looked more shocked than anything.

“I remember my brother calling me to complain about Kyle leaving Zurtron. And he called me crying when Jamie found her brother, and I got confused because the last time he’d mentioned Jamie, it was a boy.” Pidge chuckled and nodded. “So…. You pulled a Mulan and passed for a boy?”

“Have you seen me? I’ve always been underdeveloped and small. It wasn’t that hard to make fake documents and look like a prepubescent boy.”

“So… that’s why you started college later than most of us?” Again Pidge nodded. “And… the scars you have are from… battles?”

“And messing with the lions. Yeah.”

Sam ran her hand through her hair and scoffed. “I just… I thought you had a bad family or something. I never thought… you were a war vet. You lived real life Star Wars!”

“Not exactly like that… but sure.” Pidge chuckled, grateful that Sam believed her.

“And your nightmares…. Oh my, God. Katie, I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through that for so long.” She wrapped her arms around Pidge and hugged her tightly. “No wonder you freaked out when I told you about the books.” She took one of the ones on the pile and flipped to the back where Lance’s picture was. “Whoa, he’s really hot. I can’t believe this stuff is real.” Pidge laughed and shook her head. “Honestly, if I could get my brother to meet him…. But never mind. Are you… gonna try to find him?”

Pidge nodded. “Hunk and I are going to one of his signings.” She plopped back on the bed and ran a hand through her hair. “But it’s not for another month almost, and I don’t know what to do in the meantime! I have no idea how I’m supposed to focus on school.”

“Well, why don’t you just take it one day at a time. Trust me with the amount of shit the professors have us doing, the time is going to speed past.”

Pidge hummed apprehensively. Before either of them could say anything else, the front door opened, and she heard a familiar voice calling out for them. It seemed Ana had come back.

She walked into their room and smiled at them brightly. “How was break?” she asked.

Pidge looked at Samantha and they smirked. “It was alright,” Sam said with a shrug.

“Nothing major,” Pidge added.

“Well, it feels good to be back. We should go out to eat tonight before having to start classes tomorrow.” She put a hand to her hip, her silver rings contrasting with her dark chocolate skin. “What do you two think?”

“I’m up for it,” Sam answered. Pidge shrugged in agreement.

Samantha left the room and went off to catch up with Ana while Pidge snuggled into her bed and began reading again. As she read, she couldn’t help the tears that fell from her eyes and simply tried to stay quiet enough as to not alert her roommates. She read until her eyelids had gotten too heavy and finally managed to fall asleep.

She dreamt of Voltron. But it wasn’t a war anymore. It wasn’t capturing, torture, or trauma. She dreamt about the good times. The day they’d been handcuffed together and started a food goo fight. The day she found Matt. The ridiculous shows they had to put on when forming the coalition. The day Keith came back to stay.

When Sam woke her up, she felt drained and melancholic. She was nostalgic for those moments, and remembering them made her feel heavy. But she preferred it over the nightmares.

She managed to join her roommates as they went out for wings and managed to remain engaged in the conversation. It was a bit of a struggle for her to keep her mind off of New York, off of Lance. She kept wondering what she and Hunk would say to him, or how they’d approach him.

Every now and then, Samantha would look at her worriedly, but Pidge managed to refocus and tried to enjoy her time with her roommates.

The next day, classes were a bit of a blur. One dove straight into the curriculum, but others took a moment for introductions and going over the major points in the syllabus. Pidge ended up doodling in the margins of the papers, creating rough sketches of her friends. She even drew what she thought Keith and Shiro might look like.

They had all changed so much, and yet not at all. It was strange to see Lance looking so much older and mature, yet child-like and playful in that photo. And Hunk was still the same guy with the same protective hugs and bright smile, just with a beard and tattoos. Pidge was still small and looked younger than she was, but her hair was different as was her personality. She was far more careful around people than she was when she was in the comfort of the castle.

She wondered if Lance got nightmares. She wondered who was there to comfort him, or how he did it himself. She wondered if he was different around people now too.

“Ah, miss?” Pidge blinked and looked up, realizing with a start that she was alone in the classroom. “The class has been dismissed. Are you alright?”

She cleared her throat and stood up, grabbing her things. “Oh, yes. Sorry…. I guess it’s just the nerves.” She chuckled nervously and left, thankful that it had been her last class anyway.

She returned to her apartment where Samantha and Sophie were already home and watching something on the television. Meanwhile, she scavenged the pantry, hoping to eat something other than noodles.

Before she could look for long, her phone rang. It was Matt.

“Hey Pidgeon. How was the first day back?”

Pidge smiled to herself. Four years later and he still called the first day of each semester. “It was okay. Kind of pointless, and I already got assigned some homework, but it’s cool.”

“Well, just keep your eye on the prize. You’re not that far from finishing.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I get nervous just thinking about that.”

“Have you eaten yet?”

“No, I was just looking, but I think I might just order something online in a bit.” She padded over to her room and laid down on the bed. “You won’t believe what I found out the other day.” Matt hummed inquisitively. “Lance is a writer. He has a book series and it’s based off of Voltron.”

“No fucking way?” Pidge laughed and turned on her side to grab one of the book on the bedside table. “How did you find out?”

“My roommate. Samantha. Her little brother reads them. I went to go find them, and they’re really good. Really funny, and… a lot of memories.”

Samantha walked in and waved for her attention. “Your pizza’s here.”

“I didn’t order a pizza,” she answered.

Same shrugged. “Pizza chick is here and says the pizza is for someone with your last name.”

Pidge frowned and stood up. “Hey, Matt gimme a second.” She walked over to the front door and saw a girl holding out a pizza. “Um, hey. Who is that for?”

“Pidge Holt,” she answered. “It was paid online, so….”

Pidge furrowed her eyebrows, and she took the pizza, thanking the delivery girl. She walked to the table and chuckled. “Matt, why’d you get me a pizza?”

“I didn’t,” he answered. “But now I know why Hunk asked for your address earlier.”

Pidge froze and stared at nothing. “What?”

Matt laughed on the other end while Pidge felt herself go completely red. “I’ll let you go so you can eat and thank your future boyfriend.”

“Oh my God, shut up!” she whined. “Ugh. Okay, I’ll talk to you later.” He hummed suggestively and Pidge hung up. She opened the pizza and bit back a smile.

Medium supreme pizza with a stuffed crust. She couldn’t hold back the smile or the way her mouth watered. She took a soda from the fridge and took her pizza to her room, trying to hide her blush.

She pulled her laptop out and texted Hunk, asking if he had a Skype.

No? I can make one tho?

Pls do.

A few moments later, he sent her a text with his username. She figured he wasn’t too busy and decided to call him, chewing on her pizza with a smile. After a few seconds of ringing, the screen widened to show Hunk’s inquisitive face. He broke into a smile when he saw her eating.

“So you remembered my favorite pizza,” she said. “And after asking Matt where I live, you ordered it online for me?”

Hunk chuckled, and the camera moved. Pidge could hear a bit of commotion in the background as he moved away from the kitchen. He was on his phone and still at the bakery. Pidge wanted to slap herself for not remembering the damn time difference.

“Well, it was your first day back. I figured you deserve it.” Pidge felt herself blush, and she was thankful her room was dark enough so he couldn’t tell.

“Well, thank you,” she answered with a smile. “It was a great surprise.”

“Katie, are you not going to share that- Why are you smiling?” Samantha and Sophie had come into the room and Pidge froze mid-bite, looking at the screen frantically. “You never video chat. Who are you video chatting?” she asked.

Pidge chewed carefully and swallowed her bite. “Hunk…,” she answered honestly.

Samantha’s eyes lit up, and Pidge realized she’d made a mistake. “Oh my God, did he get that pizza for you? That is so sweet! Can we say hi?”

“Who’s Hunk?” Sophie asked, crawling over to see the screen.

“He’s working right now, I was just-”

“Who is that?” Hunk asked looking confused.

Pidge sighed in resignation and turned her laptop. “My roommates. Sophie and Samantha. Guys, this is my friend, Hunk.”

“Friend?” Sophie repeated with a smirk.

“Oh my God, I’m going to strangle you!” she snapped, putting her laptop aside. She ran toward them, ushering them out of the room.

They protested, laughing and teasing her. “A friend who gets you pizza from the other side of the country, yeah okay!” Sophie giggled.

“Bye, Hunk, it was nice to meet you after everything I’ve heard about you!” Samantha shouted over Pidge’s protests and Sophie’s teasing.

“Get out, get out, get out!” Pidge shrieked, shutting the door. She could hear them squealing and laughing rambunctiously on the other side. She groaned and returned to her laptop, mortified to see Hunk covering his mouth to hide a smile. “I am so sorry. College girls, what can you do?”

Hunk uncovered his mouth, and Pidge noticed a slight blush in his cheeks, but she couldn’t be sure with the damn beard covering half his face. She cleared her throat and held up her pizza. “Um, but seriously thank you for the pizza. I didn’t even realize how much I was craving it.”

“It was no problem,” he answered. “It’s not weird, right? I mean, what one of your roommates said-”

“No, no, not at all,” Pidge answered trying to keep her voice light. But she felt like something had dropped in her stomach. “Best friends can do this kind of stuff. People just you know… get weird about guys and girls being friends.” She shrugged and chewed on her pizza to keep her face unreadable.

“Oh okay, cool,” he said with a sigh of relief. That made the feeling worse.

“Um, I should let you get back to work. I keep forgetting the time difference, I’m sorry.” She laughed nervously, but Hunk only smiled at her.

“No, it’s fine. Really. I was really happy to see you get your food.” He chuckled and Pidge felt her heart flutter again. “I can call you when I get off work, if you’re not too tired?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “That’d be nice. I’ll see you later then?” He nodded with a smile. “Okay…. Bye, Hunk.”

He smiled crookedly, an expression that made Pidge’s heartbeat skyrocket. “Bye, Pidge.”

She took a deep breath and ended the call. Then she tossed her computer aside and hit her head against the wall in frustration. She stuffed her face with more pizza, hoping to just eat the day’s frustration away and grabbed her book, careful not to get grease on the pages.

Before she could read far, the door opened again and Sophie and Samantha came in with smiles. “So, how’s the pizza?”

She snorted and held out the box. Sophie took a slice, but Samantha shook her head. “So, who was that guy?” Sophie asked.

“Just a friend,” she answered, remembering how uncomfortable he’d gotten over the teasing. “And that’s all he’ll ever be.” She bit into her pizza in frustration, ignoring when Sam scoffed.

“You’re joking, right? Katie, the guy bought you a pizza. That means he thought of the time difference and managed to order it in time for you to come home. People don’t do that stuff for just friends.”

Pidge rolled her eyes and shook her head. “We’re just best friends. That’s all. I’m not a girl people like, okay?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sophie questioned, licking her fingers.

Pidge felt something heavy settle in her chest as she ran a hand through her hair. “I mean, he’d never like me. He’s known me for too long, he probably sees me like a little sister or something. He does sweet things assuming I won’t read into it because it’s ridiculous for him to like me.”

“Why wouldn’t he like you?” Sam asked. “You’re both really smart, you spent a lot of time together, and with everything you went through-” Pidge shot her a warning look, and Sam sighed. “I’m just saying, there’s no reason he wouldn’t like you.”

Pidge grimaced and ate her pizza with rising self-hatred. Of course there was. She wasn’t tall and curvy like her roommates. She didn’t have smooth skin like Ana, or curves in all the right places like Sophie, or long legs and a small waist like Sam.

Pidge was small, underdeveloped, covered in battle scars, weird little freckles, and if she wore a shirt that fit too tightly, everyone could see the chub in her stomach. The only thing she had going for herself were her eyes, but even those were surrounded by eyebrows she always forgot to tweeze. Her legs were bulky and she hadn’t shaved them since November because of how cold it got. She didn’t even know how to use makeup well enough to at least pretend she looked better.

“Katie?”

She gasped as Sophie’s voice pulled her out of her daze. “Yeah, no, sure. Probably just being pessimistic.”

“I mean, you’ve dated before, haven’t you? Guys do like you, Katie,” Sophie said encouragingly.

But that only made Pidge feel worse. Because yes, she had dated. Two boys, both of which only saw her as an object. They didn’t like her because she was smart and pretty, they liked her because they thought she’d be an easy, desperate lay. And thinking about it made her angry.

But aloud, she just answered, “Yeah. I guess so.”

“Well, we made it through our first day back. What do you girls say to changing into sweats and hoodies and binging Criminal Minds?” Pidge smiled as Samantha squeezed her free hand. “And you can bring your pizza, Katie.”

She chuckled and nodded, joining her roommates in the living room.

They didn’t know her all that well, and it wasn’t easy to comfort her. But they had tried, and they weren’t leaving her to wallow alone. For that, Pidge was grateful.

That night as she got ready for bed, her phone buzzed with a picture message. It was from Hunk. She opened it and saw a screenshot of an airline website. The code for two tickets had come up, and Pidge saw that the destination was New York.

Look what I just bought!!!

Pidge smiled and sent back a row of excited emojis.

Everything was fine. She’d gotten one best friend back. She would get the other back soon. And all of this mess about unrequited feelings wouldn’t matter, because they’d all be together, and they’d all be a family, and everything would be fine.

It had to be.

Click to read ch. 6

[amaranthinecanicular]

Mob receives a love letter. It’s the duty of the Body Improvement Club to support him.

[Happy belated Valentine’s Day, folks. Originally written for the MP100 Valentine’s Week but not finished in time because of course.

Alternative title card: that one profile pic of Musashi, which reveals that he is a zero at love but a hero at nosiness.] 

Gouda Musashi’s lovelife is, to be frank, nonexistent.

This is fine. More than fine. There are other things to focus on, more important things. The club, and the members that compose it. Muscles. Not flunking out of high school. Squats. Justice. Leg day, which is every day. Even if by some chance he did wish to engage in a teenage romance, there was no one he wanted to receive his affections. Spring of youth or no, Musashi knows that his time is well spent.

That is not to say that he has no interest in love whatsoever. “Musashi!”

Onigawara jogs up beside him. This is a surprise; Musashi dismissed the club ten minutes ago, and though he elected to run for a while longer, he could have sworn Onigawara had retired with the rest of them. Maybe he did–he’s still in his work out clothes, but he’s heaving for breath like he just sprinted to the club room and back. Musashi thinks to slow down for him, but there’s no need; in Onigawara’s eyes is a spark of fierce determination that never dies, and he keeps pace.

More important things, Musashi thinks. In spite of all his demons, in spite of all the cards and boulders and mountains stacked against him, perhaps just in spite and nothing else, Onigawara has persevered. It’s been two years since he joined the club, and even though he’s all but stopped getting into fights, he never really stops fighting. The things he fights are just different now–he fights to improve and he fights to overcome, and these days Musashi can’t look at him without feeling a pang of admiration. More important things. Onigawara is one of them.

He asks what’s up, and waits patiently while Onigawara pants out an answer.

“Shadow… leader,” he says, a nickname of Mob’s he never kicked the habit of using, “got a… he got a… love letter,”

This draws Musashi up short. Jogging in place counts as drawing up short. “A love letter?”

“Yeah. Someone–someone stuck it in his gym locker. Real fancy paper, too, nice handwriting. Asked him to meet behind the school tomorrow, after club ends.”

“Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day,” Musashi says, and if he’s pointing out the obvious it’s only because he’s so shocked. Onigawara doesn’t mention it. The surprise fades; secondhand joy sets in. The hard lines of Musashi's face are not naturally given to smiling but he smiles all the same. It must be a fearsome sight because Onigawara’s gaze barely touches him before it skitters away again. He coughs into a fist like he tried to regain his breath too fast, and Musashi wipes his face clean and channels his positive energy into lifting his knees higher. He doesn’t mention it either.

Instead he says, “Kageyama deserves congratulations,” and Onigawara meets his eyes again to nod.

“Figured you’d say that. That’s why when everyone else was patting Shadow leader’s back, I came to get you.”

He’s smirking–it matches well with the way he finally stands straight and puffs out his chest. Musashi is touched by Onigawara’s thoughtfulness, but before he can thank him a thought occurs: Mob has not received a love letter since middle school The first one was a trick played by Onigawara; the second was a trick played by a girl called Emi. Musashi frets. What if it’s another trick? What if it isn’t? Will Mob know what to do? Over the years he’s seen Mob grow, exponentially and in more ways than one, but he has never had the best luck with romance. And tomorrow is Valentine’s Day—surely that makes preparation all the more complex. Which doesn’t even touch the question of who.

“We should help him,” he says, and Onigawara blinks his eyes into twice their size. He grins, tells Musashi it’s a great idea, and then, remembering he’s meant to be scowling, grumbles, “It’s alright, I mean.” He looks embarrassed to have been caught out being sincere. Musashi doesn’t mention it.

The others are waiting in the clubroom to fill Musashi in; apparently, despite Onigawara’s efforts, they missed Mob by a handful of minutes, so the club extended Musashi’s congratulations for him. In return Musashi tells them about the plan to help out Kageyama out tomorrow. They are… less enthusiastic than he thought they’d be.

He crosses his arms over his pecs and flexes. “I’m sensing some reservations. Care to tell me why?”

Kumagawa runs one hand through his mohawk and says, “Isn’t it Kageyama’s business?”

“Yes, and as his fellow club members it’s our business too.”

They exchange glances. Musashi realizes he’s missing something. “What?”

“Well,” says Shimura, who elbows Yamamura, who elbows Kumagawa, who elbows Sagawa, who says, “You can be kind of nosy, Captain,”

He says it very gently, like he’s breaking the news of some great secret, which is absurd. Musashi doesn’t say that it’s absurd because that would not be befitting of a captain, but he does correct him, exactly as stern and patient as does befit a captain.

“I’m not nosy. I’m attentive. The wellbeing of every member of this club is my responsibility.”

“Even of their love lives?” says Yamamura.

“Especially their love lives,” Musashi wants to say, except he doesn’t, because Yamamura’s dubious tone makes him suspect that would be unwise. Instead he says, “Kageyama is an invaluable member of this team. It’s our job to support him.”

No one looks particularly convinced. No one except Onigawara, who bulls his way to Musashi’s side and thrusts his brow down and his shoulders forward. Suddenly it’s two against four instead of one against the world.

“I’m with Musashi,” he says. “Shadow leader’s putting his heart on the line and you losers want to let him go into battle alone? How the hell does not having his back make any sense?”

He challenges them with his scowl. He doesn’t need to—Musashi can see as his words take effect, begin to turn the minds of the club one by one. Yes, Mob had always been there for them in his soft and steadfast way, had always given all of his effort, and he would be more than willing to lend his hand, powers, and friendship during a romantic crisis of theirs, wouldn’t he?

This time the level of enthusiasm meets what Musashi originally expected. Onigawara flashes him a private grin, there and gone, and he swells with pride, and stands a little taller.

“You want to help me?”

Mob’s surprise shows in little ways, the slight uptick of both brows and the slackening of his mouth. He stands in the club room dressed in his work out clothes and still clutching the letter, which Musashi can now confirm is, yes, tucked into a very nice envelope with very nice handwriting. He wonders if Mob has let it go since yesterday.

“To formulate a plan of attack,” clarifies Onigawara, which isn’t the phrasing Musashi would have chosen but works just as well. Mob considers it. Into the silence filters the white noise of other clubs getting started: band practice in the music room down the hall, whistles blowing from the track and fields outside. The sounds are cheerier, the rooms seem to glow–a result of adolescents in the throes of Valentine’s Day, Musashi knows, though he has never empathized. The overall feeling he’s gotten all day is pink: pink roses passed from boys to girls, pink hearts exchanged and received, pink in the sky, even, as the sun begins to sink. It’s there in Mob’s cheeks, a faint rosy hue as he comes to a decision.

“Thank you all for thinking of me,” he says, sincerity shown through his crinkled eyes if not his smile. “That’s very nice of you. But I think I can handle it.”

Musashi manages not to show his disappointment. “If you’re certain,” he says, and thinks that It’s too bad Onigawara’s work to bring the club around will go to waste. But even he can admit that if Mob doesn’t want their help then it would be wrong to push it.

Mob is still talking, thoughtfully. “I think so. It’s not first time I’ve been confessed to, so I think I know what to say. Though, I guess the first time was just a trick by Onigawara-senpai.” Onigawara slouches even closer to the floor, which is a feat. He slouches a lot. “But the second time—well, I guess that was a trick also, because Emi lost a bet. Um. B-But I made a friend that time, too, so, um. So.” Now the flush is making him look vaguely ill. He’s certainly sweating like he’s ill. “Maybe. Maybe I could use some help.”

Musashi nods once and tries not to look too glad of it. He turns to the club: they square up, crack their knuckles, bright eyed and ready to help. “All right, boys. We need ideas for what Kageyama will do if he decides to accept or decline his admirer’s affections. Do you have any idea who this person might be, Kageyama? Not that you have to tell us if you’re uncomfortable. We respect your privacy, of course,” he adds, not at all hastily and not at all because he’s nosy. He can feel the club side-eyeing him and refuses to look at any of them.

Mob does look a little uncomfortable, but also like he’s panicking, and eager for help. That side wins out. “I think… I think it might be Teru,”

The name rings familiar, but not familiar enough for Musashi to place it. The rest of the club seems to be feeling the same. Mob is too busy twiddling his thumbs to elaborate. Onigawara is busy gaping.

“Teru?” he squawks. “As in Black Vinegar High’s shadow leader, Hanazawa Teruki?”

“Ex-shadow leader,” Mob corrects, seemingly on instinct. Then he blushes. “And yes, that Teru.”

The grainy image in Musashi’s mind snaps into clarity: a lithe boy in the bruisey colors of Black Vinegar Mid, blond and blue-eyed, with incredible strength that belied his appearance. He could never forget such exceptional musculature.

“You walk home with him sometimes,” says Shimura, and yes, Musashi remembers that now too. The neutral lines of Mob’s expression seemed to soften, just a little, whenever he met Hanazawa at the school gates. They’re softened now. This would explain why.

“Oh my god,” says Onigawara. “Oh my god. You two would be the ultimate power couple—you could rule the whole prefecture. Oh my god.” Musashi coughs pointedly, and Onigawara remembers that he is no longer a delinquent. He still looks a little starstruck.

“He’s very special,” Mob agrees. He’s smiling–really smiling, with his mouth and not just his eyes. Musashi doesn’t think he knows he’s doing it. “I care about him a lot. I don’t want to screw this up.”

Not on Musashi’s watch. “You won’t. We’re here to support you and make sure of that.”

So they start spitballing ideas. Yamamura suggests Mob sing a song to express his feelings. Kumagawa suggests he make chocolates and a card, to show that Hanazawa is worth the effort. Shimura suggests he draw a puppy on the card, because puppies are the best. Sagawa suggests just speaking from the heart. This is seconded by Onigawara. But Mob has no talent for art, no time to make chocolates, and the likelihood of him freezing up in the middle of a song is too high. In the end, after much debate, Sagawa’s idea is the one that sticks. (Personally, Musashi likes the puppy option, but he is willing to concede that he is less than an expert in the field of romance.) Composing the most eloquent way for Mob to express his feelings is harder, and the gentlest way to let the confessor down if it turns out not to be Hanazawa is harder still, but they manage. For optimal productivity, they lift weights at the same time.

In no time at all club hours are over. The shadows have grown long with the setting sun and Mob, armed with two separate speeches jotted on flash cards, a storebought box of chocolates (courtesy of Shimura, who dashed down to the nearest convenience store and back and sacrificed the perfect coiffe of his hair in the process), the original letter and six pillars of support, he sets out to meet his mystery admirer. By the wobble of his knees and the sweat clinging to his brow Musashi would say he still looks like a man on his way to the gallows. But there are other tells too–the perpetual color in his cheeks, the brightness of his eyes–and Musashi thinks, mostly, he just looks excited. Happy.

Out of the school, around to the back. Kumagawa sees him first, being the tallest among them, and points him out to the rest. Hanazawa is exactly where he said he’d be: framed by the school on one side and the treeline on the other, backlit by the sky. He catches sight of them–of Mob–only seconds later, and the friendly smile he’s sporting visibly brightens into something genuine. Mob makes a very particular sound to see it, something between a pleased hum and the dying croak of a bullfrog. Musashi thinks he can hear the frantic hummingbird-patter of his poor heart making a break for it.

Mob trips his way up to Hanazawa while the Body Improvement club pretends to walk away and then piles together behind a tree. Who’s nosy now, Musashi thinks, but doesn’t say. He’s straining to hear what’s going on as it is.

“Hello, Hanazawa-kun,” Mob says, his voice crackling over each word, and Hanazawa says it back–oh, his voice broke too, that’s actually precious.

“Hello, Kageyama-kun,” Hanazawa says again, looking only mildly mortified, and this time manages to keep his tone even. “Are you surprised to see me?”

“Not really. I thought maybe you liked me for a while, but I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it. I guess I wasn’t,”

Hanazawa’s pride takes a visible hit at Mob’s bluntness–Musashi feels a sympathetic wince ripple all through their party–but he rolls with it admirably. More than admirably. The expression on his face is too raw for admiration, too tender. “I shouldn’t have expected you to be. You really are amazing. Here.”

They exchange chocolates, Hanazawa smoothly and Mob fumbling. Hanazawa says he’ll cherish it, tucks it away, and then holds out his hand—a question. Mob, looking confused, drops the letter into his palm in answer, and Hanazawa chuckles, reaches out with his other hand to weave their fingers together as clarification. Mob stares down at the delicate knot made of their hands, and Musashi can no longer see his expression.

“Kageyama-kun,” Hanazawa starts, “I—”

“Yes.”

Hanazawa chokes on his tongue. The Body Improvement Club collectively chokes on each of theirs. Mob’s brain catches up with the breathless intensity of one word that fell out of his mouth.

“Ah, wait, I did it all out of order. I had. I had things prepared to say, and so did you, and I interrupted you. Oh no. I’m sorry. Um. Do you—do you want to start over? I didn’t ruin it, did I?”

“Did you say yes?”

Hanazawa’s tone of awe makes Mob duck his head, and the duck becomes a nod. He says, almost too quiet to hear, “Yes. Um. Are you saying yes?”

“Yes. Yes, of course, yes,”

“Then—then are we…?”

“I think so. Are we?”

“Yes. Can we…?”

“Yes,”

Mob kisses him, a quick and earnest press of lips, and Onigawara whoops. Four sets of hands slap over his face at once. Mob and Hanazawa take no notice; the kiss has ended but their foreheads are still pressed together, they’re levitating an inch or two off the ground, they’re giggling and they’re smiling—Musashi thinks they’re smiling, but his vision is too blurry to tell. He’s surrounded by suspicious sniffling, though, so he doesn’t feel particularly bad about it.

The okay for cheering is given when they touch back down. Mob whispers something into Hanazawa’s ear; Hanazawa laughs, nods, kisses Mob’s cheek, then starts to make his way round to the front of the school; there’s a definite spring in his step. Mob watches him go with a tender look that melts back into shyness when he turns to the club and gives a little thumbs up.

They explode from behind the tree, tripping over their own feet and each other to dogpile Mob, take turns ruffling his hair and lifting him into hugs and slapping him on the back.

“I’m sorry I forgot all of your advice,” Mob says between jostles, “I got nervous and eager and confused and I didn’t know what to do-”

“You did great,” Musashi says, to a fervent chorus of agreement. He knows his face isn’t the kind for smiling but he honestly can’t help it. “Where did Hanazawa go?”

“I told him I’d meet him at the front gates, after I was done speaking to you.”

Some playful coos. Sagawa might be crying. “Then we’ll walk you to the gates and he can walk you the rest of the way. Come on.”

The parade starts again. Shimura and Yawamura lift Mob onto their shoulders, and Musashi is just thinking that this might be the most successful Valentine’s Day he’s ever experienced when Onigawara calls his name.

“Can you hang back a minute? I’ve got something to say to you.”

He looks unhappy–or maybe not unhappy. Maybe anxious. He didn’t a minute ago, and why should he? The plan went off without a hitch–minor hitches, inconsequential hitches–but here he is, chin jutting out and cutting down, hands shoved deep in his pockets, shadows carving deep pockets beneath his eyes. Concern bubbles up in Musashi’s gut, and all thoughts of romance flee his mind. There are more important things.

He sends off the rest of the club without them and ignores their curious eyes. And they called him nosy. “Is something the matter?”

“No, nothing’s the matter. Why would something be the matter? Can’t a guy just wanna talk to another guy? What’s the matter with that, huh?” He cuts himself off at Musashi’s raised brow, screws up his face, screws up the words in his mouth. “Ugh, sorry, that’s not what I meant to say.”

He takes a breath–Musashi breathes too–and says what he means to say.

“There was a girl, back during all that recorder crap. She told me–when we were kids, she told me she was gonna marry me. I thought if anyone would believe me it would be her. But it wasn’t. It was you.” 

“You’ve, uh, you’ve done a lot for me the past two years, even when I was being an ungrateful little shit and didn’t deserve it,”

Musashi blinks. This… isn’t what he expected this to be about. “Don’t sell yourself short. You were the one who chose to change and followed through, and you were never once ungrateful.”

Onigawara looks furious, and maybe embarrassed. “Oh my god, shut up. Do you have to be so–so fucking you all the time?”

Definitely embarrassed. Musashi’s mouth twitches. “I think I always have to be me, yes.”

“No, nope, shut up, I was talking and I don’t need your once-in-a-blue-moon sense of humor fucking this up. I was saying. I was saying, that I used to be an ungrateful little shit–do not interrupt me, I swear to god–and I don’t want you to think I’m still the same ungrateful shit I was back then, so. Fuck. So, here.”

He pulls one hand from his pocket and shoves a box into Musashi’s chest. Resting on the pink tissue paper within are slightly misshapen, undoubtedly homemade, and undeniably heart-shaped chocolates. His brain short circuits. “I–Onigawara, is this–?”

“Tenga,” Onigawara says. “Call me that from now on. If you fuckin’ want to, I guess.”

Pink rises into Onigawara’s cheeks like the dawn, and Musashi remembers, very suddenly and very unhelpfully, that they are both only sixteen. He has no idea what the hell he’s doing.

“Thank you,” he says, because he’s a fucking idiot. If looks could kill Onigawara would be a murderer. Musashi wants death. “I mean. I mean thank you for the chocolates, and yes, I will call you that.”

They stare at each other. Onigawara’s face is practically glowing, with sweat and anger and with–happiness? Is that happiness? If Mob’s heart was a hummingbird then Musashi’s is a sledgehammer, pounding away in his throat, and he thinks he might look the exact same. Does that mean he’s happy too?

He thinks that’s what that means, so he says so, and Onigawara’s eyes go wide, and then he punches him.

It’s almost a relief. This is much more along the lines of what he expects from Onigawara, except no, he was mistaken, it’s not a punch at all. It feels like a punch because everything about Onigawara feels like a punch–he’s so brutally passionate about everything he does, Musashi has never seen anything like him, he barrels forward and never looks back, with a glare like an uppercut and a smile like a left hook and a kiss like a haymaker. Because that’s what he’s doing now, kissing Musashi’s cheek with bruising force, and ding ding ding Musashi is down for the count. KO. Match over.

Onigawara shoves him away, almost gently, and immediately turns and stalks off. Musashi would say it’s more of a dead sprint if he had the capacity to think at all, let alone identify exercise techniques.

“I like you,” he blurts out after him. Onigawara—Tenga—stops, turns, and smiles. Left hook, utterly devastating. How unfair to hit a man while he’s down.

Tenga says, “You damn well better,” and then he does run. As soon as he’s out of sight the rest of the Body Improvement Club spills out from where they’d been eavesdropping behind a tree, while Musashi is left trying to blink stars from his eyes. They don’t want to go.

“Way to go, Captain,” says Kumagawa, and “Looking good, Captain,” says Shimura. Yawamura says something similar and Sagawa doesn’t say anything because he’s crying a little. Mob nudges him.

“Congratulations, Captain,” he murmurs. His smile is a soft curve on his face, except for right there at the very corner, which is just a little sly. Musashi has no idea what the fuck is going on or what the fuck just happened, but he thinks, maybe, his love life is not as dead as he thought it was. Not by a long shot, apparently.

And that’s–that’s fine. Musashi thinks he might have some dopey expression on his face and he doesn’t care. The club is still clapping him on the back, punching him on the shoulder, congratulating, smiling. The stars are still in his eyes and the chocolate is still in his hands and the whole world is dyed pink. It’s more than fine.

(“Am I really that nosy?” he asks, not too many days later. He’s appreciating the new pages of the manga Tenga has been sketching in his free time, though he loses his place in favor of nursing his pride at the answer. 

“Duh. You could give that damn student council a run for their money.” 

Musashi wilts; Tenga barks a laugh. But he adds, “Besides, if you weren’t so nosy I would’ve never joined your stupid club at all.” And Musashi thinks, well. Well, in that case, being nosy isn’t all that bad.)

[thelibraryfanfiction]

Chapter Eight

Barbara came in and set another cup of tea down on my bedside table. It was the fourth one today.

“Hey babe, its nearly dinner time. Do you want me to make you something to eat?” she asked gently.

I shook my head, I wasn’t hungry.

It didn’t surprise me that I had been in bed all day, the hours had dragged by with such an achingly slow pace that I felt as if I had been lying in bed for weeks instead of a measly twenty-four hours.

Ian’s lawyer had explained that Ian had lung cancer and had passed away last week and that he had been put in charge of handling his affairs. He had explicably asked his lawyer to return the book to the library and leave me, a girl he only identified as ‘Clara, who works at the library’, a blue light torch.

I’d been too shocked to press the lawyer for more information. I felt strangely unreal, as if I couldn’t quite believe what was happening. I didn’t cry. I didn’t do anything, I just stood there, feeling numb as I tried to rationalize what had happened.

My brain was working too slow. Ian was dead. How could that be?

I was so absorbed with trying to make sense of that statement that I didn’t notice that James called Barbara. I barely noticed when Barbara wrapped her arms around me and took me home. I was vaguely aware that once we were home, things started to feel a little more real and I immediately started to cry.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop and Barbara held me the entire time.

I’d never cried so much in my life. Ian was gone. How could he possibly be gone? How could I possibly come to term with the fact that I would never see him again when I had seen him every month for nearly the past three years?

Eventually I went into my bedroom and cried myself to sleep. But when I woke up in the morning, my first thought was of Ian. I momentarily forgot about last night and I wondered if today would be the day I would see him again after his long absence from the library…

Then I remember what had happened and the crushing weight of knowing I would never see him again hit me all over again.

I didn’t have the strength to get out of bed. Even though I was supposed to be going to work, I just couldn’t muster the thought of going there, a place that had been the source of my interactions with Ian.

Throughout the day, I thought about a lot of things.

If Ian had died from lung cancer, he obviously knew he was going to die. So why didn’t he tell me?

He probably knew the last time he saw me was going to be the last time. Why didn’t he say goodbye? Why didn’t he give me the chance to say goodbye?

Part of me hated him for that. I hated that he had been so selfish to deny my closure. But then I felt guilty for hating him. And I didn’t hate him, not really. I loved him. I had loved him and now he would never know just how much.  

But mostly I thought about what might have been. If I hadn’t been so shy and had asked him out the first time we’d met, what would our relationship have been like? Or even later, when he had broken up with Jemma and we were playing with Maggie; I could have easily asked him out then, why didn’t I? Was I seriously so afraid that he would have said no?

Such a fear seemed stupid now.

I kept playing it over and over in my mind about what might have been all day.

“James came by,” said Barbara, “He left you these.”

I lifted my head to see her place the Alice in Wonderland book and the small blue torch on my bedside table next to the cup of tea. I didn’t say anything as I stared at them; the last items he had left me.

“I’ll be in the lounge room if you need me.” Said Barbara quietly before she walked out of my bedroom, shutting the door behind her softly.

Barbara was so lovely. I knew she was staying home from work to take care of me. I couldn’t even insist that I was fine and that she didn’t need to because the truth was, I did need looking after. Even though her gestures were so simple as holding me when I cried and constantly offering me cups of tea, the were warm and they were welcome.

I was pretty sure in Barbara’s mind there was no situation on earth that could not be made slightly better with a cup of tea. I didn’t share her philosophy, but I appreciated the gesture

At some point in the night, I reached over and grabbed the little torch Ian had left me, staring at it curiously as I held it in my hands; why would he leave me this? What did it represent? What did it mean?

Curiously I pressed the button, causing the blue light to shine over at my wall. For such a small torch, it cast quite a large blue hue on the wall.

If there was something more frustrating than trying to figure out why Ian hadn’t told me he had cancer, it was trying to figure out why he had left me a blue light torch.

I hadn’t bothered to turn any lights on as night time crept in and I lay in darkness. I took to switching the torch on and off, pointing it at different objects in my room, as if hoping that Ian would spring out of the darkness and deliver the answers I so desperately needed.

The blue light illuminated my wardrobe, my chest of draws, my bookcase, my desk, my door, my bedside table, my lap, my tea cup, the Alice in Wonderland book…

There was something strange on the Alice in Wonderland book when it was illuminated. It looked as if someone had spilled white paint on the corner of it. Sitting up, I switched on the lamp by my bed and peered at the book; it looked perfectly fine. There was no paint or damage of any kind.

But I was positive of what I had seen. Experimentally, I turned off my lamp and pointed the blue torch at the book, once again the corner of it lit up, as if it had been dipped in white paint.

Curiously I opened the book and began to flip through the pages; all of them had a little white mark in the corner of the page, almost like an ink spill that could only be seen under the light of the blue torch. Every page until the last page, the one that most books left blank; it was not an ink spill but a letter there.

Opening the book, I switched the lamp on to look at the last page… but there was nothing written there. It was as blank as the last page in every book. So I switched the lamp off and shone the blue forced over it and suddenly the page was glowing with big white letters. It was a message. A secret message, for me.

‘Dear Clara,

This is probably the last message I will ever write to you.

Thank you so much for everything.

I’m sorry I didn’t come say goodbye in person. Everything just happened so fast and I didn’t want to worry you.

But I did want to tell you that despite the fact that we spoke very little, I could always hear your thoughts. I hope you heard mine too.

Thanks for recommending the last good book of my life.

I’m going to miss you.

Love Ian.’

I stared at the back of the book in shock as a fresh wave of tears overwhelmed me. I sobbed so hard that Barbara came in to check what was wrong. I couldn’t even manage to explain what I had just found; I was such a blubbering mess. She held me once again as I cried.

Once I had stopped sobbing, I told her what had happened.

“What do the other messages say?” she asked immediately.

I sniffed and turned to look at her in confusion, “Other messages?”

“He said that was the last message he would write to you. That obviously means he’d written before. What do the other ones say?”

I blinked in shock, “Oh my god.”

Throwing back the blankets I scrambled out of bed in a rush.

“Wait, where are you going?” asked Barbara in a panic.

“To the library!” I exclaimed, “I have to see the other messages he left me.”

“Clara, its ten o’clock at night! You can’t just go to the library-” she began.

“I have to know Barbara!” I said firmly, “he was speaking to me all this time and I never heard him.”

She sighed, seeming uncomfortable. I could tell she didn’t want me to go, but she also didn’t want to argue with my logic.

“Do you want me to go with you?” she asked.

I shook my head; this was something I had to do alone. Barbara had seen me cry enough over the past twenty-four hours.

Grabbing my set of keys that I used to open up the library in the morning, I rushed out the door.

I was in such a hurry that I couldn’t wait for an uber, which at this time of night was going to be a whole ten minutes away. Instead I grabbed out my bike and peddled as fast as I could to the library.

My legs screamed in protest at being forced to work so hard after lying in bed for so long, but I didn’t listen to them. My heart was beating so hard, it threatened to break right out of my chest. I didn’t even bother to lock up my bike when I arrived at the library, I was so intent on getting inside.

It vaguely occurred to me that I was technically breaking the law and abusing my power as a librarian to open the library up after it was closed, but I didn’t care.  

Fumbling with the keys, I opened the door, tapped the code into the alarm on the wall, I flicked on the light before I ran over to the computer desk.

Wiggling the mouse, I was so anxious that I had to type in my password three times before it would accept it. I then searched Ian’s name and brought up his rental history; I saw each and every book he had ever borrowed that could have a potential message for me.

Taking a picture of the screen I ran around the library finding the books that he had borrowed. When there were multiple copies, I shined the blue light on them and looked for the white ink stains. Soon I had too many books to carry, so I left them on the counter as I continued to run around the library, finding book after book.

Eventually I had all thirty books, two years and six months worth of borrow books from our library that Ian had read. I started with the most recent:  

June 2019; So great that James is getting married. I’ll only be going of hopes of seeing you in a pretty dress again.

 May 2019: You were smiling a lot today. I’ve always wanted to tell you that you look so beautiful when you smile.

April 2019: My daughter loves you. She talks about you all the time. If you ever leave your job I’m going to hire you as my nanny.

 I remembered playing with his daughter and how happy she had always been and how he would look at the two of us playing with a kind of satisfied smile….

 March 2019: Thank you for playing connect four with me today, though I have to admit, my daughter plays better than you. I got some tough news today and you made me smile.

 Tough news, did he mean he had found out he had cancer? Had he known for that long?

 January 2019: I can’t believe its been two years since I started coming to the library. Since I started writing you these notes. Time really does fly.

November 2018: I’m getting a divorce. I keep thinking I should feel sad but I don’t, I’m relieved. We were never that good together anyway, the best thing that came out of our marriage was Maggie. I wanted to tell you because I knew you’d understand.

September 2018: You weren’t here today, James said you were sick; I hope you’re ok. It disappointed me far more than it should have that I didn’t get to see your smiling face; I look forward to it every month. I’ll just have to finish this book quicker so I can see your face again.

 I remembered so many months ago when I had been sick and James said he had asked about me…

 July 2018: You wore a dress today that took my breath away. You looked so beautiful, I think even my wife saw I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You should wear dresses more often; they suit you.

 I remembered the sun dress I wore on the day he came in to return his book. I remember the way he looked at me. I’d dismissed it at the time as just my imagination but I now knew that he was looking at me because he thought I was beautiful.

 May 2018: I proposed to Jemma. It was the right thing to do. I don’t know why but when I did, I thought of you.

March 2018: I don’t know why I still write these notes to you. I guess I like talking to you this way. One day I hope I have the courage to say all this to your face, but right now, this is all I can manage.

 I anxiously read note after note and it was as if I was having one last conversation with him…

 January 2018: One year. One whole year since I started borrowing books from your library. That is twelve times I’ve seen your face and each time I do, I find something new I like about you; today it was the way that even though you’re so tall, you still stretch up on the tips of your toes to put a book back instead of grabbing a step ladder.

October 2017: My little girl was born today. I’ve never loved anyone so instantly as I loved her. I can’t wait for you to meet her.

 I remembered when he came into the library for the first time cradling his little girl. How proud he looked to be the one holding her. How he held her with such a gentle touch, as if he was afraid she might break…

 July 2017: She’s pregnant. We just met and she’s pregnant. I know I have to do the right thing and be there for her and the child, but she’s not who I want to spend the rest of my life with, I don’t love her. But I know I will love our baby and that is what matters.

June 2017: This is without a doubt the most stupid book I have ever read. How is this a love story? I can’t really see myself having a future with this girl if she is going to recommend books like this.

 I remembered him bringing Jemma into the library and her recommending that he read Twilight…

 May 2017: I noticed you were sad today. I wanted to ask if you were ok? I hope it’s not your fiancé getting you down, you deserve so much better than a guy who makes you look so sad.

 I remembered the day he had come in. I’d just taken my ring off after Alex had hurt me. I must have looked as miserable as I felt...

 April 2017: Of course you have a fiancé. A girl as great as you couldn’t possibly be single. That’s ok. I’ll keep talking to you here, it can be our secret.

 I remembered the day he had seen my ring…

 March 2017: Thank you for your book recommendation. It was a really interesting read and I really enjoyed it. It made me like you a whole lot more knowing you have such good taste in books. It’s an attractive and rare quality.

 I remembered the day I had recommend he read ‘Tomorrow When the War Began’ and how closely he followed me as I showed him over to the books…

 February 2017: You didn’t call. That’s ok. I’ll just keep coming to borrow books so I can see you. Maybe one day I’ll pluck up the courage to talk to you. But I really liked the lipstick you wore today.

 I remembered like it was yesterday the day I had tipped the entire contents of my handbag on the floor in search of my lipstick. One that I didn’t think he even notice I’d applied but he had. He’d noticed everything about me.

Tears were streaming down my face as sob after sob racked through my body. I grabbed the last book entitled ‘Black Light; The Lost Art of Invisible Ink’ and so many things suddenly made sense.

This was the first book he had ever borrowed from the library and was obviously what had given him the idea to write these messages to me. I felt as if my heart was breaking as I realized I was about to read the first note he had ever written me, the last one I would ever read. Sobbing I flipped to the back page and shone the torch on it, that I now knew was not a blue light, but a black one;

Hello There,

I’m the weird guy you met the other day.

Thank you for helping me find this book.

I wanted to repay you right then by asking you out to dinner, but I saw that noise was prohibited in the library and I’m a little too shy to just go and ask you out.

So, I thought I would write you here instead.

If you’re ever interested in going out together sometime, to talk about books or anything else you might be interested in, here’s my number.

 My sobs were so big now they were racking through my chest, causing my shoulders to slump with the effort it took to draw another breath in.

Grabbing my phone, I punched in his number before I typed out a message of my own:

Ian,

I wish we had more time together.

I wish you had spoken to me sooner.

I would have loved to have had dinner with you.

If we could have spoken so honestly from the start, things might have been different between us.

But since we’re being honest now, I just want you to know that I love you.

I’m going to miss you.

And I will never, ever forget you.

                                                         The End

[readingfordummies]

Witches of East End  - Chapter Ten

Witch Business

Just as Ingrid had predicted, Tabitha was soon pregnant. It took only a week for the news to spread around town, and only a few days before certain women decided that they, too, wanted to see if their local librarian could help them with their problems. On a bright Monday morning in June, the glowing mother-to-be entertained yet another group of women gathered around the main counter with her story. It was one they had heard already, but it didn't keep Tabitha from telling it, and her audience was happy enough to hear it once more while awaiting their turn to see Ingrid.

"The doctors said it was a medical miracle! Because our tests came back, you know, and they were bad. They said it was virtually impossible for me to get pregnant, but it happened! All thanks to Ingrid! Did you hear what she did for Stephanie Curran? Cured her of that rash that never went away! I swear, the woman is a miracle worker! Well, not a miracle worker but some kind of witch, maybe!"

"Witch!" Mona Boyard repeated, a bit shocked.

"Witch, please," Hudson interrupted, with a hand on his hip. "This is North Hampton. We prefer 'special caregiver.' You know, like a reader or a psychic," he said brightly.

No one knew exactly how Ingrid helped people, only that it worked without any obvious medical or scientific explanation. So it had to be some kind of . . . magic? But who believed in magic in this day and age? The women of North Hampton didn't care what it was called, only that they wanted it for themselves if it worked.

At first Ingrid had not wanted to take the credit for Tabitha's pregnancy, or to pass around any more help or advice, but she soon found it difficult to refuse. Since no lightning bolt came flying out of the sky after she'd given Tabitha the fertility charm, it seemed only fair to help everyone who asked. Maybe Freya was right, maybe it had been so long that the Council had forgotten about them, maybe nothing would come of it this time. Ingrid was willing to take that chance. She couldn't deny it either: practicing magic again was not only enjoyable but gave her a sense of purpose. There was meaning in her life again. She had wasted so much time and effort in denying her natural talents, burying herself in endless small tasks and taking a job at a library: one she enjoyed, of course - but still. This was what she was put on earth to do. To hell with that restriction, surely after so many years they had earned a pass? Maybe the Council wouldn't even notice. Besides, the citizens of North Hampton were open-minded, neither fearful nor superstitious. They were curious and doubtful, but willing to try something new.

She was surprised to find an unusual run of bad luck in each person’s tale. Some problems, while minor, had been impossible to fix in the ordinary sense: strange aches and pains that no amount of medicine could cure; temporary blindness, bizarre headaches, frequent nightmares. There were several women, much younger than Tabitha, who had also been having trouble conceiving, their spirits blocked by the same silvery mass she had first seen in her coworker. Ingrid worked hard, creating pentagrams, lighting candles, giving out a few little knots, a charm or a spell or two. She accepted clients, as Hudson called them, only during her lunch hour. After all, she had an exhibit to plan and documents to steam. As recompense, Ingrid asked that they donate what they could afford to the library fund, raising money by charging people for something they wanted and that she could give them. Maybe she could close the gap in that budget, and their ambitious mayor would drop the idea of selling off the library.

Her last visitor was Emily Foster, an attractive woman in her late thirties. Emily was a well-known artist around town, known for her giant abstract murals of seascapes and horses. She lived with her husband, Lionel Horning, who was also an artist, on a farm at the city's edge, where they raised animals. They kept the Beauchamps stocked with fresh eggs and milk and never asked for payment since Joanna regularly dropped off vegetables from her garden. "How can I help you?" Ingrid asked.

"It's such an odd thing," Emily said, blowing her nose. "But I need something to . . . I don't know . . . it's so stupid. . . ."

"There are no judgments here, Em," Ingrid promised.

"I just . . . I can't seem to focus lately. I've never had this problem before . . . being blocked, you know? But it's like I can't even paint or anything. . . . It's so strange. I mean, of course once in a while you get stuck . . . but it's been two weeks now and I can't seem to concentrate on it. It's like my mind is just . . . blank . . . like I can't see anything, no shapes or anything . . . just grayness." She barked a laugh. "Can you cure artist's block?"

"I can try," Ingrid said.

"Thank you." Emily's eyes watered. "I've got an exhibit in a few months. I'd really appreciate it."

She placed Emily in a pentagram, lit the candle, and assessed her spirit. Yes, there it was, that same silvery mass, right in the middle of her torso, and by now Ingrid was quite expert at yanking it out. Ingrid realized it did not just block the creation of life, but it blocked the process of creation itself. Ingrid thought she might have to mention it to Joanna at some point. There were just too many instances lately to be random. There was something odd going on here.

Later that afternoon, Ingrid resumed her real work and began the task of preparing the Gardiner blueprints for the show. She stood at the conference table and slowly unrolled the heavy set of drawings. The sheets were large, almost as big as the table, and the paper was yellowed and fragile. Ingrid expertly thumbed through the pages until she found the site plan. She always started there. A set of design plans was like a novel in a way, a text prepared for the builder, a story written by the architect on how the house should be built. The site plan was like an introduction to the novel.

The site plan showed wavy concentric lines circling a single point at the center, a blocky shape drawn in dark pencil, which represented Fair Haven. She leaned in closely to examine the heavy pencil lines. Each set of drawings contained its own language of keys: symbols and marks that led to specific drawings for each part of the house. A design set blossomed from the outside in, from the site plan to the main floor plan to specific elevations and details.

As she moved through the drawing set, an image of the house began to form in her mind. She glanced from the key on the main floor plan to an elevation of the main ballroom, and turned back to make sure she had read it correctly. That was odd. The elevation key was different from the one that resided on the site plan. Most architecture keys were made up of numbers and letters such as "A 2.1 /1" inside a small circle, but this number tag was thoroughly decorated with twisting patterns.

Ingrid pulled a chair out so she could sit down and look more closely. There was something fascinating about the dense pattern of shapes. The swirling lines appeared floral in nature, suggestive of the arabesques of art nouveau, and as she continued to stare at them, the shapes began to resemble letters; but if they were letters they were from a language she could not understand, had never seen before. They weren't Egyptian hieroglyphs or any dead language that she had a passing familiarity with in all her time on earth.

She went through more of the drawings and found several similarly decorated tags, not just room tags and wall tags, but tags for fixtures and finishes, each adorned with the elaborate script, and each one unlike the other. She had never seen anything like it in any drawing set before. Ingrid was familiar with the standard architectural keys, and was certain that whatever was written around the keys was not meant for any builder or contractor. Drawing keys were meant to carry the reader from one drawing to another, but these keys had some other meaning hidden within them, one that had nothing to do with the architecture or construction of the house.

Ingrid pulled her phone from her pocket, zoomed in on one of the strange tags, and snapped a picture. She dropped it into an e-mail. While she couldn't read the language, she knew someone who might, thinking of the letters she always kept in her pocket.

[alibraryforyou-blog]

A Room of One’s Own

BY VIRGINIA WOOLF

One

But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction—what, has that got to do with a room of one’s own? I will try to explain. When you asked me to speak about women and fiction I sat down on the banks of a river and began to wonder what the words meant. They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney; a few more about Jane Austen; a tribute to the Brontës and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford; a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. The title women and fiction might mean, and you may have meant it to mean, women and what they are like, or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them, or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together and you want me to consider them in that light. But when I began to consider the subject in this last way, which seemed the most interesting, I soon saw that it had one fatal drawback. I should never be able to come to a conclusion. I should never be able to fulfil what is, I understand, the first duty of a lecturer to hand you after an hour’s discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece for ever. All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions—women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices, that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial—and any question about sex is that—one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore I propose, making use of all the liberties and licences of a novelist, to tell you the story of the two days that preceded my coming here—how, bowed down by the weight of the subject which you have laid upon my shoulders, I pondered it, and made it work in and out of my daily life. I need not say that what I am about to describe has no existence; Oxbridge is an invention; so is Fernham; ‘I’ is only a convenient term for somebody who has no real being. Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the waste-paper basket and forget all about it.

Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton, Mary Carmichael or by any name you please—it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week or two ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now, though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say.

But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind—put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man’s figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help, he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in protection of their turf, which has been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding.

What idea it had been that had sent me so audaciously trespassing I could not now remember. The spirit of peace descended like a cloud from heaven, for if the spirit of peace dwells anywhere, it is in the courts and quadrangles of Oxbridge on a fine October morning. Strolling through those colleges past those ancient halls the roughness of the present seemed smoothed away; the body seemed contained in a miraculous glass cabinet through which no sound could penetrate, and the mind, freed from any contact with facts (unless one trespassed on the turf again), was at liberty to settle down upon whatever meditation was in harmony with the moment. As chance would have it, some stray memory of some old essay about revisiting Oxbridge in the long vacation brought Charles Lamb to mind—Saint Charles, said Thackeray, putting a letter of Lamb’s to his forehead. Indeed, among all the dead (I give you my thoughts as they came to me), Lamb is one of the most congenial; one to whom one would have liked to say, Tell me then how you wrote your essays? For his essays are superior even to Max Beerbohm’s, I thought, with all their perfection, because of that wild flash of imagination, that lightning crack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed and imperfect, but starred with poetry. Lamb then came to Oxbridge perhaps a hundred years ago. Certainly he wrote an essay—the name escapes me—about the manuscript of one of Milton’s poems which he saw here. It was Lycidas perhaps, and Lamb wrote how it shocked him to think it possible that any word in Lycidas could have been different from what it is. To think of Milton changing the words in that poem seemed to him a sort of sacrilege. This led me to remember what I could of Lycidas and to amuse myself with guessing which word it could have been that Milton had altered, and why. It then occurred to me that the very manuscript itself which Lamb had looked at was only a few hundred yards away, so that one could follow Lamb’s footsteps across the quadrangle to that famous library where the treasure is kept. Moreover, I recollected, as I put this plan into execution, it is in this famous library that the manuscript of Thackeray’s Esmond is also preserved. The critics often say that Esmond is Thackeray’s most perfect novel. But the affectation of the style, with its imitation of the eighteenth century, hampers one, so far as I can remember; unless indeed the eighteenth-century style was natural to Thackeray—a fact that one might prove by looking at the manuscript and seeing whether the alterations were for the benefit of the style or of the sense. But then one would have to decide what is style and what is meaning, a question which—but here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction.

That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever. Never will I wake those echoes, never will I ask for that hospitality again, I vowed as I descended the steps in anger. Still an hour remained before luncheon, and what was one to do? Stroll on the meadows? sit by the river? Certainly it was a lovely autumn morning; the leaves were fluttering red to the ground; there was no great hardship in doing either. But the sound of music reached my ear. Some service or celebration was going forward. The organ complained magnificently as I passed the chapel door. Even the sorrow of Christianity sounded in that serene air more like the recollection of sorrow than sorrow itself; even the groanings of the ancient organ seemed lapped in peace. I had no wish to enter had I the right, and this time the verger might have stopped me, demanding perhaps my baptismal certificate, or a letter of introduction from the Dean. But the outside of these magnificent buildings is often as beautiful as the inside. Moreover, it was amusing enough to watch the congregation assembling, coming in and going out again, busying themselves at the door of the chapel like bees at the mouth of a hive. Many were in cap and gown; some had tufts of fur on their shoulders; others were wheeled in bath-chairs; others, though not past middle age, seemed creased and crushed into shapes so singular that one was reminded of those giant crabs and crayfish who heave with difficulty across the sand of an aquarium. As I leant against the wall the University indeed seemed a sanctuary in which are preserved rare types which would soon be obsolete if left to fight for existence on the pavement of the Strand. Old stories of old deans and old dons came back to mind, but before I had summoned up courage to whistle—it used to be said that at the sound of a whistle old Professor ——— instantly broke into a gallop—the venerable congregation had gone inside. The outside of the chapel remained. As you know, its high domes and pinnacles can be seen, like a sailing-ship always voyaging never arriving, lit up at night and visible for miles, far away across the hills. Once, presumably, this quadrangle with its smooth lawns, its massive buildings and the chapel itself was marsh too, where the grasses waved and the swine rootled. Teams of horses and oxen, I thought, must have hauled the stone in wagons from far countries, and then with infinite labour the grey blocks in whose shade I was now standing were poised in order one on top of another, and then the painters brought their glass for the windows, and the masons were busy for centuries up on that roof with putty and cement, spade and trowel. Every Saturday somebody must have poured gold and silver out of a leathern purse into their ancient fists, for they had their beer and skittles presumably of an evening. An unending stream of gold and silver, I thought, must have flowed into this court perpetually to keep the stones coming and the masons working; to level, to ditch, to dig and to drain. But it was then the age of faith, and money was poured liberally to set these stones on a deep foundation, and when the stones were raised, still more money was poured in from the coffers of kings and queens and great nobles to ensure that hymns should be sung here and scholars taught. Lands were granted; tithes were paid. And when the age of faith was over and the age of reason had come, still the same flow of gold and silver went on; fellowships were founded; lectureships endowed; only the gold and silver flowed now, not from the coffers of the king, but from the chests of merchants and manufacturers, from the purses of men who had made, say, a fortune from industry, and returned, in their wills, a bounteous share of it to endow more chairs, more lectureships, more fellowships in the university where they had learnt their craft. Hence the libraries and laboratories; the observatories; the splendid equipment of costly and delicate instruments which now stands on glass shelves, where centuries ago the grasses waved and the swine rootled. Certainly, as I strolled round the court, the foundation of gold and silver seemed deep enough; the pavement laid solidly over the wild grasses. Men with trays on their heads went busily from staircase to staircase. Gaudy blossoms flowered in window-boxes. The strains of the gramophone blared out from the rooms within. It was impossible not to reflect—the reflection whatever it may have been was cut short. The clock struck. It was time to find one’s way to luncheon.

It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten. It is part of the novelist’s convention not to mention soup and salmon and ducklings, as if soup and salmon and ducklings were of no importance whatsoever, as if nobody ever smoked a cigar or drank a glass of wine. Here, however, I shall take the liberty to defy that convention and to tell you that the lunch on this occasion began with soles, sunk in a deep dish, over which the college cook had spread a counterpane of the whitest cream, save that it was branded here and there with brown spots like the spots on the flanks of a doe. After that came the partridges, but if this suggests a couple of bald, brown birds on a plate you are mistaken. The partridges, many and various, came with all their retinue of sauces and salads, the sharp and the sweet, each in its order; their potatoes, thin as coins but not so hard; their sprouts, foliated as rosebuds but more succulent. And no sooner had the roast and its retinue been done with than the silent servingman, the Beadle himself perhaps in a milder manifestation, set before us, wreathed in napkins, a confection which rose all sugar from the waves. To call it pudding and so relate it to rice and tapioca would be an insult. Meanwhile the wineglasses had flushed yellow and flushed crimson; had been emptied; had been filled. And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company—in other words, how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one’s kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sunk among the cushions in the window-seat.

If by good luck there had been an ash-tray handy, if one had not knocked the ash out of the window in default, if things had been a little different from what they were, one would not have seen, presumably, a cat without a tail. The sight of that abrupt and truncated animal padding softly across the quadrangle changed by some fluke of the subconscious intelligence the emotional light for me. It was as if someone had let fall a shade. Perhaps the excellent hock was relinquishing its hold. Certainly, as I watched the Manx cat pause in the middle of the lawn as if it too questioned the universe, something seemed lacking, something seemed different. But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk? And to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past, before the war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these; but different. Everything was different. Meanwhile the talk went on among the guests, who were many and young, some of this sex, some of that; it went on swimmingly, it went on agreeably, freely, amusingly. And as it went on I set it against the background of that other talk, and as I matched the two together I had no doubt that one was the descendant, the legitimate heir of the other. Nothing was changed; nothing was different save only here I listened with all my ears not entirely to what was being said, but to the murmur or current behind it. Yes, that was it—the change was there. Before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise, not articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value of the words themselves. Could one set that humming noise to words? Perhaps with the help of the poets one could.. A book lay beside me and, opening it, I turned casually enough to Tennyson. And here I found Tennyson was singing:

There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion-flower at the gate.

She is coming, my dove, my dear;

She is coming, my life, my fate;

The red rose cries, ‘She is near, she is near’;

And the white rose weeps, ‘She is late’;

The larkspur listens, ‘I hear, I hear’;

And the lily whispers, ‘I wait.’

Was that what men hummed at luncheon parties before the war? And the women?

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple tree

Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit,

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me.

Was that what women hummed at luncheon parties before the war?

There was something so ludicrous in thinking of people humming such things even under their breath at luncheon parties before the war that I burst out laughing, and had to explain my laughter by pointing at the Manx cat, who did look a little absurd, poor beast, without a tail, in the middle of the lawn. Was he really born so, or had he lost his tail in an accident? The tailless cat, though some are said to exist in the Isle of Man, is rarer than one thinks. It is a queer animal, quaint rather than beautiful. It is strange what a difference a tail makes—you know the sort of things one says as a lunch party breaks up and people are finding their coats and hats.

This one, thanks to the hospitality of the host, had lasted far into the afternoon. The beautiful October day was fading and the leaves were falling from the trees in the avenue as I walked through it. Gate after gate seemed to close with gentle finality behind me. Innumerable beadles were fitting innumerable keys into well-oiled locks; the treasure-house was being made secure for another night. After the avenue one comes out upon a road—I forget its name—which leads you, if you take the right turning, along to Fernham. But there was plenty of time. Dinner was not till half-past seven. One could almost do without dinner after such a luncheon. It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road. Those words ——

There has fallen a splendid tear

From the passion-flower at the gate.

She is coming, my dove, my dear ——

sang in my blood as I stepped quickly along towards Headingley. And then, switching off into the other measure, I sang, where the waters are churned up by the weir:

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple tree . . .

What poets, I cried aloud, as one does in the dusk, what poets they were!

In a sort of jealousy, I suppose, for our own age, silly and absurd though these comparisons are, I went on to wonder if honestly one could name two living poets now as great as Tennyson and Christina Rossetti were then. Obviously it is impossible, I thought, looking into those foaming waters, to compare them. The very reason why that poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without troubling to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now. But the living poets express a feeling that is actually being made and torn out of us at the moment. One does not recognize it in the first place; often for some reason one fears it; one watches it with keenness and compares it jealously and suspiciously with the old feeling that one knew. Hence the difficulty of modern poetry; and it is because of this difficulty that one cannot remember more than two consecutive lines of any good modern poet. For this reason—that my memory failed me—the argument flagged for want of material. But why, I continued, moving on towards Headingley, have we stopped humming under our breath at luncheon parties? Why has Alfred ceased to sing

She is coming, my dove, my dear.

Why has Christina ceased to respond

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me?

Shall we lay the blame on the war? When the guns fired in August 1914, did the faces of men and women show so plain in each other’s eyes that romance was killed? Certainly it was a shock (to women in particular with their illusions about education, and so on) to see the faces of our rulers in the light of the shell-fire. So ugly they looked—German, English, French—so stupid. But lay the blame where one will, on whom one will, the illusion which inspired Tennyson and Christina Rossetti to sing so passionately about the coming of their loves is far rarer now than then. One has only to read, to look, to listen, to remember. But why say ‘blame’? Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in its place? For truth . . . those dots mark the spot where, in search of truth, I missed the turning up to Fernham. Yes indeed, which was truth and which was illusion? I asked myself. What was the truth about these houses, for example, dim and festive now with their red windows in the dusk, but raw and red and squalid, with their sweets and their bootlaces, at nine o’clock in the morning? And the willows and the river and the gardens that run down to the river, vague now with the mist stealing over them, but gold and red in the sunlight—which was the truth, which was the illusion about them? I spare you the twists and turns of my cogitations, for no conclusion was found on the road to Headingley, and I ask You to suppose that I soon found out my mistake about the turning and retraced my steps to Fernham.

As I have said already that it was an October day, I dare not forfeit your respect and imperil the fair name of fiction by changing the season and describing lilacs hanging over garden walls, crocuses, tulips and other flowers of spring. Fiction must stick to facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction—so we are told. Therefore it was still autumn and the leaves were still yellow and falling, if anything, a little faster than before, because it was now evening (seven twenty-three to be precise) and a breeze (from the south-west to be exact) had risen. But for all that there was something odd at work:

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple tree

Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit —

perhaps the words of Christina Rossetti were partly responsible for the folly of the fancy—it was nothing of course but a fancy—that the lilac was shaking its flowers over the garden walls, and the brimstone butterflies were scudding hither and thither, and the dust of the pollen was in the air. A wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver grey in the air. It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in window-panes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish (here I pushed into the garden, for, unwisely, the door was left open and no beadles seemed about), the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. The gardens of Fernham lay before me in the spring twilight, wild and open, and in the long grass, sprinkled and carelessly flung, were daffodils and bluebells, not orderly perhaps at the best of times, and now wind-blown and waving as they tugged at their roots. The windows of the building, curved like ships’ windows among generous waves of red brick, changed from lemon to silver under the flight of the quick spring clouds. Somebody was in a hammock, somebody, but in this light they were phantoms only, half guessed, half seen, raced across the grass—would no one stop her?—and then on the terrace, as if popping out to breathe the air, to glance at the garden, came a bent figure, formidable yet humble, with her great forehead and her shabby dress—could it be the famous scholar, could it be J—— H—— herself? All was dim, yet intense too, as if the scarf which the dusk had flung over the garden were torn asunder by star or sword—the gash of some terrible reality leaping, as its way is, out of the heart of the spring. For youth ——

Here was my soup. Dinner was being served in the great dining-hall. Far from being spring it was in fact an evening in October. Everybody was assembled in the big dining-room. Dinner was ready. Here was the soup. It was a plain gravy soup. There was nothing to stir the fancy in that. One could have seen through the transparent liquid any pattern that there might have been on the plate itself. But there was no pattern. The plate was plain. Next came beef with its attendant greens and potatoes—a homely trinity, suggesting the rumps of cattle in a muddy market, and sprouts curled and yellowed at the edge, and bargaining and cheapening and women with string bags on Monday morning. There was no reason to complain of human nature’s daily food, seeing that the supply was sufficient and coal-miners doubtless were sitting down to less. Prunes and custard followed. And if anyone complains that prunes, even when mitigated by custard, are an uncharitable vegetable (fruit they are not), stringy as a miser’s heart and exuding a fluid such as might run in misers’ veins who have denied themselves wine and warmth for eighty years and yet not given to the poor, he should reflect that there are people whose charity embraces even the prune. Biscuits and cheese came next, and here the water-jug was liberally passed round, for it is the nature of biscuits to be dry, and these were biscuits to the core. That was all. The meal was over. Everybody scraped their chairs back; the swing-doors swung violently to and fro; soon the hall was emptied of every sign of food and made ready no doubt for breakfast next morning. Down corridors and up staircases the youth of England went banging and singing. And was it for a guest, a stranger (for I had no more right here in Fernham than in Trinity or Somerville or Girton or Newnham or Christchurch), to say, ‘The dinner was not good,’ or to say (we were now, Mary Seton and I, in her sitting-room), ‘Could we not have dined up here alone?’ for if I had said anything of the kind I should have been prying and searching into the secret economies of a house which to the stranger wears so fine a front of gaiety and courage. No, one could say nothing of the sort. Indeed, conversation for a moment flagged. The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. The lamp in the spine does not light on beef and prunes. We are all probably going to heaven, and Vandyck is, we hope, to meet us round the next corner—that is the dubious and qualifying state of mind that beef and prunes at the end of the day’s work breed between them. Happily my friend, who taught science, had a cupboard where there was a squat bottle and little glasses —(but there should have been sole and partridge to begin with)— so that we were able to draw up to the fire and repair some of the damages of the day’s living. In a minute or so we were slipping freely in and out among all those objects of curiosity and interest which form in the mind in the absence of a particular person, and are naturally to be discussed on coming together again—how somebody has married, another has not; one thinks this, another that; one has improved out of all knowledge, the other most amazingly gone to the bad—with all those speculations upon human nature and the character of the amazing world we live in which spring naturally from such beginnings. While these things were being said, however, I became shamefacedly aware of a current setting in of its own accord and carrying everything forward to an end of its own. One might be talking of Spain or Portugal, of book or racehorse, but the real interest of whatever was said was none of those things, but a scene of masons on a high roof some five centuries ago. Kings and nobles brought treasure in huge sacks and poured it under the earth. This scene was for ever coming alive in my mind and placing itself by another of lean cows and a muddy market and withered greens and the stringy hearts of old men—these two pictures, disjointed and disconnected and nonsensical as they were, were for ever coming together and combating each other and had me entirely at their mercy. The best course, unless the whole talk was to be distorted, was to expose what was in my mind to the air, when with good luck it would fade and crumble like the head of the dead king when they opened the coffin at Windsor. Briefly, then, I told Miss Seton about the masons who had been all those years on the roof of the chapel, and about the kings and queens and nobles bearing sacks of gold and silver on their shoulders, which they shovelled into the earth; and then how the great financial magnates of our own time came and laid cheques and bonds, I suppose, where the others had laid ingots and rough lumps of gold. All that lies beneath the colleges down there, I said; but this college, where we are now sitting, what lies beneath its gallant red brick and the wild unkempt grasses of the garden? What force is behind that plain china off which we dined, and (here it popped out of my mouth before I could stop it) the beef, the custard and the prunes?

Well, said Mary Seton, about the year 1860—Oh, but you know the story, she said, bored, I suppose, by the recital. And she told me—rooms were hired. Committees met. Envelopes were addressed. Circulars were drawn up. Meetings were held; letters were read out; so-and-so has promised so much; on the contrary, Mr —— won’t give a penny. The Saturday Review has been very rude. How can we raise a fund to pay for offices? Shall we hold a bazaar? Can’t we find a pretty girl to sit in the front row? Let us look up what John Stuart Mill said on the subject. Can anyone persuade the editor of the —— to print a letter? Can we get Lady —— to sign it? Lady —— is out of town. That was the way it was done, presumably, sixty years ago, and it was a prodigious effort, and a great deal of time was spent on it. And it was only after a long struggle and with the utmost difficulty that they got thirty thousand pounds together.1 So obviously we cannot have wine and partridges and servants carrying tin dishes on their heads, she said. We cannot have sofas and separate rooms. ‘The amenities,’ she said, quoting from some book or other, ‘will have to wait.’2

1 ‘We are told that we ought to ask for £30,000 at least. . . . It is not a large sum, considering that there is to be but one college of this sort for Great Britain, Ireland and the Colonies, and considering how easy it is to raise immense sums for boys’ schools. But considering how few people really wish women to be educated, it is a good deal.’— Lady Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College.

2 Every penny which could be scraped together was set aside for building, and the amenities had to be postponed.—R. Strachey, The Cause.

At the thought of all those women working year after year and finding it hard to get two thousand pounds together, and as much as they could do to get thirty thousand pounds, we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex. What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses? Looking in at shop windows? Flaunting in the sun at Monte Carlo? There were some photographs on the mantelpiece. Mary’s mother—if that was her picture—may have been a wastrel in her spare time (she had thirteen children by a minister of the church), but if so her gay and dissipated life had left too few traces of its pleasures on her face. She was a homely body; an old lady in a plaid shawl which was fastened by a large cameo; and she sat in a basket-chair, encouraging a spaniel to look at the camera, with the amused, yet strained expression of one who is sure that the dog will move directly the bulb is pressed. Now if she had gone into business; had become a manufacturer of artificial silk or a magnate on the Stock Exchange; if she had left two or three hundred thousand pounds to Fernham, we could have been sitting at our ease to-night and the subject of our talk might have been archaeology, botany, anthropology, physics, the nature of the atom, mathematics, astronomy, relativity, geography. If only Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little poetry. Only, if Mrs Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been—that was the snag in the argument—no Mary. What, I asked, did Mary think of t hat? There between the curtains was the October night, calm and lovely, with a star or two caught in the yellowing trees. Was she ready to resign her share of it and her memories (for they had been a happy family, though a large one) of games and quarrels up in Scotland, which she is never tired of praising for the fineness of its air and the quality of its cakes, in order that Fernham might have been endowed with fifty thousand pounds or so by a stroke of the pen? For, to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether. Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children—no human being could stand it. Consider the facts, we said. First there are nine months before the baby is born. Then the baby is born. Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby. After the baby is fed there are certainly five years spent in playing with the baby. You cannot, it seems, let children run about the streets. People who have seen them running wild in Russia say that the sight is not a pleasant one. People say, too, that human nature takes its shape in the years between one and five. If Mrs Seton, I said, had been making money, what sort of memories would you have had of games and quarrels? What would you have known of Scotland, and its fine air and cakes and all the rest of it? But it is useless to ask these questions, because you would never have come into existence at all. Moreover, it is equally useless to ask what might have happened if Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had amassed great wealth and laid it under the foundations of college and library, because, in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned. It is only for the last forty-eight years that Mrs Seton has had a penny of her own. For all the centuries before that it would have been her husband’s property—a thought which, perhaps, may have had its share in keeping Mrs Seton and her mothers off the Stock Exchange. Every penny I earn, they may have said, will be taken from me and disposed of according to my husband’s wisdom—perhaps to found a scholarship or to endow a fellowship in Balliol or Kings, so that to earn money, even if I could earn money, is not a matter that interests me very greatly. I had better leave it to my husband.

At any rate, whether or not the blame rested on the old lady who was looking at the spaniel, there could be no doubt that for some reason or other our mothers had mismanaged their affairs very gravely. Not a penny could be spared for ‘amenities’; for partridges and wine, beadles and turf, books and cigars, libraries and leisure. To raise bare walls out of bare earth was the utmost they could do.

So we talked standing at the window and looking, as so many thousands look every night, down on the domes and towers of the famous city beneath us. It was very beautiful, very mysterious in the autumn moonlight. The old stone looked very white and venerable. One thought of all the books that were assembled down there; of the pictures of old prelates and worthies hanging in the panelled rooms; of the painted windows that would be throwing strange globes and crescents on the pavement; of the tablets and memorials and inscriptions; of the fountains and the grass; of the quiet rooms looking across the quiet quadrangles. And (pardon me the thought) I thought, too, of the admirable smoke and drink and the deep armchairs and the pleasant carpets: of the urbanity, the geniality, the dignity which are the offspring of luxury and privacy and space. Certainly our mothers had not provided us with any thing comparable to all this—our mothers who found it difficult to scrape together thirty thousand pounds, our mothers who bore thirteen children to ministers of religion at St Andrews.

So I went back to my inn, and as I walked through the dark streets I pondered this and that, as one does at the end of the day’s work. I pondered why it was that Mrs Seton had no money to leave us; and what effect poverty has on the mind; and what effect wealth has on the mind; and I thought of the queer old gentlemen I had seen that morning with tufts of fur upon their shoulders; and I remembered how if one whistled one of them ran; and I thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library; and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and of the effect of tradition and of the lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer, I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. A thousand stars were flashing across the blue wastes of the sky. One seemed alone with an inscrutable society. All human beings were laid asleep—prone, horizontal, dumb. Nobody seemed stirring in the streets of Oxbridge. Even the door of the hotel sprang open at the touch of an invisible hand—not a boots was sitting up to light me to bed, it was so late.

Two

The scene, if I may ask you to follow me, was now changed. The leaves were still falling, but in London now, not Oxbridge; and I must ask you to imagine a room, like many thousands, with a window looking across people’s hats and vans and motor-cars to other windows, and on the table inside the room a blank sheet of paper on which was written in large letters Women and Fiction, but no more. The inevitable sequel to lunching and dining at Oxbridge seemed, unfortunately, to be a visit to the British Museum. One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth. For that visit to Oxbridge and the luncheon and the dinner had started a swarm of questions. Why did men drink wine and women water? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor? What effect has poverty on fiction? What conditions are necessary for the creation of works of art?—a thousand questions at once suggested themselves. But one needed answers, not questions; and an answer was only to be had by consulting the learned and the unprejudiced, who have removed themselves above the strife of tongue and the confusion of body and issued the result of their reasoning and research in books which ‘are to be found in the British Museum. If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth?

Thus provided, thus confident and enquiring, I set out in the pursuit of truth. The day, though not actually wet, was dismal, and the streets in the neighbourhood of the Museum were full of open coal-holes, down which sacks were showering; four-wheeled cabs were drawing up and depositing on the pavement corded boxes containing, presumably, the entire wardrobe of some Swiss or Italian family seeking fortune or refuge or some other desirable commodity which is to be found in the boarding-houses of Bloomsbury in the winter. The usual hoarse-voiced men paraded the streets with plants on barrows. Some shouted; others sang. London was like a workshop. London was like a machine. We were all being shot backwards and forwards on this plain foundation to make some pattern. The British Museum was another department of the factory. The swing-doors swung open; and there one stood under the vast dome, as if one were a thought in the huge bald fore head which is so splendidly encircled by a band of famous names. One went to the counter; one took a slip of paper; one opened a volume of the catalogue, and the five dots here indicate five separate minutes of stupefaction, wonder and bewilderment. Have you any notion of how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe? Here had I come with a notebook and a pencil proposing to spend a morning reading, supposing’ that at the end of the morning I should have transferred the truth to my notebook. But I should need to be a herd of elephants, I thought, and a wilderness of spiders, desperately referring to the animals that are reputed longest lived and most multitudinously eyed, to cope with all this. I should need claws of steel and beak of brass even to penetrate the husk. How shall I ever find the grains of truth embedded in all this mass of paper? I asked myself, and in despair began running my eye up and down the long list of titles. Even the names of the books gave me food for thought. Sex and its nature might well attract doctors and biologists; but what was surprising and difficult of explanation was the fact that sex—woman, that is to say—also attracts agreeable essayists, light-fingered novelists, young men who have taken the M.A. degree; men who have taken no degree; men who have no apparent qualification save that they are not women. Some of these books were, on the face of it, frivolous and facetious; but many, on the other hand, were serious and prophetic, moral and hortatory. Merely to read the titles suggested innumerable schoolmasters, innumerable clergymen mounting their platforms and pulpits and holding forth with loquacity which far exceeded the hour usually alloted to such discourse on this one subject. It was a most strange phenomenon; and apparently—here I consulted the letter M— one confined to the male sex. Women do not write books about men—a fact that I could not help welcoming with relief, for if I had first to read all that men have written about women, then all that women have written about men, the aloe that flowers once in a hundred years would flower twice before I could set pen to paper. So, making a perfectly arbitrary choice of a dozen volumes or so, I sent my slips of paper to lie in the wire tray, and waited in my stall, among the other seekers for the essential oil of truth.

What could be the reason, then, of this curious disparity, I wondered, drawing cart-wheels on the slips of paper provided by the British taxpayer for other purposes. Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women? A very curious fact it seemed, and my mind wandered to picture the lives of men who spend their time in writing books about women; whether they were old or young, married or unmarried, red-nosed or hump-backed—anyhow, it was flattering, vaguely, to feel oneself the object of such attention provided that it was not entirely bestowed by the crippled and the infirm—so I pondered until all such frivolous thoughts were ended by an avalanche of books sliding down on to the desk in front of me. Now the trouble began. The student who has been trained in research at Oxbridge has no doubt some method of shepherding his question past all distractions till it runs into his answer as a sheep runs into its pen. The student by my side, for Instance, who was copying assiduously from a scientific manual, was, I felt sure, extracting pure nuggets of the essential ore every ten minutes or so. His little grunts of satisfaction indicated so much. But if, unfortunately, one has had no training in a university, the question far from being shepherded to its pen flies like a frightened flock hither and thither, helter-skelter, pursued by a whole pack of hounds. Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women, chased my simple and single question—Why are some women poor?—until it became fifty questions; until the fifty questions leapt frantically into midstream and were carried away. Every page in my notebook was scribbled over with notes. To show the state of mind I was in, I will read you a few of them, explaining that the page was headed quite simply, Women and Poverty, in block letters; but what followed was something like this:

Condition in Middle Ages of, Habits in the Fiji Islands of, Worshipped as goddesses by, Weaker in moral sense than, Idealism of, Greater conscientiousness of, South Sea Islanders, age of puberty among, Attractiveness of, Offered as sacrifice to, Small size of brain of, Profounder sub-consciousness of, Less hair on the body of, Mental, moral and physical inferiority of, Love of children of, Greater length of life of, Weaker muscles of, Strength of affections of, Vanity of, Higher education of, Shakespeare’s opinion of, Lord Birkenhead’s opinion of, Dean Inge’s opinion of, La Bruyère’s opinion of, Dr Johnson’s opinion of, Mr Oscar Browning’s opinion of, . . .

Here I drew breath and added, indeed, in the margin, Why does Samuel Butler say, ‘Wise men never say what they think of women’? Wise men never say anything else apparently. But, I continued, leaning back in my chair and looking at the vast dome in which I was a single but by now somewhat harassed thought, what is so unfortunate is that wise men never think the same thing about women. Here is Pope:

Most women have no character at all.

And here is La Bruyère:

Les femmes sont extrêmes, elles sont meilleures ou pires que les hommes ——

a direct contradiction by keen observers who were contemporary. Are they capable of education or incapable? Napoleon thought them incapable. Dr Johnson thought the opposite.3 Have they souls or have they not souls? Some savages say they have none. Others, on the contrary, maintain that women are half divine and worship them on that account.4 Some sages hold that they are shallower in the brain; others that they are deeper in the consciousness. Goethe honoured them; Mussolini despises them. Wherever one looked men thought about women and thought differently. It was impossible to make head or tail of it all, I decided, glancing with envy at the reader next door who was making the neatest abstracts, headed often with an A or a B or a C, while my own notebook rioted with the wildest scribble of contradictory jottings. It was distressing, it was bewildering, it was humiliating. Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.

3 ‘“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” . . . In justice to the sex, I think it but candid to acknowledge that, in a subsequent conversation, he told me that he was serious in what he said.’— Boswell, the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.

4 The ancient Germans believed that there was something holy in women, and accordingly consulted them as oracles.’— Frazer, Golden Bough.

I could not possibly go home, I reflected, and add as a serious contribution to the study of women and fiction that women have less hair on their bodies than men, or that the age of puberty among the South Sea Islanders is nine—or is it ninety?—even the handwriting had become in its distraction indecipherable. It was disgraceful to have nothing more weighty or respectable to show after a whole morning’s work. And if I could not grasp the truth about W. (as for brevity’s sake I had come to call her) in the past, why bother about W. in the future? It seemed pure waste of time to consult all those gentlemen who specialize in woman and her effect on whatever it may be—politics, children, wages, morality—numerous and learned as they are. One might as well leave their books unopened.

But while I pondered I had unconsciously, in my listlessness, in my desperation, been drawing a picture where I should, like my neighbour, have been writing a conclusion. I had been drawing a face, a figure. It was the face and the figure of Professor von X engaged in writing his monumental work entitled The Mental, Moral, and Physical Inferiority of the Female Sex. He was not in my picture a man attractive to women. He was heavily built; he had a great jowl; to balance that he had very small eyes; he was very red in the face. His expression suggested that he was labouring under some emotion that made him jab his pen on the paper as if he were killing some noxious insect as he wrote, but even when he had killed it that did not satisfy him; he must go on killing it; and even so, some cause for anger and irritation remained. Could it be his wife, I asked, looking at my picture? Was she in love with a cavalry officer? Was the cavalry officer slim and elegant and dressed in astrakhan? Had he been laughed at, to adopt the Freudian theory, in his cradle by a pretty girl? For even in his cradle the professor, I thought, could not have been an attractive child. Whatever the reason, the professor was made to look very angry and very ugly in my sketch, as he wrote his great book upon the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. Drawing pictures was an idle way of finishing an unprofitable morning’s work. Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. A very elementary exercise in psychology, not to be dignified by the name of psychoanalysis, showed me, on looking at my notebook, that the sketch of the angry professor had been made in anger. Anger had snatched my pencil while I dreamt. But what was anger doing there? Interest, confusion, amusement, boredom—all these emotions I could trace and name as they succeeded each other throughout the morning. Had anger, the black snake, been lurking among them? Yes, said the sketch, anger had. It referred me unmistakably to the one book, to the one phrase, which had roused the demon; it was the professor’s statement about the mental, moral and physical inferiority of women. My heart had leapt. My cheeks had burnt. I had flushed with anger. There was nothing specially remarkable, however foolish, in that. One does not like to be told that one is naturally the inferior of a little man—I looked at the student next me—who breathes hard, wears a ready-made tie, and has not shaved this fortnight. One has certain foolish vanities. It is only human nature, I reflected, and began drawing cartwheels and circles over the angry professor’s face till he looked like a burning bush or a flaming comet—anyhow, an apparition without human semblance or significance. The professor was nothing now but a faggot burning on the top of Hampstead Heath. Soon my own anger was explained and done with; but curiosity remained. How explain the anger of the professors? Why were they angry? For when it came to analysing the impression left by these books there was always an element of heat. This heat took many forms; it showed itself in satire, in sentiment, in curiosity, in reprobation. But there was another element which was often present and could not immediately be identified. Anger, I called it. But it was anger that had gone underground and mixed itself with all kinds of other emotions. To judge from its odd effects, it was anger disguised and complex, not anger simple and open.

Whatever the reason, all these books, I thought, surveying the pile on the desk, are worthless for my purposes. They were worthless scientifically, that is to say, though humanly they were full of instruction, interest, boredom, and very queer facts about the habits of the Fiji Islanders. They had been written in the red light of emotion and not in the white light of truth. Therefore they must be returned to the central desk and restored each to his own cell in the enormous honeycomb. All that I had retrieved from that morning’s work had been the one fact of anger. The professors—I lumped them together thus—were angry. But why, I asked myself, having returned the books, Why, I repeated, standing under the colonnade among the pigeons and the prehistoric canoes, why are they angry? And, asking myself this question, I strolled off to find a place for luncheon. What is the real nature of What I call for the moment their anger? I asked. Here was a puzzle that would last all the time that it takes to be served with food in a small restaurant somewhere near the British Museum. Some previous luncher had left the lunch edition of the evening paper on a chair, and, waiting to be served, I began idly reading the headlines. A ribbon of very large letters ran across the page. Somebody had made a big score in South Africa. Lesser ribbons announced that Sir Austen Chamberlain was at Geneva. A meat axe with human hair on it had been found in a cellar. Mr justice —— commented in the Divorce Courts upon the Shamelessness of Women. Sprinkled about the paper were other pieces of news. A film actress had been lowered from a peak in California and hung suspended in mid-air. The weather was going to be foggy. The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from this scattered testimony, that England is under the rule of a patriarchy. Nobody in their senses could fail to detect the dominance of the professor. His was the power and the money and the influence. He was the proprietor of the paper and its editor and sub-editor. He was the Foreign Secretary and the judge. He was the cricketer; he owned the racehorses and the yachts. He Was the director of the company that pays two hundred per cent to its shareholders. He left millions to charities and colleges that were ruled by himself. He suspended the film actress in mid-air. He will decide if the hair on the meat axe is human; he it is who will acquit or convict the murderer, and hang him, or let him go free. With the exception of the fog he seemed to control everything. Yet he was angry. I knew that he was angry by this token. When I read what he wrote about women—I thought, not of what he was saying, but of himself. When an arguer argues dispassionately he thinks only of the argument; and the reader cannot help thinking of the argument too. If he had written dispassionately about women, had used indisputable proofs to establish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing that the result should be one thing rather than another, one would not have been angry either. One would have accepted the fact, as one accepts the fact that a pea is green or a canary yellow. So be it, I should have said. But I had been angry because he was angry. Yet it seemed absurd, I thought, turning over the evening paper, that a man with all this power should be angry. Or is anger, I wondered, somehow, the familiar, the attendant sprite on power? Rich people, for example, are often angry because they suspect that the poor want to seize their wealth. The professors, or patriarchs, as it might be more accurate to call them, might be angry for that reason partly, but partly for one that lies a little less obviously on the surface. Possibly they were not ‘angry’ at all; often, indeed, they were admiring, devoted, exemplary in the relations of private life. Possibly when the professor insisted a little too emphatically upon the inferiority of women, he was concerned not with their inferiority, but with his own superiority. That was what he was protecting rather hot-headedly and with too much emphasis, because it was a jewel to him of the rarest price. Life for both sexes—and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement—is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to one self. By feeling that one has some innate superiority—it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney—for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination—over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power. But let me turn the light of this observation on to real life, I thought. Does it help to explain some of those psychological puzzles that one notes in the margin of daily life? Does it explain my astonishment of the other day when Z, most humane, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, ‘The arrant feminist! She says that men are snobs!’ The exclamation, to me so surprising—for why was Miss West an arrant feminist for making a possibly true if uncomplimentary statement about the other sex?—was not merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement of his power to believe in himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would he unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheep skins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Czar and the Kaiser would never have worn crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and rousing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgement, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is? So I reflected, crumbling my bread and stirring my coffee and now and again looking at the people in the street. The looking-glass vision is of supreme importance because it charges the vitality; it stimulates the nervous system. Take it away and man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of his cocaine. Under the spell of that illusion, I thought, looking out of the window, half the people on the pavement are striding to work. They put on their hats and coats in the morning under its agreeable rays. They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith’s tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.

But these contributions to the dangerous and fascinating subject of the psychology of the other sex—it is one, I hope, that you will investigate when you have five hundred a year of your own—were interrupted by the necessity of paying the bill. It came to five shillings and ninepence. I gave the waiter a ten-shilling note and he went to bring me change. There was another ten-shilling note in my purse; I noticed it, because it is a fact that still takes my breath away the power of my purse to breed ten-shilling notes automatically. I open it and there they are. Society gives me chicken and coffee, bed and lodging, in return for a certain number of pieces of paper which were left me by an aunt, for no other reason than that I share her name.

My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor’s letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever. Of the two—the vote and the money—the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important. Before that I had made my living by cadging odd jobs from newspapers, by reporting a donkey show here or a wedding there; I had earned a few pounds by addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers, teaching the alphabet to small children in a kindergarten. Such were the chief occupations that were open to women before 1918. I need not, I am afraid, describe in any detail the hardness of the work, for you know perhaps women who have done it; nor the difficulty of living on the money when it was earned, for you may have tried. But what still remains with me as a worse infliction than either was the poison of fear and bitterness which those days bred in me. To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks; and then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide—a small one but dear to the possessor—perishing and with it my self, my soul—all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart. However, as I say, my aunt died; and whenever I change a ten shilling note a little of that rust and corrosion is rubbed off, fear and bitterness go. Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine forever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me. So imperceptibly I found myself adopting a new attitude towards the other half of the human race. It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do. They are driven by instincts which are not within their control. They too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with. Their education had been in some ways as faulty as my own. It had bred in them defects as great. True, they had money and power, but only at the cost of harbouring in their breasts an eagle, a vulture, for ever tearing the liver out and plucking at the lungs—the instinct for possession, the rage for acquisition which drives them to desire other people’s fields and goods perpetually; to make frontiers and flags; battleships and poison gas; to offer up their own lives and their children’s lives. Walk through the Admiralty Arch (I had reached that monument), or any other avenue given up to trophies and cannon, and reflect upon the kind of glory celebrated there. Or watch in the spring sunshine the stockbroker and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money when it is a fact that five hundred pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine. These are unpleasant instincts to harbour, I reflected. They are bred of the conditions of life; of the lack of civilization, I thought, looking at the statue of the Duke of Cambridge, and in particular at the feathers in his cocked hat, with a fixity that they have scarcely ever received before. And, as I realized these drawbacks, by degrees fear and bitterness modified themselves into pity and toleration; and then in a year or two, pity and toleration went, and the greatest release of all came, which is freedom to think of things in themselves. That building, for example, do I like it or not? Is that picture beautiful or not? Is that in my opinion a good book or a bad? Indeed my aunt’s legacy unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing figure of a gentleman, which Milton recommended for my perpetual adoration, a view of the open sky.

So thinking, so speculating I found my way back to my house by the river. Lamps were being lit and an indescribable change had come over London since the morning hour. It was as if the great machine after labouring all day had’ made with our help a few yards of something very exciting and beautiful—a fiery fabric flashing with red eyes, a tawny monster roaring with hot breath. Even the wind seemed flung like a flag as it lashed the houses and rattled the hoardings.

In my little street, however, domesticity prevailed. The house painter was descending his ladder; the nursemaid was wheeling the perambulator carefully in and out back to nursery tea; the coal-heaver was folding his empty sacks on top of each other; the woman who keeps the green grocer’s shop was adding up the day’s takings with her hands in red mittens. But so engrossed was I with the problem you have laid upon my shoulders that I could not see even these usual sights without referring them to one centre. I thought how much harder it is now than it must have been even a century ago to say which of these employments is the higher, the more necessary. Is it better to be a coal-heaver or a nursemaid; is the charwoman who has brought up eight children of less value to the world than, the barrister who has made a hundred thousand pounds? it is useless to ask such questions; for nobody can answer them. Not only do the comparative values of charwomen and lawyers rise and fall from decade to decade, but we have no rods with which to measure them even as they are at the moment. I had been foolish to ask my professor to furnish me with ‘indisputable proofs’ of this or that in his argument about women. Even if one could state the value of any one gift at the moment, those values will change; in a century’s time very possibly they will have changed completely. Moreover, in a hundred years, I thought, reaching my own doorstep, women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them. The nursemaid will heave coal. The shopwoman will drive an engine. All assumptions founded on the facts observed when women were the protected sex will have disappeared—as, for example (here a squad of soldiers marched down the street), that women and clergymen and gardeners live longer than other people. Remove that protection, expose them to the same exertions and activities, make them soldiers and sailors and engine-drivers and dock labourers, and will not women die off so much younger, so much quicker, than men that one will say, ‘I saw a woman to-day’, as one used to say, ‘I saw an aeroplane’. Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation, I thought, opening the door. But what bearing has all this upon the subject of my paper, Women and Fiction? I asked, going indoors.

Three

It was disappointing not to have brought back in the evening some important statement, some authentic fact. Women are poorer than men because—this or that. Perhaps now it would be better to give up seeking for the truth, and receiving on one’s head an avalanche of opinion hot as lava, discoloured as dish-water. It would be better to draw the curtains; to shut out distractions; to light the lamp; to narrow the enquiry and to ask the historian, who records not opinions but facts, to describe under what conditions women lived, not throughout the ages, but in England, say, in the time of Elizabeth.

For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet. What were the conditions in which women lived? I asked myself; for fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

I went, therefore, to the shelf where the histories stand and took down one of the latest, Professor Trevelyan’s History of England. Once more I looked up Women, found ‘position of’ and turned to the pages indicated. ‘Wife-beating’, I read, ‘was a recognized right of man, and was practised without shame by high as well as low. . . . Similarly,’ the historian goes on, ‘the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents’ choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted on public opinion. Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice, particularly in the “chivalrous” upper classes. . . . Betrothal often took place while one or both of the parties was in the cradle, and marriage when they were scarcely out of the nurses’ charge.’ That was about 1470, soon after Chaucer’s time. The next reference to the position of women is some two hundred years later, in the time of the Stuarts. ‘It was still the exception for women of the upper and middle class to choose their own husbands, and when the husband had been assigned, he was lord and master, so far at least as law and custom could make him. Yet even so,’ Professor Trevelyan concludes, ‘neither Shakespeare’s women nor those of authentic seventeenth-century memoirs, like the Verneys and the Hutchinsons, seem wanting in personality and character.’ Certainly, if we consider it, Cleopatra must have had a way with her; Lady Macbeth, one would suppose, had a will of her own; Rosalind, one might conclude, was an attractive girl. Professor Trevelyan is speaking no more than the truth when he remarks that Shakespeare’s women do not seem wanting in personality and character. Not being a historian, one might go even further and say that women have burnt like beacons in all the works of all the poets from the beginning of time—Clytemnestra, Antigone, Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Phedre, Cressida, Rosalind, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi, among the dramatists; then among the prose writers: Millamant, Clarissa, Becky Sharp, Anna Karenina, Emma Bovary, Madame de Guermantes—the names flock to mind, nor do they recall women ‘lacking in personality and character.’ Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even greater.5 But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.

5 ‘It remains a strange and almost inexplicable fact that in Athena’s city, where women were kept in almost Oriental suppression as odalisques or drudges, the stage should yet have produced figures like Clytemnestra and Cassandra Atossa and Antigone, Phedre and Medea, and all the other heroines who dominate play after play of the “misogynist” Euripides. But the paradox of this world where in real life a respectable woman could hardly show her face alone in the street, and yet on the stage woman equals or surpasses man, has never been satisfactorily explained. In modern tragedy the same predominance exists. At all events, a very cursory survey of Shakespeare’s work (similarly with Webster, though not with Marlowe or Jonson) suffices to reveal how this dominance, this initiative of women, persists from Rosalind to Lady Macbeth. So too in Racine; six of his tragedies bear their heroines’ names; and what male characters of his shall we set against Hermione and Andromaque, Berenice and Roxane, Phedre and Athalie? So again with Ibsen; what men shall we match with Solveig and Nora, Heda and Hilda Wangel and Rebecca West?’— F. L. Lucas, Tragedy, pp. 114-15.

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.

It was certainly an odd monster that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and beauty in a kitchen chopping up suet. But these monsters, however amusing to the imagination, have no existence in fact. What one must do to bring her to life was to think poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment, thus keeping in touch with fact—that she is Mrs Martin, aged thirty-six, dressed in blue, wearing a black hat and brown shoes; but not losing sight of fiction either—that she is a vessel in which all sorts of spirits and forces are coursing and flashing perpetually. The moment, however, that one tries this method with the Elizabethan woman, one branch of illumination fails; one is held up by the scarcity of facts. One knows nothing detailed, nothing perfectly true and substantial about her. History scarcely mentions her. And I turned to Professor Trevelyan again to see what history meant to him. I found by looking at his chapter headings that it meant ——

‘The Manor Court and the Methods of Open-field Agriculture . . . The Cistercians and Sheep-farming . . . The Crusades.. . The University . . . The House of Commons . . . The Hundred Years’ War . . . The Wars of the Roses . . . The Renaissance Scholars . . . The Dissolution of the Monasteries . . . Agrarian and Religious Strife . . . The Origin of English Sea-power. .. The Armada . . . ’ and so on. Occasionally an individual woman is mentioned, an Elizabeth, or a Mary; a queen or a great lady. But by no possible means could middle-class women with nothing but brains and character at their command have taken part in any one of the great movements which, brought together, constitute the historian’s view of the past. Nor shall we find her in collection of anecdotes. Aubrey hardly mentions her. She never writes her own life and scarcely keeps a diary; there are only a handful of her letters in existence. She left no plays or poems by which we can judge her. What one wants, I thought—and why does not some brilliant student at Newnham or Girton supply it?—is a mass of information; at what age did she marry; how many children had she as a rule; what was her house like, had she a room to herself; did she do the cooking; would she be likely to have a servant? All these facts lie somewhere, presumably, in parish registers and account books; the life of the average Elizabethan woman must be scattered about somewhere, could one collect it and make a book of it. It would be ambitious beyond my daring, I thought, looking about the shelves for books that were not there, to suggest to the students of those famous colleges that they should rewrite history, though I own that it often seems a little queer as it is, unreal, lop-sided; but why should they not add a supplement to history, calling it, of course, by some in conspicuous name so that women might figure there with out impropriety? For one often catches a glimpse of them in the lives of the great, whisking away into the back ground, concealing, I sometimes think, a wink, a laugh, perhaps a tear. And, after all, we have lives enough of Jane Austen; it scarcely seems necessary to consider again the influence of the tragedies of Joanna Baillie upon the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe; as for myself, I should not mind if the homes and haunts of Mary Russell Mitford were closed to the public for a century at least. But what I find deplorable, I continued, looking about the bookshelves again, is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century. I have no model in my mind to turn about this way and that. Here am I asking why women did not write poetry in the Elizabethan age, and I am not sure how they were educated; whether they were taught to write; whether they had sitting-rooms to themselves; how many women had children before they were twenty-one; what, in short, they did from eight in the morning till eight at night. They had no money evidently; according to Professor Trevelyan they were married whether they liked it or not before they were out of the nursery, at fifteen or sixteen very likely. It would have been extremely odd, even upon this showing, had one of them suddenly written the plays of Shakespeare, I concluded, and I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare.

Be that as it may, I could not help thinking, as I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. Shakespeare himself went, very probably—his mother was an heiress—to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin—Ovid, Virgil and Horace—and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighbourhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practising his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen. Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter—indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father’s eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighbouring woolstapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer’s night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager—a fat, loose-lipped man—guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting—no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted—you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last—for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows—at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so—who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?—killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some cross-roads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.

That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’s genius. But for my part, I agree with the deceased bishop, if such he was—it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare’s day should have had Shakespeare’s genius. For genius like Shakespeare’s is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born to-day among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Brontë or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on to paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without singing them, was often a woman. It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think, suggested who made the ballads and the folk-songs, crooning them to her children, beguiling her spinning with them, or the length of the winter’s night.

This may be true or it may be false—who can say?—but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare’s sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational—for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons—but were none the less inevitable. Chastity had then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman’s life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest. To have lived a free life in London in the sixteenth century would have meant for a woman who was poet and playwright a nervous stress and dilemma which might well have killed her. Had she survived, whatever she had written would have been twisted and deformed, issuing from a strained and morbid imagination. And undoubtedly, I thought, looking at the shelf where there are no plays by women, her work would have gone unsigned. That refuge she would have sought certainly. It was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women even so late as the nineteenth century. Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man. Thus they did homage to the convention, which if not implanted by the other sex was liberally encouraged by them (the chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of man) that publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it, as Alf, Bert or Chas. must do in obedience to their instinct, which murmurs if it sees a fine woman go by, or even a dog, Ce chien est a moi. And, of course, it may not be a dog, I thought, remembering Parliament Square, the Sieges Allee and other avenues; it may be a piece of land or a man with curly black hair. It is one of the great advantages of being a woman that one can pass even a very fine negress without wishing to make an Englishwoman of her.

That woman, then, who was born with a gift of poetry in the sixteenth century, was an unhappy woman, a woman at strife against herself. All the conditions of her life, all her own instincts, were hostile to the state of mind which is needed to set free whatever is in the brain. But what is the state of mind that is most propitious to the act of creation? I asked. Can one come by any notion of the state that furthers and makes possible that strange activity? Here I opened the volume containing the Tragedies of Shakespeare. What was Shakespeare’s state of mind, for instance, when he wrote Lear and Antony and Cleopatra? It was certainly the state of mind most favourable to poetry that there has ever existed. But Shakespeare himself said nothing about it. We only know casually and by chance that he ‘never blotted a line’. Nothing indeed was ever said by the artist himself about his state of mind until the eighteenth century perhaps. Rousseau perhaps began it. At any rate, by the nineteenth century self-consciousness had developed so far that it was the habit for men of letters to describe their minds in confessions and autobiographies. Their lives also were Written, and their letters were printed after their deaths. Thus, though we do not know what Shakespeare went through when he wrote Lear, we do know what Carlyle went through when he wrote the French Revolution; what Flaubert went through when he wrote Madame Bovary; what Keats was going through when he tried to write poetry against the coming death and the indifference of the world.

And one gathers from this enormous modern literature of confession and self-analysis that to write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle scrupulously verifies this or that fact. Naturally, it will not pay for what it does not want. And so the writer, Keats, Flaubert, Carlyle, suffers, especially in the creative years of youth, every form of distraction and discouragement. A curse, a cry of agony, rises from those books of analysis and confession. ‘Mighty poets in their misery dead’— that is the burden of their song. If anything comes through in spite of all this, it is a miracle, and probably no book is born entire and uncrippled as it was conceived.

But for women, I thought, looking at the empty shelves, these difficulties were infinitely more formidable. In the first place, to have a room of her own, let alone a quiet room or a sound-proof room, was out of the question, unless her parents were exceptionally rich or very noble, even up to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since her pin money, which depended on the goodwill of her father, was only enough to keep her clothed, she was debarred from such alleviations as came even to Keats or Tennyson or Carlyle, all poor men, from a walking tour, a little journey to France, from the separate lodging which, even if it were miserable enough, sheltered them from the claims and tyrannies of their families. Such material difficulties were formidable; but much worse were the immaterial. The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility. The world did not say to her as it said to them, Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw, Write? What’s the good of your writing? Here the psychologists of Newnham and Girton might come to our help, I thought, looking again at the blank spaces on the shelves. For surely it is time that the effect of discouragement upon the mind of the artist should be measured, as I have seen a dairy company measure the effect of ordinary milk and Grade A milk upon the body of the rat. They set two rats in cages side by side, and of the two one was furtive, timid and small, and the other was glossy, bold and big. Now what food do we feed women as artists upon? I asked, remembering, I suppose, that dinner of prunes and custard. To answer that question I had only to open the evening paper and to read that Lord Birkenhead is of opinion—but really I am not going to trouble to copy out Lord Birkenhead’s opinion upon the writing of women. What Dean Inge says I will leave in peace. The Harley Street specialist may be allowed to rouse the echoes of Harley Street with his vociferations without raising a hair on my head. I will quote, however, Mr Oscar Browning, because Mr Oscar Browning was a great figure in Cambridge at one time, and used to examine the students at Girton and Newnham. Mr Oscar Browning was wont to declare ‘that the impression left on his mind, after looking over any set of examination papers, was that, irrespective of the marks he might give, the best woman was intellectually the inferior of the worst man’. After saying that Mr Browning went back to his rooms—and it is this sequel that endears him and makes him a human figure of some bulk and majesty—he went back to his rooms and found a stable-boy lying on the sofa —’a mere skeleton, his cheeks were cavernous and sallow, his teeth were black, and he did not appear to have the full use of his limbs. That’s Arthur” [said Mr Browning]. “He’s a dear boy really and most high-minded. —-The two pictures always seem to me to complete each other. And happily in this age of biography the two pictures often do complete each other, so that we are able to interpret the opinions of great men not only by what they say, but by what they do.

But though this is possible now, such opinions coming from the lips of important people must have been formidable enough even fifty years ago. Let us suppose that a father from the highest motives did not wish his daughter to leave home and become writer, painter or scholar. ‘See what Mr Oscar Browning says,’ he would say; and there so was not only Mr Oscar Browning; there was the Saturday Review; there was Mr Greg—the ‘essentials of a woman’s being’, said Mr Greg emphatically, ‘are that they are supported by, and they minister to, men’— there was an enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect that nothing could be expected of women intellectually. Even if her father did not read out loud these opinions, any girl could read them for herself; and the reading, even in the nineteenth century, must have lowered her vitality, and told profoundly upon her work. There would always have been that assertion—you cannot do this, you are incapable of doing that—to protest against, to overcome. Probably for a novelist this germ is no longer of much effect; for there have been women novelists of merit. But for painters it must still have some sting in it; and for musicians, I imagine, is even now active and poisonous in the extreme. The woman composer stands where the actress stood in the time of Shakespeare. Nick Greene, I thought, remembering the story I had made about Shakespeare’s sister, said that a woman acting put him in mind of a dog dancing. Johnson repeated the phrase two hundred years later of women preaching. And here, I said, opening a book about music, we have the very words used again in this year of grace, 1928, of women who try to write music. ‘Of Mlle. Germaine Tailleferre one can only repeat Dr Johnson’s dictum concerning, a woman preacher, transposed into terms of music. “Sir, a woman’s composing is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”6So accurately does history repeat itself.

6 A Survey of Contemporary Music, Cecil Gray, P. 246.

Thus, I concluded, shutting Mr Oscar Browning’s life and pushing away the rest, it is fairly evident that even in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist. On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted. Her mind must have been strained and her vitality lowered by the need of opposing this, of disproving that. For here again we come within range of that very interesting and obscure masculine complex which has had so much influence upon the woman’s movement; that deepseated desire, not so much that she shall be inferior as that he shall be superior, which plants him wherever one looks, not only in front of the arts, but barring the way to politics too, even when the risk to himself seems infinitesimal and the suppliant humble and devoted. Even Lady Bessborough, I remembered, with all her passion for politics, must humbly bow herself and write to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower: ‘ . . . notwithstanding all my violence in politicks and talking so much on that subject, I perfectly agree with you that no woman has any business to meddle with that or any other serious business, farther than giving her opinion (if she is ask’d).’ And so she goes on to spend her enthusiasm where it meets with no obstacle whatsoever, upon that immensely important subject, Lord Granville’s maiden speech in the House of Commons. The spectacle is certainly a strange one, I thought. The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself. An amusing book might be made of it if some young student at Girton or Newnham would collect examples and deduce a theory—but she would need thick gloves on her hands, and bars to protect her of solid gold.

But what is amusing now, I recollected, shutting Lady Bessborough, had to be taken in desperate earnest once. Opinions that one now pastes in a book labelled cock-a-doodledum and keeps for reading to select audiences on summer nights once drew tears, I can assure you. Among your grandmothers and great-grandmothers there were many that wept their eyes out. Florence Nightingale shrieked aloud in her agony.7Moreover, it is all very well for you, who have got yourselves to college and enjoy sitting-rooms—or is it only bed-sitting-rooms?—of your own to say that genius should disregard such opinions; that genius should be above caring what is said of it. Unfortunately, it is precisely the men or women of genius who mind most what is said of them. Remember Keats. Remember the words he had cut on his tombstone. Think of Tennyson; think but I need hardly multiply instances of the undeniable, if very unfortunate, fact that it is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

7 See Cassandra, by Florence Nightingale, printed in The Cause, by R. Strachey.

And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate, I thought, returning again to my original enquiry into what state of mind is most propitious for creative work, because the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent, like Shakespeare’s mind, I conjectured, looking at the book which lay open at Antony and Cleopatra. There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed.

For though we say that we know nothing about Shakespeare’s state of mind, even as we say that, we are saying something about Shakespeare’s state of mind. The reason perhaps why we know so little of Shakespeare—compared with Donne or Ben Jonson or Milton—is that his grudges and spites and antipathies are hidden from us. We are not held up by some ‘revelation’ which reminds us of the writer. All desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance was fired out of him and consumed. Therefore his poetry flows from him free and unimpeded. If ever a human being got his work expressed completely, it was Shakespeare. If ever a mind was incandescent, unimpeded, I thought, turning again to the bookcase, it was Shakespeare’s mind.

Four

That one would find any woman in that state of mind in the sixteenth century was obviously impossible. One has only to think of the Elizabethan tombstones with all those children kneeling with clasped hands; and their early deaths; and to see their houses with their dark, cramped rooms, to realize that no woman could have written poetry then. What one would expect to find would be that rather later perhaps some great lady would take advantage of her comparative freedom and comfort to publish something with her name to it and risk being thought a monster. Men, of course, are not snobs, I continued, carefully eschewing ‘the arrant feminism’ of Miss Rebecca West; but they appreciate with sympathy for the most part the efforts of a countess to write verse. One would expect to find a lady of title meeting with far greater encouragement than an unknown Miss Austen or a Miss Brontë at that time would have met with. But one would also expect to find that her mind was disturbed by alien emotions like fear and hatred and that her poems showed traces of that disturbance. Here is Lady Winchilsea, for example, I thought, taking down her poems. She was born in the year 1661; she was noble both by birth and by marriage; she was childless; she wrote poetry, and one has only to open her poetry to find her bursting out in indignation against the position of women:

How we are fallen! fallen by mistaken rules,

And Education’s more than Nature’s fools;

Debarred from all improvements of the mind,

And to be dull, expected and designed;

And if someone would soar above the rest,

With warmer fancy, and ambition pressed,

So strong the opposing faction still appears,

The hopes to thrive can ne’er outweigh the fears.

Clearly her mind has by no means ‘consumed all impediments and become incandescent’. On the contrary, it is harassed and distracted with hates and grievances. The human race is split up for her into two parties. Men are the ‘opposing faction’; men are hated and feared, because they have the power to bar her way to what she wants to do—which is to write.

Alas! a woman that attempts the pen,

Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed,

The fault can by no virtue be redeemed.

They tell us we mistake our sex and way;

Good breeding, fashion, dancing, dressing, play,

Are the accomplishments we should desire;

To write, or read, or think, or to enquire,

Would cloud our beauty, and exhaust our time,

And interrupt the conquests of our prime.

Whilst the dull manage of a servile house

Is held by some our utmost art and use.

Indeed she has to encourage herself to write by supposing that what she writes will never be published; to soothe herself with the sad chant:

To some few friends, and to thy sorrows sing,

For groves of laurel thou wert never meant;

Be dark enough thy shades, and be thou there content.

Yet it is clear that could she have freed her mind from hate and fear and not heaped it with bitterness and resentment, the fire was hot within her. Now and again words issue of pure poetry:

Nor will in fading silks compose,

Faintly the inimitable rose.

— they are rightly praised by Mr Murry, and Pope, it is thought, remembered and appropriated those others:

Now the jonquille o’ercomes the feeble brain;

We faint beneath the aromatic pain.

It was a thousand pities that the woman who could write like that, whose mind was tuned to nature and reflection, should have been forced to anger and bitterness. But how could she have helped herself? I asked, imagining the sneers and the laughter, the adulation of the toadies, the scepticism of the professional poet. She must have shut herself up in a room in the country to write, and been torn asunder by bitterness and scruples perhaps, though her husband was of the kindest, and their married life perfection. She ‘must have’, I say, because when one comes to seek out the facts about Lady Winchilsea, one finds, as usual, that almost nothing is known about her. She suffered terribly from melancholy, which we can explain at least to some extent when we find her telling us how in the grip of it she would imagine:

My lines decried, and my employment thought

An useless folly or presumptuous fault:

The employment, which was thus censured, was, as far as one can see, the harmless one of rambling about the fields and dreaming:

My hand delights to trace unusual things,

And deviates from the known and common way,

Nor will in fading silks compose,

Faintly the inimitable rose.

Naturally, if that was her habit and that was her delight, she could only expect to be laughed at; and, accordingly, Pope or Gay is said to have satirized her ‘as a blue-stocking with an itch for scribbling’. Also it is thought that she offended Gay by laughing at him. She said that his Triviashowed that ‘he was more proper to walk before a chair than to ride in one’. But this is all ‘dubious gossip’ and, says Mr Murry, ‘uninteresting’. But there I do not agree with him, for I should have liked to have had more even of dubious gossip so that I might have found out or made up some image of this melancholy lady, who loved wandering in the fields and thinking about unusual things and scorned, so rashly, so unwisely, ‘the dull manage of a servile house’. But she became diffuse, Mr Murry says. Her gift is all grown about with weeds and bound with briars. It had no chance of showing itself for the fine distinguished gift it was. And so, putting, her back on the shelf, I turned to the other great lady, the Duchess whom Lamb loved, harebrained, fantastical Margaret of Newcastle, her elder, but her contemporary. They were very different, but alike in this that both were noble and both childless, and both were married to the best of husbands. In both burnt the same passion for poetry and both are disfigured and deformed by the same causes. Open the Duchess and one finds the same outburst of rage. ‘Women live like Bats or Owls, labour like Beasts, and die like Worms. . . . ’ Margaret too might have been a poet; in our day all that activity would have turned a wheel of some sort. As it was, what could bind, tame or civilize for human use that wild, generous, untutored intelligence? It poured itself out, higgledy-piggledy, in torrents of rhyme and prose, poetry and philosophy which stand congealed in quartos and folios that nobody ever reads. She should have had a microscope put in her hand. She should have been taught to look at the stars and reason scientifically. Her wits were turned with solitude and freedom. No one checked her. No one taught her. The professors fawned on her. At Court they jeered at her. Sir Egerton Brydges complained of her coarseness —’as flowing from a female of high rank brought up in the Courts’. She shut herself up at Welbeck alone.

What a vision of loneliness and riot the thought of Margaret Cavendish brings to mind! as if some giant cucumber had spread itself over all the roses and carnations in the garden and choked them to death. What a waste that the woman who wrote ‘the best bred women are those whose minds are civilest’ should have frittered her time away scribbling nonsense and plunging ever deeper into obscurity and folly till the people crowded round her coach when she issued out. Evidently the crazy Duchess became a bogey to frighten clever girls with. Here, I remembered, putting away the Duchess and opening Dorothy Osborne’s letters, is Dorothy writing to Temple about the Duchess’s new book. ‘Sure the poore woman is a little distracted, shee could never bee soe rediculous else as to venture at writeing book’s and in verse too, if I should not sleep this fortnight I should not come to that.’

And so, since no woman of sense and modesty could write books, Dorothy, who was sensitive and melancholy, the very opposite of the Duchess in temper, wrote nothing. Letters did not count. A woman might write letters while she was sitting by her father’s sick-bed. She could write them by the fire whilst the men talked without disturbing them. The strange thing is, I thought, turning over the pages of Dorothy’s letters, what a gift that untaught and solitary girl had for the framing of a sentence, for the fashioning of a scene. Listen to her running on:

‘After dinner wee sitt and talk till Mr B. com’s in question and then I am gon. the heat of the day is spent in reading or working and about sixe or seven a Clock, I walke out into a Common that lyes hard by the house where a great many young wenches keep Sheep and Cow’s and sitt in the shades singing of Ballads; I goe to them and compare their voyces and Beauty’s to some Ancient Shepherdesses that I have read of and finde a vaste difference there, but trust mee I think these are as innocent as those could bee. I talke to them, and finde they want nothing to make them the happiest People in the world, but the knoledge that they are soe. most commonly when we are in the middest of our discourse one looks aboute her and spyes her Cow’s goeing into the Corne and then away they all run, as if they had wing’s at theire heels. I that am not soe nimble stay behinde, and when I see them driveing home theire Cattle I think tis time for mee to retyre too. when I have supped I goe into the Garden and soe to the syde of a small River that runs by it where I sitt downe and wish you with mee. . . . ’

One could have sworn that she had the makings of a writer in her. But ‘if I should not sleep this fortnight I should not come to that’— one can measure the opposition that was in the air to a woman writing when one finds that even a woman with a great turn for writing has brought herself to believe that to write a book was to be ridiculous, even to show oneself distracted. And so we come, I continued, replacing the single short volume of Dorothy Osborne’s letters upon the shelf, to Mrs Behn.

And with Mrs Behn we turn a very important corner on the road. We leave behind, shut up in their parks among their folios, those solitary great ladies who wrote without audience or criticism, for their own delight alone. We come to town and rub shoulders with ordinary people in the streets. Mrs Behn was a middle-class woman with all the plebeian virtues of humour, vitality and courage; a woman forced by the death of her husband and some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits. She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote, even the splendid ‘A Thousand Martyrs I have made’, or ‘Love in Fantastic Triumph sat’, for here begins the freedom of the mind, or rather the possibility that in the course of time the mind will be free to write what it likes. For now that Aphra Behn had done it, girls could go to their parents and say, You need not give me an allowance; I can make money by my pen. Of course the answer for many years to come was, Yes, by living the life of Aphra Behn! Death would be better! and the door was slammed faster than ever. That profoundly interesting subject, the value that men set upon women’s chastity and its effect upon their education, here suggests itself for discussion, and might provide an interesting book if any student at Girton or Newnham cared to go into the matter. Lady Dudley, sitting in diamonds among the midges of a Scottish moor, might serve for frontispiece. Lord Dudley, The Times said when Lady Dudley died the other day, ‘a man of cultivated taste and many accomplishments, was benevolent and bountiful, but whimsically despotic. He insisted upon his wife’s wearing full dress, even at the remotest shooting-lodge in the Highlands; he loaded her with gorgeous jewels’, and so on, ‘he gave her everything—always excepting any measure of responsibility’. Then Lord Dudley had a stroke and she nursed him and ruled his estates with supreme competence for ever after. That whimsical despotism was in the nineteenth century too.

But to return. Aphra Behn proved that money could be made by writing at the sacrifice, perhaps, of certain agreeable qualities; and so by degrees writing became not merely a sign of folly and a distracted mind, but was of practical importance. A husband might die, or some disaster overtake the family. Hundreds of women began as the eighteenth century drew on to add to their pin money, or to come to the rescue of their families by making translations or writing the innumerable had novels which have ceased to be recorded even in text-books, but are to be picked up in the fourpenny boxes in the Charing Cross Road. The extreme activity of mind which showed itself in the later eighteenth century among women—the talking, and the meeting, the writing of essays on Shakespeare, the translating of the classics—was founded on the solid fact that women could make money by writing. Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for. It might still be well to sneer at ‘blue stockings with an itch for scribbling’, but it could not be denied that they could put money in their purses. Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century a change came about which, if I were rewriting history, I should describe more fully and think of greater importance than the Crusades or the Wars of the Roses.

The middle-class woman began to write. For if Pride and Prejudicematters, and Middlemarch and Villette and Wuthering Heights matter, then it matters far more than I can prove in an hour’s discourse that women generally, and not merely the lonely aristocrat shut up in her country house among her folios and her flatterers, took to writing. Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontës and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice. Jane Austen should have laid a wreath upon the grave of Fanny Burney, and George Eliot done homage to the robust shade of Eliza Carter—the valiant old woman who tied a bell to her bedstead in order that she might wake early and learn Creek. All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she—shady and amorous as she was.—who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you to-night: Earn five hundred a year by your wits.

Here, then, one had reached the early nineteenth century. And here, for the first time, I found several shelves given up entirely to the works of women. But why, I could not help asking, as I ran my eyes over them, were they, with very few exceptions, all novels? The original impulse was to poetry. The ‘supreme head of song’ was a poetess. Both in France and in England the women poets precede the women novelists. Moreover, I thought, looking at the four famous names, what had George Eliot in common with Emily Brontë? Did not Charlotte Brontë fail entirely to understand Jane Austen? Save for the possibly relevant fact that not one of them had a child, four more incongruous characters could not have met together in a’ room so much so that it is tempting to invent a meeting and a dialogue between them. Yet by some strange force they were all compelled when they wrote, to write novels. Had it something to do with being born of the middle class, ‘I asked; and with the fact, which Miss Emily Davies a little later was so strikingly to demonstrate, that the middleclass family in the early nineteenth century was possessed only of a single sitting-room between them? If a woman wrote, she would have to write in the common sitting-room. And, as Miss Nightingale was so vehemently to complain—”women never have an half hour . . . that they can call their own”— she was always interrupted. Still it would be easier to write prose and fiction there than to write poetry or a play. Less concentration is required. Jane Austen wrote like that to the end of her days. ‘How she was able to effect all this’, her nephew writes in his Memoir, ‘is surprising, for she had no separate study to repair to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions. She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by servants or visitors or any persons beyond her own family party.8 Jane Austen hid her manuscripts or covered them with a piece of blotting-paper. Then, again, all the literary training that a woman had in the early nineteenth century was training in the observation of character, in the analysis of emotion. Her sensibility had been educated for centuries by the influences of the common sitting-room. People’s feelings were impressed on her; personal relations were always before her eyes. Therefore, when the middle-class Woman took to writing, she naturally wrote novels, even though, as seems evident enough, two of the four famous women here named were not by nature novelists. Emily Brontë should have written poetic plays; the overflow of George Eliot’s capacious mind should have spread itself when the creative impulse was spent upon history or biography. They wrote novels, however; one may even go further, I said, taking Pride and Prejudice from the shelf, and say that they wrote good novels. Without boasting or giving pain to the opposite sex, one may say that Pride and Prejudice is a good book. At any rate, one would not have been ashamed to have been caught in the act of writing Pride and Prejudice. Yet Jane Austen was glad that a hinge creaked, so that she might hide her manuscript before anyone came in. To Jane Austen there was something discreditable in writing Pride and Prejudice. And, I wondered, would Pride and Prejudice have been a better novel if Jane Austen had not thought it necessary to hide her manuscript from visitors? I read a page or two to see; but I could not find any signs that her circumstances had harmed her work in the slightest. That, perhaps, was the chief miracle about it. Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare. If Jane Austen suffered in any way from her circumstances it was in the narrowness of life that was imposed upon her. It was impossible for a woman to go about alone. She never travelled; she never drove through London in an omnibus or had luncheon in a shop by herself. But perhaps it was the nature of Jane Austen not to want what she had not. Her gift and her circumstances matched each other completely. But I doubt whether that was true of Charlotte Brontë, I said, opening Jane Eyre and laying it beside Pride and Prejudice.

8 Memoir of Jane Austen, by her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh.

I opened it at chapter twelve and my eye was caught by the phrase ‘Anybody may blame me who likes’. What were they blaming Charlotte Brontë for? I wondered. And I read how Jane Eyre used to go up on to the roof when Mrs Fairfax was making jellies and looked over the fields at the distant view. And then she longed—and it was for this that they blamed her—that ‘then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen: that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs Fairfax, and what was good in Adele; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.

‘Who blames me? Many, no doubt, and I shall he called discontented. I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes. . . .

‘It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.

‘When thus alone I not unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh. . . . ’

That is an awkward break, I thought. It is upsetting to come upon Grace Poole all of a sudden. The continuity is disturbed. One might say, I continued, laying the book down beside Pride and Prejudice, that the woman who wrote those pages had more genius in her than Jane Austen; but if one reads them over and marks that jerk in them, that indignation, one sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire. Her books will be deformed and twisted. She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters. She is at war with her lot. How could she help but die young, cramped and thwarted?

One could not but play for a moment with the thought of what might have happened if Charlotte Brontë had possessed say three hundred a year—but the foolish woman sold the copyright of her novels outright for fifteen hundred pounds; had somehow possessed more knowledge of the busy world, and towns and regions full of life; more practical experience, and intercourse with her kind and acquaintance with a variety of character. In those words she puts her finger exactly not only upon her own defects as a novelist but upon those of her sex at that time. She knew, no one better, how enormously her genius would have profited if it had not spent itself in solitary visions over distant fields; if experience and intercourse and travel had been granted her. But they were not granted; they were withheld; and we must accept the fact that all those good novels, Villette, Emma, Wuthering Heights, Middlemarch, were written by women without more experience of life than could enter the house of a respectable clergyman; written too in the common sitting-room of that respectable house and by women so poor that they could not afford to, buy more than a few quires of paper at a time upon which to write Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre. One of them, it is true, George Eliot, escaped after much tribulation, but only to a secluded villa in St John’s Wood. And there she settled down in the shadow of the world’s disapproval. ‘I wish it to be understood’, she wrote, ‘that I should never invite anyone to come and see me who did not ask for the invitation’; for was she not living in sin with a married man and might not the sight of her damage the chastity of Mrs Smith or whoever it might be that chanced to call? One must submit to the social convention, and be ‘cut off from what is called the world’. At the same time, on the other side of Europe, there was a young man living freely with this gypsy or with that great lady; going to the wars; picking up unhindered and uncensored all that varied experience of human life which served him so splendidly later when he came to write his books. Had Tolstoi lived at the Priory in seclusion with a married lady ‘cut off from what is called the world’, however edifying the moral lesson, he could scarcely, I thought, have written War and Peace.

But one could perhaps go a little deeper into the question of novel-writing and the effect of sex upon the novelist. If one shuts one’s eyes and thinks of the novel as a whole, it would seem to be a creation owning a certain looking-glass likeness to life, though of course with simplifications and distortions innumerable. At any rate, it is a structure leaving a shape on the mind’s eye, built now in squares, now pagoda shaped, now throwing out wings and arcades, now solidly compact and domed like the Cathedral of Saint Sofia at Constantinople. This shape, I thought, thinking back over certain famous novels, starts in one the kind of emotion that is appropriate to it. But that emotion at once blends itself with others, for the ‘shape’ is not made by the relation of stone to stone, but by the relation of human being to human being. Thus a novel starts in us all sorts of antagonistic and opposed emotions. Life conflicts with something that is not life. Hence the difficulty of coming to any agreement about novels, and the immense sway that our private prejudices have upon us. On the one hand we feel You—John the hero—must live, or I shall be in the depths of despair. On the other, we feel, Alas, John, you must die, because the shape of the book requires it. Life conflicts with something that is not life. Then since life it is in part, we judge it as life. James is the sort of man I most detest, one says. Or, This is a farrago of absurdity. I could never feel anything of the sort myself. The whole structure, it is obvious, thinking back on any famous novel, is one of infinite complexity, because it is thus made up of so many different judgements, of so many different kinds of emotion. The wonder is that any book so composed holds together for more than a year or two, or can possibly mean to the English reader what it means for the Russian or the Chinese. But they do hold together occasionally very remarkably. And what holds them together in these rare instances of survival (I was thinking of War and Peace) is something that one calls integrity, though it has nothing to do with paying one’s bills or behaving honourably in an emergency. What one means by integrity, in the case of the novelist, is the conviction that he gives one that this is the truth. Yes, one feels, I should never have thought that this could be so; I have never known people behaving like that. But you have convinced me that so it is, so it happens. One holds every phrase, every scene to the light as one reads—for Nature seems, very oddly, to have provided us with an inner light by which to judge of the novelist’s integrity or disintegrity. Or perhaps it is rather that Nature, in her most irrational mood, has traced in invisible ink on the walls of the mind a premonition which these great artists confirm; a sketch which only needs to be held to the fire of genius to become visible. When one so exposes it and sees it come to life one exclaims in rapture, But this is what I have always felt and known and desired! And one boils over with excitement, and, shutting the book even with a kind of reverence as if it were something very precious, a stand-by to return to as long as one lives, one puts it back on the shelf, I said, taking War and Peace and putting it back in its place. If, on the other hand, these poor sentences that one takes and tests rouse first a quick and eager response with their bright colouring and their dashing gestures but there they stop: something seems to check them in their development: or if they bring to light only a faint scribble in that corner and a blot over there, and nothing appears whole and entire, then one heaves a sigh of disappointment and says. Another failure. This novel has come to grief somewhere.

And for the most part, of course, novels de come to grief somewhere. The imagination falters under the enormous strain. The insight is confused; it can no longer distinguish between the true and the false, it has no longer the strength to go on with the vast labour that calls at every moment for the use of so many different faculties. But how would all this be affected by the sex of the novelist, I wondered, looking at Jane Eyre and the others. Would the fact of her sex in any way interfere with the integrity of a woman novelist—that integrity which I take to be the backbone of the writer? Now, in the passages I have quoted from Jane Eyre, it is clear that anger was tampering with the integrity of Charlotte Brontë the novelist. She left her story, to which her entire devotion was due, to attend to some personal grievance. She remembered that she had been starved of her proper due of experience—she had been made to stagnate in a parsonage mending stockings when she wanted to wander free over the world. Her imagination swerved from indignation and we feel it swerve. But there were many more influences than anger tugging at her imagination and deflecting it from its path. Ignorance, for instance. The portrait of Rochester is drawn in the dark. We feel the influence of fear in it; just as we constantly feel an acidity which is the result of oppression, a buried suffering smouldering beneath her passion, a rancour which contracts those books, splendid as they are, with a spasm of pain.

And since a novel has this correspondence to real life, its values are to some extent those of real life. But it is obvious that the values of women differ very often from the values which have been made by the other sex; naturally, this is so. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail. Speaking crudely, football and sport are ‘important’; the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes ‘trivial’. And these values are inevitably transferred from life to fiction. This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room. A scene in a battle-field is more important than a scene in a shop—everywhere and much more subtly the difference of value persists. The whole structure, therefore, of the early nineteenth-century novel was raised, if one was a woman, by a mind which was slightly pulled from the straight, and made to alter its clear vision in deference to external authority. One has only to skim those old forgotten novels and listen to the tone of voice in which they are written to divine that the writer was meeting criticism; she was saying this by way of aggression, or that by way of conciliation. She was admitting that she was ‘only a woman’, or protesting that she was ‘as good as a man’. She met that criticism as her temperament dictated, with docility and diffidence, or with anger and emphasis. It does not matter which it was; she was thinking of something other than the thing itself. Down comes her book upon our heads. There was a flaw in the centre of it. And I thought of all the women’s novels that lie scattered, like small pock-marked apples in an orchard, about the second-hand book shops of London. It was the flaw in the centre that had rotted them. She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others.

But how impossible it must have been for them not to budge either to the right or to the left. What genius, what integrity it must have required in face of all that criticism, in the midst of that purely patriarchal society, to hold fast to the thing as they saw it without shrinking. Only Jane Austen did it and Emily Brontë. It is another feather, perhaps the finest, in their caps. They wrote as women write, not as men write. Of all the thousand women who wrote novels then, they alone entirely ignored the perpetual admonitions of the eternal pedagogue—write this, think that. They alone were deaf to that persistent voice, now grumbling, now patronizing, now domineering, now grieved, now shocked, now angry, now avuncular, that voice which cannot let women alone, but must be at them, like some too-conscientious governess, adjuring them, like Sir Egerton Brydges, to be refined; dragging even into the criticism of poetry criticism of sex;9admonishing them, if they would be good and win, as I suppose, some shiny prize, to keep within certain limits which the gentleman in question thinks suitable —’ . . . female novelists should only aspire to excellence by courageously acknowledging the limitations of their sex’.10 That puts the matter in a nutshell, and when I tell you, rather to your surprise, that this sentence was written not in August 1828 but in August 1928, you will agree, I think, that however delightful it is to us now, it represents a vast body of opinion—I am not going to stir those old pools; I take only what chance has floated to my feet—that was far more vigorous and far more vocal a century ago. It would have needed a very stalwart young woman in 1828 to disregard all those snubs and chidings and promises of prizes. One must have been something of a firebrand to say to oneself, Oh, but they can’t buy literature too. Literature is open to everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt, that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

9 [She] has a metaphysical purpose, and that is a dangerous obsession, especially with a woman, for women rarely possess men’s healthy love of rhetoric. It is a strange lack in the sex which is in other things more primitive and more materialistic.’— New Criterion, June 1928.

10 ‘If, like the reporter, you believe that female novelists should only aspire to excellence by courageously acknowledging the limitations of their sex (Jane Austen [has] demonstrated how gracefully this gesture can be accomplished . . . ).’— Life and Letters, August 1928.

But whatever effect discouragement and criticism had upon their writing—and I believe that they had a very great effect—that was unimportant compared with the other difficulty which faced them (I was still considering those early nineteenth-century novelists) when they came to set their thoughts on paper—that is that they had no tradition behind them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help. For we think back through our mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to the great men writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure. Lamb, Browne, Thackeray, Newman, Sterne, Dickens, De Quincey—whoever it may be—never helped a woman yet, though she may have learnt a few tricks of them and adapted them to her use. The weight, the pace, the stride of a man’s mind are too unlike her own for her to lift anything substantial from him successfully. The ape is too distant to be sedulous. Perhaps the first thing she would find, setting pen to paper, was that there was no common sentence ready for her use. All the great novelists like Thackeray and Dickens and Balzac have written a natural prose, swift but not slovenly, expressive but not precious, taking their own tint without ceasing to be common property. They have based it on the sentence that was current at the time. The sentence that was current at the beginning of the nineteenth century ran something like this perhaps: ‘The grandeur of their works was an argument with them, not to stop short, but to proceed. They could have no higher excitement or satisfaction than in the exercise of their art and endless generations of truth and beauty. Success prompts to exertion; and habit facilitates success.’ That is a man’s sentence; behind it one can see Johnson, Gibbon and the rest. It was a sentence that was unsuited for a woman’s use. Charlotte Brontë, with all her splendid gift for prose, stumbled and fell with that clumsy weapon in her hands. George Eliot committed atrocities with it that beggar description. Jane Austen looked at it and laughed at it and devised a perfectly natural, shapely sentence proper for her own use and never departed from it. Thus, with less genius for writing than Charlotte Brontë, she got infinitely more said. Indeed, since freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art, such a lack of tradition, such a scarcity and inadequacy of tools, must have told enormously upon the writing of women. Moreover, a book is not made of sentences laid end to end, but of sentences built, if an image helps, into arcades or domes. And this shape too has been made by men out of their own needs for their own uses. There is no reason to think that the form of the epic or of the poetic play suit a woman any more than the sentence suits her. But all the older forms of literature were hardened and set by the time she became a writer. The novel alone was young enough to be soft in her hands another reason, perhaps, why she wrote novels. Yet who shall say that even now ‘the novel’ (I give it inverted commas to mark my sense of the words’ inadequacy), who shall say that even this most pliable of all forms is rightly shaped for her use? No doubt we shall find her knocking that into shape for herself when she has the free use of her limbs; and providing some new vehicle, not necessarily in verse, for the poetry in her. For it is the poetry that is still denied outlet. And I went on to ponder how a woman nowadays would write a poetic tragedy in five acts. Would she use verse?—would she not use prose rather?

But these are difficult questions which lie in the twilight of the future. I must leave them, if only because they stimulate me to wander from my subject into trackless forests where I shall be lost and, very likely, devoured by wild beasts. I do not want, and I am sure that you do not want me, to broach that very dismal subject, the future of fiction, so that I will only pause here one moment to draw your attention to the great part which must be played in that future so far as women are concerned by physical conditions. The book has somehow to be adapted to the body, and at a venture one would say that women’s books should be shorter, more concentrated, than those of men, and framed so that they do not need long hours of steady and uninterrupted work. For interruptions there will always be. Again, the nerves that feed the brain would seem to differ in men and women, and if you are going to make them work their best and hardest, you must find out what treatment suits them—whether these hours of lectures, for instance, which the monks devised, presumably, hundreds of years ago, suit them—what alternations of work and rest they need, interpreting rest not as doing nothing but as doing something but something that is different; and what should that difference be? All this should be discussed and discovered; all this is part of the question of women and fiction. And yet, I continued, approaching the bookcase again, where shall I find that elaborate study of the psychology of women by a woman? If through their incapacity to play football women are not going to be allowed to practise medicine —

Happily my thoughts were now given another turn.

Five

I had come at last, in the course of this rambling, to the shelves which hold books by the living; by women and by men; for there are almost as many books written by women now as by men. Or if that is not yet quite true, if the male is still the voluble sex, it is certainly true that women no longer write novels solely. There are Jane Harrison’s books on Greek archaeology; Vernon Lee’s books on aesthetics; Gertrude Bell’s books on Persia. There are books on all sorts of subjects which a generation ago no woman could have touched. There are poems and plays and criticism; there are histories and biographies, books of travel and books of scholarship and research; there are even a few philosophies and books about science and economics. And though novels predominate, novels themselves may very well have changed from association with books of a different feather. The natural simplicity, the epic age of women’s writing, may have gone. Reading and criticism may have given her a wider range, a greater subtlety. The impulse towards autobiography may be spent. She may be beginning to use writing as an art, not as a method of self-expression. Among these new novels one might find an answer to several such questions.

I took down one of them at random. It stood at the very end of the shelf, was called Life’s Adventure, or some such title, by Mary Carmichael, and was published in this very month of October. It seems to be her first book, I said to myself, but one must read it as if it were the last volume in a fairly long series, continuing all those other books that I have been glancing at—Lady Winchilsea’s poems and Aphra Behn’s plays and the novels of the four great novelists. For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately. And I must also consider her—this unknown woman—as the descendant of all those other women whose circumstances I have been glancing at and see what she inherits of their characteristics and restrictions. So, with a sigh, because novels so often provide an anodyne and not an antidote, glide one into torpid slumbers instead of rousing one with a burning brand, I settled down with a notebook and a pencil to make what I could of Mary Carmichael’s first novel, Life’s Adventure.

To begin with, I ran my eye up and down the page. I am going to get the hang of her sentences first, I said, before I load my memory with blue eyes and brown and the relationship that there may be between Chloe and Roger. There will be time for that when I have decided whether she has a pen in her hand or a pickaxe. So I tried a sentence or two on my tongue. Soon it was obvious that something was not quite in order. The smooth gliding of sentence after sentence was interrupted. Something tore, something scratched; a single word here and there flashed its torch in my eyes. She was ‘unhanding’ herself as they say in the old plays. She is like a person striking a match that will not light, I thought. But why, I asked her as if she were present, are Jane Austen’s sentences not of the right shape for you? Must they all be scrapped because Emma and Mr Woodhouse are dead? Alas, I sighed, that it should be so. For while Jane Austen breaks from melody to melody as Mozart from song to song, to read this writing was like being out at sea in an open boat. Up one went, down one sank. This terseness, this short-windedness, might mean that she was afraid of something; afraid of being called ‘sentimental’ perhaps; or she remembers that women’s writing has been called flowery and so provides a superfluity of thorns; but until I have read a scene with some care, I cannot be sure whether she is being herself or someone else. At any rate, she does not lower one’s vitality, I thought, reading more carefully. But she is heaping up too many facts. She will not be able to use half of them in a book of this size. (It was about half the length of Jane Eyre.) However, by some means or other she succeeded in getting us all—Roger, Chloe, Olivia, Tony and Mr Bigham—in a canoe up the river. Wait a moment, I said, leaning back in my chair, I must consider the whole thing more carefully before I go any further.

I am almost sure, I said to myself, that Mary Carmichael is playing a trick on us. For I feel as one feels on a switchback railway when the car, instead of sinking, as one has been led to expect, swerves up again. Mary is tampering with the expected sequence. First she broke the sentence; now she has broken the sequence. Very well, she has every right to do both these things if she does them not for the sake of breaking, but for the sake of creating. Which of the two it is I cannot be sure until she has faced herself with a situation. I will give her every liberty, I said, to choose what that situation shall be; she shall make it of tin cans and old kettles if she likes; but she must convince me that she believes it to be a situation; and then when she has made it she must face it. She must jump. And, determined to do my duty by her as reader if she would do her duty by me as writer, I turned the page and read . . . I am sorry to break off so abruptly. Are there no men present? Do you promise me that behind that red curtain over there the figure of Sir Charles Biron is not concealed? We are all women you assure me? Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these —’Chloe liked Olivia . . . ’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.

‘Chloe liked Olivia,’ I read. And then it struck me how immense a change was there. Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for the first time in literature. Cleopatra did not like Octavia. And how completely Antony and Cleopatrawould have been altered had she done so! As it is, I thought, letting my mind, I am afraid, wander a little from Life’s Adventure, the whole thing is simplified, conventionalized, if one dared say it, absurdly. Cleopatra’s only feeling about Octavia is one of jealousy. Is she taller than I am? How does she do her hair? The play, perhaps, required no more. But how interesting it would have been if the relationship between the two women had been more complicated. All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple. So much has been left out, unattempted. And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. There is an attempt at it in Diana of the Crossways. They are confidantes, of course, in Racine and the Greek tragedies. They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that; and how little can a man know even of that when he observes it through the black or rosy spectacles which sex puts upon his nose. Hence, perhaps, the peculiar nature of woman in fiction; the astonishing extremes of her beauty and horror; her alternations between heavenly goodness and hellish depravity—for so a lover would see her as his love rose or sank, was prosperous or unhappy. This is not so true of the nineteenth-century novelists, of course. Woman becomes much more various and complicated there. Indeed it was the desire to write about women perhaps that led men by degrees to abandon the poetic drama which, with its violence, could make so little use of them, and to devise the novel as a more fitting receptacle. Even so it remains obvious, even in the writing of Proust, that a man is terribly hampered and partial in his knowledge of women, as a woman in her knowledge of men.

Also, I continued, looking down at the page again, it is becoming evident that women, like men, have other interests besides the perennial interests of domesticity. ‘Chloe liked Olivia. They shared a laboratory together. . . . ’ I read on and discovered that these two young women were engaged in mincing liver, which is, it seems, a cure for pernicious anaemia; although one of them was married and had—I think I am right in stating—two small children. Now all that, of course, has had to be left out, and thus the splendid portrait of the fictitious woman is much too simple and much too monotonous. Suppose, for instance, that men were only represented in literature as the lovers of women, and were never the friends of men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers; how few parts in the plays of Shakespeare could be allotted to them; how literature would suffer! We might perhaps have most of Othello; and a good deal of Antony; but no Caesar, no Brutus, no Hamlet, no Lear, no Jaques—literature would be incredibly impoverished, as indeed literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women. Married against their will, kept in one room, and to one occupation, how could a dramatist give a full or interesting or truthful account of them? Love was the only possible interpreter. The poet was forced to be passionate or bitter, unless indeed he chose to ‘hate women’, which meant more often than not that he was unattractive to them.

Now if Chloe likes Olivia and they share a laboratory, which of itself will make their friendship more varied and lasting because it will be less personal; if Mary Carmichael knows how to write, and I was beginning to enjoy some quality in her style; if she has a room to herself, of which I am not quite sure; if she has five hundred a year of her own—but that remains to be proved—then I think that something of great importance has happened.

For if Chloe likes Olivia and Mary Carmichael knows how to express it she will light a torch in that vast chamber where nobody has yet been. It is all half lights and profound shadows like those serpentine caves where one goes with a candle peering up and down, not knowing where one is stepping. And I began to read the book again, and read how Chloe watched Olivia put a jar on a shelf and say how it was time to go home to her children. That is a sight that has never been seen since the world began, I exclaimed. And I watched too, very curiously. For I wanted to see how Mary Carmichael set to work to catch those unrecorded gestures, those unsaid or half-said words, which form themselves, no more palpably than the shadows of moths on the ceiling, when women are alone, unlit by the capricious and coloured light of the other sex. She will need to hold her breath, I said, reading on, if she is to do it; for women are so suspicious of any interest that has not some obvious motive behind it, so terribly accustomed to concealment and suppression, that they are off at the flicker of an eye turned observingly in their direction. The only way for you to do it, I thought, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were there, would be to talk of something else, looking steadily out of the window, and thus note, not with a pencil in a notebook, but in the shortest of shorthand, in words that are hardly syllabled yet, what happens when Olivia this organism that has been under the shadow of the rock these million years—feels the light fall on it, and sees coming her way a piece of strange food—knowledge, adventure, art. And she reaches out for it, I thought, again raising my eyes from the page, and has to devise some entirely new combination of her resources, so highly developed for other purposes, so as to absorb the new into the old without disturbing the infinitely intricate and elaborate balance of the whole.

But, alas, I had done what I had determined not to do; I had slipped unthinkingly into praise of my own sex. ‘Highly developed’—’infinitely intricate’— such are undeniably terms of praise, and to praise one’s own sex is always suspect, often silly; moreover, in this case, how could one justify it? One could not go to the map and say Columbus discovered America and Columbus was a woman; or take an apple and remark, Newton discovered the laws of gravitation and Newton was a woman; or look into the sky and say aeroplanes are flying overhead and aeroplanes were invented by women. There is no mark on the wall to measure the precise height of women. There are no yard measures, neatly divided into the fractions of an inch, that one can lay against the qualities of a good mother or the devotion of a daughter, or the fidelity of a sister, or the capacity of a housekeeper. Few women even now have been graded at the universities; the great trials of the professions, army and navy, trade, politics and diplomacy have hardly tested them. They remain even at this moment almost unclassified. But if I want to know all that a human being can tell me about Sir Hawley Butts, for instance, I have only to open Burke or Debrett and I shall find that he took such and such a degree; owns a hall; has an heir; was Secretary to a Board; represented Great Britain in Canada; and has received a certain number of degrees, offices, medals and other distinctions by which his merits are stamped upon him indelibly. Only Providence can know more about Sir Hawley Butts than that.

When, therefore, I say ‘highly developed’, ‘infinitely intricate’ of women, I am unable to verify my words either in Whitaker, Debrett or the University Calendar. In this predicament what can I do? And I looked at the bookcase again. There were the biographies: Johnson and Goethe and Carlyle and Sterne and Cowper and Shelley and Voltaire and Browning and many others. And I began thinking of all those great men who have for one reason or another admired, sought out, lived with, confided in, made love to, written of, trusted in, and shown what can only be described as some need of and dependence upon certain persons of the opposite sex. That all these relationships were absolutely Platonic I would not affirm, and Sir William Joynson Hicks would probably deny. But we should wrong these illustrious men very greatly if we insisted that they got nothing from these alliances but comfort, flattery and the pleasures of the body. What they got, it is obvious, was something that their own sex was unable to supply; and it would not be rash, perhaps, to define it further, without quoting the doubtless rhapsodical words of the poets, as some stimulus; some renewal of creative power which is in the gift only of the opposite sex to bestow. He would open the door of drawing-room or nursery, I thought, and find her among her children perhaps, or with a piece of embroidery on her knee—at any rate, the centre of some different order and system of life, and the contrast between this world and his own, which might be the law courts or the House of Commons, would at once refresh and invigorate; and there would follow, even in the simplest talk, such a natural difference of opinion that the dried ideas in him would be fertilized anew; and the sight of her creating in a different medium from his own would so quicken his creative power that insensibly his sterile mind would begin to plot again, and he would find the phrase or the scene which was lacking when he put on his hat to visit her. Every Johnson has his Thrale, and holds fast to her for some such reasons as these, and when the Thrale marries her Italian music master Johnson goes half mad with rage and disgust, not merely that he will miss his pleasant evenings at Streatham, but that the light of his life will be ‘as if gone out’.

And without being Dr Johnson or Goethe or Carlyle or Voltaire, one may feel, though very differently from these great men, the nature of this intricacy and the power of this highly developed creative faculty among women. One goes into the room—but the resources of the English language would be much put to the stretch, and whole flights of words would need to wing their way illegitimately into existence before a woman could say what happens when she goes into a room. The rooms differ so completely; they are calm or thunderous; open on to the sea, or, on the contrary, give on to a prison yard; are hung with washing; or alive with opals and silks; are hard as horsehair or soft as feathers—one has only to go into any room in any street for the whole of that extremely complex force of femininity to fly in one’s face. How should it be otherwise? For women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics. But this creative power differs greatly from the creative power of men. And one must conclude that it would be a thousand pities if it were hindered or wasted, for it was won by centuries of the most drastic discipline, and there is nothing to take its place. It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities? For we have too much likeness as it is, and if an explorer should come back and bring word of other sexes looking through the branches of other trees at other skies, nothing would be of greater service to humanity; and we should have the immense pleasure into the bargain of watching Professor X rush for his measuring-rods to prove himself ‘superior’.

Mary Carmichael, I thought, still hovering at a little distance above the page, will have her work cut out for her merely as an observer. I am afraid indeed that she will be tempted to become, what I think the less interesting branch of the species—the naturalist-novelist, and not the contemplative. There are so many new facts for her to observe. She will not need to limit herself any longer to the respectable houses of the upper middle classes. She will go without kindness or condescension, but in the spirit of fellowship, into those small, scented rooms where sit the courtesan, the harlot and the lady with the pug dog. There they still sit in the rough and ready-made clothes that the male writer has had perforce to clap upon their shoulders. But Mary Carmichael will have out her scissors and fit them close to every hollow and angle. It will be a curious sight, when it comes, to see these women as they are, but we must wait a little, for Mary Carmichael will still be encumbered with that self-consciousness in the presence of ‘sin’ which is the legacy of our sexual barbarity. She will still wear the shoddy old fetters of class on her feet.

However, the majority of women are neither harlots nor courtesans; nor do they sit clasping pug dogs to dusty velvet all through the summer afternoon. But what do they do then? and there came to my mind’s eye one of those long streets somewhere south of the river whose infinite rows are innumerably populated. With the eye of the imagination I saw a very ancient lady crossing the street on the arm of a middle-aged woman, her daughter, perhaps, both so respectably booted and furred that their dressing in the afternoon must be a ritual, and the clothes themselves put away in cupboards with camphor, year after year, throughout the summer months. They cross the road when the lamps are being lit (for the dusk is their favourite hour), as they must have done year after year. The elder is close on eighty; but if one asked her what her life has meant to her, she would say that she remembered the streets lit for the battle of Balaclava, or had heard the guns fire in Hyde Park for the birth of King Edward the Seventh. And if one asked her, longing to pin down the moment with date and season, but what were you doing on the fifth of April 1868, or the second of November 1875, she would look vague and say that she could remember nothing. For all the dinners are cooked; the plates and cups washed; the children sent to school and gone out into the world. Nothing remains of it all. All has vanished. No biography or history has a word to say about it. And the novels, without meaning to, inevitably lie.

All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said, addressing Mary Carmichael as if she were present; and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo, and the rings embedded in their fat swollen fingers, talking with a gesticulation like the swing of Shakespeare’s words; or from the violet-sellers and match-sellers and old crones stationed under doorways; or from drifting girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women and the flickering lights of shop windows. All that you will have to explore, I said to Mary Carmichael, holding your torch firm in your hand. Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the everchanging and turning world of gloves and shoes and stuffs swaying up and down among the faint scents that come through chemists’ bottles down arcades of dress material over a floor of pseudo-marble. For in imagination I had gone into a shop; it was laid with black and white paving; it was hung, astonishingly beautifully, with coloured ribbons. Mary Carmichael might well have a look at that in passing, I thought, for it is a sight that would lend itself to the pen as fittingly as any snowy peak or rocky gorge in the Andes. And there is the girl behind the counter too—I would as soon have her true history as the hundred and fiftieth life of Napoleon or seventieth study of Keats and his use of Miltonic inversion which old Professor Z and his like are now inditing. And then I went on very warily, on the very tips of my toes (so cowardly am I, so afraid of the lash that was once almost laid on my own shoulders), to murmur that she should also learn to laugh, without bitterness, at the vanities—say rather at the peculiarities, for it is a less offensive word—of the other sex. For there is a spot the size of a shilling at the back of the head which one can never see for oneself. It is one of the good offices that sex can discharge for sex—to describe that spot the size of a shilling at the back of the head. Think how much women have profited by the comments of Juvenal; by the criticism of Strindberg. Think with what humanity and brilliancy men, from the earliest ages, have pointed out to women that dark place at the back of the head! And if Mary were very brave and very honest, she would go behind the other sex and tell us what she found there. A true picture of man as a whole can never be painted until a woman has described that spot the size of a shilling. Mr Woodhouse and Mr Casuabon are spots of that size and nature. Not of course that anyone in their senses would counsel her to hold up to scorn and ridicule of set purpose—literature shows the futility of what is written in that spirit. Be truthful, one would say, and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting. Comedy is bound to be enriched. New facts are bound to be discovered.

However, it was high time to lower my eyes to the page again. It would be better, instead of speculating what Mary Carmichael might write and should write, to see what in fact Mary Carmichael did write. So I began to read again. I remembered that I had certain grievances against her. She had broken up Jane Austen’s sentence, and thus given me no chance of pluming myself upon my impeccable taste, my fastidious ear. For it was useless to say, ‘Yes, yes, this is very nice; but Jane Austen wrote much better than you do’, when I had to admit that there was no point of likeness between them. Then she had gone further and broken the sequence—the expected order. Perhaps she had done this unconsciously, merely giving things their natural order, as a woman would, if she wrote like a woman. But the effect was somehow baffling; one could not see a wave heaping itself, a crisis coming round the next corner. Therefore I could not plume myself either upon the depths of my feelings and my profound knowledge of the human heart. For whenever I was about to feel the usual things in the usual places, about love, about death, the annoying creature twitched me away, as if the important point were just a little further on. And thus she made it impossible for me to roll out my sonorous phrases about ‘elemental feelings’, the ‘common stuff of humanity’, ‘the depths of the human heart’, and ail those other phrases which support us in our belief that, however clever we may be on top, we are very serious, very profound and very humane underneath. She made me feel, on the contrary, that instead of being serious and profound and humane, one might be—and the thought was far less seductive—merely lazy minded and conventional into the bargain.

But I read on, and noted certain other facts. She was no ‘genius’ that was evident. She had nothing like the love of Nature, the fiery imagination, the wild poetry, the brilliant wit, the brooding wisdom of her great predecessors, Lady Winchilsea, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Jane Austen and George Eliot; she could not write with the melody and the dignity of Dorothy Osborne—indeed she was no more than a clever girl whose books will no doubt be pulped by the publishers in ten years’ time. But, nevertheless, she had certain advantages which women of far greater gift lacked even half a century ago. Men were no longer to her ‘the opposing faction’; she need not waste her time railing against them; she need not climb on to the roof and ruin her peace of mind longing for travel, experience and a knowledge of the world and character that were denied her. Fear and hatred were almost gone, or traces of them showed only in a slight exaggeration of the joy of freedom, a tendency to the caustic and satirical, rather than to the romantic, in her treatment of the other sex. Then there could be no doubt that as a novelist she enjoyed some natural advantages of a high order. She had a sensibility that was very wide, eager and free. It responded to an almost imperceptible touch on it. It feasted like a plant newly stood in the air on every sight and sound that came its way. It ranged, too, very subtly and curiously, among almost unknown or unrecorded things; it lighted on small things and showed that perhaps they were not small after all. It brought buried things to light and made one wonder what need there had been to bury them. Awkward though she was and without the unconscious bearing of long descent which makes the least turn of the pen of a Thackeray or a Lamb delightful to the ear, she had—I began to think—mastered the first great lesson; she wrote as a woman, ‘but as a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman, so that her pages were full of that curious sexual quality which comes only when sex is unconscious of itself.

All this was to the good. But no abundance of sensation or fineness of perception would avail unless she could build up out of the fleeting and the personal the lasting edifice which remains unthrown. I had said that I would wait until she faced herself with ‘a situation’. And I meant by that until she proved by summoning, beckoning and getting together that she was not a skimmer of surfaces merely, but had looked beneath into the depths. Now is the time, she would say to herself at a certain moment, when without doing anything violent I can show the meaning of all this. And she would begin—how unmistakable that quickening is!—beckoning and summoning, and there would rise up in memory, half forgotten, perhaps quite trivial things in other chapters dropped by the way. And she would make their presence felt while someone sewed or smoked a pipe as naturally as possible, and one would feel, as she went on writing, as if one had gone to the top of the world and seen it laid out, very majestically, beneath.

At any rate, she was making the attempt. And as I watched her lengthening out for the test, I saw, but hoped that she did not see, the bishops and the deans, the doctors and the professors, the patriarchs and the pedagogues all at her shouting warning and advice. You can’t do this and you shan’t do that! Fellows and scholars only allowed on the grass! Ladies not admitted without a letter of introduction! Aspiring and graceful female novelists this way! So they kept at her like the crowd at a fence on the racecourse, and it was her trial to take her fence without looking to right or to left. If you stop to curse you are lost, I said to her; equally, if you stop to laugh. Hesitate or fumble and you are done for. Think only of the jump, I implored her, as if I had put the whole of my money on her back; and she went over it like a bird. But there was a fence beyond that and a fence beyond that. Whether she had the staying power I was doubtful, for the clapping and the crying were fraying to the nerves. But she did her best. Considering that Mary Carmichael was no genius, but an unknown girl writing her first novel in a bed-sitting-room, without enough of those desirable things, time, money and idleness, she did not do so badly, I thought.

Give her another hundred years, I concluded, reading the last chapter—people’s noses and bare shoulders showed naked against a starry sky, for someone had twitched the curtain in the drawing-room—give her a room of her own and five hundred a year, let her speak her mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and she will write a better book one of these days. She will be a poet, I said, putting Life’s Adventure, by Mary Carmichael, at the end of the shelf, in another hundred years’ time.

Six

Next day the light of the October morning was falling in dusty shafts through the uncurtained windows, and the hum of traffic rose from the street. London then was winding itself up again; the factory was astir; the machines were beginning. It was tempting, after all this reading, to look out of the window and see what London was doing on the morning of the 26th of October 1928. And what was London doing? Nobody, it seemed, was reading Antony and Cleopatra. London was wholly indifferent, it appeared, to Shakespeare’s plays. Nobody cared a straw—and I do not blame them—for the future of fiction, the death of poetry or the development by the average woman of a prose style completely expressive of her mind. If opinions upon any of these matters had been chalked on the pavement, nobody would have stooped to read them. The nonchalance of the hurrying feet would have rubbed them out in half an hour. Here came an errand-boy; here a woman with a dog on a lead. The fascination of the London street is that no two people are ever alike; each seems bound on some private affair of his own. There were the business-like, with their little bags; there were the drifters rattling sticks upon area railings; there were affable characters to whom the streets serve for clubroom, hailing men in carts and giving information without being asked for it. Also there were funerals to which men, thus suddenly reminded of the passing of their own bodies, lifted their hats. And then a very distinguished gentleman came slowly down a doorstep and paused to avoid collision with a bustling lady who had, by some means or other, acquired a splendid fur coat and a bunch of Parma violets. They all seemed separate, self-absorbed, on business of their own.

At this moment, as so often happens in London, there was a complete lull and suspension of traffic. Nothing came down the street; nobody passed. A single leaf detached itself from the plane tree at the end of the street, and in that pause and suspension fell. Somehow it was like a signal falling, a signal pointing to a force in things which one had overlooked. It seemed to point to a river, which flowed past, invisibly, round the corner, down the street, and took people and eddied them along, as the stream at Oxbridge had taken the undergraduate in his boat and the dead leaves. Now it was bringing from one side of the street to the other diagonally a girl in patent leather boots, and then a young man in a maroon overcoat; it was also bringing a taxi-cab; and it brought all three together at a point directly beneath my window; where the taxi stopped; and the girl and the young man stopped; and they got into the taxi; and then the cab glided off as if it were swept on by the current elsewhere.

The sight was ordinary enough; what was strange was the rhythmical order with which my imagination had invested it; and the fact that the ordinary sight of two people getting into a cab had the power to communicate something of their own seeming satisfaction. The sight of two people coming down the street and meeting at the corner seems to ease the mind of some strain, I thought, watching the taxi turn and make off. Perhaps to think, as I had been thinking these two days, of one sex as distinct from the other is an effort. It interferes with the unity of the mind. Now that effort had ceased and that unity had been restored by seeing two people come together and get into a taxicab. The mind is certainly a very mysterious organ, I reflected, drawing my head in from the window, about which nothing whatever is known, though we depend upon it so completely. Why do I feel that there are severances and oppositions in the mind, as there are strains from obvious causes on the body? What does one mean by ‘the unity of the mind’? I pondered, for clearly the mind has so great a power of concentrating at any point at any moment that it seems to have no single state of being. It can separate itself from the people in the street, for example, and think of itself as apart from them, at an upper window looking down on them. Or it can think with other people spontaneously, as, for instance, in a crowd waiting to hear some piece of news read out. It can think back through its fathers or through its mothers, as I have said that a woman writing thinks back through her mothers. Again if one is a woman one is often surprised by a sudden splitting off of consciousness, say in walking down Whitehall, when from being the natural inheritor of that civilization, she becomes, on the contrary, outside of it, alien and critical. Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives. But some of these states of mind seem, even if adopted spontaneously, to be less comfortable than others. In order to keep oneself continuing in them one is unconsciously holding something back, and gradually the repression becomes an effort. But there may be some state of mind in which one could continue without effort because nothing is required to be held back. And this perhaps, I thought, coming in from the window, is one of them. For certainly when I saw the couple get into the taxicab the mind felt as if, after being divided, it had come together again in a natural fusion. The obvious reason would be that it is natural for the sexes to co-operate. One has a profound, if irrational, instinct in favour of the theory that the union of man and woman makes for the greatest satisfaction, the most complete happiness. But the sight of the two people getting into the taxi and the satisfaction it gave me made me also ask whether there are two sexes in the mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body, and whether they also require to be united in order to get complete satisfaction and happiness? And I went on amateurishly to sketch a plan of the soul so that in each of us two powers preside, one male, one female; and in the man’s brain the man predominates over the woman, and in the woman’s brain the woman predominates over the man. The normal and comfortable state of being is that when the two live in harmony together, spiritually co-operating. If one is a man, still the woman part of his brain must have effect; and a woman also must have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine, I thought. But it would be well to test what one meant by man-womanly, and conversely by woman-manly, by pausing and looking at a book or two.

Coleridge certainly did not mean, when he said that a great mind is androgynous, that it is a mind that has any special sympathy with women; a mind that takes up their cause or devotes itself to their interpretation. Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single-sexed mind. He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided. In fact one goes back to Shakespeare’s mind as the type of the androgynous, of the man-womanly mind, though it would be impossible to say what Shakespeare thought of women. And if it be true that it is one of the tokens of the fully developed mind that it does not think specially or separately of sex, how much harder it is to attain that condition now than ever before. Here I came to the books by living writers, and there paused and wondered if this fact were not at the root of something that had long puzzled me. No age can ever have been as stridently sex-conscious as our own; those innumerable books by men about women in the British Museum are a proof of it. The Suffrage campaign was no doubt to blame. It must have roused in men an extraordinary desire for self-assertion; it must have made them lay an emphasis upon their own sex and its characteristics which they would not have troubled to think about had they not been challenged. And when one is challenged, even by a few women in black bonnets, one retaliates, if one has never been challenged before, rather excessively. That perhaps accounts for some of the characteristics that I remember to have found here, I thought, taking down a new novel by Mr A, who is in the prime of life and very well thought of, apparently, by the reviewers. I opened it. Indeed, it was delightful to read a man’s writing again. It was so direct, so straightforward after the writing of women. It indicated such freedom of mind, such liberty of person, such confidence in himself. One had a sense of physical well-being in the presence of this well-nourished, well-educated, free mind, which had never been thwarted or opposed, but had had full liberty from birth to stretch itself in whatever way it liked. All this was admirable. But after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter ‘I’. One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter ‘I’. One began to be tired of ‘I’. Not but what this ‘I’ was a most respectable ‘I’; honest and logical; as hard as a nut, and polished for centuries by good teaching and good feeding. I respect and admire that ‘I’ from the bottom of my heart. But—here I turned a page or two, looking for something or other the worst of it is that in the shadow of the letter ‘I’ all is shapeless as mist. Is that a tree? No, it is a woman. But . . . she has not a bone in her body, I thought, watching Phoebe, for that was her name, coming across the beach. Then Alan got up and the shadow of Alan at once obliterated Phoebe. For Alan had views and Phoebe was quenched in the flood of his views. And then Alan, I thought, has passions; and here I turned page after page very fast, feeling that the crisis was approaching, and so it was. It took place on the beach under the sun. It was done very openly. It was done very vigorously. Nothing could have been more indecent. But . . . I had said ‘but’ too often. One cannot go on saying ‘but’. One must finish the sentence somehow, I rebuked myself. Shall I finish it, ‘But—I am bored!’ But why was I bored? Partly because of the dominance of the letter ‘I’ and the aridity, which, like the giant beech tree, it casts within its shade. Nothing will grow there. And partly for some more obscure reason. There seemed to be some obstacle, some impediment in Mr A’s mind which blocked the fountain of creative energy and shored it within narrow limits. And remembering the lunch party at Oxbridge, and the cigarette ash and the Manx cat and Tennyson and Christina Rossetti all in a bunch, it seemed possible that the impediment lay there. As he no longer hums under his breath, ‘There has fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate’, when Phoebe crosses the beach, and she no longer replies, ‘My heart is like a singing bird whose nest is in a water’d shoot’, when Alan approaches what can he do? Being honest as the day and logical as the sun, there is only one thing he can do. And that he does, to do him justice, over and over (I said turning the pages) and over again. And that, I added, aware of the awful nature of the confession, seems somehow dull. Shakespeare’s indecency uproots a thousand other things in one’s mind, and is far from being dull. But Shakespeare does it for pleasure; Mr A, as the nurses say, does it on purpose. He does it in protest. He is protesting against the equality of the other sex by asserting his own superiority. He is therefore impeded and inhibited and self-conscious as Shakespeare might have been if he too had known Miss Clough and Miss Davies. Doubtless Elizabethan literature would have been very different from what it is if the women’s movement had begun in the sixteenth century and not in the nineteenth.

What, then, it amounts to, if this theory of the two sides of the mind holds good, is that virility has now become self-conscious-men, that is to say, are now writing only with the male side of their brains. It is a mistake for a woman to read them, for she will inevitably look for something that she will not find. It is the power of suggestion that one most misses, I thought, taking Mr B the critic in my hand and reading, very carefully and very dutifully, his remarks upon the art of poetry. Very able they were, acute and full of learning; but the trouble was that his feelings no longer communicated; his mind seemed separated into different chambers; not a sound carried from one to the other. Thus, when one takes a sentence of Mr B into the mind it falls plump to the ground—dead; but when one takes a sentence of Coleridge into the mind, it explodes and gives birth to all kinds of other ideas, and that is the only sort of writing of which one can say that it has the secret of perpetual life.

But whatever the reason may be, it is a fact that one must deplore. For it means—here I had come to rows of books by Mr Galsworthy and Mr Kipling—that some of the finest works of our greatest living writers fall upon deaf cars. Do what she will a woman cannot find in them that fountain of perpetual life which the critics assure her is there. It is not only that they celebrate male virtues, enforce male values and describe the world of men; it is that the emotion with which these books are permeated is to a woman incomprehensible. It is coming, it is gathering, it is about to burst on one’s head, one begins saying long before the end. That picture will fall on old Jolyon’s head; he will die of the shock; the old clerk will speak over him two or three obituary words; and all the swans on the Thames will simultaneously burst out singing. But one will rush away before that happens and hide in the gooseberry bushes, for the emotion which is so deep, so subtle, so symbolical to a man moves a woman to wonder. So with Mr Kipling’s officers who turn their Backs; and his Sowers who sow the Seed; and his Men who are alone with their Work; and the Flag—one blushes at all these capital letters as if one had been caught eavesdropping at some purely masculine orgy. The fact is that neither Mr Galsworthy nor Mr Kipling has a spark of the woman in him. Thus all their qualities seem to a woman, if one may generalize, crude and immature. They lack suggestive power. And when a book lacks suggestive power, however hard it hits the surface of the mind it cannot penetrate within.

And in that restless mood in which one takes books out and puts them back again without looking at them I began to envisage an age to come of pure, of self-assertive virility, such as the letters of professors (take Sir Walter Raleigh’s letters, for instance) seem to forebode, and the rulers of Italy have already brought into being. For one can hardly fail to be impressed in Rome by the sense of unmitigated masculinity; and whatever the value of unmitigated masculinity upon the state, one may question the effect of it upon the art of poetry. At any rate, according to the newspapers, there is a certain anxiety about fiction in Italy. There has been a meeting of academicians whose object it is ‘to develop the Italian novel’. ‘Men famous by birth, or in finance, industry or the Fascist corporations’ came together the other day and discussed the matter, and a telegram was sent to the Duce expressing the hope ‘that the Fascist era would soon give birth to a poet worthy of it’. We may all join in that pious hope, but it is doubtful whether poetry can come of an incubator. Poetry ought to have a mother as well as a father. The Fascist poem, one may fear, will be a horrid little abortion such as one sees in a glass jar in the museum of some county town. Such monsters never live long, it is said; one has never seen a prodigy of that sort cropping grass in a field. Two heads on one body do not make for length of life.

However, the blame for all this, if one is anxious to lay blame, rests no more upon one sex than upon the other. All seducers and reformers are responsible: Lady Bessborough when she lied to Lord Granville; Miss Davies when she told the truth to Mr Greg. All who have brought about a state of sex-consciousness are to blame, and it is they who drive me, when I want to stretch my faculties on a book, to seek it in that happy age, before Miss Davies and Miss Clough were ‘born, when the writer used both sides of his mind equally. One must turn back to Shakespeare then, for Shakespeare was androgynous; and so were Keats and Sterne and Cowper and Lamb and Coleridge. Shelley perhaps was sexless. Milton and Ben Jonson had a dash too much of the male in them. So had Wordsworth and Tolstoi. In our time Proust was wholly androgynous, if not perhaps a little too much of a woman. But that failing is too rare for one to complain of it, since without some mixture of the kind the intellect seems to predominate and the other faculties of the mind harden and become barren. However, I consoled myself with the reflection that this is perhaps a passing phase; much of what I have said in obedience to my promise to give you the course of my thoughts will seem out of date; much of what flames in my eyes will seem dubious to you who have not yet come of age.

Even so, the very first sentence that I would write here, I said, crossing over to the writing-table and taking up the page headed Women and Fiction, is that it is fatal for anyone who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. It ceases to be fertilized. Brilliant and effective, powerful and masterly, as it may appear for a day or two, it must wither at nightfall; it cannot grow in the minds of others. Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the woman and the man before the art of creation can be accomplished. Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated. The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness. There must be freedom and there must be peace. Not a wheel must grate, not a light glimmer. The curtains must be close drawn. The writer, I thought, once his experience is over, must lie back and let his mind celebrate its nuptials in darkness. He must not look or question what is being done. Rather, he must pluck the petals from a rose or watch the swans float calmly down the river. And I saw again the current which took the boat and the under-graduate and the dead leaves; and the taxi took the man and the woman, I thought, seeing them come together across the street, and the current swept them away, I thought, hearing far off the roar of London’s traffic, into that tremendous stream.

Here, then, Mary Beton ceases to speak. She has told you how she reached the conclusion—the prosaic conclusion—that it is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry. She has tried to lay bare the thoughts and impressions that led her to think this. She has asked you to follow her flying into the arms of a Beadle, lunching here, dining there, drawing pictures in the British Museum, taking books from the shelf, looking out of the window. While she has been doing all these things, you no doubt have been observing her failings and foibles and deciding what effect they have had on her opinions. You have been contradicting her and making whatever additions and deductions seem good to you. That is all as it should be, for in a question like this truth is only to be had by laying together many varieties of error. And I will end now in my own person by anticipating two criticisms, so obvious that you can hardly fail to make them.

No opinion has been expressed, you may say, upon the comparative merits of the sexes even as writers. That was done purposely, because, even if the time had come for such a valuation—and it is far more important at the moment to know how much money women had and how many rooms than to theorize about their capacities—even if the time had come I do not believe that gifts, whether of mind or character, can be weighed like sugar and butter, not even in Cambridge, where they are so adept at putting people into classes and fixing caps on their heads and letters after their names. I do not believe that even the Table of Precedency which you will find in Whitaker’s Almanac represents a final order of values, or that there is any sound reason to suppose that a Commander of the Bath will ultimately walk in to dinner behind a Master in Lunacy. All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are ‘sides’, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side, and of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot. As people mature they cease to believe in sides or in Headmasters or in highly ornamental pots. At any rate, where books are concerned, it is notoriously difficult to fix labels of merit in such a way that they do not come off. Are not reviews of current literature a perpetual illustration of the difficulty of judgement? ‘This great book’, ‘this worthless book’, the same book is called by both names. Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

Next I think that you may object that in all this I have made too much of the importance of material things. Even allowing a generous margin for symbolism, that five hundred a year stands for the power to contemplate, that a lock on the door means the power to think for oneself, still you may say that the mind should rise above such things; and that great poets have often been poor men. Let me then quote to you the words of your own Professor of Literature, who knows better than I do what goes to the making of a poet. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch writes:11

11 The Art of Writing, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.

‘What are the great poetical names of the last hundred years or so? Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Landor, Keats, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Morris, Rossetti, Swinburne—we may stop there. Of these, all but Keats, Browning, Rossetti were University men, and of these three, Keats, who died young, cut off in his prime, was the only one not fairly well to do. It may seem a brutal thing to say, and it is a sad thing to say: but, as a matter of hard fact, the theory that poetical genius bloweth where it listeth, and equally in poor and rich, holds little truth. As a matter of hard fact, nine out of those twelve were University men: which means that somehow or other they procured the means to get the best education England can give. As a matter of hard fact, of the remaining three you know that Browning was well to do, and I challenge you that, if he had not been well to do, he would no more have attained to write Saul or The Ring and the Book than Ruskin would have attained to writing Modern Painters if his father had not dealt prosperously in business. Rossetti had a small private income; and, moreover, he painted. There remains but Keats; whom Atropos slew young, as she slew John Clare in a mad-house, and James Thomson by the laudanum he took to drug disappointment. These are dreadful facts, but let us face them. It is—however dishonouring to us as a nation—certain that, by some fault in our commonwealth, the poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog’s chance. Believe me—and I have spent a great part of ten years in watching some three hundred and twenty elementary schools, we may prate of democracy, but actually, a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born.’

Nobody could put the point more plainly. ‘The poor poet has not in these days, nor has had for two hundred years, a dog’s chance . . . a poor child in England has little more hope than had the son of an Athenian slave to be emancipated into that intellectual freedom of which great writings are born.’ That is it. Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one’s own. However, thanks to the toils of those obscure women in the past, of whom I wish we knew more, thanks, curiously enough to two wars, the Crimean which let Florence Nightingale out of her drawing-room, and the European War which opened the doors to the average woman some sixty years later, these evils are in the way to be bettered. Otherwise you would not be here tonight, and your chance of earning five hundred pounds a year, precarious as I am afraid that it still is, would be minute in the extreme.

Still, you may object, why do you attach so much importance to this writing of books by women when, according to you, it requires so much effort, leads perhaps to the murder of one’s aunts, will make one almost certainly late for luncheon, and may bring one into very grave disputes with certain very good fellows? My motives, let me admit, are partly selfish. Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading—I like reading books in the bulk. Lately my diet has become a trifle monotonous; history is too much about wars; biography too much about great men; poetry has shown, I think, a tendency to sterility, and fiction but I have sufficiently exposed my disabilities as a critic of modern fiction and will say no more about it. Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream. For I am by no means confining you to fiction. If you would please me—and there are thousands like me—you would write books of travel and adventure, and research and scholarship, and history and biography, and criticism and philosophy and science. By so doing you will certainly profit the art of fiction. For books have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy. Moreover, if you consider any great figure of the past, like Sappho, like the Lady Murasaki, like Emily Brontë, you will find that she is an inheritor as well as an originator, and has come into existence because women have come to have the habit of writing naturally; so that even as a prelude to poetry such activity on your part would be invaluable.

But when I look back through these notes and criticize my own train of thought as I made them, I find that my motives were not altogether selfish. There runs through these comments and discursions the conviction—or is it the instinct?—that good books are desirable and that good writers, even if they show every variety of human depravity, are still good human beings. Thus when I ask you to write more books I am urging you to do what will be for your good and for the good of the world at large. How to justify this instinct or belief I do not know, for philosophic words, if one has not been educated at a university, are apt to play one false. What is meant by ‘reality’? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech—and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Piccadilly. Sometimes, too, it seems to dwell in shapes too far away for us to discern what their nature is. But whatever it touches, it fixes and makes permanent. That is what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge; that is what is left of past time and of our loves and hates. Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us. So at least I infer from reading Lear or Emma or La Recherche du Temps Perdu. For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life. Those are the enviable people who live at enmity with unreality; and those are the pitiable who are knocked on the head by the thing done without knowing or caring. So that when I ask you to earn money and have a room of your own, I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not.

Here I would stop, but the pressure of convention decrees that every speech must end with a peroration. And a peroration addressed to women should have something, you will agree, particularly exalting and ennobling about it. I should implore you to remember your responsibilities, to be higher, more spiritual; I should remind, you how much depends upon you, and what an influence you can exert upon the future. But those exhortations can safely, I think, be left to the other sex, who will put them, and indeed have put them, with far greater eloquence than I can compass. When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else. Do not dream of influencing other people, I would say, if I knew how to make it sound exalted. Think of things in themselves.

And again I am reminded by dipping into newspapers and novels and biographies that when a woman speaks to women she should have something very unpleasant up her sleeve. Women are hard on women. Women dislike women. Women—but are you not sick to death of the word? I can assure you that I am. Let us agree, then, that a paper read by a woman to women should end with something particularly disagreeable.

But how does it go? What can I think of? The truth is, I often like women. I like their unconventionality. I like their completeness. I like their anonymity. I like—but I must not run on in this way. That cupboard there—you say.it holds clean table-napkins only; but what if Sir Archibald Bodkin were concealed among them? Let me then adopt a sterner tone. Have I, in the preceding words, conveyed to you sufficiently the warnings and reprobation of mankind? I have told you the very low opinion in which you were held by Mr Oscar Browning. I have indicated what Napoleon once thought of you and what Mussolini thinks now. Then, in case any of you aspire to fiction, I have copied out for your benefit the advice of the critic about courageously acknowledging the limitations of your sex. I have referred to Professor X and given prominence to his statement that women are intellectually, morally and physically inferior to men. I have handed on all that has come my way without going in search of it, and here is a final warning—from Mr John Langdon Davies.12 Mr John Langdon Davies warns women ‘that when children cease to be altogether desirable, women cease to be altogether necessary’. I hope you will make a note of it.

12 A Short History of Women, by John Langdon Davies.

How can I further encourage you to go about the business of life? Young women, I would say, and please attend, for the peroration is beginning, you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays of Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very well for you to say, pointing to the streets and squares and forests of the globe swarming with black and white and coffee-coloured inhabitants, all busily engaged in traffic and enterprise and love-making, we have had other work on our hands. Without our doing, those seas would be unsailed and those fertile lands a desert. We have borne and bred and washed and taught, perhaps to the age of six or seven years, the one thousand six hundred and twenty-three million human beings who are, according to statistics, at present in existence, and that, allowing that some had help, takes time.

There is truth in what you say—I will not deny it. But at the same time may I remind you that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1866; that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by law to possess her own property; and that in 1919—which is a whole nine years ago she was given a vote? May I also remind you that most of the professions have been open to you for close on ten years now? When you reflect upon these immense privileges and the length of time during which they have been enjoyed, and the fact that there must be at this moment some two thousand women capable of earning over five hundred a year in one way or another, you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity, training, encouragement, leisure and money no longer holds good. Moreover, the economists are telling us that Mrs Seton has had too many children. You must, of course, go on bearing children, but, so they say, in twos and threes, not in tens and twelves.

Thus, with some time on your hands and with some book learning in your brains—you have had enough of the other kind, and are sent to college partly, I suspect, to be uneducated—surely you should embark upon another stage of your very long, very laborious and highly obscure career. A thousand pens are ready to suggest what you should do and what effect you will have. My own suggestion is a little fantastic, I admit; I prefer, therefore, to put it in the form of fiction.

I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young—alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so—I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals—and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton’s bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would he impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.

If you’re able and willing, here are some nonprofit feminist organizations you could donate to that greatly benefit women. Women’s Global Empowerment Fund, Pro Mujer, Planned Parenthood, and Distributing Dignity (tampons and bras for the homeless.)