#and cove LITERALLY has like. thirty moments AND the in betweens | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chaseatinydream · 4 years ago

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pirate king (5) || atz

“You need to eat.”

Seonghwa nudges a bowl of fish stew towards you. It's piping hot and steaming, you cradle it gratefully with your fingers.

Since you’ve woken up in San’s cabin a few days ago, you’ve taken a few days under the Treasure’s healer’s care to recover from the fever brought on by your infection. San has been nothing but kind to you, even allowing you to sit in the sickbay and watch him while he tends to patients.

Many of the pirates come in and out for check ups on previous wounds, a healing sword gash, an amputated finger. You watch the healer bustle about at work, speaking in a soft, quiet tone when tending to them and making silly jokes to distract them from the pain. His dimpled smile and silly behaviour is somewhat familiar to you now, you can even recognise his whistling from the cabin. Maybe it’s because he is the only person you have on this ship, so you stick to San’s side as much as possible.

The Treasure has already left the cove, sailing out into the open sea once more. San tells you that they are sailing along the coast of Hispaniola to reach Tortuga, but these waters are close to the pirate town Tortuga and the Royal Navy fleets patrol the area to sink any unsuspecting pirates. Their captain has chosen to stay further from land, where the Navy’s fleets can conceal themselves from sight and carry out an ambush on them.

When San brought you onto the main deck the last few days so you could stretch your limbs and breathe some fresh air, all you’ve seen for miles is blue, unending ocean. Being able to walk freely on deck with San’s conversation instead of Mingi’s watchful eye is one of your few joys on this ship.

Today, however, San wants Seonghwa to bring you onto deck.

Your chest is bound, of course, and San swears that no one else on board besides him knows that you are a woman. Women are considered bad luck on ships, and even though San has reassured you that Hongjoong doesn’t believe in silly superstitions, you’d rather not give him another reason to toss you to the sharks. San has agreed to keep your secret, but still, with Seonghwa supporting you, he might notice something.

“Seonghwa’s smart, but when it comes to stuff like this, he can be pretty blind. Don’t worry about it too much.” San had told you in the morning. You decide to trust him on this.

So you take the fish stew in your hands and drink it. You were surprised at first, you thought pirates would have terrible cooking skills, but Seonghwa’s food has always been rich, hearty and filling. With his intense stare on you as you eat, however, you find it difficult to swallow the food.

“Is there something you need?” You ask after narrowly avoiding choking for the third time. Seonghwa’s expression is unreadable, unnerving. You don’t expect anything good to leave his mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

At that, you do choke and Seonghwa immediately panics, grabbing a cloth from his pocket and offering it to you. You wave it away, hacking and thumping your chest, careful to avoid where the tiny crystal rests underneath the oversized tunic San lent you.

“What for?” You cough as you set down the bowl, reaching for a mug of green tea on the table. As much as you disliked the drink at first, after being force fed it by San so many times, you’ve come to enjoy its mild, earthy flavour. Seonghwa inhales deeply, as if preparing to say something life altering.

“I’d like to apologize for not noticing your wound sooner.” He bows his head in genuine apology, much to your shock. “I should have realised that you were injured and reported it to Hongjoong earlier. If I did, you wouldn't have fallen ill-”

You're so dumbstruck that you simply stare at him with your mouth hanging wide open. Yeah, he didn't notice, but it wasn't his fault at all. Even if he had noticed, and hadn't done anything to help you, you couldn't blame him. He wasn't obligated to help you in any way.

“It's alright.” You try to cover up your confusion by taking another spoonful of fish stew. “It wasn't your fault. I don't blame you.”

“I wanted to make it up to you, so will you allow me to walk you around deck today? I saw San helping you and thought I might be able to assist in the same way.”

What on earth is wrong with this man? He owes you nothing. How can anyone be so… kind? You were literally nothing more than a stowaway he found on ship, not someone he needed to repay a debt to. But from the determined glint in his eye, he wasn't about to take no for an answer.

“Thank you, then.” You manage to reply hesitantly. It's probably the fastest way to get this done and over with.

Draining the stew, you rise to your feet, and you see Seonghwa move to support your side. He gives you a kind smile. “Are you ready to go?”

Holy shit, this man…

“Yeah…” You clear your throat uncomfortably as he slings one of your arms around his shoulders. They're a little broader than San's, more muscled under his black shirt, and one of his hands come to rest on your side.

Step by step, he carefully moves you towards the door, nudging it open with his foot. The sunlight hits you in the face, and you blink rapidly to clear your sight.

“Clean the cannons properly! I don't want to see a single speck of gunpowder on them, understood?”

“Trim the sails, wind from starboard!”

You're bombarded with activity the moment you step onto the main deck. Pirates rush about, some cleaning out the long barrels of the cannons, some scrubbing down the deck and some mending torn sails. It's strangely domestic, and you can't help but snort at the image of these so called bloodthirsty pirates. Then you remember their captain and you shiver.

“Are you feeling cold?” Seonghwa's concern unnerves you. You shake your head desperately.

“No! I just uhhh…. felt some wind!” You're tempted to smack yourself in the face for your blatant stupidity. “Let's continue moving, shall we?”

He brings you to the front of the ship, where you can see sea waves crashing against the ship's wooden plants in sprays of white. For a moment, you look up and forget that you’re on a ship, all you see is the sun hovering over the horizon and blue sea rolling onwards. You close your eyes and breathe in the warm, salty air, it brings you peace.

“The Treasure is a beautiful ship, isn’t it?”

Your eyes snap open to look at him. Seonghwa has turned around to watch the crew at work on the deck, the smile on his face soft and fond. You know next to nothing about ships, but you do admit she’s very graceful with her pale blue sails and the sheer size of the ship is undoubtedly impressive. You nod.

“I think it is.”

Seonghwa smiles warmly at you then, leaning against the rails of the bulwarks with a happy, content gaze. “She’s a three masted frigate ship, a hundred and three feet long and thirty feet wide. It was one of the Royal Navy’s prides, until Hongjoong single handedly stole it from them without force and repurposed it into a pirate ship of his own.” He gestures at the other end of the ship.

“That’s called the stern. We’re at the bow. When you’re facing the bow of the ship, the right is called the starboard and the left is called port.” The cook tells you. That clears things up from you. Every time you hear someone (especially Mingi) call out ‘wind coming from port’, you think that you’re finally approaching land, but no.

“Thanks for telling me.” You tell him and he nods. You’re not sure why he’s telling you all this, but you suppose that’s his way of trying to make up for something he didn’t do.

“We’re currently on the forecastle deck, and that’s the main deck.” He points a finger at where the main activity is happening. “Above the captain’s cabin is the quarterdeck.”

“Where the captain is.” You mutter under your breath. “I’ll be sure to steer clear of it.”

You didn’t intend for Seonghwa to hear it, but he does anyway. He pauses for a moment, chewing at his bottom lip, eyes flicking between you and the quarterdeck. You start to worry if Seonghwa is unhappy that you’re almost insulting his captain, but then he speaks.

“Don’t take captain personally.” He tries to reassure you, putting a hand on your shoulder. “He does believe that you’re one of the Royal Navy, so you can’t blame him for being cautious. A few years ago, we bargained for one of the most accurate nautical charts in the navy’s possessions and the Navy has been after us ever since. Hongjoong’s worried about it, so he’s cautious of any new stranger on board. Deep down, he really is a kind person at heart.”

Seonghwa’s eyes are so pleading, as if he’s genuinely upset by the thought that you could dislike his captain. You can’t find it in yourself to outright tell him you think his captain is a menace who wouldn’t so much as bat an eyelash if you were tossed overboard this moment and got eaten by sharks. In fact, he might even find it in him to dance a little jig.

“Umm...” Is all you manage in reply. You’re such a smooth talker, you could cry. Seonghwa looks a little disappointed that you don’t believe him, but he gives you a small, understanding smile.

“It’s alright if you don’t see it now.” He says gently, turning to look at the waves with you. “I’m sure you will, eventually. That’s what happened to me too.”

You raise an eyebrow. From what you can see, Seonghwa is nothing like his captain. Even as a pirate, he’s kind hearted, gentle and compassionate. His captain, on the other hand, is exactly like the scourge of the seas.

Then you hesitate for a moment, eyes flickering over to the man beside you. He notices it before you can drop your gaze.

“Is there anything you want to ask? I don’t mind.”

You ask away.

“Do you know who brought me to the sickbay?”

Seonghwa frowns, racking his memory. “It wasn't San? If that's the case, I don't have any idea either. I'm sorry I don't have the answer to your question.”

“It's alright.” You rush to reassure him. “Actually, I have another question. Why did you become a pirate?”

The man suddenly tenses at your question, fingertips digging into the wood of the bulwark railings until his knuckles turn white. You can see his eyes darken ever so slightly and in a single breath he looks like he’s aged a decade, barely restrained pain dancing across his face like the result of a reopened wound.

“You don’t need to answer if you feel uncomfortable.” You rush to amend. The air feels like it’s turned to ice, goosebumps racing over your skin. Seonghwa shakes his head, his tightly wound muscles slowly relaxing under his dark shirt as he eases his grip on the railing.

“No… It’s just a bad memory.” He exhales, but you can hear the lump in his throat. “I didn’t join out of choice.”

Your eyes go wide. “The captain kidnapped you?”

“No!” Seonghwa rushes to stop you, biting his lower lip. “When I was young, my family was killed on suspicion of hiding pirates by the Royal Navy.”

Ahh, the Royal Navy which you’ve heard so much about. The bane of the pirates… who you’re supposed to be.

“That’s sad.” Is all you say.

Seonghwa gives you a weak smile that doesn’t seem quite real, but continues his story anyway. “I managed to escape onto a ship in the harbour… which happened to be the Treasure.”

So it’s somewhat similar to what you’ve experienced so far. Maybe that’s why he’s been treating you more kindly than what you’d expect.

“I’ve been with Captain and the crew ever since.” Seonghwa adds seriously, but there’s a happier, content spark to his eyes. You can hear the little bounce in his voice when he speaks of the crew and the ship. They must be close.

The feeling in your chest that has been there ever since you’ve stepped aboard this ship only grows. It’s alien, unnerving. You don’t recognize it.

You turn away from Seonghwa to stare at the horizon in the distance. For some reason, every time you look at the sea, you’re immediately calmed, the storms of your heart ceasing to nothing but white noise at the back of your mind.

But this time, a small niggling feeling encroaches on your usual sense of calm.

Something cold creeps over your lungs and heart, an unexplainable anticipation and fear. It only grows bigger, more real, and for some reason, you feel like the reason of your distress is only growing closer.

Your head jerks to the left. Your eyes furiously scan the sea you are travelling upon, the dark blue that rushes underneath the ship, but you can’t see anything. Then your breath catches in your throat.

There’s a low groan. It starts off soft at first, but grows in volume gradually until the sound is ringing in your ears. It’s soul wrenching, full of anguish and so desperate like a crying child calling out for his mother that your chest throbs painfully in response to the sound.

Then you hear it.

Come back…

You almost jump in terror. The words aren’t in any language you speak, but you know their meaning clear as glass. The one behind the groan is searching for something, no… someone.

Where did you go?

Your breath suddenly shorten into pants. For another second, you’re heart wrenchingly terrified, almost as much as the time you were running for your life from the Royal Navy. Seonghwa must notice something, because he taps you on the shoulder, his face worried.

“Is something wrong?”

You stare at him in shock. “Do you not hear that noise?”

At your words, his brows furrow. “What noise?”

Why did you leave?

You almost squeak with fright, your hands clapping over your ears. “That noise!”

Seonghwa frowns in concern, reaching out to support you once again. “You must be hearing things because of your head injury.” He tries to reason with you gently, pulling you towards the sickbay. “Come on, let’s get you back to San so he can give you a check up-”

Where are you, Sǣr?

The last word is a scream, a cry of fury and distress. What is Sǣr? Then all of a sudden, you see it.

“There!” You drag Seonghwa with you by the wrist to the bow of the ship, as far as you can go, all blood draining from your face. “Look!”

He strains his eyes, peering out into the horizon and shielding his eyes from the sun. The glare reflecting off the ocean waves make it difficult to see and he doesn’t notice anything different than usual. No ship sails on the horizon, no cause for danger. When he wants to turn around and ask you what you see, you point into the water, right into the distance.

“It’s in the sea!” You shout at him, almost hysterical with fear. Why can’t he see it? “It’s coming!”

Thank the heavens for their grace because Seonghwa doesn’t call you crazy and toss you into the sickbay. He stares in the direction you direct him for a few long, agonizing seconds, before you see his eyes going almost unnaturally wide with horror and his mouth falling open.

The sight might have been comical if you hadn’t been on the verge of wetting your pants in terror.

It’s a massive, dark shape moving underwater, right beneath the surface. It’s still a considerable distance from the Treasure, but at the speed it’s moving, it’ll be upon you in mere minutes. You have no idea what kind of monstrous beast it could be, but you definitely don’t want to find out. Neither does Seonghwa, apparently, because he turns around and sprints across the main deck for the captain’s cabin.

You watch, adrenaline pumping through your veins, as he snatches up an iron bar and hammer, wasting no time in striking it with all the force he has.

The sound rings across the ship and immediately the whole ship ceases activity, waiting in anticipation for a command. Mingi leaps down from the quarter deck in one smooth movement, not even bothering with the stairs. Seonghwa shouts something at him that you can’t quite hear over the distance and the quartermaster dashes up to the forecastle deck to you, boots pounding on the wooden planks.

“Where is it?” Is all he rasps out, eyes scouring the horizon for a glimpse of it. This time, you have no problem locating it, your eyes almost instinctively drawn to its shape. You point at it, and it must be a lot closer and bigger than before, because Mingi sees it almost immediately and his face goes ashen.

“All hands on deck!” Mingi bellows at the crew, who leap into action at once. “Raise the mizzen sail and ready the cannons! We’re going to sail a port beam reach to the wind!”

In front of you, a flurry of activity breaks out over the ship. Along the bulwarks, you see men rushing to untie the cannons which had been previously secured to the main deck, powder monkeys running out from below deck with small white bags of what you assume to be gunpowder. There’s a snapping sound as the massive square sail of the third sail comes down, and you grab for the railing as the Treasure almost flies forward at a speed that seems impossible for such a massive ship.

“Yunho, trim the sails!”

The tall man slides down from the crow’s nest on one of the sheet ropes, landing as nimbly as a cat on the deck. He leads a team of men in hauling on the sheets, tightening them as them prepare to sail perpendicular to the wind.

San joins you at the bow. “It’s big.” He comments about the growing shape dryly. “Probably about two or three times bigger than the ship.”

He’s understating. The monster looks like it could eat the Treasure for breakfast.

“We're travelling at six knots!” You hear someone call from the other side of the ship. Mingi shakes his head furiously.

“Tighten the sheets! We need to move faster than twenty knots!”

“What's a knot?” You ask San.

“A nautical mile per hour.” The healer answers, never taking his eyes off the sea monster. “We measure the ship's speed with a device called the common log.The speed of the ship is said to be the number of knots counted.”

“And do you know what's chasing us?”

San eyes you with a disgruntled stare. Even the ever calm healer seems a little unnerved. “You could always go overboard and find out.”

“We're gaining in speed!” A man at the starboard shouts, leaning over the rail. “Nine knots now!”

There's a groaning of rope as the sails pivot on their masts to catch the wind, Yunho shouting commands to the sail trimming crew. The ship angles to the left, diverging from its original course.

“Where are we headed?” You swallow uneasily. San shrugs, no more knowledgeable than you.

“Yeosang is trying to find somewhere along the coast we can go ashore or hide from the monster.” He squints at the dark shadow as the ship continues to sail away from the monster. “It may not even be chasing us specifically.”

The dark shape changes course as well, moving right for the ship.

“Well that's a reassuring thought.” You gulp. There's a intent to the massive creature, in the way it moves. No doubt, it's heading for the ship and from how it looks even bigger than before, it's gaining on them.

“Thirteen knots!” The same man bellows, his voice almost breaking in fear. Mingi curses under his breath.

“We're losing ground.” He swears rather colourfully. “Hongjoong-hyung needs to sail a beam reach or we have no chance of outrunning that thing. I predict it's moving at about twenty five knots and that's nearly impossible for us even with a strong wind.”

“What happens if the wind gives out on us?” You mutter to yourself, but Mingi hears you.

“It won't.” The quartermaster replies with a sort of assured confidence, as if he is stating fact. “Not with Captain around.”

You want to argue that the captain can't control the skies, but it seems insistent on proving you wrong. The ship suddenly surges forward with a burst of speed, the bow slicing the sea before them. You're thrown off balance for a moment but manage to hang onto San for dear life. He barely notices your added weight on his arm.

“Hongjoong-hyung has the blessing of a sea god on him.” Mingi tells you bluntly as his eyes continue following the movements of the sea monster. “Usually we rarely encounter any threats of nature on the ocean, but I suppose there's a first time for everything.”

“A sea god?” You repeat skeptically. San nods seriously.

“Even Hongjoong-hyung himself didn't believe it. But there's a pulse around him, a positive, protective energy that reflects the sea and keeps him safe from most storms. Someone drew power from it to place a blessing upon him.”

“Let's hope it's enough to save us.” You mutter nervously as the dark shape draws even closer. The ship is almost skimming the waves now, flying with the wind as it angles towards the left.

“Twenty six knots!”

There's a massive cheer from the ship, but their happiness is cut short when the dark shape puts on a burst of speed, moving towards them with some kind of sinister intent.

Mingi lets out a growl.

“Wooyoung, fire the cannons!”

A young man with striking purple hair leaps to a cannon, as do the rest of the gun crews. He adjusts the cannon, moving it about a swiveling platform before locking it in place with a lever.

“Fire!” His voice rings out and one of the crew hands him a piece of burning slip. He touches it to the cannon.

“Fire in the hole!”

“Cover your ears.” San advises you serenely, his own hands clasped over his ears. You follow suit just before you hear a sound like a massive thunderclap that threatens to split the sky in half.

Jumping into the air, you yelp as you feel your ears ringing at the noise. Your eyes, however, trace the almost too fast flight of the cannonball as it streaks across the sky and smashes into the ocean with incredible force.

There's a moment of silence.

Then a pained roar, so loud and so enraged that every pirate on the deck almost quakes in fear. Then you hear Yunho call from the rigging.

“Land sighted!”

Your eyes follow his, and you spot a cove with narrow opening, likely too small for the sea monster to enter. So that was their plan.

“This is a dangerous plan.” San murmurs to himself. You look at him worriedly.

“Why? From what I see, it's our best option.”

The healer exhales, frowning. “Yes it is, but we're in Navy infested waters and now we're heading for land, where it'll be difficult for us to catch wind and leave. After that cannon shot, every ship in a ten mile radius would have heard us.”

“But we don't have a choice.” You try to reason. San nods reluctantly.

“That's the problem.”

The ship nears the tiny cove, a narrow passage surrounded on all sides by rocky cliffs. The captain, once again, steers his ship through without the slightest bit of fear, as if he's one with the ship. The sides of the ship barely scrape the walls of cove opening, and once you're through, the crew let out a ateezmassive cheer of relief.

The dark shape presses against the mouth of the cove for a moment, as if trying to squeeze it's way in. You watch with bated breath as the monster hovers there, before letting out an immense roar that shakes the very masts of the ship and causes the treasure to rock back and forth unsteadily, a quivering shadow in the deep.

For a brief second, you suddenly see it and your breathing cuts off in a gasp of realization.

It's staring at you, just like before. A colossal shape that glows a brilliant crimson, the colour of blood.

There's another seething roar that causes the sails to shake in the wind and the crew to rush to cover their ears before the shadow vanishes into the depths, as abruptly as it has come.

The crew aboard the ship break out in cheers and hollers of excitement, but you merely slump against the rails of the bulwark, hands trembling as you try to come to terms with what you have just realised.

It was the eye from your dream.

#ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fanfiction #ateez hongjoong #ateez seonghwa #ateez yunho #ateez yeosang #ateez jongho #ateez san #ateez mingi #ateez wooyoung #ateez pirate king #w; pirate king #w; fanfiction #w; ot8

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phcking-detective · 4 years ago

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FOUND

Find Familiar: ch 1

Rating: E

Summary: Nines cast the spell Find Familiar, but instead of an animal, they accidentally summoned a werewolf. Gavin is just happy to have finally found his mate and start pack bonding with the half-elf wizard. His best idea for a fun bonding activity? Touching his dick of course!

***

Gavin wakes up with a warm, breathing body pressed against his own, and it's all he ever wanted.

Then reality seeps in like cold rain and he realizes it's just the one person, not a dog pile, because he doesn't have a pack. Only a wizard who maybe sort of magically owns him now.

So that's a great start to the morning.

He gets a stew started like he promised, once he finds some potatoes and carrots, one lonely haunch of meat in an icebox, and no spices beyond salt. There aren't many places to look, since the whole room is five, maybe six hundred square feet.

Gods. Gavin's a lone wolf living half-feral without a tent or even a fire half the time, and he still thinks this is pathetic.

He knows better than to touch any of the books scattered around—fucking wizards—so he doesn't try to clean anything while he waits for his new … boss? Alpha?? person, to wake up.

(He does risk moving a stack of papers to sit in front of the black leather collar on the desk. Not hidden. Just. Out of sight.)

"No celery?" the wizard asks.

Gavin bites down on a flinch and a few choice swears. Sweet Selûne shift him. Who the fuck goes from asleep to awake completely silent like that?

"No," he growls.

Nines blinks themself more awake. "Is your negative an agreement to my question or simply a negative?"

"Baby, I have no idea what the fuck you mean, but there's not any celery."

"Oh. Thank you."

The conversation ends there when he dishes out a bowl of stew, that Nines eats at their desk, one agonizingly slow bite at a time, almost as an afterthought as they work on creating papers and papers of writing.

Since the wizard is so absorbed in their scribbles they can barely notice food, Gavin strips down and takes a bath. The water runs hot straight out of the faucet, even without any signs of pipes. Sinking into a whole tub of it feels goddamn luxurious.

He's half-shifted before he even realizes, but Nines probably wouldn't notice he got out and swung his dick around like a propeller, so he doesn't force himself back. His hybrid form always feels better anyway, the best of both animals, with human hands and wolf senses, still able to stand and walk upright but with stronger muscles and thicker protective body hair.

He's still sunk down and amusing himself by blowing bubbles in the water with his near-snout when Nines finally surfaces for air on their own side of the tower.

"Gav—oh."

They turn around and blink at him. Gavin hunkers down lower in the water and prepares to force himself back, but even without actively poking the bond, he can tell there isn't any fear or revulsion from the wizard. He still pulls his snout of out the water and scents the air just to check, but … nothing.

"Good. Yes. Feel free to utilize any of the …" Nines pauses, stuck on the words. "Accommodations. Can you read?"

It's probably a fair question—especially since the answer is barely—but Gavin still hauls himself out of the bathtub and onto the sand pit so Nines will have to look at him. All the scars, the body hair almost thick enough to be a pelt, the way his bone structure is clearly halfway between one form and the other right now.

But instead of making the wizard flinch away and stop asking questions, Nines just grabs a different notebook and begins sketching him.

"Why?" Gavin growls out.

He can still speak, but just like his amount of literacy, the amount is barely. With lots of effort.

"Hmm?"

Nines looks up. Sort of. They lift their head at least, but their eyes stay focused down on their notebook, reluctantly dragged up at the very last second.

"Mm? Oh. Yes, here is your contract," they say.

They place the small stack of papers they'd written onto the dining table in the center of the room, then the two of them meet in the middle, each awkwardly taking a seat across from each other at the table, then staring at each other even more awkwardly.

"That is my brother's seat," Nines says.

Gavin raises an eyebrow but doesn't move his ass out of it. At least he put pants on before sitting down.

"I have never had another visitor," the wizard continues. "So. That has always been …"

They trail off, then grab their notebook and begin reading from it.

"My name is Nines. I am a wizard. I am thirty-two year half-elf. I do not have a gender. I use they-them pronouns. Pause for—"

They stop abruptly and look back up at him.

"… Gavin," he says. "I'm a fighter, thirty-six, werewolf. Born, not turned, so we don't really keep track of any races. You're either a wolf or you're not. Probably human though. Uh, he-him."

If they don't bother with human binary genders, maybe they'd understand just … switching genders? He thinks about it while Nines writes down what he'd said, like anything he says is actually important enough to be recorded.

Maybe he should let them get a little more attached to him before he tells them about the other crazy, evil wizard with a claim on him—and all the transformations they'd done on his body.

"Does your entire pack consist of born lycanthropes?" they ask, drawing him back into the conversation.

"Can just say wolves," Gavin grumbles. "And yeah. Haven't taken in a stray for a while."

No one does. That's why he's still—ugh, stop it. Fucking feeling sorry for himself.

"Is there a significant cultural difference between born and turned … wolves?"

Gavin stares at the wizard. Significant cultural difference, Selûne shift and collar him.

"Turned wolves don't have a pack," he finally says. "No one to share the mental load—most of the poor fuckers don't even know what's happening until they're already shifted and scared and starving. They've got just enough instinct to go back home, and then the screaming and running starts …"

He assumes he doesn't have to finish it from there. A hungry wolf sees something run, and they think prey, not child.

"I apologize if I ask simple questions," Nines states while still writing. "But I have never had the opportunity to meet a wolf in person, and so my knowledge is likely biased and incorrect. Is a coastal environment a suitable habitat for you?"

Gavin shrugs. "Sure. You gonna let me run around outside at some point?"

"Yes, of course. You may come and go as you please," Nines says. "How much land will your pack need? I do own the surrounding—"

His pack? Gavin stares at Nines as they ramble on about this land they own and how it's too rocky to support farming but has access to a cove, and the ensuing treaty with the local pod of merfolk, and—

And his pack. He has no idea what game the wizard is playing, but he never imagined it would include letting him "come and go as you please" and providing land for his—

"I don't have a pack," he blurts out.

Nines stops and blinks at him.

"Got kicked out."

He doesn't explain. It's impossible to explain just one thing, because it's all tangled together, in his mind, the words stuck in his throat. Refusing his pack's Alpha, bargaining to have his body changed and transformed, his womb scooped out so he could never be bred, never ever—

And where exactly that got him. They sit together in silence for a long, horrible moment.

"No one has need of a ninth child," Nines finally says.

"You really call yourself that?" Gavin asks in return, for lack of anything less dick-ish to say.

"Yes." Nines looks at him without any self-pity and factually adds, "It states all that most need to know. They do not need me, and I do not need them."

Gavin nods. "Fuck 'em."

"Yes. Well. I—" Nines stops and abruptly pushes the small pile of paperwork closer to his side of the table. "Here is your contract. It details what I … do need. And, expectations. I suppose the fifth clause is no longer necessary, unless you intend to create your own."

"My own … pack?" Gavin asks slowly.

"Yes."

He snorts. "I'm not going to run around and start turning people."

"Yes, that is included in the clause," Nines says. "Subsection A. Not to offend, but I thought it best to lay out a certain number of precautions first. B notes that you will be beholden to all the same laws as any other citizen, and C states you will make adequate arrangements for the full moon with myself or Knight Commander Anderson."

Gavin pulls a face at the rank. That shit's almost definitely a paladin. No sense of humor, holier than thou, and allergic to critical thinking. Just because you pledged allegiance to a deity society deemed "Good" doesn't actually mean literally everything you do is always going to be right or kind or morally just.

"He is also a lycan—" Nines stops and corrects, "A turned wolf, you called it? If expecting the two of you to … have commonalities … is unreasonable, then the subsection can be adjusted accordingly. The point is merely that you arrange for a safe and secure location each month."

"Yeah, we're not going to sniff each other's butts and be best friends," Gavin tells him. "It's probably how you feel about sorcerers and warlocks. Magic just looks like magic to me, but—yeah."

He stops when he sees Nines's face collapse into itself in the purest form of affronted disgust he's ever seen. This time, he can't stop a chuckle before it slips out.

"I can just stay here though?" he asks.

Nines unfurls their face enough to nod. "Yes. My power may be my own, achieved through my own studies, but I was sent to the same monastery as my twin. I acknowledge you have been sent by my patron deity, and I will fulfill my responsibilities to you thusly."

Gavin's eyebrows shoot up. "You're religious?"

"I worship Selûne," Nines answers.

Gavin stares at the wizard.

"Children born under the full moon often have enhanced magical ability," they explain. "She is also the goddess of navigation, quests, and all who work by night. It was the battle with her own twin that caused the formation of Mystral, the goddess of all magic. Many arcane users still worship her as such."

"And werewolves," Gavin says as how this shit all happened clicks into place.

"Your duties outlined in the contract." Nines stops and clears their throat. "Every power has a price, and mine was enacted at my birth. I have always needed certain accommodations. I realize now a mere animal would not be enough to serve as my familiar, yet a person has never been summoned before. A familiar that is both animal and person, however …"

Gavin nods at the stack of papers. "So am I your familiar or your employee?"

"Well, both," Nines answers. "You are magically bound to me, but you obviously are not a simple animal. I have made adjustments due to these extenuating circumstances, but this is a standard contract for all minions, assistants, and others employed by wizards."

He snorts. "Do I have a union?"

"Yes, subsection E, although you will need to opt-in," Nines replies, very sincerely.

Gavin taps the top paper to make a point when he asks his next question, and the paper suddenly yells the word "HEREFORE" at him.

"Oh, my apologies." Nines takes the stack from him and scribbles a few marks in the top corner. "There, the volume should be properly adjusted."

Gavin cautiously slides the papers back over, being careful to only touch the sides of the stack. He takes the first page off the top and pokes his name, one of the few words he recognizes.

"Gavin," the paper announces.

"I have paperwork I must complete to officially register you as both my familiar and my new minion," Nines tells him. "I trust you can be left to your own devices to review our contract?"

"Yeah," Gavin says.

"Very good."

Nines gets up and returns to their desk. Still no collar, only … this contract. Gavin runs his finger along the first line.

"The entity known as Gavin, herefore referred to as THE FAMILIAR, will enter into a magically binding contract with Nines, herefore referred to as THE WIZARD, to serve in the capacities of both a FAMILIAR and a MINION, as outlined by the Wizard Coalition of …"

***

Gavin nuzzles into his bed and groans. Three days of barely stopping to hunt and sleep to get here, and now it's been another three days of slowly figuring each other out.

Which hasn't been bad or anything. He got to run around outside, do a few laps around the borders of Nines's land. Cold, wet, and rocky, but he has to admit, he's kind of digging the melodramatic sea-side vibe. The air smells like salt and storms all the time, crowding out all the memories of soft earth and dense forest.

And he's got a contract. A "boss." That's the word Nines wants to use, so Gavin says that, but they both know he means Alpha.

It's good to have a job, food, and a bed, blah blah blah, he's really grateful and all, it's just—

Maybe not everyone has them or wants to indulge in them, but Gavin does for both.

And it's been nearly a week.

"Nines," he finally says.

He pokes at their bond too for good measure. The wizard won't pay attention to him unless he does. They'll look up and point their face at his face, but somehow their hand will keep writing in the scroll and they won't hear a goddamn word he says.

Even with the mental prodding, Nines barely turns their head. "Hmm?"

"I need to jack off."

Nines keeps writing for half a second before they blink and actually look at him. "… now?"

Gavin half-shrugs, still laying down. "I mean, tonight, yeah."

He's a werewolf using testosterone cream—kept in a jar in his coin purse, which was much more important to enchant to shift with him than shoes—who just formed a mental pack bond again. Full moon already past or no, his hormones are screaming at him that he needs to fuck.

But that's probably not Nines's idea of a fun bonding activity.

"Do you have adequate lubrication?" Nines asks, then continues with narrowed eyes before he can even reply, "Do not use my spell components."

Gavin barks out a laugh. "What—I'm gonna jack it with oblex ooze? That'd melt my fucking dick off!"

"Yes, it would."

He pauses. "Do … you know that for sure?"

Nines sighs. Deeply. "I attended an academy meant to train paladins, clerics, and perhaps the odd druid."

"All the most repressed spellcasters, huh?"

Nines doesn't deny it. Gavin snorts, imagining all the magically-inclined tithe-children being told to keep themselves pure so they can be properly donated to the gods turning into magically-inclined teenagers hit with guilt and libido in equal measure—and all the idiot fuckery they probably got up to without any actual education about their bodies.

"Do you have adequate lubrication?" Nines asks again. "I do not keep supplies for that on hand."

"You don't keep supplies or you don't uh, keep anything on hand?" Gavin wiggles his eyebrows.

Nines flushes and glares like they're still a prefect at that academy. "I—that is not—"

Gavin raises his own hands to prove they're above the sheets. "If that's not any of my business, sure. Figured that, honestly. Which is why I'm telling you that I've got needs, but I can just go downstairs if you want."

"Downstairs?" Nines frowns less furiously.

"That little entranceway at the door is large enou—"

"I'm not going to send you out into the hall," Nines says, like that's what will make them clutch their pearls in shock. "You can stay in your own bed."

"Yeah?" Gavin gives the wizard a once over. "I'm good with that. So good. But what I'm willing to do with pack and what you think is appropriate for a roommate probably isn't the same thing."

Nines's frown turns more calculating, like they're correcting the runes in a spell. "We are discussing you staying in your bed to masturbate while I continue my studies, correct?"

"… yeah?"

"Are you going to call me names, attempt to touch me, or—"

"No, no," Gavin rushes to reassure them. "I can just …"

He moves his hand down and cups himself, just to demonstrate that he's only going to be touching his own body, before he remembers that's not socially acceptable around humans either. Nines only cocks their head to the side though, a mild curiosity leaking through their mental bond.

And fuck, just his hand feels good right now. It's been nearly a goddamn week.

"Do you have adequate lubrication?" Nines asks.

Gavin shivers under the sound of their voice. "Don't need it. Get wet enough myself."

He feels the bond pulse again with that academic sort of curiosity, like Nines is going to start taking notes on him again while he jacks off. He pushes his trousers down, moving slowly enough to give his boss plenty of time to look away. He isn't wearing smalls of course. They'd just be another piece he'd have to pay to get enchanted.

Nines eyes his cock like they might sketch it in exact anatomical detail.

Gavin doesn't mention how he got it—his bargain and the Collar, the collapsed tower, the vows of vengeance—he'll get around to confessing it all eventually. But in the meantime: a fun bonding activity.

Gavin grips his cock and gives it a few strokes. Nines blinks in a way that's more like shutting their eyes repeatedly. He exhales slowly and makes himself stop, although he does still keep his hand held loosely around the base.

"If you don't want echoes, you'll have to wall off your mind on your own end," he advises Nines. "I'm uh … a little too busy here to concentrate."

"Echoes," Nines repeats.

Shit, right. Human. Doesn't seem to specialize in any divination or enchantment magic—so they probably don't have any experience being inside someone else's head.

"Yeah, that's why I offered to," He jerks his chin at the door. "Distance helps, some."

Nines does that tiny little head tilt again. "May I observe?"

Gavin licks his lips. "Yeah."

"May I ignore you?" they ask next.

"Uh, sure?"

He doesn't have any human hangups about nudity, but he's not going to whip his dick out and waggle it at anyone who doesn't want to see it. Jacking off in the same room is probably already pushing it, but then again, the rules seem to be different in boarding schools and barracks and sometimes bars but sometimes not—humans have so many weird fucking rules.

"Then," Nines says. "You do as you please, and I will do the same."

"Works for me."

Gavin gives his cock another squeeze, and Nines turns back to their scroll. Yeah, he's a little disappointed about that, but it's enough just to have his pack in the same room and know he's not alone.

Since the wizard isn't watching anyway, Gavin rolls over and shoves a blanket down around his crotch. He has a whole nest of them, all piled up on top of a mattress Nines insisted he have. They'd tried to bring in an actual bed, but it's just weird, sleeping so high up and away from the ground for no reason.

He gets a soft little mound built up and grips himself again through the blanket. Even if Nines makes him wash it after, this will make his bed smell like him and home and—

Gavin buries his face into his pillow and inhales. It still has Nines's scent on it. All the blankets do too, so now they'll smell like the both of them, like pack.

He feels a fresh jab of interest spike back through their bond and guesses Nines is watching him again. Maybe jacking off right in front of them like that was a little too much, but with everything mostly out of view now, they're back to curious again.

It only takes him a minute to build up a steady rhythm, rutting into the blankets and his own hand. He groans into the pillow and hears Nines breathe in sharply.

Echoes. He grins and keeps going.

He doesn't know what kind of needs Nines has or wants to fulfill, but he likes the thought of making them feel good. Would like it even better if he could crawl over between the wizard's legs and find out what they're working with by licking it.

"Gavin …"

The wolf whines in response to his name in his Alpha's mouth. He squeezes his hand tighter at the base of his cock against the knot trying to plump up there, just in case Nines wants it.

"Yeah, baby?" Gavin manages to growl.

"Oh."

Nines breathes the word, and Gavin can feel a small simmer of arousal bounce back and forth between them—this time from the wizard's end, not his.

"Does it always feel like this?" they ask.

He groans in answer, the only response he has to the soft wonder in their voice. He knows humans' senses are weak and dull, that they don't get hit with lust and frenzy the same way wolves do.

But hearing the awe in his human's voice the first time they feel it too makes him want to show them how good it can really feel.

"Yeah," he bites out. "Better with … you."

His canines get in the way of the words, the partial shift rippling through his body. He's never had particularly good control of it, so there's no stopping the change now when his blood's up.

"Are you wet?"

The question stabs through him. Gavin loses his rhythm with a whimper, nearly overcome with the instinct to crawl over and show his Alpha, present his cock or his mouth or whatever hole they want to use.

And he is wet. He can feel it dripping down the length of his cock, more pooling at the head, smearing into the palm of his hand.

"Uh huh," he pants.

Gavin bites down into the blankets as he ruts harder, but a sharply clicked tongue brings him back to awareness. He turns his head to the side and blearily stares up at Nines as he continues fucking his own hand.

"I would like to hear you," Nines says.

"Baby," Gavin breathes in reply.

Nines closes their eyes and shivers. Well, if they like his voice …

"Wanna lick you," he says. "Suck on you and make you—ahhh, make you feel good."

"I—" Nines stares at him with wide eyes.

"Shh, shhh." Gavin keeps making the noise in a low mumble as he slows down his pace into a dirty grind. "Gotcha baby, get my mouth on your nipples an' your neck, your mouth, make you wet too."

"I don't usually like to be touched," Nines admits.

Gavin's brain snatches onto the word usually, but he doesn't want to push. There's some shit he knows for sure he won't ever do, but then there's a lot more he just doesn't know if he really doesn't want, or maybe only in the right situation, with the right pronouns and body parts, the right person, but then how is he supposed to know if he wants it enough to try it if he won't know if he actually wants it until he's already tried it?

So that's a whole big nest of wyverns, and neither of them need to try to sort it out right this moment.

"Can give you this though, yeah?" Gavin asks.

He twists his wrist on the upstroke against the head, but then stops and holds completely still. Nines tries to strangle a whine in their throat at the lost sensation.

"… yes."

That confession sounds much better. Gavin grins at the wizard and starts thrusting again, still looking at them. Their long eyelashes and shoulder-length hair almost soften their face into pretty, but then thin lips, a straight nose, and strong jaw sharpen the effect back up again. And the ice-blue eyes set against pale skin and black hair just sends it all careening past beautiful or handsome into big words about being scary-haunting-magical that the wolf can't think of right now.

He can feel his orgasm building up, drowning in those eyes staring right back at him, but he squeezes harshly at the base of his cock. The sensation strangles at the root, like the little moans Nines won't let escape their mouth.

He probably shouldn't tempt it, but he sinks into the feeling of tightening and loosening his grip around his knot and the waves of pleasure that sends rolling through them both.

"You," Nines says but can't seem to find anymore words.

"Mmgff." Gavin huffs into the pillow and tries to make his own words work. "Good, feels good. Sorry. Won't knot if—fffuck."

If that scares you. Disgusts you. Bores you, to be stuck listening to him come and come and come while the exasperated wizard is trying to focus on their studies.

He pries his eyes back open when he hears footsteps and stares up at Nines paused in an awkward-half crouch over him, like they're not sure if they're allowed to touch. His tail makes the decision for both of them by immediately wagging in anticipation of pets and attention.

"May I touch you?" Nines still asks.

Gavin nods past a desperate whine. A hand slides up the back of his neck first, while another soothes over his bare flank. Must've kicked off his trousers at some point. All that matters is the hand on the back of his neck, pinning him down, holding him place, exactly where he should be for his Alpha.

His tail wags harder.

"May I see?"

The hands urge him to roll over, and he does, without hesitation, like a dog showing his belly when his master comes home.

Laying on his back like this, he knows the partial shift is even more apparent. Just about everything humans think they know is bullshit, but his hybrid form really does look like those shitty illustrations of big scary wolf men.

And that's without the thick, hairy cock jutting out between his legs.

He's proud of it, wanted it, needed it, but that was for himself. He wasn't trying to impress anyone, and he's not expecting a human to like it.

"Does your phallus typically have this appearance, or is it increasingly engorged due to your partial transformation?" Nines asks.

Gavin stares up at them and tries to impress through their mental bond just how many fucking words that was.

Nines flushes and tries again. "Does it get bigger when you shift?"

"Yeah," he says. "Touch me?"

He holds his cock slightly out toward the wizard in offering. Nines hums in consideration but doesn't make any move toward it. That's fair.

"Do you knot without …" They struggle with the words again. "Sex?"

Gavin strokes himself, tugging upward and pause at the head. It leaves his knot free below, not quite there yet, but noticeably swollen under the attention.

"Can. Sometimes."

"Will you show me?"

Nines stares down at him and meeting their eyes is like looking at the moon. Humans want so badly to sort everything into Good or Bad, even the deities they worship. But some things aren't good or bad, only intense.

Gavin nods, mouth slack and panting. He wraps his left hand around his knot to work it while his right keeps stroking the rest. Nines's eyes sweep up and down him like a search light scanning for a rogue.

"Feel … good?" he asks between pants.

Maybe he's already asked, but it's hard to think right now. He tugs at the bond, trying to pull Nines's mind closer to him, get them to come down out of the sky and feel it with him. The wizard's hands clench into the robes draped over their kneeling legs.

Then they open their eyes again, and Gavin could swear their irises really have turned a silvery-blue.

"Behave."

The order thunders down their bond and into his chest. Gavin groans, the tightness coiled inside him easing another measure. He's not quite ready to unspool, but maybe—maybe just a little?

"I am asking about you."

Nines's voice changes from questioning and a little stilted to informing him of how it is, like casting a spell. Gavin doesn't have any ability himself, but as far as he knows, that's kind of how they do it. Spell casting is just telling reality what to do with enough conviction that reality up and does it.

"Do you want to be mine?"

Gavin thrusts into his hands in answer. It's sloppy and a little pathetic, because there's nothing for him to rut into. But he starts nodding again, just in case that wasn't enough.

"Like this?" Nines touches him for the second time, one hand gently curling around his throat. "To be mine."

He's coming undone. Falling apart. Food and shelter and an Alpha, their own little pack of two, someone touching him and promising to claim him.

"Suh … 'posed to be … yours."

He knows it's true, it's true, true. The call in his mind, their contract, both of them bound by Selûne.

"Yes," Nines confirms. "Show me."

Gavin comes almost before they finish speaking. He tries to hold eye contact as long as he can, but eventually his own squeeze shut as he curls in on himself with a shudder. The first wave passes deceptively quick, with just a few spurts from his cock.

But he's not done.

"Good boy."

Those hands are back again, just like before, this time encouraging him to roll back onto his belly. They stroke through his hair and scritch behind his ears when he obeys, and he thinks life couldn't possibly get any better until there's a warm body sliding onto the mattress behind him.

Then he's being spooned and everything inside him unravels without any warning.

When he's done coming for the second time, he's aware of a few things: the hand wrapped back around his throat, first. That the gangly half-human, half-elf is tall enough to almost envelope him completely. The soft murmur of praise in his ear, shifted halfway up his head now and nearly wolf-like.

Yours.

It's harder to send the thought out when he's only partially shifted. Even with other wolves, they all share best as animals, some basic concepts as hybrids, and only faint echoes when unshifted.

But being the wizard's familiar must be different, since he'd heard the summons in his head from damn near across the country, in all forms, while Nines can't shift at all.

You are mine. I will take care of you, if you allow me to keep you.

Oh yeah, that's definitely different. Wolves share senses and feelings, not full sentences.

Keep me, Gavin manages to think back.

"Yes," Nines murmurs aloud.

The third wave hits him, and he sobs as he comes for his Alpha. His body is just doing the best it can to please, still managing to pump out another two shots of cum. He can finally feel a tinge of mild revulsion from Nines, but it seems to be aimed more at the mess than himself. Bold feelings from a wizard who left a hunk of bread to mold so long they mistook it for a stoneshroom.

"Perhaps I should invest in a toy," they muse. "A sleeve somewhat akin to a bag of holding, so that it can contain all this mess."

Gavin groans in a not-sexy way. "Don't make me fuck a void."

"No, the pocket dimension would only be applied at the tip of the—"

He can't help but start laughing. Pocket dimension applied at the tip—and said completely straight. Goddamn wizards.

Nines expresses their irritation at being laughed at by nipping his ear, and yep, there's wave number four. To their credit, they do continue to hold him until he gets another brief reprieve.

"How many times does this occur?" they ask when he's done.

"Depends," Gavin scrapes together enough brain matter to say. "More with … partner."

"Hmm," Nines says, like the feral scientist they are.

Gavin flips off his pride and goes straight to begging. "Please."

He's not sure what exactly he's begging for though—not to be forced into multiple orgasms while Nines observes or takes notes, or that the wizard will get started on that right away.

"Please, please, baby."

Nines pulls him back to rest half on top of their body, which lets them switch their right hand for their left hand around his throat without him laying on top of their arm. And that in turn frees up their right hand to drop down to his cock.

"Yours, yours," he mumbles. "Alpha."

"What do you need?"

Their hand brushes his own, the one gripping his knot. He lets go for an agonizing second to press their hand against it instead. Nines lets him wrap his hand back around theirs, using both of their hands to squeeze and lightly tug the knot.

"Ah … ahhh …"

"Ask properly," Nines orders.

"Alphaaa!"

He practically wails the word, shaking apart in Nines's arms and beneath their hand, but he can't now, it's not enough on his own anymore, not without permission.

"Hmmm."

Gavin cries freely, but doesn't make Nines grip him tighter or stroke him off. His Alpha will give him what he needs, and he'll take what he's given, like a good boy.

But that doesn't mean he can't ask for more.

"Baby," he groans. "Need it, need it, I—phck, please!"

"Yes."

The final wave sweeps over him so hard he goes blind, or his eyes shut, or he's back on his belly again, face smushed into the pillow, Nines's hand still around him and the blankets beneath his cock to rut into and it's not the last because Nines tells him Again and Again, until he's coming dry, throat hoarse from crying.

And then once more after that.

When he regains consciousness again, his whole body feels sore in the best possible way. There's drool running down his chin, tacky and drying to the pillow. He has his knees tucked up beneath him, but that's OK, because this is how he's supposed to present anyway.

Except the hand reaching between his legs doesn't breach him. Something soft and wet swipes over him instead, and he can't even muster up the mental energy to be scared, to explain why that's still there, that he managed to bargain for a working cock and all his insides scooped out, but that's still—

"Hush." Nines soothes him with another hand rubbing his back. "You did very well. All you must do now is rest."

Gavin sinks back down into the delicious ache and doesn't move while Nines cleans the slick from between his thighs, then further up to his cock. The blankets he'd rutted into have already been removed at some point. He knows from experience not even the best wizard on the material plane could wash his scent out though and takes a moment to feel a little smug about it.

"Yes, you came a truly impressive amount," Nines says. "Excessive, actually."

Gavin smacks his mouth before he can speak. "Your fault."

"Hmmm."

Nines stands when he's done and moves away. Gavin manages to flop onto his side and curl up. His boss did say he could sleep now. He just needs a little nap.

He gets a flask of water shoved in his face instead. The hand petting him goes back awkward again, pat-pat-pat instead of real pets. Nines doesn't seem to know exactly what to do now that they're done, but clean up and water was still really nice of them.

Gavin finishes gulping down the flask and heaves in air.

"I have work I need to finish," Nines informs him. "Have your needs been sufficiently met?"

Sufficiently met? Fuck, he's had orgies that didn't wear him out this good.

"Yeah," Gavin answers. "Need to sleep now."

Nines smiles at him. "Excellent. Good boy."

Gavin grins lazily back at them. "And when I wake up, I'm gonna crawl over between your legs and make you feel good too."

Nines flushes and half opens their mouth to protest.

"When you need a break from your scroll-thingy, and only if you let me," he adds.

Nines closes their mouth. They don't say anything else, but that means they also don't say no. Their blush doesn't go away either. They simply stand back up and sit down at their desk, spending far too much concentration fussing over the exact alignment of all their inks and quills instead of looking at Gavin.

Who keeps grinning, even as he yawns and snuggles down in his bed. He just needs a little nap, and then after that … he has all sorts of ideas for fun bonding activities.

***

This fic was commissioned by one of my followers to continue the first drabble! Subscribers to my Patreon get early access to all my commissioned fics 2 weeks before they’re posted to AO3 and tumblr ^^

#reed900 #gavin reed #dbh #dbh fic #detroit: become human

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lanadelreyfiles-blog · 7 years ago

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California Dreaming ‘Not all my romantic relationships were bad, but some of them challenged me in a way that I didn't want to be challenged, and I am happy I don't have to do that now.’ Lana Del Rey. Does Lana Del Rey really live right inside the middle of the 'H' of the Hollywood sign and spend most of her nights perched high above the chaos that swirls within the city of angels below, as the teaser for her new album, Lust For Life, suggests? Or does she rent a house in LA's Santa Monica or Silver Lake or someplace else she's not about to divulge, in case, having taken a cryptic February tweet of hers literally, a posse of her 6.3 million well-meaning Twitter followers showup on her doorstep with the ‘magic ingredients’ to cast spells on President Trump? Does she really only dip her toes into ‘the muck and the mires of the city every now and then’, as she says in the album's trailer? Or does she ‘go out quite a lot actually’, as she tells me when we meet, and spend her nights having fun with a tight crew of mainly musician mates, dancing at house parties, going to gigs and occasionally wrestling the microphone from her male friends to sing Hotel California in karaoke bars? In this post-truth world, it feels pedantic to care too much either way.

The 'real' Lana Del Rey is a 31-year-old woman called Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, born in Lake Placid, New York. She's close to her younger sister - Chuck, a photographer - but less so to her parents, Patricia and Robert, and her little brother, Charlie. They're a family of individual she tells me: ‘It was natural that we all went down our own separate paths, and we've all stayed there.’ We are sitting next to each other on a sofa in the Los Angeles recording studio where she has been creating her most musically accomplished work yet - the aforementioned album, Lust For Life, is destined to be the sound of this summer. Lana is fully present, smart, funny, engaging and refreshingly able to laugh at herself. She wears jeans and a vintage shirt, and she talks softly but with a compelling certainty. I like her all the more for the fact that no amount of everydayness negates the magic she exudes as a performer. To her fans, Lana exists in flickering Super 8; the Manic Pixie Dream Girl who comes with no baggage or bad days, but is here only for you in a Valencia-filtered fantasy. She's an idea of a woman who didn't grow up anywhere, but emerged fully formed from the elevator at the Chateau Marmont Hotel. She's a montage of Americana, finished with a flick of black eyeliner. Both the reality and the fantasy of Lana Del Rey make up a fully formed, albeit exceptional, human being. But, as Lana tells me, inhabiting these two worlds hasn't always been easy: ‘I know that if I had more of a persona then [when she released her breakthrough hit, Video Games, on the internet in 2011] I have less of one now. I think it comes down to getting a little older. Maybe I needed a stronger look or something to lean on [back then]. But it wouldn't really be hard for me today to play a mega-show in jeans without rehearsing and still feel like I was coming from the right place.’ I suggest that the scrutiny Lana was put under by the media for having a melancholic persona was unfair. Everyone, to some degree, presents a different side of themselves at work, right? Plus, she's hardly the first artist to change her name or cultivate a distinctive stage look. Yet, countless conspiracy theories called into question her appearance, talent, and family background around the time her second album, Born To Die, was released in 2012 but Lana is remarkably understanding. ‘Looking back now, I get a little more of what they're saying. When I was in the mix of a lot of reviews and critiques, I was kind of like, “What? I do my hair and my make-up just like everyone else for my pictures and my show, and yes my songs are melancholic, but so are whoever else's.” So to see a couple of other female artists not get criticised made me think, “What is it about me?”’ In hindsight, she says, she understands what the criticism and intrigue over her authenticity as an artist was about: ‘I think it comes down to energy, I really do. It wasn't overtly saying “I'm unhappy” or “I'm struggling” in my music, but I think maybe people did catch that and they were saying, "If you're going to put music like that out there, you better fessup to it.” But I don't think I really knew how felt. Then when things got a little bigger with the music I was still figuring out what was important to me.’ I get the sense that she's done a lot off figuring out in the past few years, like many of us now in our early thirties probably have done too. The difference with Lana, of course, is that all her experimentation, mistakes and regrets were fodder for public consumption. I mention that sinking feeling I get when I stumble across an old diary or a Facebook post that feels like it was from a totally different place to where I am now. I ask if she can relate. ‘That applies to me,’ she says. 'I have cringy moments. Certain things I have said and songs I have done, but mostly the ones that were leaked... I mean, they're not my finest.’ She's talking about her computer being hacked in 2010, when hundreds of unfinished songs were released online, without her permission. It was a horrible invasion of her privacy, and it leads on to a discussion about vulnerability though interestingly, it's not a word she says she has ever applied to herself. I ask her what performing on stage takes from her emotionally and what she gains from it, her amphitheatre shows usually hold up to 24,000 people at capacity. She fixes me with a not-at-all vulnerable look and says, ‘Well, it depends on the day. If I'm having a good day, it still takes a lot, but so much of it is physical. I try to take strength and sing from my core, so I have to actually feel good and get a lot of sleep. Of course, it also helps if my personal life is even; when you're on stage for an hour and 40 minutes, you think while you're singing. I don't like my in-between thoughts to be restless, or worrisome, so I can focus on the crowd.’ After a show, she feels reflective and needs time to process it. ‘It's not like you do it and it didn't happen; it's a real experience. I know rock bands who say they fucking love it - that they would [perform] every night and wouldn't do anything else. I don't know if it's as emotional an experience for them [as it is for me]’ Back to that need to feel good and have an 'even' personal life, Lana has lived in both New York and London, but says Los Angeles is starting to feel like home, and that's a big part of what's making her happy right now: ‘I'm growing my roots and meeting a lot of other friends, so I feel a little more settled.’ In her downtime, she loves swimming in the ocean: ‘I have a friend called Ron who likes to swim with me. So every now and then, we find an empty beach, jump in and swim the length of the coast, from one side of the cove to the other.’ Hey friends are her family, says Lana and that's why she can't accept anything less than total honesty and trust from them: ‘The fact that l know that now everything a lot clearer. What's interesting is how unsafe we [could] feel among each other [if we weren't] able to express how we really feel. It's hard knowing that if you tell someone exactly how you feel, like if you're happy or unhappy, that could be the end of the relationship because they don't feel the same way.’ We speak about the crews you pick up through your life and agree that, in your thirties, you are much better at surrounding yourself with people who make you feel good. ‘When you're in your twenties, you let this cast of characters [into your life], especially if you're in the arts,' she says. ‘It didn't matter what they stood for or what they thought was important. But as the years went on, there were things that I saw in people that I didn't like.’ Lana is enjoying being part of a music scene in LA where her friends include photographer Emma Tillman (also the wife of singer-songwriter Father John Misty), Zach Dawes, who has played bass with the British super-group The Last Shadow Puppets, and musicians Jonathan Wilson and Cam Avery. They play music together, which is not something she's done with friends before. The first time she had dinner with the wholegang, she thought: 'Wow, this is great.’ She tells me: ‘Feeling part of something is definitely a nice feeling.’ The downside to rolling with a crew of fellow musicians is that karaoke becomes a competitive sport: ‘If I am with the guys, they're always on the microphone and sometimes it's hard to grab it from them. Everyone pretends that it doesn't matter, but you can tell there are moments in the choruses when people are really singing.’ We laugh and I feel pleased that I'm meeting Lana at a time in her life when, as she puts it: ‘All the tough things that I have been through - that I've drawn upon [in my work] - don't exist for me any more. Not all my romantic relationships were bad, but some of them challenged me in a way that I didn't want to be challenged, and I am happy I don't have to do that now.’ I don't mean to rain on her parade, but I ask whether she feels that when she admits she's happy that something bad might be just around the corner? ‘Yes, sometimes. I have a little bit of that feel that it's a human thing to be superstitious. Sometimes I say to my friends, “I don't want to jinx it.” Or if l'm on the phone I'm like, “I'm so excited about this”, and then waiting for that phone call the next day... but there's no such thing as jinxing it. Just let go.’ The key to happiness, she says, is to ask yourself what will make you happy: ‘I try not to do anything that won't [make me happy], even if it's a show in a place that doesn't suit me. It's so simple; I always used to ask myself that, but never listened [to the answer] because I knew I was probably going to do it anyway. If someone really needed me to do something, I would probably be like, “OK!"’ I wonder if we put too much emphasis on being happy and that in itself causes stress and anxiety, but Lana passionately disagrees: ‘No! I think happiness is the ultimate life goal. I think it's the only thing that's important. There are no mechanisms in place for routes to happiness, that's the whole fucking problem. I think people are unhappy in school - the education structure has been the same for a long time and kids are still not satisfied all over the world with their educational experience. And you don't have enough conversations when you're young about what makes for a satisfying mutual relationship. Those collective life experiences - your youth, your academic education and your education about business, marriage or relationship goals - they all lead up to happiness. I think the emphasis is on the wrong things, and it has been for a long time.’ Lana tells me she's more socially engaged than ever; her fifth and latest album is a mix of personal introspection and outward-looking anthems, such as God Bless America, in which she sings: ‘God bless America and all the beautiful women in it.’ She says that, with this record, she was striving for a feeling that we're all in this together: ‘I think it would be weird to be making a record during the past 18 months and not comment on how [the political landscape] was making me or the people I know feel, which is not good. It would be really difficult if my views didn't line up with a lot of what people were saying.’ We discuss being constantly bombarded with news and other people's views in our hyper-connected world, and I ask how she reconciles her personal wellbeing with the collective feeling that we are all going to hell in a handcart. ‘I think it's a balance, I really do. You are so fortunate if you have good health and high energy because it takes a lot to be a responsible human. Responsible to yourself, responsible to others, and to know when not to get too deep into the wormhole of news, but still be politically in-the-know and not be disconnected. In my life, it's like walking on a tightrope. I read the news, but I won't read it before bed; I won't read it when I get up and won't read it between my recording sessions. I have windows of time where I check in and catch up with everyone, but I keep my sacred things sacred.’ And as for her paean to America's women? "I wrote God Bless America before the Women's Marches sprung up, but I could tell they were going to happen. As soon as the election was over, I knew that was going happen. People were way more vocal and more active on social media and in real life, so I realised a lot of women were saying out loud that they needed support and they were nervous about some of the bills that might get passed that would directly affect them. So yes, it's a direct response in anticipation of what I thought would happen, and what did happen.’ Predicting the Women's Marches must have taken a seriously smart, social instinct, or some kind of sorcery straight from one of her otherworldly Lust For Life trailers. Whatever you think, you can't deny that the pulse of the zeitgeist beats throughout Lana's new album, from her pop collaboration with The Weeknd on the title track to the moody duet with John Lennon's son, Sean,and my personal favourite, Yosemite, a beautiful song about the way relationships change over time. After she plays me this track in the very room in which it was recorded, I can't help but ask what Lana is like as a girlfriend. ‘I'm amazing. I'm the best,’ she jokes, before clarifying, ‘I actually am the best girlfriend because I only get into a relationship if I'm really excited about it. I'm unconditionally understanding, very loving and like to be with that person for a lot of the time.’ After hearing Yosemite's refrain that she's no longer ‘a candle in the wind’, which to mean she's found a steadier light in her life, I wonder whether what she looks for in a relationship has also changed? ‘For me, the dream is to have a little bit of the edge, the sexiness, the magnetism, the camaraderie, be on the same page and all that stuff, but without the fallout that comes from a person who is really selfish and puts only their needs first, which is like a lot of frontmen if we're talking about musicians!’ (Lana has previously dated Barrie-James O'Neill, the Scottish lead singer of alt-rock band Kassidy.) ‘I'm going to write a book one day called, “The curse of the frontman and why you should always date the bassist."’ Lana smiles, takes a sip of her iced coffee, and says: ‘I guess have a little bit of a fantasy that really great relationships, friendships, and romances can stand the test of time. Even though each person in the relationship or the group changes, they don't change in ways that would make the relationship come to an end. The chorus [of Yosemite] is about doing things for fun, for free, and doing them for the right reasons. It's about having artistic integrity; not doing things because you think they would be big, but because the message is something that's important. And then, it's about just being with someone because you really can't see not having them in your life,not because it would be 'beneficial' to you to be in their company. It's that concept of just being in a relationship for 100% the right reasons. Being a good person, basically.’ Lana Del Rey is mercurial - just when you think you've got her she slips through your fingers like quicksilver - but in that hot second, I think I see her clearly: an artist who is rising from the ambiguity of youth and emerging into a woman with an authentic vision for her life and her art. Yes, that might one day fade like the barely there ‘Chateau Marmont' tattoo on her left wrist, but right now her power is in sharp, unfiltered focus. Lana Del Rey's fifth studio album, Lust For Life, is out soon.

#Lana Del Rey #Lotte Jeffs #ELLE #ELLE UK #Magazine #Interview #Editorial #2017 #May 2017 #Lust For Life

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bloodshedfalls · 8 years ago

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ACCEPTED!

Hey, is that JAKE GYLLENHAAL? Oh no, it’s GRAHAM HARPER. I hear he is THIRTY and he can be DECISIVE and DEPENDABLE but can also be BITTER and ISOLATED. Not to mention they are a WITCH. (mandaaaaaa)

Accepted! Welcome to Bloodshed Falls! Be sure to send in your account in the next 24 hours, track these tags, be sure to read through our plotdrops, post a starter and follow everyone on the blogroll!

(tw: death, violence)

CHARACTER DESCRIPTION:

Before the fire.

After the fire.

This is how Graham Harper has come to think of his life. Two chapters. Two parts. The old him and the new, irrevocably changed him.

Born to members of the Mercier coven, Graham grew up being taught their ways and the ancient, dark magic they practiced. His father and Joel Mercier were as close as brothers and the coven was his extended family. A determined and curious boy, Graham was as confident and decisive as he was loyal. He knew what he wanted just like he knew what company he would keep and it’s why himself, Marie Leblanc and Lenore Mercier became inseparable early on.

Maybe it was because they were born on the same day, years apart, or maybe it was simply a choice the three had made. Whatever it was drew them together and forged a connection between the three that everyone could see. That was the thing about family in the Mercier cove: you could choose your own along with the one you’d been given and that’s exactly what Graham did.

He spent mornings with his father, being mentored by the one person he looked up to most, afternoons being taught by his mother and every other moment with the other two. When his sister, Evelyn, came along, it was like he’d gained another part of himself he didn’t know he was missing. Evelyn was his shadow, a small, bird like girl, seemingly delicate but as powerful as any of the young witches in their coven and Graham saw her as another extension of who he was, someone to pour into and teach alongside their parents.

Life was good and his skills grew year to year, his decisive nature making him more determined than most, willing to go further than some, just like Marie and Lenny. The three of them continuously pushed the boundaries of their skills and, eventually, linked their magic together in a bond meant to strengthen them and avail their magic to each other. It didn’t feel like being weighed down or drained, far from it. It felt right. To have the most important part of themselves connected by the very thing that made them what they were.

This was the very bond that prompted them to perform magic together, doing complex, dark spells of every kind. This was the bond that prompted them to perform magic in the cemetery that fateful night that both spared their lives and simultaneously ripped everything from them. It was that bond that caused the three to try and put out a fire that was never meant to go out, to watched the bodies of dead family members, dead coven members before homes collapsed and they were consumed entirely, rendered to ash and memory. And it was this bond that seemed to break– to snap in the face of such loss.

Were they survivors? Or victims?

Whatever they were– one thing was true. The three remaining members of the Mercier coven were lost. They were broken. And that’s ultimately what pulled them away from each other. Marie was falling apart and Graham was doing his best to keep her from breaking, same with Lenore but it seemed as though Lenny had other ideas. When the three split ways, Graham and Marie together and Lenny on her own, Graham knew it was a bad decision, knew they should’ve stayed together but two days later when he went back to where they’d split, to where he thought Lenny would be but she was gone. It felt like betrayal but not one he could dwell on.

He and Marie had a mission in mind– they needed to find those who’d taken everything from them, with or without Lenny, before the trail went cold and so they did the first thing angry, hurting, lost individuals often did; went headfirst into a fight they couldn’t hope to win. It took only three weeks before Graham was on his own. He and Marie weren’t a match for the members of the other coven and it cost her her life.

The moment she died, Graham felt as something snap inside of him– literally, something tear away from him and sever in the most painful way, leaving him gasping as their bond was cut, ripped from him. And days after, he felt the same exact pain when, wherever she was, Lenny severed the last link between them as well with a cloaking spell. It didn’t stop Graham from trying to find her, though, carrying Marie’s ashes with him in hopes they could honor her together before realizing it wasn’t going to happen. She was gone and so he had to do this on his own. Spreading his best friend’s ashes before starting on a journey that would take him years. He was determined to face the witches who’d taken everything from him and would do whatever he could to take them down.

His leads led him all over– mostly the states but parts of Canada as well and one particular lead around two years ago led him to a small pack of wolves outside Montreal. He was able to kill most of them but was viciously bitten by another, leaving the warlock to suffer the bite’s side effects– the sickness, the hallucinations, the pain of the change without the actual change, his magic protecting him. It was in this state that he was found by a one Shelby Fontaine, a witch who, as fate would have it, happened to be studying medicine. And she was the one who was with Graham in the worst of the sickness, through the agonizing pain of his body and magic rejecting the curse trying to overwhelm him, the hallucinations of his family, of Marie and Lenny and his sister. She used medicine and what magic she could to nurse him back to health.

Perhaps Graham might’ve felt differently about her help had he known her family name but for what it was worth, she was the person who helped him and when they parted ways after he was back to full health, he knew he was in her debt. From there, he kept searching, finding anyone with answers or who knew anyone with answers, prying it out of them by whatever means. He managed to tick off a small number of the coven members who’d strayed too far from the pack but it was never enough; they’d taken it all from him, every single person and even those who’d survived were gone as he’d long since been prepared to find Lenny’s body whenever he caught wind of a deceased or killed lone witch.

For the past year he’d returned to the states, growing increasingly aimless in the way only a man who’d been lost for years could be. Who’d never admit to being lost and isolated and on a path that would only lead to death. It was this that prompted him to reignite his search for Lenore, even just to get closure that she was dead– that he wasn’t thinking of a ghost that wasn’t there anymore. Still, there was nothing, like all the other hundreds of times he’d tried. He spent the latter part of 2016 finally returning to a home that had become a graveyard of unconsecrated witches and lost souls never to be found again.

He was tired. His determination and resolve increasingly wavered and he wondered what it was all for? Marie was dead, Lenore probably was, his parents were, his sister, everyone he cared about was. Graham was isolated. He was a wanderer. His home was gone. He was in a place darker than he’d been and for someone born into blackness, it was a foreign feeling. It might have ended there, he might have given up but decided to try the spell once more. The locator spell that availed nothing for years, a last ditch attempt to find someone who was probably long gone by now. But then it was like someone had finally flipped a switch that had been off for half a decade and he could sense the last remaining member of his coven. Whether her being alive was false hope, a twisted trick or the truth, it didn’t matter because Graham left Louisiana that day and headed for Red Creek.

HEADCANONS:

Graham couldn’t consecrate Marie when she died since they were so far from home. Instead he carried her ashes with him for weeks, hoping that he’d find Lenore in that time and they could honor their best friend together. But he never found Lenny. After too many weeks he finally scattered Marie’s ashes in an area he knew lone witches traversed through, knowing that’s what she’d have wanted– to avail her magic and spirit to the disillusioned and disenfranchised, to the lost and the isolated– to the outcasts. To people like them.

He has little to nothing left of his family or coven but one of his most precious possessions is his father’s signet ring. The ring has magic imbued in it, passed down for generations with magic from his ancestors.

His second most important possession is the pendant Marie wore with the Leblanc family crest. Much like his father’s ring, it too is imbued with generational magic from her bloodline that he’s not dared to even think of using.

Both objects are spelled so only he can remove them.

A few years back Graham encountered an imp with a penchant for bargaining for rare objects. The witch needed a favor and he had enough to pay Callum Rook to get the job done. However, after their initial deal, he became aware of the ring and pendant Graham carried and attempted to take the powerful objects for himself. Needless to say it didn’t go over well and the two’s temporary deal was no more.

He has a black bird tattooed over his heart for his sister, Evelyn.

Fire makes him flinch for but a moment before he’ll get as close to the source as possible, almost as if twistedly daring it to touch him– to do what it did to his family and coven and consume him. But then it’s as though the bird on his chest flutters– his conscience forcing him away from self destruction and toward the one goal he’s had since his life burned to the ground: revenge.

At one point he was attempting a sacrificial spell about to kill a young werewolf when Vaughn Wilde and his partner stopped him and while Graham got away, if he were to ever cross paths with that hunter again, it most likely wouldn’t be pleasant.

Graham has significant scarring on his left shoulder from the werewolf attack, from the socket to right before his neck.

CHARACTER OCCUPATION: unemployed for now.

#accepted #acceptedapp #graham harper #admin flynn #submission

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jack-carberry-todd · 6 years ago

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The Serrated Knife Incident

My dad returned to the kitchen table with serrated utility knife in his hand. The same knife that he had given me for Christmas. At the first recognition of the knife, I exclaimed, ‘that’s my knife’. ‘What’, replied my Dad. ‘Is that my knife’, I said, assuming that he must have bought one for himself, or I had brought my own back home and not remembered.

It was not my knife, it wasn’t even a serrated knife with a black handle like my own one has. It was a simple dining knife.

Ferry/Moon

I walked up the narrow road, uphill, at night, and turned to where I assumed the horizon was, and for a few small moments, maybe a second, I perceived a natural luminous object just above the horizon line, maybe a huge moon protruding from the ocean or maybe a ball of fire simmering on a faraway visual plane.

But not.

What immediately proceeded was a visual perception of a highly lit ship offering an intense light, increased by its contrast to the surrounding darkness

A Cat, Then A Black Bag In A Hedge

Whilst driving at night, I focused on a black cat. It was on the far side of the s bend I was moving through. In the same second, as I moved closer to the cat, which was curled up just off the tarmac, it turned into a black bag, a rusting bin liner, that had the movement of a cat’s tail flicking.

Always Expect the Worst

When driving up a familiar road, (but one not driven on for a while), I had an experience of seeing car lights in the hedge coming from a vehicle coming down the road. This happened two more times, an in fractions of seconds after this experience, I gained more visual data and gave more thought to what it could be; that it was just a particularly luminous part of the hedge, or the angle, or the corner was just right, so to create more shine.

Due to the immediate believe that the patch of light was coming from an oncoming vehicle, I react before the hard data has corrected my perception.

In this particular case, an oncoming car is the potential next visual object that would cause me to react more severely on seeing the lights. This can be seen as a dangerous/life threatening experience that could be imminent.

Is it this expectation of danger that control and dictate our predicted perceptions.

The casual saying, ‘Always expect the worst’, isn’t something we decide to inforce or not, it happens before choice. Instinctive.

Insect on the Table

I glanced down and left and saw a big ochre/yellow/light brown mosquito. A moment later, there was no insect, but dancing light of the sun’s angular beam, percolating through rustling leaves of a nearby tree.

Plane Lines

New weather removes clouds. In the naked sky, the slightest shape discernible is noticed.

Because the planes are visible and because they own the stage of the sky, they are noticed more.

The twist, clouds have appeared, there are no planes above, but on a cloudless ceiling, lines of them, now occupy.

Not like hard/straight lines that trail out from the metal craft. But for clouds, these shapes were very line like.

Streams of vapour are not errors of judgement, they just share the same visual imagery of clouds, in particular conditions the way they appear minutes after the plane has gone could not be distinguished from the real thing.

Smoke in the Studio

I saw reams of smoke pirouetting in several tall vertical vortexes, as milliseconds went by, the smoke took a more material surface, then became thin, transparent plastic sheeting. The sheet billowed close to where I keep my solvents and mediums and the worst expected perception was a wisp of smoke caused by a fire.

It wasn’t rational but from an initially peripheral angle, it was as much smoke as it was plastic sheeting, until the ‘truth’ concluded with visual input.

Oranges Light/U.F.O/Mars

An orange light, the brightness far surpassing any star in the naked galaxy, hovering a quarter distance up from the horizon line, its shape seemed like it might be determined if it wasn’t for the muffled glow around the spherical object. The colour of the light appeared the unique in the usual night sky. The size was large in respect of other lights within the STRATISPHERE, but it was the colour that shocked me. The shape and colour was closer to earth bound light bulbs surrounding the ground, in relative terms, to the orange light.

I looked for a while, then looked through binoculars at the object, it appeared to have two vague structures protruding from the bottom of the block shape.

I had a different relationship with the light with the binoculars on, it consumed a bigger percentage of my visual field, it became a focus and not a dot.

However, the object appeared larger through the lenses, I still had a strong sense that I was the same distance away from the light, as I was before the lenses.

I had little recallable reference to what this light may be, so until collaborative information provided fact, I was going to experience this light as a U.F.O., not one that had to be controlled by an ‘alien’, but literally an unidentified, floating, hovering, suspended, celestial object.

Two days after experiencing the glow of orange above the black sea and within the black sky I discovered that the light was Mars.

Predictive perception took me on the long con with Mars.

Pan of Peas

Whilst finishing cooking dinner at home for my Mum, I saw the biggest saucepan we have, on the worktop, with a tiny amount of peas at the bottom.

Whilst having this momentary experience, it was funny to me, because me and my Dad are chefs and to choose the biggest saucepan for a tiny amount of peas is so impractical and makes no sense to a chef, and why she hadn’t picked up any of these choices that Dad makes in thirty years is funny.

In the second of humour and seeing the pan on the side, I moved towards the sink and saw the same pan in the sink, with some water and washing up liquid in it, water that I had just put in the pan forty seconds ago after using it for boiling potatoes.

At this recognition of what must have been in the sink, I moved back along the kitchen to the pan of peas, to see them not in biggest pan, which resided in the sink, but the second biggest pan, still an oversized pan for the amount of peas, but a completely different shape and size, with a distinctly different handle.

Where Two Worlds Meet

(The clouds became the trees and the trees became the clouds)

Whilst driving along the motorway at 10:15 on 03/08/18, the very dark clumsy mass of tress stretched right out to the horizon where they were meet by a slightly lighter amorphous shape, that had been tamed to a dense line that covered the vertical (a bit) and the horizontal space. These two areas meet with ambiguity and offered a constant fluctuation between each other, at the point of merger. This could be believed due to the light being closer to the area further away, making the trees on the horizon line the same phenomena, just lit from a closer point.

As I drove closer to the source of light, I concluded that the lighter shape was clouds and the merging of these things was a hallucination.

The way I perceived the mass of trees blending with the mass of clouds brought awareness to how the phenomena of the sky (elements) can be emulsified with the phenomena of the physical world, be that natural or man-made.

Lines at Night

Downderry hill, one of the two hills in my village.

The entry and exit points.

Entry of white/yellow lights and exiting of red/orange.

Fish/ No Fish

I caught two mackerel in ten minutes.

After a further five minutes I saw a fish jump out of the water, this made me want to continue fishing.

Minutes later I saw a fish , jumping through a rolling wave, that was full of froth, bubbles and streaks. The mix of turquoise, blue and grey water with shimmering light of the wave tricked me, not illusion, but hallucination.

In less than a second, the fish turned into the colours and movement of the tunnel of water.

Expectations of good are happening as well as bad.

Telescopic

As the conditions of light dim, so does the ability to focus upon the weight and feathers…………

At this moment of crux, between visible and not, I follow my weight from its launch point of the sand behind where I am stood, and watch it disembark the road on its leader of nylon line and I follow its position, as it arcs further out to sea, expecting the plunge and splash of the submersion.

At the time of this expectation, I saw a splash much closer in to shore and at a different angle to where I was focused on…..

The Archway

As I drove down a hill in Ivybridge I saw an archway, a cream covered archway that contained a green garden that had its own perspective and receeded down a drive. I was approaching the archway whilst driving down the hill, for two seconds, the archway only became more in focus and believable and then, before it passed out of sight, it turned into a green hedge that was dome shaped, almost the negative shape of the archway and drive I had just seen.

200 meter high road

Red light where there must be a road, but with nothing but darkness, there is no road, no hill and no reference point or perspective for the light to have, except for it to be far away and visible.

It was like a worm hole to a different spacial plane had briefly opened up 200 meters above the ground, in the middle of the sky, that i had vision of.

Eddystone Clouds

Circular cloud above the Eddystone lighthouse, about four times the height of the lighthouse above it. It moved to the left, like all the other clouds above the horizon.

However, whilst it was above the lighthouse, it appeared to be because of the cloud science, of clouds being situated in isolation above areas of rock.

8 Discs of Light

A lamp 100 meters from the ground, made up of eight circular metal discs that were illuminating.

Quite a sci-fi experience at the right time of day, which the right conditions of light, because the pole on which the lights are elevated on, disappears.

(However) This scene sen through a water covered circle of the glass window infant of me, gave the eight separate discs a dulling effect and made the technological appear natural, referencing the moon and petrol effect the surrounding clouds have on it.

Vertical Cloud

Dark blue grey cloud in a narrow tunnel shape. It decreased in thickness at the bottom.

The oddness came from the vertical orientation of it.

Like it had been puffed out of a factory but then lingered. But there was no factory and the cloud was far above the visible horizon line. If the same shaped cloud turned 90 degrees, then there would be no excitement or interest.

As I moved closer to the (cloud), it started to rotate clockwise a small amount.

Was it due to my position changing or was it the movement of the cloud anyway.

Light and Orange Chair

A small bright light bellow my orange chair, turned out to be a smooth piece of circular metal, that appears to appeared to be a screw or bolt.

Multiples in Storm

The tide was a 5.8.

It had rained all day and then all evening.

The wind was blowing right off the sea.

River full, hours ago, now banks lines are redundant.

Birds in Swell

White seagulls illuminated by the little light left in the air. They soared in a vortex, making their way towards the epicentre of the storm: the sea’s edge. Where the crashing waves met the beach and the where the overfilled river cascaded into the oncoming sea. When the birds came close to the water, they merged with the froth, becoming sea foam, then being swept into the vortex above. The close me and my dad got to the beach, the clearer it became that there were no seagulls in the air.

Lights in the Floodwater

The houses which cast the light were in the same place as I am used to them being.

Yet the majority of the floor space has a different surface, a blanket of water, it has taken on the light of the houses. Not as reflections but as tonal transfers.

The interest came from the movement the light had.

With this new surface of clingy wet volume, loose shapes were harboured. The movement of the water was not just caused by the wind, it came from the other water sources feeding in and out.

Log Drifting Up the River

Stood on the perimeter of the cafe, I looked down on the river, that was full of logs and debris all being hurtled down the river, exiting the mouth and being spewed out to sea. Concentrating on the logs, I noticed one moving up the river away from the sea. In the same second a log went into the reversing log and broke the hallucination. My backwards log turned into the black patch of water that had mercy changed shade, that similar to the logs, because of the motion of the river.

Vibrating Phone

Feeling my phone vibrate in my pocket before or after getting the call.

I mean, did I go to, or think about going to check my phone before or after the vibration.

Having a similar experience at an earlier time of feeling the vibration in my pocket, then seeing my phone on the table five foot in front of me.

The Man Who Turned Out To Be a Fire Extinguisher

I saw a person in a red top, with black hair, through frosted glass. with a semi-transparent checked pattern, from seven meters away. It turned out to be a fire extinguisher, with a black shape onto of it.

This happened four more times in that day, and then once more the following morning. This makes me question the capabilities of learning from prediction errors and how quickly the learning happens or doesn’t happen and with repetition of error, what is the time that learning happens in.

Music, Not Music

I heard some music, from an unfamiliar output, not a usual speaker, maybe a speaker in an object of some kind, after this first second of music, I turned around to the source of the sound, which turned out to be some one stirring coffee in a metal cup

Seeing a Black Cat Again

Through two sets, then one single door windows, I saw a black cat curled up in the middle of the hostel corridor. In the same second that I passed through the door in, the cat became something else. It was no longer a cat. It became a small object indecipherable at this distance, able to see what it wasn’t but not what it is.

Big Bright Red Cloud

A huge red light in my left periphery, which could have been the break lights of an enormous vehicle. In the second which my head was turning, the vehicle light became a bright red cloud, the majority of which was hidden behind the hill, this was why the small circular shape of red appeared.

Giant Weather Ballon

The moon as a giant illuminated whether ballon.

It was because of its size, abnormal colour and low positioning that steered me away from the idea of the sphere being the moon.

Pale Yellow/ Light Orange

Pale yellow/ light orange with a tint of green to it.

A spherical orb appears. It has a piece missing, not too dissimilar to a nearly full moon.

It hovered in the sky, about a thumbnail’s distance up from the horizon line. It stayed for less than a second before disappearing as I turned my head, which I was doing before I saw the orb.

A sail of a ship that has risen to the sky.

A ballon gliding below the storm that rages above.

A ball of gas, that has risen from the depths of the sea, only to float just above, once surfaced.

In fact what the shape turned out to be was a hallucination. A shape subjectively implanted into the distance.

Wrong.

What the shape truly was, an eye floater, generated within my eye, and due to my position and contents, the shape in my eye was placed in a clearer part of the sky, so to give it a chance of standing out.

Blue/Grey/White Orb

I looked at the sun, just risen, bright orange and yellow and for the quarter of a second I focused both eyes upon the centre of the ball, it became deep electric blue. Once I turned away to look at the sky, void of sun, a semi transparent blue/grey/white orb replaced the familiar transparent squiggles. It was singular and didn’t have the scudding movement that the usual floaters have. The transparency became less with every second after the focus on the sun. Less blue are the wrong words, it was the same colour blue as it faded, just that the transparency has been decreased, when I found a sky with little distraction.

A Black Cat; For the Third Time

I was in my kitchen and turned and walked towards the door and just outside the doorway I saw my black cat, curled on the floor, in the split second of sharpening focus, my cat, who died five years before, turned anatomy parents dog, who is also black, who has lived in the same house as me for two years.

Fishing Rods as Children’s Scooters (and in the same second)

Through the cafe’s window, whilst moving through the kitchen, I looked to the beach, and saw a cluster of people, the small groups, I saw two fishing rod rests placed about four meters apart, just before the window exited from my sight, with the pace of my walk, the rod rests adjusted to children’s scooters, the stem of the handle pole and handles protruded from the sand and were clear in vision for a part of a second.

Ex Girlfriend

When driving through Ivybridge I saw my recently ex girlfriend standing at a bus stop. She had the same length hair, but the colour appeared red-red-is and not blonde.

After I had driven past and the tug in my stomach faded, I realised that there are three bus stops which go to Plymouth, which is where I assumed she would be going on a Friday night, that are closer to her house. It didn’t make sense that she was stood there. Having only broken up one week ago and this being her home town, the association leaned on my perception.

Faces in the dark, whilst moving.

Dead Cow

Walking the beach in the early morning light, I saw the body of a cow, sunk in to the sand. The head was gone, its discoloured while fur was soaked through; even from a distance, this could be seen. The cow had a distinctive black patch on its rib. As I got closer the fur became more realistic and vivid and the likeness grew, until I got within meters away and the dead half a cow turned into a rock with seaweed patches.

A sheet as leafs

Driving through the valley at dark, in the wind and rain, on my left was a white/grey piece of material, draped over a branch of a tree. As I drew closer the sheet turned into the drooping branches of the tree.

Structure of The Sky

Especially when the land is cropped out of vision, the sky has many layers. It has layers of colour and texture, soft amorphous shapes lay behind sharp rays, and it also has the ‘foreground’ layer of inner eye phenomena.

Rather, the sky is one layer, which consists of many layers and infant of that is the glistening static, made up of eye floaters and shooting stars, that combine to make a cinematic field in front of an atmospheric backdrop.

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