#also it snowed all day where i live so its appropriate that i wrote something to do with snow

[starwarned]

@carryon-countdown 2021

Day 15, 9 December: Vacation/Travel

rated T, 921 words, general tags: anniversary trip gone wrong, little to no actual explanation of how they got here, biting, lack of blood

Finish reading under the cut!

SIMON

Alright, so maybe this didn’t go quite as planned.

I try the door again, but the view outside is practically opaque white with how heavily it’s snowing. I shut the door immediately because I don’t want to make Baz even colder. He’s already freezing, and he won’t just suck it up and let me cuddle him.

“Baz,” I say. “You’ve needed to feed for three days. Please.”

He shakes his head from where he’s curled up across the room next to the fireplace. His eyes are wild with desire and fear and he’s trembling. I can see the glint of his fangs poking out of his lip.

We’ve been stuck in this ski lodge somewhere in the buttfuck middle of nowhere for four days now. It’s snowing so hard that we can’t get into our car and drive off and Baz can’t even leave the cabin to try and find something small to hunt.

(This is the last time I ever let Shepard send us on a surprise anniversary vacation.)

I take a couple steps in and Baz presses himself to the wall. “Simon,” he warns. “If you get closer, I— I’ll do something I’ll regret.”

“I won’t regret it,” I insist. I puff out my chest and turn my head to the side so he can see my neck. “Baz, you’ll die.”

“So fucking be it.”

I sigh and fling my arms up into the air. “I can’t believe you’re being so stubborn about this!”

(Actually, I can, but that’s not the point.)

“You have to feed, Baz!” I continue, hysterically. “You know that if you don’t, you’ll just lose control. Come here while you’re still lucid.”

“Big word for you,” Baz mutters under his breath, but I can hear him. It’s eerily silent in this cabin.

I guess we’re resorting back to how we treated each other three years ago in school. If I were really committed to that idea, Watford me probably would have backed Baz into a wall to threaten him with calling the Sword of Mages (and then maybe he’d bite me then because I was so close), but current me can’t call the Sword of Mages nor do I want to threaten Baz by shoving him around. (I like shoving Baz around, but only consensually and in very different scenarios.)

“Baz.” I walk towards him slowly, like I’m cornering a wounded animal that thinks I’m going to hurt it. “You know this is the only way. We’ve talked about it a lot.”

“I know,” he says, clenching his fists tightly in his hair, tugging at it. “I know. Just never in this scenario.” He looks up at me. I’m now maybe three feet away. “I don’t want to hurt you, love.”

I kneel down. I’m far enough away that I can’t touch him, but I can see every emotion flicker across his eyes, as inconsistent as the firelight dancing through the room. “I know you don’t. And I promise it won’t happen. You have to do this now, Baz, or you’ll lose control—”

“I know!”

He’s panting now, his eyes wide and his mouth barely hanging open. I know what he wants. And I’m prepared to give it to him.

“Come here,” I say. He has to travel the distance between us. I have to know that he’s choosing to try it and I’m not shoving my neck into his mouth.

He slowly slides towards me until his knees are pushing into mine, both of us kneeling in front of one another. His hands shake as they move towards me. He cups my cheeks.

“You know I’d never do anything to hurt you,” he says.

“I know.” I cup my hands around his. “But I need you to do this. Please.”

He nods slowly. I can tell he doesn’t like it. I can practically see every part of him screaming in opposition to either drain me as quickly as possible or to run into the snowstorm and freeze to death rather than bite me. “I’m just going to take a little bit,” he says. “I’ll stop. I’ll stop, I swear.” (He’s convincing himself more than me. I already know he’ll stop.)

Baz moves one hand down to my shoulder and then presses his face into my neck. He glides his nose over my skin and I shiver at the cold touch. I wrap my hands around his hips for something to hold onto. He’s bent over me now, risen up on his knees so he can get a better angle.

Slowly, I feel his fangs against my skin. They slide into my neck — I won’t lie about the pain. It hurts like fuck, but if I gained anything from my childhood with the Mage, it’s an ability to handle excruciating pain. I can feel Baz start to drink my blood and the pain gets less intense. It seeps out of me and I swear I can feel Baz warm up in my grasp.

After maybe twenty seconds, Baz stops. He stops drinking and then just holds himself against my neck, breathing. I feel his fangs retract and he leans away from me. He must have barely gotten anything, but he already looks more alive.

“See?” I say.

Baz slumps against me, hugging his arms around my middle and pressing his head into my chest. “Smugness doesn’t suit you, Simon.”

He’s right. What does suit me is my boyfriend in my arms, safe and satisfied.

Now if only I could find a sandwich or something.

[winterscaptain]

an unrivaled force of nature.

Aaron Hotchner x Gender Neutral Reader

a/n: thank you all for taking this ride with me. we’re almost finished, so tell me what you think, how you felt, how you are. i couldn’t do this without you.

an ajf fic arc that happily stands on its own! (the pieces stand alright on their own as well, for the most part!) one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine | ten | eleven

words: 3.3k warnings: language, sad

summary: “give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er wrought heart and bids it break.” - william shakespeare, macbeth. a eulogy, an offer, a return. 

masterlist | a joyful future masterlist | requests closed!

You brush some wayward snow off of Anderson’s coat as he puts his pallbearer gloves on, and one corner of his mouth tips up. “Thanks.”

“Mhmm.” 

You have to do something. Staying still and letting your restlessness eat at you right now is not an option. 

Will tacitly asks for your help with the little buttons on his pair of gloves, and you secure and smooth them over his wrists. When you’re done, he presses a kiss to your temple before taking his place on the curb. 

Derek is crisp and stone-faced, his gloves perfect as he prepares for Haley’s arrival. You cross to him, placing a hand on his shoulder and kissing his cheek. His eyes shut for a second, but otherwise, he doesn’t move. 

There’s a tug on the hem of your coat, and you find Jack standing before you. You kneel to his level and needlessly fuss with his collar. 

“Are you coming with us?”

You nod. “Yes, my love. I’ll be right there with you and Aunt Jess and Dad.”

He nods and grabs your hand. You keep his fingers tucked into your palm as you stand back up. Aaron’s a little ways off, speaking with the Father before the hearse arrives. You lead Jack to his side, and he absent-mindedly puts a hand on his son’s head. 

When you move to give them a little space, Jack holds you fast, so you settle for stepping just off Aaron’s shoulder. Jessica approaches you then, and you hug her with your free arm. 

“Thank you for being here,” she whispers. “I know it’s -” Her breath catches. “I know it’s hard.” 

You shake your head where it rests on her shoulder. “Anything for you, anything for her.” 

She leans back, and you catch Aaron’s final words as the hearse arrives. 

“...Thank you, Father. I appreciate it.” 

+++

You walk a little in front of Emily, behind Jessica and Aaron. Jack let you go and is walking steadily beside his father. You have no idea where Aaron’s head is, but all you can do is be there, on his six, just like you always are. 

The pallbearers set Haley into her place with a reverence that makes you dizzy. Or, maybe that was just the tears already pushing at your eyes or the fact that you couldn’t stomach breakfast. 

The Father starts to speak. Jack looks up at you where you stand behind Jessica, and reaches for you. Jess makes some space, and you settle in beside her. Your hand falls to Jack’s shoulder, and Jess tucks her hand into the crook of your arm. 

Sooner than you thought possible, Aaron leaves Jess’s other side and pulls his notes from his coat pocket. His hands shake. 

“W.S. Gilbert wrote, ‘It's love that makes the world go round.’ And if that's true, then the world spun a little faster with Haley in it.”

How does he always know what to say?

“...Haley was my best friend since we were in high school.”

You’ve thought about it before, and you know you’d think about it again, but the loss of a twenty-five-year friendship makes your heart ache. There’s part of you that wishes you could check out, let your mind drift as you stand in the December chill. 

But you can’t. You have to feel this. You need it. 

You can’t leave Aaron, Jess, Jack alone in this. 

“We certainly had our struggles, but if there's one thing we agreed on unconditionally, it was our love and commitment to our son Jack. Haley's love for Jack was joyous and fierce. That fierceness is why she isn't here today.” He takes a breath. “A mother's love is an unrivaled force of nature.”

He looks around and you meet his eyes. Your sole focus is your breath. He can see it in the cold air, and does his best to match it. It’s your eyes and the eyes of his son keeping him upright today. You nod, and he turns back to his notes. 

The whole exchange takes less than a second. 

“And we can all learn much from the way Haley lived her life.”

So so much. 

“Haley's death causes each of us to stop and take stock of our lives. To measure who we are and what we've become. I don't have all those answers for myself, but I know who Haley was. She was the woman who died protecting the child we brought into this world together. And I will make sure that Jack grows up knowing who his mother was and how she loved and protected him,” he swallows thickly, “and how much I loved her.”

Aaron loves like you’ve never seen before. He’s reserved, quiet about it, but somehow it’s also the most obvious thing about him. 

His love is deep and intense and all-consuming. 

You see it in the way he watches his son. 

You see it in the way he deftly guides victims to safety, making them feel safe on the worst day of their lives. 

You see it in the way he takes care of all of you on long days and longer cases, the way he tells you all to get some sleep. 

In short, you’ve never once doubted his love for Haley. 

You choke back a sob, and you can hear Jess do the same beside you. 

He collects himself again. “If Haley were with us today, she would ask us not to mourn her death but to celebrate her life. She would tell us -” His voice breaks along with your heart and he takes another breath. 

You can feel Dave shift beside you and you’re not sure what he’s going to do, but you reach for his sleeve, letting go of Jack for just a second. “Let him,” you whisper. He looks at you, nothing but concern in his eyes. You nod. “Let him.” 

Dave nods, and you return your hand to Jack’s shoulder. 

“She would tell us to love our families unconditionally.” Another crack in his voice, another in your heart. Your tears flow even faster now, your hand shaking where it rests on Jack. “And to hold them close, because in the end, they are all that matter.” 

You take stock of your own family. Derek stares straight ahead on the other side of Haley’s casket, but his eyes are misty. JJ is practically a puddle, her lashes wet and blue eyes oddly beautiful - the color brightened by her tears. Emily’s beside her, as is Will with Henry in his arms. 

Dave, Spencer, Penelope - all in shambles. 

Jessica.

Jack.

Aaron.

Haley. 

She’s your family too. You’ll love her for the rest of your life. You’ll love her son. You’ll love her Aaron. You’ll not only love them for yourself, for them, but for her. 

Aaron’s right. Family is all that matters. 

“I met Haley at the tryouts of our high school's production of The Pirates of Penzance. I found our copy of the play and was looking through it the other night, and I came upon a passage that seemed appropriate for this moment.” He settles himself again with another deep breath. You're proud of him - for breathing, for speaking, for being brave.

You knew there was no way to prepare, but it’s harder than you thought - standing here, listening to Aaron attempt to summarize all that Haley was, is, to him. 

Even harder still? Knowing that the last time you spoke to her, embraced her, laughed with her is already behind you. 

You look down and your tears fall into the grass. The story of how Haley and Aaron met is one of your favorites. Once, Haley snuck you into the garage and showed you the photos, making you swear that the knowledge will go to your grave. 

For you, Haley? Anything. I never need to breathe a word of seventeen-year-old Aaron in tights and a ridiculous hat. 

"Oh, dry the glistening tear that dews that martial cheek…”

That’ll be just for us. 

“...for, oh, they cannot bear to see their father weep."

+++

“No, not today.” You look across the table at JJ, who stands as her phone rings. “They can’t call us in.” 

“I’ll take care of it.” 

The next minute or two is tense while you wait for JJ to finish the call. She returns, and you know just by the look on her face you’re not going to like what she has to say. 

So, you preempt her. “Tell Strauss they need to send another team.” 

She shakes her head. “No other teams available.” 

“I’ll get Rossi,” Derek says with a sigh. There’s nothing you can do. He walks out onto the patio and exchanges a few words with Dave and Aaron. 

After a minute, Derek and Dave leave Aaron out on the patio. He turns, looking at all of you through the window for a moment before turning his back, resting his elbows against the stone balustrade. 

You gather your things, following Emily out into the main foyer, but you lose your breath along the way, your shoulders sinking and your eyes dropping to the floor. Will places a soft hand in the middle of your back. 

“You alrigh’?”

You shake your head, pulling a sharp inhale in an effort to keep your tears at bay, and he catches JJ’s wrist. She looks back for just a moment before reaching forward for Derek, tugging a little on his sleeve. 

Your acting unit chief turns around, a softness in his dark eyes. The rest of the team is staring at you. An overwhelming feeling of weakness, almost humiliation, falls over you. 

Why can they leave him and I can’t?

Derek heaves a sigh and says, “Five minutes,” gesturing with the tiniest dip of his chin. The rest of the team follows him out like a pack of well-trained ducklings. JJ’s hand runs down your arm as she passes, and Will presses a kiss to the side of your head. 

Sometimes, you think, Will is a better man than any of you deserve. 

You send him a silent thanks and turn on your heel, almost jogging out into the cool night air. It’s more than kind of Derek to release you for even a moment - he doesn’t have to, but you know the role is wearing on him. 

The more time you get with Hotch, he figures, the faster he can come back to work. 

Aaron hasn’t moved by the time you reach him. You breeze to his side, only slightly out of breath. His scotch sits untouched in front of him, but you can’t fault him for that. Today is not the kind of day that can be blunted by alcohol. 

You’re quiet for what feels like a long time, just sharing space with one another. 

“You should go,” he says. “The team needs you.” 

“I -” You cut yourself off, afraid of sharing too much. There’s so much you could say, so much you need to say. Both to him and to Haley. 

You miss her. Even when she was in WITSEC, there was the hope that one day she would be home, ready to greet you with a wide, crooked smile and, if you were lucky, a laugh. 

That hope is gone and with it, parts of your life you never thought you’d lose. 

Fuck it. Nothing you can say will be wrong. 

“I wanted to be with you for another minute before we left.” 

Aaron’s quiet, but his shoulders drop just the smallest amount. “Thank you.” 

You tip your head to the side, letting it rest on the edge of his shoulder. I wish we didn’t have to leave you. 

I know, his sigh says. It’s okay. 

Tears spring into your eyes again without prompting. It seems your heart has been breaking since Hotch’s voice first wavered in his eulogy. The grief radiating off him in waves only amplifies your own. 

There’s a thickness in his voice as he speaks again. “She really liked you, you know. She -” He clears his throat, a useless endeavor. “She loved you.”  

A little smile pulls at your lips and tears leave your eyes - just two - without your permission. “I know.” Quietly, you add, “I love her, too.” The past tense is too painful, so you keep her with you in the present. 

“She trusts you with Jack. Always has.” He huffs a humorless laugh. “Can’t even say that for myself.” 

There’s nothing you can say to that, but you shake your head. An inaudible, “Yes you can,” leaves you. You know he hears it - the little smile that pulls at the corner of his mouth tells you as much. 

Belatedly, you realize it’s probably been more than five minutes, but you can’t bring yourself to care. 

“Can I ask you for something?” 

You lean back, looking him in the eye. “Anything.” 

“Can you -” He stops, his lip quivering and tears pushing at his eyes. He swallows, his jaw tight, as he collects himself enough to speak without losing it. “Can you help me keep my promise?”

Your brow tugs in the middle. “Which one?”

“All of them,” he says. “I want Jack to know -” He can’t finish, but you watch him. He knows you understand. “I also promised to spend the rest of my life making up for…” He gestures vaguely. “...this.” 

You reach toward him, pressing a fervent kiss to his cheek before hooking your chin over his shoulder. You cling desperately to his coat, knowing if you hurt him, he’ll tell you. 

 He returns your embrace, locking his arms around your back. A whisper leaves you. “Of course.” Now that you’re pressed against him, you’re not sure if you’re shaking or he is, but you only hold him tighter to stem it. 

There are no other words exchanged between you as you pull away and meet his eyes. You needlessly smooth his collar. 

When you make your way to the door, you turn over your shoulder once more. He’s watching you. “See you when we get home.” 

He nods. Be safe. 

You offer him the smallest of smiles. Always. 

+++

It’s the middle of the night when your phone rings. You answer it before looking, your last name rough as it leaves your mouth. 

“It’s Hotch.” His voice is just more than a whisper, but of course, you’d know it anywhere. 

You sit up straight in bed, rubbing your eyes. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Is Jack alright?”

There’s a sigh. “Nothing. I’m...fine. Jack’s asleep here with me, but I just…” He pauses. “I just needed to know you’re okay.” 

The tension leaves you as relief floods your system. “Yeah. I’m okay. We’re sleeping in shifts. I’m back on in,” you check the clock on the bedside table, “four hours.” 

“Ah,” he says. “I’ll let you sleep then.” 

You know he’s about to hang up, but you stop him. “Hotch, wait.” 

There’s silence on the other end of the phone, so you can only hope he’s listening. 

“If you want to stay on for a little while, I can’t promise I’ll stay up, but you don’t have to hang up.” 

A heavy exhale sounds in your ear. “Really?”

“Yeah.” You tuck yourself back into bed. “I can talk about nothing, if you want. I’m no Spencer, but I’ve picked up a few of his tricks.” 

“Alright,” he says with a quiet laugh. “I don't want to keep you up, but -” 

“Oh, please. Let someone take care of you for once, would you?”

There’s a huff followed by silence, so you take your cue. You tell him all about the drive out to the crime scene today - it was a gorgeous, winding road through the Tennessee mountains. There was plenty of snow and the air was crisp and cold. 

You skip over the case details, just describing the landscape as best you can. Your yawns come faster than your words after a while, and you figure it’s time to check in. 

“Hotch?”

There’s a little shuffle on the other end of the line, and a little hum. That’s good enough for you. 

“Goodnight, Aaron.”

Another hum. “Night, sweetheart,” he slurs. 

You know he’s barely conscious, but that doesn’t deter the adrenaline rush. You manage a, “Sleep well. I’ll text you in the morning,” before hanging up. You stare at the dark screen of your phone for a moment. The dark is the only thing there to hear your whisper. It listens. 

“I love you.”

+++

There’s another call in the late afternoon. You step out to take it. Derek hardly takes a second glance at you as he and the rest of the team continue working. 

“Aaron?”

“Hey,” he says. “Strauss just left.” 

Your brow crinkles. “What?”

“We did have a meeting scheduled, but she came to the house so I wouldn’t have to take Jack to the office or leave him here.” 

“That was...generous.” It was hard to find the word, but you got there eventually. 

He sighs. “Yeah, I thought so too.” 

“So, what’s up?” 

I know you’re not calling me without reason so just spit it out. 

“She offered me retirement. Full pension, full benefits.” 

Your heart drops and you try to hide the anxiety in your voice. You’re not sure it works. (From his end of the phone, it doesn’t.) “Are you going to take it?”

“That’s the thing -” 

You check the team on the other side of the window. Derek taps his watch, and you nod.

“- Jess offered to take Jack whenever I’m away. She wants to.” 

You’re speechless. You can’t say you’re surprised, knowing Jess as you do, but it's so big. She’s basically becoming a mother overnight. “Wow.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Aaron, I’m so sorry -”

“- Get back to the case. I just wanted to tell you because...I don’t know. I’m gonna sleep on it and then figure it out in the morning.” 

“That sounds like a good idea.” You check the time. “Kiss Jack goodnight for me, will you?”

“Of course. Good luck.” 

“Thanks.” You hang up, neither one of you stuck on pretenses of politeness anymore. You slip back into the room with an apologetic glance at Derek. 

Spencer looks back at you. Hotch? 

You wave him off. Later. 

+++

You're antsy to get off the plane, your knee bouncing, and your lip between your teeth. With Derek’s permission, you fly out of the office like a bat out of hell in the afternoon light, trying to make it before the sun sets. 

You know exactly where to find him. 

Parking the car, you step out and button your coat against the chill. He’s visible from here, on the bench, with his elbows resting on his knees and his head bowed. 

You don’t know this, but of course, he knows you’re coming. He’s not surprised when you sit beside him. He offers you a hand and you take it. 

“Have you told her, yet?”

There’s an almost-smile on his face, closer to something you recognize than anything the week prior. “Told her what?”

“That you’re coming back to us. That this team, this work, is who you are?”

His eyes are trained on the temporary marker as he replies. “You know I don’t have to tell her. She already knows.”

You look at him for a second, studying his profile. “I’m proud of you.” 

He looks at you, almost doubtful. 

With the smallest of smiles, you add, “She’s proud of you, too.” At another questioning glance: “She told me as much, last spring. She’s so proud of you, Aaron.” 

He nods with a deliberate slowness and turns his gaze back to Haley. He squeezes your hand. 

You squeeze back. 

+++

tagging: @arganfics @quillvine @stxrryspencer @agenthotchner @hurricanejjareau @ughitsbaby @rousethemouse @criminalsmarts @shrimpyblog @genevievedarcygranger @ssaic-jareau @good-heavens-chris-evans @davidrossi-ismydad @angelsbabey @writefasttalkevenfaster @venusbarnes @hotchsflower @ogmilkis @marvels-agents100 @hotchslatte @risenfox @mrs-dr-reid @captain-christopher-pike @dwellingsofrosie @pan-pride-12 @sunshine-em @word-scribbless @jdougl-love @sageellsworth05 @dreila03 @forgottenword @aaronhotchnerr @ssa-morgan @buckybau @sana-li @tegggeeee @abschaffer2 @ssacandice-ray @ellyhotchner @lotties-journey-abroad @mrs-joel-pimentel-23-25 @laneygthememequeen @violentvulgarvolatile  @mooneylupinblack @ssareidbby @violet-amxthyst @bwbatta @roses-and-grasses @lcvischmitt @capricorngf @missdowntonabbey @averyhotchner @mandylove1000 @cevanswhre @qvid-pro-qvo @jeor @spencers-hoodrat @infinity1321 @zizzlekwum @popped-weasels @evee87 @nuvoleincielo @this-broken-band-girl @reidtomestyles @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @winqhster @spencerelds @the-falling-in-the-danger @nattylite49 @crazyshannonigans @softbibxtch @iconicc

[oxbridge-quality-fanfiction-co]

The Lovelorn Monster

Welcome to my first Modern AU, which I wrote for @lovelyrita1967  It’s a Geraskier Romcom with extra suffering and gore! Also, it’s a Christmas fic as @booichiboo requested. 16k, M.

You can read it on AO3.

Summary: It's been many months since the mountain incident. Jaskier is alone on Christmas day. His lovely, old house has somehow become a monster-infested hellhole. Now it seems there might be a way to kill two birds with one stone. Only deciding what actually needs killing is much more complicated than that.

cw: blood, so much blood, also a lot of angst (although there’s a happy ending), suicide references, some Geraskier disagreements and heartbreak. No sex, but there’s a fair bit of angsty cuddling and some much less angsty kissing.

*********************************************** 

When I am laid, am laid in earth, May my wrongs create

No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;

Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

Dido’s Lament, Henry Purcell, adapted from The Aeneid

Jaskier stared at his beautiful, tall, richly dressed Christmas tree with pride and a wistful smile. Each ornament was a souvenir or a gift. This tradition gave his decorations deep meaning, but also made him reluctant to come anywhere near the tree this year.

Memories. He had a cardboard box full of them. There was a delicately carved wooden heart covered in rich, red paint he received from Countess de Stael. Then his favourite - a perfect, tiny copy of his lute he had ordered to celebrate his first successful performance for the royals. He even had a little doll that a sibele, a demon who steals children, was using to lure a baby when Geralt cut off her head.

Geralt never approved of Jaskier keeping the toy, let alone using it as an ornament. ‘I don’t need keepsakes to remind me of the last time I killed something,’ his gruff voice would say.

Well, this year it’s going up. Jaskier picked a spot for the doll with a rebellious toss of his hair. It was quite a nasty, clumsily knitted thing. Seeing it on the tree succeeded mostly in creating an uncomfortable lump in his throat as he imagined Geralt sitting on his living room sofa, relaxed, with a snide smile, some acerbic remark already forming in his head.

Perhaps Geralt would ignore the doll. ‘You just love making yourself sentimental,’ he’d say instead, seemingly no connection, just a short, judgmental glance at the tree.

And Jaskier did, actually. No shame in that. It had its benefits. In his mind, Geralt could easily become just the memory of a perfect, lost friend, regardless of how he would feel about the prospect. He was the hero Jaskier once traveled with, no more, no less. They parted ways for perfectly rational reasons.

‘Just give me a couple of years,’ he said to the imaginary Geralt in his mind and smiled with pride. Being the storyteller meant being in control.

Then he noticed a little ornament shaped like a golden dragon lying at the bottom of the box. The sight made him freeze for a moment. He shook off the memory and ignored the draw towards his phone which has been intensifying over the last couple of days.

Everything was going fine. The phone was just playing music, lying perfectly innocently on the windowsill as it should. It was set on shuffle, and Annie Lennox’s “Dido's Lament” was on, a little bit ominous, but also somehow appropriate.

He hummed with the music while hanging up a few golden baubles. As he started to sing, another voice joined in, a distant echo of his hum, a gentle, female timbre following along quietly. It made him smile, eyes suddenly attracted to the window. It was already getting dark, and the Christmas lights he put up outside were reflecting in the glass. A weird glow by the evergreen shrubs made the snow underneath them shine delicately.

The decorations were nearly complete. There was a comforting smell of cinnamon and apples coming from the kitchen. Also, he still had some surprisingly successful homemade ginger biscuits left.

The golden dragon was the last thing he hung on the tree. He flinched a little as he did, but it was where it belonged. Then he moved away to admire his finished work. ‘Better late than never,’ he whispered to himself.

At that exact moment, the next song started to play. Jaskier instantly recognised it and stared at his phone as if it personally insulted him.

‘It's been a blue holiday since you've been gone,’ Aretha Franklin started to sing.

‘Oh, no you don’t,’ Jaskier whispered while walking calmly towards his phone.

‘Oh darling, won't you hurry, hurry home,’ she continued undisturbed.

He actually liked the song and was starting to wonder if he was overreacting.

‘It's been a blue… a blue holiday. And I'm all alone.’

No, he wasn’t.

‘My dear I need your love to keep… to keep me warm.’

Yeah, sure, like that was ever an option, he thought to himself.

‘I cry when I hear the chapel bells ring… And sometimes I cry all through the night.’

Fuck. Jaskier’s fingerprint lock was a little wonky.

‘Won't you please come home and make my… make my holiday bright.’

Finally, he managed to skip a couple of songs, and quickly discovered he actually preferred some silence this time. He took a deep breath and decided it was time to focus on cooking. That should be comforting enough.

As soon as he turned towards the kitchen he heard a weird, buzzing sound, and then a high, disembodied laugh. Lights flickered. There was a loud crash, a cavalcade of many little objects falling all at once, baubles suddenly bouncing off his furniture. A glass ball he bought at a little Christmas market in Vizima rolled in between his feet.

He swore under his breath and turned back. All the ornaments were lying on his wooden floor, and only the Christmas lights remained. A small dark shape with sharp horns moved along the wall and then disappeared behind the sofa, still giggling to itself.

Jaskier stared at the naked tree, feeling a bit hopeless. Then he climbed up the sofa pillows and looked into the tight space between the wall and the backrest.

Two small, red eyes stared back.

‘Proud of yourself?’ he asked with irritation and heard only a quiet hiss in response. ‘You know what? Fuck you. Sincerely, fuck you.’ He pointed at the thing, his eyes narrowing. ‘No more biscuits for you. You’re going down,’ he threatened, a surprising and, by all accounts, disproportionate amount of uncurbed fury in his voice, hand shaking slightly.

For a moment Jaskier seemed overwhelmed. He took a couple of very deep breaths, then coughed a little and his eyes watered. ‘Right,’ he said to himself, his attempts to calm down obviously failing. He stretched his neck, then rolled his shoulders, releasing the tension with a sigh. ‘Right,’ he repeated as his expression switched to resolve.

He squeezed his phone with newly found determination, and then fiddled with it nervously for much longer than he originally planned.

Finally, he clicked on his least favourite icon of all - the phone app.

The signal was ringing loud in his ears. Time slowed down. He was just about to hang up when he heard a deep voice on the other side. ‘Yes?’

‘Vesemir,’ Jaskier announced, jovially. ‘Merry Christmas!’ He listened to Vesemir return the greeting and massaged his temples nervously. ‘Yes, thank you. Erm… I was just wondering… No, no, I am not going to hang up. Whatever gives you that idea?’ He laughed nervously. ‘I do need help. It’s a dreadful emergency. No… Of course, I would have called otherwise. Yes, it’s quiet because I’m at home. No, I have not been drinking. I am most definitely sober. Yes, yes, yes… No, I do realise… I actually do have a monster that needs to be… witchered? No, it’s not just one, actually… It’s- it’s a couple of things, really. I know it’s Christmas. Yes, I see your point. But… isn’t Geralt working anyway?’

He waited as the line went quiet for a while. ‘Yes, I did just ask for Geralt,’ he confirmed.

No response. Vesemir must have moved away from the phone, and there was a sound of distant chatter. When he returned his voice was hesitant. ‘You’re sure about this?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I definitely want Geralt here. As soon as possible would be grand,’ Jaskier confirmed again, surprised at how confident he sounded.

‘Fine,’ Vesemir said finally, before hanging up right away, voice a bit more irritated than the situation justified.

Jaskier put the phone away and tried to force himself to breathe again.

You can read the rest on AO3.

********************************************

Extra thanks to @ohmybgosh @variousnoises

@thelastsock​ @jaskierswolf​ @rawrkinjd​ @katesierra​ @gilbert-von-kneecap​ @stinastar​ @carmillacarmine​ @ro-the-bard-writer​ @ikeptupwiththejoneses​ @purpleonionofsex​ @marvagon​ @fontegagrilledcheese​ @sarah-midnight​ @geraskierficrecs​ @renfribrooks​ @darknessyuu​ @comfortabletextiles​ @gosh-diddley-darnit​ @ohjules​ @short-potato​ @anie6142​ 

@valdomarx​ I know you don’t read Modern AUs but this one has a wyvern, a rusalka and Geralt is still a witcher. Also, I love you. That’s my argument.

[bumbershots]

THE AGE OF THE UNDERSTATEMENT

Author’s note: Hello! So last winter I spent it binge watching so many Mexican soap operas, A LOT of old winter Olympics footage, and Harry Styles music videos so I came up with this idea, but didn’t really did anything until I was writing the one shot for the playlist challenge and the characters sort of came to life. I wrote the whole idea for every chapter so I don’t slack (like with my other story lol) anyway. Here’s the result. Enjoy! (:

Story page ★ Word count: 2.6K

Chapter one: Time

It’s snowing outside. Small, thin flakes that can be easily mistaken for hail, until they stick to the window and melt into the glass. Selena wants nothing more than to track the damp streak with one of her fingers, a bad habit she keeps from when she was a kid —one of many. She refrains from doing so because duty calls, there are a minimum of ten things that she was asked to help with right now. She makes her rounds across the wedding venue, instructing the string quartet where to place the chairs, confirming for the hundredth time that the bride’s father is not sneaking cupcakes out of the catering team or trying to have one last pre-wedding conversation with her fiancé.

In another situation she would’ve delegated the tasks to Minako and Paloma or any of the other bridesmaids. But Selena needed to stay busy, just so her thoughts don’t draw a mindmap, a list of everything that went wrong in her life for the past three weeks. A complete disaster, one bad choice after another one. A mistake on her side, a mistake on his, all of them domino-stumbling into each other, where the only possible outcome was to try to go back to how things were before she committed the first fault.

The good and bad thing about Selena, is that she’s also very efficient, fifteen minutes later she is done with her duties and is dismissed by Maki, the bride herself. But this free time more than a blessing is a curse that leaves her dwelling and all of a sudden she is aware of how alone she is feeling. Selena is alone, literally and figuratively, she is so unused to it. For someone who grew up in a big family, surrounded by aunts, grandmothers, cousins, nieces and nephews —some of them not even related by blood. She used to be so comfortable in her solitude, when she first moved to Tokyo. But it somehow feels weird when it is not self-inflicted. She stands in the empty corridor, feeling lost, before she decides to find the only person who won’t make her feel alone, whose presence is always a silver lining in her life, and who is apparently the only person that she will keep coming back to over and over again.

She finds Viktor going over his speech in the car park, he is leaning against his car, his brow knitting deep in thought, eyes scanning quickly the paper before him. He looks seconds away from giving up his task —or the wedding altogether. But he won’t actually leave, because he cares about Maki too much, just like all the other guests. Selena knows that although Viktor is not a very romantic person, he will at some point in his lecture, make the bride cry with whatever unexpected analogy he’d come up with.

It’s freezing, colder than the usual, even for a December morning. Selena pulls her coat closer to her body and rubs her hands together, another poor attempt to channel her anxiety to another part of her body.

Her companion doesn’t miss it, but all he says, after folding the paper he had in half and a long exhale, is, “I’ve always wanted to attend a summer wedding, right before the sunset and as the ceremony takes place so does the sun in the horizon… and the twilight comes in view and seals the couple’s love with its last beaming rays.” Viktor lends his scarf to a now shivering Selena. “When it’s your turn, promise me you’ll have a summer wedding, at the end of June?”

Selena’s first thought in response to this is not the discomfort she was expecting, but actually a quick flash of what her long time friend just described, it seems ridiculous when she is too certain that something like that will never happen in her life. Not when she doesn’t even have anything close to a stable relationship in her present.

“Why would you bestow upon me such expectation or needing to marry a man… someone, anyone, if ever. It is very sexist of you—”

“Please, shut the hell up.” Viktor unbuttons his coat, completely unbothered by this weather, a mark of the Russians.

Weirdly enough, Selena does shut the hell up. Something so rare that has Viktor going still. From her periphery, Selena sees her friend stay quiet, probably pondering what he is about to ask next, because he knows that he only has one chance to do it right, that’s how Selena is about things that bother her. If you are unable to articulate the appropriate question, she won’t say anything.

“Where’s Harry?” says Viktor. “Is he charming the string quartet already?”

“We had a fight.” Selena breathes out, glad to get that off her chest, the mist from her breath curls upwards until it’s undistinguishable. “I don’t think he will come.”

“Why?”

Because it was a big fight, an ugly one. She thinks but doesn’t say, still Viktor can tell and he scoffs.

“God what a dick.”

Supposedly Viktor was friends with both Harry and Selena, but it doesn’t really feel like that for him, not after the incident last week. Not when Harry was acting jealous every time Viktor was around. He is not one to romanticise that behaviour and call it love. He sees it as a red flag, one that he would immediately discuss with Selena, but not now when she looks like she’s attending a funeral and not a wedding. Viktor and Selena share a lot of things and they have planted plenty of questionable habits on each other, but beating around the bush was not one of them. But her vulnerability can be felt in the freezing air, in every misshaped snowflake and Viktor studies her, not liking the apprehension on her face.

“But he will come,” says Viktor.

Selena lets out a bitter laugh, refusing to look up. “Why would he? He doesn’t even know the bride or groom.”

Viktor leans away from his car, before he slips out of his coat.

“I would,” he says, wrapping her in the garment carefully, “because of the cute girl who asked me to, and the free food.”

◇

All flights were postponed due to the snow. Harry laughs, knowing it is completely ridiculous that the moment he is looking to get out of Japan, a blizzard comes out of nowhere to prevent it. As if there’s someone up above, directing his acts, trying to get him to attend the wedding he was dressed up for and invited to only a couple of days ago. It’s unfair, and he feels uncomfortable to be stranded at the airport. Harry is tempted to call Selena, knowing that she won’t deny him the chance to stay at her place until his flight can take off the next morning.

There’s no way he is calling her, not after the fight from the other day. All the things she said filled his head to the brim and it had been constantly dripping unkind thoughts about her. He decides to just wait at the airport, a bench can’t be the worst place to sleep tonight.

But a tap on his shoulder saved him from what would’ve been a really dreadful day and night. Harry finds himself face to face with the last person he expected to see today in Japan.

“I’m going to give you a moment alone, so you can sit with what you’re feeling. When I return we will talk about it.”

There’s a knot on his chest, but he nods. “Yes, thank you Sam.”

As soon as Sam has disappeared upstairs, Harry goes to stand by the window, and stares at what is probably one of the nicest views of Tokyo. He wanted to yell, cry until his voice ran out and his eyes were so swollen that he would have trouble opening them for the next few days. He could scream and Sam wouldn’t hold it against him, but just one look at the city before him was a reminder that he was not home. It’s one thing to have a much needed breakdown in his own flat under the watchful eye of his friend and bandmate Mitch and another to disrupt the peace of Sam’s loft. It’s one and a half floors that Harry has associated with calm and security from the moment he first stepped into it three weeks ago, and while he had never played any part to this, he’d rather have a crisis at the airport where everyone can see and judge him than to threaten the tranquility so shamelessly.

He rests his forehead on the window and breathes like that, counting and counting until he hears Sam return. He expects her to join him but she continues to the kitchen and Harry just follows with his gaze.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Sam asks, tying up a black apron, standing in her pristine white kitchen. Harry wants to tell her that nothing too fancy, that he’s not even hungry. But he can’t say anything.

It all feels so foreign, watching Sam cook him breakfast, fighting with Selena, being in Japan. It all piled up on Harry’s shoulders until he couldn’t carry it any longer. It dawns on him that he doesn’t know what he really wants.

“I’ll make an omelette.” She concludes after his silence.

If Harry believed more in the strengths of his relationships, he would say that they both find comfort in each other. Sam being the only person who didn’t get invited to the wedding and Harry being the only one that shouldn’t have. But he doesn’t know her that well, all he knows is what Selena told him that night before they arrived at her place for dinner.

Well she was dating Maki last year, but they broke up. She had carelessly said and for a moment it unsettled Harry, how little she cared about her friend’s feelings. They don’t like to talk about it, so we don’t. Boundaries, something that everyone in their circle seemed to have. It’s the reason why he was so surprised at Sam’s offer to stay at her place until his flight is rescheduled.

Ten minutes later, he is summoned to the living room area. “I was debating whether to ask why you are dressed for a funeral,” says Sam, walking back to the kitchen counter to retrieve their mugs. It’s almost lunch time, but she leaves a mug of steaming black coffee in front of Harry. Then she nods at where Harry left the black jacket of his two-piece suit draped over the arm of the sofa. “But I remembered about the winter wonderland wedding you’ll both be attending.”

Both.

Harry sits up over the old peeling couch, he crosses his legs under him and Sam takes the one-seater to his left, eyes sharp on how Harry crinkles his pants.

“We don’t have to talk about the wedding.”

“You seem to be under the impression that you talking about the wedding will unsettle me but I can assure you that is not the case.”

Harry’s eyes widened. “No, no,” he says. “It just seems unnecessary, whatever issue I have is not related to the wedding.”

Sam levels him a flat look. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Harry. But you’re terrible at explaining what bothers you.”

“Yeah, that is true.” Harry takes a big chunk of omelette and stuffs it into his mouth. A childhood habit to keep his mouth shut. He watches Sam take a spreader knife to push some jam across the fresh loaf of bread she stopped to get on her way home. “I just wanted to avoid talking about the wedding, the attendees, what happens after the wedding.”

“Just to spare my feelings?”

“Yes, because I know I would feel uncomfortable upon hearing how my ex is getting married this afternoon—”

“Harry,” says Sam. “I don’t feel uncomfortable.”

How can you not? He thinks. Having finished almost all of the omelette, Harry resorts to spreading two thick layers of jam onto an open-faced slice of bread, before folding it in half and shoves it into his mouth. “I can’t look at Selena in the eye ever again anyway.” He said, as he chewed.

“Why?” She is slower in her rituals, more careful as she spreads jam to the very tips of her slice.

“I just can’t.” Harry swallows. The bread is soft and fluffy, the jam has the perfect balance of sweet and citrusy but it still doesn’t go down as easily. “Because it’s such a mess, I feel terrible about everything right now and there’s a chance I go and pass on my bad mood to the attendants. Why would I turn a wedding into a funeral? I can’t get away with that, I’m no Hugh Grant. I don’t know if I can look at Selena in the eye and she’s the reason I was invited. She probably doesn’t even want me there or anywhere anymore. And it’s fine that she doesn’t. It’s her brother’s wedding who also might not want me there. I just don’t even know how to exist anymore. I don’t want to carry all the feelings I have for her back to England where they will surely rot along what’s left of my heart. I wish I was dressed for a funeral, mine if possible. I spent all fucking morning tying up this tie—”

“Breathe,” says Sam. Her knife is hesitant, waiting for Harry to actually breathe, before it is back to sliding smoothly across the bread. Harry knows she’s studying him, trying to ask him about the argument he had with Selena, most likely preparing a speech about why Maki or anyone in that family would want him there. “Have another slice of bread.” Sam doesn’t push him to talk about that or anything, they finish their meal in silence and it gives Harry some time to collect his thoughts for the first time today.

He helps with the washing up because however far away from home, he can’t shake off the manners his mother taught him. As he finishes, the clock by the wall announces that the time to make a choice is running out. Harry can stay here and wait for an update on his flight. He can go to a hotel and thank Sam for her kindness. He can leave his stuff here and figure out how to get to the wedding by train, bus or even scooter. He has time to decide and it occurs to him that it doesn’t apply just for today but any other for that matter.

It’s strange how for the past couple of weeks he felt like he was living towards a deadline, that any minute he spent was some sort of borrowed time. Harry doesn’t feel any of that frustration as Sam wipes clean the coffee table, who’s methodical about even this, each movement measured and easy to follow.

The loft is quiet, nothing but Harry’s level, unhurried breathing in the space around them. Sam finishes her task and focuses her gaze on him, unfaltering for a second before she turns away.

“Grab your jacket. We’re heading out.”

“What?” Harry is surprised, but he goes to do as he’s told, frowning at his luggage by the door.

“You can leave that in here.” Sam slips on her jacket in one smooth motion, shoes slipping on her feet easily. “We’re going for a drive.”

Harry fixes the collar of his shirt. “Where to?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On the things you choose to tell me during the drive.” Sam props open the front door and Harry follows right behind.

But he is not rushing this time, whatever choices he does make today will be the right ones, whether he regrets them or not will be something to look back on, years from now. But as he climbs into the passenger seat of Sam’s black convertible, the city passes by his side. Harry is sure that for now, he has all the time in the world.

△△△

Sign up for the tag list ♡

[wolf-and-bard]

@winter-fir: Sofia, my darling, this was written as a birthday present and with you in mind. Thank you for being such a delightful, funny, mad scientist genius friend, I love you. I wanted to give you some Arnaghad/Erland fluff and it didn’t turn out fluffy at all, it’s a rambly mess and I’m sorry. It did turn into a continuation and a prompt fill, I hope you don’t mind. 😂 I also hope you ate a lot of cake today ❤

Steal My Heart Again

Prompt: Isolation

Relationships: Arnaghad/Erland of Larvik

Rating: E

Content Warnings: apocalypse-appropriate sentiments (aka hopelessness), explicit sexual content, swear words, minor character death (past)

Summary: This is a sequel to Drown With Me If You Can. Erland and Arnaghad have made it to the safety of Kaer Seren’s cellars and have to face life during the apocalypse. They cope in different ways. In which: Erland wallows some more and Arnaghad wants cuddles. 

Word Count: ~3k

AO3 Link I @witcher-rarepair-summer-bingo​

In the latter years of the 1130s, a conflict between the Northern Realms of Redania, Kaedwen, and Kovir and Poviss sprouted up in which Kovir and Poviss petitioned to gain sovereignty.

Erland pauses to ponder his next words and in that pause, becomes aware of something stirring.

Witchers usually sniff and listen before something breeches their line of sight, but with his beloved bear, it’s even more intense. Erland can hear the giant’s footsteps pound in tune with his own heart as soon as Arnaghad rises from his meditative perch at least four rooms down the hallway. Erland can smell the endorphins that chase each other through Arnaghad’s bloodstream as soon as he calls out for Erland, still far away. They have a different scent for every person and witcher picking up on them.

For Erland, Arnaghad’s contentedness smells like toasted white bread and strawberry jam. Conversely, Arnaghad is reminded of the concoction of oils and herbs he treats his old bearskin with so that it retains its texture whenever Erland smiles. Everything about Arnaghad is intense, as is the emotional knot Erland carries tucked between his lungs, the one that is made up of strings of the past and present that have become inevitably entangled. There is no easy emotion here and so Erland shoves them all aside in favour of putting down his next lines.

It came to pass that, under the supervision of the Hierarch of Novigrad, then Walter Beda, the rulers of the three countries met to negotiate the agreement. King Radovid III of Redania and King Benda of Kaedwen sailed on the Redanian flagship Alata to Lan Exeter where Gedovius Troyden, then Earl and later King of Kovir, met them, accompanied by his wife Gemma. Thus, the First Treaty of Lan Exeter was forged, and Kovir and Poviss gained the right to call themselves a kingdom.

Erland blows on the ink and the smell intensifies so much that his mouth waters. He glances to the side to see the bear appear in the hallway.

“There you are,” Arnaghad rumbles when he arrives at Erland’s small chamber which used to be a storage for barrels in need of repair. He shoulders through the narrow doorway without knocks or ceremony, and his bare feet slap against the stone, warmed by an underground pool of water which is suffused by heat from the earth’s core. With the White Frost raging outside the keep of Kaer Seren - in whose basement they currently reside in - even that heat will fade and freeze, but it has not been touched yet. They have not been touched yet, they made it to the safety of this hidden hearth and it nearly cost them their lives. “What are you doing, birdie?”

“Writing,” Erland says absent-mindedly and growls when Arnaghad’s hulking form blots out the light of half the torches as he approaches the makeshift desk. It’s a splintered plank of wood propped up on two empty barrels, a third one – overturned – functioning as the chair. The rest of the room is bare save for the rusted grates in which the torches reside and a wicker basket full of half-rotten corks. The griffins used to collect them to fashion floormats for the baths with. The griffins that now lay buried under rubble, only a story or two above Erland’s and Arnaghad’s heads. He tries not to think about that as he writes, writes, writes.

“Why, thank you dearest beloved, I had not figured that out for myself.”

Erland shrugs and bends further over his page. He is halfway through his account and he has to keep going while the words still come easily and his hand hasn’t cramped up. It tends to do that a lot these days, whether from writing, shovelling endless masses of snow or from stroking Arnaghad’s oversized cock. The first one is a need to preserve what might otherwise get lost, the second a necessity so their one exit from Kaer Seren doesn’t get blocked completely. The third activity is all pleasure and indulgence and re-learning the body of a man he thought lost to him for so long.

Arnaghad, the obnoxious idiot, steps closer and squints over Erland’s shoulder which truly sucks up the rest of the flickering illumination. His burly hand comes to rest on Erland’s head – now freshly shaven into his preferred undercut again with his hair woven into complex patterns Arnaghad yet remembers from his home – and his chin presses against Erland’s temple.

“’Kovir’s Independence and the First Treaty of Lan Exeter’,” Arnaghad reads out loud from the top of the page. “The fuck does this have to do with you? Are you trying to write a world history?”

“You forget where we are,” Erland murmurs and finishes his sentence, placing a small asterisk with a number ten atop the last word for yet another footnote.

“I haven’t.” Arnaghad plucks the feather from Erland’s hand and rises a little, takes the bent fingers into his own and strokes along them to straighten them out, one by one. Erland sighs and sags against the bear, letting fatigue wash over him, wash away his ambition for the day. “You forget where you are. Who you are and who you are with.”

“I might have,” he admits sheepishly and closes his eyes, listens to the faint gurgle of Arnaghad’s stomach. It’s a simple, well-crafted lie. Erland never forgets and how could he?

“I understood the journal,” Arnaghad says. “Well, I wasn’t willing to give my life for it as you were, but I understood why you wrote it. The ice might melt, the beasts might return and for that, whoever is to inhabit this world may need the information you captured. But this is unfathomable.”

“Of course, it would be to you.”

“What is that supposed to mean? Are you calling me stupid?”

“No,” Erland says and melts as Arnaghad’s hands let go of his to gently massage his shoulders. It’s only when the static pain slowly ebbs away that Erland realizes just how long he’s been sitting hunched over his notes. Each word an investment with so little parchment leftover.

“Then what? Why are you doing this?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Erland sighs and ducks out of his lover’s grip to get up and pop his joints. Avoiding Arnaghad’s gaze, Erland extinguishes the torches with a flurry of precise Aards and makes to leave the room.

The bear wouldn’t understand in a million years why Erland writes the chronicle, would probably call it a waste of energy and resources. There is utility in writing a bestiary, there is only sentiment in writing a history. And perhaps a flicker of hope that whatever civilization rises from the rubble of the Ice Age will not repeat their forebearer’s mistakes. Except no. Erland may be an idealist at heart, but not enough that this hope has a chance of threading through the fabric of his motivation.

His motivation is woven in entirely selfish materials. It’s distraction, it’s occupation, it’s indulging in self-pity and nostalgia, melancholy and pride. It’s to keep himself from spiralling into depression and forgetfulness, to keep his brain from deterioration. Between fucking and eating and sleeping, Erland needs mental stimulation more than exercise.

Arnaghad, on the other hand, spends his hours in meditation and weapon-less drills, doing push-ups by the hundreds, handstands by the hours, pull-ups by the thousands. His massive body, in spite of the lethargy and sluggishness his form might suggest, needs constant movement. To prevent muscle atrophy and to keep himself alert and strong for whatever they have to face.

For now, what they have to face is endless isolation. Just the two of them, a slowly but steadily dwindling supply of dried meats and herbs, pickled vegetables and fruit, and barrels upon barrels of ale. Most of them brewed with the recipe Keldar perfected over decades of teaching young griffins to hold their alcohol alongside their swords.

Keldar.

Erland tries not to think of the old griffin master, especially tries not to think about how they found his body, a frozen statue before the crumpled gates of Kaer Seren, half-buried in snow by the time that Arnaghad and Erland fought their way to the keep. He’d survived the avalanche, had stayed at the school, and Erland had abandoned him. Him too.

Dear old Keldar, dutiful to his last moments. It was what every griffin would have done, every one except for Erland it seemed.

“Birdie,” Arnaghad says, tapping the side of Erland’s skull where his griffin tattoo decorates his shaved skin. They walk side by side, down the endless winding corridors of Kaer Seren’s basement system towards the centre where the heat is the most intense. It’s also where they set up their meagre bedroll, a heap of old linens with Erland’s quilt and Arnaghad’s bearskin on top. “You’re getting lost in your thoughts again.”

“What were you saying?” Erland asks and pushes open the door to their bedroom. Slap, slap, go Arnaghad’s feet as he enters while Erland’s follows after him. He wears both their socks, still more prone to the cold even down here.

“Nothing,” Arnaghad says. He stops in the middle of their room – all grey brick cast in flame from the torches Erland managed to keep perpetually burning. It’s a trick he perfected back when the signs where first developed where he can attach the power of a sign to an object. So, he tethered an Igni to each of the torches, and he did not tell Arnaghad that this constantly pulls on his own energy. The bear would worry and call that too a waste of resources. But Erland would rather be tired by firelight than wide-awake in perpetual darkness, calculating in his head the days that remain to them. “Come here, you look fatigued.”

Erland catches Arnaghad’s steady gaze, darkened by his heavy brow and chiselled face, a small smile tugging on his oh so stoic lips. His hair is neatly bound at the base of his skull, two ceremonial mini-braids framing his cheeks to either side. He wears naught but a simple set of beige linen clothes these days, linens that tug and pull at his bulging muscles. He’s more than a brick wall, he’s as unmoving as the very ground they stand on. Arnaghad cannot be taken apart with brute force, it takes more subtler means of attack to undo him. Erland knows them all intimately and perhaps that is exactly why Arnaghad opens his arms to him then. Erland sighs. He has the rest of Radovid III’s reign to chronicle and his stomach is still on fast-mode. The only reason he came here in the first place was… to… Erland sneezes and the torches flicker. He knows when he’s defeated.

“I am tired,” he admits and crosses the distance between them. If ever there is such a space, unbridgeable at times, invisible at others, it is because Erland put it there. Not intentionally and not always happily, but if things went Arnaghad’s way, they would be close always. The man that envelops Erland in a tight hug has a constant hunger for touch and affection, and Erland has trouble having that piece slide into the greater mosaic he has constructed of his lover over the past centuries.

‘You’re getting old and sappy,’ Erland said to him once, three orgasms into the night and Arnaghad still insisted on holding him close. ‘Sappy and cuddly. I do not recognize you.’

‘Nor I myself,’ Arnaghad replied. If they were other people they might have attributed it to love, how it had overcome everything, how, here at the end of all things, it was them against the apocalypse. How they needed to hold onto each other for there was nothing else to hold onto. But Erland is an idealist, not a romantic, and Arnaghad a pragmatist, not an intellectual, and so that was where the conversation died then.

“You should rest more,” Arnaghad says.

“What a waste of time,” Erland replies and rises to the tips of his toes, uses Arnaghad’s bull neck for purchase to pull himself up. They’re barely eye to eye, but that doesn’t matter when he can finally tilt his head and kiss the tiny frown from Arnaghad’s face. It’s a matter of last resort as well as personal pleasure. Erland is in no mood to argue about his newfound hobby and he does want. Wants so much, so deeply it aches to the core of his bones. They’re still working through their differences – and that, he suspects, will take longer than any written history might – but with each day, Erland can allow himself a little more. He can allow himself to slot their lips together and push his tongue deeply into Arnaghad’s mouth, can allow himself to melt into his bear’s arms and let his rumbling groan rattle his skeleton. Erland smiles at the zealous manner in which Arnaghad’s whole body responds to the kiss. His hands, splayed across Erland’s shoulder blades, tighten, his cock stirs when Erland licks and sucks and adds a moan of his own, his shoulders rise. He’s so passionate, has so much to give, something that Erland has trouble keeping up with.

If half of this witcher had been the one leading the bear school, where could it have climbed to? What could it have accomplished if the abysses between its members hadn’t been quite so gaping? Erland tries not to wonder, tries not to rewrite the course of time in endless thought spirals, but it’s so hard. It’s another reason why he has to focus on the actual past. Because if he doesn’t remind himself that it is set in stone, if he doesn’t capture it with his own words, he starts to trail down the paths of forgotten ‘what ifs’, of unforgettable ‘what ifs’, of the ‘what ifs’ that are neither forgotten nor unforgettable, that are too daring to even consider. Erland loses himself in thought and it is then perhaps a blessing that he can lose himself in Arnaghad’s embrace instead.

“Do you think we could have dinner tonight?” Arnaghad asks after they part, even though he knows the answer. It’s worrying, a true sign that not even Arnaghad has an endless reservoir of energy. His hunger is much more vicious than Erland’s and it’s getting harder and harder for him to wait the intervals they settled on in order to stretch the food as long as they can. Usually, he doesn’t ask. Usually, his voice doesn’t sound so small. Fuck. It’s heart-breaking.

“Not yet, big bear, I’m sorry,” Erland sighs and noses along Arnaghad’s jaw, then sinks back down to his feet and presses his face into the crook of his neck. Wraps his arms around Arnaghad’s middle. Is proud when he doesn’t do the mental math right then and there. No, he won’t torment himself and he won’t succumb to the slight growl Arnaghad gives. Whether it’s from his throat or his stomach doesn’t really matter. The sound pierces Erland’s armour, but it doesn’t shatter. He’s still strong. Can still be strong. “Do you want me to distract you?”

“Ah, birdie, didn’t we just talk about how you’re tired?”

“I’d make a joke about being hungry myself,” Erland mutters, then licks over Arnaghad’s pulse point insistently. “But last I checked, your sense of humour is still as barren as the Korath desert.”

Arnaghad chuckles and the motion slightly shakes Erland where he rests against the bear’s chest. He lets his hand slide down to gingerly palm across Arnaghad’s half-hard cock and it rises to the touch, firms up. He closes his eyes and sucks on his own bottom lip. So easy to please.

“Says the man who thinks fun is a torture device,” Arnaghad retorts on a sigh and as such, it lacks an edge. Erland deftly plucks at the fastenings of the linen trousers and slips his hand into them. Arnaghad’s flesh is hot and solid, too big to wrap his fingers around.

“Alas,” Erland murmurs against the skin of Arnaghad’s neck, cranes his own to nibble on the bear’s jawbone, tracing it with his tongue. “My hand is tried from writing all morning.”

“All day more like,” Arnaghad grumbles.

“Even worse. It’s of no use now.” And with that, he gently guides Arnaghad to the corner where their makeshift bed is, bids him to sit down and takes his own place in Arnaghad’s lap with his belly pressed to the warm floor. Propped up on his elbows, Erland peers up at Arnaghad. From this low, the man seems taller than a mountain, his eyes far away, half-lidded and hazy and Erland smiles. He is tired, yes, so very tired, and that means he is sloppy. Sloppy as he descends over the head of Arnaghad’s massive cock which tastes salty and musky and he laps it all up he goes with lazy drags of his tongue. His lips are loose and his hands looser as they fondle Arnaghad’s cock at the base, toy with his balls.

Before long, spit leaks out of the corners of his mouth and runs down Arnaghad’s length and the low moans of the bear thunder through the hall, echo off the walls, loud enough to raise the dead, Erland thinks sometimes. He wishes he could revive his brothers and sons by cock-sucking alone, but the world has never been that simple. And it won’t ever be now. But if he can give Arnaghad pleasure and himself something to get distracted by then that should be enough.

Erland gets drunk on Arnaghad’s cock, chokes on it as he ruts into the floor without shame. They come within seconds of each other and Erland drinks up what he can, lets the rest spill over Arnaghad’s lap, then cleans that with his tongue too. After, he falls asleep there, curled into a ball in Arnaghad’s lap and it is enough. For now.

[rokutouxei]

together through the fog

ikemen vampire: temptation through the dark theo van gogh / mc | 1770 | T

Born frailer than your average pureblood vampire, she's doomed to need fresh human blood—not just rouge—to survive. Drinking from them will cost more than just blood: and she doesn't want to make them pay that price, especially not the one she loves the most. What decisions are you free to make when you don't really have a choice—and how is Theo going to convince her that staying a little longer isn't so bad if he's with her?

chapter 1 of 3

One of the most important rules of being in the art dealership industry is to make good connections. No amount of great art at hand will amount to much if the dealer does not have the appropriate connections to get these art into the proper hands. Of course, wealthy patrons are always much appreciated, for the invasion of the new art into the eyes of the more conservative aristocracy is one way to usher in the new dawn, but there are other types of connections that have to be made—and that is, to those who are not only interested in the art, but are also willing to lend a hand in the sharing of this art to the rest of the world.

Theo has a lot of clients. In the handful of years he has spent in the industry, he has collected his fair share of interested patrons and sponsors for the artists. Favoritism is of no use in this world. But if one were to ask—it would be easy for him to say that his best, perhaps his favorite, client, was a Comtesse that lived at the outskirts of town.

Rich, born of old money, in a large mansion where she lives alone, besides perhaps her singular, nosy butler. They’ve known each other for a few years now, after having met when they were much younger, and they have become, to some degree, friendly with each other, not only with regards to his work. Make no mistake—she is not his friend for superficial reasons like appearance or wealth. It’s that she has a great eye for art—and a big heart for it as well.

“Theo! it’s been a while since you’ve come around.”

Her greeting comes instantly as the door to her study opens, Theo being ushered in by her butler, Sebastian. She’s sipping from a teacup in front of a fireplace, bundled up under blankets—even when it isn’t too cold outdoors yet.

“You know how the industry is,” he comments, as he settles on the seat across her, setting down the framed painting gently on the soft red carpet of her study. Once Theo’s own cup of coffee is poured, the butler leaves the room, the door closing with a silent click. Theo does not miss the expression on the butler’s face before he disappears. He turns back to his friend, gauging. “When I saw this piece I had an inkling that it would be to your taste.”

She chuckles, a little embarrassedly, putting down the teacup on its saucer. “Now, now. You make it seem like the kind of art I like is on the predictable side.”

“I wouldn’t say predictable, but you do have a taste.”

She nods. “Oh? I had not even noticed. Maybe you watch me a little too keenly, Theo.”

“Just for work,” he quips back with a friendly smile, as he uncovers the painting he has brought with him.

-

Theo was right—the painting is to her taste. It was a painting of a morning through the frame of a window, overlooking a snowy mountain. The gentle texture of the brushstrokes from the view outside made the snow falling seem so real, delicate and soft, and the thicker, rougher ones along the inside of the room made it feel closer, a little warmer. By a yet-unknown artist, of course, and she contemplates hanging it along the main hallway of the mansion, making sure it will catch the eye of anyone who will pass by, hoping it would spark something.

And then the dizziness returns.

There was no doubt Theo noticed her spacing out during their little conversation, but there is only so much she can do in hiding how unwell she’s been feeling. She had instantly sighed in relief when Theo was guided out of the room—as now she can clutch her head freely and whine a little in the throbbing inside of her skull.

But it’s okay. At least she has the paintings.

The one thing she can do.

It doesn’t matter if she isn’t going to last long, not anymore. But at least, if she can do something for the things she loves… maybe it will be worth it in the long run.

-

Theo has always had his wits around him, particularly in terms of being observant. While he’s not infallible, the little things generally do not escape him, and he makes sure he stows them away in the back of his head for safekeeping.

Theo was 25 when she first wrote to him about it

She wrote: How would you feel about it if I were a vampire?

This really didn’t surprise Theo as awfully as it ought to have. There was one particularly intriguing rumor that spread around town about her family. Whether or not the people knew, had a clue, or if it were just the result of their imagination, is beyond him, but there have always been rumors about her family being a family of vampires. Of course, it is easy to shrug off: the human imagination is an interesting thing, and with the rise of rational science throughout the past few centuries, vampiric lore has simply fallen out of favor. Besides, this kind of rumor is unsurprising when the area’s oldest and longest living aristocrat families live such a secretive, mysterious life outside of the rare social events they decide to engage in.

Theo had the same thought process, of course. He had written back rather amusedly, saying that even if she were a vampire, it would not change the fact that she was a good friend of his. No fang or lost blood will get in the way of my fondness towards you, he had written.

Fondness—fondness is too simple a word for what he feels towards her.

But what matters is that she had written back, in her small, delicate handwriting: Well, then it is my pleasure to tell you that I am.

That was just three years back, but it feels like a million years ago. He had not given it much thought then. He had not given it much thought as of late.

Until now.

Until today, really, sitting across her in her study watching her space out as the tiny sharp tips of fangs protruded out from where her lips can no longer hide them.

If she was not lying to him, then that’s alright.

But there was no denying that look of desperation hiding in her eyes, as she tries to focus on something else in the room other than him.

He turns before the mansion’s main door gets shut behind him, turning to the butler with seriousness in his eyes.

“Sebastian, I have a question I have to ask you.”

-

She had met Theo when he was much younger—he was 18 at the time. And she… Well, greater vampires age a little differently than humans do, but she must have looked about 16. Her parents had brought her to an exhibition that day. it was part of her training—much was needed for an eternally-living vampire to be able to fit into human society without standing out too much.

Her interest in art was another thing altogether, though.

While her parents had gone away to talk with their acquaintances and other friends in the gallery, she had decided to walk around to enjoy the paintings that were on display. She grew up surrounded in art—part of the privileges of being born into the aristocracy—and these weren’t new to her, but some of the paintings… felt different. They were painted in different ways, looked at things in different lights. They piqued her interest. She wanted to get to know them more and-

She met Theo.

Theo was one of the youngest art dealers present during the show, which had been overseen by the company he was working with. She is still not entirely sure what had drawn Theo to her at that time—perhaps it was their seeming-similarity in age—but that day, they had made good friends, talking about art and paintings and the life of an artist. She wasn’t an artist herself, but the discussions had made such an impact on her that afterwards—they had exchanged addresses, and promised to write to each other.

That now feels like a lifetime ago.

How long ago was that, even? Surely at least a decade past. Time is a fickle thing for creatures like her. A decade is no more than a human’s millisecond. In a few more centuries, she will have forgotten everything about this little life, maybe even this mansion in the outskirts of Paris. The oldest of her family have been alive longer than humans would expect.

But not her.

It seems… unnatural, but she was born sickly, frailer than your average vampire. On occasion, she catches what is perhaps the vampire equivalent of a flu—weakness, fatigue, body pains, fever, and dizziness. Of course, this is curable with a good drink of blood, as is most things for vampires like her, but there is a catch—drinking it fresh from the source is always the better option. She would need bottles and bottles of rouge to recover from one “flu”, but fresh blood—

Fresh blood is different.

Drawn straight out of the vein, still warm from flesh…

That would cure her in minutes.

Too bad she has gotten a little too fond of humans.

Ah, how can one not, when you spend most of your life watching them struggle to live when death knocks at their door so soon after their birth? Humans have a strength she cannot comprehend. One she wishes she had. So she’s sworn to never drink out of a human ever again; even if it is at the cost of her health. She can acquire all the rouge she needs to recover. She cannot replace a random human’s short meaningful life at the cost of eternity for her own convenience—and she does not have the heart to drain one into death, if to spare them from the curse of living throughout perpetuity.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, they say.

She clutches her chest as the coughs overtake her, so strongly she is thrown to her knees onto the ground. Her butler rushes to her aid, but does not make it before she collapses onto the floor with a thud.

She doesn’t want to drink from humans anymore. And especially—not from the one she loves the most. But maybe this time she doesn’t really have a choice.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Tribulation Interview: Shadow Sounds

Photo by Ester Segarra

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Ever since I saw Swedish goth metal band Tribulation open for the much more outwardly macho Cannibal Corpse and Behemoth in 2015, I’ve been impressed by their steadfast commitment to their spectral aesthetic, even when surrounded by the most brutish of metalheads. Their new album, the appropriately titled Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, feels like the apex of their interests and style: mythological themes, magic sounds, sparkling and rising songs that are as meaty as they are layered and complex. Opener “In Remembrance” begins with spooky arpeggios before chugging drums and guitars kick it into high gear, buoyed by lead singer Johannes Andersson’s icy growls. Creaking piano interludes like “Lethe” are just as essential to the album’s mood as guitar-forward rockers like “Hour of the Wolf” and “Daughter of the Djinn”. And the louder songs don’t so much build to a crescendo as gallop to them on the back of drummer Oscar Leander, falling back gently. Simply speaking, Tribulation can do it all, and Where the Gloom Becomes Sound is just the latest evidence.

Guitarist Jonathan Hultén composed most of the songs on the record but happened to amicably leave the band late last year, replaced by Joseph Tholl from VOJD (who plays on opener “In Remembrance”). The band’s still committed to properly rolling it out, as it’s released on Metal Blade next Friday. Last week, I called guitarist Adam Zaars (who just had a child a month ago and spoke from a Sweden facing some travel restrictions due to both COVID-19 and a large amount of snow) to speak about why Where the Gloom Becomes Sound still feels like an album that belongs to Tribulation as a whole. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: The circumstances surrounding the new album are unique, since it was mostly written by Jonathan, and then he left the band. Have you found it difficult to move on from that and take in the album and present it without him?

Adam Zaars: Yes and no. It’s still a Tribulation album. It just so happened that Jonathan wrote more songs on this one. He wrote 7, and I wrote 3. For the previous two albums, we kind of split it 50/50, more or less. The album before that, I did most of it. We still make every song into a Tribulation song at the end of it, as a collective effort, somehow. It still feels like an album with Tribulation songs and not an album with Jonathan’s songs. To that extent, it’s not really that strange. Then again, he did quit, and now we have our new guitar player, Joseph. In a way, I just want to start writing a new album with him and the rest of the guys. [laughs] There’s also that aspect to it, kind of wanting to start something new.

SILY: The context and themes of the record include myths and magic. Do you find it necessary to really dive into that to fully understand or appreciate the album?

AZ: It’s not anything new to us. For some reason, the bio makes it seem like it’s a big thing now. It’s always been [a big thing]. But it’s an apt language, I guess, to use in a Tribulation context. We’re not a political band. We’re trying to express something that’s quite difficult to describe in words. Since we’re doing that with the music, drawing on myth and religion and the like, it just kind of feels like it comes from the same world. That’s really why we’re doing it. It isn’t mundane at all. The opposite, I guess.

SILY: The way you use your instruments, there is a certain magical aspect to it. On “Funeral Pyre”, the guitar takes on an almost theremin-like quality, and on “Leviathans”, the actual sound of the instrumentation is like a leviathan and crashing waves. Did you take those ideas and the love for mysticism all the way into your instrumentation?

AZ: Yeah, kind of. The thing you hear on “Funeral Pyre”, it is a guitar, but we’ve had this idea that we always wanted to use a saw that makes a similar eerie, ghastly sound. That’s where the idea came from. We didn’t end up using a saw--we used a guitar instead. But definitely, sounds like that have an otherworldly quality to them.

SILY: Have you ever seen someone play a saw live?

AZ: Have I?...I don’t think so.

SILY: There’s a street performer in Knoxville, TN who plays one. It’s crazy to watch how that can create that sound.

AZ: I would love to see that.

SILY: Is Joseph trying to learn these songs at the moment? Are you preparing to play them in some capacity, or looking more forward to writing new material?

AZ: He’s done some. We just recorded a video for “Funeral Pyre”. But we’re so busy with promoting the album at the moment, so we haven’t really rehearsed, which is kind of strange, I guess. We played with Joseph for so many years in the past. Me and Joseph started our first band together when we were 13. He’s definitely going to learn the songs. We’re not going to view this album as something that shouldn’t have happened. We all view it as a Tribulation album. Hopefully, we’ll play them live too, when that happens.

SILY: To what extent did you use the sequencing of songs to tell a narrative, whether a concrete narrative or a broad one?

AZ: The only thread running through the album, that’s also a bit conflated in the bio, is the idea of the five elements. We do write about it in the lyrics. Jonathan had been reading about the five elements of Western esoteric tradition, and at the same time, I was reading about the five elements of some Indian traditions. As we always do, we used what we had because of the synchronicity. We’d both been naming our songs as working titles, like “Fire”, “Water”. [laughs] Because of that, it was apparently something that we should be exploring or using. That’s really the only underlying theme of the album.

SILY: Was there anything different about the process of writing these songs and coming up with their different arrangements and tempos as compared to with your previous records?

AZ: Not really, I would say. You always think about trying to get the songs in somewhat different tempos and keys and what not. I always find myself worrying about, “Oh no! All the songs are in the same key!” Then, I go back to them and realize that isn’t actually the case. It has a way of working itself out on its own, and I don’t think it was any different on this album.

SILY: Tell me about the stories behind the videos for “Hour of the Wolf” and “Leviathans”.

AZ: The “Leviathans” video, we worked with a guy from Gothenburg, and he had made a video for Dark Tranquility. He made that whole video just by using their front cover, animated. We were really impressed by what he had done with it. He had also done some really cool cover art for Graveyard and a few other bands. The first idea was to build on the cover and let him play around with the illustrations in the album booklet. He did that, started doing that, and it was clear to me when I saw what he was sending that it would be much better if he just did whatever he wanted because the images that I sent him and the ones he made on his own didn’t really match. He just made the video in his studio by focusing on this watery side of the lyrics and the idea of this leviathan.

The second video, we recorded with an old friend of ours, who also did the video for “Strange Gateways Beckon” back from The Children of the Night. We went out to a castle a the lake, not too far from Stockholm, on a really, really cold day. [laughs] You can see that in the video from Johannes’ breath. We just built on the theme of that song, to some extent, at least. “The Hour of the Wolf” is the ghost hour, we say in Sweden, the early morning when you can’t sleep when the demons and anxiety come. We built around the more ghastly kind of theme of it. Johannes really went into character in that video in a way I hadn’t seen him do before, which was really cool.

SILY: What’s the inspiration behind the cover art? 

AZ: No inspiration, I would almost say. You can’t really connect the title, the cover, and the lyrical content in a satisfactory way. That was the idea behind it. The title, Where the Gloom Becomes Sound, is the basic thing we’d been trying to do since our first album, which of course reflects what we’re trying to do with the music. The same goes for the cover. It spoke to us. It came about because we were in the studio discussing the cover and the title, and we never really have any of that finished until the album was almost finished. That was the case this time around as well. We always try to make the studio as Tribulation-friendly as possible, to decorate it somewhat. Johannes had brought a poster he hung up in the control room, and it kind of dawned on all of us that we already had the cover--it was right there. Luckily, it seemed like no one else had used it before, and hopefully, nobody uses it in the future. It’s a pretty cool piece of art by this Belgian artist. Supposedly, it doesn’t exist anymore. My first idea was to find it and take our own picture of it, but it probably got destroyed in the war. The photo you see on the cover is from the late 19th century, a print in an art magazine. It already kind of has this antique vibe to it, which works well with what we’re trying to express in general.

SILY: Are you planning on eventually touring these songs, or doing livestreams or socially distant shows?

AZ: We do have a tour booked. It was supposed to happen now, in January and February, but it’s supposedly happening in September/October. We don’t know whether it’s gonna happen or not. But we’re still hoping. It’s a tour of Europe. It all depends on what’s happening. If the plague continues, I guess we’ll have to do some kind of a live stream. We started thinking about doing that at this point. At first, we didn’t really want to do it, because what we had seen so far [from others’ streams] wasn’t really what we wanted to do. But of course, we could always do it our way. If we’re not gonna tour, we’re definitely gonna stream something, and even if we do tour, we might end up streaming something anyway.

SILY: Have you thought about how you’re gonna adapt these songs to a live setting?

AZ: Yeah, I think it’s gonna work fairly well. I’m remaining positive it’s going to work...“The Hour of the Wolf” is a basic rock song, really, and some of the other ones are a bit more complex, I guess. Then again, we’ve managed to do it before, so I’m not that worried about it, really.

SILY: What else is next for the band?

AZ: Not entirely sure. Again, it really depends on what the current situation evolves into. Who knows? Regardless, since we’re a new band right now with Joseph, myself, personally, I really want to write some new material. It seems silly: The album isn’t even out. We recorded it in May and June, but that seems like ages ago. This year has been the longest year ever. It’s a bit early for [new music]. [But] you have to take advantage of enthusiasm and creative bursts when they reach you. I feel like we’re in one of those right now.

SILY: Is the band currently able to gather in the same room and collaborate in person?

AZ: Yeah. I recently moved away from Stockholm, so I’m about 4 hours away from them. It’s difficult to travel, of course, but me and Joseph have had some rehearsals over Skype [for “Funeral Pyre”.] That’s one way of doing it. We could still be in the same room. There aren’t any restrictions saying we can’t as long as we’re all symptom-free and all that. But I wouldn’t really want to get on a train right now.

SILY: Anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

AZ: Yeah, I watched the new series by John Turturro about Umberto Eco’s book The Name of the Rose, which is one of my favorite books ever. I kind of like the old movie version with Sean Connery--it’s got a fantastic soundtrack. This one has 8 episodes. Even though it can’t really compete with the book, I thought it was pretty good. It has all the ingredients I want: theological discussions and monks and just being Medieval in general.

[chiseler]

The Old Masters: Kurt Kren

31/75: Asyl / 31/75: Asylum (1975)

Kurt Kren (1929-1998) was best known for his work with the unpleasant bodily-fluid ridden productions of the Vienna Aktionists, a group of Hitler’s children whose post-war adolescence did in art what Ulrike Meinhof did in direct action. The suffocating atmosphere of retooled Nazi industrialists and amnesia with a born-again uptightness produced predictable results: the state must not be allowed to retain a monopoly on violence. How many Blood Order members can you watch, parading sanctimoniously on television, grinning in deathsheads from podiums, telling everyone that they have always been good citizen democrats, without wanting to burn it all down?

The body is alienated by the rigid control systems of Nazi and post-Nazi Germany (a continuum by other means); the invisible bodies of the pulverized dead shadow the plants and office blocks; Tiergartenstraße No. 4, where Aktion T-4 (Aktionist?) was hatched—the extermination of the unfit and insane—is now a bus terminal; tourists marvel at the great modernist IG Farben complex, alone in an otherwise-erased Frankfurt (IG Farben’s American legal representative: John Foster Dulles, who also worked for Krupp). No wonder Kren and his friends Otto Muehl and Herman Nitsch wanted to cut off their fingers and smear themselves with vomit, filming it all straight on, just like the Nazis shot the Warsaw Ghetto.

Kurt Kren

Sitting through works like Kardinal, Self-Multilation, and Sodoma remains a chore, but for different reasons than in 1969, I hazard. The glaring bright colors now reflect Japanese game shows or late style millionaire pop art; the beatings, couplings, spurtings and evacuations have long been appropriated by gross-out horror shtick in mainstream Hollywood, likewise the flashing old film stock and jump cuts. What is left is a past-tense sense of the epic, a lofty Wagnerian pronouncement that the cinema is best equipped to investigate violence and that entertainment is really all just fascism. Shaking off the idea of gesamkunstwerk or the marble atrocities of Arno Breker proved harder than it looked, no matter how true every sickened pronouncement of Aktionist agit-prop was—and it was, it certainly is true.

If the ‘Baroque’ aspect of these films was once part of the attack, it has now become a sign of the long dreary reach of fetishism and managed hypocrisy. The problem with animal intestines, bodies wrapped in metal wire, and piles of soaking flesh is that the arrangement does not mirror the repressed psyche of a generation of sons of Gauleiters, born-again liberal bureaucrats and captains of industry, but a great cathedral of interlinked reactionary problems to be solved hermetically. From this point on, such problems were doomed to become wholly personal—as if the artists were unconsciously terrified of collective nihilism after Goebbels cornered the market. Austria is mainly Catholic, and the confessional is never far away from Aktionist agony. Redemption rears its bestial head—which also implies a second innocence, which is postmodern salvation.

To expose the unreality of what remained of the saccharine and morose Nazi regime via vitriol and bleeding flesh was clearly not enough. After the Aktionists called it quits and retired to their various castles and cultic fiefdoms, the Red Army Faction kidnapped former SS officer, then-CDU member, and Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie head Hanns Martin Schleyer in 1977. When the German government refused to trade this grotesque relic for four captured RAF fighters (who were mysteriously found hanging in their cells afterward, á la the ANC in South Africa, and also like Ulrike Meinhof, a year earlier, another ‘suicide’—all of which shows the repulsive cynicism lurking under a supposedly ‘democratic’ state), Herr Schleyer was topped and left in the trunk of an Audi. No loss, but tears and outrage flowed from a middle class that forgot that it was a far, far greater executioner in ‘39. The late 1970s were dark, dark, dark. The very outrageousness of their ‘happenings’ show that the Aktionists were suckered in by hope ten years prior. The world remakes itself, oblivious.

The case of Aktionist Kren is more curious and longer lasting than the King Ludwig-like careers of Nitsch and Muehl. His early films were stark or wiggly or frozen: trees, landscapes, little images, people in rooms doing hypnotized screen tests. Unlike his later direction in Sodoma et al, he seemed concerned with the medium’s archaic properties and the possibility of making still-life and landscape political. He returned to this program out of the Aktionist dead end.

31/75: Asyl, from 1975, a sequel to his 1960 3/60: Bäume im Herbst, is one of his best films. More Holbein than Kaspar David Friedrich, it shrinks the epic panorama down to an insect view. Using a simple form of time-lapse photography, a static shot shows farmland and a winding road in late autumn to early winter. By placing various filters over the lens, days pass in globules, wax drippings, thick polluted rain, condensation and gum. A man with a dog goes in and out of frame; the snow melts, it rains; light shifts. Not blood and soil but damp, oily mud like a Turner marsh. And no heroics with geysers of blood, iron crosses and milk, the exegesis of guilt. However, there is certainly something displacing the day here. The status quo of round-ups and tests? Isolation, inner migration? The ‘asylum’ of the title suggests a place of refuge but like in English, the German asyl can also mean a madhouse or political asylum. The film was shot in Saarland, West Germany, under French control after WW1 but returned to Germany in 1935. Saarland is border country, a place of several masters and populations on the move. Kren himself was sent off on one of the Kindertransport to Rotterdam, where he lived until the end of the war.

Wilhelm Reich, in his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, showed that the mysticism of Nazi ideology was depicted foremost in pretzeled human bodies, a combination of Protestant asceticism and cheap porn cartooned in the figure of the swastika. Before landscape, Fascism uses bulky propaganda to conjure up the Fatherland and recites bad poetry about the holy relation between man, pig, earth and muck. Sacrifice is the Father’s cloying prayer, his own death extended by his sons’ dying—for most fathers in the Fatherland rented their land from wealthy landlords, rented rooms from good Aryans, worked for Herr NSDAP Millionaire Flick. Places of death are used over and over again; their industrial emptiness ensures that no birds sing. No birds sing, but not out of reverence for the dead so much as disgust for the living—the quiet living that made those dead, that signed contracts for transport expediency for a Jew, Gypsy or a Red.

Kren’s view from a windowsill does have some of this void mood, yet he rejects the trap of timelessness in favor of everyday decay. The immortal Frost Gods can only bury dogshit in deep snows, give you pneumonia, cake your axel with mud. The landscape lives on geologically and not mystically. It has beautiful things, extraordinary things, because its own microscopic changes are more fabulous than eternity. Kren’s little film avoids both faces of the same reactionary crisis: that of the epic-making National Socialists, and his own earlier anti-epics that attacked the drapery of the historical fasces. Fall and winter last a little over 8 minutes in the duration of this film, which took 21 days to shoot. The Third Reich was supposed to last for 525,600,000 minutes, which is a thousand years of unreal time. William Blake wrote: He who binds to himself a joy/ Does the winged life destroy.

All of Kren’s films are curious, even his old naughty routines. He moved to America in 1978 and travelled the country, stopping to show his films at universities before finally settling in Texas, where he split his time between Austin and Houston. There, he became a fixture in the punk scene, appearing with some of the best bands of the time, projecting his films behind the noisy vigorous music of Left agitators like Really Red and Culturcide. Always a workman, he made new films while employed as a security guard at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. He died back in Vienna in 1998.

by Martin Billheimer

Links:

Technical details of the film here:  http://www.resettheapparatus.net/corpus-work/id-31-75-asylum.html

The film @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cblbgbnE1wo

‘Ode to Kurt Kren’, fan video with photos, using the tribute song by his friends, Really Red, recorded 1982: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3_RfD0Qv_k

[jhl1031973]

Unpublished Work - Doctor Who: Advent Of Terror

This is my fourth entry in Big Finish Productions' Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip Opportunity. None of my work has been chosen, but there will be other chances. This one features the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Enjoy andSubmitted For Your Approval.

- James Heath Lantz November 2, 2020

Advent Of Terror

A Short Trip Starring The Seventh Doctor And Ace

By

James Heath Lantz

The Snow came down slowly. The multitude of colours from the numerous Christmas lights and decorations reflected upon the white landscape. The village of Ortonshire looked picturesque, like a greeting card a friend or relative would send. The small hamlet was known worldwide for its Christmas celebration from late November until early January. The local candy factory made Advent Calendars that were shipped everywhere from London, England and Paris, France to Alberta, Canada and Tuscany, Italy. People of all walks of life came from everywhere to experience what newspapers and magazines over the years named “The Most Magical Christmas Village In The Entire World”. Celebrities, especially writers, would visit on their vacations. Rumours had circulated about  Amelia Earhart, Winston Churchill, Shirley Jackson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ernest Hemingway, Anne Rice, Stephen King and Clive Barker walking the streets to take in the magnificence of Ortonshire. One innkeeper's grandmother even claims that Mary Shelley wrote the final chapter of Frankenstein in the room that belonged to her Great Aunt Sadie on Boxing Day.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in Ortonshire when the TARDIS had materialized in front of the largest Christmas tree to be placed in the town square in perhaps half a decade. The doors creaked open. The Doctor, in his seventh incarnation, placed his hat upon his head as he walked out of the time machine. He took a deep breath to take in the crisp winter air. There was a twinkle in his eye when he saw the lavishly decorated village.

“Come along, Ace,” The Doctor called to his companion with hint of impish glee in his Scottish burr. “The Most Magical Christmas Village In The Entire World awaits us.”

Ace buttoned up her coat before the Doctor closed the TARDIS doors. The Doctor looked at the Christmas tree. “Perhaps we should move the TARDIS a bit. It could ruin the view of the tree,” The Doctor pondered out loud.

The Doctor and Ace returned to the TARDIS. The ship disappeared some seconds later. After five or six attempts, it reformed just outside of the village's city limits. The Doctor and Ace were greeted by the words “Happy Christmas from” written in red and green Christmas lights over the Ortonshire sign. The Doctor silently noted that the population number was covered by snow. However, he thought nothing of it after seeing Ace smile. With everything she and the Doctor had been through, they both deserved a little holiday cheer.

“I must say,” The Doctor said as he and Ace walked through the snow covered thoroughfare and looked at the beautiful ornaments and lights of various brilliant hues, “The human capacity for celebration and decoration surpasses that of destruction at this time of year.”

Ace and the Doctor continued their stroll. The Doctor was particularly enchanted by a group of snowmen dressed like Father Christmas. He and Ace had a long, hearty laugh at the sight of them. They then resumed walking until they saw three rows of ice sculptures. The Doctor took time to admire the beauty and craftsmanship. The attention to detail on an angel astounded him. Something also look frighteningly familiar about it. Yet, he could not put his finger on what that was.

"Professor," Ace said inquiringly, interrupting the Doctor's reverie, "Where are all the people?”

"I'm sorry, Ace. What?"

“The people. There should be at least one crowd of people if this is The Most Magical Christmas Village In The Entire World like you said. Even the shops we passed along the way were empty, and it's barely seven o'clock.”

“My goodness, Ace. You're right,” The Doctor observed. “I was so taken by the splendour and wonder of Ortonshire, I failed to notice the most important thing you had just pointed out. What happened to all the people?”

Before the Doctor could even think to investigate his inquiry, a pair of hands belonging to someone behind him had grabbed his arms. Another had done the same to Ace. They had not heard the sound of footfalls running toward them. A tall woman in a yellow hazmat suit moved in front of the Doctor and Ace. Her facial features were obscured by her protective mask. She pointed her gloved left index finger at them as she spoke sternly in a Northern English accent.

“What the devil are you two doing here?” She asked.

*

The Doctor and Ace were brought to the Leverton Military Base just a few miles east of Ortonshire, which had recently been used as a headquarters for pandemic responses in the past decade or so. Blood samples were taken from the Doctor and Ace before they were led to a decontamination room. The Doctor told Ace that they must go through the procedure for everyone's protection. They were cleansed with chemicals, soap and water before putting on grey jumpsuits to while their clothing was being sterilized. They were dressed normally some hours later.

A guard brought the Doctor and Ace to an interrogation room. On the way there, the Doctor noted that the TARDIS was being rather unsuccessfully examined an adjacent laboratory. He began to chuckle upon seeing a scientist in a hazmat suit fall when the ship gave him an electrical shock. The Time Lord then thought it best to move on. He and Ace entered the medium sized, sparsely furnished room. They were ordered to wait for a Doctor Henderson to question them.

The Doctor, umbrella under his arm, paced. Ace sat in a folding chair. She followed the Time Lord's movements with her eyes. “Do they think we did something wrong, Professor?” She asked with hint of preoccupation in her voice.

“I'm not sure, Ace,” The Doctor replied. “I wonder if our being here is connected to the missing people of Ortonshire.”

The Doctor continued pacing the room. This time he did so while playing the spoons. This went on for roughly fifteen minutes. Ace wanted to protest this action, but The Doctor's expression told her that he was concentrating on the situation. He checked his fob watch when a tall, pale woman with long, dark, curly hair and horn rimmed glasses entered. On the left breast of her long white coat was a badge identifying as Doctor Carol Henderson, Head of Project PANVAC.

Project PANVAC is a team of scientists and military personnel created to study viruses and pandemics to prevent their spread and create vaccines should they be needed. They banded together with funds from various governments worldwide after so many lives were lost in the past couple years to new strains of illnesses that had mutated considerably.

The Doctor closed his fob watch and lamented, “You took your own sweet time getting here.”

“Sorry if my needing to decontaminate myself and my security officers is an inconvenience,” Doctor Henderson responded sarcastically. “Now, would you mind telling me who you are and what you two were doing in a quarantined area?”

“Quarantined area?” The Doctor asked in surprise. “We knew nothing of a quarantine. We'd only just arrived. We're not even from around here.”

“By your accent, I'd guess you're from Scotland,” Henderson responded.

“You'd be quite surprised, I'm sure. Anyhow, I am the Doctor, and she is my friend and associate Ace.”

“Doctor is a title, not a name. For example, I'm Doctor Carol Henderson.”

“For you, dear Doctor Henderson, it's a title. For me, it's a name.”

"Very well, Doctor," Henderson said with a hint of irritation. "Now, tell me what you were doing in a quarantined area.”

“We didn't know about any quarantine,” Ace said impatiently.

“Stay calm, Ace,” The Doctor said, raising his right hand slightly. He turned to Doctor Henderson. “She is quite correct. We came to Ortonshire because of its reputation for Christmas celebration. We had no idea any quarantine had been put into place.”

Before Doctor Henderson could respond, someone had knocked on the interrogation room door. She opened it and stuck her head out the other side. Someone had told her the secretary-general of the United Nations wanted to speak with her. She left and returned some twenty minutes later. The Doctor looked at Henderson in an attempt to anticipate what she will do and say next.

Henderson took a deep breath. “Apparently,” She said to the Doctor, “I'm supposed to trust you. After I mentioned 'The Doctor' to the secretary-general of the United Nations, he ordered me to allow you assist Project PANVAC if you wish to do so.”

“Yes. Of course, I'd be happy to help if I can.”

“The U.N. has quite a detailed file on you.”

“Yes,” The Doctor said, “You can thank those busy bodies at U.N.I.T. for that.” He walked toward Doctor Henderson. “Now, what exactly are we dealing with here, Doctor Henderson?”

“It started three days ago with some children who were building a snowman near the forest at Ortonshire's southern border. A boy named Charlie Wright was the first to exhibit symptoms. He complained of a headache after returning home. The local doctor found he had a very high fever before the lad lost consciousness. His three friends – another boy and two girls had similar symptoms as the evening had progressed.”

“Let's see,” The Doctor pondered, “Three days ago was December 1st. Go on, Doctor.”

“My team and were called when infection spread to the adults and other children. The local physician told us  that all the patients exhibited something odd on the skin about an hour before we arrived in Ortonshire.”

“Odd in what way, Doctor?”

Doctor Henderson paused for a moment. She seemed to searching for an appropriate description. Swallowing her pride and perhaps realizing the Doctor was no threat, she spoke.

“Perhaps it's better to show you, Doctor.”

*

Doctor Henderson's gloved hand punched a numeric code on a security keypad to the right of a metallic door. The Doctor put on a surgical mask and latex gloves while following her. The door slid open. They briskly walked down an empty, bright white corridor. The doctors were greeted by a burly security guard upon Henderson's explanation of the Doctor's presence. She had told him the Time Lord was there on orders from the United Nations. The Doctor tipped his hat before entering the patient's quarters.

Charlie Wright was a sandy haired, frail boy who looked to be no more than ten years of age. He lay dormant in the hospital bed. The Doctor looked at a copy of Charlie's file. With Doctor Henderson to his right, the Doctor examined the boy closely. His skin was chalk white with blue, green and grey vine-like tendrils all over his body. His pupils, irises and the whites of his eyes were clouded over in the same green/blue/grey hue.

“The vines are attached well,” Doctor Henderson said. “Scissors and knives were unable to cut them. Fire only activates the sprinkler system.”

The Doctor took a closer look at the vines. The Doctor said, “We may not need to do that if we can get a blood sample.”

“I'd like to get a sample of them as well to study this more thoroughly.”

“Understandable. A low level laser might be able burn off a piece without harming young Charlie here. Now, tell me. Is Ortonshire the only area infected, Doctor Henderson?”

“According to our facilities in other parts of the world, the illness is contained within the vicinity of Ortonshire. No other village, city, country or continent has had any reports of symptoms like these for now,” Henderson replied while indicating the tendrils.

“Then it's not too late,” The Doctor said hopefully, “We may be able find a cure before this spreads worldwide. Now, somebody get me that laser.”

*

Ace was in the laboratory where the TARDIS was being examined. She had been ordered to where a hazmat suit for her protection. The scientists who were studying the ship were amazed. They had no idea what they were dealing with. One man even approached the TARDIS doors with a large drill in hand. Ace laughed.

“You'll never open the TARDIS with that,” Ace observed.

“What?” The scientist with the drill asked.

“I'm afraid she is quite correct, sir. Your drill won't open my TARDIS,” The Doctor said. “Now, put that thing away. The TARDIS is perfectly safe. Stop wasting time, and point us in the direction of Doctor Henderson's office.”

The scientist indicated a corridor to his left. “You can't miss it. Her name's on the door,” He said sheepishly.

The Doctor turned his head in the direction of the TARDIS. He was clearly irritated. He muttered something under his breath. Ace couldn't quite make out what he said, but she giggled. There was something amusing and sweet about the Doctor when his dander was up. Ace told the Doctor that they arrived at Doctor Henderson's office, Now all they had to do was wait for her to arrive with the laser needed to take the sample of the virus vine. Hours had passed. The Doctor used this time to read Doctor Henderson's extensive research on viruses, pandemics and cures. He had finished reading her most recent paper when the head of project PANVAC entered the room with the surgical laser in hand.

Doctor Henderson and the Doctor went to Charlie's bedside. The Time Lord prepared the laser. He double checked its parameters to make certain it was set at minimum intensity. He didn't want to unnecessarily injure the boy in his efforts to save him. The narrow red beam hit a vine on the boy's wrist. A small chunk of about the size of a newborn kitten's toenail fell on to the white bed sheet. The Doctor placed it in a vial with a pair of tweezers. The Doctor and Doctor Henderson took the sample in thee latter's office. The head of Project PANVAC looked at it through a microscope. She was stymied and shocked by her findings.

“Doctor,” Henderson said, “Have a look at this.”

The Doctor looked into the microscope. “Very interesting indeed,” He commented.

“You don't seem as surprised as I am,” Henderson observed. “It has characteristics of a virus. However, I've never seen anything like it.”

“There is nothing like it,” The Doctor said, “At least on Earth.”

“Are you saying this virus is alien?”

“Doctor Henderson,” The Doctor began, “You're a brilliant virologist. I finished reading your papers while waiting for the laser.”

“Those are roughly thirty years of work consisting of thousands of pages,” Henderson said in a surprised tone. “It would take me at least three years to read them again.”

“I'm a fast reader,” The Doctor commented, “As I was saying, you're a brilliant virologist, doctor. Yet, you have a habit of doing what most scientists tend to do. You limit the scope of your search for answers.”

Ace had been sitting in a chair across from Doctor Henderson's desk. She was positively amused by the exchange between the doctors. She did nothing to repress her smile and laughter.

“So you are saying it's alien,” Henderson said, ignoring Ace.

“Not all alien life forms are little green men, doctor,” The Doctor responded.

“Some are Daleks or Cybermen,” Ace interjected.

“Not now, Ace,” The Doctor said gently.

“How do you know it's alien, Doctor?” Henderson asked.

“That isn't the important question, Doctor Henderson. How did the virus get to Ortonshire, and how do we cure it? Those are the inquiries you must ask if we are help the infected and prevent the spread to the rest of the world.”

The Doctor snapped his fingers and ran toward the nearest exit. Doctor Henderson followed him.

“Where are you going, Doctor?” She asked, pursuing him.

“I need to get to the TARDIS!” He called as he ran further away. “There's no time to lose!”

*

Ace, still in the hazmat suit, entered the TARDIS. The Doctor ran to the controls, pressed buttons and flipped switches. The doors closed.

“You won't be needing that, Ace,” The Doctor said, indicating her hazmat suit. “We're perfectly safe in the TARDIS.”

Removing the protective head piece and mask, Ace asked, “Shouldn't we be saving the people in Ortonshire, Professor?

The Doctor hadn't taken his eyes and hands away from the TARDIS controls. “That's exactly why we've returned to the TARDIS, Ace. If I'm right, the illness is not of Earthly origin.”

“So we're going find who created it?”

“Not exactly,” The Doctor answered. “We are, however, going to see how it began.”

“Couldn't we prevent the infection from coming to Ortonshire?”

“As much as it pains me, Ace, I'm afraid not. We're merely going back in time to see how the virus got to Ortonshire.”

Ace looked disappointed. “Don't look so glum, Ace,” The Doctor said. “We'll find a way to cure every sick person in Ortonshire. I just need to confirm a theory first.”

Ace was reassured by this by the time the TARDIS returned to Ortonshire's city limits near the village sign some days before their initial arrival. Christmas lights shined their rainbow of hues upon the box, perhaps as a signal of hope for things to come. The Doctor and Ace heard the town square's clock tower's bells toll. It was midnight. The Doctor checked his fob watch to be sure. He clicked it shut and sat down on the ground in front of the TARDIS doors. Ace sat next to him, her arms wrapped around her knees.

“What are we doing now, Doctor?” Ace asked.

“Waiting, Ace. We're waiting.”

Twenty minutes later, the Doctor looked at his watch again. He then turned his gaze to the sky.

“It should be arriving,” He said, “Now.”

The Doctor and Ace looked up. A shooting star streaked across the night sky, its fiery tail blazing through the starry backdrop. A meteor was clearly burning upon entering Earth's atmosphere. Small, flaming bits of the space rock crash landed. One had come close to striking the Doctor had Ace not pushed him out of the the way.

Ace helped the Doctor to his feet. He thanked her and dusted himself off. He returned to the TARDIS to get a long pair of tongs and a cylindrical lead container. The Doctor placed the meteorite inside the canister before walking into Ortonshire. Ace followed closely.

“Where are we going, Doctor?” Ace asked.

“We need to make sure no other meteorites in the area, Ace.”

“Shouldn't we get more of those lead cylinders from the TARDIS?”

“There's no need,” The Doctor answered with a twinkle of pride in his eye. “Much like the TARDIS, this receptacle is bigger on the inside. Now, come along, Ace. We have lives to save.”

*

Doctor Henderson made her rounds to check the infected somewhere around midnight. She entered Charlie Wright's room. She looked briefly at his file. As she looked up from the folder, the pale boy covered in vines did something that startled her. He sat up. She called his name, but there was no response. His face was cold and without expression. This brought a shiver of terror to Doctor Henderson.

Charlie got out of bed. Doctor Henderson overcame her apprehension and called the young man's name. The only responses were a chillingly vacant look in her direction accompanied by an eerie silence. Charlie marched out of the room. Doctor Henderson, her curiosity outweighing her fear, followed the boy. He didn't seem to notice her behind him. Perhaps in his current state, he didn't even perceive her presence as a threat.

Charlie had joined another group of the infected. Others followed suit. The crowd became overwhelming. Doctor Henderson had lost her balance. She placed her hands in front of her person to break her fall. Her moving forward did nothing to distract the patients from getting to their destination. Henderson saw that the rest of the Project PANVAC team was following the entranced people with tendrils all over their bodies.

The marching had stopped outdoors. Henderson noted they were in the Ortonshire village square. The colours of the Christmas tree's lights, especially the red and green, made the infected look more menacing and frightening. Doctor Henderson gulped saliva to moisten her previously dry throat. She looked around  The faces of Project PANVAC's personnel mirrored the question that was on mind.

What do these people want?

*

The Doctor and Ace had been collecting meteorites for the better part of two hours when they returned to the TARDIS. They had a dozen of the space rocks inside the container. The Doctor worked the ship's controls allowing it to materialize in front of an elaborately decorated wooden cottage. He checked the date. It was December 1st.

The house was surrounded by a white picket fence. Gold garland and small red and green lights trimmed the structure. Brightly lit statues of a snowman and Father Christmas were placed on the left and right sides of the gate behind the TARDIS. The snowman's left hand touched a red postal box with an address written on the side. The Doctor read it aloud.

“17 Miller Road,” He said, “If I recall correctly, young Charlie Wright lives here. We should investigate here for clues to how he became ill.”

The front door was unlocked, and the light within were still turned on, meaning the family left in a hurry. The Doctor and Ace moved quietly. They entered the front room to find an Advent Calender on the coffee table adjacent to the Christmas tree and television. It had an image of two children, a dark haired boy and a blonde girl, in Christmas pyjamas looking in amazement at the numerous presents under the tree. The square for December  1st had been opened.

“Doctor,” Ace said holding the Advent Calender. She indicated the empty square. “Look.”

“Yes, Ace, it's an Advent Calender. They're quite common at Christmas time.”

“No, look closer,” Ace insisted.

“Goodness, Ace, you're right,” The Doctor said upon further examination of the empty square. He saw bits of green dust inside. He put on latex gloves to take a sample of it. He and Ace returned to the TARDIS to study the weird powder. The Doctor looked worried after about fifteen minutes.

“I think, Ace,” He said, “We may have missed a meteorite somewhere.”

*

The Ortonshire Candy Factory was on the east end of the village. The TARDIS had arrived not long before the meteor shower had begun. The Doctor started a countdown. A meteorite crashed through one of the factory's windows the moment after the Doctor had finished. It had landed in a vat of chocolate unbeknownst to anyone working there. The mixing process had turned the rock to dust. The chocolate was then used in the sweets for the Advent Calenders.

The Doctor snapped his fingers and looked at Ace. “There's a slim chance,” He said, “But we going to have go with your plan, Ace.”

“My plan?”

“I'll explain later. We need to return to the TARDIS.”

The time machine vanished. It reappeared inside the factory this time. It hovered over the vat of chocolate. The Doctor stood in the ships opened doorway with a long mechanical arm device in his hands, He used a joystick to move it left and right, up and down until its two prongs grabbed the meteorite in the moment before it landed in the chocolate. The Time Lord returned inside to calculate his next move. He configured the TARDIS controls.

“Now,” He said to Ace, “If this is timed correctly, we can place this rock we caught somewhere our previous rock hunting selves will find it, thereby preventing it from contaminating the candy factory's chocolate and any infection in Ortonshire.”

“There's one thing I don't get, Professor,” Ace said. “How was this my plan?”

“It was you, dear Ace, who asked if we could prevent the infection from coming to Ortonshire. Now, put that hazmat suit back on, and prepare your throwing arm. We're almost where we need to be.”

The TARDIS whirled and twirled in the air. The Doctor opened door after checking the ship's location.

“When I say go, Ace,” The Doctor said as he opened the door, “ Throw the meteorite.”

“I hope this works, Professor.”

“I've seen you launch explosives at Daleks, Ace. You'll do brilliantly.”

He looked down at the street a few steps in front of the candy factory. “Now, Ace! Now!”

Ace's gloved hand hurled the meteorite with the might and determination of David against Goliath. IT landed near a tree less than an inch away from Ace's previous self. The Doctor closed the door, scanned Ace for infection and radiation and smiled.

“Excellent throwing, Ace. If all went well, Our next trip to Ortonshire will be a happier one.”

The TARDIS was now on the moon, time was catching up with itself as The Doctor and Ace's previous selves disappeared with all of Ortonshire's meteorites. The Doctor looked inside the container. There were thirteen plus five they had missed before.

“Ah yes,” The Doctor said, “We did another survey of Ortonshire after taking the rock you threw.”

The Doctor and Ace returned to Ortonshire's sign. The Time Lord opened the TARDIS doors. He exited to admire how beautifully lit the words Happy Christmas were. The Doctor took a deep breath with a smile and a twinkle in his eyes.

“Come along, Ace,” The Doctor called. “The Most Magical Christmas Village In The Entire World awaits us once more.”

Ace came out of the TARDIS just as a portly man with a white beard dressed as Father Christmas approached the Doctor. He grinned broadly as he spoke to them.

“Happy Christmas, folks. Welcome to Ortonshire,” The man said jovially.

“Happy Christmas to you as well, my good man,” The Doctor responded with a tip of his hat. This is Ace, and I'm the Doctor.

“Pleased to meet both of you,” The man replied, shaking hands with Ace and the Doctor. “I'm Chris. You here for the Christmas Festival?”

“Yes,” The Doctor replied, “I also wonder if you could tell where I may find an Advent Calendar.”

The End

[redraspberrycats]

Alright, the day has come!! This year, i participated in the Undertale Secret Santa and wrote a fic for @goops-art . She asked for a fluffy fic between Papyrus and Frisk as one of her prompts, so I have delivered! :D I really like the way it turned out, and I hope you do too!

I'll also @undertalesecretsanta for setting this all up! Thank you guys so much. With no further ado, here we go!

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

Papyrus paced worriedly through the snow -- or, rather, through the inches deep trench he had already worn into it. The human was late! Don't ask how he knew, he just did; the human should have been here by now, and it was disconcerting! Where could they possibly be??

Just as he was about to take a step out of his self-imposed boundaries, he saw a figure approaching from the distance. A small figure… the human!! Smiling in anticipation, he struck a dramatic pose and waited for them to get close. It had taken a bit longer than expected, but here they were, a captive audience for his practiced monologue! "HUMAN… ALLOW ME TO TELL YOU ABOUT SOME COMPLICATED FEELINGS," he began, impressed at how audience-y they were. Not even a peep or a shuffle! "FEELINGS LIKE…" Papyrus made to continue, but cut himself off. Upon closer inspection, something didn't seem right -- no one could be that good of an audience! 

He strode forward and knelt to the ground in front of the human, who still hadn't moved, though they did now seem a bit confused. Continuing his scrutiny, Papyrus found that they were a mess; their clothes were wet and torn, their hair bedraggled, and their eyes tired. This simply wouldn't do at all! Not even Sans was allowed to be this messy! The capture would have to wait. Having decided on a course of action, Papyrus again began to speak. "HUMAN. ARE YOU, PERHAPS, IN NEED OF…. A HUG???"

Their eyes narrowed slightly and looked suspiciously shiny, as if holding back tears. Sniffling, they nodded, and hesitantly held their arms out toward him. Oh no! A genuine plea for affection -- they were targeting all of his soft tendencies! Papyrus reached forward and wrapped them in the closest hug his long limbs could muster, lest they pull away. It was easy to tell they were unsure, but when Papyrus rested his chin on their shoulder, they relaxed enough to lean most of their weight against him. 

The two of them stayed there for a few minutes. The human seemed content, so Papyrus held off his restless energy just long enough to hold them for awhile. And then, of course, he took matters into his own (infinitely capable) hands. Literally. He picked them up with his hands and cradled them against his chest for the journey back through town.

"HUMAN…" he mused as they huddled closer to him (probably amazed at his sheer speed as he ran across the snow! Nyeh!). "I HAVE A QUESTION TO ASK YOU. ACTUALLY, I HAVE TWO QUESTIONS! I AM FEELING VERY INQUISITIVE, IT SEEMS!... ANYWAY." Papyrus' face shifted into a more serious expression. "WOULD YOU TELL ME YOUR NAME? FOR PERFECTLY REGULAR, NON-HUMAN HELPING REASONS, I SWEAR." There was a short bout of silence.

"....Frisk," they said eventually, shy.

"WOWIE, WHAT A SPECTACULAR NAME, HUMAN!" Papyrus smiled brightly, so the human -- Frisk -- would understand how great they were. "VERY HUMAN-Y…. DON'T THINK ABOUT THAT TOO MUCH. MOVING ON!" He pointed emphatically to the sky. "THE REAL QUESTION WAS: ARE YOU OKAY, FRISK?" He hoped the human could tell that he was concerned. 

By this point, the two had reached town and made it to Papyrus' home, so he set them on the ground and held their hand while he opened the door. Frisk remained quiet as they walked inside. They made a beeline for the couch, and immediately buried their head in their hands. 

"WHAT WAS I THINKING??" Papyrus said, and Frisk curled even further in on themselves. "OF COURSE YOU'RE OKAY! YOU ARE VERY GREAT, AFTER ALL! RIGHT, HUMAN?" Frisk didn't move, except to wrap their arms around their stomach. Their face was red and blotchy, but they seemed determined not to cry. Papyrus sat beside them and held an arm out encouragingly -- this was clearly a time for softer things. Like himself! Warm, soft, and cuddly, just as a skeleton should be! "Listen, Frisk. Maybe You Are Already Ok. But I Will Make You Even Okay-er Than You Already Are! Because The Great Papyrus Is The Best At Helping People Be Okay! Okay?" He spoke at a lower volume than usual, but made sure to still be just as exuberant. Frisk let out a watery giggle from their seat, and when he asked "Have I Said Okay Enough Times Yet?" they laughed again and scooted themselves under his arms, so they were cuddling. 

"Can I…. can I stay here with you?" Frisk asked, timid. They seemed a little embarrassed. "I don't really wanna leave." they admitted, hiding their face again, but this time in Papyrus' battle body. He gently ran his fingers over their back.

"YES, OF COURSE! IF YOU NEED A PLACE TO STAY, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS ASK!" Back to his regular voice, Papyrus was a bit loud, but the human didn't seem to mind. "IF WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A SLEEPOVER, THERE HAS TO BE PREPARATIONS, THOUGH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT KIND???" Frisk, smiling, shook their head. "THE COOKING KIND!! COME ON, LET'S MAKE A PIE! WE CAN CANOODLE LATER!" With no further preamble, he shot up off the couch and into the kitchen. It didn't take him long at all; he had long legs. That, and the kitchen was… right there. 

Once Frisk had joined him, he set about explaining how to make the pie -- you had to beat the fruit filling into submission! You had to roll the crust out within an inch of its life! You had to turn the oven all the way up and throw the pie in with the fury of a thousand suns… whatever those were! -- and then instructed the human to give it their best shot. They picked up the spoon for the filling and hit it with all the force they could. Which… "HM. THAT WASN'T VERY. STRONG. BUT THAT'S OK!! YOU ARE DOING YOUR BEST!! I WILL SHOW YOU HOW IT'S DONE!" 

Papyrus took the spoon and smashed it into the bowl, which sent the filling splattering all over the walls. There wasn't much left in the bowl. No matter -- "ONTO THE CRUST!" 

Frisk bounced a bit as they followed him to the other side of the counter, where he had pre-made dough set out. It seemed they were coming out of their shell! How enchanting! "ALRIGHT! I WANT YOU TO ROLL THIS CRUST OUT WITH ALL THE POWER… OF FRIENDSHIP!! NYEH HEH!" Carefully, they took both sides of the handle and rolled it out. Slowly. "YOU KNOW WHAT?? I'LL HELP! IT WOULDN'T BE FRIENDSHIP IF YOU DIDN'T DO IT WITH A FRIEND!!" Before stopping to consult, Papyrus grabbed one end of the rolling pin and let Frisk grasp the other side. Together, they spread the dough until it was big enough to make a crust.

The result was… indescribably lumpy.

Papyrus placed his hands on his hips, smiled, and said "NYEH! WELL DONE, HUMAN! NOW ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER; ALMOST PUZZLE-LIKE, ISN'T IT?" 

Frisk turned a lovely shade of pink as they followed him around the kitchen. It looked like they were thinking very hard about something. Just as he was about to show them how to put the pie in the oven, they reached up to tug on his battle body. "You, um. You're doing well too." They told him, fidgeting with the sleeves of their sweater. Papyrus gasped.

"OH NO!! A GENUINE COMPLIMENT! YOUR POWER… IT'S TOO STRONG!!!" Frisk giggled at his antics and playfully shoved his hip, which was in easy reach for them. He, in turn, stumbled back dramatically, putting a palm to his forehead. "ET TU, HUMAN??" Pretending to be worried, they rushed over to him and fretted about his "injuries". Papyrus laughed triumphantly and picked them up, rising back to his full height. "NYEH HEH HEH!! YOU HAVE FALLEN INTO MY TRAP! LITTLE DID YOU KNOW THAT I HAVE A SECRET MOVE OF MY OWN!" Papyrus swung them about in a circle, Frisk laughing all the while, and then hugged them for all he was worth. They hugged back, with slightly less force but no shortage of love. 

"ALRIGHT, HUMAN, YOU'VE CONVINCED ME!" Frisk looked up, confused, and Papyrus set them on the ground. He walked over and set the pie in the oven, so focused on what he was saying that he forgot to use his sun-passion… sun fury? "IT IS TIME TO CANOODLE! COME WITH ME AND LET'S CHOOSE MOVIES AS A BACKDROP!" Frisk made a happy hum and ran behind him to the living room, flapping their arms excitedly. 

The two of them made their way over to the stack of films to peruse the selection, but it didn't take long before Frisk pointed and shouted "That one that one that one!!!" with hardly any space to breathe in between their words. It was a disc of the first season of a human show that Undyne had left after a sleepover. 

"OH! THIS SHOW IS RATHER INTERESTING. INTERESTING IN THAT I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE! BUT WHAT DO YOU KNOW?? I HAVE A FEELING YOU AND UNDYNE WOULD BE GREAT FRIENDS, HUMAN! SUCH PASSION! SUCH EXCITEMENT!! SUCH SIMILAR TASTE IN ANIMATED VIDEO!!!" Papyrus kept up his mini monologue as he picked up the show and set it up to play, Frisk glowing with anticipation all the while. When he had settled on the couch, he lifted an arm and they immediately snuggled against him, having lost all the hesitation from earlier. Papyrus smiled fondly to himself, but didn't say a word.

They watched the show together for a good long while, settling into each other more comfortably on the couch and laughing or commenting when appropriate. As the evening turned to night, Frisk became a bit drowsy in their place against Papyrus. Presently, he got up to take the pie out. They had spread out into the warmth he left behind by the time he came back, so instead of moving them too much, he simply lifted them into his lap. Snuffling quietly, they turned to face his chest and curl up against it before falling back asleep. Their tiny hands on his chest plate made his SOUL overflow with affection. 

When Sans came home a few hours later, it was to the both of them passed out on the couch, the TV still playing in the background. He placed Papyrus' favorite blanket over them, turned off the television, then went to bed himself. 

[arsenicpanda]

M, AD, AF, AK!

Nice choices, I’m going to convert them into number, and then let’s go!

13/M. Has a ship ever broken your heart?

Constantly.  There’s a roughly 50% chance that, in a show where at least one person dies, one or both members of my ship will die.  It just...it just KEEPS HAPPENING, my god.  But a special shout out to Chiaki/Makoto from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time for ripping my heart out and stomping on it even though they both live.  Like my HEART, how DARE they.

30/AD. Name a couple of fandoms in which you have no ships.

I generally only actively seek out fandom stuff when I have a ship because searching for gen stuff is pretty futile, but it happens occasionally.  Newsies is the only one I can think of off the top of my head; I just want to read about Spot Conlon without shipping him with anyone (canon character or OC, it doesn’t matter), but that, like, never happens.  It did happen once though, in the excellent fic In New York about how he joined Tammany Hall and whatnot.

32/AF. Share five must-read fics.

Ok, are we talking across all fandoms or across Riverdale fandom?  Fuck it, I’ll do both, with the Riverdale choice that would normally be in the multi-fandom part moved to the Riverdale section.

Multi-Fandom:

1. Ambivalence by DreamScene (Code Geass) - An excellent look at a Shirley Lives AU.  It’s dark, it’s interesting, it’s a good character piece, the Lelouch/Shirley interactions are perfect in every way, and its got some nice smut at the end.  It’s a little screwy with the timeline, but it’s so good in every other respect that I do not care.

2. Ascendant by Samurai 101 (Naruto) - A very, very interesting Itachi time travel fic with a great and very unique take on time travel in general.  It really dives into clan politics and the difference in Itachi as a child and Itachi as an adult.  And the looming threat of Madara is so, so great.  Every side character is so fleshed out and real, and I love it.  Let it be known that I normally don’t like Itachi, but I really like him in this.  He’s not some perfect, all-wise ninja god; he’s a fuck up of a teenager and a kid trying his best, and he’s actually relatable.

3. Wanted It To Be a Game by SkylaDoragano (Persona 4) - An excellent role reversal fic with Adachi and Yu (well, more P4 Protagonist than Yu as we know him).  It really follows the domino effect of switching their roles out in terms of who lives and who dies and who joins the party in what roles.  It’s so interesting to see the domino effects of it all.  It really gets into the psychology of different characters, and everyone’s dynamics are fantastic, with a special shout out to Adachi and Saki’s friendship.  Seriously, if you like Adachi, this is a must-read.

4. 365 Days of Winter by zauberer_sirin (Durarara!!) - This is the perfect Izaya/Namie fic.  Like, their dynamic is so, so on point, and watching them fall in love when they really would rather not is such a delight.  I love the monthly format, and I love Izaya’s subtle jealousy, and I love how they never even explicitly confess their feelings.  It’s all so them, and I love it.

5. Executive Reform by karanguni (Final Fantasy VII) - It’s a Final Fantasy VII/Pacific Rim mash up that works surprisingly well.  It’s such a great gen fic, and the focus on the Shinra executives delights me.  Like, Scarlet and Hojo interacting while neither are being crazy?  Genius!  And it does such a great job of depicting the complicated relationship between Hojo and Sephiroth even though Sephiroth isn’t even an active character.  Everyone is so human in this, and I absolutely love it.  Tragically, it’s abandoned.

BONUS: Seven Suitors for Shirayuki by Sabrael (Snow White with the Red Hair) - Look, this doesn’t quite make the all-time top five, but I want to plug it here anyway because oh man, guys, this is top-notch slow burn/pining.  Like, by the end you are DYING, the burn is so good.  It fleshes out minor canon characters very well, and there are some great OCS, but they’re not OCs for the sake of OCs but ones that are truly necessary.  And the characterization is on point, and the obiyuki is SO GOOD.  Seriously, if you followed my advice about the show and fell into obiyuki hell with me, go read this.

Riverdale (Do you know how hard this was?  Narrowing this down?  There are so, so many things I want to add but can’t grrr)

1. cut while shaving by areyouabadwolf2 - I’ve made no secret of the fact that this is my all-time favorite Riverdale fic.  And in fact, it would normally knock Executive Reform out of its #5 spot.  It’s such a great post-season 2 darkfic, just an excellent look at where everyone could go from there.  It’s heavy on the Serpents, just the way I like it, and all the relationships are so cool.  Like, Jughead & Cheryl friendship?  Sign me the fuck up!  It’s also SO good at suspense and keeping secrets from its readers, and no one ever talks in a way that makes you go “ah yes, thank you for telling me that even though everyone in the room already knows about it.”  And like, the characterization in this is flawless, absolutely flawless, and the Betty/Jughead dynamic is amazing with them as a criminal duo.  I just. I love it.  Tragically, it seems to be abandoned.

2. The town called Riverdale by satelliteinasupernova - Yeah, you wrote this, so technically it’s redundant for you, but it belongs here, so tough.  This is the Riverdale/Princess Tutu mashup that I didn’t know I wanted, and it has an extra dose of eldritch horror.  The meta-y goodness is so delicious, and the suspense is fantastic, I was always on the edge of my seat.  It’s so great watching Veronica try to figure out this mystery while people around her are either cagey or don’t realize there’s a mystery to solve.  There’s such great uncertainty running throughout it,and I highly recommend it.

3. Black Cherry Chutney by lilibug - I love dark!bughead, I love it so goddamn much, and this is a great depiction of it.  And like, not just dark!Betty or dark!Jughead but both of them, and it’s such a delight.  Like, I absolutely love this Jughead from the word go, and Betty is so great because she is, like in canon, so much more than what she first seems.  The bughead dynamic is great, and the smut is fantastic.

4. Fullmetal Riverdale by lnles - This is such a good mashup of Riverdale and Fullmetal Alchemist that I cannot articulate it.  Like, it’s not just 1-1 insert Character A into Role A; it really works with the setting and characters of Riverdale to create something new but familiar.  It’s working with great pieces, and it does them both justice, which is saying a lot because Fullmetal Alchemist is very, very good.  I love the characterization and the hints of what happened in the past and the prose and just everything.  It’s not done, but it’s got a regular update schedule, so I’m hoping it gets finished. Go give this some love!

5. Shake, Rattle, and Roll series by TakeAWalkOnTheWildside - Ok, so I’m cheating here by putting in a series, but let me cheat, ok?  I’m still amazed that there are so few 1950s AUs for bughead, but I’m really glad we got this series.  It’s sexy, it’s fun, it’s period-appropriate, and it’s dramatic too.  Like it’s a whole saga of Betty and Jughead getting together and then being together, and it’s so fun.  Also, he eats her out on her dining room table in part one, so that’s great.

37/AK. Do you have a favorite trope and/or AU for your OTP?

For my OTP of OTPs, shirlulu, does Everyone Lives count?  Because that series does not end well for them.  But, ok, other than that, I want to see some mutual pining for them because the idea of Lelouch pining is so goddamn amusing, especially when mixed with perpetually pining Shirley being completely goddamn oblivious.  As for bughead, one thing I don’t see enough of (and crave more of) is their friends and family trying to play matchmaker for them but failing spectacularly.  Also, more 1950s AUs please.

[queen-susans-revenge]

I don’t have time to do it right now but one of these days I really need to write down everything I learned from alt.tarot back in the day Some of it is about tarot but more of it is about how to fight with people on the Internet. I was reminded re-reading the Dickwolf Discourse and how Mike’s hard-won lesson from that is that he could have Just Stopped much earlier. Just Stopping is a great skill that I learned through many bruising fights on Usenet and specifically alt.tarot. See, most people who think they are Knowledgeable About Tarot in fact are Jon Snows to the subject: they know nothing. The received wisdom on tarot is complete garbage; you can easily spend years and read dozens of published books and come away believing things like “tarot was invented by gypsies and contains secret wisdom smuggled out from the fall of the Library of Alexandria.” Insert Luke Skywalker gif: every part of that is wrong. Playing cards were actually invented by the Chinese, reached Europe around 1360, and in the middle of the fifteenth century Italian nobles started using tarot decks to play a trick-taking game resembling bridge. The so-called Major Arcana, or trump cards, were mostly drawn from Petrarch’s poem I Trionfi which translates to “The Triumphs” (triumph=trump). I Trionfi was enormously popular, especially in Italy, and you see imagery from it everywhere during the time period and all kinds of card decks using it. (Looks down at wall of text I have just produced. Whelp. Time for a read-more!)

So almost nobody knows this basic fact, that the structure of the Major Arcana and a lot of the imagery on the cards comes from Petrarch originally. Instead they spend years reading dumb newage books that all regurgitate the same content, like, “Death doesn’t mean death, it means change.” To Petrarch, and to the Renaissance Italians, and to the likes of Waite and Crowley, Death literally meant death. Now they all believed that there were things like Christian faith that could triumph over/trump even death: Petrarch’s poem is structured like a Roman triumphal parade except with metaphysical forces involved, so like the great conquering emperor is brought low by the power of love, and the lovers in turn are brought low by the power of chastity, and the chaste in turn are brought low by the power of death, but death is conquered by fame, and fame is conquered by time, and time is conquered by the eternal Kingdom of God. This is the basic procession that you see in the trump cards. And yes this does mean that tarot was also explicitly Christian, from the beginning, and remained so even as the robes-and-wands set started appropriating Jewish kabbalah and mapping tarot onto it. That happened in the eighteenth century, in France. The two dudes responsible are Antoine Court de Gébelin and M. le Comte de Mellet, two more names that most people who think they know a lot about tarot will never have heard of. The line goes from them through Eliphas Levi, Papus, Wirth, those guys, through to Waite and then Crowley. Now all these dudes were occultists, and occult means clandestine, hidden, secret, so as you might expect they were not at all good at clearly explicating their beliefs. Back on alt.tarot I used to use a Waite quote as my signature: “Superfluities and interpretations notwithstanding, it is directly, or indirectly, out of the recent view, thus tentatively designated, that the consideration of the present thesis emerges as its final term, though out of all knowledge thereof.” (That’s from The Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. It’s all like that.) So, it’s definitely not their fault that most people don’t know about Petrarch and kabbalah and what Crowley really meant when he made such a big goddamn deal about how “Tzaddi is not The Star.” Even when the likes of Crowley or Waite did write books supposedly detailing the meaning of the symbolism of their decks, they threw in lots of misdirection and outright lies “to mislead the uninitiated.” Kabbalah is the key, they’ll tell you, but they won’t tell you that they used it as an athbash--forward and back, just like the Fool’s Journey goes both up and down the Tree of Life; divine power can be called down into Malkuth, the physical world, but one born into Malkuth can also ascend to Kether, unmediated experience of the divine. (So The Star is both Tzaddi and Heh.) Anyway, if you can’t trust the newage books and you can’t trust the occult books, are there any good books on tarot? Yes, there are two: Gertrude Moakley's groundbreaking (and out of print) book The Tarot Cards Painted by Bonifacio Bembo for the Visconti-Sforza Family: An Iconographic and Historical Study, and the equally groundbreaking and equally out of print Rhapsodies of the Bizarre, a collection of essays by Court de Gébelin and M. le Comte de Mellet, with translation and commentary by J. Karlin, the terror of alt.tarot. Jess Karlin was not his real name. He knew more about tarot than, I gradually came to believe, anyone else in the world. He was a jerk, and proud of being a jerk: Thelema is a religion of war, he said, and he came not to affirm but to destroy. He was my teacher, and he taught me a lot, and I tried to repay him both with money and by acknowledging the debt whenever the subject comes up, like now. One of the things he taught me was how to learn from someone who is giving you an actual answer but insulting you while they do it. (Try ignoring the insult and saying thank you, for the answer. They may have more to teach.) I say Karlin knew more than anyone else in the world because the academics after Moakley were disappointing; the field became dominated by playing card historian Michael Dummett, who was so invested in debunking the occultists that he really doubled down on trying to argue that no link between tarot and fortune-telling existed before the French guys came along. Which is stupid, because the links between games of chance and systems of divination have always been super tight--Fate and Luck are the same damn bitch. And you can find (and Karlin did find) very early references to witchcraft performed with playing cards. So because the playing card historians would have nothing to do with the occultists, and Karlin was doing these serious deep dives into formerly-untranslated eighteenth century French occult texts and even earlier stuff, he ended up understanding the iconography and symbolism of tarot way better than the people like Dummett who were much too serious to touch the occult traditions. That was another thing Karlin taught me: that academic consensus can sometimes be just as wrong as newage gobbledegook, and it really is possible, when you start doing deep dives into niche subjects, to outstrip the experts. Sometimes it’s not just possible but frighteningly easy. Anyway, he knew a ton--and he knew it in a field where the vast majority of people think they understand the material, but are very wrong. I think this had the effect of making him quite crabby. Some people came to alt.tarot saying they wanted to learn tarot; and those people, J. Karlin was willing to teach, although he might yell at them some for believing stupid things, if they did. And they probably did--I remember being twenty-one, a shiny new-minted college graduate, proud of my A in an undergraduate Quantum Mechanics For Non Physics Majors class, trying out some “maybe fortunetelling is a quantum effect” angle and getting my ass handed to me, deservedly so. But many, many more people came to alt.tarot back in the day thinking they already knew tarot. And they very much did not want to be corrected. They just thought the cards looked cool and they were perfectly content with their own “I’ll just intuit what I think the cards mean” approach to tarot. And to those people, Karlin was a relentless asshole. Because the symbols did in fact have an original meaning, and it is possible to trace the evolution of the iconography through time, and in fact all those centuries of artists and writers and...I dunno, warlocks and whatnot...working on the cards has created a much, much, much deeper and richer symbolic framework than what most people can make up off the tops of their heads just by looking at a random image from The Tarot of the Cat People or whatever. So that was maybe the first important thing he taught me: there is a truth. Even in symbolic matters, even in stuff that was all “just made up” at some point, it is possible to distinguish what’s important and true from what’s just people spouting off the tops of their dumb heads. And fourth or fifth was that if you argue with someone long enough and you find yourself getting boxed into a corner, fighting desperately to support propositions you’re not even quite sure how you ended up needing to defend, you can just...stop. Usually that’s the cleanest and clearest path. Karlin would not let people save face and he would not let them have the last word: if they were wrong, they’d either have to admit it, or they’d have to flounce off to another Usenet group, orrrr...they’d have to learn how to fucking shut up. It’s a good skill to have. I learned it in alt.tarot, being wrong a lot. I had many fights with Jess Karlin on alt.tarot. But to my knowledge I was the only one from that group that he offered to formally initiate into Thelema. If I have siblings in this lineage I don’t know them; and I never considered myself a Thelemite, even after the initiation. But I have tried to pass on what he taught me. Crowley wrote that the adept “must teach; but he may make severe the ordeals” and I always sort of thought Karlin was living by that principle. At the same time he liked to point out that it’s not necessary to hide your pearls from swine: they won’t take ‘em no matter how brightly you polish and how neatly you letter the sign, FREE PEARLS OF WISDOM, PLEASE TAKE. My worst fights with J. Karlin were always when I was trying to do something nice for him. I still wince remembering when I tried to give him a copy of Alan Moore’s Promethea; that ended with us not speaking for several years. So if he reads this he’ll probably be mad at me all over again but anyway he eventually started using his real name, Glenn Wright, for his Internet writings instead of the Karlin nym. He hops around websites too fast for me to keep track, but as recently as 2015 he had a blog on Tumblr​. Sometimes he offers tarot readings for sale--one card, yes or no question only. I recommend these without question whether you “believe” in tarot or not. (I’ve grown out of my quantum woo days and I don’t now think the cards are anything but a fantastic system for self-reflection). This is super long so I’m gonna stop now. Maybe it’ll do for that “what I learned from alt.tarot” post I always meant to make.

[musingmycelium]

MMMMM gonna be THAT person and ask alllll the questions for the quizzy as companion meme for whomever you desire :D

:0! under a read more for obvious reasons ljlkjlkjlkjkj

1, 8, and 9 answered here

2. How would they meet the Inquisitor? depends on how they came to the inquisition! if he came with idrilla, and honestly that means linayel too, then he would meet the quizzy upon arrival to skyhold, having sent word of their visit beforehand [though not too far before]. if by himself he would just show up and request audience with them -making himself available as an agent.

3. What would some of their cutscenes look like?!! his haven cutscene -if triggered with appropriate approval- would be in the woods outside the main settlement, he’d take the quizzy out into the quiet snow and share some dalish mead with them and offer conversation if they would like it and silence if they don’t. at the end he’ll tell them they were looking overwhelmed and taking a step back to breathe always aides with that.a high approval quizzy can get a cutscene at skyhold in the garden: da’ean tending plants until he notices quizzy walking over, at which point he’ll ask if quizzy has ever tended plants before and will offer to show them what he’s been growing. 

4. What would their romance route look like? Would they be romancable?ever a quiet romantic da’ean is

5. If they romanced someone as Inquisitor, would they still fall for that person as a companion? How would that play out? How would they react to that person being romanced by the “new” Inquisitor?yes! so da’ean romances dorian and the iron bull in my canon, and depending on the quizzy he would romance an unromanced bull or dorian or both still. their relationship is pretty solid, though with da’ean as a companion there would be a few changes to their dynamic mostly in terms of da’ean doesn’t have to deal with the trauma of being quizzy lkjkljklj if either of them are romanced by the quizzy he’d approve so long as quizzy treats them well!

6. Write some of their party banter (in reaction to major events, scenery dialogue, or just shitting around. Askers can specify for which character/event, or leave it up to the writer).this honestly deserves a post of its own so like, i’ll do that.... later.....

7. What would be on their tombstone in the fade (what is their greatest fear)?da’ean’s tombstone read: Silenced and Forgotten

10. If Inquisition operated like DA:O, what would their gift items be? What would their approval and disapproval Feast Day items be?:o i don’t have the feast day dlc so i’ll skip that since i don’t have a base of ref for it lmao. his regular gift items would be flowers, dalish artifacts, and books. the two which would trigger cutscenes would be a small halla charm -a high approval quizzy would learn here about his sister, and an ancient looking book written in a mix of elvhen and arcaic tevene -da’ean would excitedly talk about it and with dorian’s help translate the book revealing it to be a dalish songbook.

11. How would they grow as a person? How would they compare at the end of the Inquisition as a companion to who they were as the Inquisitor?at the beginning da’ean is more reserved and less likely to actively engage with the quizzy, as he gets more comfortable and gets to know the quizzy he’ll open up quite drastically. in terms of character growth da’ean goes from someone who is still tied to the past and doesn’t look to the future into someone who actively makes the future the best it can be for himself and those he cares about -effectively taking his head out of his ass and learning to cope healthily with the past.

12. Do they believe the Herald of Andraste is really the Herald of Andraste?absolutely the fuck not. if the quizzy is also dalish there would be dialogue between them for how da’ean believes the quizzy is sent by mythal but otherwise no he doesn’t believe in the maker one whit, and andraste isn’t exactly in his good graces.

13. If the Herald didn’t have them tag along to prep the trebuchets, what would they do during the battle for Haven? (bonus: would they join in on the impromptu Dawn Will Come choir practice in the camp?)da’ean would organize the younger members of the inquisition and ensure they make it out of haven safely. and lmao he has a lovely singing voice but a chantry song will never fall from his lips

14. What nickname does Varric give them?songbird. which da’ean finds hilarious since his name means little bird

15. Without the influence of their decisions for the Inquisition, which of the companions do they get along with? Which ones do they bicker with?da’ean gets along well with bull and dorian [duh] and sera the best, though he is also friends with viv and solas and varric! he bickers the most with solas and cass.

16. What would the Fear Demon say to them in the Fade to try and discourage them?I HAVE. DIALOGUE I WROTE AGES AGO.... FROM MY LONGFIC SO I’M GONNA REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE THAT SHIT

“You’ll fail the Inquisition just like you failed your sister.” The silken voice of the Nightmare sent shivers running up Da’ean’s spine. He couldn’t explain the sense of wrong the voice gave him, even as the words it spoke wriggled their way into Da’ean’s thoughts like worms. The lie based on truth; how many times had he told himself it was his fault before, how many nights had he spent in fear of his own incompetence and inability to protect those he cared about. How long must he carry this guilt, a month ago he would have thought he would never be free of it. Helpless to his terror.

Now; as he saw the snarl on Dorian’s lips, the hard glint in Bull’s eye, the outrage pouring out from Solas’s entire body, he knew, he knew it was not through any fault of his own. His soiled past was not something he could change, but right here, right now, he could move on. He could chose to leave everything that burdened him in the hands of those who came with him. He could ease the burdens they carried without fear of making things worse.“Doubt me all you want, but you know the truth. It’s your fault the slavers caught her, and it will be your fault when Corypheus captures the world.” The Nightmare must be feeling desperate, it had already gone after Hawke and Stroud, and now it was focusing solely on Da’ean. The breath-warm air and disorienting light was causing him enough problems, but if the Nightmare grew bored of him, he would move on to his next target.

“If you think those are new thoughts Nightmare, you are dead wrong.” They were close, they had to be close to the rift. If Da’ean could hold his attention until they could flee, the rest of the part wouldn’t have to deal with it.“I’ve accepted my mistakes, I know what I’ve done.” The hard knot of old anxiety in Da’ean’s chest was gradually unravelling; his newfound beliefs, hard won and solid, slowing taking its place. “I am stronger for knowing myself, what about you Nightmare? What have you done that you regret, what things haunt your dreams?”

maker that’s old but i’m not gonna edit it bc i’m lazy and its late lkjljlkjklj

17. Where do they hang out in the Winter Palace? What’s their thoughts on the nobles/The Game?he’d be out on the open. area. thing??? where dorian is stan-THE COURTYARD, he’d be chillin in the courtyard. da’ean couldn’t give a nug’s ass about the nobles or the game and will show some harsh contempt for those in the palace with their noses in the air around him like he’s not even there.

18. What’s their reaction to a dragon showing up?“fuck this but also fuck this” and high fives bull

19. Once Corypheus is beaten, what do they do during the party? Do they stay with the Inquisition, or go somewhere else? What could the Inquisitor do to convince them to stay?during the party he’d be talking/drinking with sera and after the inquisition depends on his romance options. if he romanced dorian he’d follow him to tevinter bc Fuck You Bioware eat my entire ass to make sure he’s safe and to chill in the background since there’s no going back home. if he romanced bull or bull and dorian he would travel with the chargers as the newest member to the crew. a high approval quizzy could convince them to stay only if romanced

20. How do they react to learning abominations can retain their consciousness and identity, and even live peacefully with their spirits/demons, as seen in Stone-Bear Hold?psst. pssssssst... the dalish already know and you can take that hc from my cold dead hands.... BUT he’d be excited to see it recognized and would want to talk with the augur extensively

21. What do they think of the discoveries made in the Deep Roads? Do they make any comments on anything?Buck Fuckin Wild is da’ean’s take on the deep roads. he doesn’t like the claustrophobic feel they give him, he does have Some Thoughts on the titans and talks about them with idrilla.

22. If you have another Inquisitor, how would those two get along, specifically?UUUHHHHH i have his older sister idrilla who isn’t a quizzy normally but in an au she might have been the quizzy and they get along great!

23. In trespasser, what “gift” would they give the Inquisitor, if any?a halla charm! one linayel carved for just this purpose and it’s threaded on a strip of leather.

24. What are their plans for after the Exalted Council? Will the Inquisition staying in tact or being disbanded make a difference?he goes back to doing what he was doing before it, it doesn’t change much unless he was romanced and then its dependant on player choice

25. In the alternate reality, if they were corrupted with lyrium, how do they act? What’s their attitude about the end of the world/their inevitable death? oh fuck da’ean would fall deeper into depression, lose all sense of time/meaning and he would just end up with total and complete apathy

[filmstruck]

Fårö: Bergman’s Island of Quiet Enchantment by Thomas Davant

Resting only a car ferry’s ride off the tip of the Swedish island called Gotland and facing the Baltic Sea, the island of Fårö is a world not so far away but lost in time. With a population of less than 500, it sits quietly on the map, inconspicuous, encouraging the burned-out city dwellers to pack their bags and travel south from Stockholm for a summer getaway. Squat windmills droning in the sea breeze, cow-dotted farms settled inside stone walls and beaches scrubbed by pine make up the scenes of the island’s landscape.

A medieval church stands tall amongst a line of trees, its sloped orange roof a pleasant contrast against the blue sky. In the back stretches the cemetery. A stone path leads to a far corner where beneath thick trees and against the vast fields lies the final resting place of Ingmar Bergman and his wife.

It’s quiet here. No sounds of cars, no rumbles of the city. Only the breeze blowing off the Baltic as it plays through the branches above.

It’s appropriate, given Bergman’s legacy, that his final resting place should be somewhere so isolated, still and solemn.

Every artist has his or her great source. Tarkovsky conjured poetry from the mist-covered, tree lined fields of Russia; Fellini conducted symphonies from the wine-soaked streets and electric lights of Rome; Ozu found a quiet, desperate humanity in the right angles and horizon lines of suburban Tokyo; and Ingmar Bergman had Fårö.

Here he worked, shooting the episodic SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (‘73) and the nightmarish HOUR OF THE WOLF (‘68). But here he also lived and wrote and contemplated with the ritualistic nature of a monk: on these beaches he devoted hours of walking and thought; in his sunlit room he read and sat before the typewriter; and in the island’s only theater he screened films. The articles are out there describing the visits to his home and the painstaking lengths to which the island and Bergman Foundation have gone to preserve the rooms as they were when the filmmaker passed away over ten years ago. His home has long been a site of fascination and pilgrimage for directors and writers and the weary-souled viewers who make the trek to this small island to see for themselves what it was about this place that inspired him so, and what kept him here long after he had stopped making films.

Bergman captured this place at the end of the Sixties in an hour-long documentary for television. He returned to his subjects ten years later with FARO DOCUMENT 1979 (‘79), a departure from narrative and a love letter to his island home and neighbors. Like most documentaries about a certain time and place, this document exudes a mosquito in amber quality. Interspersing breathtaking shots of the land under snow, rain and fog with testaments of longtime residents, Bergman creates a film that exists as a cousin to his main body of work.

Where he finds endless inspiration and life in the island’s essence, so do—in one way or another—the people he interviews, from an older gentleman whose heart aches from his love for the landscape to a woman who lost her house to a fire but still will not leave. There’s a beauty in the man who loves to write poetry, who has come so that his life is devoted to outpourings of verse about the leaves, the fields, the shade of a tree, and all without the aspirations of becoming someone or doing it for any other reason than he feels in his heart that he must.

One particularly beautiful sequence serves as a time capsule within a time capsule. With an explosion of ‘60s-era rock n’roll, we find ourselves aboard a school bus hurtling across Faro. An unseen Bergman interviews children, asking what they like about the island, whether they think they’ll stay or leave after school.

We jump ahead to the present (the late ‘70s). The children are older now. Some have left, some have stayed. Some have moved to the busier mainland but long for the peace and quiet they found so boredom-inducing as children. One man, the most affecting, talks as a child of his love for the sea. Now a train conductor for the city’s line, he finds the urban environment with its high-rises and tight sidewalks cold and limiting. Something is missing, and he often returns to look at the sea to find it.

What the film bears most in common with the rest of Bergman’s work is its sheer uncertainty in the face of time. What will become of these people? What will become of the land? We in turn ask these questions of ourselves. Images, Bergman’s memoir composed of his journal entries, reflections and production stills, is rife with references to the island. As he swings between exuberant highs and depressing lows, one thing remains constant in his reflections: the sand beneath his feet, the pines through which he walks, the breeze off the sea.  

In my favorite entry, he simply begins: “I’m sitting on Fårö Island, waiting. Just as I wished” (298).

Perhaps those most touched by his work will one day take the journey themselves, walk the paths along the shore and pass through the pines and feel as though they’ve always known this place.

[blame-canada]

Life in Color - Creek

Once Craig realized the rainbow came from a person—one steadily beating heart, two wide green eyes—the world was never quite the same again. Maybe he's gotten a bit too poetic with time, maybe a bit too over-dramatic and strange- but he's worth it. God, is Tweek ever worth it.

I wrote this a little bit ago but realized I never made it a post on Tumblr so here we are! Also, it’s Tuesday, so this is even more appropriate. Find it on AO3 here! 

It’s a Tuesday morning.

Craig hates Tuesdays. They’re too early in the week, and they always feel too long. The rest of the week looks like a mountain from Tuesday morning. The cold is particularly biting this Tuesday, and he rubs at his subtly leaking nose, sniffing loud enough to hear it through his headphones. Summer barely existed this year, and he’s not looking forward to the snow. Nobody ever really is. Oh well.

The bus rolls to a stop in front of him, and with the snap of its shitty little stop sign popping out to blink red in his eyes, the doors crumple in like the gates to a particularly teenaged hell, and his sister shoves in front of him to get to her friends first. He just wants to get to school. He sighs and climbs in after her.

His road is bumpier than the main ones and he’s not sure if it’s because he doesn’t live in the best neighborhood or if it’s because none of the roads get enough attention from city hall. Plow trucks are unkind to asphalt. A particularly deep and familiar pothole makes his palm jam into his chin. He’s bitten his tongue like that before, so he’s learned better; he doesn’t talk on the bus. There’s not much point, anyway.

Everything looks so grey this morning. He hates mornings. Tuesday mornings, though, they’re the worst, and he’ll say it all day long.

The snow adds another layer to the dull monochromatic landscape, covering the last bits of mostly dead brown grass with greyish sludge. It’s still white in the middles, though, and that part’s alright. Besides that, even the sky matches. For a moment, Craig wonders if he’s suddenly gone completely colorblind. Then he catches a glimpse of a horrendously hot pink and red monstrosity of a scarf wrapped around Heidi Turner’s neck, and he is horribly reminded. He glares at it, as though it can hear his disdain for its existence, and scrolls through his playlists for something new to listen to. Nothing is really working for him though, so eventually he gives up and keeps his headphones in for the only reason that it completes the tired Tuesday morning look he’s going for. He’s also lazy, and the bus is loud. Everything feels slow.

They file off the bus in a neat line, their backpacks smacking into the corners of the benches because they’re filled with too many papers and the rows are too small. Craig notices his shoe is untied and takes care to take higher steps to prevent tripping on it. He’s sure if anyone caught him they’d laugh, but it’s the aisle of a bus, and he can’t be assed to care, really. He yawns and follows the crowd to the front doors.

Even though Heidi so rudely reminded him of the existence of color, everything seems so muted, and it isn’t a good thing. His eyes are sweeping the crowd, picking out bits and pieces of crucial information to analyze later. There’s a lot going on and he doesn’t want to forget any of it.

He finds himself at his locker without remembering how he got there, but that’s fine. He’s here for only two reasons, and the first is easy. He drops his backpack to the floor and shrugs off his winter jacket, tearing open the locker and carefully hanging his coat by the tag to avoid warping the fabric. No one actually keeps their backpacks in their lockers, so he closes it loudly after that and presses one hip against it to stare out into the crowd.

He can feel him before he can see him, like a tiny sun with a flow of energy that radiates from him in the form of soft, comfortable heat. He steps within his radius and a switch in Craig’s brain is flipped, and one by one the colors start to flood back into his vision. He can now clearly see just how ugly that shade of green is and question why anyone would ever want to wear that somewhat regularly in the winter. That red clashes with her hair dye. He doesn’t know where to begin with him.

His right side is leaning into cool metal while his left side is hearing the very beginning of a symphony orchestra tickle his ear, and he’s not wearing headphones anymore. Craig doesn’t have to look to know. He can feel the growth of flowering vines blooming from a familiar heart, green and shocking yellow, from here. The vines start to dance in his peripherals, like a frame to the picture that’s playing out in front of him. A body brushes up against his left side, instantly warming it, and Craig’s insides begin to melt from the heat.

“Did you see Eric’s new hat?” the voice he adores mutters, bitter as the coffee he’s sure to have in at least one hand. “Atrocious,” he sneers, and Craig hums his agreement.

“I wouldn’t expect any better. Did you see-”

“God, yes, you’re talking about Heidi’s scarf, right? Those colors don’t go together in any universe.” He shivers, probably half in disgust and half involuntary, his side pressing even closer to Craig’s, and he’s not complaining. His chest is feeling so hot, his heart turned to soup, and the affection he has for this body that hasn’t even looked at him yet is all-consuming.

“They’re ‘complicated’ again,” Craig mentions.

The sun scoffs. “No they’re not. They’re barely together in the first place. I give them a week before that status changes to either ‘in a relationship’ or ‘single.’”

Craig smirks, chuckling via a heavy breath through the nose that he knows is recognizable as a laugh, but maybe only to him. “I’m betting on ‘single.’”

“They’re so co-dependent it’s ridiculous. You’re going to lose, y-you know,” the sun, his sun, insists, and he laughs a bit more for real this time. He doesn’t have to look to know he’s smiling now too, because he can feel it in his bones when their hands clasp together. The essence of his spirit drips into his veins like a poison, but the good kind, and one he would happily die to. As it rushes up his arm and straight into his heart, it warms every inch of him to the core. He lets out another sigh, but this one isn’t bad. The energy has simply given him more air than he needs in his lungs, and with his heart stopped, he doesn’t need it expanding his chest anymore.

They stand side by side for a moment, watching the sea of people wade around them like an obstacle course. Craig knows they’re catching the same faux pas, even when they aren’t verbalizing them. He has on the scarf Craig has called his favorite before, and it’s true, it is a favorite. It’s just the right shade of heather grey to complement his pea coat. He’s adorable in a pea coat.

The first warning bell sounds overhead, telling Craig that he needs to let go of the hand he hasn’t looked at yet and go to class, and the thought nearly breaks his heart. His partner grunts at it. Craig squeezes their fingers together once more, for good luck. “I hate Tuesdays,” he adds, as is customary, and as he’s sure he’s heard a million times before from his own lips.

“I know, right?” he responds, and the moment Craig feels him turn his head he copies him so that they’re catching each other’s eyes. “There’s so much left of the week; I can’t stand it.”

His name is shouted at him from within his head, over and over, ‘Tweek Tweek Tweek,’ and each repetition feels like a new hymn. Craig is grateful for the ability to see color only when he looks into the hazel-green of his boyfriend’s eyes, takes in the rich brown of the freckles that dust his nose and pock everywhere else, and the rosy tint of his cheeks from his own trek outside no less than ten minutes prior. Tweek is artistic perfection, with his long nose and wide round eyes and high cheekbones. Tweek is everything Craig could ever look for in a model for his photography, and so his portfolio reads less like a college application and more like an extended love letter. At worst, he will have proof of how much he adores him, though it’s hardly a worst. At best, he’ll be accepted to every university he applies to next month.

“You got your phone?” Craig asks, because Tweek forgets it some days, the quietest his phone ever gets. Tweek nods though, and he’s a little relieved. School passes faster when he has sloppy texts to read under his desk. The teachers know they’re texting but don’t care much to stop them anymore. Detention never matters anyway, because they just both end up in it for the same crime, and they spend an entire fifty minutes doing nothing but stare at each other.

It’s why Craig feels so confident he’s memorized the curve of his brow, the hook of his nose, the shell of his ears and how they stick out slightly. He knows exactly where all six of Tweek’s cowlicks are located on his scalp. He can trace them like a children’s activity book the same way he can trace the moles on his back on Sunday mornings, slow and lazy with a gentle index finger he hopes can transfer love without words. He knows it can but it’s never, ever enough.

Craig blinks when he hears the second bell ring, and he realizes he is still standing in the hallway with their fingers intertwined, the floors nearly empty save for the occasional speedwalking student who cares about attendance. They’re always late to their first classes; this ritual is crucial to Craig’s day, and he swears he can’t survive a Tuesday without it.

Tweek squeezes his hand gently and tugs on it, pulling at Craig’s marionette strings that he has always had wrapped around his fingertips. It is a silent command that Craig obeys, and he leans down to kiss his forehead, but snags a peck to the tip of his nose too. Tweek’s smile is the sun again, blinding him, and then their hands are disconnected, and it’s so unbearably cold. “See you at lunch,” Tweek says, and Craig nods, flexing his empty fingers to shake away their fidgeting at the lack of contact they so desperately desire. Tweek gets on the tips of his toes to kiss him and it blesses him, and Craig can feel vines blooming from his own lips, transferred in the contact. They snake through his body and plant flowers in his stomach, fill his brain with sweet nectar and his lungs with fresh water. He’s drowning, but it’s nice, so he accepts his fate.

Tweek takes his first steps away and Craig feels like his heart may as well be breaking, he’s so obsessed. God, is he obsessed, but he doesn’t care. “I love you,” he says, and Tweek turns, and his brilliance is so unsurpassed he wants to sob.

“I love you too,” he replies, and he walks away to his first period English class. As he walks, the change is gradual, and Craig’s heart is sinking and his stomach fills with lead. The green of the posters on the wall and the bright orange of the senior lockers fade slowly, slowly, until everything is muted again and nothing is beautiful. It’s because Tweek takes the beauty with him, Craig’s sure, and he’s never given it back. God help him if he ever loses him, because he’s not sure he’d survive without color. It is the life around him, and it grows from Tweek through his wandering vines and yellow rays of sunshine and green irises. It is everything.

Craig picks up his backpack, slings it over one shoulder, and only begins walking away when his sun turns the corner and the last of the sunrise blinks away from him. He trudges to history, his red converse dulled to maroon, and he sighs, because it’s Tuesday, and he hates Tuesdays.

Lunch never comes soon enough, but at least the pulses of rainbows that radiate from his pocket with each text can carry him through.

[benito-cereno]

A story for All Saints’ Day

I technically made it! In some time zones!

Anyway, some people told me on Twitter they might be interested in reading some original prose fiction from me. Welp, I hope you weren’t lying!

Here is a story I originally wrote as a comic script (that you may have heard me talk about) that I have adapted into a short story. This is only part one! I will be posting additional parts in the days to come, as this story is an appropriate one for these liminal days between the Halloween and Christmas seasons.

Please read and share! Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call my story

The Further Adventures of Santa Claus, chapter 1: The Saint Comes to Wallachia (part one)

“I've never been so bored and excited at the same time in my entire life,” the child said. Her nose was pressed against the frosty window pane, where her breath created a ghostly fog on the glass. It was only late afternoon, but the darkness stretched out its inky fingers pretty early in these days around the solstice, giving the child a sense that it was much later than it actually was.

“Hmm?” The child’s tutor cocked up an eyebrow, not even looking up from the stack of papers he was correcting. The child’s facility for boredom extended such that she was sufficiently behind on schoolwork that her tutor had to come out deep into what would normally be a winter break for both of them.

The child turned from the window, wiping the condensation of her own breath off the tip of her nose. “Well, you know. I'm really excited that it's Christmas Eve and everything, but I don't have anything to do to kill time until it gets here!” She slumped down into a chair, but rather than stopping at chair’s edge such as a person intent on sitting comfortably might do, she let her forward momentum cause her to continue sliding past the edge of her seat and onto the floor until she pooled there languidly, as if the sheer presence of boredom had leeched all the calcium from her bones and only a puddle of girl remained. “I wish I could watch TV. The new Shelfy Elf Christmas special is coming on tonight!”

“First of all,” the tutor said, finally looking up from the pile of risibly incorrect math assignments and glowering somewhat over the rims of his glasses, “I would rather watch a YouTube video from the future inerrantly predicting my own death than Shelfy Elf. But more importantly, you know you’re not allowed to watch TV until we finish getting through all this schoolwork.” He smirked a little, noticing the child had stopped listening somewhere mid-sentence, instead staring at the ceiling and blowing bubbles with her own spit. “I hope you asked Santa for even one ounce of attention span for Christmas.”

The spit bubble popped silently. “What?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just sit still until I get through these papers. The more you squirm and the more you change the subject, the longer this takes.” The tutor turned back to the paper and briskly circled a series of unreduced fractions. Something like a shadow seemed to cross his brow and he paused, pen mid-stroke. “Although…”

“What? What? Can we stop? Can I watch Shelfy Elf?” the child asked, almost too expectantly.

“Not in a million years. But! Maybe there’s something that might provide you with a brief entertainment and also technically fall under the auspices of your cultural and historical education.”

“You had me at ‘entertainment’ and lost me at ‘education’,” the child said, resuming a slumped position in the chair. “I’d rather watch you circle fractions than hear a history story. No offense, but history is for dumb people who are boring, like you.”

“Cool, cool. Cool cool cool,” the tutor deflected. “What if this story was a ghost story?”

The child’s curiosity was mildly piqued; her suspicion somewhat moreso. “Why would you tell a ghost story on Christmas Eve?”

The tutor set down his pen and closed the math book, himself palpably relieved at the change of subject. “Telling ghost stories used to be a common occurrence at Christmas. The Christmas season is cold and dark, scary and dangerous. If you think about it, caroling is a lot like trick or treating, and it used to be even closer than it is now.” He took off his glasses and wiped them with the cuff of his sweater sleeve. “Plus, you know, just like they say in that song: ‘there’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of old glories of Christmases long, long ago’? Right?”

The look on the child’s face was blanker than the answer spaces after the extra credit questions on her vocabulary quiz. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The tutor smiled resignedly at this common refrain that he had heard many times in his years working with the child. “Don’t worry about it.” He replaced his glasses on his face and rubbed his chin. “I tell you what. I’ll make sure the story is appropriate for Christmas, what do you say?”

“With Santa in it?”

“Sure, of course.”

The child pressed her luck. “With Shelfy Elf in it?”

The tutor patted the child on the head. “I would sooner die. Now sit back. I know just the story.”

And here is the story he told:

Many people know that Santa Claus' true name is St. Nicholas, but most don't know anything more than that. St. Nicholas was a bishop from the town of Myra, in the province of Lycia in Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey. He lived during the late third century CE through the early fourth century CE, a time when Hellenistic culture was very strong in his region.

Since he is venerated today as the saint of sailors, some people posit that Nicholas worked as a boatman himself, though it is more likely that his parents were very affluent and owned the fishing fleet rather than worked for it. It is said that, on a trip back to Myra from studying in Alexandria, Nicholas saved the life of a young sailor in a storm. When the pair arrived back in Myra, Nicholas took the man to the local church, where the bishop had just died, and the church elders were seeking a replacement.

As Nicholas prayed, the sailor overheard the men saying that God had instructed them in a dream to find a “man of victory.” As it happens, the name Nicholas is derived from the Greek words “nike,” meaning “victory,” and “laos,” meaning “people,” meaning that Nicholas would bring the people to a great victory over evil. The sailor did not hesitate to tell the church fathers how his life was bravely saved by the actions of one “Nike-laos,” and Nicholas was promptly made bishop of Myra.

In his time as bishop, Nicholas became known for his great and anonymous generosity, often perpetrated under the cover of night, as well as a large number of miracles. But given the state of the world at that time, perhaps Nicholas' greatest miracle was dying of old age, peacefully in his own bed, on December 6, 343 CE. His body was laid at his church in Myra, which became a popular center for pilgrimage. His tomb was said to secrete manna, a holy liquid with potent healing abilities, making the shrine all the more desirable.

In the year 1087, sailors from Bari in Italy took advantage of the confusion arising from a recent raid by the Turkish Seljuks to get the monks from Nicholas' shrine to show them the relics and body of the saint. The sailors opened the tomb and returned with the saint's remains back to Bari, where a new church was built, and where Nicholas' bones lie to this day.

Or so most people think. While the details of what happened following the translation of the saint’s relics are unclear, the facts are these: the tomb continued and continues to this day to produce manna, that pure liquid with powerful healing properties, and soon after the disturbance of the tomb and its resettling in Italy in 1087, children began seeing Saint Nicholas roaming the world each year on the anniversary of his death, leaving candy, nuts, fruits, and toys in their shoes. Whether these two facts are connected is up to you to decide.

At any rate, it was under these circumstances that the saint found himself traveling through the snow-shrouded woods of Eastern Europe one December 5 in the 15th century. As he had done in his former life, he traveled under cover of darkness astride his mighty white steed to give gifts to his favorite people in the world, children. By this time, he had acquired a helper: a woodland god forced into obsolescence by the advent of Christianity to his old Northern home, and tamed by the miraculous power of Nicholas himself. The great, wild god. The Krampus.

And so it was that the unlikely pair found themselves this Saint Nicholas Eve in the voivodeship of Wallachia. As Nicholas’s horse crunched softly through the crust of the untouched snow with each step, the Krampus sniffed the air with suspicion and snorted a substantial cloud of steam into the cuttingly cold night. The saint looked around him to see what his bestial companion had noticed that his human--though saintly--eyes had failed to notice. As the brisk winter wind blew the black velveteen clouds away from the frame of the moon, the milky white light was given purchase on what the saint had previously believed to be the trees of the Wallachian forest.

Instead what he found was a forest of rotting bodies impaled upon tall spikes planted throughout the forest. Though the bodies had largely by this point become food for crows, nevertheless the small size of many of them made clear that whoever had committed such a deed had few scruples about whom he wanted to make an example of.

Saint Nicholas turned his head in both sadness and disgust. “I must say, Krampus,” he said in resignation, “I don’t think we’ll find many good children in this country.” The Krampus snorted in agreement.

The pair soon emerged from the woods and across the snowy plain their eyes landed upon a wondrously princely court, complete with an imposing tower lording over the surrounding area. The saint also noticed a somewhat ostentation cathedral within the walls of the court as well, though he wondered how much use it truly received. The silhouette of this stark, gothic fortress cut a somewhat frightening figure upon the night sky, but a bright orange glow from the windows and a bounty of smoke pouring out of the palace hall suggested perhaps it was somewhat cheerier on the inside.

“However,” Saint Nicholas remarked dryly, “it looks as if this humble dwelling has left the light on for us.”

(more soon)