#also i had to leave my hostel and sign out and i teared up a little ngl :(

[feedthemadness-sweetie]

DOBBY IS A FREE ELF

[annie-blackhill]

Aight, I know that I've been away for awhile but now I'm back and I have ideas babes!

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Warnings:

Depression

Anxiety

Past panic attacks

Mentions of past domestic violence

Abusive childhood

Post traumatic events unconscious coping mechanisms

Unconscious flinching out of instinct

Sudden panic when hearing fighting between a man and a woman screaming very near

Loss of breath

Domestic violence

Blood

Panic attack

____________________________________

Dazai Osamu

________________

Safe and Sound

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Dazai and (Y/N) have been in a relationship for two years now. They're so in love with each other that everyone at the ADA are questioning the fact as to why they weren't married yet.

Dazai really loves (Y/N) and she loves him just as much back. They both really love each other and they both understand each other the most too.

But there were still some things that Dazai didn't know.

The main reason why (Y/N) and Dazai weren't married yet was because Dazai wanted to get her parents' blessings first. He was so excited to get their blessings, to meet the people who brought his perfectly imperfect lover into this cruel, tainted world.

He was eternally grateful to them for bringing her into this world, although the cruel world had tainted her and made her the broken person she is now, he still loves her for her. She's the only reason he has to live now. And he loves her for that.

Whenever Dazai asked (Y/N) about her family, she would tell him stories about when she was a child and how her dad would bring them to the beach every weekend because they lived near to the beach or when they went back to school shopping together.

But that was it. Her dad never really appeared in her other stories much. He would pop in at some point of the tale and then disappear. Her mum, was mostly the one to witness her achievements.

But (Y/N) has never described her parents' proud expressions whenever she achieved something.

At times, when Dazai did pry lightly, she would turn the story somewhere else, mostly to her friends.

He knew that she didn't really have a good primary school life, seeing as she's told him before that she's been bullied at that time. She's described them as the loneliest years of her life and how much she's hated herself those times.

Whenever (Y/N) talked about friends, it would be about her friends from her high school life. Her high school was much more on the better side.

She had been a prefect in her high school years, since her first year to her last year.

The only bad memories she had was when she realized that being in the first class and being the top of the class meant the other students would sabotage her and the two times in her senior years where she had to fight back as self-defense when she tried to break up a fight and they started to hit her too.

Dazai wasn't daft. Of course, he picked up on all the signs she showed that she wasn't really fond of her parents.

At first, he thought that it was just because of a small fight they had. But two years have passed in their relationship and (Y/N) hasn't cracked even the least to tell him why her childhood stories are only until a certain age or why she's never told him how proud her parents were of her.

Dazai was worried. In the end, he decided that maybe her parents just have a slightly tight relationship with each other.

Dazai decided to not ask. He let it slide and slip past them. He never touched the subject of her parents for the half of the second year of their relationship.

As the other half year of their relationship rolled in, Dazai and (Y/N) had saved enough money to buy a cozy little apartment near the ADA and move out of the ADA's hostel.

The day they were moving in, the couple were greeted by the middle aged woman who lived next door with her husband and 4 year old daughter.

She had been a very sweet auntie that welcome the sweet couple to the apartment complex with open arms and a sweet smile.

More than once had she cooked good food for the duo since they always returned late from work.

"You two kinda remind me of how my husband and I used to be when we were younger and so in love," the auntie would say to the duo all the time.

The little 4 year old would also come by and play around with the loving couple whenever they were on leave.

Auntie would always try persuade her daughter from "disturbing the lovely young couple" as she would always say to her daughter.

"It's alright, auntie! I love kids! (N/N)-chan and I are planning to have a few little munchkins like this when we're married too!" Dazai would assure her, while playing with the little girl.

But there was always something about how (Y/N) would send the auntie knowing looks as though she knew something that he didn't all the time, so he decided to pay more attention too.

When Dazai did start to notice more, he noticed the dark bags under the auntie's eyes and he noticed how tired she always was.

The more he noticed the more concerning she looked to him day by day.

"Auntie, would you like to join us for tea, today? Osamu and I wanted to play with that sweet little angel," (Y/N) invited the auntie.

"WHO'S THAT AT THE DOOR???!!!" the booming voice of the male from inside the auntie's house shook (Y/N) to the core and it ignited old memories that she didn't have to remember.

"Auntie, you really should come. Osamu insists! You know how he gets when he doesn't get what he wants! He'll be whining all day long like a little baby!" (Y/N) tried to convince the auntie discreetly.

"I ASKED 'WHO'S THAT AT THE DOOR'! ANSWER ME YOU USELESS WOMAN!!!" the man shouted from the bedroom again.

(Y/N) flinched. She was regretting sending Dazai to the store now. They had been running low on groceries and she had sent Dazai to the store, as she would say "please contribute you're lazy arse to do something in this household, my love" and he had carried his lazy arse to the store near the apartment complex.

After Dazai had left was when she started to hear the shouts and yells from the next door auntie's house.

Even as the bad memories plunged her being, she had forced herself to go and at least try to save the auntie before anything bad happened to either her or her daughter.

But even then, if you looked closely at (Y/N) you could see that she was trembling badly and that she could barely stand on her two feet.

"Auntie, come on please!" (Y/N) begged in a mutter exclamation.

"I'm sorry," the auntie murmured before closing the door on her with an apologetic smile.

"Auntie, no!" (Y/N) exclaimed.

And that was when she heard the terrible screams and the yell. The cries of the little 4 year old teared her soul apart into the smallest of pieces.

"NO, NO, NO!!!!" (Y/N) yelled as her mind turned blank and the memories flooded her brain.

Her mind turned so blank that she forgot that she was slamming her fists onto the door and that she had an ability.

The memories of how her father would come home drunk and lay on the sofa. Of how her mother had found out that he was having an affair. Of how, he would beat the living daylights out of her mother.

(Y/N) never told Dazai any of that. She felt ashamed to tell him that her childhood was the most terrible thing to ever happen to her.

A blood curdling screamed pierced the air along with a loud cry and that was enough for (Y/N) to snap out of her traumas and remember that there were lives on the stake right now.

She finally regained her senses fully and remembered that she has an ability.

Using her elemental abilities, she bent the wooden front door so much that it broke it half and broke off of it's hinges. The lower half flew to the side of the corridor almost hitting her while the other half flew into the house and hit the middle aged aggressive man that was about to beat his wife over the head with a glass flower vase.

The auntie stood in shock as the younger woman ran to her and hugged her.

"Auntie! Are you alright?! Are you bleeding anywhere?! Do you have any fatal injuries?!" (Y/N) questioned quickly as she held the shorter's woman's face in her hands and looked her over, making sure that she wasn bleeding anywhere majorly.

"Why you little freak show! You must one of those freak shows that are born with those little abilities! How dare you interfere with someone else's family problems?! Youngsters these days don't know how to respect their elders! Let me teach you then!" the man yelled at (Y/N) as she stood in front of the trembling woman, making sure that the older woman was perfectly hidden behind her.

(Y/N) slipped a hand into the back pocket of her jeans. She clutched the holster of her gun.

"Step away, right now before I seriously hurt you," (Y/N) warned as she held her left hand out to stop him from coming any nearer to them.

The man took off his belt and folded it into two, straightening it out with a snap, which caused both women to flinch as more dark memories flooded into (Y/N)'s mind.

"I said STOP RIGHT THERE!" (Y/N) warned yet again. It was against the law for her to shoot him and she couldn't even use her abilities against him as he was a normal civilian.

She was trying her best to not hurt anyone here and let the civilian authorities handle the ruthless man.

The moment the man raised his arm was the same time (Y/N) slipped her gun out of her back pocket and shot his arm.

The man let out a cry of pain and fell back from the sudden pain. He looked at the younger woman, wide eyed as she held the gun tight and pointed the barrel to his forehead.

"Armed Detective Agency member, (L/N) (Y/N)," (Y/N) announced as she showed him her ADA card.

The man backed away more at that. His eyes wide as he realized that she was a member of the authorities.

"(Y/N)?!" Dazai shouted as he entered only to see the bloodied situation of the man and the two trembling women.

"Where's the child?!" Dazai asked immediately.

"Sh-she's in her room," the auntie answered meekly.

Dazai nodded. He looked down at the man, disgust, venom and a desire to kill clear on his face.

The man even then, still tried to gain Dazai's pity as Dazai was a fellow man too.

"S-sir! All I was trying to do was educate my wife to be more better and obedient! I wasn't trying to do anything other than that! I swear!" the man said.

That only made Dazai even more disgusted as he spat on the man's face in disgust. He stomped his foot harshly on the man's hand that was holding the belt.

"You disgust me you old fool! You're an utter disgrace of a human being! I'm disgusted to see people like you are still alive! Terrorizing women's lives! Making them only feel like obedient dolls that should only do whatever you say!

I'd rather kill you then let you go to jail and then get back out after a few months! People like you shouldn't exist at all in the first place!

Your wife is supposed to be your life partner! Not some maid or toy that would do everything you say! You're supposed to live life and do everything together!

I can't believe you even had a child with her only to state your dominance over her and make her unable to run away from you!

You disgust me!" Dazai yelled at the man as he twisted his foot on the man's hand more and stomped it over and over and over again, intent on breaking it.

(Y/N) shielded the auntie's sight form her lover's rage as he broke the man's hand and rendered it completely shattered under his shoe.

"Osamu..." (Y/N) called out for him.

Dazai raised his head to look at his lover, tears streaming from his eyes from utter pure white hot rage.

"Are you alright? Are the two of you alright? Is that little angel injured?" Dazai's voice turned so soft that (Y/N)'s heart broke at the mere sound of it. He sounded as scared as she was feeling.

Dazai went over to the two women and squeezed them into a light hug, he buried his face into the crook of (Y/N)'s neck. (Y/N) hugged his waist, her arm practically limp, but her hand still clutching the gun tight just in case the man tried anything, her ear was placed against his frantically beating heart.

The older woman had wrapped her arm over his back and was hugging him tight, scared out of her life and grateful for the presence of the two youngsters at the moment.

"Osamu... We need to call the police and the ADA, specifically Kunikida-san. We need to explain a hell load to them all," (Y/N) murmured lightly to the shaken man.

Dazai nodded lightly at her statement before pressing a light kiss to the crook of her neck and removing himself from the hold of the two women.

"Auntie, do get your little girl and wait outside of the house. (Y/N) and I will call the police and our co-worker to handle the mess here," Dazai informed the older woman.

She merely nodded, not trusting her voice to be strong enough to answer him as she went to the little girl's bedroom to get her out of the house.

Once the child and woman were safely out of the house, Dazai dialed Kunikida while (Y/N) dialed the police station.

Both at had arrived at the house. The man was brought away on a stretcher by the paramedics as (Y/N) was explaining to the police as to why she had used her gun.

Kunikida and Dazai, both standing on either side of her, trying to justify the reason as to why she did so and the police accepted the reasons in the end.

Dazai said his end of the story and then they moved on to ask the wife and the child about their ends of the story.

"(Y/N), you know you shouldn't have used your gun. I'll have to confiscate it for now. You'll only be allowed to use it on missions. I'm sorry but those are the rules that you need to follow after that little act of 'misusage' as the police says," Kunikida sighed as he took the gun lightly from her slightly slackened grasp on it now.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. I was scared and he raised the belt above me, ready to hit at any moment---" her voice cracked and she couldn't continue the sentence anymore.

Kunikida held her hand softly as Dazai brought (Y/N) into a soft side hug, holding her softly and rubbing her shoulders.

"I know and that's why I'm the one that's supposed to be saying sorry for taking away your gun, (Y/N)," Kunikida said.

"Hey, hey. It's alright, the both of you. I'll pull some strings here and there and make sure, (Y/N) gets her gun back, alright? Easy peasy!" Dazai lightened the mood up a little.

"Sigh, thank you, Dazai. For making this easier for all of us," Kunikida said before excusing himself, saying that he needs to fill out a few more forms at the police station and make sure that neither Dazai or (Y/N) get accused for anything that they didn't do.

Dazai proceeded to lead (Y/N) back to their little home as the auntie and her daughter were led to the second ambulance by the new paramedics.

(Y/N) leaned into Dazai as she curled up onto him. He held her close and tight, knowing full well that she was shaken up from the encounter.

"Osamu... Remember how you always asked for the truth about my childhood... What you witnessed today that was happening to that auntie and her daughter? That's the real truth to my childhood.

But no one saved us. And as I grew and my dad lived his other life with his little affair, he would come and go to let off steam on my mother and my mother started to blame me for how miserable our lives were.

That's why I never had a past occupation like everyone else. I had been working with the ADA ever since I was 18 and I ran away from her.

The president helped me. He helped my mother by providing her safety and a new home.

My father is still out there, somewhere with that other woman.

And I... I've never seen my mother since the day I ran away. She must be happier now," (Y/N) said, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Dazai hugged her closer and kissed her forehead.

"It's alright, love. You have me and the other ADA members for you as well now. Hell, even the Port Mafia is with you right now after how much you helped them out when we were all having trouble with The Guild and Fyodor. You have all of us here for you.

Most importantly, my love, you have me. I won't let anyone so much as hurt you even a little bit and go off the hook.

I swear," Dazai murmured softly into her ear and she snuggled closer to him, their feets touching and their hands interwined with each other's.

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"Port Mafia strikes again as a man who was arrested yesterday due to commiting domestic violence was murdered by them brutally in his own jail cell much to the surprise of all the police officers present.

Police officers were considering requesting the Armed Detective Agency to further an investigation at first, but has now decided against it as the chief of the police station has deemed it as a waste since the man was a criminal," the news reporter announced on the morning news as (Y/N) sipped her (bitter/sweet/neutral) (coffee/tea) and Dazai adorable chewed his crab sandwich.

"Who did you ask to do it?" (Y/N) asked immediately as soon as Dazai swallowed.

"Chuuya was more than willing after I told him the story. I didn't even have to tell him which police station and cell that scum was in, he ran off and figured it all out himself and finished the job," Dazai answered before continuing to adorably eat his crab sandwich.

"That scum deserved it," (Y/N) agreed as she continue sipping her (coffee/tea).

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Awareness Note:

Stop domestic violence. The pain lingers on even after the relationship has ended. No one should have to be bounded to a spouse that only views them as an object and an inferior instead of a human being and an equal. No one has to go through physical and mental pain with a monster that prefers to take control of everything. No one has to go through such pain.

Marriage isn't pain! Marriage is a bond of two people who love each other!

If it hurts both physically and mentally, then it's not love.

Know the difference.

[frostahesmegabite]

The Judgement of Carrion

@daily-writing-challenge - Day 4 - Accomplish/Macabre [ Content warning: Blood, Guts, Gore, Bits of Torture, That sort of stuff. While there aren't pages and pages of it, it is present in this short story. I tried to find a balance of detail and keeping things light without going into ‘Hostel’ territory. ]

Human forts were a dime a dozen, easily found and half of them forgotten or falling to ruin due to the numerous war fronts that were constantly moving across the face of Azeroth to fight one force or another. Some lost to time, others to ruin, some to marauding forces and others simply abandoned because they were no longer needed. It was one of these Forts that Megahes had put to use for himself and probably his most comprehensive and long lasting pastime.

Clever little devices put into play to keep things looking abandoned and misused, neglected and falling to ruin. The place had not only been repaired but also reinforced with Magical and Mechanical Goblin ingenuity that was built upon with knowledge gained over the past several decades.

Inside of this fort, despite the fact it was never intended to receive an actual willful audience, was decorative furniture made of fine dark woods embroidered with rich velvets, soft silks and the finest wools and cottons coin could acquire. Tables stretching about with plates and goldware that no man or woman other than Megahes would ever see sat to present an atmosphere of riches on display. Trophy cases and stands line the walls with numerous weapons of both magical and mundane descent that perch over Armor Stands holding protective metal layers meant not just for Goblins, but all races.

If any ever came to somehow find the place and took the time to inspect any of it, they’d find that all of these items weren’t as ‘pristine’ as they may appear at a distance. Damage came to them all at some point or another. Blunted blades, shattered axe heads assembled to look presentable. Armor with gashes, pierced helmets or chest pieces, greaves with shorn metal by the thighs that most likely led to bleed outs.

The more one could look, the more they’d note that all of the gear was like walking through a museum of deathly wounds. All that stood or hung from the walls had a story of defeat and loss and probably before then, great triumphs, valor and victory… just to have their stories end here.

Megahes pays no mind to these things now though as he walks with his back rigid and straight, his arms back behind him with hands clasping the other arms elbow in some overly formal glide across the stone floor. His bright white and gold attire is a stark beacon amongst the dark colors and atmosphere of the room that one should have found comforting, but for some reason, only brought worry and dread with it as he moves about his untold business.

[ Artwork by the Magnificent Fishadee. No Fire or Light Shards floating about in this scene, purely put for clothing example. https://twitter.com/fishadee ] He stops, not worrying to look around for any watchers, for he knows there are none as he stops at a small wall just behind a staircase. “Rehorur decno Kudex.” A series of flashes occur around our Goblin and once completed a small stone panel slides off to the side and Megahes puts his hand into the slot. A sudden sharp ‘shing!’ sound is head and Mega’s neck tenses but for a moment before his hand is withdrawn. A mechanical but feminine voice perks up from the slot. “Welcome back.” “Hmm.” The only sound Megahes makes before he takes a step back and then to the left. The stone wall jars forward at an alarming speed, spikes erupting from her stone crevices meant to impale and kill any would-be intruders while giving Megahes the solitary moment that was needed to pass behind the crude defense into the wall beyond. Whether by measured practice or perhaps sensors, the trap quickly retreats and returns to normal, giving off no telltale signs of a hidden door or of Mega’s earlier passing.

The reason for all this secrecy? Hidden at the end of the staircase Mega was already descending. Humans had their specialties sure, jacks of all trades those people. But the one thing they never fail to make well?

Jail Cells and Prisons.

It was this singular reason that Megahes took over this once ramshackle Fort for himself. Though there weren’t many cells, there was no need. Three of them sat in a row at the bottom of the stairs, each outfitted with custom Arcano-tech that allowed for the arrival of a singular occupant that was soon set to magical and electrical suppression to keep them docile and incapable of action while time slowly allowed them to become dehydrated and starved to where strength or speed was no longer an issue either.

The work put into this place was one of Mega’s hidden creations of pride and in the past, its use went towards a sorted pastime of torturing whoever was unfortunate enough to get caught by one of his traps. Times change however and with Mega’s newfound religion, came the need to change how and why he did things while applying them to old hobbies. Today’s hobby however, only involved one other person beyond himself and Mega comes to stand right before him as electricity pulses through his frail, nearly starved frame.

“Brother Abacus.” A stupid name, false to be sure, but one that Megahes didn’t really care about either way. “I realize you don’t know who I am and that’s quite alright.” He leans in, voice dialing down as he speaks through the bars just as another tide of electricity bombards the ‘Brother’, causing him to whimper and whine in pain. “You have been found guilty of being a member of a Twilight Cult, one in fact, that was run by Dinthoqaf the Defiler.”

The cultist looks up, arms shaking in heavy tremors as he tries to look his would-be captor in the eye. They give out however, causing him to hit the ground with an exhale. His cracked and bleeding lips wobble, trying to say something, but the lack of strength made their efforts near useless. It was sad really, or at least it would be if Megahes cared about the man's condition in the slightest.

Megah glides over to a control panel on the wall and proceeds to flip a series of switches and dials which cause several mechanical tendrils to tear from the wall in Abacus’ cell that soon lash him to the same wall they originated from. His body was quickly drawn into an ‘X’ shape with limbs pulled tight and to their limits.

“You see. Your former… Employer? Boss? Leader.” Megahes hands lift and tumble in slow methodical circles as he tries to find the right word, but leaves it be. “Him and I don’t get along very well and thanks to his efforts, I find myself needing to improvise my tactics a bit. While I know he’s dead, face turned to slag and glass, I wanna make sure I get the job done correctly, meaning none of his followers try to take up his mantle. I’m sure you understand.”

He turns around and heads into the cell, worry of electrocution now gone thanks to the current state of affairs. “You see. I have this…” He pauses. “...Macabre little ritual I have to do every so often and believe me.” The Goblin laughs while looking up at the man while proceeding to straighten up his clothes, as if it mattered. “As much as people might want me to say I hate doing this… I don’t. I’ve been doing this to people way before you all found me and now. Now I get to put my hobbies to better use.”

Megahes’ hand comes up, his index finger pressing to his lips to tell Brother Abacus to be silent. His smile fades with the gesture and he reaches up, pressing his black and gold painted claw against the clothing of this man's thigh. Downward, slowly, it runs. Fabric quickly turns from a peasant-y brown to a heavy red and brown as flesh below seems to split before the clothing itself can.

Magic? Possibly. Insanely sharp claws? Not likely. But whatever it was, the man's thigh split open as if by scalpel and despite his starvation, he thrashes weakly in an effort to pull away. The machines holding his wrists tighten and continue to do so until the sound of bone is heard crunching.

This process continues on not just for mere moments but stretches of hours, lines drawn across flesh like sand. Megahes had nothing else to say and so, despite the protests and pleading, begging to let him go and he’d tell no one, Mega continued.

Soon, details were carved away, facial features, scalp and its rooted hair, ears. Nearly anything that could be taken and removed without outright killing this poor cultist was taken in some macabre movie of silence and torture and finally, when the man was nearest his end, Megahes opens his own shirt.

The metal embedded into his Chest that shines with the Light like a beacon in this squalor, practically vibrates as Mega runs his blood coated hands across its surface. Red blood made semi-translucent by the sheer shine, soon was baked and cooked black, all Vitae devoured, leaving Megahes to sigh in relief.

“I would ask you to tell the Defiler thank you for giving me this. But… we both know you’re never going to have that opportunity.”

Megahes runs his hand up from Brother Abacus' groin clear up to his collarbone, shearing clean through flesh and muscle alike. What came next was a grotesque shower of innards that began to fall and slop to the floor, leaving our would-be cultist inanimate and lifeless.

“Now to clean up and go home. Tonight’s my date night and I have so many things to accomplish before She gets home…” Soon, the jail cells were left dark and eventually the slow trickling of blood and various other liquids came to silence in the dark, waiting to be cleaned up and for a new subject to be taken.

[drethanramslay]

A funny thing called Fate- Prologue

Pairing: Bryce X MC (Aisha Khurrana)

Word Count: 2.8K words

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

Warning: None really, just a little cursing

Author’s note: I had been listening to Strawberries and Cigarettes by Troye Sivan and that is actually the primary spark which led me to come up with this series. Shout out to @mvalentine and @anotherbeingsworld fo letting me bounce my crazy ideas <3

AHHH so it is finally here!! This is my first time writing Bryce so I hope I can do justice to this beautiful man. This starts with Aisha’s (MC) POV and like I said, there will be a time jump. It would be first person when I’m writing in the past and then it will shift to third person when I’m writing the present. I think i should stop my rambling and let’s go!!

Terms you need to know-

-Bhaiya: Brother in hindi

-Beta: Technically it means ‘son’ but in most Indian families its used like a term of endearment too

- AIIMS, Delhi: Stands for All India Institute of Medical Sciences. This is one of the best medical schools in the country and Only 100 people out of 200,000(or more) get in. So it is very cut throat.

10 years ago- Aisha's PoV 

(Age: 16)

I am done.

Done with all the drama, done with all the lies, done with all the manipulations and done with all the heartache.

And most of all, I was done with him- the infamous Bryce Lahela. 

The boy with the stupid long hair, the stupid signature smirk and the stupid charm. Those amber eyes which reminded you of the sand and sea and those lips on which an everlasting smile played used to be like a breath of fresh air. I always thought that he was so unique, but boy was I wrong. 

All boys are the same.

I really thought that jocks like him would be different huh? Can someone just hand me my clown shoes?

But luckily, I don't have to see his face ever again because for once, instead of making a mockery of my existence, life decided to give me something that I really wanted badly.

A chance to leave all of this in my past. A chance to start over again.

My dad had a better business opportunity back in Mumbai. I am an Indian and we lived in Delhi since the time I was born but we shifted to Mauii when I was in the ninth grade because of how demanding dad's job was getting

Bhaiya chose to stay back in Delhi because his engineering college was there and he enjoyed the hostel life way too much. And he had finally managed to get out of our toxic household so I really could not blame him.

So yeah.. that is how I ended up in Maui in the first place.

It was okay in ninth grade. I kept to myself and blended in with the shadows (because hello social anxiety!). But... Tenth grade changed everything.

It was one of the best and worst year of my life and I often wonder if I could ever get over this.

I am definitely sounding like one of those over-dramatic Indian soap operas my mom watches every night.

"Aisha? Are you ready? The car is here beta."

"Yes, Mama. I am coming!! Just packing up some stuff."

Breaking out of my reverie, I stuffed in my phone and other essentials into my carry bag. As I was zipping up my luggage, I yanked open my closet door to see if I left anything behind my eyes landed on the shoebox I had stuffed in the back of my closet.

I gulped and I felt tears well up in my eyes again. A part of me wanted to take it for it had all the trinkets of the good things in my relationship with Bryce but, another part of me knew that if I took it with me, I would never be able to move on and that would completely defeat the purpose of this fresh start I have been looking forward to.

So with a heavy heart, I looked away and shut the door of the closet, picked up my luggage and left.

As the Uber pulled out of the curb I stared out of the window, to look at the beaches I had come to love and hate.

I liked Maui, I really did but all that it was reduced was a place where I was humiliated and belittled.

And it was all his fault.

PRESENT

(Age: 27)

"Oh my god. I'm gonna late!!" Aisha screeched as she saw the time on her phone. She shoved the duvet off her and jumped out of bed. She tried running to the bathroom in her small closet-sized apartment but it just ended up with her stubbing her toe against the coffee table.

"Ow ow ow." She cursed as she hobbled into the washroom and got on with her daily chores. Her hand-eye coordination was already awful and add that she was sleep deprived just made the entire thing worse. Stumbling, tripping, cursing she managed to brush her teeth and hop into the shower. The burst of cold water managed to wake her up as she furiously washed.

Why did I have to move into a room under a busy staircase?! This is why bhaiya says- Do your research. She angrily thought to herself as she wiped herself rigorously and zipped open her suitcase, searching for her semi-formal clothes.

Grabbing a granola bar and her trusty thermos of coffee, she was on her way to Edenbrook.

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As she entered the atrium, she was in complete awe. It looked big and majestic on the outside, with a clever mix of brick walls and the glass facade, making it look welcoming. Sunshine poured through the atrium as the various doctors and nurses worked around her, not giving mind to the clueless intern gawking.

"Hi, I'm Dr Ines Delarosa, a senior resident!! You look lost. Let me guess... the first day of residency?" A short woman in a doctor's coat walked up to her breaking Aisha from her awe, her aura full of happiness, rainbows and unicorns which made Aisha a little vary.

Is it normal to be this happy and energetic?

Aisha nodded hesitantly and the resident smiled a hundred-watt smile. "Great. You are gonna need a photo ID. Follow me, I will get you all set up." Wordlessly Aisha followed Ines, slinging her messenger bag over her shoulder, nervously playing with the strap.

It is going to be fine... Aisha breathed out as she entered a room with a white background and a camera before it. "Just step over here, in front of the camera and smile."

And waste my energy? No thanks.

She schooled her features to be as professional as she could and the flash of the camera went off. Aisha walked over the tangled wires and peeked at the screen. A serious face stared back at her, the lighting doing good to her brown skin. Her nose piercing caught light and her dark mahogany hair was tied up in a neat ponytail.

"Is it okay? Or do I need to retake the photo?"

"No, it is great! I like it. Thank you."

"Well I will just stick this on your ID.... and you are good to go!! I wish I looked that good in my ID." She said and cheerfully and once her eyes fell on the title a smile made its way on her face,

Dr Aisha Khurrana... It is real and it is true.

"My first day as a real doctor." she whistled lowly shaking her head as if she didn't believe it.

"I was in your shoes last year. Believe me, med school was nothing compared to this. Your three years of residency will be the toughest, most amazing year of your life!! But the first year as an intern will be the craziest of all."

As soon as the smile had graced her features, it slipped away and she nodded seriously. "I think I am ready for it. I have been dreaming and slogging my ass so that I could work in Edenbrook. Ever since I learnt that Ethan Ramsey worked here. His research basically pushed me to apply for med school."

Also, the fact that my parents can like shut up about me being worthless.

"That is great. I will just walk you to the locker room so that you can change into scrubs." Ines offered and Aisha gave her a small smile.

"So... Any advice?"

"Make friends..."

And I am out. She thought to herself. She always struggled with making friends and that is partly the reason why she would keep to herself all the time. Sure she did make a few gem of a friends in med school but if she had to choose between mingling with strangers and drowning, you know what she would choose.

"... with your interns, year senior residents, even your patients! Friends will get you through anything. And, uh, try to not annoy the Attendings! You do not want to get on your boss's bad side."

"Noted."

After changing she was just passing through the waiting room so that she could get to the orientation when she heard gasps from the seating area. A woman had collapsed on her seat and the people were crowding around her.

Her instincts kicked in and she ordered. "Give her space. Everybody step back! I'm a doctor."

She hurried over to the woman just as another doctor rushes in. He kneeled at her side and checked her pulse. "Pulse is weak. She's unresponsive." He looked up and his eyes landed on her.

"You Rookie. Get here."

"Right away doctor. Coming!" Aisha hurried over as the doctor lifted the fainted woman on to the nearby gurney.

"What was she coming in for? Did she fill out a form yet?"

"No, she'd just walked in."

The doctor's piercing blue eyes landed on her which made her straighten her back. "If we don't figure out what's wrong with her fast, she's going to die on this table. Rookie, check B.P."

Wrapping the blood pressure cuff around the unconscious woman's arm and she pumped the bulb, peering at the numbers.

"It's plummeting. She's hypotensive. We've gotta get fluids in her."

Aisha's eyes wandered over the woman's form, trying to search for more clues. Her eyes landed on the rapidly forming bruise on her elbow.

"Doctor... Look at this bruise. I think it's a sign that she is a haemophiliac."

The doctor replied in a gruff voice. "You think or you know?"

"I know."

"Good. Also can you see the way her fingertips are turning blue? It is a sign of low oxygen saturation in the blood. Take a closer listen to her lungs. Hurry."

She nodded assertively and slipped the resonator of the stethoscope over the ribs, straining to hear the diminishing whooshing of the lungs which made Aisha gulp in fear.

"Can't hear anything on the left side and the right side is struggling. She is going to suffocate at this rate." She spoke up , her voice struggling to stay calm but as she glanced at the older doctor, he seemed to be as cool as a cucumber.

"Nurse we have got a code blue." His authoritative voice boomed over as the nurses bustled around the gurney.

Taking the bag mask from the nurse, he secured it around the patient's mouth and gently pump air into her lungs.

"What do we do, Doctor? What's happening to her?" She asked as she noticed the reducing breath rate.

He looked up. "Consider all the clues. It's all there. You know this, Rookie."

Aisha closed her eyes and took a deep breath, realigning her focus, delving deep into her mind, analyzing the clues.

Hemophilia... low blood oxygen... no lung expansion on one side...

Her brown eyes snapped open as it struck her. "It's a haemothorax!"

A twinkle of approval flickered in the ocean eyes, which vanished as soon as it came. "Precisely. A blood vessel ruptured and is filling her pleural cavity..."

"... Blocking her lungs from expanding! That's why she can't breathe." Aisha completed the sentence.

Fuck.

"But we can't repair the blood vessel over here."

The older doctor's jaw clenched. "Then we will have to do a emergency thoracotomy to drain the cavity instead. Nurse!"

The nurse hustles around handing her a scalpel and a chest tube, her eyes widening in shock.

She gulped, her nervousness spiking as she sees the doctor lift the shirt of the patient, exposing the side of her rib cage.

"We need a local anaesthetic-"

The doctor interrupted her. "We're out of time and she is already unconscious. Do it now, or the woman's life is on you!!"

She gritted her teeth with determination. I am not loosing a patient on my first day.

She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. It is just like anatomy class only... this isn't a cadaver but a real person.

But that statement, instead of calming her, it just caused the scalpel to shake in her hand.

The doctor reaches and encompasses her hand. "Hey... You can do this."

Aisha nods stabilizing herself and focusing solely on the older doctor's voice, before she looked down.

"There you go... Nice and easy."

Incision at the fifth intercostal space... anterior.. to the mid axillary line...

And when she was confident enough, she made the perfect incision, a trickle of red following the path of the scalpel.

"Now the tube."

She took and pushed it into the incision and with a spurt, blood started draining out of the chest cavity resulting in the patient to take a deep breath.

Holy shit I did that. I freaking did that.

In the daze of endorphins, she heard the doctor order her surgery, the nurses wheeling the gurney and the onlookers applauding.

She turned towards the attending, excitement pouring out of her in waves. "Doctor.. that was absolutely amazing!!"

It's was as if a switch flipped and the grumpier and sarcastic facade took place. "You're right. It is pretty amazing you didn't get her killed."

Aisha's jaw dropped.

"Wait, what?"

The doctor rambled off, pointing out her mistakes. "Your examination was slow and superficial. Your scalpel technique, amateur at best."

It took all her might to not scoff. 

Excuse me I graduated from AIIMS Delhi, thank you very much.

 Swallowing the dying need to go off she spoke in a professional tone. "Amateur? I'm sorry, doctor but it is my first day."

"Well, that is not an excuse you can use because if that patient would have died, the blood would have been on your hands..." He lifted the badge attached to her breast pocket scrutinizing on the surname.

"... Khurrana."

He tossed the id back to her, turned on his heels and walked away, leaving a steaming Aisha in her place.

"What a dick." She muttered under her breath.

"Yeah and I'm totally in love with him." A nurse appeared magically out of thin air near her, causing her to jump in surprise.

The kind eyed nurse just rolled his eyes and placed a hand on her shoulder which had Aisha bristling. "Don't worry about it, Dr Ramsey is like that to everybody."

Aisha's jaw dropped for the second time. "Wait... Dr. Ramsey as in Dr. Ethan Ramsey?!"

Shooting a knowing glance, he spoke up. "I take it, you're a fan?"

"He's only my medical hero and greatest inspiration. I've read all his research!" Aisha rushed off, horror and excitement rushing through her.

Oh my god I managed to piss of my one medical hero.. I'm such a dumbass.

Noticing the horror of her expression he gave a gentle smile. "On the bright side, you'll get plenty more chances to impress him."

She sighed and looked down to see that her scrubs were stained with blood.

First impression is last impression beta, always remember that. Her father's voice resonated in her mind.

"Dammit, I'm here for five minutes and I'm already a mess. I can't show up to orientation like this!"

"Don't sweat it. There are extras in the locker room. Come I will show you the way..."

She walked into the locker room, looking for her assigned locker. There was a crowd of half naked interns and after mumbling a couple of 'excuse me's', and rubbing shoulders (literally) she made it the end of the room.

As she turned she knocked into another woman in nothing but her undergarments.

"Uh...um.. okay then." Aisha stuttered as she felt the back of her neck heating up.

Thanks to my brown skin no one can see me getting flustered.

"What? See something you like?" She asked cheekily in an Indian accent which eased Aisha up a bit.

"Ha, you wish."

"Aren't you cute?" The woman snickered as she reached for her pants.

"That's what people say, so it must be true."

She reached for her full sleeve shirt before looking Aisha's way. "Desi?"

Aisha snorted. "Obviously. And I'm guessing you too."

"Of course. And I'm guessing that you are definitely not wearing those scrubs."

"What? Didn't you hear? Bloody clothes are like the new trend around here."

There was a moment of silence before both of them started laughing.

"It's good to meet someone from home." Aisha spoke as she pulled her scrub shirt off.

"Woah, woah, woah. Don't count on that yet. I need to see if you are gonna get in my way in this competition."

Aisha smirked as she shut her locker. "Can't say I'm surprised. Can't be desi if the sense of competition isn't ingrained in your DNA."

"Oh my god never thought that I would see Jackie's twin." A familiar manly voice wafted over to them.

Wait a second...

"Shut up scalpel jockey, this is our kind of bonding."

"Oh please, don't scare the newbie aw- oh."

Oh.

She was standing right in front of him. Face to face. The playful amber eyes, with flecks of brown hadn't changed. The long shoulder length hair had been cut and styled to be short and messy.

There was no trace of the surfer boy she met in Maui. He was a man through and through but still, the youth in his eyes poured out in waves, reminding her of the sandy beaches.

But right now those amber eyes were wide with shock.

It's not everyday that you meet your ex of ten years in the locker room of your new job.

"Aisha?"

".... Bryce?!"

HEHEHEH AWKWAARRDDD

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[aliciameade]

A Thousand Cuts

Title: A Thousand Cuts Author: aliciameade Rating: M for alcoholism and angst Pairing: Beca/Chloe Summary: Beca doesn't realize she needs to get her shit together until it's too late, or, my take on a prompt I was sent to write something based on Taylor Swift’s “Death by a Thousand Cuts.”

Also on AO3

My heart, my hips, my body, my love / Trying to find a part of me that you didn't touch

Gave up on me like I was a bad drug / Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club

Our songs, our films, united, we stand / Our country, guess it was a lawless land 

Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand / Paper cut stings from my paper-thin plans 

My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust / Trying to find a part of me you didn't take up 

Gave you so much, but it wasn't enough / But I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts

“You don’t mean that.” Beca’s voice cracks over the words; she’s moments from crying and she knows it.

Chloe’s already crying. “The hell I don’t.” Her voice is steady despite the tears. Her jaw is set, the muscles in her left cheek tensing with how hard she’s clenching it.

“Where am I supposed to go?” That’s when the first tear finally hits Beca’s cheek. They don’t stop after that and she doesn’t bother trying to wipe them away. “I don’t know anyone else here!”

“That’s not my problem.” Chloe walks away so abruptly, steps so heavy it makes Beca jump. She’s digging through the trunk that sits at the foot of their bed and pulls out Beca’s duffel bag to toss it onto the bed. “Pack. And get the rest of your shit out before the end of the month whenever I’m not here or I’m throwing it all away.”

Beca’s sure this must be what it feels like for the earth to swallow one whole. Her world’s been ripped out from beneath her feet.

The thing is, it’s her fault. She can’t argue that it’s not. She could have tried harder, not allowed herself to grow complacent. Chloe was someone who loves with her entire being, every inch of her soul. And Beca adores her. Loves her. But she has struggled to keep up with just how much Chloe needs from her in return for all the love she gives Beca. Truth be told, it’s scared the shit out of Beca since the day they exchanged their first ‘I love yous.’ She had even prefaced her confession by saying she will probably mess it all up.

Fucking self-fulfilling prophecies.

“I’m going for a walk,” Chloe says as she pushes past Beca more physically than necessary. “Don’t be here when I get back.”

When the door slams behind her, Beca fights the urge to crumple onto their bed and weep. They’d just made love on it this morning and she thinks if she touches it, it may burn her flesh.

Instead, she grabs the bag Chloe threw onto it and starts stuffing clothes and toiletries into it. Her head pounds and her chest aches with the need to sob but she won’t give this tiny apartment, their first home together as a couple. She fills the bag until she can’t zip it and throws her laptop into its case to swing them both over her shoulder.

On her way out the door, she rips a photo of the two of them in front of their Christmas tree last year off the fridge—not to destroy it, but to stuff it into her bag.

She wonders if Chloe will even notice it’s gone.

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

Beca takes the train into Manhattan. Brooklyn feels too small, too familiar. She wants the city to swallow her since the earth only pretended to. She doesn’t have a single New York-based contact in her phone except for the ramen house Chloe and she love and the main number for her office. She doesn’t particularly like her job and has made no effort to get to know anyone there. 

In the future, she’ll realize this could be a theme in her life.

She ends up at a hotel by Union Square. She can’t afford it. It’s nearly $200 for the night and it goes on an already precariously charged-up credit card. She’ll move to a hostel tomorrow; tonight, she needs privacy and space and the freedom to have the breakdown she’s been staving off for the two hours it’s been since Chloe told her it was over and threw her out of their home.

Once she gets to her room, she drops her bags on the floor and immediately throws up.

It’s the longest night of Beca’s life.

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

She doesn’t get the rest of her belongings back. She’s living in a hostel in a room she shares with five other people, at least one of which is new every night. She has to wait her turn to use the bathroom and to shower and most of the time, there’s no hot water.

The good thing, she supposes as she tries day after day to find a single good thing in her life, is that at $35 per day, she can actually afford her room and board and even feed herself twice a day and keep her phone bill paid.

Thank God for ubiquitous free WiFi.

But that one good thing, just keeping herself in room and board, doesn’t do anything to outweigh all the bad.

She hasn’t spoken to or heard from Chloe in two months. There was no final warning about coming to get her belongings or they’d be trashed. Chloe hasn’t checked in with her a single time.

Not that Beca’s reached out to Chloe either.

She’d thought escaping Brooklyn would help protect herself. Far from away all their usual haunts, she would be safer from the constant reminders of all the moments she and Chloe shared in the year-and-a-half they spent living together there.

Instead, she’s faced with bigger reminders in Manhattan. So many date nights spent there at restaurants and concert venues and theatres and sunset strolls through parks.

“Oh, my gosh, baby, this is so romantic, we have to take a selfie,” Chloe said as she grabbed Beca’s hands to spin them in a circle that almost had Beca tripping over her own feet. “Wait, no! Excuse me, sir?” Chloe asked a passerby. “Would you take our picture, please?”

“Sure,” he said as Chloe handed him her phone. “Tell me when.”

“Just take a bunch,” Chloe answered before Beca had even had a chance to weakly and pointlessly protest the impromptu photoshoot.

Then they were kissing on Gapstow Bridge with Central Park and the New York skyline behind them and Beca forgot why she would ever want to protest such a thing.

She can’t even walk through Times Square without her eyes pricking with tears at the memory of Chloe dragging Beca up the red stairs in the middle of a snowstorm to take a selfie at the top while they kissed wearing beanies and scarves and gloves.

The photo came out looking like they were in a snow globe and felt as magical as it looked. It’s saved in her favorites on her phone, but she refuses to let herself look through that album.

Even when she’s alone at night in a strange place that is her home but feels nothing like it, Chloe is everywhere. She can feel her phantom arms around her waist to pull Beca back against her to settle into sleep. In the shower, her hands travel over her body and she remembers all the times and all the ways Chloe has touched her here, and here, and here.

Alcohol doesn’t help, though Beca gives it her best shot.

It leads to her waking up in the beds of people whose names she only sometimes remembers.

A man she goes home with makes her leave when she won’t stop crying when he tries to touch her.

A woman she goes home with spends the night holding her. They even have sex, finally, in the early hours of the morning. But all Beca can think about is how it’s not right. How she isn’t Chloe and she doesn’t know how to touch Beca as Chloe does. It does nothing to help Beca forget or move on. In fact, it only makes her miss Chloe more.

She stops trying to escape into other people and goes back to drinking alone. It’s cheaper that way, too, which is a nice bonus. One bottle of whiskey runs her $40 which gives her far more drinks for her dollar compared to going to bars.

Eventually, she finds someone in need of a roommate through a coworker and she has a room to herself in Washington Heights. Her roommate is nice, a few years older than Beca, and works for the city’s child services department. She’s a good listener on the rare occasions Beca confides in her when her emotions become too much to take alone.

It turns into a relationship of convenience. They both acknowledge that’s what it is and that they’re setting themselves up for disaster if (when) it ends because someone (Beca) is going to have to move out when things become too messy.

But until that happens, it’s nice to feel at least somewhat normal again. She doesn’t feel like she’s ready to fall apart if someone looks at her the wrong way on the street.

She still thinks about Chloe at least once every minute when she’s conscious.

And usually, even when she’s not.

She knows she’s fixating. It’s too hard to not spend as much energy as she can berating herself for messing up and losing Chloe. It’s delicious torture to hate herself so much and replay the details of every moment of their relationship and pick out every time she fucked up and think about how she could have done it differently, how she would do it differently if she had the chance.

What’s most irritating of all is that there is no one singular cataclysmic event she can blame. It was her series of micro-aggressions, so seemingly small (to Beca), that piled up until replying to Chloe’s multi-scroll-long text message telling Beca that she needed more from her with “k” got her thrown out on the street.

And she knew—knows—she deserved it.

She wishes she could go back in time and slap herself and tell her to get her shit together before she loses the best thing to ever happen to her.

But she can’t. She keeps drinking and it’s never enough to forget Chloe.

Eventually, her behavior lands her out on her ass again, but this time, she expects it. What girl wants her not-girlfriend crying about her ex every time they have sex? At least there’s a discussion first and she’s allowed a couple of weeks to find a new place to live.

A year has passed since she fucked up her relationship with Chloe but, somehow, she’s managed to get her professional life into something resembling moderate success. She’s surprised when she downloads bank statements at the balance in her account to have when she goes apartment hunting. She’s done nothing but pay rent to her now-ex-roommate and buy what few things she’s needed to get by (mostly alcohol). She thinks she remembers an email from HR about a bonus or royalty payout around Christmas…?

It affords her the ability to get her own apartment, a one-bedroom in Harlem.

It also affords her the freedom to indulge in all her vices without someone passing judgment. She can drink herself to blackout. She can have anonymous sex. She can cry until she’s sick or lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling all night in a drug-and-alcohol-induced stupor. None of it really matters, anyway.

She fits right in with the people she’s finding herself forced to be around more often. She gets wasted with colleagues and A-listers under the guise of networking. She impresses men with her ability to out-drink them despite her stature. And if one of them offers cocaine? She can be the last one standing in the early hours of the morning.

She prides herself on her endurance, though not more than she prides herself on the fact that no matter how hammered she gets, not once has she drunk-dialed Chloe to beg forgiveness.

She hasn’t dialed her at all, for that matter.

She’s never apologized.

She wants to point out that showing up at her former apartment building when it’s dark and the streets are empty repeatedly pressing the buzzer for what used to be her apartment is not drunk-dialing nor drunk-texting.

“Hello?” Chloe’s voice crackles through the shitty speaker and Beca slumps against the wall next to the metal intercom at the sound of it. “Is anyone there? I swear if you kids are pulling this shit again, I’m calling the cops.”

Beca laughs to herself, memories of a group of teenagers that roams the neighborhood raising havoc of the relatively painless variety. Things like Ding Dong Ditch and hiding delivered packages from their recipients. It always infuriated Chloe and made Beca laugh and tell her to calm down, they’re just kids and they could be getting into much worse kinds of trouble.

She considers continuing to ring the buzzer just to keep Chloe on the line; it’s been so long since she’s heard her voice. Maybe she could just sleep on the building’s stoop?

She’s still thinking about it when she hears the familiar squeak of the door opening.

“Beca?”

She wonders if maybe she finally passed out to slip into dreamland because Chloe’s standing in front of her in plaid sleep shorts and Beca’s favorite vintage David Bowie tee.

“Hey, babe,” she slurs.

“What are you doing here?” Chloe takes half a step out of the door and starts to reach for her but stops short. “Are you drunk?”

“What if I am?” she says as she pushes herself away from the wall to stand upright again, though everything feels like it’s tilting. She points. “That’s my shirt.”

Chloe crosses her arms over her chest as if that will hide it. “I asked what you’re doing here.”

Beca has to think hard. She doesn’t remember how she got to Brooklyn. She doesn’t know what time it is. “I’m tired,” she answers. “I came home.”

“You don’t live here anymore.”

“I didn’t say I live here. I said I came home.” She tries to walk forward but trips and finds herself caught by Chloe before she hurts herself. “Cat-like reflexes,” she says with a chuckle before catching the scent of the laundry detergent and lotion Chloe always uses and the tears come out of nowhere.

She’s vaguely aware that Chloe’s helping her walk and it’s up the stairs and into the apartment they once shared, not out to the curb.

The last thought that passes through her mind as Chloe helps her into what was always Beca’s side of the bed is that even through her blurry vision she can see a picture on the refrigerator. A copy of the same photo she’d taken with her the day Chloe had thrown her out, placed in the exact place the original had been for so long.

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

She wakes to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Her head throbs but not too painfully; she rarely gets hungover these days. She knows where she is. She knows the feel of the bed, the softness of the sheets, the scent of breakfast and the sound of the quiet tings and thuds of cabinets opening and closing, of plates, mugs, spoons, and knives.

She doesn’t want to open her eyes. Maybe if she pretends to be asleep she could stay there all day without having to be embarrassed by her actions. She can just hold onto this unexpected return to a past life for a few more minutes before it’s ripped away from her again.

She starts when the sound of a mug being placed on the nightstand near her head comes unexpectedly.

“Morning,” Chloe’s quiet, husky morning voice whispers as she sits on the edge of the bed next to Beca.

Beca grimaces and pulls the covers up over her head. “No.”

“I have to go to work.” Beca didn’t even think about the fact that it was a weekday. Her own schedule doesn’t conform to the typical Monday-through-Friday model. “But I’m going to call out sick for the afternoon and come back at lunch.”

Beca slips the covers down until they’re under her chin. She knows she looks like shit but Chloe looks more beautiful than she remembers her.

“You can stay here until then. Help yourself to breakfast. We’ll talk when I get home, okay?”

Beca just nods, afraid that anything more than that will wake her from whatever dream she’s having. She feels Chloe’s hand on her leg, a brief touch before she’s leaving too soon.

Beca watches her gather her things and leave the apartment, locking it with her keys.

She knows she should go back to sleep. Sleep off the last bits of the drunkenness she can still feel swimming in her. But she’s been thrown back into her old life, her old home, and like so many mornings, Chloe’s just gone to work after making coffee for Beca.

Slowly, she sits up to take in her surroundings. The small studio looks much like she’s remembered it. There’s a lot more of Chloe in it now, though. More photos of her and friends Beca’s never met. The band posters Beca had insisted on putting up have been replaced with generic canvas prints from Target that feature the Eiffel Tower and a recreation of a poster for la tournée du Chat Noir avec Rodolphe Salis. It makes her smile; Chloe’s always had an obsession with Paris and it had only gotten worse after they went to Denmark—but not France—in college.

Driven by her roiling stomach she forces herself out of bed. When she stands, she has to do a double-take looking down at herself. She’s not wearing the clothes she’d left her apartment in yesterday. She’s not even wearing pants. Her legs are bare and she plucks at the shirt she’s wearing to see it’s one of her old concert tees.

A memory flashes of last night, of Chloe in the doorway wearing Beca’s shirt.

It makes her feel lightheaded and she reaches for the coffee Chloe’s left bedside before crossing the room to the kitchen. Everything’s still in the same place and it’s mindless yet spine-tingling to go through the motions of finding something to eat in that room just as she’s done countless times in the past.

She plops down at the small table that she once imagined proposing to Chloe over on a Sunday morning over a cozy winter brunch they prepared together and is about to dig into her bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that Chloe miraculously has on-hand despite claiming to hate it when she freezes, spoon halfway to her mouth.

On the clothing rack in the middle of the room, the one they had to fight over for valuable space, hang all of Beca’s clothes she’d left behind when she was forced to flee.

Her chair screeches as she pushes it back to rush over and quickly flip through the blouses, pants, and dresses she hasn’t seen in more than a year. She tugs open the third and then fourth drawers of the dresser they shared to find them both still stuffed full of underwear, bras, socks, tank tops, shorts, and Beca’s beanies and gloves she’d really missed that winter. She drops to her knees and reaches under the bed to find the sharp plastic edge of a storage bin and pulls it out. All her shoes, still in their place.

If not for the changes in decor, she would believe she never left. Nothing has changed since her last morning with Chloe.

It’s overwhelming. Chloe had threatened to throw everything away if Beca never picked it up. Beca never did, but Chloe didn’t follow through.

Her head swims and her eyes prick with tears. She thinks she might be sick from the rush of emotions and adrenaline; Chloe hadn’t tossed their life in the trash even though she’d tossed Beca to the curb.

She isn’t sick, though. Instead, she strips off her shirt and crawls into the bathtub and turns on the shower to sit under the spray and cry.

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

Beca’s heart races when she hears Chloe’s keys in the hallway seconds before they rattle in the lock. She watches the door open slowly, Chloe peeking in carefully until they find Beca sitting at the table.

“You’re awake,” she says as she enters with less care now that Beca’s not asleep. “Did you find something to eat? I brought lunch just in case.”

Beca’s eyes drop to the bag in Chloe’s hand; there are familiar round plastic take-out containers stacked in it and Beca doesn’t have to ask to know it’s from the ramen place they frequented. “I did, yeah.”

Chloe sets the bag on the table and Beca watches her take off and hang up her coat. When she turns back around, she pauses. “Oh.”

Beca wonders what she’s looking at until she realizes it’s Beca’s clothes. “You didn’t throw my stuff away.”

Chloe takes a break as though she’s about to speak but instead she sighs and says nothing in reply as she sits down in her chair to Beca’s left and starts unpacking the lunch she’s brought.

Beca catches her hand when it’s busy setting up soup and sides and Chloe’s entire body seems to flinch, but she doesn’t pull her hand away. “You didn’t throw me away, did you.”

Tears are welling in Chloe’s eyes when they meet Beca’s but she still doesn’t speak.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Beca rushes when she realizes she’s the one who has to do the talking. “But I do. Will you hear me out? Give me ten minutes. Five.”

“Okay,” Chloe says quietly as she pulls her hand back to resume passing out utensils.

Beca waits until she’s finished, until Chloe’s no longer distracting herself with busywork and her eyes land on Beca nervously so she can finally say, “I’m sorry, Chloe.”

The End

[valkyriewarriors]

| Goddess of the Hearth | V

masterlist

warnings: none

word count: 2.1k

a/n: sorry for the wait. so much schoolwork but ill be done with the semester in two weeks so hopefully i can start posting regularly after that. also my askbox is always open for requests. 

Nesta looked at the dark and bulky man who was now bowing to her. Devlon, he introduced himself — the centurion from the legions’ camp on the outskirts. She tried not to grimace as he threw her a sloppy grin as he rose again. 

“Priestess, what an honor it is to stand before you.” 

“Is that supposed to be my carruca?” Nesta flatly asked, walking past the man towards her carriage. The carruca had an arched wooden rooftop, the exterior reflected colors of gold and red, the colors of the empire. On the inside there was enough space for at least four people, sitting comfortably in leather cushioned seats. She looked towards the front where two black horses with dark black manes intricately braided pulled the carriage. 

“This is one of the finest from our collection, reserved for members of the Senate, but you are a special exception.” Nesta tried to ignore the way her stomach turned as he lazily eyed her and only stiffened her back to face the centurion. 

“When do we leave?” 

“We? I’m not going with you, priestess.”

Nesta raised her eyebrows, “Then who is..?”

But she got her answer before the centurion could speak.

Over the horizon she spotted him, it was always hard not to. His broad figure shone in the sunlight, forever a stark contrast to the white sands and it wasn’t long before his long legs reached them. And then he was before her, much different than she has seen him before. Now he stood in his armor, his shoulders straightened and the helmet on his head covered his wavy curls. She couldn’t see past his soldier demeanor to the boy who laid out on her garden floor soaking in the sun. His eyes were darker underneath his helmet and the sun didn’t shine bright enough to capture them. For some reason Nesta felt very cold in the scorching heat. 

“These are my best optiones Cassian and Rhysand. They’ve won countless battles for me so surely they can handle a trip to the capital. I’m sure your husband will be pleased to know you are under the very best protection.” 

Your husband. 

Nesta tried not to flinch. 

Devlon stood in front of what Nesta realized were two optiones. She didn’t notice the other male, lea, dark  and muscular with eyes that almost looked like amethyst crystals. “Priestess, it's an honor to accompany you. I’m Rhysand.” He bowed slightly. Nesta tried not to wince at the gesture but gave him a tight lipped smile.

“Yes it’s an honor Priestess.” Nesta almost did not recognize his voice.

“Cassian.” She said voicing her thoughts and froze when their eyes met but she quickly regained her posture. Nesta straightened her back, lifted her chin and turned away from Cassian. Devlon was watching the exchange carefully.

“Is this it? Just two?” She said trying hard not to sound annoyed but her tone was completely the opposite.

Devlon’s face turned sour,  astounded that she spoke so frankly with him. Nesta knew men like him all her life, she was forced to give them blessings from Vestía. They thought the world should be given to them at the hands of pretty women. Nesta hated it, every one of them.

“I’ll have you know, Priestess that these men have been trained specifically by me so I’m sure they’ll be just right to your new husband.” Devlon had a wicked gleam in his eyes. His last words came out in an almost sneering tone.

Before she could lash out on him Rhysand stepped up. “Very well. We should probably get going so we can reach our destination by dawn.” He reached for her one case of clothes on the ground and lifted them into the carruca. Devlon only grunted a goodbye before disappearing from her sight.

“He’s not really great with women.” Cassian said from behind her. She whirled around to face him now pulling off his helmet freeing his wonderful brown locks in the sun. Nesta tried not to stare as he ran his fingers through it. As if she didn’t dream of doing the same thing last night.

“He’s not the only one optione. Aren’t you going to help Rhysand?” She tried to look away from him, hoping to squander any thought of rebuttal from him.   

Cassian bit his inner cheek but went to lift her bags into the carriage. Rhysand threw them a curious look, maybe he sensed the same atmosphere that she thought felt suffocating.

-

He saw the stare that Rhys threw him, almost quizzical but Cassian ignored it. Of course Rhys didn't know of all his garden rendezvous with the priestess. Or that the conversation they had last night was running through his head on repeat. Cassian simply shrugged one of the cases on his shoulder to load into the carriage. You’re different from the rest.

“I can take the reins until sundown tonight, we should be able to make it to Helion by then.” Rhysand told him as he climbed behind the two great stallions. Cassian still caught his smirk as he looked over to where the priestess was climbing into the carriage. “You get to babysit.” Rhysand said almost too cruelly. 

“How generous of you,” Cassian tried to sound sarcastic. Rhy’s smirk grew as Cassian’s lips twitched. Rhys pretended not to see the obscene gesture Cassian threw at him. 

The priestess said nothing as he climbed aboard and sat across from her. Her steel grey eyes failed to meet his, but that didn't stop Cassian from admiring her beauty once more. It was almost painful to see her pale skin glow off the midday’s sun. He wished she'd let her hair down so he could see the slightly orange hues when it hit the sunlight. Instead it was tied up and hidden underneath a white veil. 

“I’m not the enemy you should  be looking out for, optione.” She said with an icy tone. Her eyes now bore deep holes into his. 

“Trust me if anything can cut men down it’s that tongue of yours, Priestess.”  

He loved watching her fluster, watching her brows furrow and sometimes a blush would creep up her neck right beofre she’d regain that stoic posture. Cassian knew the words she’d say next to him would slice him. It was like the calm before the storm.

“Would you like to end up like them Cassian?” His name falling off the tip of her tongue felt like audial velvet.

Now it was her turn to watch him fluster. He swallowed and looked away but could still feel her stare. I’d let your tongue do anything to me.  But Cassian knew better not to voice that thought. He watched as she closed her eyes and rested her head against the window frame, a slight smile on her face. 

Before long the sun was setting, Cassian found it hard to tear his gaze away from the asleep priestess. Her slightly slumped posture, softened features, the slow and steady breaths indicated she was fast asleep, But Cassian had his duty, and his eyes continued to dart outside looking for any sign of trouble. 

Rhysand pulled in front of a private hostel where servants waited for them. Cassian stepped out of the carriage just as the priestess arose from her sleep. She readjusted her veil before gracefully stepping out, ignoring his offered hand to help her down. 

My, aren’t you a magnificent sight. Eris may have no eyebrows but he does have taste.”  

Cassian snapped his gaze towards the voice, and immediately recognized Aelius Helion, the owner of Rome’s most luxurious private mansios. The business gained him notorious reputation among the elite which also granted the privilege of people looking away from who and how many he bedded.  His wide beamed smile and offered hand however were objectively ignored by the priestess, not even glancing at him. Helion blinked as if a ghost just walked through him. Cassian did his best not to crack a smile. 

“This is where I will be staying?” She deadpanned looking towards the grand structure whose arched entryway exposed the vibrant greens of the courtyard, the silks and velvets of the decor, and the massive statues of the gods in crystalline limestone. 

“It’s no temple priestess, trust me on that,” Helion winked and Cassian knew the priestess struggled not to roll her eyes. “Nevertheless, it has housed emperors and senators for years now. Servants for your every need, and I mean any need.” He was trying to get a reaction out of her stone face, but she never wavered.

  “I assume these optiones will be in the room next to mine?” Her voice was like a sharp fresh breeze on a summer’s day, ignoring his previous comment.

Helion, now fully recovered from her icy demeanor, looked intrigued. “We can arrange that, of course priestess. Although guards usually stay, erm, on duty for the night.” 

“They need rest.” She looked over to Cassian very quickly, but it was enough for Helion whose cat-like eyes wandered to him too. Cassian found it best now to help Rhysand unload her cases, avoiding their looks. 

“Don’t worry I'll take care of your boys, priestess. I’ll see you for dinner tonight?”

“Send it to my room instead.” She smiled sweetly, not an ounce of verity in it, and left to let the servants lead her to her room. 

Helion blew out a breath Cassian was familiar in holding himself. “Now why did Devlon send his two best optiones with ice priestess?” He asked, head cocking slightly towards Rhysand. 

Rhysand only shrugged, “He thinks it’ll grant him more favor with the Emperor if he provided the best protection for her.”

“She must be a very special bride. I heard Eris asked for her especially even after her little incident.” Helion chuckled but stopped when he saw the confused expression on the optiones. Rhysand raised his eyebrows, “Incident?” He looked over to Cassian who only shook his head, he didn't have any idea what Helion was talking about nor did he want any part of this conversation.  

Helion diverted his gaze to Cassian’s uncomfortable stance, “Devlon didn’t tell you? The girl not only signed off Eris’ eyebrows, but burned and scarred three of his guards.”  

Rhysand scoffed, “Alright stop telling tales Helion,” 

“I’m serious, I have reliable sources.” Helion’s eyes hardened and his smile vanished.

Cassian’s eyebrows furrowed. “Enough of this. Where do we put the carriage?” He growled slightly. Helion raised his hands in defense and ushered a servant towards them to show them the way. 

-

“Wow, only one bed,” Rhysand said with a smirk on his face as they entered their room right across from the priestess. As Rhysand said, there was only one giant bed wrapped in silk covers. Cassian rolled his eyes as he threw his sack on the floor, “we’ll be switching patrol tonight anyways. Otherwise, you sleep on the floor.” 

“After a whole day out in the sun while you got shade in that fancy carriage? No way.” Rhysand plopped on the bed with arms behind his head, Cassian could almost seem him sinking into it. “I think this mattress is stuffed with feathers.” He said with a smile on his face. 

“What was that by the way today?” Rhysand said with his eyes still closed. 

“What was what?” 

Rhysand sat up from the bed and threw a skeptical look at him. “Her knowing your name and stealing glances at you, you genuinely talking to her, and then snapping at Helion.” 

“Helion talks too much.”

“About the priestess? Why would you care so much?”

Cassian sighed. He lifted the sleeve of his shirt to reveal the scar on his bicep. “She gave me a salve to heal this wound. There’s much more to her than being an ice priestess.”

Rhysand’s eyes narrowed, “What kind of salve would heal that so quickly?”

When Cassian said nothing Rhysands jaw tightened, “Are you really not going to answer me?”

“The Germanic tribes,” when Rhysand stiffened Cassian continued quickly, “it was through a network already established before the war.” 

“You don’t know what was in that salve she could’ve..”

“She could’ve what?” Cassian repeated, daring him to finish that thought. Rhysand just continued to stare at him, “You don’t have feelings for her right?” 

“Of course not.” Cassian said quickly and steadily even though his heart was racing. Rhysand didn’t look convinced. Cassian dragged his hand over his face and sighed. “I’ll take the first watch, you should rest for now Rhys.” He shut the door behind him without waiting for his response.

[manggojooz]

Pick A Side (Part 12)

pairing: Taehyung x reader

word count: 2,320

genre: university!au; angst; romance; a lil of thriller; a lil bit of fluff

warnings: slight references to voyeuristic behaviour

previous part: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11

taglist: @destiel1597 @mila271 @hopetookmysoul @ximaginx@honeyursosweet @coffeecupyoongs@bangtanbaesstuff@annoyingpessimist @betysotelo18 @okaysoplshelpme@igot7bangs @tahaing @mochi-and-co @somewhereinthestarss​

comment: sorry if im getting rusty at this, i need to warm up T.T badly...

Film cameras are better than digital ones. Why? Because in that moment the light flashes, the truth is etched into the film forever. Because truth is perceived as valuable.

---

“I just hated Jihyun for making this whole mess so I just did it, alright?! Happy now?!”, Taehyung’s voice sustained despite the recording having ended.  

“Thank you for giving me the idea of using a recorded confession”, Haejoong smiled at you with that same expression that used to make you feel comforted but now all you wanted was to punch his face in.

It wasn’t only you, Taehyung also had his fist clenched tight to the extent his knuckles were turning white.  

“The moment either of you try to report any of this, just know that I wouldn’t go down alone...”, the sly being tucked his phone back into his pocket, hardly moves a facial muscle before giving you one last nod and eventually sauntering off the hospital porch.  

---

“Don’t you want to know what happened?”, Taehyung asked you apprehensively as both of you sat in a corner of a sparsely patronised café near the hospital.  

Your expression looked angry but your eyes told him that it was more complex than that.  

“Why didn’t you tell me? Can’t believe he thought of threatening you to say those things... and all because of me... I’m such a burden...”, you ranted and Taehyung was astonished, that you never momentarily doubted that him and was even able to figure that much by yourself.  

“Don’t say that! You are not... Nobody would have known that he would go to such lengths. He's crazy, we have to report this to the police”, Taehyung felt indignant that Haejoong made you feel this way about yourself.  

“We will have to report it to the police but he has that damn recording...”, you were biting your fingernails, deep in thought.  

“Should we tell Ms. Helen about this and let her report it?”, Taehyung suggested. 

“That’s equivalent to reporting it, Haejoong will just use that recording...”, you answered with a deepening frown.  

“Let’s face it, Y/N. There’s nothing that can stop him from releasing it...”, Taehyung was getting impatient. He knows he had everything to lose, but he hated this hostage-like situation.  

“No, I won’t let him do that you!”, you raised your voice, annoyed that there seems to be no option.  

Both Taehyung and you could see it. Haejoong will keep gaining the upper hand if you continue to hold each other down like this. It was so unfair, you thought. The ones that have nothing to lose, can always afford to play the dirty game. They only stand to gain.  

That was when your mind suddenly clicked. No, Haejoong has something he can’t lose too... someone.  

---

Taehyung and you sat next to each other nervously gazing at the café door. Finally it rattles and flies open, the person you were keenly waiting for walked warily towards the both of you.  

Taehyung stood up from his seat, “Jihyun...”, he calls her name gently as she approached the table. “Have a seat, do you want a drink?”  

“It’s ok... what do you want?”, Jihyun’s attitude was uncertain as she rejected the drink but still took a seat opposite you.  

You carefully broached the subject, starting from the point when you found out that Haejoong liked her.

“So, now he has a recording of Taehyung ‘confessing’. Jihyun, he is not what he seems, you have to believe us”, it took a good eight minutes before you managed to finish the recap. You were kind of surprised that Jihyun stayed quiet throughout although she did look apprehensive.  

“Y/N, I know I said that I believe that you didn’t do it. But don’t be mistaken. It doesn’t mean I trust that you are on my side. Haejoong was the only one who had comforted me and stood up for me during this time... How can you expect me to take your words about him, when you were not even there with me when I needed it”, she was mostly staring at Taehyung as she expressed her doubts.  

“I tried calling you, I thought you...”, Taehyung attempted to explain.  

“You thought I wouldn’t want to see you? You are not wrong though”, Jihyun sounded exhausted. “Didn’t you say that he likes me? If that’s the case, why would he do that to me?”  

You had no answer.  

“I don’t want this thing to get any bigger than it already is... I just hope it dies down quickly and quietly. That is all I want now. It’s not about the truth anymore. Somehow the world makes me feel that as the victim, finding the culprit, seeking justice, is not my priority”, she sounded utterly drained.  

She stood up to leave and you bolted up from your seat too, “Jihyun...” There was a stillness in the air, you had almost never called her by her name like that.  

---

“Taehyung and Y/N came to look for me this afternoon...”, Jihyun said nervously. Haejoong had just brought her to their comfort food place - a kimchi soup restaurant, which is the only thing she can eat whenever she felt awful, and they are now strolling towards her hostel. His scarf was wrapped around her neck after he adamantly insisted that she wasn’t wearing enough layers.  

Haejoong stopped in the middle of the pavement upon her words and turned to face her.  

"They told me that you were the one who took those photos of me and wanted me to report you...”, Jihyun elaborated, stopping and spinning to look at Haejoong too.  

Haejoong was completely still, his eyes moving unnoticeably, observing all the tiny signs in Jihyun’s features.  

“They say you forced Taehyung to record a confession...”, Jihyun continued.  

“Do you believe them? What is it that you want to hear from me?”, Haejoong replied cautiously.  

“... you are the only friend I have now, so I want to hear you say that it’s not you”, Jihyun mumbled.  

“Will you believe me if I say that it is not me?”, Haejoong asked.

“I will”, she answered, never once averting his eyes.

“It’s not me.”  

A comforted smile slowly spreads across her lips.  

“It can’t be you...”, she whispers, and he was relieved to see that she will take his side. “It cannot be you...”, she uttered, and his expression changes. Yes, it cannot be him, if it were, Jihyun might lose it altogether.

“I was looking for the right time to let you hear the recording... I didn’t want to traumatise you just when things were getting better. Isn’t this like the thief calling someone else the thief? Unbelievable...”, Haejoong was careful that he didn’t appear too keen to explain the situation.  

“They pretend they can understand how I feel after all that has happened. How can they ever understand the feeling... it’s not as if it has happened to any of them”, Jihyun started to tear up.  

“Do you want to hear it? If not, what do you want me to do with the recording?”, Haejoong prodded.  

Jihyun thought for a while and said, “Nothing... delete it.”  

“You want me to delete it? Jihyun, I can’t-”, Haejoong started to resist.  

“I have known Taehyung for years! I've liked him for half that time! What do you want me to say?!”, Jihyun was agitated suddenly. Haejoong just stared at her in shock. But in a matter of seconds, she managed to catch herself again, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have shouted at you. I just want it to be over, Haejoong...”.  

“Do you still like him... Kim Taehyung? Even after all he did to you?”, Haejoong questioned her, his heart never felt heavier than it is now.  

“Have you ever had such a person? Even if they hurt you a lot, and they do all sorts of bad things, you feel like you can’t leave them? Maybe one day he will see that I was the one sticking by his side through it all... maybe then, I stand a chance. If only...”, Jihyun suddenly stopped, and shook her head.  

“If only what?”, Haejoong pressed on.  

“Nothing... I shouldn’t be thinking such things”, Jihyun became tight-lipped.

“If only Y/N never came into the picture?", Haejoong completed her statement.  

The shock in her eyes were evident.

---

Water was dripping from your hair all over the floor. You undid the bath towel wrapped around your body and flung it over your head, squeezing the moisture from your troublesome hair.  

You walked along the window towards where you had left your clothes hanging off the chair in your dorm. The windows were shut tight and you had drawn the worn-out curtains. Despite all that, your ears perked up when you heard a queer buzzing sound outside your window. You quickly threw on your sweater and slowly peeled open the curtains.  

A dark figure was hovering outside the window, you squinted at it and thanks to the light emitting from the other units you realised that it was a drone pointed right at your window. Right as you identified the foreign object, it started to fly away from you.  

You turned and scanned your room quickly, dashing towards your handphone.  

---

The drone zips through the night sky and to a secluded field not far from the school hostels. Donning a black hoodie, Haejoong looks up at the drone while controlling it with the remote in his hands. As the drone lowers itself, Haejoong spots the silhouette of another object behind it.  

“What’s that?”, he mumbles to himself, furrowing his brows.  

The object came closer towards him and his heart almost stops when he realises it is another drone which had been following his! He quickly lowers his head, trying to hide from it, running to pick up his own drone from where it had landed on the brown lawn.  

The sound was soft, a bit mushy, but he could definitely make out the footsteps approaching from behind him. 

Haejoong stops in his crouched down position. In a split second, he picked up his drone and started sprinting towards the buildings. Just as he was approaching the edge of the grass field, Taehyung dashes out of nowhere and tackles him to the ground.  

The two men were struggling in each other’s holds, Haejoong desperately trying to break free and Taehyung refusing to let go. Haejoong’s drone was crushed between their tangled bodies and in the midst of the tussle, one of the blades on the drone slices across Taehyung’s collar bone.  

Eventually, Haejoong managed to pin Taehyung to the ground and was fiercely shaking off Taehyung’s grasp on his ankles when a second person jumps on him, causing him to fall over. This time the man was much larger than his size and he twisted Haejoong’s arms behind his back, shouting into Haejoong’s ears, “Stop it! You are under suspicions of stalking and sexual harassment. You are required to- cooperate- with our investigations!”, the policeman huffs while working to hold Haejoong down.  

---

You burst through the doors of the police station. Ms. Helen was sitting next to Haejoong and you had the urge to just grab him by the collars and demand all the explanation you deserve but that was not top priority at the moment.  

“Where’s Taehyung?”, was all that you spouted, “Is he at the hospital? Which hospital?”  

“Y/N, I’m here, behind you”, Taehyung shuddered in embarrassment of you making a fuss in the police station.  

“Oh my gosh!”, you exclaimed when you saw his white knitted sweater covered in blood stains. You ran towards him, with fear and worry written all over your face. Seeing your reaction, Taehyung quickly revealed the bandage on his collar bone, “I’m ok I’m ok, it’s just a minor cut, they already fixed me up here.”  

That assured you not to worry about him but the fury did not die down and you immediately turned to lunge yourself at Haejoong. Helen threw herself between you and your nemesis, throwing her arms up to prevent you from exacerbating the situation.

“Y/N, that’s enough!”, she chided and luckily Taehyung ran over to drag you away.  

No matter how much the police questioned him, Haejoong remained silent and denied everything.  

“Mr. Im, the implications here are pretty obvious, wouldn’t you agree? We set up a net to catch the fish. If you aren’t the fish, why did you fall into the net?”, the inspector was pretty patient.  

“If you go around setting random nets, you are bound to catch things that are not fishes”, Haejoong replied defiantly, his words still sparse.  

“Well it was a pretty specific net, after all we used the victim as the bait to set it up...”, the inspector casually commented.  

Haejoong scoffed, “the victim?”, he turned to glance at you, and Taehyung’s feathers were vehemently ruffled again. “Are you sure this alleged victim knows enough to help you set up a net? You have got the wrong person, officer... she’s just trying to-”

“Oh no no, she’s not the victim I’m talking about”, the policeman cut Haejoong off.  

Silence ensued as Haejoong processes the assertion. Then who is this ‘victim�� they speak of?  

The door opens again, wind howling as it did.  

“Ah Ms. Kim, sorry to make you come all the way, this late at night”, the inspector greeted.  

You always felt that there was a kind of eeriness to the silence that came abruptly after a loud sound. That moment an explosion subsides, that sound which is quieter than silence itself.  

This was that moment.  

“A sound of something breaking A sound full of unfamiliarity”

He always had the same disposition. It always felt familiar. But that was just a mask he wore. Now you see it, the truth of him, the unfamiliar reflection of his soul. As he looked at Jihyun entering the dusty room, it was alive in his eyes. The vengeance that he hold, the indignation that he suffer and most importantly, the hurt that he never once imagined she would bring to him.

[ladyknightleyisundercover]

Harry/Ginny: "We're cursed! We're doomed!"

AO3

The summer after Ginny finished atschool, but before she started with the Harpies for the new season, she andHarry booked their first holiday together. They were to visit southern Spain,touring the muggle and magical coastline and generally having a delightful twoweeks. It would be Harry’s first ever trip abroad (the Dursleys hadn’t exactlybeen big on taking him away with them) and Ginny’s first holiday since theWeasleys went to Egypt when she was twelve. And it proved a disaster from startto finish.

Various Portkeys were missed; onehotel lost their booking altogether, forcing them into a very dodgy hostel forthe night where they shared a dormitory with fourteen drunk men on a stag do;and between them, they ended up in hospital four times. First Ginny gotsunstroke, then Harry fell down the side of a cliff on a hiking trip and brokehis ankle, then Ginny got a severely infected bug bite, then Harry finished offtheir stay with a nasty bout of food poisoning. All these things were easily dealtwith by the Healers, but all in all, it wasn’t the most successful of holidays.

They recounted the farce overdinner to Ron and Hermione when they got back, who laughed in the appropriateplaces, and made the appropriate noises of sympathy when required. “You’recursed,” Ron said, once they got to the food poisoning bit. “That extendingcamping trip we took put a curse on your holidaymaking forever!” A few drinkslater, this ‘curse’ turned into a silly in-joke which gave them all a fewlaughs, and was promptly forgotten about the next day.

Until, that is, the two of thembooked a second holiday together. This was in late autumn: their busy workschedules meant that they rarely were able to see each other, so they made aconscious effort to get away, just the two of them, and booked a cottage forthe weekend in Upper Fladgley. Getting there was, clearly, a breeze: they onlyhad to apparate up to Yorkshire, and they met in the Wand and Cauldron,enjoying a delicious meal before walking the short distance to thebeautifully-appointed cottage rented to them for Friday to Monday via a friendof a friend of a friend for surprisingly little. The weather was glorious forlate November: cold and crisp, but dry—autumn at its best. It was all set to bea glorious holiday, and an excuse for some much needed time together.

And then they discovered the ghoulin the attic.

This ghoul made the ghoul at theBurrow look tame, and explained why the rent had been so low. It consistentlymade noise—howling, banging on the pipes, doing Merlin only knew what untilabout four in the morning, whereupon it stopped for a couple of hours only toregroup at breakfast time twice as loud. They tried all the silencing charmsthey knew, but for some reason, they did not work. The ghoul was so loud thatat times talking was impossible: Harry and Ginny found themselves bellowing ateach other to be heard, which rather took the edge off whatever kind ofromantic weekend they’d planned. Sleeping was challenging enough; anything elsewas out of the question, especially after Ginny purchased two sets of ProfessorSprout style earmuffs which they both wore to bed.

They did, it was true, enjoy somenice autumnal walks around the sleepy little magical village in the Dales andthe Wand and Cauldron severed the best food either of them had had in months. Likethe Spain trip, it wasn’t as though they’d hated every moment. But as aromantic getaway, the holiday was a disaster from start to finish.

“I told you: cursed!” Ron said,when they’d told him, later. And, again, they’d laughed at their misfortune,then promptly forgotten all about it.

But then. In the spring, they’dorganised a trip to the Amalfi Coast. Early May, they’d been told, was the besttime to go, and so they headed for the wizarding beaches, sparing no expense ontheir hotel. They’d booked for a week, and the first three days were glorious.You could not have asked, they both agreed later, for a better holiday. Thehotel was incredible, the food divine, and the scenery beyond anything theycould have imagined. More than that, though they were finally able to spendsome time alone, just the two of them. It was amazing.

Then, the morning of their fourthday there, they’d gone down to breakfast only for another guest to approachthem. “Are you Ginny Weasley?” he’d asked. Ginny, who had had a spectular firstseason with the Harpies, was used to this by now, confirmed that she was,expecting to sign an autograph then be on her way, like at home. But the blokehad derailed their breakfast, giving her a play-by-play of nearly every matchshe’d been in like she herself hadn’t been there—with critiques!—and it hadrather spoilt breakfast.

Still, they were set up for a nicemorning by the pool afterwards…until it turned out that word had gotten outthat the Harpies’ new star Chaser was staying there, and nearly every touristin the surrounding area wanted her autograph, or a conversation, or the chanceto throw a Quaffle around with her. Throw in the fact that a fair few wereequally starstruck with Harry, too, and it meant that yet again, they didn’tget the relaxing couple’s holiday they planned. The remaining seven days werespent dodging autograph seekers and then, less charmingly, Rita Skeeter, who’dgot word of where they were staying and started popping up to ask ridiculousquestions, hoping for an exclusive.

Of course, they’d regaled Ron andHermione with the story when they’d got back. It wasn’t that they had had atruly awful time—and the two of them, with their respective upbringings, werewell aware of how lucky they were to be able to afford holidays at all, letalone such expensive ones in such lovely places. Still. The idea of a nicebreak, just the two of them, and no interruptions seemed to be unobtainable,much to their chagrin.

“It’s because you’re cursed,” Ronhad said solemnly. Once again, it was clear he meant it as a joke. And yet…

Busy work schedules, for both of them,meant that they didn’t plan another holiday for a good while. It wasn’t untilthe following summer that they planned to go away again, and this time, theydid extensive research, read every single review going, and booked under fakenames. Anything they could possibly do to ensure that things would goswimmingly, they did. All was looking very positive: they had rented into anextremely exclusive villa on one of the Greek Islands, on the recommendation ofone of Ginny’s teammates. Tamsyn swore that it was genuinely the best holidayshe had ever had, so the two of them started to relax.

This, finally, would be the holiday. The one to make up for allthe other rubbish ones; the one where everything would be perfect, and the onewhere no one would recognise them, as they had booked under the name of Danieland Bonnie Grint.

Three weeks before they were due toleave, a letter arrived at the breakfast table. The villa had burned down.

“…full refund…assure you thatno one was injured…regret we are unable to offer alternative accommodation atthis stage…” Ginny read aloud. She looked at Harry.

“Insurance job,” they agreed inunison.

*

“I’m not being funny,” Ron said,“but I think that you genuinely are cursed. You just cannot have a goodholiday. It was when we were on the run, see. The camping cursed you.” The fourof them had met for dinner, and Harry and Ginny had filled them in on theirlatest holiday shenanigans.

“Don’t be silly, Ron,” Hermionesaid, rolling her eyes affectionately. “Of course it didn’t. Have you been ableto find anything else?” She addressed this last to Harry and Ginny, who bothshook their heads.

“Sadly not,” sighed Ginny. “Wewanted to go somewhere hot, and also somewhere private after last time, and theonly places we’ve found now look a bit dodgy, really. Everywhere’s booked up,as you’d expect in July. It’s a bummer.”

“There’s worse things that couldhappen for sure,” Harry added, “but it’s still annoying.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Hermione saidsympathetically. “Maybe you could get something later in the summer?”

“That’s the plan,” Ginny said. “Wewere thinking—”

“It won’t work,” Ron interrupted,“because you’re cursed!”

“Oh, Ron!”

“I’m starting to think you’reright,” Ginny said, laughing. “We just can’t catch a break—literally!”

“The camping cursed you,” Ron said,looking at Harry with a grave expression on his face. “And you by association,”he added, nodding at his sister.

“That clearly isn’t true,”said Hermione in her logical voice. “You and I spent the entire time withHarry, and none of our holidays have been cursed.”

“Well now they will be!” Ron exclaimed. He picked up his beer glass andhalf rose from his seat. “Quick, look, there’s an empty table over there! Let’srun now, before the curse catches up with us, too!”

“We’re doomed,” Harry agreed. “We’recursed! Save yourselves while you still can!”

“Honestly, you two, that is nothow curses work! You should know this by now. You have to be cursed by someone,and—” Just then, their food arrived, cutting Hermione off. Distributing thedishes took a few moments, but once everything was settled, Ginny regarded theother three thoughtfully.

“D’you know, I think you’re right,”she said. “I think we could be cursed.”

“I can feel it in my waters,”agreed Ron, taking a big bite of burger. “Cursed.”

Hermione huffed in exasperation. “Thatreally isn’t possible, and—”

“The more you say it, the more trueI can feel it becoming,” said Harry, nodding at Ron. “I fear we are doomed toawful holidays for the rest of our lives! Whatever will we do?!”

“I don’t know if I can survive it,”Ginny said, pretending to wipe away a tear.

“You’re all being absolutely ridiculous—”

“There’s only one thing you cando,” Ron said. They all looked at him. He assumed the air of one who as reachedtrue enlightenment. “Break the curse.And also chuck us the ketchup, ta.”

“Now you’re talking,” Ginnysaid, waving her fork in his direction. “Wait. How do we do that?” Harryshrugged.

“I think it’s obvious,” Ron said. “To break the curse, you have tothink like the curse. Act like the curse. Becomeone with the curse.”

“Oh, honestly! How many years of magical education between you, and youpersist in indulging in these wild conspiracy theories which have no basis inthe reality of how cursing actually works!” Hermione looked like she was on theverge of the apoplexy.

“What you need to do,” Roncontinued, ignoring this, “is go camping again. The two of you, a tent, aweekend in the wilderness. Or, I dunno, some campsite somewhere. I guess itdoesn’t matter. But the point is, if you go camping together, and have a goodtime, I am convinced the curse will be lifted and you’ll have no more holiday problems.Boom. Sorted. Am I a genius or am I a genius?”

“I think it could work,” Harrysaid, playing along. “Gin? How about we dig those tents out again and go?”

“I’m up for it,” she agreed. “But Ithink we should consult an expert.”

“Bill?” asked Ron, confused.

Ginny shook her head. “Hermione?You are clearly the expert on all things curses at this table. What say you?”

Hermione looked like she might explodewith frustration, but just then the waiter came to ask how they were getting onwith their food. They all assured him it was lovely, then attention turned backto Hermione. Who was now not looking frustrated at all. Indeed, she had anexpression on her face which might best be described as ‘dangerous’.

“I think Ron’s idea could wellwork,” she said, taking a sip of wine to allow for a pointed pause. “If you doit properly.”

“…properly?” asked Ginny.

“You can’t just go camping andthink it’ll fix everything,” she said. “You have to go camping the muggle way.No magic.” She speared a carrot, looking satisfied.

“What’s muggle camping? How’s it different?”asked Ginny.

Hermione smiled. “Oh, you’ll see.”

to be continued…

[noahreids]

Beauty in the Aftermath (CS FF) | 13/14

Summary: Confronted with the sudden appearance of her birth parents, Emma, in a moment of panic, runs. She flees the diner, Storybrooke, the country. She finds herself a day later in the Dublin, Ireland Airport terminal wondering what the hell she has gotten herself into. With some fear, a little determination and a considerable amount of faking it along the way, she sets off on a trip she never planned on taking but needed more than she ever knew. She finds herself, she finds a Brit adrift on his own journey and finds out what home really means.

Rated: M (Sexual content & some Irish whiskey along the way).

Also on: AO3 | FFN Tumblr: [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 ] Art!: Cover | Ch.1 | Ch.3 | Ch.5 | Ch.7 | Ch.9 | Ch.14

A/N: I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season (and happy, happy New Year!) Thanks for your patience with the last chapter and the two week break. We are back with the penultimate chapter, hang in there! And just thanks for being awesome amazing people. I appreciate the heck out of each and every one of you. xo

Always thanks to @shippingtheswann for the cheering and beta work (go read her wonderful story!), @imagnifika for finding the heart of the story with her art, @halobxist & @meanderingcaptainswanmusings for everything xo. And please keep supporting all the other CSBB authors and artists. The content everyone is bringing is truly amazing.

And now what will Emma do?

Chapter 13

Night has crept over the city, aided by the thick ashen clouds and the light mist of rain slowly dampening everything it touches. The light from the streetlamps diffuse golden on the wet cobblestone streets, guiding tourists and locals alike to the overcrowded pubs and restaurants, casting spotlights on those pulling on their cigarettes and laughing with friends.

Emma doesn’t register any of it, faceless people, and nameless places, all passing in a blur. She glances around but her mind is too preoccupied with conjuring up negative scenarios, each one worse than the one before.

Maybe it was his plan to disappear all along.

He’d had enough of her mess.

Or worse yet, something has happened to him and she’s been too selfish, thinking only of herself. Should she check the hospitals?

She feels her heart pound, getting itself stuck somewhere in her throat and when she does try to gasp for breath, she freezes again at the sound of her own frantic sob, clamping her hand over her mouth. Her eyes dart around, hoping no one has taken notice and when she sees no adverse reactions, she forces herself to take a measured breath through her nose, and then another.

While she manages to keep breathing, it doesn’t stop the traitorous hot tears from continuing to escape from the corners of her eyes, rolling silently down her cheeks.

Her knees clutch tighter at her pack between her legs, as if holding onto that will somehow help her hold herself together. Crazy, but it works, or it works sufficiently enough to make her feel like she won’t shatter right then and there. When her tears begin to abate, she weakly drops her hand to her lap and sucks in a stuttered breath.

As the cooling, damp air reaches her lungs, she closes her eyes and takes a few more calming pulls. She feels the mist against her face, feels the moisture soak into her clothes and the goosebumps that spread across her skin.

For one blissful moment, her terrible thoughts fade and she sees his smile. She sees all the times Killian reached back for her, pulling her through the people, always patient, always waiting.

And she ran away.

She wipes angrily at another stray tear and forces her eyes open.

She has no idea how long she’s been sitting on the bench, or where she is, or where to look first or--

Her pulse quickens and she forces her feet to push up from the ground, lifting her from the bench, a sudden need to do something because if she doesn’t get up from that bench she might never find the strength to. She hoists her bag onto her back and groans at the weight, and it’s a weight she’s not entirely sure is just from the pack on her shoulders but she doesn’t dwell on it, at least not right away.

For now, she is determined to find a street name and a starting point, hostels. She’ll check all of them.

She fumbles for her phone and with shaky fingers, cold fingers and pulls up a google search. How many could there possibly be?

Fifty according to hostels dot com.

Fifty according to hostelworld dot com.

At least forty-five in her guidebook.

And while many overlap, some don’t, so where does that leave her? She’s too tired to do the math but without any other plan, she sets off towards the closest red dot on her map, her steps slow but determined.

xo

Her head falls lower and her heart drops further in her chest every time there is no man with dark messy hair in the lobbies she searches. Each confused look from front desk clerks and each time there is no account of a tall man with a British accent her hope shrinks. There is no sign of him anywhere.

She’s walked for hours, until most places were full up and closed, or quiet for the night. She walked until her clothes are soaked through and her back aches.

Some clerks are too busy or too tired to care, some clearly think she is crazy, while others who get a better look at her red rimmed eyes and hesitant questions do take more time to really think before shaking their heads.

A few offer suggestions of where she might look and promise to call if they do see him -- she hesitates on what to call him. Boyfriend seemed silly, friend isn’t enough, other words tie her stomach in knots and yet --

“He’s just -- mine. My Killian,” she whispers to yet another sad ‘no’ but before she can step away from the counter, the older gentleman at the desk covers her chilled hand with his.

“Why don’t you sit down and warm up a little?”

Emma eyes the front door, knowing only rain and darkness await her. And the overwhelming feeling she is no closer to finding Killian that she had been at the start begins to creep back in. For all she knows, they’ve been going in opposite directions, or he could be fast asleep somewhere warm, or on a bus travelling further away from her as the seconds tick by.

A shiver racks her body.

“I’ll fetch you some tea and you can just rest a moment. If he hasn’t been in yet, I’m sure he’ll be by soon. You wouldn’t want to miss him and I can imagine how frantically he must be looking for you.”

A weathered hand squeezes hers.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll be but a moment. I promise.”

Emma spots an overstuffed chair in the corner, faded red plaid material, a thick blanket draped across the back. She can see herself curling up in it and sleeping for days, sleeping until this nightmare is over.

“Have a seat.”

Emma finally relents, her pack a burden she can no longer hold up. She drags her wet sneakered feet to the corner of the room, and unceremoniously dumps her bag on the floor but hesitates before sitting down.

“Don’t worry about your wet clothes, it’s only water afterall.”

She turns to find the man watching her patiently before leaving her with a wink.

It’s only another beat before she finally collapses into the chair, feeling swallowed up by the plush material. She feels small and alone. She kicks her shoes off and draws her feet up, resting her forehead against her knees.

It’s only when she hears the tea cup settle on the coffee table beside her that she looks up.

He’s brought her tea and a slice of coffee cake and she could very well cry at the kindness.

“Just remember, while there is tea, there is hope.”

She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know if she can find the right words and she doesn’t know how much hope she has left. The man seems to sense that, so his next move seems more cautious. He hesitates but finally moves slowly to reach into his back pocket and produces a postcard. He holds it close while he searches for his words.

“I think some might think the act of writing love letters is silly or outdated but I still think it’s the best way to say something we might be afraid of saying out loud. Perhaps while you wait for your young man to show up, you can write him a note?”

Emma blinks at him, wondering how he could know her so well. How he could have found exactly what she needed.

She reaches out for the postcard and holds it to her heart long after the man has retreated back to his perch behind the desk. She closes her eyes and knows, if her heart could press the words onto the card, what they would be, she just needs to take that next step and write them herself.

She takes a moment to test them in her mind, to feel the sureness of them before opening her eyes and reaching into her pack. It’s while she is searching for her pen that her fingers brush against the envelope tucked deep inside her bag.

And somehow, for some reason, this time she doesn’t feel the swift paralyzing panic. This time it whispers of hope, of finding lost things, which is something she could really cling to right now, and so she doesn’t push it further down into her pack. No, this time she grips it hard with both hands and abruptly tugs it loose.

It falls into her lap, while her pen flies out, sliding across the floor, taking a lone white sock and a hair tie along for the ride. She scrambles to pick them up, shoving the items back in her bag but keeps the envelope and pen close.

She huffs out a breath and lays the envelope flat on her lap, along with the postcard, her emotions warring on what she wants to attempt first. She knows the words she wants to write, feels them, wishes she could could say them to him right now and yet, her hand trembles when she picks up the pen. So she tucks the card between her and the chair and flips the envelope over. And as she did when she first received the package, she draws her fingers across her handwritten name, trying to imagine the woman with the hopeful eyes write it out as carefully as can be, knowing her daughter was going to see it one day. She wonders if the woman herself had drawn a finger over the cursive. She wonders if there is a resemblance to her own writing.

She looks at each letter carefully. Maybe the letter m, perhaps the a.

She shakes her head at her wandering thoughts and reaches a trembling hand out for her tea, savouring the rich flavour as it warms her from the inside out. Her breathing comes easier after another sip and she thinks for a moment that the old man might be right, maybe there is a little bit of hope infused in every cup of tea.

She rests the cup back in the saucer, and with determination finally flips the envelope over, fingers slowly and carefully breaking the seal. There is a part of her that knows that she won’t find all the answers or the peace she is looking for inside that envelope, probably far from it. But if two people, who claim to be her parents, can find her after all this time, want to find her. Maybe there is hope for her yet.

Instead of hesitating any further, Emma lifts the envelope high and dumps the contents onto her lap.

Legal documents, handwritten letters, newspaper clippings, and pictures, dozens of pictures, scatter across her lap. Emma carefully moves the papers around, catching a few words here; confidential adoption, dozens of Dear Emmas, but it’s the pictures that give her pause.

She recognizes the same couple in all of them, it seems to be a timeline of their life, from their adolescent years to some as recent as they looked in the diner that day.

Emma gasps as a small picture slips from the others.

She only has a handful of pictures of herself as a child, never staying with a family long enough to fill an album, uninterested in keeping many mementoes of those years. She certainly had no pictures of herself as a baby.

But.

But one thing has stayed with her all these years, a blanket. A carefully knit, wool, baby blanket, white as snow, a purple ribbon around the edges, the simply trimming, along with her name stitched across the top.

The same blanket she is looking at in an old weathered picture, wrapped tightly around a crying baby.

Impossible.

And yet she is looking at it with her own eyes. Looking at herself.

She fumbles through the papers, frantically searching for an explanation.

She finds it in the form of the most recent ‘Dear Emma’.

Emma’s eyes blur with tears as she tries to read, tries to understand an insane story of two young people falling in love against their parents’ wishes, of finding out they were pregnant and only wanting to give their daughter her best chance. A deceitful father promising to find the perfect family for their newborn, a family that promised to visit and send pictures and let them see at least a glimpse of their daughter growing up. Only to have been lying all along, selling the baby to the highest desperate bidders.

Emma can’t begin to understand the impossible story, the heartbreak, all those words on the pages but she does keep coming back to a certain few.

We never stopped looking for you.

We never stopped loving you.

We always had hope we would find you again.

Her chest tightens. It’s all so much, maybe too much? And she is not sure if she wants to jump in with both feet and brave the unknown, or stuff it all back in the envelope and pretend like she never read any of it.

Killian would know what to do, she thinks. He would take her hand and tell her how strong and brave and capable she is. He would believe in her when she can’t find it in herself to do it.

Are they angry she hasn’t answered them? No, I’m sure they would understand, she remembers him telling her.

What if they don’t like me? Impossible, he would press into her skin, whispered words against her forehead, calming her worries and racing heart.

She looks down at the spread of papers in her lap and a thought so strong comes to her, nearly knocking the breath from her lungs. It’s not the why, or the heartbreaking story of how she was pulled away from her parents, it’s not the proof in the pictures either. It’s that, these two people never gave up, that they deemed her, Emma Swan, important enough to look for, to hope for, to love. That she was never really alone.

Her emotions bubble back up at that thought, and she thinks, she’s not alone now. That Killian is out there, she just needs to find him, to not give up, because she lo--

She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes until she see stars.

Think, Emma.

Her mind races through where she’s already been, she thinks of the hostels she hasn’t checked yet.

She could call, she could try and retrace her steps once more, she could put an ad on Craigslist. Her heart picks up at the possibilities, and she feels a little foolish having not gone through her options earlier, ruled purely by her heart and panic.

But first…

She pulls the postcard out again, more determined than ever and takes in the photograph on the front. The card carries a standard beautiful shot of the Cliffs of Moher but there’s a text overlay, relaying an assortment of random facts about Ireland.

84,421 square kilometres.

4,726,000 people.

5,500,000 sheep.

Emma finds a brief moment to smile, thinking back to the sheep and flips the card over, her words flowing with surprising ease.

How many miles have we traveled?

How many people and places have we seen?

How many stories will remain with us when this is through?

I’m not sure, save for one.

I love you. I do, I do.

She drops the pen and leans her head back against the chair, eyes on her messy handwriting. She presses a kiss to her fingers and then brings them to her words.

“Emma!”

--

Thanks for reading!

Who do you think is there? 

One more to go!! xoxo

[thetravellingvagrant]

Day 11- Lviv/Krakow: In Which I Smuggle A Sausage

I had booked a bus departing Lviv for 7:30am. Ostensibly, my reasoning for this was so I could get to my new destination early and not waste any of the scant two days I had planned to spend, there. At the time, this reasoning had seemed sound, though as I peeled my face off my pillow, all caked in saliva and night-tears at five past six in the morning, I was no longer so sure.

Regardless, this was the boat I had put myself in and it was now my duty to solemnly stand at its bow as it slipped below the icy waves. And those waved definitely were icy today; I posted a screen shot of the temperature that I would have to endure for my walk to the bus stop, some days ago, so this will definitely not come as a surprise, but it was to be -9, with a real-feel temperature rating of -19. That's effing ludicrous is what that is.

I bundled myself up as best I could, making use of my extra thick socks, faintly ridiculous hat and both pairs of stolen gloves and left, chucking the keys to the apartment through an open window as I had been instructed to by my host.

While my extra layers provided some degree of protection, there is, however, only so much that post office own brand gloves can do, and so I arrived at what I guessed was where the bus would leave from, forty five minutes after I left the flat, frozen to the bone, wheezing heavily and terrifyingly dishevelled. I still wasn't totally sure where exactly I was supposed to catch this bus, though; Google had reliably informed me that Pizzaria Napoleta was the pizzeria I had scoped out the previous day, though had at some point, presumably quite recently, had changed its name, (which is obviously unbelievably helpful when trying to find it in a hurry) though I still hadn't really got a clue where buses would stop around there. As I arrived, however, I could see in the carpark nearby, a couple of big boi buses (some may call them coaches) pulled up and ready for action. I lumbered over to them.

The first of them that I approached certainly didn't seem like my bus. It was from a different company to the one advertised on my ticket and apparently started and ended its journey in different locations. It did go through Krakow, though, so my vagrant sense tingled and I decided to check, anyway.

Irritatingly, or perhaps thankfully, depending on your viewpoint, it actually was my bus. I wasn't quite sure how I was supposed to actually know that by any means other than sheer, dumb luck, but I guess it was fine. I was on board now and wouldn't die of exposure and in the end, isn't that all that really matters?

I have honestly very little to say about my bus journey. It was longer than expected (owing to the ticket listing both arrival and departure points in local time, though not factoring that in to the journey length listed underneath) though not terribly uncomfortable, as far as eight hour bus journeys go.  I did have a few odd moments while passing the border control into Poland, however- which, by the way, took up three of the eight hours of travel and was generally total shit on every level. The first of these moments came when the weirdly authoritarian jobsworth of a Polish passport control officer came to look at my documents.

“...do you have any ID?” she asked, already holding my passport in her hands.

My eyes narrowed. “...yyyyyes?”

She waited expectantly

“...you're holding it” I continued.

“Another ID, driving license, national ID anything”

I told her, quite confused at this point that I did not. I had rather expected that the passport would be enough, as it had been and should be for literally every country in Europe, but she would not acquiesce. I ended up going through my wallet and finding an very old student card from like 2007, which I showed her.

“...That's honestly all I have” I stated, plainly, my confusion giving way to irritation at this point.

“...What did you study?” she asked.

“...Philosophy!” I answered, abruptly. The fuck was this?

She took a moment and handed both my passport and student card back to me. Apparently I had passed the secret troll test and could now pass, unhindered? I guess?!

I had noticed, also, once we pulled up to the crossing, large signs positioned everywhere, telling me that it was strictly forbidden to bring and meat, cheese or dairy into the country with me. I began to sweat as my eyes darted to the little carrier bag full of food I had brought with me. Inside lay a half a cured sausage and a full block of Ukrainian cheese (which, while an excellent euphemism for drugs, in this case was not). What could I do? Inform someone that I had meat and cheese with me and have them summarily dispose of it? Of course not, aside from those being the actions of an oddball, I wasn't letting anyone touch my fucking cheese, and so I did what I felt I had to and kept schtum. This made for a terrifically exciting bag check. As the bulky old polish man rifled through my belongings, I waited for him to lay his hands on my big sausage- easy now- and for the jig to be up. I remained clenched throughout this entire procedure, ready to bolt for the border at a moment's notice, but fortunately his search was not thorough enough to find my illicit cargo. He waved me through and I was officially a smuggler. It was some buzz; I might try it with heroin, next time.

After hours and hours and hours, the bus arrived in Krakow and I filed off, all mangled up and exhausted to head to my hostel. The check in process was exceptionally pleasant, due in no small part to the very friendly receptionist, who effortlessly made small talk, laughing at all my shit, tired half-jokes while chewing through the admin of my booking. Notably though, she made a bit of a misstep when describing what one could do and see in the city.

“Down here” she said, while doing a big circle on my map “is Jewish Quarter”

“ah, okay, cool” I replied, more asleep than I was interested.

“Yes, it's very nice there and sometimes you can see the proper old fashioned jewish people with the long hairs and the big hats”

I was just tired enough to not be able to keep quiet.

“You make it sound like a Jew-zoo or something”

She laughed, embarrassed. “No, no, not like a zoo, but its quite a cool thing to see, so if you get there you can see it”

...It did sound a bit like a Jew-zoo...

Putting aside her clear and deeply rooted anti-semitic views, I flopped onto my bed- another top bunk- and immediately fell asleep for an hour and a half, thereby nearly entirely invalidating the point of catching the earlier bus, which had worn me out so badly in the first place. Truly I am a master strategist.

Upon waking up, I had a reluctant and very long conversation with one of my new room-mates. A middle-aged Malaysian man whose name I still cannot remember, despite him telling me like four times. He was one of those people that just liked to tell you facts about things and places. Our conversation lasted, as I say, basically forever and was honestly around 95% him telling me things I didn't really care about and didn't plan to remember. Still, though, he was nice enough, so it didn't phase me that much.

I left the hostel at around 5 in the afternoon. It was already dark and freezing, when I did and I was still absolutely humped from the bus ride, so I didn't plan to stay out long. I had a quick walk around the old-town, which I vaguely remembered from my last trip to Krakow, a decade ago and took in the genuinely impressively dense christmas market

Thiqq

before giving up entirely and heading back to the hostel, via a restaurant which was decked out with a fairly tacky medieval theme and an expensive menu. Fuck it, though, I'd earned a nice meal after the day I'd had. I ordered a plate of potato pancakes, served with venison goulash

Thiqqer

and I demolished that fucking thing. There were no survivors. I headed back to the hostel for the old bibble-sleep combo, with my stomach fuller and my wallet emptier than either of those things should have been.

[newstfionline]

The Tragedy Of Saudi Arabia’s War

By Declan Walsh, NY Times, Oct. 26, 2018

Chest heaving and eyes fluttering, the 3-year-old boy lay silently on a hospital ward in the highland town of Hajjah, a bag of bones fighting for breath.

His father, Ali al-Hajaji, stood anxiously over him. Mr. Hajaji had already lost one son three weeks earlier to the epidemic of hunger sweeping across Yemen. Now he feared that a second was slipping away.

It wasn’t for a lack of food in the area: The stores outside the hospital gate were filled with goods and the markets were bustling. But Mr. Hajaji couldn’t afford any of it because prices were rising too fast.

“I can barely buy a piece of stale bread,” he said. “That’s why my children are dying before my eyes.”

The devastating war in Yemen has gotten more attention recently as outrage over the killing of a Saudi dissident in Istanbul has turned a spotlight on Saudi actions elsewhere. The harshest criticism of the Saudi-led war has focused on the airstrikes that have killed thousands of civilians at weddings, funerals and on school buses, aided by American-supplied bombs and intelligence.

But aid experts and United Nations officials say a more insidious form of warfare is also being waged in Yemen, an economic war that is exacting a far greater toll on civilians and now risks tipping the country into a famine of catastrophic proportions.

Under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi-led coalition and its Yemeni allies have imposed a raft of punitive economic measures aimed at undercutting the Houthi rebels who control northern Yemen. But these actions--including periodic blockades, stringent import restrictions and withholding the salaries of about a million civil servants--have landed on the backs of civilians, laying the economy to waste and driving millions deeper into poverty.

Those measures have inflicted a slow-burn toll: infrastructure destroyed, jobs lost, a weakening currency and soaring prices. But in recent weeks the economic collapse has gathered pace at alarming speed, causing top United Nations officials to revise their predictions of famine.

“There is now a clear and present danger of an imminent and great, big famine engulfing Yemen,” Mark Lowcock, the under secretary for humanitarian affairs, told the Security Council on Tuesday. Eight million Yemenis already depend on emergency food aid to survive, he said, a figure that could soon rise to 14 million, or half Yemen’s population.

“People think famine is just a lack of food,” said Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Starvation” which analyzes recent man-made famines. “But in Yemen it’s about a war on the economy.”

The signs are everywhere, cutting across boundaries of class, tribe and region. Unpaid university professors issue desperate appeals for help on social media. Doctors and teachers are forced to sell their gold, land or cars to feed their families. On the streets of the capital, Sana, an elderly woman begs for alms with a loudspeaker.

“Help me,” the woman, Zahra Bajali, calls out. “I have a sick husband. I have a house for rent. Help.”

And in the hushed hunger wards, ailing infants hover between life and death. Of nearly two million malnourished children in Yemen, 400,000 are considered critically ill--a figure projected to rise by one quarter in the coming months.

“We are being crushed,” said Dr. Mekkia Mahdi at the health clinic in Aslam, an impoverished northwestern town that has been swamped with refugees fleeing the fighting in Hudaydah, an embattled port city 90 miles to the south.

Flitting between the beds at her spartan clinic, she cajoled mothers, dispensed orders to medics and spoon-fed milk to sickly infants. For some it was too late: the night before, an 11-month old boy had died. He weighed five and a half pounds.

Looking around her, Dr. Mahdi could not fathom the Western obsession with the Saudi killing of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.

“We’re surprised the Khashoggi case is getting so much attention while millions of Yemeni children are suffering,” she said. “Nobody gives a damn about them.”

She tugged on the flaccid skin of a drowsy 7-year-old girl with stick-like arms. “Look,” she said. “No meat. Only bones.”

The embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington did not respond to questions about the country’s policies in Yemen. But Saudi officials have defended their actions, citing rockets fired across their border by the Houthis, an armed group professing Zaidi Islam, an offshoot of Shiism, that Saudi Arabia, a Sunni monarchy, views as a proxy for its regional rival, Iran.

The Saudis point out that they, along with the United Arab Emirates, are among the most generous donors to Yemen’s humanitarian relief effort. Last spring, the two allies pledged $1 billion in aid to Yemen. In January, Saudi Arabia deposited $2 billion in Yemen’s central bank to prop up its currency.

But those efforts have been overshadowed by the coalition’s attacks on Yemen’s economy, including the denial of salaries to civil servants, a partial blockade that has driven up food prices, and the printing of vast amounts of bank notes, which caused the currency to plunge.

And the offensive to capture Hudaydah, which started in June, has endangered the main lifeline for imports to northern Yemen, displaced 570,000 people and edged many more closer to starvation.

A famine here, Mr. Lowcock warned, would be “much bigger than anything any professional in this field has seen during their working lives.”

When Ali Hajaji’s son fell ill with diarrhea and vomiting, the desperate father turned to extreme measures. Following the advice of village elders, he pushed the red-hot tip of a burning stick into Shaher’s chest, a folk remedy to drain the “black blood” from his son.

“People said burn him in the body and it will be O.K.,” Mr. Hajaji said. “When you have no money, and your son is sick, you’ll believe anything.”

“The big countries say they are fighting each other in Yemen,” Mr. Hajaji said. “But it feels to us like they are fighting the poor people.”

Yemen’s economic crisis was not some unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of the fighting.

In 2016, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government transferred the operations of the central bank from the Houthi-controlled capital, Sana, to the southern city of Aden. The bank, whose policies are dictated by Saudi Arabia, a senior Western official said, started printing vast amounts of new money--at least 600 billion riyals, according to one bank official. The new money caused an inflationary spiral that eroded the value of any savings people had.

The bank also stopped paying salaries to civil servants in Houthi-controlled areas, where 80 percent of Yemenis live. With the government as the largest employer, hundreds of thousands of families in the north suddenly had no income.

At the Sabeen hospital in Sana, Dr. Huda Rajumi treats the country’s most severely malnourished children. But her own family is suffering, too, as she falls out of Yemen’s vanishing middle class.

In the past year, she has received only a single month’s salary. Her husband, a retired soldier, is no longer getting his pension, and Dr. Rajumi has started to skimp on everyday pleasures, like fruit, meat and taxi rides, to make ends meet.

“We get by because people help each other out,” she said. “But it’s getting hard.”

Economic warfare takes other forms, too. In a recent paper, Martha Mundy, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, analyzed coalition airstrikes in Yemen, finding that their attacks on bridges, factories, fishing boats and even fields suggested that they aimed to destroy food production and distribution in Houthi-controlled areas.

Saudi Arabia’s tight control over all air and sea movements into northern Yemen has effectively made the area a prison for those who live there. In September, the World Health Organization brokered the establishment of a humanitarian air bridge to allow the sickest Yemenis--cancer patients and others with life-threatening conditions--to fly to Egypt.

Among those on the waiting list is Maimoona Naji, a 16-year-old girl with a melon-size tumor on her left leg. At a hostel in Sana, her father, Ali Naji, said they had obtained visas and money to travel to India for emergency treatment. Their hopes soared in September when his daughter was told she would be on the first plane out of Sana once the airlift started.

But the agreement has stalled, blocked by the Yemeni government, according to the senior Western official. Maimoona and dozens of other patients have been left stranded, the clock ticking on their illnesses.

“First they told us ‘next week, next week,’” said Mr. Naji, shuffling through reams of documents as tears welled up in his eyes. “Then they said no. Where is the humanity in that? What did we do to deserve this?”

The Saudi coalition is not solely to blame for Yemen’s food crisis.

In Houthi-held areas, aid workers say, commanders level illegal taxes at checkpoints and frequently try to divert international relief aid to the families of soldiers, or to line their own pockets.

Despite the harrowing scenes of suffering in the north, some Yemenis are getting rich. Upmarket parts of Sana are enjoying a mini real estate boom, partly fueled by Yemeni migrants returned from Saudi Arabia, but also by newly enriched Houthi officials.

Local residents say they have seen Houthi officials from modest backgrounds driving around the city in Lexus four-wheel drives, or shopping in luxury stores, trailed by armed gunmen, to buy suits and perfumes.

Tensions reached a climax this summer when the head of the United Nations migration agency was forced to leave Sana after clashing with the Houthi administration.

In an interview, the Houthi vice foreign minister, Hussain al-Ezzi, denied reports of corruption, and insisted that tensions with the United Nations had been resolved.

“We don’t deny there have been some mistakes on our side,” he said. “We are working to improve them.”

Only two famines have been officially declared by the United Nations in the past 20 years, in Somalia and South Sudan. A United Nations-led assessment due in mid-November will determine how close Yemen is to becoming the third.

To stave it off, aid workers are not appealing for shipments of relief aid but for urgent measures to rescue the battered economy.

“This is an income famine,” said Lise Grande, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Yemen. “The key to stopping it is to ensure that people have enough money to buy what they need to survive.”

The priority should be to stabilize the falling currency, she said, and to ensure that traders and shipping companies can import the food that Yemenis need.

Above all, she added, “the fighting has to stop.”

One hope for Yemenis is that the international fallout from the death of the Saudi dissident, Jamal Khashoggi, which has damaged Prince Mohammed’s international standing, might force him to relent in his unyielding prosecution of the war.

Peter Salisbury, a Yemen specialist at Chatham House, said that was unlikely.

“I think the Saudis have learned what they can get away with in Yemen--that western tolerance for pretty bad behavior is quite high,” he said. “If the Khashoggi murder tells us anything, it’s just how reluctant people are to rein the Saudis in.”

[blessed-but-distressed]

This is a thing that I wrote a long time ago.

It isn’t fanfiction. It’s just fiction. 

I will be posting here until I think of what to do with it.

FERNWEH

 When Becca decides to shake off those shackles and get the hell outta Dodge, she doesn’t have many regrets. She won’t miss those late nights folding baby clothes at her local All Baby Needs SuperStore. She won’t miss her distant parents or her uninspiring classes for her useless degree. The only person she will miss is Jack.

Jack is stuck in the post-university, pre-real job wasteland of delayed adolescence. He doesn’t know if he is a socialist, or an anarchist, or just reads too many books. He stacks vegetables, he haunts libraries and he chases girls. But now his best friend is leaving town, and he doesn’t know if he can handle being left behind.

A story about growing up, leaving home, staying behind, sad bastard music and the people who make everything bearable.

Chapter One: 

Becca

Truthfully, I can handle all of it. The cloying stench of mouldy socks and clove cigarettes. The scratchy, standard-issue woollen blanket that wasn’t quite enough to wade off the night-time chill. The oddly masculine snoring that would make any trucker proud. The clanking of pipes in the wall beside my bed that had me sat bolt upright on my first night, half convinced the ghost of Jacob Marley was coming for me, dragging the chains he’d forged in life. All of this didn’t bother me. Not really. But the weeping. I couldn’t handle the fucking weeping.

I’d been sharing a room in Berlin’s cheapest youth hostel for a week with Ilonka, from Hungary. Ilonka the weeper. And we aren’t talking about girlish sobs here, with intermittent hiccups. Oh no. Not Ilonka. Beautiful, heartbroken, weeping Ilonka. She didn’t do anything by half measures.

She’d told me her life story on the first night, over a Midori and lemonade in the bar downstairs. I was quickly coming to the realisation that this was how it was done. Nothing in Backpacker World got done without a bit of Dutch courage.

Ilonka’s story was that she’d come to Berlin to intern at one of those ridiculously trendy, ridiculously contemporary art galleries in Kreuzberg. Which made sense. With her extensive collection of very cute multi-coloured berets, long, lean legs encased habitually in skinny jeans, and her Franka Potente in Run Lola Run hair, she certainly looked the part. She made me feel inadequate every time she entered a room, and I was convinced that was at least half of what contemporary art was all about.

Which is why it was so disconcerting when halfway through her third Midori and lemonade, big fat tears began to slip down her perfect, Eastern European face, and into her drink, which she continued to sip through her straw, unperturbed. Then, without much warning, she keeled forward, and a high-pitched noise of distress began to rise from the back of her throat, not unlike that of an ambulance leaving the scene of an accident. The barman, cute and Irish though he may have been, gave us that ‘You’d better clear the fuck out’ look perfected by cute Irish bartenders the world over, and I bundled her upstairs before he summoned over the bouncer, who was significantly more intimidating.

Once I’d gotten her settled on her twin bed, she pulled herself together enough to relate to me the rest of the story. On her third week into her internship, she’d rung up her boyfriend, Kolos, back home in Budapest, and her best friend had answered the phone. Turns out they’d been screwing around behind her back for the last six months, and they had used Ilonka’s absence to move in together. Which you have to give points for, if only for the sheer brazen cowardice of it all. Were they going to keep up the charade until it came time to ask her to be the Maid of Honour at their wedding?

Ilonka was a wreck. She’d keep it together all day, every day at work, but as soon as she got back into the room she would just lie on her bed, crying inconsolably for hours, until she eventually, mercifully, fell asleep. If she wasn’t weeping, she was sitting on the window sill, where she had pried the window open, and was smoking her favourite clove cigarettes in flagrant disregard of our dorm’s no smoking policy, and my (fabricated) assertions that I was an asthmatic. She’d hold her cigarette in one hand and her mobile phone in the other, and yell obscenities in Hungarian to whoever was on the other end, in between puffs. I don’t speak a lick of Hungarian, but you can always tell an obscenity, no matter the language. It’s about the force behind the delivery. The venom behind the words.

The hostel had been chosen for its location, just off the Ku'damm, not for its internal décor or sterling customer service record. Which is just as well, because I’d been in cancer wards with more cheer; the grey-speckled institutional style walls hinting at the building’s previous life as an insane asylum perhaps, or at the very least a reform school. My polite request to move to a different room had been met with a coolly raised eyebrow, and an unconvincing promise that they’d see what they could do.

It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my first foray into the world of international travel. But it certainly made for interesting anecdotes for my emails sent back home.

I’d say things were going much better for me outside of the hostel, but that was a matter of some debate.

A few months back, embittered by my slow slide from promising Journalism student to person-who-straightens-cans-of-baby-food-in-a-budget-department-store-for-a-living, I’d stayed up until four in the morning one night, researching methods of escaping the monotonous retail hell that my life had become.

My unlikely salvation was with a company that would pay for me to fly to Germany to work as an Au Pair for a year. They’d even put me up in Berlin for a month, so I could brush up on the language, before they dispatched me to the family they would pair me with. All of those weekend evenings spent wrangling my neighbour’s kids to bed when I was sixteen had suddenly come in handy, and I had signed on the dotted line.

Of course, when I say “brush up on the language”, I mean learn from scratch. Of course. German had never been an elective at high school. I’d learnt Italian, although that data had almost been completely rewritten in my mind, replaced with an intricate knowledge of song lyrics by a particular favourite band of mine, who specialised in what my friend Jack liked to call “Sad Bastard Music.”

The total sum of my German language proficiency before my departure had been restricted to numbers one through ten, hello, good bye, thank you, and handful of random phrases one picks up after a lifetime of watching World War Two dramas, none of which were suitable for polite company. My knowledge of German culture was mostly restricted to a general appreciation for Daniel Brühl’s face, and a vague recollection of having read Faust when I was fourteen.

It was not until I took a seat on the first day of classes, that I realised what a grave mistake I had made. There was no way I would be able to wrangle children, even relatively small, uncomplicated ones, in four weeks time, with absolutely zero grasp on the language. It was impossible. Unfathomable.

Our teacher was a jovial fellow called Hans-Peter. He had the kind of white bushy moustache and knitted jumpers which made him look rather like a benevolent tug-boat captain, and kind eyes that encouraged students to take risks where they might otherwise have kept silent. He was a good teacher. I could tell. But there was no way in hell he was going to make me semi-fluent within a month.

Every classroom in the language school was named after a particular river in Germany. Our classroom, Donau, which I later discovered was the German word for the Danube, was right at the top of three dizzyingly uneven flights of stairs, in a converted attic where every inch of wall space was dedicated to laminated charts depicting a different German verb, and its various forms. It also had a broken radiator, which Hans-Peter would kick good-naturedly every morning when it failed to break the chill, before instructing us to keep our gloves on.

That’s the first useful German phrase I learn.

“Handschuhe auf!“ Gloves on.

The second:

“Jacken auf!“ Jackets on.

I’d always had a natural talent for scholastic endeavours. Which is to say, I’d really crashed and burned at university when I’d gotten through twelve years of schooling without really trying too hard, to find I actually had no idea how to study. But I’d always managed to scrape by on natural ability. I had no natural ability when it came to German. I was a babe in the woods. And I definitely needed to study.

Being in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language is a little like being a newborn lamb. You stumble a lot, and you’re vulnerable as hell, but everyone finds you pretty damn adorable anyway, for the most part. But for someone who has always been really good at things, it is the ultimate exercise in humility. Suddenly, you’re unable to do even the most simplest of things. Order a coffee. Ask for directions. Make an effusive apology to the angry looking guy you bump into on the train.

It had taken me five whole days to work up the necessary courage to approach even a McDonalds counter. I practiced the order in my head, as I waited in line.

“Ein Happy Meal, bitte.” One Happy Meal, please.

I didn’t think even I could fuck that up. I tried to anticipate what questions they would ask me, in which order. Would I like a toy? Would I like ketchup?

When they asked me if I wanted mayo or ketchup on my fries, the unexpected option made me answer in the affirmative, without specifying which I preferred, pissing off the harried-looking girl behind the counter in the process. I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment, and I backed away from the counter, waving my hands and butchering an apology in my pidgin German.

I never went back to that McDonalds.

Like a diamond in the rough, I found a T-Mobile payphone on my way back to the hostel and I fed about ten euro in change into the machine until it finally connected me to Jack’s mobile. It rang out, and went to voicemail, and instead of leaving a message, I hung up the receiver, and burst into angry, embarrassed tears. I didn’t get any change back, either.

Wiping my face clean with the sleeve of my coat, I hurried back to the hostel, before I could make an idiot of myself in some new way. Still hungry, I raided the vending machine in the lobby, and sat on my bed eating out-of-date chips until Ilonka had returned. She took one look at my tear-stained face and unsatisfying dinner and bundled me into my coat and took me out to an Irish Pub around the corner for a pint of Guinness and something called a Blarney Burger.

“It will not always be so,” she reminds me sagely, as she steals a chip from my plate. And for a little while there, Ilonka is my hero. When I grow up I want to be just like her. We sing Cranberries songs together, and make the acquaintance of some chipper blokes from County Clare who are, of course, enamoured with Ilonka’s ethereal Eastern European beauty, and keep us plied with enough black stuff that I quite forget about the dizzying regret that has been eating me away inside for days.

But later that night, the weeping starts again, and it chips away, slowly but steadily, at my newfound regard for her. I get up for class early the next morning, head still throbbing from the previous night’s excesses, and leave her a note on her bedside table.

“It will not always be so.”

[dismalzelenka]

"Why do you trust me so much?"

Tilani looked up from her book and pulled the blankets tighter around her legs. Luciel was giving her that look again, that mournful, questioning stare, golden eyes watering at the corners from unshed tears. "What do you mean?"

"I mean-" he gestured around him wildly. "This. All of this. You never asked for this. Christ, Tilani, we met a week ago, and now we're sitting in this apartment together and I just admitted your life is essentially in my hands with this security system in place and you...you're just. Sitting there. Reading. Like this is the most normal thing in the world. Why? How?"

Tilani shrugged and set the book page aide down on the bed. "What's the point in getting freaked out over something I can't control? It's too late for me to walk away now. Might as well settle in and get comfortable, right?"

He stared at her in silence, eyebrows furrowed, jaw tensed. "What did you do before all of this?" he asked finally. His voice was quiet, tentative. Searching.

"I told you already. I'm a children's book author. But you knew that already, right? You had to, I mean. I have several published, and you did background check the hell out of me on my first day here. Didn't even buy me dinner first." She'd meant it in a lighthearted way, gently teasing, the way they'd always been on the group chat, but the way he flinched didn't escape her notice. "Sorry. Time and a place, I know."

"I did know that, but that's not really what I meant, I guess." He twisted his hands together restlessly. "I meant what were you doing when you got that first text? Where were you in life that you just...dove right in to something this crazy?"

She laughed, but it sounded hollow, even to her own ears. "Family bullshit, mostly. I was living with my grandmother. Taking care of her, you know? No one else in the family would, and I loved her more than anything. When she died, I was supposed to get her house and everything else she owned, but." She shook her head. The RFA had been a welcome and well-timed distraction, but the pain was still fresh, and it welled up inside her now, a midnight tide slowly lapping against her shore.

“My brother had her declared mentally incompetent at the time of the signing on the basis that leaving her entire estate to someone like me was an irresponsible investment. He knew people. The suit went through, her estate went to a trust, and they're slowly picking through her bones after tossing me out like last night's trash. Run of the mill family bullshit." She pulled out the labradorite rosary she kept beneath her shirt and gripped it tight enough she felt the engravings leave faint indentations in her skin. "This is all I have left of her."

"Someone like you? I don't understand."

"My parents always expected me to follow in my mother's footsteps. Take over the company. Be a top cog in the corporate machine. Grams was the only other person who didn't buy into that fuckery. We were...comfortable, you know? Every day was quiet, simple, cozy. Happy. And I wouldn't have traded that for any amount of money in the world." Tilani looked around the apartment's sparse furnishings.

"I didn't even have a place to live anymore when I came here," she added softly. "I was on the bus when I got the message. I'd just gotten to the city. I'd planned on crashing in churches and hostels until I found enough work to make ends meet and get a place of my own. I was starting over. When they led me here, it...seemed as good a place as any, you know? Felt like...maybe there really was a God, and maybe he'd actually listened to me for once. I'd have been an idiot not to take it."

"I guess that makes sense." Luciel spun back around in his chair and stared intently at the screen before swiveling it back around to face her. "But where does that leave you now? I came here - rushed here - because I was so afraid you were in danger. I just went on autopilot. Tilani, I've never done that before, for anyone. And now that I'm here, I've painted a target square on your back. Everyone keeps patting me on the back for protecting you, but none of you get it. I'm not. I can't protect you. The very nature of my career, of who I am...it all gets in the way-"

Tilani swung her feet out of bed and padded over the tile until she stood right in front of him. "Luciel, stand up." She offered him her hand. His palm was cold and sweaty when he gripped her fingers. "You're a good person. I can tell you are. You're good, and kind, and capable. You can do this. You can keep me safe. You all said I had a choice when I first joined, and I'm making it right now. To stay here." She closed her eyes, suddenly acutely aware of how closely they stood together. Their lips brushed, and time stood still.

"I choose here," she whispered, eyes still squeezed tightly shut. "I choose you."

His jacket rustled, and she felt his arms clasp warmly around her waist. "I shouldn't do this. God. I can't do this. But I want..." His thumb traced small circles in the small of her back. "Tilani, look at me." He brought one of his hands up to cup her cheek. "Earlier, when my brother held you captive. When the security system was counting down...what you said then. Did you mean that?"

"Every word," she breathed. "If you're counting confessions made under duress as valid testimony," she added teasingly.

His laugh was stilted. "I have no idea what's valid anymore. I-"

Tilani stood on her toes and brushed his lips with hers, soft and gentle. A kiss that was also a quiet promise. "I won't force you into anything, Luciel. But I'm also going to see this through to the end. I'm already here; all I ask is that you let me in enough for me to help you."

He leaned in to kiss her again, but the second his lips touched hers he jolted back and shook his head. "I...I'm sorry. Just. Go to bed, alright? I need...I need some air." He turned and bolted into the hallway.

Tilani brushed her fingers against her lips and stared at the door as it slammed shut. The sound shattered the heavy silence into pieces and laid her heart bare on the floor. She sank to the floor against the side of the bed and drew her knees to her chest. Conflicted. Confused. Wanting. Doubting.

Choosing.

I choose to stay.

[weannewashere]

Unbelievable sights...

Hey there, all you six million loyal blog readers! Welcome to what is possibly a four-part blog series on my whirlwind trip to the two biggest countries in the world (at least in terms of population) AKA India and China. It’s going to be quite an eventful ride and I would apologize in advance for the unprecedented length and informality of this post, but come on now, you all knew what you signed up for when you decided to start reading a blogpost from me haha. With this warning being given, if you agree to the terms and conditions of this post, then by all means, please click on the “Keep Reading” tab. 

First off, the main characters of our story:

Weanne - aka our fearless heroine and star of the not-so-widely syndicated but critically acclaimed Keeping Up With Weanne. You already know about her and her propensity to be a klutz, so let’s move along here.

Vishal - trusty sidekick  close friend from the WHO who’s based in India for the year. He’s alright, I guess. Jk he’s kind of the best but I know you’re reading this, you do not get to use this against me ugh

Ines - poor innocent IT professional from Taiwan who finds herself inadvertently running around the Indian subcontinent with two strangers she just met (this sentence alone is a movie plot in itself)

Rayan - our auto-rickshaw driving savior

Vishal and I had been planning this India trip for months, and the whole itinerary seemed pretty straightforward. We had this whole Google Sheet painstakingly outlined over Skype with dates and accommodations and attractions written all over them. I mean, what could go wrong, right? We got this, right? Things are going to go according to plan!

Narrator: Things aren’t gonna go according to plan.

Before we go any further, I think it’s important that we set a few things straight right from the get go, because I refuse to take any responsibility for any of the events to be described in the succeeding paragraphs. Because you see, apparently, our good friend Vishal has a travel curse so notorious it even spawned its own hashtag (#TravelingWithADasari). According to the terms of this curse, any trip associated with him is bound to have its fair share of unusually unfortunate events, including, but not limited to: flat plane tires, hot tea spillages on the plane, missed flights, misplaced visas, border-detained buses, wrong directions, horrible weather, etcetera etcetera. To be fair, I was warned about it beforehand, but like that blonde girl who still runs through dark hallways in her underwear we scream “DON’T RUN THROUGH THAT DARK HALLWAY IN YOUR UNDERWEAR” at in horror movies, I still decided to go through with the trip. I didn’t really believe in the curse, I guess. But alas, to experience is to believe. And experience it I did hahaha.

If you don’t believe me, here’s a sampler of all the shenanigans that happened before the trip had even started:

My passport was expiring. All the Manila appointments for passport renewal were full, so I had to do mine in Baguio, a full six-hour drive away, only four weeks before the actual flight.

On the day of my passport renewal, we got stranded in Baguio because of heavy rain, hence I missed work the next day.

After multiple calls and emails to the DFA, I found out my passport processing was delayed, giving me barely one week to process two visas for the whole trip! 

I ended up being scammed out of P7000 after I went to the wrong website for my Indian e-visa application. Sumit, the guy scamming me, even had the frigging gall to sarcastically scold me for trying to process the visa so late and pressure me into paying even more for an expedited visa.

On the morning of the trip, a typhoon hit Manila and we realized the vehicle that was supposed to drive me to the airport was not allowed in Manila that day due to the coding scheme!

But alas, dear friends, all’s well that almost ends well, and despite all the unfortunate series of events, our heroine still found herself safely checked into NAIA that day, with a fresh passport, all the right visas, and a gigantic 15kg pink backpack as tall as her, all pumped and ready to go… and receiving a text from AirAsia to tell her her flight had been delayed by one hour.

Psh no worries, a delay of one hour still gives me two hours to make it to my connecting flight from Kuala Lumpur to Delhi. 

Because just a few minutes later, I received another text from AirAsia, this time telling me my flight was delayed by yet another hour and a half. This meant I had only 30 minutes at the KL airport to make my connecting flight to Delhi! At this point, I was almost in tears at the thought of missing the flight and losing at least one out of my five days in India. The good news was, I think I was finally starting to grasp that this wasn’t going to be a regular trip, as evidenced by this text exchange as I was waiting for the flight to board:

So to make this long story just a little less long, here are the FAQs:

Did I make it to my connecting flight? HAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahaha no. The plane took FOREVER to take off and I got to Kuala Lumpur 1.5 hours late.

Aww you poor thing. Did they give you a new flight then? NOPE. I stood in line for an hour, searching for Delhi wedding venues online so I can believably spin a story to the agent about needing to be in Delhi ASAP for a friend’s wedding, only to be told that the next flight they could put me on was two frigging days away. I was all, nope, to heck with that.

I’m at the edge of my seat in suspense. So what did you do? It turns out my department chair was flying in to Kuala Lumpur from the Philippines at the same time and she managed to find me at the connections counter. She offered to let me stay the night at her place. On the way to her apartment I booked a completely new flight to Delhi using her husband’s phone, went back to the airport at 5AM the next day for this new flight that took me to an eight-hour layover in Bangkok, where I ventured out into the city to the Chatuchak weekend market to hang out with a couple of friends from Loma Linda who coincidentally just happened to be in Bangkok that particular week, hightailed it back to the airport on an Uber only to realize I didn’t have enough baht on me to pay the driver huhuhu. Good thing he was the nicest person who just smiled and waved me off. #faithinhumanitymaintained 

Late dinner with my boss in Malaysia

A quick Bangkok escapade with my LLU Weannies.

So now there I was, at the Bangkok airport, finally about to board a flight that would hopefully bring me to New Delhi by evening… and I somehow started feeling anxious about everything. I’m not sure what it was, really - sort of a mixture between “am I really doing this” and “do you know what you’re getting yourself into,” intensified by the fact that I seemed to be the only Filipina in the whole boarding area and was already receiving curious stares from fellow passengers. Now that it was actually happening, I guess it just hit me that I was heading off to this huge, famously overwhelming country thousands of miles away, to see a wonder of the world, to meet a friend I had really only hung out with for one week a year ago. It was this weird paradox where I had expectations but also didn’t know what to expect at the same time.

Nevertheless, on July 29, 2017, at around 10PM, a full day later than originally scheduled, after having breakfast in Malaysia and lunch in Thailand, I was now going to have dinner in India. I exited the airport and strained my eyes to look for a strange, bearded, polo-shirt wearing guy and yup, found him!

The poor guy had flown in from Chennai to Delhi on July 28 as we had originally planned, and I was feeling quite bad about leaving him alone in New Delhi for the day, but nope, I shouldn’t have even worried. In true Vishal fashion (I have this theory he makes 50% of his friends this way), he had somehow made a friend at the hostel, invited her to attend a concert at a basement with him (I mean this by itself sounds sketch, right?), and somehow convinced her to ditch all her previous plans and gallivant around India with a guy she just met and a girl she hadn’t yet.

And that was how I met the adventurous Ines.

I didn’t know whether to applaud her spontaneity or question her sanity hahaha for all she knew we could have been serial killers preying on unsuspecting travelers, but whatever possessed her to trust Vishal that day, I’m thankful for it haha.

Since we had lost an entire day due to my delay, we couldn’t meet up with Alvira (another WHO friend who was supposed to join us) and go around New Delhi anymore. Instead, we immediately hopped on an Ola cab to take us straight to Agra in the middle of the night. It was a good four-hour cab ride - you would think I’d be tired from traveling for more than 24 hours, but there was so much to catch up on with Vishal and so much to learn about Ines and so much about my flight to whine about that we spent a good portion of the cab ride in animated conversation. We finally made it to Zostel Agra at around 2:30 in the morning.

We forced ourselves to wake up 1.5 hours later at 4 AM. Blog reviews had said that it was worth seeing the Taj Mahal during sunrise, and I’d be darned if I missed out on that haha. We somehow made it out of the hostel without causing a ruckus, rode an auto rickshaw through the sleepy streets of Agra, and found ourselves at the west gate (I think) of the Taj. A tour guide offered us his services, which we gladly accepted.

And boy am I glad we did. Because not only was he able to provide us with an excellent historical background of the Taj, he was also quite good at taking our photos and directing our poses hahaha.

The west gate of the Taj.

Team No Sleep

Hands on hips as directed by our tour guide, taken from the Janine Tugonon Miss Universe School of Posing.

GUYS. GUYS. ITS… ITS… *SPUTTERS* IT’S THE TAJ. *GESTICULATES WILDLY* LIKE, THE TAJ MAHAL. *MAKES HEAD BLOWN GESTURE* THE REAL THING. *GENTLY CARESSES THE TAJ WHILE WHISPERING* I HAD HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT YOU I HAD ONLY SEEN YOU IN PHOTOS AND NOW YOU’RE HERE RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME IN THIS VERY SPECIAL MOMENT YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL I mean what, I was totally cool I didn’t lose my chill at all, Ines didn’t look at me all amused and say “you look very excited”

Okay but seriously. Guys. The only correct reaction to seeing the Taj Mahal in person is to draw a sharp intake of breath with your hands on your heart and your eyes tearing up and promptly freak out. Which may or may have been my shameless reaction and I make no apologies for it.

Okay fine, let me try to make like a proper travel blogger and give you a few interesting facts about the Taj Mahal. The Taj was commissioned in the 1600s by the emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his one great love, Mumtaz Mahal. It is made of the most exquisite marble inlaid with precious stones that were handcrafted in by artists. It is symmetrical on all sides, meaning from whichever side you look at it, it will look the same. And fun fact: there’s an optical illusion surrounding the Taj. When you stand in one of the archways and walk towards it, the Taj seems like it’s receding, as if it’s trying to move away from you. But when you walk away from it, the Taj actually looks like it’s growing bigger, drawing towards you. Parang pag-ibig lang yan, guys. Pag nilalapitan mo, lumalayo. Pag ikaw na yung sumuko at nag walk away, saka niya pinipilit lumapit sayo CHOS.

It was definitely worth visiting the Taj at sunrise, as the crowds were still quite small. Take for example, this photo with the Princess Diana bench, so named because well, the great Princess Diana sat on it lol. Apparently, during peak hours, it takes hours to line up and have a photo on this bench. For us though, it took less than a minute.

We walked around the structure for a bit, finally finding a spot to sit down and admire the famous monument. It was quite a surreal moment for me, just quietly watching this famous world wonder bathed in sunrise. I think in my head I was trying to grasp the sheer magnitude of love that caused the emperor to spend 53 billion rupees just for his wife to have a resting place as majestic as the Taj. I even questioned his sanity, at one point. But love is quite powerful and crazy that way, I guess. (Also didn’t hurt that he had the money for it lol.)

Photographs weren’t allowed inside the Taj itself, but we did get to see the replica tombs of the emperor and his wife. We then walked around the building again and just sat on the marble floor, taking in the view. We could’ve stayed there the whole day, but alas, we had things to do, places to see, food to eat.

After the Taj, our tour guide took us to this alleyway which seemed to be a hotspot for souvenirs and pasalubongs. 

We then stepped into this dessert store selling a classic Agra specialty: soft candies called petha.

Ugh how do I even begin to describe petha? Have you ever tasted a smell? Like, have you ever inhaled something fragrant and aromatic and flowery and wondered what it would taste like? That’s what petha tastes like - like an explosion of fragrance in your mouth, but light and airy and not overwhelming. It was so good, I think I bought two flavors - butterscotch and something else. (Also, I’m so mad now because I’m reminded of the fact that I actually forgot these pieces of heaven in Vishal’s fridge :( )

Enter Rayan. He was the auto-rickshaw driver that our tour guide reserved to take us around the rest of the area. For breakfast, he took us to this cozy roadside store that gave me my first glorious taste of aloo paratha and reminded Ines of how much she loved masala chai (I don’t remember just how many cups she had haha!).

After breakfast, we headed to the Agra Fort, a grand, imposing sandstone structure seen across the river from the Taj Mahal. Entering it felt like entering the world of Game of Thrones, particularly Dorne, with its reddish fortresses and bright spacious courtyards.

Three interesting facts about this place that I really liked:

The Agra Fort houses Jahangir’s Chain of Justice, a giant chain fastened with bells that people who were in need of justice could just shake in order to get the emperor’s attention. I thought that that was absolutely fantastic, to have a ruler who recognizes that not everyone is able to access justice, and to have a mechanism that allows those people to get his attention regardless of their caste or status. 

The fort is home to the “prison” of Shah Jahan. Name sounds familiar? Yup, he’s the same guy who built the Taj Mahal. Apparently his son declared him incompetent to rule and hence placed him under house arrest. His only comfort was that he was given a room directly across the Taj, allowing him to view his wife’s memorial every day until his very last breath :( Awww.

You can see the Taj through one of the holes.

Akbar the Great, the third Mughal emperor created the religion Dīn-i Ilāhī, which is basically a conglomerate of all the different major religions at that time. You could see this evidenced in the design of the fort - for example, the particular archway in the photo below is adorned with a swastika (Hinduism), the lotus flower (Buddhism), arches (Islam), the Star of David (Judaism), and the cross (Christianity).

Entrance reflecting the symbolism of the major religions

Mehehehehe naiinitan na si koya pero waley siya choice siya, kailangan magpapicture mehehehehehe.

After the Agra fort, we were feeling quite sweaty and tired, so we decided to forego the Baby Taj and the other Agra attractions. Rayan took us back to the hostel so we could rest for a bit and pack up before we left for Fatehpur Sikri, a town 43 kilometers away (this involved a hilarious encounter with a not-so-hidden bathroom inside our hostel room, but I digress lol). We were feeling quite proud of how our day was going relatively smoothly - so many things accomplished in just half a day! What was it we said? Oh yeah, things are going according to plan.

Narrator: Things aren’t going to go according to plan.

Vishal had booked an Ola cab to take us from Agra to Fatehpur Sikri days in advance, but apparently, as we found out that day, the reservation request failed. No worries, we can rebook again! An Ola cab soon came to us, we piled all our luggage into it, settled in, only oops, our driver changed his mind, he didn’t want to take us after all! No worries, Rayan had said he has a cab! So we piled out of this cab, picked up all our luggage, and asked Rayan to come to our rescue! He agreed, and pulled up several minutes later… in his trusty auto rickshaw. No worries! We can totally do a two-hour ride through major highways with all our luggage in just an auto! Yay!

At this point, I think Ines was questioning her life choices hahaha. 

So there we were - four adults and several huge backpacks crammed into one auto rickshaw, trying to eat our lunch (biryani and paneer) without spilling anything on ourselves as we flew through a highway. Rayan opened up about how he was abandoned as a child but turned things around and made a living as a rickshaw driver, Vishal told us about how this ride reminds him of certain childhood memories, Ines told us about her aversion to dry food, and I… I don’t remember if I shared anything, actually haha!

We made it to Fatehpur Sikri at around 4:30 PM. We visited two complexes in the area: the palace complex and the Jama Masjid. The palace complex was quite interesting, because it was home to the emperor’s three wives: a Muslim, a Hindu, and a Christian, and their residences each reflected their faiths. Also, tip for the traveler: get a guide. It’s quite surprising how much symbolism is embedded in the designs of the palace itself - even just the number of pillars in one structure represented something significant. By the end of the day we were making guesses about what the four holes in a wall or the 16 steps in a stairway could’ve represented hahaha.

The Jama Masjid was also pretty grand, and since it was a mosque, we had to leave our shoes by the entrance and Vishal had to wear a drape to cover his legs. We went inside the Tomb of Shalim Chishti, a Sufi saint and sprinkled rose petals all over the cenotaph. We also tied red and gold threads around the lattices inside the tomb and made a wish, as per tradition. And as all wish-making traditions go, you’re not supposed to tell anyone your wish or else you won’t get your heart’s/brain’s/stomach’s desire.

Did mine come true? If I remember my wish correctly… I actually think it did.

Team No Shoes

After our tour, we went back to our rickshaw to get our stuff. I looked over and Vishal seemed to be involved in a calm and friendly conversation with Rayan and our tour guides. They were speaking in Hindi so I couldn’t understand, but judging from their calm, even joking, tones, I thought, “Awww look at these bros bonding" lolol.  

Narrator: The bros were, in fact, not bonding.

Hahaha apparently what was really happening was that the tour guides were trying to get Vishal to pay exorbitantly higher tour fees, and what I thought was them laughing at something he said was actually them scoffing at the price he was offering to pay them. Apparently the tension was so intense that Vishal got worried that they would try to start a fight or something. And all this time I was there just smiling brightly at them like an idiot because apparently my situational awareness is just that bad hahaha.

Somehow, things got resolved and the tour guides let us go. But our struggles weren’t over yet. At this point, you probably already know the drill - the Ola cab reservation we had booked to take us all 200 kilometers from Fatehpur Sikri to Jaipur had, guess what, failed yet again. Because of course, of course hahaha.

Poor guy at the local establishment just trying to cool down from the stress of babysitting two tourists lol

We (well mostly just Vishal) kept trying to book a new cab, until finally, we had to accept the inevitable fact: no cab was coming. If we wanted to get to Jaipur tonight, we need to get ourselves on a bus, and soon, because it was starting to get dark.

Abandoned by Ola Cabs, we positioned ourselves by this roadside, hoping that a sleeper bus would soon materialize in front of us (I mean, we did try sticking our wand arm out heh). A bus did drive past us, but it was one of those regular buses that already seemed pretty overcrowded, so we decided to try the next one. We also got approached by a few guys offering to take us to Jaipur, but we were like nah mate we’ve had too much bad luck on this trip already, at this rate you’re probably gonna turn out to be the zodiac killer or something lol.

A full hour passed and we were still bus-less by the side of the road, in the dark. At this point, the travel gods were all, “Hey you know what would be kinda funny? If they got rained on too.”

And rain, it did.

And I loved it. Call me a masochist, but I was honest to goodness getting quite the kick out of every second of our consistent misfortunes hahaha they were just so ridiculous! Or maybe you should call me an unintentional sadist, because apparently, while your heroine was internally gushing “THIS IS AMAZING MUCH RAIN SUCH RICKSHAW MUCH BLOG CONTENT WOWE IS THAT CORN ON THE COB YASSS I’LL HAVE SOME THANK YOU,” our poor Indian-American host was stressing out so much about our safety and comfort that he actually found the contact number of a taxi company online, asked to be put in touch with its CEO, and requested for a cab to pick us up at any cost hahaha. Yup, my situational awareness was as poor as ever haha. (Also, the best direction Vishal could give the cab company was, “uhhhh we’re by the side of some road” lololol).

And then suddenly, like the first drop of rain after a drought, like the sight of the meal you ordered finally making its way out of the restaurant kitchen, like a piece of Cinnabon for the weary soul, a sleeper bus did materialize out of nowhere. Okay fine we saw it coming from hundreds of yards away, but still. Rayan flagged it down for us (yes, he had been waiting with us this entire time!), and we immediately jumped on it, no questions asked.

We found an empty compartment on the top half portion of the bus, and crammed us and all our luggage in it. It was quite comfortable and private actually, like a mini mattress with just enough space for three people.

And so commenced our four-hour commute to the Pink City.

We realized we hadn’t had dinner yet, but we remembered we still had some leftover biryani and paneer from lunch! So we opened those up and ate it with our hands. 

We also tried to entertain ourselves by attempting to play Uno and Mao in the dark cabin lol. Eventually though, our conversation drifted off to the serious topic of faith and religion. We had, after all, just spent the day going through religious places of worship and palaces that incorporated the different faiths, so it was perfectly natural for us to reflect on what that personally meant for us - three people from three different faiths and varying levels of practice. It was honest, thoughtful conversation that made me realize just how little I knew about other world views and how we, as humans, regardless of all our differences, are all just trying to find our truths and do good in this world. 

So there we were, our main characters, in an open air sleeper bus in the middle of the night, on a long stretch of highway miles away from nowhere, with no idea where we were supposed to get off other than what a tiny dot on GoogleMaps showed us. We were drunk on sleep deprivation, exhaustion, and adventure, the past 24 hours giving us a lifetime’s worth of stories we couldn’t have written better ourselves. It was 12 AM and we were falling asleep, but before I let the tiredness wash over me, I couldn’t help but think about how the past two days had seen me through three countries and six cities and 9000 kilometers of distance and how nothing had gone right yet somehow everything was right, and how this was never in the plan but in this moment there was no place in all the planet’s 510 million square kilometers I would much rather be.

In this moment, everything was right with the world.

We made it safely to our hostel in Jaipur none the worse for wear at 12:30 AM.

It was a great day.

Narrator: It was, indeed… a great day.

P.S. Shoutout to Rayan, the real MVP for sticking with us the entire time and making sure we got to our destinations safely in the Little Autorickshaw That Could. He literally went the extra mile for these cursed tourists lol, getting home late to his family for our sakes. And even after all that, he barely even looked at the money we handed over to him in the end, because according to him, he’s just happy showing people around India and making sure they have a good time. There are, indeed, a lot of good people in the world. (For the extra warm fuzzies: We told Vishal’s dad about how Rayan had saved us, and he got his staff members to track Rayan down and wire him a good amount of money for his family. <3)

Also, shoutout to my powerbank for keeping our phones alive enough for me to take all the photos and for Vishal to contact people and figure out where we were going lol.

Coming up next: the second installment of the India-China mini-series. If you made it this far, congratulations - I PROMISE THE NEXT ONE WON’T BE AS LONG PLEASE STILL READ MY BLOG PLEASE LMAO

[cyclingpacificthoughts]

Wheeling through Washington

Total Distance Cycled:   1,029km (639miles) Total Distance Climbed: 10,098m (33,130ft - 1.1 Everests)

From a cycling point of view Washington was a bit of a mixed bag. We visited a cycling Mecca but also spent a fair amount of time on highways just getting somewhere. This is no fault of Washington but rather the price paid for a detour to Seattle. Missing out the Olympic Peninsula meant missing out on the most rugged, remote and scenic section of the northern west coast and probably some of Washington’s best riding. However the draw of friends and bright lights in a new city proved to much, there’s always next time!

We did some more island hopping, saw the home of Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks while playing tourist, and visited the birthplace of grunge. We met our first guns, heard an innovative solution to Trump, and rode on one of the worst bridges imaginable.

A big thank you to our hosts along the way, Tim and Diana, Steve, Lou and Nick, and Lauri.

But before all that, picking up where I left off we still had one more day in BC and our first rest day in the provincial capital of Victoria...

Saturday October 7th 2017 (continued) Tour Day 8 Cycle Day 5: Chemainus Campsite to Victoria

Arriving in Victoria we headed to the Youth Hostel looking for a cheap bed for a couple nights and perhaps some friendly faces to explore the city with. Without a booking we weren’t worried as being “off-season” all the campsites so far had been deserted. What we hadn’t counted on was Canadian Thanksgiving and the Victoria Marathon the following day! As such the Saturday night had been booked out weeks ago and a quick scan of AirBnB and some hotel comparison sites quickly confirmed that Victoria was at capacity.

No room at the inn.

Mild panic set in at the thought of having to cycle back out of town to a campsite but thankfully the last bedroom in a nearby hotel was found. Yes it was about 6x what we had budgeted for, yes it was only one bed (thankfully king sized) but after a week on the road the luxury of it soon made us forget the price.

Having made ourselves look as respectable as possible we ventured out to see what was on offer, settling into a nice session beer chosen purely on tap handle.

Give me your tears gypsy.

Some locals quickly introduced us to this student town’s signature drink: The Crasher. Think an espresso martini with the subtlety, sophistication, and punch of a night out in Newcastle.

With a weeks worth of cycling in us and not much else things quickly escalated to the point that I lost Joe and have a vague memory of trying to square dance in a country bar... It all proved too much for these simple cyclists and we were both tucked up in bed before 10pm as the lightweights we’ve become.

9.31 - well and truly done.

Sunday October 8th 2017 Tour Day 9 Rest Day 1

“IS EVERYBODY READY!?!?!”

Hmmmm???

“LET ME SEE YOUR ARMS IN THE AIR!!!!”

“KEEP THOSE KNEES UP!!!!”

Whaaaaa???

“YOU ALL LOOK GREAT!!!!”

My head hurts... what the hell is going on?

6.30am, our first rest day but rest was far from possible as it turns out our hotel was 50m from the start/finish line for the marathon. Some overly enthusiastic American (is there any other type?) with a megaphone blaring out warm up instructions and platitudes to the gathering runners.

With sleep not on the table and the effects of the previous nights indulgences setting in, the hotel breakfast was a welcome sight, complete with waffle maker:

A post shared by Kit MacInnes-Manby (@cycling_pacific) on Oct 8, 2017 at 10:09am PDT

Not a vegetable or fruit in sight but plenty of starchy carbs and sugar to start the recovery.

A couple hours later it was also the perfect place to hang with two stars of the long distance game.

Daniel Kipoech and Kip Kangogo.

Feeling like we should be vaguely cultural we made like good tourists and checked out the Royal British Columbia Museum (The Canadian’s making like good colonials and still giving props to Liz).

Highlights included John Lennon’s Rolls Royce, complete with a dent from an old English woman who hit it with her umbrella in disgust at the defacement of the British beauty.

Ticket to ride, at one point the World’s most expensive car.

A First Nations exhibition

‘It’s only a model”.

And a historic section taking you from ice aged British Columbia through to early European settlers.

When bears were the least of your worries cycling around here.

Culture over and being Canadian Thanksgiving, what better place to enjoy a traditional meal than an English cricket themed sports bar, while enjoying some NFL?

All in all our day in Victoria was just what we needed and as we checked into the hostel 24hrs later than planned it was time to say goodbye to Canada and hello to the “Land of the Free”.

British Columbia Parliament Building.

Monday October 9th 2017 Tour Day 10 Cycle Day 6: Victoria to San Juan Island

A shortish ride back along the Lochside trail we’d come in on took us to Sidney for the ferry crossing to San Juan Island. But before we could get going, first we had to face US border control. We were quick to notice the changes in officials, no longer the friendly Canadians, welcome to the gun toting stern and serious Americans. After a mild interrogation, the first signs of warmth did appear as he told us to be careful down in Mexico (the first of many cautions about the perils of crossing the southern border, otherwise known as “Mexiphobia”, a common condition it would seem in these parts!).

Arriving into Friday Harbour of San Juan Island we headed to Tim and Diana’s (The Tim that we’d met cycling on Salt Spring Island). Tim used to fly commercial sea planes from Seattle up here and liked it so much they built a house in retirement.

The San Juan Islands are regarded as one of the best places to cycle in the US. Thankfully for us we arrived on a Monday outside the normal season and so enjoyed them to ourselves! Panniers deposited we headed out on one of Tim’s routes to the American Camp at the bottom of the island.

This was the US army base for the “Pig War” between 1859-1871 between the Americans and the British. If you’re checking your history books and thinking it’s a little late in the day for the British and Americans to be at war you’d be right. Long after the war of independence and just as the American civil war was kicking off, the Brits and Yanks decided to have a little posturing over an ambiguously defined boarder between Canada and the US, some settlers on both sides, and a pig. Over the 12 years, only 1 shot was fired and there was only one casualty, the pig.

Tuesday October 10th 2017 Tour Day 11 Cycle Day 6: San Juan to Orcas to San Juan

Fuelled up on some of Tim’s speciality protein pancakes we set off on one of the more ambitious rides of the tour thus far. Orcas Island and the 2,500ft peak of Mount. Constitution.

Leaving in bright sunshine but also the panniers (and our waterproofs) we felt great as we sped off to the ferry. I should have remembered my GCSE geography water cycle.

With not much in the way of elevation except for Mount. Constitution, there’s a fair chance that you’ll get wet on Orcas Island. Almost as soon as we arrived it started to rain, and rain, and rain. By the time we got to the base of the mountain we were soaked. The mountain itself was completely covered in cloud and so with the prospect of no view and even more rain, an executive decision was made to make it back in time for the lunch time ferry.

A cloud covered mountain as we retreated home.

Arriving back in San Juan in glorious sunshine was mildly annoying but if you’re going to have a rain day, make sure you have a solid roof and drying room to come back to!

Dry and warmed up Tim and Diana treated us to their speciality secret burgers which is in my opinion is one of the best ways to end a day’s cycling!

Burger time.

Wednesday October 11th 2017 Tour Day 12 Cycle Day 7: San Juan Island to Marrowstone Island

It was tough to leave San Juan and the fantastic hospitality of Tim and Di but with Mainland USA calling and the bright lights of Seattle, it was time to be on the move again.

A ferry to Annacortes and the Deception Pass bridge was first up. In general bridges are the stuff of nightmares for bicyclists, usually built for cars with no consideration for other users you can often face the prospect of speeding motorists on one side and a nice barrier followed by a long drop on the other. They do however often provide beautiful vantage points too, and Deception Pass definitively fell into that category.

And thankfully on this occasion the crossing was easy enough too.

Heading south another ferry took us to Port Townsend, and having not eaten all day we broke our “no Mexican food till Mexico” rule, inhaling the offering in front of us!

Time stamps on these photos - 17:16 & 17:22.

Our evening destination: Marrowstone Island. The home of family friend George Dennison, who turned up at my parent’s home in Scotland some 15 years ago, having walked for several hours to get there, and asked to take a look around as it had been his ancient Scottish ancestor’s. Mum being mum invited him in and got chatting. Now in his 90s with his adventurous spirit still undiminished meant missing out on seeing him again as he was taking a trip to Mexico, however we had the pleasure of being hosted by his stepson Steve.

Our first “dive bar” provided the evening entertainment. Fried food, beer, and the joy of shelling peanuts, then sweeping them from the bar through a purpose built gap and onto the floor, which gave a satisfying crunch as you walked on it.

Returning to our cottage (built by Steve aged 16), the Laphroiag flowing, another quintessential American first, 2nd amendment rights!

*warning, divisive political subject below*

Just the previous night, in light of the terrible events in Las Vegas, we had debated the (in the group’s opinion) absurdity of gun ownership laws with our previous hosts. Now we found ourselves on the other side of the debate.

I should point out a few things here. 1) Steve’s collection mostly consists of hunting rifles 2) He is a well trained marksman and 3) Willing to debate the subject without just blindly shouting “2nd amendment” at you. As such it wasn’t your stereotypical endless loop of American Freedom, protection and Constitutional rights but it did serve as a stark reminder that you’re probably walking (or cycling) past someone carrying a gun all the time.

Steve loved guns, from the revolver that had been with him the whole evening, to the antique collection of beautifully crafted hunting rifles. He was clearly extremely knowledgable and was well trained in the use and care of his weapons. I have no problem with people wanting to collect and maintain guns in a sensible fashion, I know plenty of people in the UK who do the same.

However he had also just sat on the jury for a trial where a man had fired “spray and pray” with a semi-automatic at another (unarmed) man who was lost and had stoped at his property to ask for directions. Not that the assailant knew that as he took the fire first ask questions later approach. Steve’s opinion was that the guy was guilty and shouldn’t be allowed to own the guns, but surprisingly (or perhaps not) the law was actually on the side of the guy with the gun!

A particularly disturbing story given Joe and I had very nearly knocked on a strangers door earlier that day when looking for Steve’s property. Needless to say we haven’t thought about doing that again!

One of the more surreal evenings drew to a close as I slowly fell asleep, whisky in one hand, Steve opposite with hunting rifle across his lap.

The best thing about a musket; it gives you a lot of time to calm down - Jim Jeffries

To close out this topic, my thoughts are best summed up by Jim Jeffries

In summary, if you like guns, and are actually trained to use them, then fair enough. But, and it’s a big but, there are way to many BS arguments, not enough checks to make sure you know what you’re doing / aren’t crazy, people who are unwilling to even have a debate, and finally, surely there is absolutely no need to own an fully automatic?

The Cabin that Steve built. I was still struggling to make my bed at 16 (still learning!) let alone build a cabin to put one in.

Thursday October 12th 2017 Tour Day 13 Cycle Day 8: Marrowstone Island to Seattle

Looking forward to our next rest day, we set off early for Seattle. More busy roads and the first of “Manby’s Mechanicals” when a rather large nail decided to get in the way of my back tyre.

I wonder what did it?

Puncture repaired and another ferry caught, a long ride from Edmonds through the vast northern Seattle Suburbs meant we were more than happy to arrive at our destination after a necessary pit stop for 20 McNuggets to get us there! Our awesome hosts for the next two nights; new Seattle residents Lou, a long time family friend and her husband Nick. Showered up the first stop was our second dive bar of the trip followed by a great Thai. A quick night cap back at the Eastlake Zoo resulted in one of the more interesting purchases of the tour. Joe, determined to find himself some speedos for Mexico, thought he’d found a bargain. $10, a pickled sausage and some budgie smugglers.

It wasn’t till the next morning he realised he’d in fact purchased himself some lovely hot-pants!

Hoping these don’t make an appearance on the beach.

Well fed and well tired we stumbled to bed looking forward to playing tourist the next day.

Friday October 13th 2017 Tour Day 14 Rest Day 2

The first stop for any tourist in Seattle? Where else but one of the most iconic and distinctive elements of any cityscape; the Space Needle. Supposedly there are better views to be had from the taller skyscrapers it faces but lets be honest, if you’re in Seattle for 1 day only, you’re going to ascend the 160 metres to the observation deck and take it in.

Tourist checkpoint complete, Joe was particularly keen to check out the library(!?!) and to be fair it is actually a very interesting architectural structure, both inside out with one entirely red (and disorientating) floor.

Feeling peckish it was over to Pike’s Place Market, home of the original Starbucks (which was avoided due to it a) being a Starbucks and b) queues round the corner with a deserted new Starbucks within sight of it). There was plenty on offer in the hustle and bustle, including a piano playing fisherman:

Playing with Fish(y) Fingers?

We settled on the “World Famous” (almost every establishment in America seems to be such) Beecher’s Homemade Cheese, where they did indeed make cheese, but given that no one lives there and the vast machines producing it I’m not sure how it is homemade. Anyway the guidebooks will recommend the Mac & Cheese, and the Mac & Cheese was duly ordered. It was OK. I like to think of myself as a bit of a Mac&C aficionado, and while it was certainly good it wasn’t mind blowing which for something that was “world famous” peeved us. Then again what can you expect from a country where the majority of the time only two types of cheese exist: American and Swiss!

CHEEEEEEEEEESE!

Ground Zero for the bad coffee everywhere epidemic.

Fed and watered it was time for some more culture, and ever since I had seen this in my Lonely Planet there was only one place I wanted to go.

The Experience Music Project (now the Museum of Pop Culture), with exhibitions on SciFi, Star Trek, Jim Henson, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, and more it was epic. Or it would have been had we not completely lost track of time. Arriving around 3pm and starting in the first section we got to, SciFi I was just battling my way out of Star Trek and making a beeline for Jimi when... “Sir, please can you make your way to the exit”... 5pm had sneaked up on us. A little annoyed at paying $50 for only 2hrs, what we considered a very early closing time, and our own stupidity at not checking said closing time, the cherry on the cake was the “late night at the museum” complete with bar was back in the SciFi section!! We got our own back though as Joe stole a handful of marshmallows from the bar on the way out.

Who you going to call?

Extreme danger of being exterminated, until you find a staircase.

“I’ll be back” so I can check out Jimi! 

Wandering up Capitol Hill with the sun setting we took in the Space Needle from the top over beers before meandering our way back for dinner and the promise of ginormous pizzas and one of the best views of Seattle at night.

With 8000 calories a day being burnt, it’s fair to say our appetites have skyrocketed. The promise of the largest pizzas we had ever seen was delivered and then some at Frēlard Pizza. Feeling ambitious and going against the advice of our hosts and waitress we both ordered a 24” each, Joe going for a 1/2 carbonara, 1/2 Full Hog and myself taking on a 1/2 Full Hog, 1/2 Staple and Fancy.

I raced into an early lead, and with only 1 slice to go, Joe still had 1/2 his to go. But it was the case of slow and steady wins the race, and while I decided on “saving” the final slice for the morning, Joe finished it all much to the amazement of our waitress and discomfort of his stomach. There’s always room for ice cream right? We decided to find out and in total gluttony ordered American sized tubs. Back at the Brooks, no longer able to move I slipped into a satisfied food coma.

Saturday October 14th 2017 Tour Day 15 Cycle Day 10: Seattle to Riverbend

Up early, our hosts setting off for an anniversary hike (happy anniversary guys!), we made our way south, past Pike’s Place and out of town on quiet and easy cycle paths. 

Lou and Nick.

Taking the ferry from Fauntleroy to Vashon Island it was time for our final island and penultimate ferry. Vashon is another popular cycle spot, with quiet roads, pretty towns, and one of the toughest starts to a ride at the exit of the north ferry terminal - a nice 10% that levels off halfway, tricking you into thinking that it’s done with you, only to carry on round the corner at the same lovely gradient!

The other side of Vashon and back on the mainland having said goodbye to our 13th and final ferry we made our way through Tacoma and ended the day at Riverbend RV campsite just east of state capital Olympia. Checking in we met Chad, inviting us to join him and his partner Anastasia for a few drinks later...

Both wine merchants, a few turned into many and before we knew it the topic of Trump was again circling the campfire. This is where possibly one of my favourite ideas ever was brought up. “C*cksucker Camp” Chad suddenly and enthusiastically exclaimed. Intrigued, as (most likely due to the wine) the name came before the explanation at the mention of Trump, I enquired further.

In a nutshell, Trump and other such men would be sent to a camp, surrounded by sycophants and other “amenities” to be kept in a stupor of satisfaction that they are the greatest, leaving the rest of the world to get on with life absent of such egotistical numpties. Either intentionally or by accident the name also works on multiple levels as not only an insulting description for the men sent there, but also the main amenity on offer to keep them happy. In any case an RV park in the middle of Washington was the last place I expected to hear such an inspired idea.

Not long after this, Joe and I decided that the best idea was bed and slid off into the darkness to find our tent.

Camping RV style.

Sunday October 15th 2017 Tour Day 16 Cycle Day 11: Riverbend to Aberdeen

A brief morning ride found us in Olympia Coffee, in the pleasant looking town that was our 2nd surprise state capital following Victoria.

Caffeined up, the unremarkable ride along another highway (further punishment for our detour to Seattle) was only broken by a serendipitous whim to take a looping road I spotted on my Garmin called Summit Lake. Place/road names on the trip so far seem to fall into the category of either a description or somewhere in Scotland and this happily fell very much into the former, taking us from the monotony of highway shoulder to a beautiful town surrounding a lake. Some more luck followed when looking for public access we met Sharron tending her garden who offered us her pontoon as a fine spot to enjoy our lunchtime sandwiches. It certainly beat the inside of a Subway.

Refuelled, we set sights on the latter naming convention. Aberdeen had been on my list of places to go from near the beginning of planning this trip. Not just due to going to school near the original but also being the birthplace of Kurt Cobain. I can’t claim to have been an original Nirvana fan, but ever since I was given an album as an early teenager (is there a more appropriate age to start listening to Nirvana?) I’ve always had a soft spot for them.

“Come as you are”.

Aberdeen also meant our first Warm Showers. Yes we had had a shower in all this time, this warm showers is an online cycling community / app, similar to Couchsurfing, that is something like a free AirBnB for cyclists provided by other cyclists. Having only just heard about it before the trip, it is genius! Hosts basically offer anything from a spot on their lawn for a tent to a spare bed or something in between in addition to a warm shower as the name suggests.

Lauri was our first host, and an excellent introduction to this wonderful sub-community. Moving to Aberdeen for work, she enjoyed the great cycling on her doorstep, the Olympic Peninsula to the north and down the coast to Oregon. Bringing along a bottle of wine, we shared a takeaway Pizza and enjoyed discussing cycle touring. We also got to stick pins in the world map, and with Joe going for Lewes, I decided to be the first “Scot” and stick mine just north of Glasgow.

Monday October 16th 2017 Tour Day 17 Cycle Day 12: Aberdeen to Astoria

We woke to a heavy fog and the forecast looked like this might be our last day of sunshine for a while, which given the time of year wasn’t surprising. In fact we’d been extremely lucky not to have had any bad weather, save for the local geography induced soak on Orcas, so far. 

Our first Warm Showers Host Lauri.

After an excellent breakfast at one of Lauri’s local spots, a quick tour of Aberdeen ensued to find Kurt’s monument, situated by the bridge Kurt used to sit under and write songs which traversed the kindly named Wishkah River, an adaption of the Chehalis Indian word hwish-kahl, meaning stinking water. You can get a sense why there was so much angst in his songs!

Rebelling like Kurt would.

Aberdeen itself, a former logging town, suffering depression as the industry has declined was greeted universally with surprise and derision when brought up as a stop on my trip by those who knew of it along the way. 

You can get a sense of how these forgotten towns across America were desperate for something new in Washington DC, the promise of industry returning and a break from the establishment. Sadly I don’t see Trump delivering for these people.

Despite all this I actually quiet liked what I saw of Aberdeen and can see it becoming a tourist hub for the outdoors with great access to the Olympic Peninsula or with cheap property, potentially even a new startup hub between Seattle, Portland and Silicon Valley if the local officials get their act together.

A post shared by Kit MacInnes-Manby (@cycling_pacific) on Oct 16, 2017 at 8:26am PDT

Foggy start.

Initially we had a shortish ride in mind to the KOA campsite in Bay Centre. However arriving in South Bend just before 1pm a quick decision was made to get as far south as possible to make the most of the good weather as it was turning into a beautiful day. Astoria was the next logical place and with another warm showers host arranged we took a look at the route.

Lauri had given us one big piece of advice, do not cross the Astoria-Megler Bridge which takes you over the Columbia river out of Washington and into Oregon. It’s long at over 4 miles / 6.5km, looks fearsome with a flat first half followed by a nice mile long 5% clime, has almost no shoulder, and the cars speed along at 70mph. The advice was to head to Ilwaco where for 50c a bus could be caught over the bridge. The issue was, we were still 45miles away and the last bus was at 4.10pm. This gave us just over three hours, which for those of you good at math(s) meant averaging 15mph for 3 hours straight. On an unloaded road bike, no problem. On a fully loaded tourer, this meant hitting near enough our max flat road speed and maintaining it. Throw in a headwind for the first hour and it was huge challenge. Somehow, after sitting in the red for longer than one should when supposedly touring we rolled into town at 4pm. A bus went past us as we entered, but unconcerned we headed to the stop expecting to have more than enough time in hand.

Waiting around the bus stop, 4.10 then 4.20 came and went. A local informed us that the buses are not that reliable and the one we saw was probably it. Brilliant. Thanks bus driver who clearly had Friday beers on his mind rather than sticking to schedule. I still have a mind to write a strongly worded email to the Washington department of transport! To add insult to injury, we were looking out over Cape Disappointment.

It’s amazing how much a beer in the sun with a view can lift the spirits. We’d also picked up Alejandro as we’d ridden into Ilwaco, our second cycle tourist we’d met heading down the coast (we’d bumped into a couple of Italians in South Bend). Alejandro was from Chile, this was his first trip outside of his home country and he’d saved up for 4 years to do it! He was on a big loop from Denver up to Seattle and then down the coast to Newport. He’d also had his bike stolen from him after being forced to lock it up outside overnight which served as a  warning to us to add to all the others of touring bike theft woe. Luckily for him he’d managed to pick up another bike cheaply on Craig’s list and carried on undeterred.

Rehydration and sun can make you feel a lot better.

Pit stop over the three of us set off on what turned out to be a very scenic ride to Astoria, save for a horrible tunnel, and of course that bridge. Tunnels, our first, are tricky to navigate as cars can’t see you and the back draft from passing vehicles are extremely unpleasant. Joe found this out as a truck went past causing him to swerve into the wall and pick up a nasty graze.

With just the bridge between us and our destination the convoy nervously met at the start to assess. With no other option, it was ride across or go on a 60mile diversion to find another crossing. The first flat two miles with a shoulder less than 0.5m wide, cars screaming and beeping past. The last two miles, a 5% gradient up to the apex and then a helter skelter decent into Astoria. Unpleasant is an understatement but with the sun setting the views were also incredible.

Safely on the other side - Alejandro and “that” bridge.

Adrenaline still pumping we arrived, a new appreciation for life, a stiff drink and food required. Enjoying the largest Nachos I’ve ever seen, we chatted and found out that Alejandro had learnt all of his English through video games and American TV! According to my dad, all I ever got out of those was brain rot. Our host home earlier than expected and only 2 blocks away we set off for our second warm showers, but that, and our adventures in Oregon, are stories for another time...

It’s Nacho food, it’s mine!

[lewigm-blog]

Newsletter 3: Lima tell you something about Peru’s Capital…

Me trying to imagine and pose for a cute couple’s picture. Cat has to send me a picture of her sitting on some steps so I can photoshop her in. (Also I wonder what was going on with the couple behind me. I’d like to think that I captured a cute moment of them) Published April 16, 2019

Gypsy Music

“God is a gypsy who plays her violin

At the gate of my heart.

Hidden in the high thin notes of her wild music

is her longing for love.

She plays her rhapsody

Until the tears come… longing, longing to be invited in.”

-        Sr. Lou Ella Hickman

 After spending a short six hours at the Starbucks in Cusco, I finally finished my pre-Lima newsletter in Cusco… That is to say that I am only three newsletters behind now! I am excited to be writing going through my experience and time in Lima with a broader perspective on what the Lima trip has meant for me. The city has much life and is constantly moving with rushed vendors hopping onto moving buses on highways and throughout every street. Interestingly enough, traffic seems to function better than some major U.S. Cities. Everyone here is an aggressive driver, not much like Jersey or Long Island drivers in the ways they can be careless or distracted, but rather they drive with an attentive, but intense approach to driving. Not all conductors can be characterized this way, but I can say this much about the commercially employed and apparently licensed drivers.

Amidst the bustling movement of people and vehicles, I have been able to draw out three “themes” or questions that capture my time in Lima: Traffic, privilege and more traffic, “Why am I here?”, and “Bohemian Rhapsody” While some of the events and moments I describe while in Lima fall clearly into one theme, most others blend and find their place somewhere in between.

Traffic, privilege and more traffic

As my fellow first year community mate and I arrived in Lima, we were met with an overwhelming heat and cloudiness that pervaded each and every breath we took. It was as if Peru was letting us know that although we had come down 3,000 meters of altitude, we weren’t going to make it through the coastal region without some discomfort. In true volunteer fashion, we were provided with a cheap Altel “dumb” phone (which only worked on speaker phone) to communicate with our JVC community back home for anything migrations related. Another adjustment we had to make was navigating the city without access to consistent internet. We found ourselves downloading, screenshotting and even hand drawing walking and bus routes to move around. It became our nuanced approach to being simple living JVs in Lima.

One of the aspects that struck me the most about Lima was the rhythm and pace of the traffic and the Limeñan people. Our entire first day in Lima was spent attempting to understand the bus routes and system. We stayed at the “humble” Inmaculada Colegio located in Santiago del Surco, which was conveniently located near a major highway (Panamerica Sur Highway). The highways have bridges and other points of access so that pedestrians could make their way to bus stops. Bus companies in Peru tend to be privatized and have specific routes which only added to the confusion. The city of Lima had its own public bus company, but we never made it to that point in our time with public transportation. After failing to describe our destination to nearly 20 buses, we decided to hop on a random bus and see where it took us.

Once aboard, we zipped past several districts and areas of the city, both poor and underdeveloped and also drove through areas that were more touristy and gentrified.  One region in particular, San Luis, had me disconcerted and would shift my perspective for the rest of my time in the city. As the bus drivers maneuvered through hordes of stagnant traffic, several passengers hopped on and off to get to their destination. One young man, about my age, made his way onto the bus and stood near a woman in a seat in front of my community mate. I initially thought nothing of him as he appeared to be just another passenger who, like most other Peruvians on public transportation, had little regard for personal space. He suddenly bent over and drew closer to this woman putting his arm around her, speaking to her as a close friend would. I couldn’t hear much of anything over the incessant car horns and chants of street vendors attempting to sell their goods, but after he spoke, the woman seemed distressed as she began to shake her head. He crouched down, and it appeared that he was comforting her. She then opened her backpack and he searched through it, taking out some money. He casually called over a bus vendor selling snacks and purchased a soda with her— I suppose now his—money. In a dramatic and cruel fashion, he opened and drank the soda in front of her, gasping in delight after consuming the first sip of his spoils.

If my description of this event so far hasn’t told you much about me, I am quite weary and observant of those around me, especially in unfamiliar territories. Perhaps it was the inner gringo in me or all the news media clips that my mom and other family members would share with me before arriving in Lima, but I feared for my own safety. In that moment, I felt that my decision to wear Chaccos, Touristy white cargo shorts and a Henle Long sleeve shirt was the worst thing I could’ve possibly done (Picture this but with a different shirt). I experienced an intense pressure and anxiety as my Americanness and privilege seemed surged up as if it was beach ball that I was trying to hide underneath water. I felt very out of place and wanted nothing more than to disappear. I had never seen a robbery in action.

What could I have really done? What if he approached my community mate? I only felt the sweat profusely leaving the pores from my hands onto my knees and shorts as these thoughts passed through my mind. Seeing what I believed to be a casual Jason Bourne-esque robbery on the bus, I only wanted to get back to Andahuaylillas. I struggled thinking about how I would travel the rest of my time in Lima. My community mate and I still had a whole 12 days in the city, and I wanted nothing more than to leave after our migrations process was over. I was never quite at ease during the rest of the trip after that moment but had to pull it together for migrations.

The next few days were spent drawing out maps to the tramites and customs office about an hour walk away. What we expected would be a process that would take a few trips and days was over in a matter of three hours. We left the Inmaculada early ordering an Uber from inside the Inmaculada to take us to the interpol and customs office. We thought we had arrived early enough but there was a long line of others waiting to be let through. One thing to note is that Peruvian lines can be complicated and generally disorganized, but we didn’t know that at the time. With a great wave and influx of Venezuelan refugees, things were backed up for everyone who may have just wanted to renew their licenses, ID’s and file any other paperwork. I was growing nervous after seeing other folks in line pulling out the same sheets of paper that looked completely different than ours. I thought that we had forgotten something back in Andahuaylillas and our trip would be for nothing!

When we finally reached the front of the line, an employee asked me where my papers were, and he noticed that my community mate and I had United States passports. He then loudly exclaimed “Oh you’re AMERICANS?! Why didn’t you come up front and say so?!” and then he took us inside. As we walked past several offices and groups of people, we were told that we had waited in the Venezuelan line and we would be tended to shortly. The process afterwards was clear and simple. We were fingerprinted, had our teeth checked and signed a few documents. Within a few hours we were out of the interpol offices and I was to check up on my religious carnet in a few weeks back home in Cusco. It seemed like an easy process for us but there were many Venezuelans still in lines and I wondered how long they would be there.

For those who may not know, Venezuela is going through an economic, political and humanitarian crisis. The “President” Nicolás Maduro has allowed for much corruption to go unchecked for years, leaving many to flee the country so that they can provide for themselves and their families. Many Venezuelans seek refuge in nearby countries such as Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru. Many of the street and bus vendors in Peru today are Venezuelans hoping to make some money to meet up with family in other countries, or to simply feed themselves for the day. It is both sad and amazing to see the resiliency and positivity of many Venezuelans who are grateful for every sale and donation.

During my trip with the tourist bus company PeruHop, I met a Venezuelan named Luis in Paracas who was working in a hostel we stayed at. He fled the country as things were starting to get violent and desperate and he told me how grateful he was to find employment and a place to stay. Most of Luis’ friends and family weren’t so lucky. Oftentimes, even if they managed to leave Venezuela, they struggled finding consistent employment.

The sentiment and tensions that some of the Limeñans had towards the newly immigrated Venezuelans weren’t helpful during the mass migration. During mass at the Inmaculada, some Catholics grumbled about parables or readings that welcomed the stranger and foreigner. This crisis has been going on since Hugo Chavez’ presidency in 2010. It has been nearly a decade and the issues have yet to be resolved. The distaste and disapproval of their migration seemed ironic to me because just a few decades prior, Venezuela had opened its borders to receive Peruvians. I suppose it surprised me to witness a distaste of migrants and refugees in another country. These issues are present everywhere I suppose.

 Why am I here?

This question of “Why am I here?” came up often during my time in Lima. After our migrations experience took only a mere 3 hours to accomplish, I wondered what we were going to be doing for the next 12 days. My community mate and I decided to spend a few days on the safe and touristy bus company called PeruHop. It took us to the beach town of Paracas, near the Ballestas Islands or better known as “The Galapagos of Peru.” We also stayed in Huacachina and the area of Ica, home of the largest desert oasis where spent an afternoon looking at the sunset after sandbuggying. This was definitely an experience that I would normally enjoy but given the reason I had come to Peru in the first place, seemed to contradict the JVC value of simple living and solidarity with the people we served.

This was a difficult discernment process because it wasn’t a decision that affected solely myself, but my other community mate as well. I had not been accustomed to living a life of much travel, vacation and privilege before. As some of you may know, I was raised with my brother by a single mother who had sacrificed much to ensure that we were provided with the necessities. Here and there money would be saved up to take a trip to the free Knoebels family park or on the rare occasion, to Dorney Park. Time off and vacationing wasn’t the norm for me, and it was difficult to discuss with my JV community mate since our upbringings were starkly different. I constantly had to ask myself, “Is this really simple living? Why am I spending more than 3 months’ worth of stipend for a trip that most of the people in the Quispicanchi region will never experience? Am I doing this because I want to or to appease the community?” Questions like these surged constantly and left me feeling uneasy and resentful.

I understand that I have many differences with others, but I struggled to find a balance between our different gustos (tastes) and interests during our time in Lima. It was a particular challenge being just one on one with that person, but I (eventually) realized that I was at odds with my community mate because we are different people. I understood the saying “You learn a lot about yourself and others when you travel with them.” It was certainly an intense way of experiencing this saying as it was two people.

I have found that this whole arranged marriage part of the Jesuit Volunteer experience was difficult because well… it’s arranged! In my life, especially leading up to my departure, I tried spending most of my time and energy with the people I cared for the most. I had no problem leaving an event or kindly declining invitations to spend time with acquaintances. I simply did not have the time to casually be wasting time, or at least that was how I bluntly rationalized that decision. I spent time with the individuals who I would consider true friends, the people that gave me so much life and added value to me as a person. I believe that I may have brought a bit too much of that no-acquaintance attitude into Peru. Naturally, I didn’t realize this completely on my own. I had the help of some Jesuit apartment mates for two weeks at the Inmaculada.

 Bohemian Rhapsody

Contrary to my earlier descriptions, not all from my trip was a negative experience. I had a wonderful time within the walls of the Inmaculada. With it being the start of the “summer vacation,” the colegio was empty and quiet. The only sounds came from construction, much like the University of Scranton during the summer. Life was still going on, but at a much slower pace. Any other noises would come from the aforementioned Zoo, but mostly from the bird exhibit. Macaws and Peacocks would constantly shriek and call out throughout the days and late in the evening. I never quite grew accustomed to those sounds because they were always foreign and unexpected in the super city.

           The time I would spend in the Inmaculada before and after exploring the city with my community mate was a time to order my life and for calm reflection. This was both good and bad because I would have a lot of time on my hands to think about why I am here, which was a frustrating question to ask. I felt that I was just wasting my time and struggled to understand what this time in Lima really meant. I was at odds with my community mate on how to navigate the city. I struggled with the value of simple living after paying for three months’ worth of stipend for PeruHop. I wanted to start working and although I recognized that I would (eventually) appreciate my time adjusting into Peruvian life, but that didn’t make going through it any easier. Interior conflict and resentment was a brewin’ and what I needed was some spiritual direction.

           I found that during those times I would write and converse with the Jesuit brothers and priests who stayed in the Inmaculada to reorient myself. I discovered much life and joy within the Jesuit milieu in the mornings around the dining room. It was a time that I would chat with my new source of inspiration and passion for food, Olga. I would always cook an egg in the kitchen so that I could preview what was to come for lunch and hear about her life in Venezuela. I also noticed the routines and particularities of some of the Jesuits. One Jesuit would always have a fruit, perhaps a granadia or a sliced apple, while reading the paper. Another would always ask Olga for an over easy egg. As she would make his egg, he would toast a slice of bread, spread butter and pour olive oil, made from the Inmaculada’s own olive trees, onto his toast. Quite a unique way to do breakfast, but my community mate learned another way to spread butter!

Everyone had a routine and I realized that it was something that I longed for myself. I began asking them about their lives and roles in Lima. Some Jesuits were simply passing through, while others were more permanent residents working within the schools in the area. I really enjoyed my time with the director of the Inmaculada, Father Oscar. He was the parish priest who originally brought JVC to Andahuaylillas. I also enjoyed speaking with Monsignor Alfredo Vizcarra, the bishop in Jaen. His story was particularly interesting because he was sent to work in Chad, where he founded 17 Fe y Alegria schools. He had no particular desire or interest to go to Chad, but that is where he was sent, and he was able to make a difference there. Monsignor Vizcarra told me that although his mission had many successes, the journey was not without any challenges or failures. In that moment, I related to this because I hadn’t clicked particularly with any of my community mates. Perhaps I wasn’t as open to the experience to learn and grow within the JV community as I had once thought…

 “Hidden in the high thin notes of her wild music is her longing for love…”

 This was an experience of God; a chord was faintly being played that I recognized, something I could hum along to. The initial feelings that I had when I was called to enter this JV experience resurfaced and I felt renewed to be challenged as a person to grow for and with others. The sound that beckoned me brought with it much excitement and fear. It was a call to be more able to find God in all things. In that conversation with Alfredo, I had also asked him about his motivations for joining the Jesuits. He told me that he was called early on in life, but with a well-maintained prayer life and dialogue with God, he found solace as he left his studies of law for the Jesuits.

As he continued to speak, I questioned and began revisiting my faith life and relationship to God. Was what I had only a technical or academic sense of faith? Do I really believe that I am a Catholic? Can I say confidently that I own my faith, that I have a relationship and prayer life with God? I realized that the answer wasn’t clear just yet. Up until that point I realized that I didn’t have a defined and clear relationship with God. I don’t know if anyone ever does reach a constant state of nirvana, but I felt that perhaps I wasn’t even trying. I merely appreciated what the Catholic faith life had added to my life. Sunday masses helped provide an orientation for my life one week at a time. Ignatian Spirituality appealed to me because of its intellectual approach to faith and life. It was as if I was stuck with only talking about Faith, God and sharing stories and reflections of my life without ever being clear that God was at the center of it all.

 “At the gate of my heart…is her longing for love…longing, longing to be invited in…”

I didn’t believe in the faith with all my heart. I saw its goodness and potential, but I was not ready to accept it. This was the challenge for which I felt called to face during my time here in Peru. It was also a call to see God in other people as well. I realized something surprising about myself during this reflective period. I had been used to taking on the responsible, big brother role within my family and I was beginning to show some of that with my community mate at times. I had come into this volunteer experience with expectations and desires for what I wanted a Jesuit volunteer to be. Naturally, when those expectations weren’t met, I was going to be inevitably frustrated. I had not given myself or my community mate the space to discover this new world and chapter in our lives. It wasn’t fair of me to do that, and it is something that I have slowly been improving on.

My conversations with the Jesuits and my brief experiences of prayer after that night gave me something more focused to work on; To be truly open to witnessing and hearing God’s call to not only love others, but to allow myself to accept the ways in which others want to love me. I hope that with time and effort, I can continue to explore and renew the commitment to a healthy and holistic relationship with God. To nurture a relationship with the God that is always there, the God that is always beckoning us to let Him in, even when and where we least expect it.

“Is this the real life? Is this just Fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality. Open your eyes, look up to the sky and see...”

 Gypsy Music (Or what I call “God’s Bohemian Rhapsody”)

“God is a gypsy who plays her violin

At the gate of my heart.

Hidden in the high thin notes of her wild music

is her longing for love.

She plays her rhapsody

Until the tears come… longing, longing to be invited in.”

-        Sr. Lou Ella Hickman

A group of international PeruHop friends after winning Trivia Pictured (Left to Right): Jenz (Our Danish sugar daddy who paid for our drinks) Jary (Holland Native who came for Peru’s international car derby Dakar, Also loves Chipotle more than anyone I know even though he’s only been there once), Jack (An Australian student just traveling and balling on a budget) Me (Inhaling to look decent in the apparently medium sized shirt) Phyllis (My community mate who killed the celebrity part of Trivia) Margerite (German free spirit who was such a kind soul)

Me trying to imagine and pose for a cute couple’s picture. Cat has to send me a picture of her sitting on some steps so I can photoshop her in. (Also I wonder what was going on with the couple behind me. I’d like to think that I captured a cute moment of them)

The view from the Olive Cerro at the Inmaculada. It was cloudy but a spectacular view nonetheless

Links to Photos:

Lima: https://photos.app.goo.gl/HnVHCALVR6naKB7s6

PeruHop Adventures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/rpkFB8eWsf677aUB8