#and i found out that i knew some kipling after all!

[monstersandmaw]

Laces for a Lady - 18th century poly shifter romance (Part one, sfw)

Disclaimer which I’m including in all my works after plagiarism and theft has taken place: I do not give my consent for my works to be used, copied, published, or posted anywhere. They are copyrighted and belong to me. 

Well folks, here it is. You said you were interested, so I hope it meets expectations! Here's part one for you, of a multi part story. If you want to kno wmore about it, you can find some more info here, as well as a little 'mood board'.

Content: sfw, the daughter of a country gentleman from Sussex relocates to a sleepy fishing village in Cornwall in order to become the paid companion of a young widow, and meets some of the locals on her arrival. Wordcount: 3972

Five and twenty ponies, Trotting through the dark - Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk. Laces for a lady; letters for a spy, Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by! ~ from ‘A Smugglers’ Song’, Rudyard Kipling (1906)

In the cool, lavender light of a late spring dawn, a gaff-rigged cutter drew into the sheltering arms of a small bay at high tide, and quietly dropped anchor. As if the soft splash had awoken him, a cockerel spluttered to life in a farmyard somewhere inland, but most of the villagers were already up and awake and steering their small, secret fleet of boats out from the golden crescent of sand beneath the cliffs to meet the waiting ship fresh from Roscoff.

Beneath the waves, where churning kelp moored itself in unyielding handfuls to the ancient granite of the sea floor, a long, serpentine shadow snaked between the stalks, and the currents of the coastline subtly shifted. Any revenue men trying to sail along the coast from Fowey to catch the smugglers would have found the wind and tide set dead against them, and in the subtle wake that wafted from the mottled, eel-like tail as it passed unseen, the waters of the secluded inlet calmed beneath the keels of the scurrying fishing boats. The drag of the oars through the waves lessened, and muscles already tired from heaving and hefting goods up the cliff moved a fraction easier for the unexpected boon.

Between them over the next hour, the gathered men and women shifted their haul of half anker barrels and dozens of crates and boxes of goods ashore. The small kegs of rich, French cognac would fetch a pretty price all across Cornwall, and along with the liquor came smaller luxuries like lace and silk, and bundles of tobacco and spiced tea, all meticulously wrapped in oil cloth to keep the sea and the salt and the water out.

And when the speedy, slender ship was riding noticeably higher in the water, the locals simply melted away into the countryside like so many mice from a late summer granary before the excise men even knew the ship from Guernsey had visited the cove at all.

Fifteen miles away, as the sun breached the horizon and cast its first rays of warmth along bellies of fleecy clouds and the flanks of blossoming hedgerows below, a stagecoach lurched and rumbled westwards along potholed roads, and a young woman stared out of the grimy window as the horses carried her into a new chapter of her life.

After leapfrogging some two hundred miles or so along the staging stations that dotted the South Coast, with nothing but a small trunk of her belongings and a thrice-read, dog-eared novel for company, Eleanor Bywater was more than ready to see the back of that infernal stagecoach. Had it not been for the small but inconveniently bulky travelling case sitting at her feet, she might have hired a horse and ridden from the last staging inn at Plymouth to reach the secluded fishing village of Polgarrack, but given that the trunk held all her worldly belongings, she had not been quite desperate enough to escape the discomfort of hard seats and poor suspension to abandon it.

Bouncing along in the nearly-empty stagecoach, she studiously tried to ignore the older woman sitting opposite her. She’d stared intently at Nel since they'd left Plymouth behind that morning, and her scrutiny had begun to make that last twenty mile stretch feel much, much longer.

Finally, after jouncing over a pothole deep enough to start prospecting for copper ore at the bottom, Nel gasped and then raised her eyes to meet the woman’s openly curious stare. She found sympathy for her own discomfort, and a small degree of kindly amusement too. 

“Where are you headed, miss?” the stranger asked after Nel raised the hint of an eyebrow at her as the silence stretched.

“Polgarrack.”

At that, the woman’s grey eyes narrowed in confusion. “Now what takes a young miss like you to an old fishing village like Polgarrack?”

She looked to be in her fifties, though a life beside the harsh sea had weathered her features somewhat, and her wiry grey hair was covered by a simple linen cap. Her dress was dark and plain, though there was a hint of tired lace around the neck and cuffs. Her hands had the tough, reddened look of someone who scrubbed pots and salted fish, while Nel’s own hands were smooth and soft, if a little ink stained from sending a letter to her friend before leaving the inn that morning.

Nel laughed quietly and shrugged. “There’s no mystery to it,” she said. “I am to be employed as a companion to the widowed Lady Penrose at Heath Top House. I am expected there this afternoon.”

Given that only ladies of relatively high social standing themselves tended to become a ‘lady’s companion’, the older woman made a hasty re-evaluation of her fellow traveller, and her already ruddy cheeks flushed a darker shade as she cleared her throat and looked away.

“Begging your pardon, miss,” she said. “We don’t get many new faces in Polgarrack, is all. I didn’t mean to pry or cause offence with my questions.”

“No harm in a little curiosity,” Nel said, trying to put the stranger at ease to avoid any further awkwardness between them on the remainder of their journey. “I take it you’re from Polgarrack yourself then?”

“Oh, born and raised, miss,” she chortled. She eyed the forest green redingote Nel wore, with its rather masculine high collar, wide lapels and small, gold pocket watch dangling on a chain, and the contrasting sage green skirts beneath, and no doubt made one or two judgements of her own about the young lady. “And yourself? You don’t sound as though you’re from these parts at all, if I may be so bold.”

Nel smiled. “I’ve come from Sussex.”

The woman’s watery, grey-blue eyes widened almost comically and she gasped. “’at's a bloody long way, miss! And all on your own?” She shook her head but remembered herself and mumbled, “Begging your pardon.”

“You’re right,” Nel sighed, letting her gaze slide to the window to watch the countryside roll past in a blur of salt-bleached grass and vibrant yellow gorse flowers. “It is a bloody long way.” And her spine and backside felt every lump and bump and lurch of the stagecoaches from Sussex to Cornwall. With a warmer smile, she turned back to the woman. “My name is Eleanor, but most people call me Nel.”

“Agatha,” she replied with a grandmotherly smile of her own for the young woman. “But everyone calls me Aggie. My husband, Martin, is the village carter and smith, and we’ve got four boys, all of them either fishermen or miners. They all married too, so I’ve got nine grandchildren, if you can believe it!”

Nel offered Aggie her congratulations and another little smile, and then ventured to ask, “Will you tell me a bit about the place? I should like to know more about it, since it is to be my home for the foreseeable future.”

Aggie brightened even more and shuffled her plain, dark skirts, giving a wince and a grunt as the coach lurched over a pothole and the driver cursed audibly above them. Settled, if not entirely comfortable, she began.

“Well, see now. Folks has been fishing these waters for time out of mind. Pilchards is our mainstay, o’course, but the folks over St. Austell way mine clay, and obviously there’s copper and tin mines all over in the north of Cornwall. Mining here is as old as fishing, but it’s starting to dry up here and there now, o’course.”

She barely paused to draw breath before barrelling on, and Nel sat and listened while the older woman talked.

“Now, your Lady Penrose married into the Penrose family — see, she’s from Bath herself originally, though I can’t rightly remember what her family name was, but…” Nel let Agatha's potted history of the fishing and mining community wash over her, paying just enough attention to make polite sounds at the right pauses, but the discomfort of the journey and a decided lack of sleep was beginning to wear her attention span down to a single, fraying thread.

After two hours in the swaying, rolling coach, she felt woozy and weak-stomached, but with Aggie’s near-constant chatter, she at least had a better understanding of the politics of the little village than she’d ever have gained in six months on her own. She’d also learned why Aggie had been in Plymouth, since most folks never had any reason to travel further than the bounds of their own parish. Agatha’s sister’s husband had apparently been killed in the American Revolutionary War some ten years earlier, and since the widow’s health wasn’t the best these days, Aggie made the trip along the coast when she could to see her and take care of her.

Nel’s ticket took her as far as Whitcross, a desolate intersection of paler roads on a clifftop overlooking the tightly-nestled fishing port below, and away across the heather and tufted grass of the heath, she could just see an old manor house in the distance, flanked by tall copper beeches and ash trees. It looked slightly further away than she had anticipated, and she glanced apprehensively down at the travelling trunk at her feet.

Still, she was aching for fresh air and to be free of the sickening motion of the carriage, so she took the driver’s hand and allowed him to guide her safely down onto the hard-packed surface of the road before he lifted her case down for her as well.

From inside, Aggie peered out and scowled disapprovingly. “Now just you wait a moment,” she barked at the driver, who cocked an eyebrow but did pause. “Did they not send someone for you, dearie?” she asked Nel, still leaning out of the doorway and peering about like a disgruntled badger, and using the endearment freely. Apparently, two hours of talking non-stop at Nel had removed any pretence of formality or sense of social distance. Nel might as well have been adopted into Aggie Carter’s family as a niece by that point, and she couldn’t help but smile at the warmth it conjured in her chest.

“I… I never thought that far through,” she admitted, with her hand atop her bonnet as the wind gusted up from the sea below, soaring delightedly over the edge of the cliff and racing on inland as if to continue the momentum of the great rolling breakers that foamed and thundered against the shore. The coachman glanced at his pocket watch and groused something about a schedule that was almost immediately lost to the next inward gust.

“No, no, dearie,” the old woman scoffed. “No, you must come into the village. It’s far too far to go all by yourself, and with that case as well. Here, let me —”

“I can manage the case, I assure you,” Nel said with a gentle smile as Aggie half-toppled, half-leaned out of the coach to pick up the case. “How far is it to the house?”

“Two miles up that hill yonder,” Agatha said, pointing with one gnarled and arthritic finger towards the house on the rise to the north. “Come to the Lantern, and we’ll have one of the lads take you up once you’ve caught your breath.” The Lantern, as Nel now knew thanks to Aggie’s detailed prattling, was the inn at the centre of the village, right on the water near the harbour.

She had been about to protest, but with a sigh, she simply nodded. The constant journeying and jolting had worn her down more than she cared to admit, and while she wasn’t the kind of wallflower she’d met any number of times in London during the Season, a life led mostly indoors with few opportunities for physical activity had not prepared her for a two mile walk in heavy, too-fine clothes, carrying an unwieldy case in gusty conditions. Her family had been invited a number of times to Goodwood House to walk the large park there, and she had frequently ridden a rather spirited mare through the parkland of Lavington Hall with her dear friend William, so she was not entirely unused to the great outdoors, but she did have to admit that her experiences had been rather more curated and sanitised than the wild expanse of heathland visible on all sides of the stagecoach from Whitcross.

“You’re kind, Agatha,” she said, and let the woman heft her case into the otherwise empty coach.

The thing about a tiny village was that an outsider stood out a mile, and a young lady in her mid twenties and dressed in impractical, rich green clothes, stood out like a beacon in a dark night. Everyone turned to watch her as she disembarked from the coach. At home, she had barely garnered a look from anyone. Being the centre of everyone’s curiosity there was novel and, in a word, horrifying.

She almost blurted aloud that one would think she was a revenue man come inspecting for smuggled goods, but she bit it back just in time. Cornwall’s so-called ‘free trade’ and smuggling rackets were absolutely none of her concern as an outsider, infamous though they may be, and it would do her no good to start sticking her nose where it did not belong.

The Lantern was a half-timbered, two-storey building that faced the walled harbour. Its painted sign was peeling and sun-bleached, and it squawked something dreadful as it swung back and forth in the squalling wind. Mullioned windows glinted and shimmered, though the small, diamond panes were caked with a haze of salt spray, and alongside the inn, a hand-cart rumbled down from a narrow side alley towards the harbour beyond, where fishing boats bobbed on their mooring lines at the lapping high tide.

Agatha pushed open the black-painted door but came to an abrupt halt as someone appeared to be leaving the inn at the exact same moment, and nearly barrelled into her and Nel.

“Oh, excuse me,” came a young man’s hoarse tenor, and he stepped aside within the inn’s small porch to allow the two women to enter before he left.

Nel noted briefly that he wore well-made but plain clothes, and carried a hefty looking cane in his left hand, upon which he leaned while he waited for them to pass. He was pale and thin, his undyed linen shirt hanging loosely off his shoulders, and his light brown hair was tied back at the nape of his neck into a horsetail. The moment he met her eye, he inhaled in surprise and almost immediately looked away, his large, dark brown eyes turning shy and uncertain. “M’lady,” he mumbled without looking up.

She didn’t have time to correct him and tell him she had no such title, because the moment she had stepped inside, he was off out into the day beyond, limping markedly on his right leg as he went.

Nel turned back to find Agatha waiting for her, watching. “That there was young Edmund Nancarrow,” she supplied as Nel caught up with her. “Local lad. Lots of Nancarrows in this area,” she chuckled. “Can’t move for tripping over a Nancarrow. He was a shy, skittish thing even before he went off to war in the Colonies and came back with a bad leg,” she added. “But he’s a sweetheart if ever I saw one. Tailor’s ’prentice he is now.”

At that, Nel just nodded. Something in her ached when she realised she probably wouldn’t have much to do with the folk from the village once she was ensconced up at Heath Top House, and she half wised she could. They already sounded far more interesting than the Lady Winnifred Penrose, with whom Nel had only exchanged a short flurry of letters before becoming formally engaged as her ‘companion’. 

Still, an unmarried woman of Nel’s age and social standing was considered almost past her prime, and given that the few marriage proposals she had received had faded into the mists of her very early adulthood, she had had to find another respectable way to support herself. Hence, Heath Top House.

Aggie bustled her into the main room of the pub, and their arrival caused a flurry of activity that drew the eyes of a good few patrons. 

Seated at the wooden bar inside, hunched over a pewter tankard, sat a tall, bulky man in his late-thirties or early forties, with long, thick, dark grey hair shot through with a shimmer of silver white. He had it tied back off his face in a low ponytail at the nape of his neck and as he turned to regard Nel’s arrival, she met unusually deep green eyes surrounded by a web of crows’ feet lines in a tanned, weathered face. His scowl was dark and full of suspicion, but even the storm clouds in his expression couldn’t mask the fact that he was handsome, in a rugged, rough-hewn kind of way.

When she saw where Nel’s attention had snagged, Aggie let out a little gasp and snatched her by the upper arm to steer her towards an empty table in a bay window, about as far from the wooden bar where the man still sat and glared at them as it was possible to be. 

“And that’s Locryn Trevethan,” Aggie hissed as she saw Nel settled into a seat. “Can’t say as I’ve seen him in here more than a handful of times this year though. He’s usually out on the water. Lives alone in an old stone cottage round the bay from here, up at Pilchard Sands. You’d probably best be giving him a wide berth, miss. Not that he should give you any trouble, mind,” she amended carefully, “But he’s not for the likes of you to go mingling with.”

Nel smiled at the protective tone in the older woman’s voice, and nodded once.

With her warning given, Aggie raised her voice and called over to the old man behind the bar. “’ere, Tom! This young lady needs a ride up to Heath Top. You think you can arrange that for her?”

The stoop-shouldered, white-haired man nodded and knuckled his forehead at Nel across the space. “Not the finest, but we got a cart.”

“If you have a horse, I could ride,” she said, trying to be helpful.

“Ain’t got a saddle for a lady,” he said regretfully.

Memories of galloping through the leafy trees of Lavington Hall’s parkland with William flashed across her mind and she suppressed a smile. She certainly hadn’t ridden the grey mare side-saddle while keeping up with her childhood friend, and although it had been a year or so since she’d sat astride a horse instead of side-saddle, she thought she could manage well enough. “I know how to ride a man’s saddle,” she said, “But I do have a travel case I’d need to send someone back for.”

“I could get one of the lads to bring that up for you after,” said Tom, “But it’s almost as much effort to hitch up a cart as it is to tack up a horse for riding, ma’am.”

“Whatever is the least trouble for you will do fine,” she said, and the stoic, weather-beaten old man’s red cheeks darkened and he ducked his head.

While Tom left to sort out transportation to the house, Aggie flapped about getting some refreshments for Nel, leaving her to wait at the table alone.

In the wake of the hubbub and pother Agatha left behind her, Nel took a long, deep breath looked around to find Locryn Trevethan still staring across the room at her. Taken aback by his directness and the intensity of his glare, she tried to smile, but his expression remained thunderous beneath strong, dark brows, and she quickly looked away, embarrassed.

In a face turned to leather by the sun and sea-wind, wide cheekbones and a heavy brow framed his piercingly green eyes. Never mind that marked crow’s feet around his eyes that made him look like he would rather have been laughing; the contrast between the dark, hostile glower and the soft laughter lines unnerved her and made her feel off-balance, as though her stranger’s presence in their local pub had unknowingly raised the ire of a usually gentle man. 

He had a short, neatly-trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard around full lips that were currently turned down at the corners and which bore a silver-pink scar across the middle. Despite the warm day, he wore a fisherman’s dense, woollen sweater, and when she risked another look back at him, she found him still frowning openly across the bar at her.

Nel didn’t relax until Aggie returned, at which point the man snapped abruptly out of his trance, slammed a coin down on the bar, and strode from the pub on long legs that were thick as tree trucks at the thigh. The door bounced back off the plasterwork in his wake and his boots rang on the flagstones outside.

“Not one to welcome strangers, I take it,” Nel muttered, and downed half of the cheap, watered-down wine that Agatha had set on the table for her.

“Oh don’t you pay him no mind, miss,” Aggie scoffed, settling herself down into the seat opposite her like a brooding hen and glaring at the pub door. “He don’t seem to like no one in Polgarrack save for sweet Ned Nancarrow, strangely enough. Then again, I ain’t met no one who’s taken a disliking to sweet Ned. Now, Tom will have the horse and cart ready for you in just a moment, but you just take your time and recover after your journey.”

Nel, who had felt ten times better the moment she’d taken her first proper lungful of sea air on stepping out of the swaying stagecoach, looked across the table into the older woman’s face and found a mother’s kindness and compassion in her wrinkled face, and something twisted in her gut. “You’re very kind,” she whispered, unable to muster anything more. “Thank you.”

She chuckled. “You know, and don’t you take this amiss, but you remind me of my niece a little, though she’s a little younger than you.”

Nel’s eyebrows twitched in wry amusement, and Agatha blushed at the impropriety of her words. Nel didn’t get the chance to reassure her because Tom shuffled back in and told her the cart was ready for her.

She laid a coin on the table for the wine and stood, following the innkeep out into the yard and clambering up with her case into the back of the cart. It was hardly a very dignified mode of transport for someone of her station, and when Tom said as much while they rumbled out of the inn’s yard, Nel just laughed and said she didn’t mind.

“Anything is better than that awful rolling stagecoach,” she beamed, and swung her legs back and forth like a child off the back of the cart bed while Tom clucked his tongue at the horse to hurry up.

As they trundled up the narrow, cobbled street from the harbour, they passed Edmund Nancarrow standing outside a tailor’s shop, talking with the beast of a man from the bar. Both men looked up and watched her pass like she was some kind of rare spectacle.

In a way, she supposed she was. 

Still, she smiled at them despite her nerves, and Edmund knuckled a non-existent cap at her with a shy smile, while Locryn just glared.

She sighed and wondered what this next chapter in her life would bring.

___

Next chapter ->

Well, what did you think of it so far? I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it, as always!

I hope you’ll consider reblogging as well as leaving a like if you enjoyed it. Take care, and I hope you have a lovely day/night wherever you are, and whenever you read this.

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[amplifyme]

S3 is wrapped! What an amazing experience~.

Reckoning: 

VINCENT DROPPING ONTO DIANA’S ROOF TO SEE HER. He thinks sometimes it’s best to forget and she asserts “I don’t believe that" (and Vincent admitting in the season finale that he doesn't forget because he recalls it all in his dreams.) Diana wanting to hear more about the world Below and Vincent coming to show her (the character progression-- he doesn't just take her to the Naming Ceremony.) She’s already “in” with the community because of her above and beyond measures to recover Vincent and his son. VINCENT SHOWS HER THE WATERFALL ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, how our boy has grown. The Naming Ceremony. Diana talking with Jamie. Jessica????? Mary’s sadness. Jessica luring Father to the surface and murder happening. Vincent’s assurance of Diana’s welcome and friendship; and Diana asking when she’ll see him again and not pressing after his “I don’t know.” Vincent’s face as Diana climbs back up to the surface-- not by Catherine’s route, but by her own (and the script notes, heehheheheh.) Diana working with Joe on a case; Mary bringing news to Vincent-- I thought it was a helper that was murdered (Winston??? I know him from AWTN)-- and Vincent seeing Mary’s wounded feelings that she tries to suppress with grace (knew it.) Jimmy’s not amenable or happy (and was really subtle-not-subtle about deflecting away from Diana at first.) Jessica not wanting to spend the next fifty years alone. Father feeling bad on his return. The flip of Vincent mediating Father’s complicated love affairs (I’m not laughing, I’m not laughing, but it’s a little bit ironic.) Father feeling physical pain with the separation and Vincent empathizing even if he lives/lived that way his entire life. Vincent willing to help Father “whatever path he chose”-- wow. Jimmy and Joe talking about Diana’s methods and cutting to Diana verbalizing her thoughts while Gregory kills again. (The script is great though bittersweet read along-- would have loved to see those scenes; but I’m glad what was kept was excellent.) The Community listening to Vincent since Father is not there (and William completely supporting him) and Vincent noticing Mary leaving and Mary confronting Father at the romantic (for Vincent and Catherine, and Vincent and Diana?) lake spot. Father realizing Mary is attached. Father leaving for two weeks while Vincent walks him up. Father abandoning his post and Vincent’s “think of the joy, the possibilities”-- this is Father’s version of Remember Love, and Vincent is living through it, isn’t he? Vincent feeling disconnected to the world Above because he found and lost Catherine… and the undercurrent of that being he’s losing Father, too. Diana not knowing this but listening and understanding; then surprising him by already working on the case he needs help with. Vincent immediately warning her to be “very careful with this knowledge” and Diana’s “I know.” Testing her continuing loyalty to the world below by solving a murder for them, nice. I like that her confusion about people from the world Below committing murder was cut-- it keeps that realistic edge to her character. Vincent’s monologues with his son continue to be perfection; and the episode ending with him holding little Jacob as his only stability is *chef’s kiss*.

Legacies: 

Diana carefully navigating Joe and Jimmy on the case while Father feels guilt but sets it aside to walk in the park and marvel at frisbees with Jessica. Kipling’s stories~. Mary and Vincent’s conversation-- the high times are always just around the corner, and Mary not wanting to burden Vincent. Vincent listening and comforting Mary’s woes. The third murder from an old, old helper; Vincent and Diana figuring it out together. Diana tearing up over the backstory and Gregory and "failing." Father almost slipping off the stairs with his squeaky shoes, hearing Gregory digging a grave, and investigating (DESPITE HIS PROMISE TO JESSICA), and not tapping out what he’s doing (some of that guilt and disconnection holding his hand) and trying to run from and getting recaught by Gregory… not a great episode for Father (also: hit over the head like the other cave in episode, eyyyy parallels.) Vincent and baby Jacob and Jamie and (... I forgot, oh no-- looked up the script, IT’S BROOKE)’s delightful moment being broken off and Diana showing up alone to Gregory’s place and tracking him down. Father trying to reason with Gregory about the past and pleading to help Gregory even as Father’s lowered into the coffin (the irony of both men not being able to let go finally colliding with each other.) Vincent dropping in to ask Jessica questions and then having to leave just as fast. Diana to the rescue and finding Gregory and trying to talk him down. Diana working out where Father is with the Community (and Jessica comforting rather than being angry or jealous with Mary.) Vincent running straight to the tunnels and finding a very dusty Father with one punch to the ground. Jimmy angry that Joe is listening to Diana instead of his tenacity (and I get that frustration-- Joe was in his position a couple months ago about Cathy; except this time, it’s a personal beef Jimmy has with his skills against Diana’s... and he’s wrong.) Joe reading Diana like a book (and used to secrets by now, having worked with Cathy two to three years.) Jessica seeing that Father belongs Below (also: red haired second romances, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.) “He’s a resilient animal, the old gray whale”, and Jessica’s “Not so old”; and their goodbye. DIANA MEETING LITTLE JACOB AGAIN. Vincent caught up in the miracle of his son and Diana remarking that “we can never run out of hope for a newborn child” (layered nicely over her I-don’t-trust-anyone attitude from a few episodes ago)-- one pair’s beginning at an end and another person’s beginning not even started. Vincent’s recall of nightmares and violence and pain and acknowledging that he put both of them through a lot (something Cathy didn't do to Vincent, if I recall.) “He can make it all right”/”Nothing can make it all right.” And Vincent asking why Diana’s done so much for them. Her “I don’t know, Vincent, you… you make so many things possible… how could I not help you?” was an amazing line (and very MSR, too, now that I think of it; but moving that thought aside because this is the Vincent/Diana romance hour only--); and Vincent’s response--”Jacob is not my only blessing”-- was the HEIGHT of romance (grinned so, so big.) Diana thinking he means only Catherine (setting up that arc in Nan’s AWTN, WOW NAN) and being touched and shaken he means her, too; and Vincent putting her unease and nerves and doubts in herself to rest (the script notes. THE SCRIPT NOTES.) And the final scene: Diana looking at Vincent but Vincent keeping his eyes on his son (but aware she’s looking at him.) Magnificent. 

Giving myself a bit of time to digest the series, then I’m going to go wild rereading AWTN and everything else you’ve uploaded. This has been such an incredible journey-- thank you for sharing it here, for broadening my horizons with Nan’s work and BATB, and for sharing it with me. I’ve enjoyed every second thus far; and I’m positive I will continue to do so in future~. :DDDDD 

Congratulations! I hope you take the time to go back and rewatch your favorites. As with TXF, every viewing brings something new, and a deeper appreciation for the storytelling.

Let's wrap this up (for now, anyway).

Diana wanting to hear more about the world Below and Vincent coming to show her (the character progression-- he doesn't just take her to the Naming Ceremony.) She’s already “in” with the community because of her above and beyond measures to recover Vincent and his son. VINCENT SHOWS HER THE WATERFALL ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, how our boy has grown.

Yeah, I think it's obvious that he's already pretty fond of her.

The Naming Ceremony. Diana talking with Jamie. Jessica?????

She actually spoke to Livvy. And did you catch that Laura approached her and asked her in sign what she was to Vincent? And she signed back to her, "A friend."

Ah, yes, Jessica. Does Nan's Portrait by Flash Light resonate a bit more now that you've "met" her?

Vincent’s assurance of Diana’s welcome and friendship; and Diana asking when she’ll see him again and not pressing after his “I don’t know.” Vincent’s face as Diana climbs back up to the surface-- not by Catherine’s route, but by her own (and the script notes, heehheheheh.)

That's why I wanted you to read the scripts! Vincent can be very reticent in his own way, but a lot of what he's thinking and feeling is in his face and his eyes, if you know how to look. This is really the first chance they've had to just talk and be together without some sort of crisis being the catalyst. So there's a bit of newness and shy awkwardness that's so disarming to me.

What did you think about the way Diana works, how she immerses herself into someone else's head? Interesting, yes? And it's obvious she and Joe have come to some sort of understanding after Gabe's death. He gives her more leeway, doesn't demand as many explanations.

The flip of Vincent mediating Father’s complicated love affairs (I’m not laughing, I’m not laughing, but it’s a little bit ironic.) Father feeling physical pain with the separation and Vincent empathizing even if he lives/lived that way his entire life. Vincent willing to help Father “whatever path he chose”-- wow.

Yeah, I think Father had to have gained more understanding of what V has lived with all his life, especially after Catherine. And Vincent continues to be the good and compassionate man he's always been, just a bit less... fanciful (or perhaps innocent?) in his thinking. He's matured, gained his own fresh understanding of life and love and "the fell clutch of circumstance."

Father abandoning his post and Vincent’s “think of the joy, the possibilities”-- this is Father’s version of Remember Love, and Vincent is living through it, isn’t he? Vincent feeling disconnected to the world Above because he found and lost Catherine… and the undercurrent of that being he’s losing Father, too.

Yes to all this! But Diana will reintroduce him to the wonders of the world Above soon - I'm certain of it. How long will he be able to resist the draw of Diana, her loft (already a safe place in his mind), and the ability to stand in front of her windows in the sunlight? I'm betting not very long.

Vincent’s monologues with his son continue to be perfection; and the episode ending with him holding little Jacob as his only stability is *chef’s kiss*.

Which is mirrored in Legacies final scene, with the important and telling addition of one other person. 🙂

Father trying to reason with Gregory about the past and pleading to help Gregory even as Father’s lowered into the coffin (the irony of both men not being able to let go finally colliding with each other.)

Yep!

Diana working out where Father is with the Community (and Jessica comforting rather than being angry or jealous with Mary.)

What I find most interesting about that scene is the interaction between Diana and Vincent. She's convinced it's over and that Father must be dead. But the second V says he's not, that he would know it if he was, Diana immediately accepts his spooky certainty and shifts gears with him, considers other explanations for what might've happened to Father. They make a good team, huh?

Joe reading Diana like a book (and used to secrets by now, having worked with Cathy two to three years.)

I love Diana's "Ouija board" crack to Joe as she's leaving. 🤣

The final scene...

Vincent’s recall of nightmares and violence and pain and acknowledging that he put both of them through a lot (something Cathy didn't do to Vincent, if I recall.)

I think you might right about Cathy. I can't think of a single instance where she does acknowledge that. Hmmmm...

Her “I don’t know, Vincent, you… you make so many things possible… how could I not help you?” was an amazing line (and very MSR, too, now that I think of it; but moving that thought aside because this is the Vincent/Diana romance hour only--); and Vincent’s response--”Jacob is not my only blessing”-- was the HEIGHT of romance (grinned so, so big.)

Don't know how much attention you've paid to V's body language throughout the series, but he has a subtle tell when he's feeling a bit shy or nervous: he shifts his weight a little. Which is exactly what he does before he tells Diana that Jacob is not his only blessing. I love that moment. Diana is practically struck dumb. She has no idea how to respond to that. I love them. 🥰

And the final scene: Diana looking at Vincent but Vincent keeping his eyes on his son (but aware she’s looking at him.)

Um, not precisely correct. If you watch carefully, the final five seconds or so, you can see him shift his focus from the baby to her. You can see it in the second screencap here. I added the first one just because both V and D are smiling in this one. ❤️

This has been such an incredible journey-- thank you for sharing it here, for broadening my horizons with Nan’s work and BATB, and for sharing it with me. I’ve enjoyed every second thus far; and I’m positive I will continue to do so in future~. :DDDDD 

The pleasure has been all mine, my friend. I love introducing people to the BATB 'verse and to Vincent and his family, friends, and the two vastly different women he comes to love - it's all so magical and unique. I don't think there'll ever be another show like it. It's been a long time since I've done a complete rewatch. Thanks for helping me rediscover it!

[shoku-and-awe]

Vietnamese sweets from my trip to Hoi An last year! We have the obligatory strolling coconut, rice cakes with peanuts and sugar, late-night roti with mango (the amount of butter was unreal), fresh fruit for breakfast, and fried red banana cakes from a street vendor.

Also, I’d never had red banana before, but somehow it triggered a fuzzy childhood memory that I was losing my mind trying to decode. I walked around muttering to myself like Robert Durst for two days, then met up with my parents in Hanoi and my dad immediately cracked the case!

Red bananas come from the Just So Story about the Elephant’s Child, who really really wanted to know what the Crocodile had for dinner and so took a hundred pounds of bananas (the little red kind) all the way to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to find out. And boy did he find out...

[violet-knox]

The Family Secret

Chapter 3: Deep Breaths

Pairing: Young!Snape x Reader

Summary: You finally make it home, safe and sound, happy to welcome Severus into your family. Finally you feel at ease until you’re woken in the middle of the night.

Word count: 4087

Previous Chapter - Chapter 1 

Severus had barely any time to sleep before it was your turn to be dropped off, the conductor glaring down the bus in your direction when he called your name. You were too tired to care for the overgrown child holding a grudge on you because your boyfriend was irritable. Your eyes were heavy with exhaustion and it took everything you had to stay awake, telling yourself you were almost there as the bus swerved around the town. 

“Sev,” you whispered, lightly shaking his shoulders to wake him. “Severus.”

You heard him groan in protest, he cuddled into your side as if you were waking him to head to class. You ran your fingers through his hair and smiled as he hummed in response and for the first time that night, you saw a look of content reflected on his face. He was no longer worried about what you might think of him, whether you’d leave him to the horrors of his family or not. He no longer cared what his parents might do, how they may react. None of it mattered anymore. He’d left Spinner’s End, never to return and for the first time in his life, he knew without a doubt he had someone who cared and loved him back. 

“It’s time to go,” you urged him, trying to push him up. Pulling himself off you with a groan, he rubbed his tired eyes, trying to shake off his sleep. He looked worse than he had before he’d fallen asleep, a giant bruise on the side of his jaw making itself apparent and you could only hope that was the extent of his injuries.

“Already?” He spoke like he had the flu, his voice heavy with pain, harsh like his throat was made of sandpaper. 

“I’m afraid so,” you chuckled, gently tucking his hair behind his ear, your fingers hovering over his bruise tracing its outline. Your smile slowly faded into a frown, Severus grasping your wrist when he saw the sadness in your eyes. The last thing he wanted was for you to worry over him. Wounds heal, but it's hard to change the way people view others, something he was all too familiar with, and he didn’t want you to see him like some helpless child that needed your protection. 

Placing his hand over yours, he peeled it away from his face, gripping it tightly instead, hoping to assure you he was fine. Your eyes met his and you felt your worries melt away as you focussed on him. Severus smiled as he watched your expression soften, relieved you wouldn’t make a big deal over his injuries. Leaning in, he tilted his head and pressed his lips to yours, his hand finding itself in your hair as he kissed you. You eagerly kissed back, forgetting about last night, forgetting you’d just helped him run away from home and how worried your parents must have been when you didn’t come home yesterday. You focussed on his touch, his kiss, his love for you and left behind any concerns about what was to happen next. 

“(Y/L/N)!” Shouted the conductor. You pulled yourself away from him, Severus leaning in to keep your lips connected for as long as possible, a small whimper of complaint escaping his lips as you stood up, pushing back the curtains to find Kipling glaring down the bus in your direction. “Your stop!”

You rose your hand to thank the man and turned back to Severus, raising an eyebrow as you suppressed a laugh. You’d never seen a man as old as Kepling hold a grudge over the way a teenager had treated him, but you found the absurdity of the situation absolutely hilarious and apparently so did Severus. He no longer seemed short tempered towards the man, his mood improved after the short nap he’d taken. There were no words to express the relief you felt seeing him happy, watching the life return to his body.   

As Severus took his time to get up from off the bed, you removed the charm on the trunk and pulled on the handle to reveal it from where it hid. Once the bus came to an abrupt halt, Severus took the other side of the trunk and you both made your way off the bus. Kipling glared at you both, arms crossed as you passed him by, saying absolutely nothing when you tried to thank him. The second you’d stepped off the bus, the doors slammed shut and the bus was gone, leaving you in the dark once again. 

You shook your head at the insane night you’d had, hoping that your arrival at your destination meant the nightmare was over, that you could both finally get some rest. You glanced over to Severus who looked rather confused, glaring at the house you’d been dropped off at. It wasn’t enormous, but it was large enough for you to know never to mention it to Severus all these years, knowing how he’d feel about your family’s fortune. But it wasn’t just the size of the house that Severus found quite shocking, it was the fact that it was the only house on the street alive at four-thirty in the morning. The first floor was completely lit and he could see movements in what he assumed was the kitchen. 

“My father’s a doctor,” you explained as you pushed open the gate and made your way up to the door. You’d mentioned previously both your parents were Muggles, but you’d never cared to share what they did, always avoiding the question when he asked, feeling guilty when he told you his mother was unemployed and his father was a factory worker. You never minded of course, but the way he looked when he told you of his parent’s work status, you could tell he was ashamed.  

“What?” Severus looked confused as if your statement couldn’t possibly explain why your house was awake, hoping the reason wasn’t because of him and your choice to stay at Spinner’s End last night. You giggled as you set down the trunk to search for your keys, realizing he had no reason to understand the job of a Muggle doctor. Ever since you’d left for Hogwarts, you’d felt yourself detach from the Muggle world more and more, your parents the only reason you keep in touch

“He works the night shift Thursday through Saturday,” you told him. “He always leaves for work around seven pm and then returns at four in the morning.”

“But why? That sounds like a horrible schedule to keep,” Severus asked, staring at the window where your father’s shadow was shown holding a mug and reading a book. He found it strange for someone to want to work such hours, especially when the entire country was asleep right now. 

“He didn’t pick his schedule,” you said as you pushed open the door and pocketed your keys. Severus watched the figure in the kitchen turn towards the sound of the front door opening before setting down the mug and book to make his way into the sitting room. Stepping inside, he helped you carry his trunk inside before you shut the door. 

“(Y/N)?!” Severus watched your father quickly make his way into the room, clearly concerned for you. “Where have you been?!”

He’d barely thrown Severus a quick glance before focussing his attention on you. His reaction wasn’t one Severus had ever imagined coming from a parent, his own never glancing twice if he stayed out late so long as he was there in the morning for chores. Your father cared for you, the panic of harm coming your way evident in his eyes. He would have been jealous long ago as he always was when he saw others with their parents, but he felt happy watching him hug you. He wanted you to be loved, to have people worry over you, to have what he didn’t. 

“I-I know I said I’d be home by midnight. I’m sorry, something came up. I-” you spoke apologetically, your eyes trying to calm him as you both kept your arms hooked on one another. You peered over in Severus’ direction and he saw the smallest sliver of a smile on your face, like he was part of the family, being welcomed home instead of the intruder he truly was. “Can Severus stay here for a while?”

The man shifted his glance to Severus, letting you go as his eyes scanned him over. He felt self-conscious as he waited in anticipation for the man’s answer, to see if this house would reject him, claiming him unworthy like Lily’s had. He knew how he looked, bruised, hair likely dripping with oil, clothing dirty and torn. He wasn’t exactly in the ideal state to be meeting your father, let alone barging into his home at four in the morning asking for a place to stay. 

“What happened?” your father asked.

“Can-can we talk about it in the morning?” You pleaded with your eyes, too exhausted to do anything but sleep. You both needed to rest after the night you’d had, after you’d made your escape. Severus was free of that horrible house and you just wanted to make sure he was okay rather than argue with your father right now. 

It seemed as though hours would pass by as you both stood there, staring at the man, his arms crossed, eyes squinting, glancing between you and Severus. Neither of you knew what you’d do if he said no. You didn’t have enough money to find a place to stay and going back to Spinner’s End wasn’t an option. He had to say yes, there was no other choice. You’d fight for him to stay with you, at least for the night and if it came to it, you’d figure out what to do tomorrow, take it one day at a time. Finally, your father relaxed his posture, his arms falling by his side as he let out a sigh in defeat.

“Fine. Uh, Severus, you can stay in our guest room,” he agreed to your terms, pointing to the door beside the staircase down the hall. 

“Papa please, can he stay in my room? Just for tonight? Please?” You pushed your luck and Severus could hardly believe your daring attitude. It was enough for your father to agree to let him stay, generous of him considering he’d never met Severus before, but you had concerns. Severus was getting weaker with each moment that passed. He was physically, mentally and emotionally strained from everything that had happened and you wanted him by your side in case anything were to happen.

“Absolutely not.” Your father rejected your request as predicted. 

“Please Papa? It’s been a long night and I don’t want to leave him.” You took Severus’ hand and pressed his arm into your chest, hoping to sway your father. You knew he had a soft spot for you; being an only child did have its perks, at least with your father. 

“Please,” you begged, smiling as you held Severus tighter, your boyfriend likely completely red in the face by now from the situation, but you couldn’t risk taking your eyes of your father to find out. He kept glancing away from you, shaking his head, rolling his eyes at your stubborn behaviour, but you kept your position, never letting up.  

“Fine. But keep your door open,” he finally agreed, and you relaxed your grasp on Severus, happy you wouldn’t have to leave his side just yet. 

“Thank you!” you sang in glee as you turned your eyes to Severus, smiling when you saw his hair fallen around him, what little you could see of his face, beet red. He was embarrassed of course, ashamed he had to ask for help from the parents of the person he’d been dating, who he loved and wanted to make a good impression for. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. He wasn’t supposed to stand there in front of the man like a beggar, a homeless student with nothing to show for but the clothes on his back and the trunk you’d helped him lug around. The way the man looked at him now, pity in his eyes, a look of remorse, this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. 

“Go upstairs and I’ll fetch my first aid kit.” your father ordered, looking rather concerned for Severus. He was paler than usual, his skin whiter than paper, his eyes bloodshot and his breaths heavier than ever before. You’d been so concerned with your travels, getting him to safety, you’d hardly noticed how discoloured he was. 

Picking up one side of the trunk, Severus grabbed hold of the other as he followed you up the stairs to your room. Your room was at least three times larger than his, your bed holding a queen-sized mattress, pillows fluffier than a Pygmy Puff, a large desk organized with as much supplies as you could ever need. None of it a shock to him considering the size and location of the house. You placed the trunk against the wall between your closet and the door before flicking on the light to your room. You’d barely invited Severus to have a seat on the bed before your father came back into the room, setting the first aid kit onto your desk and unzipping it. 

Severus rose a brow at you, doubting how effective Muggle medicine could be, but he let your father examine him nonetheless. Having you by his side was all that gave him the strength to pull through all this. He looked down at his hand, watching your fingers slip through his palm to interlock with his. Your touch was medicine enough for him, the cream your father had given him for the bruises useless when you’d spent all of last night mending his heart.

“I’ll be fine,” Severus insisted, the man asking Severus to remove his shirt so he could examine his chest. “I just need some rest.”

You were about to protest, to insist he let your father look him over properly, but you knew how tired he was, how badly he needed a good night's rest and for all you knew, his evident pain was all due to lack of sleep. Smiling at your father, you agreed with Severus, wanting to rest as well and put last night behind you. Your father reluctantly gave Severus a few painkillers before putting away his kit, realizing how hard of a day you’d both had and began to make his way out of the room. 

“We will discuss this in the morning,” he said, standing by the door. You nodded and stood to remove your shoes, socks and jacket, deciding to sleep in the clothing you had on and change in the morning.

“Goodnight,” you said, watching him leave you be and make his way across the hall to his own room. Looking back to Severus, you let out a sigh of relief, closed your eyes and tilted your head back. It was over. You’d made it. He was safe, he was home. 

Severus walked over to you and gently placed his hands around you, his touch feather light as you let the weight lift off your shoulders. You eased into him, returning his hug and you both held each other, engulfed in the silence; the beautiful sound of peace and freedom. You held onto the moment, smiling as you each leaned on the other, trusting one another. You couldn’t help but hum in delight, breaking the cherished silence between you.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice silky smooth, soft like the clouds in the sky. He was grateful for you, for everything you were to him, for simply existing. He’d spend the rest of his life trying to repay the gift you’d given him tonight, breaking him out of the chains that weighed him down his entire life. 

You snuggled into him, your fingers running through his hair in comfort, your face sore from smiling for so long. You loved him so much, your heart fluttering as you held him, thinking about spending your summer together, happy and safe. The events you’d witnessed yesterday, the way he was treated in that house was a nightmare you never thought he’d suffered through, his life resembling that of a prisoner than a poor Cokeworth boy living on the wrong side of town. 

Neither of you knew how long you’d stood there for, but when your legs could take no more, they walked you both to the bed, your hands interlocked until you managed to find your way under the covers. Like a moth to a flame, your bodies held onto each other tightly, your limbs tangled in one another, his face nuzzled deep in the crook of your neck, your lips pressed against his hair, taking in his scent as sleep welcomed you with open arms. It took no more than five minutes for you both to drift off, dreaming of your futures, the possibilities that awaited you, the mends that could be made with those you’d both said goodbye to long ago. Severus had closed the door on his past, his family, but you’d kicked open a hundred windows for him, opening his life up to so many opportunities. He was no longer tied down to live as the boy with massive piles of debt passed down from his parents, trying to work his way out of poverty. He was the boy with great potential, the boy with love to help him concur anything thrown his way. 

You wanted nothing but the best for Severus and the Sandman had granted you that wish tonight, your dreams filled with aspiration for him, watching him complete his Mastery in Potions and rise to be known as the Wizarding World's most successful portioner. He’d be awarded an Order of Merlin and you’d be there by his side to support him, always. You gasped in amazement at his achievements, gasped when he told you he couldn’t live without you, gasped on the day of your wedding, gasped-

When you woke at the sound of alarmingly desperate gasps, a sound like none other you’d heard before, like a wounded animal screaming for its life. Your eyes wanted to stay closed, to shield you from the horror of the real world. Go back to sleep, life was kinder in your dreams. Severus was gasping for air like he was drowning, unable to come back to the surface. Your body jolted up when you finally realized what was going on. 

“Severus!? Sev!” You sat, kneeling beside him on the bed, your hands cupping his cheek, hoping to wake him from this nightmare, that you’d both wake up perfectly happy again. His eyes opened the slightest bit before rolling back into his head again, his chest desperately grasping for air. “Severus please!”

Tears swelled in your eyes as you begged him, begged Merlin, begged the universe for this to stop. It was a dream, a horrible nightmare. It had to be, this couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening. You were happy, you were safe, you’d saved him. No, no, no, no!

“Papa!” You shouted through your cries, your mind unable to grasp the situation, screaming at you. Your body tensed, your arms wrapped around him desperately. You could do nothing more than cry, to hug him, to shout and scream, your thoughts too scrambled to think to do anything else. 

Both your parents came running into your room, your mother turning on the light and your heart dropped as you saw the colour completely lost from Severus’ face. He was a ghost, a mere image of the boy you loved. Your vision blurred as your tears thickened, carrying every memory of him that flashed through your mind, every plan you’d imagined for your futures together. Your own throat closed up, no longer accepting air as you screeched lowly. Please.

“(Y/N)! Get off the bed!” your father ordered, but you couldn’t process his words, anything past the perimeter of your bed miles away to you. You couldn’t focus on anything but the state of your boyfriend. He was barely breathing, his eyes refusing to open, his blood no longer pumping through his body. The world was lost to your mind. You didn’t want to accept it, you couldn’t think that way, he was still here, he was still with you, he was still alive. 

You felt yourself being pulled back into reality as your mother hugged you from behind, dragging you off the bed. Your body was too weak to function, too focussed on the panic you felt that you fell backwards in your mother's arms, bring you both down to the ground as she held you, your tears falling to the floor as you watched your father take your place, tearing at Severus’ shirt to examine him.

“His lung collapsed,” your father stated so casually, like Severus was just another one of his patients, like he meant nothing to him. Your blood boiled at the absurdity of his words. How could his lung have collapsed? What had his father done to him last night? How had he managed to travel on the Knight Bus with you? Your mind burned with questions, your tears drying as your panic turned into rage. Anger covered up your fear, wanting to blame someone, to go back to Spinner’s End and make those horrible people undo the damage they’d done to their son. You struggled to keep yourself grounded as your mother slowly let go of you, your father’s words muted to your ears as he spoke.   

“Grab the car keys and call the hospital, let them know I’m on my way with an emergency patient,” he said to your mother who immediately ran out of the room. Her heavy footsteps echoed in our head, your vision finally returning to you as you watched your father pull Severus to the edge of the bed.  

“I-I can take him to St. Mungo’s,” you managed to say, finally grasping the situation and trying to think of the best way to help Severus. “They-they have better treatment, faster treatment.”

“It’s too far away. By the time we even reach London he’ll-” Your father shook his head as he slowly gathered Severus in his arms, lifting him off the bed to carry him out the door. He paused and looked back at you, seeing the pain in your eyes, the worry and sorrow. 

“He’ll be fine (Y/N). Just, go help your mother,” he tried to assure you, but his tone told a different story than his words. He was just as worried as you were and that frightened you more than anything. You let out a shaky breath, trying to push aside your despair before nodding slowly and turning on your feet to run over and grab the keys to the car, your father making his way after you with Severus. Your mum got off the phone just as you picked up the car keys and ran to unlock the car, following behind you in a haste. 

Tears returned to your eyes as your father entered the garage after you, Severus lying lifeless in his arms. Your bottom lip trembled as you pushed down your emotions, trying to stay strong for him. It would do no good to resume your state of panic, it would do him no good. You had to stay strong for the both of you. For Severus you would stay silent, you would hold him and cast every healing spell you could think of on your way to the hospital. You’d keep yourself from falling apart for the sake of his life, his future. You couldn’t let yourself mourn him because he wasn’t gone. He had an entire life to live and so you fought just as his body was fighting to keep him alive. Together you would fight through this, you’d survive and come out the other end stronger than before. You’d conquered over so much pain and agony within the last few years together, there was no reason for you to give up now. You were going to fight off death, win his life back and re-join each other on the other side of the battlefield, you were sure of it. It was love that brought you home tonight and it was love that would bring him back to you again. 

~

Next Chapter

~

@dracos-mudblood​ @darkthought15​ @severuslovebot​ @mitchiesdungeon​ @bush-viper-cutie​ @ravenhopeflyte54​ @wanderingtrails @sleepysnapesnake​ @lizlil​ @eave3​ @cuddlebunny0330​

[image-thot]

Drunken Mess Part 2 - Larry x reader

It had almost been two months since he last saw you, even though he is the reason you left he can't help but feel angry. But he is not angry for the same reason you left, no.

 After about a month of not responding to your text or calls, they all suddenly stop at first he thinks nothing of it. He is still angry with you, this anger that’s been brewing in his head starts to whisper different ideas and scenarios to him. It makes him think, maybe you've found someone more willing to be physical with you.

 He's sad and angry.

 The voice repeats, maybe they never loved me. He is a mess of overwhelming emotions, he wants to punch something but at the same time, he wants to curl up and cry. He knows why you are doing this to him, well he thinks he knows. He starts to think he is deserving of all this misfortune, everything that has happened in his life is all been about bringing him pain.

 But then it dawns on him, what if something happened to you? That thought was brought on by Keeg, they wanted to try and give him reason to dig himself out of this self-loathing hole he has dug. At this realisation he's terrified, he has a million different scenarios go through his head. What if you'd been kidnapped? Injured or Killed! It had only been a week since you had lasted texted, that is plenty of time for you to have god knows what happen to you.

He goes to Rita as he knows you two are close, not as close as he is with her but enough that you still write to her.

“Rita!” He shouts down the hall to her. “Have you been writing to y/n?” He asks trying to mask the panic that is laced in his voice.

“It’s bad enough that you are ignoring them, but do you have to spy on her?” She huffs turning to face him, a scowl present on her face.

“No I’m not spying, I’m worried about them.” He says looking down from her gaze.

“That’s a first.” She scoffs as he looks at her in almost a glare even with his glasses. She notices his change and her expression softens. “But to answer your question, they haven’t written in about two weeks.”

 At that, he takes off running down the hall.

 “Larry! What does that mean?!” Rita shouts after him.

 He goes to Vic because he is the most tech-savvy he knows, he hopes he is going to help. No, he has to help. He almost kicks down the door to Vics room as he enters.

“Wow, Larry. Ever heard of knocking?!” Vic shouts at him.

 “I need your help.”

After explaining the situation to him he is somewhat understandable and gets to work.

 “So after a month of ghosting them you going to stalk them?” He jokes out.

“This is serious Vic.” Larry almost growls out.

After a few minutes, Vic lets out a sigh.

“Sorry Larry, but their phone hasn’t been turned on in about a week.” 

“Do you know where?” Larry responds, he feels like he may die from this overwhelming feeling of dread. “Maybe we can find out if we go to where it last was?”

 “That I can do.” Vic takes a couple of seconds to get the location. “ unit 5 at 47 bay road, Madison, Wisconsin. Does that mean anything to you or them?”

“Yes, that’s their apartment, from before they moved here,” Larry speaks as he walks out of Vic’s room.

 “Guess it’s road trip time,” Vic says following behind larry

“No, you aren’t coming.” Larry turns to stop him noticing the others walking down the hall.

 “I hope you do not think you doing this by yourself,” Rita says.

 It turns into a big old road trip with the whole gang to your apartment. Everyone has their reasons for going but every one of them is worried about you.

Once they do eventually get to your apartment they have no idea what to expect when going in. is there going to be a crime scene? Hidden clues around?

Nothing, your apartment almost looks like no one has ever lived there, aside from the furniture and odd clothing items around. It’s not the first time he has been here before, he has been here just a few times before and nothing looks different aside from your missing presence. He begins to look for anything that might be out of place or any notes or clues to your disappearance. The others were about to help when Rita stops them, she knows how much this means to Larry and knows that he is the best person to discern between a clue and just a normal item.

Whilst looking for clues he stumbles across a new shelf in your bedroom, the shelf is dedicated to things that he has got you. Any plants that he has given you are all well maintained. After several hours of combing through your things, he has come up with nothing. Vic suggests that they try your place of work, they were not sure what they were expecting when they got there. When they had first met you seem like fighting crime and saving lives was your full-time job. It was a real kick when they find that no you hadn’t returned to fighting crime but, instead worked at a small ordinary grocery store. They had found out from the manager surprisingly you had quit about four weeks ago.

 “Is she missing?” an elderly woman asked as the group was exiting the store.

“Ye—I’m not sure,” Larry responds, slightly stuttering. He isn’t sure what if you just left because you wanted nothing to do with them or him.

 “Well, they must have some foresight.” She responds and starts to shuffle back into the store.

 “Why is that?” He is quick to catch up to the elderly woman.

 “Well, they had asked me to water their plants for the next month or two. I just live down the hall from them.”  She says continuing to shuffle off into the shop, he just stands there.

Those thoughts come back, had you left because you did not want anything to do with him? Was this just some sick game to you?

Hammerhead had thrown a tantrum and pointed out a lot of the things that he was trying not to think of.  It was then that they decided that in the morning they would go back to the manor.

That night he slept in your bed, he could still smell you, it brought him comfort and pain at the same time. He wanted to cry, he wasn’t sure if he could.

 When they get back to the manor they are greeted by a slightly angry Chief, he isn’t happy that they went out without his consent.

 “What you could show a little concern over y/n!?” Larry shouts storming up towards his room, Rita follows up behind him she wants to offer him the comfort she knows he needs.

 Another week goes by, nothing.

 He takes another trip to your apartment, he goes around your neighbourhood and city postings missing flyers. When he got back he even went to beg the chief to contact Kipling to summon Baphomet to try and locate you, Chief swiftly denied him saying that if you wanted to be found you would be. This angers him, he started to think the chief knew what was happening with you and it would not have been the first time the chief had lied to him.

 It has been three weeks since he had last received anything from you, his anger had long faded and replaced with grief. What if he never saw you again? What if you moved on? What if you had died?  He would never know, and that not knowing was slowly driving him into a catatonic state.

 Throughout this whole experience, Keeg had tried to help Larry, not that he had ever stopped before. But he tried to comfort him in ways they hadn’t tried before, he tried to help locate you to no avail.

 In the fourth week he never left his room, Cliff said he must have died up there. Rita was going up she would be there for him making sure that he at least ate. He didn't want to give up on you, but he just felt so hopeless and nothing he did never seem Everyone was feeling it they had all tried and come up short.

 It was the first night of the new month, Larry had decided that he would try and get out, even if it was to turn back around. As he exited his room a loud noise was heard coming from the Chief’s office, he rushed towards his office. He wasn’t the only one who had heard the noise, cliff, Vic and jane had heard and rushed to the scene.

They all rushed in ready for danger, but they weren’t met with death or destruction hell there wasn’t a piece of furniture out of place. The only thing that was out of place were the three people in all black combat gear talking to the chief.

Once they had entered the room they had all stopped the conversation and turned to look at them. Larry thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, the person on the far side of the three looked awfully like you. Either that or you were standing here in the room with him/

“What the fuck?!” Cliff says as chief wheels out from the desk to come between the two groups of people.

“This doesn’t concern you all leave.” Chief demands as Larry starts to walk towards you but is pushed aside by Vic.

“y/n Why the hell are you rolling with the Night Wanderers!?” Vic shouts but is prevented from getting any closer by the unmanned man. Larry had no idea who or what the Night Wanderers were, but from the sound of they weren’t good.

“You make it sound like a bad thing” The man closest to Vic says as he scoffs at the boy.

“These the people you laying low with?” asked the unnamed woman looking at you. “Don’t look like your crowd.”

You were about to chime in when you were interrupted by the chief.

“apologies for their interruption but as I told you I don't have the information you are looking for.”

 “Shame.” The unnamed man began. “guess we will have to try other sources.”

 Pushing past the group of confused anti-heroes, he stops at the door and turns to the chief. “Where’s the closest bar?”

 “In town on the main street, can’t miss it at this time of night” Chief chuckles with a fake smile.

 “Right, let’s go you too.” The man says walking out of sight and earshot, with the woman in tow.

 You go to follow them but you feel Larrys grasp on your arm and the staring from everyone around you.

“what is going on y/n?” He asks while you can’t seem to meet his gaze. You pull your arm away and push past him following the other two.

 Larry is left stunned and he turns to face the chief, before making his way over to the door to follow you.

 “Don’t,” Chief says halting larry.

“And why should any of us do that?” He shouts at him. “You lied to us again, you said you didn’t know where y/n was.”

 “That isn’t something that I can discuss with any of you,” Chief says then cliff pitches in.

 “Yeah well isn’t the first time! Like what the fuck man?! What was so hard about saying that they join another group?!?!?” Cliff shouts.

 “Because it isn’t your life that is in danger if the details get out…” Chief quietly says.

 “Wow, shocker Chief concerned with his own skin,” Cliff says voice dripping with sarcasm.

 “…… It’s not your life you are concerned about is it.” Larry trails off as the realisation of what Chief says hits him. “What did you get y/n involved in?? what was so important that you’d risk their life!!” Larry shouts as the chief raises a hand.

 “I’m sure they’ll explain of whatever it was that they put in your pocket,” Chief says as he steers around the group and out the room.

(Photos below are inspo for what the un named characters are and the last image is inspo for something that you may wear in the murder group)

Image 1: Unnamed man

Image 2: Unamed female image 3: you

[the-melting-world]

Strength | Side B: "The Lily"

Art by @ ligiawrites

~ In which a secretive barhand sacrifices a dream...

The Trio Appearances: Kipling | Khleo | Ozy

Arcana LI appearances: Asra | Nadia | Lucio | Valdemar

Track Origins: “The Lily” by Blanco White

Not sure if this is the right track? The full album can be found here: Strength

Khleo is Non-binary and uses she/they pronouns interchangeably

cw: language, alcohol, mild violence, blood, hostile work environment, pregnancy (*For clarification, themes of pregnancy are not connected to themes of blood or violence*)

~ 5k words

While Lucio waits outside the basement of the Chandrian Tavern Hall, he’s approached by Khleo’s familiar, Hefe. The lioness has a few questions for the former Count…

Lucio was well aware that there were certain familiars that could communicate with people aside from the humans to which they were bonded. Still, he never thought that he would be holding a conversation with a lion in the back alleys of Center City.

Hefe, as she introduced herself, had joined Lucio on top of the pile of crates, which whined considerably as she settled on her haunches.

< You smell like Death. >

Hefe spoke the last word as if she knew the Arcana personally. Lucio took one glance at the lioness’ great paws and chose not to deny it.

“You’re right,” he said thickly. He struggled to maintain eye contact with her steady, amber gaze.

< If you mean to bring my cub any harm, you can take it elsewhere. >

Lucio’s naturally blond eyebrows lifted an inch. “Do you mean Khlee?”

She nodded slowly.

He shook his head and huffed, “Death’s ties are to me and me alone. Trust me, I’m not trying to drag anyone else into it. What I have to go back to…” he thought about the dank cellar of the Lazaret and its shelves full of outdated medical instruments. He thought of pale green skin and carefully mummified horns. Lucio turned his head and shuddered. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

Hefe was silent for a moment before a purr trilled low in her throat.

< Good. >

When Lucio looked back up, the familiar was gone.

Commotion trickled in from the other side of the door. Lucio could hear members filling up what sounded like a spacious area. Greetings rang out. Equipment was dragged off of shelves and out of boxes. Whatever this club meeting was about, it sounded like there was something physical going on.

The former count waited a few more minutes before taking a deep breath, standing up, and letting himself inside.

About two dozen people were crowded around some kind of pit. The pair locked in were definitely fighting. Lucio could see over most of the heads taking up the space. He picked up on the challengers’ bare feet and how they sparred bare-knuckled. Except, they weren’t sparring. The blows were connecting. Solidly. Intentionally.

Lucio’s game was swordplay, but he had some training in hand to hand combat. He used what he could remember to try to pinpoint the style. The closest he could figure was kick-boxing, but that didn’t seem quite right. The punches looked too strange for that — too curvy. And the blocks were absorbed more by the elbows. When the opponents were locked, grasping for the back of each other’s head, no one broke it up. The lively spectators only watched while the challengers tried to climb up each other, knees first like excited apes.

“Monty. You came.”

The new presence at his elbow startled Lucio. Just like their cat, Khlee had managed to easily sneak up on him. Lucio noticed that her suspenders swung below her waist and her shirt was unbuttoned a lot lower than would be appropriate for serving customers. They didn’t seem to care.

Khlee gestured to the energetic knot of people.

“What do you think?”

Lucio glanced back at the fight and grimaced. “Is no one going to break them up?”

Khlee smiled. “Doesn’t work like that. They’re looking for the clinch. Makes it easier to lay in some knees to the more vulnerable part of the body.”

Lucio grunted like he knew what the hell they were talking about.

“And they’re okay with getting so… bloody?”

The barhand nodded. “They look forward to that too.” They looked up at Lucio and hooked their thumb over their shoulder. “Come over here and I’ll show you the basics.”

The fights went on in the background while Khlee led Lucio to a quieter spot closer to the minibar. Finally working up the courage to comment about them, Lucio waved at Khleo’s arms.

“I bet fights are over for you pretty quickly.”

Her eyes widened a bit before she realized his meaning. “I mean, sure, I throw punches, but there’s more to it than that. Speaking of arms.” She explained that he would only be allowed to block with his gauntleted arm in order to minimize injury. After that was established, she started to show him how to properly stand and defend himself.

Lucio never even agreed to fighting in the first place, but this barhand seemed to know what she was doing when it came to instruction. Sport and the physical challenge that came with it was always something that resonated with Lucio no matter the playing field. And it had been ages since he learned something new. So he swallowed his doubt for the time being and absorbed Khlee’s crash course in this unorthodox style of combat.

The way of eight limbs, she called it.

Lucio learned that the “clinch” Khlee spoke of earlier referred to the series of standing grappling techniques that he witnessed when he first walked in. Despite how important this was to combat, Lucio made it very clear that he did not want to get caught in one of those. Especially not against someone smaller and scrappier than him like Khleo, whose shorter limbs and concentrated muscle gave her all the advantage in this sport.

“What? Afraid your skin will bruise too easy?” Khlee teased right after she was done showing Lucio all the ways he could disengage himself from a sudden grapple.

Lucio, who had discarded his top layers a while ago, gently caged his alchemical arm over his abdomen and said, “Uh duh. Besides, I just ate. Forgive me if I’m not looking forward to losing my dinner all over my opponent.” Then he blushed and added sheepishly. “Thank you, by the way. For dinner.”

“Focus,” Khlee reminded him as they squared his hips and elevated his arms. They spent the next few minutes guiding him in strikes, many of which were concentrated not so much in the fists or feet, but in the elbows, knees, and shins.

“Can I be honest?” Lucio spoke up after forgetting to engage his hips on the last kick.

“Go ahead,” Khlee huffed right before punishing Lucio for his mistake with the proper form. Her shin met his ribs in a clean, controlled strike. Lucio knew that she was holding back, but he grunted all the same.

“I don’t like having to adjust to this style at all,” he whined. “Can’t I just fight the way I know how? Because really, this,” he exaggerated his hip movement and popped up his knees like he was bouncing a ball on them, “is all really stupid if you think about –”

Lucio felt his mouth pool with something gooey and hot before he tasted the iron. He doubled over shortly after his ribs started screaming at him.

“Oh. Look at that,” Khlee noted, “you just took a stupid elbow to the face and a stupid knee to the gut.”

Lucio waited before turning his head and spitting a wad of blood off to the side. “You almost made me lose a fucking tooth.”

Khlee came over and clapped him on the back. “If I wanted to do that, I would have. Now, Monty. Are you done insulting my way of fighting or is there something else you want to add?” They smirked at him in a way that appeared good natured and unoffended despite their sudden outburst of violence.

Before Lucio could answer, a handful of voices called both of their attentions towards the ring in the middle of the room.

“Khleo! Bring his green ass over here!”

“Yeah. You’ve had him long enough. We’re itching to break him in!”

The very last thing Lucio wanted was to get broken in by the scrappy-looking bunch that beckoned him over. But he also didn’t want to appear spineless in front of all of these people, so he didn’t protest as Khlee guided him to the center of the ring.

Lucio found comfort in her heavy hand resting on his shoulder as she looked out at her club members and recited a few rules. The first two were the same. Don’t talk about the damn club. A few members chuckled at that. Khlee reminded them that if someone tried to tap out, said “stop” or went limp, that meant that the fight was over. Lucio was relieved to see the members take this one more seriously. They all nodded in grave understanding.

To Lucio’s disgust, one of the rules was no shirt, no shoes. Biting back his groan, he removed his boots and handed them off to one of the members on the sidelines.

“And finally, rule number eight.” Khlee gave Lucio’s shoulder a squeeze. “My friend Monty here, it’s his first night, which means,” she dropped her hand and backed up into the throng, smiling broadly, “he has to fight.”

Many were eager to take Lucio on, but since it was his first time, he got to decide which of the volunteers he would go against. In the end, he went with someone of his similar height and build. He didn’t want the smaller fighters using their advantage against him. He only hoped that his challenger lacked about as much flexibility as he did.

After they assumed their stances and touched knuckles, the challenger said something Lucio didn’t expect.

“I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

Lucio hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he swung quietly, but with all his might.

The rest of the fight was a bit of a blur.

Lucio forgot everything that he learned. One minute he was blocking with his elbows and keeping his opponent at a distance with well timed foot jabs and the next, his arms were flailing and he was losing all balance.

The bystanders acted as the ropes to a real boxing ring. Whenever he staggered, they pushed him back into the fight. He ate a lot of blows. Some hands. A few elbows. His head was spinning and his blood was on fire.

Sound warbled in and out of his ears like he was underwater. His eyesight was lost to the sweat. His blood ran down his neck, his chest, and made the floor slippery. Both he and his opponent lost their footing and came down hard. Then they laughed together.

Lucio knew he couldn’t fight blind on unsteady legs, so he asked them to stop. They did and many hands came to help Lucio onto his feet. He was given towels, water, and a kiss on the forehead, no doubt by his challenger.

Since Lucio’s was the last fight of the night, the crowd retired around the broken picnic table by the wall. Khleo served them up a round of bread and ale so flat and diluted, it was practically water. But no one complained.

Lucio didn’t have much to say amidst the group of companions, but they made him feel at home. A few of them asked about his arm and showed off their own prosthetics to compare.

Later, after everyone had gone, Lucio left the table covered in empty beer glasses and joined Khlee at the minibar.

“You in the mood for a real drink?” She asked, already pouring something amber and smoky into a crystal tumbler.

Lucio sighed. “Usually, I would, but I think my blood has had enough excitement for one evening.”

Khlee added a couple of ice cubes and chuckled, “No such thing.”

While she took her first sips, Lucio tested his swollen cheek with the blunted fingers of his alchemical hand.

“At first I couldn’t really understand why you all would fight hard enough to draw blood. If it was for some money or a prize, it would have made more sense to me, but…”

“But you realized that we’re all just perverted little piggies looking for punishment.” Khlee rested her empty glass on the wood.

Lucio laughed. “Yeah. That.” He shook his head. “But then I got in there and I get it now.” Listening to the patrons talk, he caught on to what they did for a living. They were the chamberlains, the couriers, the nurses, the gondoliers, the construction and sewer workers. Khlee’s club was full of the people who pulled the most weight to keep this city afloat. They were the ones who needed to let off the most steam from what Lucio could tell.

“So, Montag…” Khlee said, breaking Lucio from his line of thoughts, “Did your mother give you that name?”

Lucio raised an eyebrow.

Khlee added, “I was just thinking, why Montag? Wouldn’t it make more sense to name you Donnerstag – Thursday, after the god of thunder?”

Lucio scoffed, “Why would that make more sense?”

She started buttoning up her shirt. “Well because, you know. No offense, but everybody hates mondays.”

“Is this your strategy to keep your patrons coming back?” Lucio snapped. “By hacking their birth names to pieces?”

The barhand didn’t appear ruffled by the other’s outburst. “Just trying to make a little conversation.”

Lucio leaned back some. “Alright, then. What about your name? Von Heine. I know that village. The Heine.” It was a little hamlet nestled on the edges of the Scourgelands. Lucio’s people and Khlee’s shared the same language, but different histories. “It’s where you all dress like snaggle-tooth toddlers and spend every waking hour grinding wheat and growing yeast for your bread or your booze.”

The barhand rested her forearms on the bar, leaned on them and smiled. “Based on the stories Papa told me, that sounds about right.”

The distant look in her expression made Lucio soften his voice. “You don’t remember?”

She waved at nothing. “I’ve never been to the Heine. Only heard stories growing up. My folks found me in the coliseum when I was just a kid. They raised me.” There was some silence.

Khleo cleared her throat and straightened up a little. “As for the tracht,” She looped her suspenders back on and gave them a light snap. “You can blame the owner. He wanted the tavern to appeal to tourists. So while I might look like a toddler, remember that I can still kick your ass, Monty.”

Lucio snickered. “Noted.”

Still grinning, Khleo asked, “You got yourself a place to sleep tonight?”

Lucio looked elsewhere. “Uh. Not this time.”

Khleo pointed at the fireplace. “I know it doesn’t look like much from here, but it’s pretty cozy in the hearth. And Hefe can keep you warm.”

Lucio briefly considered the idea of sleeping in an empty fireplace with someone else’s lion for a blanket. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing that had happened to him in one evening. Once upon a time, the thought of going to sleep somewhere like that would make his skin crawl. But like many things that had seen that day, he experienced it through a new lens. He trusted Khleo.

Besides, he really, really didn’t want to sleep out in the cold street.

“Thank you.”

Before Khleo could respond, their privacy was broken by the sound of a door opening.

“Shit.”

Quick and without making any noise, Khleo hoisted herself over the minibar and dragged Lucio off of the stool. She pressed a finger to his lips when he tried to protest. One look at her dark expression told him now was not the time to argue. Lucio tried to keep his steps soft as Khleo guided him to the hearth. She gently bent him over and pushed him inside, tugging the curtains closed behind him.

Hefe growled dimly as Lucio tumbled over her. There was some awkward movement as the lioness made room for him. By the time Lucio was semi-comfortable, he tuned in to the heated conversation that already started in the basement.

“Overheard one of your idiot friends on their way out. You don’t charge admission?” The mature voice must have belonged to the person descending the stairs.

There was no answer from Khleo at first. Then she murmured almost too low for Lucio to hear, “No, but they’re welcome to leave donations.”

Lucio listened to heavy footfalls making their way to the broken picnic table.

“And you’re giving away our food?”

In a voice that suggested this wasn’t the first time they had this argument, Khleo finally spoke up.

“You never said I had to charge for entry into the club. You only said I had to pay rent, which I do. I’m never late. And that’s just bread left over from today. We can’t sell it tomorrow. I don’t see the problem if we have to throw it out anyway.”

Something pounded once on the wood, rattling the glass mugs.

“This is a place of business, Khlee. Not a gods-fucking food bank!”

“Are you done?”

“Am I…” The wood creaked. “Am I what now?”

Khleo sighed. “Nothing, Otto. We’re good. I’ll start charging for the damn bread.”

The silence that followed was tense, uncertain. Lucio longed to see what kind of looks were being exchanged between them, but he wouldn’t dare move aside the curtain. Hefe seemed to sense it too because she kept her head leveled a few inches off the ground and her ears at alert angles.

“Oh no, I think you forgot something. You definitely forgot who the fuck you’re talking to.”

Crash.

“Didn’t you?”

Crash.

It took a moment for Lucio to register the sound of glasses being flung and breaking against the minibar as well as the wall behind it.

The barhand’s voice had lost its cool indifference.

“Otto, come on. Don’t. I’ll pay for it, okay? Just put it on with the rent. You don’t have to–”

CRASH.

“Wait!”

CRASH.

Hefe lowered her ears, but she didn’t move. Lucio pressed his back against the brick in an effort to steady himself and quiet his breaths.

“Stop! Stop! Why are you doing this? I’m sorry, okay? Uncle – hold on!”

CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

Lucio leaned forward, but Hefe used her shoulder to shove him back.

< No. >

“Onkel, bitte.” Khleo’s voice came from somewhere low. Like she was squatting on the floor. “Tut mir Leid… . Es tut mir Leid. It won’t happen again. I promise....” She inhaled a ragged breath and whimpered as if in pain.

The man’s breath came out a little labored from all the effort. “You said you take donations?”

“… Ja.”

“Where?”

Khleo sniffled. “Unter da.”

Glass crunched and broke underfoot as the man went about his search. Eventually, he gave a contented sigh. “That should cover all this mess and the bread. Now... clean this shit up.”

More glass popped under his weight as he headed towards the stairs. The sniffles died down a few minutes after he left. Lucio sat frozen, unsure how he should proceed.

Finally, there was movement and Khleo’s voice came out dark and choked.

“Hefe… just do it.”

Khleo’s voice and the sound of Hefe’s hypnotic purr was the last thing Lucio remembered before losing himself to total darkness.

*

*

*

Basil seethed in silence while he listened to his boss get on Samira’s case yet again. This time it was about her uniform.

“Mr. Otto, I told you, the ones you gave me when I started working don’t fit me anymore.”

Otto snorted. “I missed the part where that’s my problem. Those uniforms don’t grow on trees, girl.”

The afternoon shift had just ended, so they were all tired, but still had their stations to clean. Khleo was taking her break from deliveries under a quilt in one of the empty booths. Gabe had started his delivery shift a few minutes ago. The bar was empty except for Samira, Basil and of course, their boss. Currently, he was enjoying his afternoon snack in front of his employees.

Samira shook her head and surrendered her hands. “I didn’t even know the uniforms were mandatory. Basil and Gabe never wear theirs.”

Otto swallowed a spoonful of oatmeal. “Last time I checked, you weren’t Basil or Gabe.”

Samira’s glasses started to get misty the longer she looked at her employer. She waved at Basil without looking away from Otto. “But if the uniforms are mandatory, why don’t you ever say anything to them?”

Without missing a beat, Otto punctated the air with his spoon as he explained. “They’ve put in their time here, while you… Lass, you haven’t been here but a minute.”

“Mr. Otto, I’m sorry, but this is not fair.”

It’s more than unfair, Basil wanted to add, but he bit back his tongue. He shot a glance over at Khleo’s sleeping lump, wondering if they could hear this right now.

“Fair.” Otto dragged out the word. “What about if I cut my losses with you and hire a new barmaid?” He studied his bowl as he scraped the oats off the edges in a way that set Basil’s teeth on edge. “All you do is look pretty at the front of the house. Anyone can do that, Miss Kaba.”

Samira’s garnet eyes went wide and then narrowed suddenly. Her lip trembled. “That is not all that I do.”

Finally, Otto looked up and sighed. “I don’t have time for the tears today, Samira. Here’s the key for the costumes in storage. You and Khlee are dancing tonight. Now, the waistlines on those dresses are all adjustable, so I don’t want to hear anymore excuses about your fitting issue. Understand?”

Samira looked like she had something else she wanted to say. Instead, she blinked rapidly as she took the keys from Otto and practically broke out into a run.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Basil let Otto have it. “Did you really have to give her the whole ‘you’re replaceable’ speech?”

Otto narrowed his eyes at the barhand. “I pay you to make drinks, Jebeles. Know your place.”

Basil replied, “You’re always going on about how the barmaids bring in the most customers, yet none of ours stay for more than a few months. Think you should lighten up some? Just maybe?”

Otto rolled his eyes. “If the lass doesn’t have the backbone to work here, then she should find herself another bar.” Then he grunted as he stood up and wandered over to the booth where Khleo was resting.

Otto used his foot to jostle Khleo awake. She poked her curly head out from under the quilt and scowled in her usual way.

“You’re dancing tonight,” He said without a hello. “Go get dressed.”

Basil expected Khleo to give at least a little pushback. She wasn’t a fan of wearing the dirndl unless it was for the annual beer festivals. Otherwise, she chose to perform without it. But to Basil’s surprise, Khleo set her jaw and didn’t meet Otto’s eyes as she climbed out of the booth. She rolled up her quilt, tucked it under her arm, and wordlessly headed towards the basement. After she left, Otto floated back to the bar, smiling smugly to no one in particular.

Basil wasn’t sure what he just saw, but he didn’t like it.

***

The costume chest was already opened by the time Khleo got there. She changed mostly in the dark until it was time to lace up the bodice of the dress.

Figuring Samira couldn’t be far off, she left the costumes and wandered further through the storage space.

“Mir,” Khleo called out, her voice still raspy from sleep. “Can you help me with this? You know I always forget how to…”

Khleo found her coworker off in some corner, sitting on a prop used for talent shows. She was hunched over a bit, her arms resting palms up against her thighs, almost as if she was waiting for something to fall into them.

Samira looked like she had gotten halfway with putting on her dirndl when she had given up. Even in the low light, Khleo could detect the wet shine clinging to her cheeks.

“Sorry, Khleo. I was on my way to help you, but I... kind of lost track of time.”

The sound of water rising up her throat drew Khleo closer. It wasn’t the first time they had shared a room during costume changes, so neither had much of a reaction to Samira’s state of undress. As Khleo came closer, her eyes wandered past the barhand’s bra and down to where her stomach interrupted the costume.

“Don’t laugh, but I can’t get it over my tummy.” Samira snorted, almost like it was a joke.

Khleo reached out her hand and arched a curious brow.

Samira sniffed. “It’s okay.”

The barhand took a deep breath before grazing the skin over Samira’s navel with her fingertips. She felt a flicker at first. When she pressed her entire palm against the warm bump, she felt something more.

< Ask her how long it’s been. >

“Six and half months, I think.” Samira answered when Khleo voiced Hefe’s question aloud.

Khleo withdrew her hand. “You think? You haven’t seen a doctor yet?”

Samira closed her eyes and sighed. “No, but… I haven’t had the money or the time. Have you seen where I work?” Then she opened them and glared a little at Khleo. “Plus, I’m not an idiot. I haven’t had a drink or a cigarette since I first suspected. I can take care of myself.”

“You need to see a doctor, Mir.” Khleo was pacing now. “The father?”

Samira’s face twisted as she mumbled something dark and negating.

Khleo stopped. “Right,” she sighed. There were so many other questions she wanted to ask. But when she looked at Samira, who seemed like she was already regretting trusting someone else with this information, Khleo inhaled again and approached her friend.

“What do you want to do next? If you could?”

Samira blinked, gratitude and relief filling her eyes at the question Khleo had settled on.

“I have a half sister in Nevivon. She would take me in, but she’s got kids too and she works. If I could just get to her.”

Khleo grunted in understanding. Trips across the sea were not cheap. And Samira couldn’t just stop paying rent.

While Khleo was still thinking, Samira curled on herself and whispered, “I was trying to take more shifts so I could get out of here as fast as I could, but Otto… he’s going to find out, Khlee. He’s going to figure this out and then he’s going to fire me. I know he is.”

“No he’s not,” Khleo replied calmly as she unhooked her keys from one of her inner pockets. She held out the one to her apartment. “Here. My place is in the Flooded District. Hefe will help you. Go there and wait for me.”

Samira sat up a little straighter. “What? I can’t just leave. My shift is nowhere near over.”

Khleo took Samira’s hand and pressed the key in her palm. “Don’t worry about that. Just trust me. I can explain everything tonight.”

To Khleo’s relief, Samira relaxed her hand around the key. She hesitated once more before sighing and nodding. “Okay. Let me help you tie up your dress and then I’ll go.”

As soon as Samira and Hefe were out the back door, Khleo put the next few hours out of her mind. She entered a sort of trance as she walked up the stairs and made up an excuse for Samira’s absence. Otto wasn’t happy about it, but that wouldn’t even matter after tonight.

Khleo put on a smile, danced, served, and entertained the patrons. Whenever Basil tried to get her alone and ask his questions, she dodged him with the grace of a feyling determined to remain elusive.

Otto, thankfully, went home early and left his barhands with the responsibility of closing up. Khleo pulled some favors and managed to free herself soon after her boss left. She skipped changing out of her dress and just jogged briskly through the lanterned avenues until she made it to her apartment.

When she came inside, she found Samira asleep on the couch. Hefe lay on the floor, guarding the space. Khleo avoided her familiar’s gaze as she quietly walked past the couch and down the hall. When she entered her room, she closed the door behind her and shut her eyes.

There wasn’t time to think about what she was going to do. If she gave herself even a moment, she feared she would lose her nerve.

Moments later, Khleo was back in the common room, gently helping Samira onto her feet.

“Khleo?”

Khleo hugged her. “I’m sorry it took me so long. Here.”

Samira blinked a few times and put on her glasses before accepting the glass jar that Khleo offered her. She briefly took note of the contents before asking, “What’s this?”

Khleo cleared her throat. “It’s enough to get you to Nevivon and set up with a doctor until you have the baby.”

Samira turned the jar over in her hands. “What, you just had this lying around? What was it for?”

“Please.” Khleo couldn’t look at the jar, so she locked eyes with Samira instead. “Please, Mir, just take it. Take it and go.”

Whatever Samira wanted to say, she held onto it. Then she opened her arms and held onto Khleo.

“Thank you, Khlee. I was so afraid that… just. Thank you.”

Khleo was out of words. She hugged Samira back, staring wide-eyed at the walls of peeling paint in her apartment as she nodded in understanding.

After Samira had left, Khleo noticed that Hefe had disappeared too. She had no desire to look for her. Instead, Khleo drifted back into her bedroom and came before her antique dresser like it was some kind of altar.

Soon she was on her knees, bowed before the very last drawer, where she kept the dreams of her father, her mother, and her own.

Khleo seldom opened the drawer. She knew that if she wanted to take out and admire her dreams, she would have put them back and close them inside the wood. Tonight she looked down at her dreams and they looked back at her.

A tight moan escaped the barhand as she dragged her palm up her face and dug her nails into her hairline. With her other hand, she tried to close the drawer. Like always, it was stubborn and would not bend to her.

And so Khleo fought with the drawer until it gave in. She shut up her dreams so she wouldn’t have to look at them anymore. Tears and sobs consumed her until there was nothing left but thoughts. The low and bitter kind.

[trisscar368]

Hey! I love your post about color theory (the one that started with Homer's "wine dark sea") and i was wondering if you know any articles or general bibliography which mentions the "mass Grecian colorblindness" (bc I saw you knew a specific date the theory was proposed). I'm doing my thesis on ancient Greek dress and I want to include some colors and your post has an excellent commentary for bluish/purplish hues!!

Hiya! Sorry it’s been three days since you sent this in, I’ve been very offline lately (new meds, no brain and no energy @.@)

I’m just going to stare existentially at the wall for a moment because a) oh god is that post still circulating? and b) I am honestly just a nerd on the internet and a 4 am post being involved in anyone’s thesis is a terrifying concept.

A lot of what I dug up to quickly back up my points I linked in that post and the rest I would need a bit of time to find again. There is some further commentary on Hebrew and the word for blue, and on purple vs violet in my #linguistic hijinks tag, but please actually evaluate the sources I used yourself if you’re going to reference them. I am just a random nerd on the internet, please do not let me become the monster I am currently trying to slay*.

Gladstone’s text is called Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, and the basic theory (the progressive development of color words as needed) that I spent all those words breaking down was first published by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay.

I’ve also found some additional sources since that post was made that have discussed the deeper translation quandaries at hand - what I explained was one school of thought that I’d been introduced to previously, and which is still defended by modern scholars (some of the sources I used are less than a decade old after all), but the high level scholarly discussion is as debated as any other field - translation as a science (however soft) has gotten a lot less eurocentric over the decades since the theory was put forth, and some people have challenged the starting assumptions of that study. If you want to dig into that mess, starting on wikipedia and digging through their source pile is a great place to begin.

A lot of this is still on my deeper research pile, but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be of much immediate help to you. A lot of my research brain and energy got shunted to other topics a few months ago**, and finding better quality sources for this topic than what I used would take a while and breaking in to a few university libraries. Not that I object to doing that, I do need to find some grimoires...

*Faust and Crossroad Summoning has become a Project because nobody has any ducking primary sources and all online articles say eerily the same thing in the same order with the same words, like they’re all quoting the same paper or each other...

**Faust and pre-faustian grimoires, crossroads lore and trying to figure out if there actually is a djinn variant or if Kipling was making shit up, victorian kink practices, and medicinal cannibalism in europe are all active research threads and at this point I am actively terrified of what the next fanfic I try to write will look like.

[serialreblogger]

Hey! I'm thinking of reading Dracula, and knowing that's your eternal hyperfixation, I wanted to ask your thoughts, if you had any comments, suggestions, ect.

HEY WHY DIDN’T I SEE THIS SOONER I’M SO SORRY FRIEND

okay okay okay okay (...several people are typing...) SO

the first thing you should be aware of when reading Dracula is that it’s quite Victorian, so you might find it easier, especially on a first read, to get an annotated version (the Norton Critical Edition version is quite good) that puts footnotes in to explain all the outdated references to like, London penny-meat merchants and stuff. I would say it’s significantly easier to read than Lord of the Rings, but because it was written 200 years ago the difference in language means it’s not a simple read. (However, if you have absolutely any attraction to the Gothic aesthetic, Dracula is so very much worth the brainpower to slog through the rougher sentences. Like. “...the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.” The whole book is like that. A bit stilted to contemporary readers, but also breathtakingly spot-on in its Spooky Factor.)

the second thing you should be aware of is that Dracula is extremely gay, but in a Tormented Victorian Closeted way. There’s a part where Jonathan climbs out a window that just. It’s uh. The descriptions are very,, metaphorical-sounding. Again, the whole book is like that, and sometimes it’s very fun and sometimes (lookin at Lucy’s whole thing) it’s significantly more unsettling if you pay attention to the weirdly sexy descriptions of how the protagonists interact with the vampires, but I think that’s part of what I find so fascinating about Dracula--it’s unsettling and strange and the pieces don’t fit together clearly, and I still don’t know quite what to make of it, but all the same the feeling of what Stoker’s saying comes through quite clearly. There’s a reason why so many Dracula adaptations have this narrative of a protagonist falling in forbidden love with the tormented Vampyre, yknow? There’s something so unmistakeably sympathetic about the character of Dracula, even when the narrative of the story goes out of its way to establish that he has no redeeming qualities or even proper personhood, that he’s just a monster. Because there’s something about the story (even without getting into the whole “Mina and Jon murked their boss” thing) that makes a reader wonder if that’s really the whole truth. If there isn’t something tragic about Dracula. If there isn’t something in him, if not of goodness, then at least of sorrow, instead of only fear.

Anyway I digress but I think we all knew that was gonna happen; point is: Jonathan and Dracula definitely had sex, Mina and Lucy were definitely in love, Seward’s got something weird goin on with the old professor (and also he’s just very weird, full stop. sir. sir please stop experimenting on your asylum inmates. sir i know this is victorian england but please Do Not), and Quincey, well, Quincey is an American cowboy with a bowie knife, and I think that’s all we really need to know.

ok and! the third thing you should be aware of is The Racism. Imperialist Britain, yo. Bram Stoker was Irish so like, it isn’t half as bad as some other authors of his time period (Rudyard Kipling anyone), but the racism is real and I don’t wanna gloss over that. The g**sy slur is used with abandon for a huge assortment of people groups, there’s a tacit as well as overt acceptance of the idea that West is superior to East, and because the educational system where I grew up is a joke and I can only learn things if I accidentally fall down the wikipedia hole of researching the insect genus hemiptera, i genuinely still don’t know how accurate the extensive history of Romania recounted in the first third of the book actually is. Oh also casual and blatant anti-blackness is verbalized by a character at least once. I’m pretty sure the racism has a metaphorical place in the framework of Dracula’s storytelling, but I couldn’t tell you what it is because I am not going to bother putting myself in the mindset of a racist white Victorian man. This is the mindset I am trying to unlearn. So: read with caution, critical thinking, and the double knowledge that even as the narrators are meant to be unreliable, so too is the author himself.

Finally, regarding interpretation: so personally I’m running with the opinion that Dracula is, at least partly, a metaphor for Stoker’s own queerness and internal conflict re: being queer, being closeted, and watching the torture his friend Wilde went through when the wealthy father of Wilde’s lover set out to ruin his life for daring to love his son. Whether this is true or not (I think it’s true, but hey, that’s analysis, baby), you can’t understand Dracula without knowing the social context for it (as with all literature--the author isn’t dead, not if you want to know what they were saying), and the social context for it is:

- Stoker was friends with Wilde, growing only closer after Wilde was outed

- Wilde was outed, as I said, because the father of his lover was wealthy and powerful and full of the most virulent kind of hatred. This is especially interesting because of how many rich, powerful parents just straight up die in Dracula and leave the main characters with no legal issues and a ridiculous amount of money, which is the diametrical opposite of what happened to Wilde

- Stoker idolized his mentor Henry Irving. Irving was a paradigm of unconventional relationships and self-built family, in a world where divorcees and children born out of wedlock were things to be whispered about in scandalized tones, not people to love and embrace. Irving was also famous for thriving off of manipulating those close to him and pitting friends against each other. Given the painstakingly vivid description Stoker provides for his titular vampire and how closely it matches Irving’s own appearance and demeanor, Irving was widely understood even at the time of writing to be the chief inspiration for the character of Dracula

- the book is dedicated to Stoker’s close friend, Hall Caine, a fellow writer whose stories centered around love triangles and accumulation of sins which threaten to ruin everything, only to be redeemed by the simple act of human goodness

- Stoker was Irish, but not Catholic (he was a Protestant of the Church of Ireland, a division of the Anglican Church). This may come as a surprise when you read the book and see All The Catholicism, Just Everywhere. Religion is actually a key theme in Dracula--most of the main characters start out your typical Good Victorian Anglican Skeptics, and need to learn through a trial-by-fire to trust in the rituals and relics of the Catholic Church to save them from Dracula’s evilness. Which is interesting. Because not only do these characters start off as dismissive towards these “superstitions” (in the same way they dismiss the “superstitions” of the peasant class on the outskirts of Dracula’s domain), but the narrative telling us “these superstitions are actually true!” cannot be trusted, when you know the author’s own beliefs.

(Bram Stoker is not saying what his characters are saying. This is the first and most important rule to remember, if you want to figure out Dracula.)

- The second-most famous character in the novel, after Dracula himself, is Van Helsing, whose first name is Abraham. Note that “Bram” is a declension of Abraham. What does this mean? I legitimately have no idea. But it’d be a weird coincidence, right? Like what even is the thought process there? “Oh, yeah, what should I name this character that comes in, makes overtly homoerotic statements willy nilly, and encourages everyone to throw rationality out the window and stake some vampires using the Eucharist? hmmmm how about ‘Me’”

ok wait FINAL final note: you legitimately do not have to care about any of this. I love Dracula because it has gay vibes and I love trying to figure it out, like an archaeologist sifting through sentence structure to find fragments that match the patterns I already know from historical research; but that’s not why you should love Dracula. The book itself is just straight up fun to read. Like I said, Stoker absolutely nails the exact vibe of spookiness that I love, the eerieness and elegance and vague but vivid fear of a full moon crossed by clouds at midnight. The characters are intriguing, especially Quincey gosh I love Quincey Morris but they’re very,, sweet? if i can say that about people i, personally, suspect of murder? They come together and protect each other against the terrible threat that is Dracula, and you don’t get that half as often as I’d like in horror media. I don’t even know if Dracula could qualify as “horror” proper, because it’s not about the squeamish creeping discomfort that “horror” is meant to evoke, it’s not the appeal of staring at a train wreck--it’s not horrifying. It’s eerie. It’s Gothic. It has spires and vampires and found family and cowboys, and to be honest, I don’t know what could be better than that.

[vampiresuns]

Another Round

✴︎ ANOTHER ROUND ✴︎

1.7k words. In between chess games, Anatole tries, and fails, to figure Oz’mandias out.

For @asras3rdeye​, to whom Ozy belongs to, because why have one nerd pining, when you can have two.

What happened when one fell prey of one’s own conventions? And of the fairly set conventions between others? Anatole didn’t know. Usually, he thought himself resourceful enough to untie himself from plethora situations, something he successfully did on the regular. However, he doesn’t remember the last time he had to undo his own set of rules. 

Oz’mandias was… confusing. Anatole was never very sure what to do with him. He hadn’t been lying to his cousins all the many times he had stated he was his chess partner alone — he was glad to have their weekly chess games, chat with Ozy over the table and use his brain in something which wasn’t reading documents or drafting things, or worrying about this or that diplomatic envoys and what they might or might not want, after detecting several degrees of you’re-not-being-completely-truthful in their words. 

He didn’t expect his job to be any different, yet that didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate those respites of human connection. He liked his games with Ozy for the same reason he liked working in the City so much. He got to talk to people and learn from them in ways you couldn’t when it was you, your papers, your desk and your office. It kept Anatole humble to remind himself who and what he was working for, in a very similar way than losing to Oz’mandias in chess did. It made him try new things, come up with his own strategies and pour himself into it whole-heartedly, like he did with those things which truly interested him.

Not that Ozy always won. Not quite. He was better at chess than Anatole but he was far more comfortable in traditional patterns than Anatole ever was. Structure was his aide, true, but only in the measure which it let itself be accommodated to Anatole’s many necessities and ambitions. At the verge of 30 he is more than aware of his own unconventionality, and much more willing to use it in his favour than he was 10 years ago. 

That he had learnt to trust his own propensity to veer from convention didn’t mean that he had all the answers. He thought he had just stated the opposite, but at least when it came to his job he always found them: if he himself didn’t have them, someone in his team did. That was half the point in teamwork. Chess, however, was a lone man’s sport, when it came to Ozy he had no one he could ask. Kind of. He could ask Kipling, but as far as he was aware Kipling tolerated Ozy, barely now starting to truly coexist after things which Anatole was not privy to. 

It was him, his brain and a game of chess per week. 

He wasn’t exactly sure when everything had begun to change — when Ozy began observing, catching up to his patterns, making winning more difficult. He didn’t know when Ozy had stopped talking as much and began listening instead. He didn’t know when, or why Ozy began flexing his arms distractedly before picking a piece and making a move. Perhaps the last one had been his own doing. Some games ago, Ozy had dropped a piece on accident and Anatole had caught it for him; when Oz’mandias said thank you, Anatole squeezed his forearm, eyes twinkling with something warm that slipped to them unallowed. 

Maybe all of this was his doing, him being the one to blame for his own predicament. Maybe it was how he seemed to throw himself into things he was passionate about with everything he had that had created this halo of what-is-truly-going-on-here. Was Ozy enticing him? Somehow? Anatole didn’t think so, but there was a keen interest in his voice, and he doesn’t remember the last time someone listened to him ramble on and on so attentively. 

That’s a lie, he does. One thing is listening to the debonair diplomat, and another was listening to Anatole in private, where he allowed himself to just exist in his complexities and multitudes without paying attention to whether it was or not appropriate. Not that only people who had been interested in Anatole beyond a platonic connection listened to him, that’s a lie. His family did, his cousins did — Milenko and Amparo at least, Artemisia wavered — his friends, for whom he lived and loved, also did. His issue with Ozy was Anatole could not tell what interest any of them had in it. 

There was friendship in his words, but there was something he could not distinguish the cause of. When people were themselves in a state of confusion Anatole could pick up from the confession itself (if people had a good grasp of their emotional responses and correct ways of dealing with them) to all of the feelings which aided in creating the confused state, yet access to none of its origin. Sometimes Ozy was the former, others the latter, where affection, hesitance, doubt and genuine interest rolled off his tongue. 

Was it him? Anatole longed for that option in the same measure he dreaded it. Was it someone else? Was Ozy unaccustomed to friendship? Was the fact he hadn’t really settled in Vesuvia yet? Or rather, he had done so physically but his heart was still elsewhere? Was it all of these and more Anatole could not have any idea of? He didn’t know and it was driving him crazy. 

His cousin’s sarcastic snort when he insisted he was studying up new chess moves because he wanted to impress Oz’mandias as a friend, didn’t help. 

“Ah, yes,” Amparo said, “because it’s when you’re friends with someone that you desperately want to be noticed by them.” 

Anatole shot her a look.

“Alright I’ll let it be, but Nana— you know if you actually want to talk about it, we’re here, right?”

Anatole wanted to, but he didn’t even know where to begin. He made a pained noise that made Amparo laugh before throwing her arms around his neck. “Too many thoughts.”

“Way too many. It would be easier if I found an excuse to do something with him that isn’t playing chess, without it sounding strictly like it’s platonic or strictly like it’s a date.”

“So you do like him?”

“Yes, but I don't know, Lele. I don’t know. He’s my friend, I like him as a friend, but there’s something that I can’t place between us, and I have no clue where it came from, and it’s driving me insane.”

“You could just ask.”

“No, no I can’t just ask. Don’t give me that look. It’s just I know Ozy, alright? We don’t just play silently, we talk, and he mentioned in passing how liking people is weird. Usually when he’s told someone likes them he just likes people back, and then he said a myriad of things but you get the idea.”

“Sounds to me like he could’ve been waiting for you to say something.”

“Maybe, but I don’t want him to like me because I like him. I want him to like me because I’m me, Lele.”

Amparo hummed. “Doesn’t Lenko date his cousin or something?”

“Kipling? I’m not asking Kipling. Just—”

“No?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, good luck.”

Anatole sighed, throwing himself back on the chair he was sitting on, groaning into his hands. Eventually he went back to the book he was reading and the notes he was taking, with its poor yet adequate sketches of some of the chess pieces and the moves he wanted to try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, he supposed, only if it applied to the game right now. One thing was venturing, the other was taking a shot in the dark with one eye closed and pretending you knew what you were doing. Anatole was very much not going to do that. 

He’d find a way to spend more time with him, he told himself, but now their weekly games would have to do. With a new week, a new game came. This one found Anatole and Ozy having round after round of them, even stopping to get some fresh air and refreshments together, both of them standing close to each other in the small balcony near Anatole’s office, and then finding their way back in again for another round. 

This time Anatole won, he tried his luck with one of the new things he had studied previous to their game, and it worked. 

“But, that’s— that’s new,” Ozy said, bewildered. Anatole thought it was a cute look on him.

“Abaco, how dare you not prepare him for this,” Anatole laughed, taking Ozy’s king. “I have met a traveller from an antique land,” he began, reciting absentmindedly as he played with the King, moving it between his fingers. “My name is Oz’mandias, King of Kings,” Anatole looked at his friend, a smirk and a raised eyebrow on his face, “look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing besides remain.”

His attention had gone back to the King however, and when he looked back at Oz’mandias, he was staring. Anatole blinked, and the other cleared his throat, focusing on something else.

“That’s not fair,” Ozy complained, “I’ll never finish figuring you out if you keep pulling new moves.”

It was like everything stopped moving, impossibly still for a moment as Anatole took in his words. He stared back at him, aghast, his mouth hanging half open — all of his teasing, his cocky brow and debonair flew out of the window, just like that. His face felt too hot not to be blushing, and of course it’d be just his luck that now his elusive blush decides to appear. 

“I— uh, thank you,” Anatole has never sounded more ineloquent in his life, but now it was Ozy’s turn to be surprised.

“For what?”

“For paying attention… should we play another round?”

He asked before the topic could go on, heart raising in his chest. Ozy said yes, and began arranging the pieces once more. One last round with the excuse of not leaving Anatole’s presence just yet. 

As he made his first move Anatole wondered what would happen if Ozy had decided to wipe out his little smirk by throwing all the pieces away and just kissing him. Incredibly dramatic of a thought, he was well aware, but it was better to think about dramatic impossibilities than think about how their knees almost brushed as Anatole chose to move a pawn. 

[husheduphistory]

Mummy Brown: A Most Tragic Hue That Everyone Used

Millions of people walk the hallowed halls of the Louvre every year to see some of the most important masterpieces of all time with their own eyes. With 35,000 pieces on display there is a lot to take in, and among them is Interior of a Kitchen by Martin Drölling. The scene is tranquil, showing an illuminated country kitchen where a young girl works on her needlework, another woman sits in her chair, and a girl sits on the floor playing with a cat. The detail is exquisite, and although the view from the window is bright the majority of the scene is painted in varying shades of brown, and it is this brown hue that places Interior of a Kitchen in a unique category. Drölling painted the work in 1815, but his paint had origins in ancient times.

Interior of a Kitchen by Martin Drölling. Image via Wikipedia.

In the Medieval age medicine was still in its infancy, but one substance that was highly sought after for its medicinal purposes was bitumen. Referred to as early as the twelfth century, it was a substance believed to cure nearly any ailment. Bitumen was found naturally in the earth in the Middle East region, but rather than extracting it from the ground, it was believed that it could be obtained from another source, the long-dead bodies of ancient Egyptians. The Persian word for bitumen was “mum” or “mumiya” which lent itself to the word “mummy” and the black color of the wrapped corpses led people to (falsely) believe they were soaked in bitumen during the embalming process. It was impossible to extract the alleged bitumen from the mummies, so they ground up the dead ancient bodies and used that instead.

By the fifteenth century it was commonplace for merchants to visit Egypt and send large shipments of mummies back to Europe for an eager consumer looking to grind them up for medicine. At the time there were incalculable numbers of mummies at their disposal and according to Thomas Pettigrew’s History of the Egyptian Mummy the author writes, “No sooner was it credited that mummy constituted an article of value in the practice of medicine than many speculators embarked in the trade; the tombs were sacked, and as many mummies as could be obtained were broken into pieces for the purpose of sale.” After being lowered into the tombs merchants picked their new cargo and paid the inexpensive prices before loading their ships with bodies and parts that were doomed for the grinders of Europe. Once reduced to powder, the dead would be mixed into topical balms or straight into drinks to be immediately ingested. The demand for mummy medicine ran high with little to no consideration if the body was old, young, male, female, or cause of death. It was a trend that continued well into the 18th century.

Merchant selling mummies on the street. Image via rarehistoricalphotos.com. 

By the 1830s the general public became obsessed with all things ancient Egypt and relics from the time became highly desired collectible pieces with a mummy being at the top of everyone’s wish list. The ferocity in obtaining mummies sent people tearing into sacred sites and haggling with sellers on the streets who claimed the bodies they were selling were genuine. The monk Father Géramb stated in 1833 that “it would be hardly respectable, on one’s return from Egypt, to present oneself without a mummy in one hand and a crocodile in the other.” Once brought into the homes of Europe as unfortunate souvenirs the fascination with Egypt’s ancient dead manifested in mummy “unwrappings” or “unrollings” that began as scientific undertakings but evolved into public events that would often sell out. As the wrappings were unfurled those gathered would delight in the trinkets that would fall from them, the pieces of paper tucked inside, and the sight of the blackened body before them.

Flyer for a mummy unwrapping circa 1850. Image via medium.com.

Considering how Europeans strived to incorporate ancient Egyptians into their daily lives it is not surprising that they also made them a part of their art. With a shade resembling burnt umber, Mummy Brown was made by mixing white pitch, myrrh, and the ground-up remains of ancient Egyptian mummies. Beginning in the 16th century the paint became extremely popular with artists because of the unique pigment that could only be obtained from the mummies because of the specific  substances used in the mummification process.

The use of Mummy Brown reached its height in the mid-eighteenth to nineteenth centuries when it was used by such famous artists as Sir William Beechey, Edward Burne-Jones, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Eugene Delacroix, and Martin Drölling who used the paint extensively in Interior of a Kitchen. What is unclear though, is if artists knew exactly what they were painting with.

One artist who was unaware of his paint’s dark origins was pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones. As recalled by his nephew, author Ruyard Kipling, his uncle was spending a day with fellow artist Alma Tadema in the 1860s when he learned that the pigment’s name was not a metaphor, that the paint he had been using was in fact made from ground up mummies. Deeply disturbed by this, Burne-Jones went into his studio and came back downstairs stating that if it was made from dead Pharaohs then the tube in his hand needed to be buried immediately and with proper honor. According to Kipling’s later account of the day, “So we all went out and helped – according to the rites of Mizraim and Memphis, I hope – and to this day I could drive a spade within a foot of where that tube lies.”

Edward Burne-Jones. Image via Wikipedia.

The origins of Mummy Brown were never kept secret, but over the centuries people seemed to forget that the color’s name was literal. As the facts of the paint’s origin came back into collective knowledge people grew increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of painting with ancient human remains. C. Roberson and Co., one of the leading colorists of the 19th and 20th centuries, included Mummy Brown in their catalog until 1933. It took just over three more decades for the production of Mummy Brown to be officially declared over. The reason was as simple as it was tragic, there were no more mummies to use for paint. As stated by the managing director of C. Roberson and Co., “We might have a few odd limbs lying around somewhere, but not enough to make any more paint. We sold our last complete mummy some years ago for, I think, £3. Perhaps we shouldn't have. We certainly can't get any more”

Tube of Mummy Brown paint. Image via artinsociety.com.

Today the color Mummy Brown is made from materials completely unrelated to human remains. While it is known when the production of the color was finally stopped, it is difficult to estimate just how many works of art were created using the paint. In an unfortunate twist, many of the artists active at the height of Mummy Brown’s usage painted scenes of ancient Egypt making it entirely possible that the sacred deceased of Egypt were taken from their tombs only to be ground up and used to paint them.

Sources:

 Ground Up Mummies Were Once an Ingredient in Paint by Rose Eveleth. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ground-mummies-were-once-ingredient-paint-180950350/

 The Life and Death of Mummy Brown by Philip McCouat.

http://www.artinsociety.com/the-life-and-death-of-mummy-brown.html

 Was This Masterpiece Painted With Ground Mummy? by Kristen Romey.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/09/mummy-art-painting-delacroix-pigment-ancient-Egypt/

[aion-rsa]

Why Turner Classic Movies is Reframing Problematic Hollywood Favorites

https://ift.tt/3rnt3hu

Breakfast at Tiffany’s is a movie Alicia Malone fell head over heels in love with during childhood. Seeing it more times than she can remember in her native Australia, the future author and Turner Classic Movies host still recalls failed attempts to launch a high school film club with Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly as the star attraction.

“I thought for sure people were going to get excited about classic movies if they watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s because it has so much life to it!” Malone says today. How could they not fall for Hepburn’s iconic performance, which Malone still describes as luminous? “Holly Golightly is a complex female character, and for the times it was quite sexually progressive.”  Yet there was always another element, even in those halcyon days, which Malone recognized as uncomfortable—that discomfort has only grown to modern eyes.

Beyond the movie’s bittersweet romance between a pseudo-call girl and the kept man living in the apartment upstairs, there’s a grossly racist caricature of Japanese Americans in the movie’s margins, and it’s portrayed no less than by Mickey Rooney in yellowface makeup. It’s technically a small part of the movie, only appearing briefly and sporadically, but each time the character arrives, it’s like a sledgehammer swung across the screen. For decades the performance has been rightly criticized by Asian American advocacy groups, and even Rooney acknowledged late in life that if he knew people would become offended, he “wouldn’t have done it.” Nevertheless, the shadow that character casts over the movie has only loomed larger with time.

“I just kind of hold my breath and half shut my eyes every time Mickey Rooney shows up,” fellow TCM host Dave Karger says during a Zoom conversation with Malone and myself. “Mercifully, he’s gone pretty soon, and I’ve chosen actively not to let that performance ruin the movie for me, because ‘Moon River’ and the party scene, and George Peppard looking so great—there’s just so much to love and appreciate, so I actively choose to focus on that.”

Despite those personal struggles with the movie, Karger and Malone are both unafraid to examine the full implications of Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi head-on. It’s why they hosted, alongside Ben Mankiewicz, a lengthy discussion of the character’s legacy last week during a special Turner Classic Movies presentation. That conversation was part of TCM’s Reframed series, a new season of content from the network which looks at some of the most beloved Hollywood classics of the 20th century—the crème de la crème, as Karger describes them—and studies why they can also be problematic and, in some cases, stunningly offensive. In the case of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, that can even lead to larger discussions about prevailing anti-Japanese attitudes and stereotypes in American society that persisted in the immediate decades after World War II… and can still be found as echoes in the anti-Asian stereotypes of today.

For Karger and Malone, these are the types of discussions TCM hosts have been having off-screen for years. So bringing those dimensions to the forefront for new generations of viewers felt only natural with Reframed.

Says Malone, “We often talk to each other about how we approach certain films when it comes to writing our scripts for our intros and outros for each individual film. We also talk with the producers about what we should bring up, what we shouldn’t bring up; if we should talk about an actor or director’s problematic past during that particular film, or if it doesn’t go with the content of the movie.”

So the five main hosts of TCM–who also include University of Chicago Professor Jacqueline Stewart and author Eddie Muller–were eager to have these frank discussions on screen while offering historical context from a modern perspective.

“All of us at TCM are watching the world change and watching the culture change,” Karger says, “and even though we show movies by and large from the period of the ‘30s to the ‘60s, we all realized that it doesn’t mean we can’t be part of today’s cultural conversation. It’s not a stretch at all to talk about classic movies from a point-of-view of the 21st century; that’s very possible to do, and I think a lot of our fans are looking for that kind of context when they watch the channel.”

The Reframed series, which was spearheaded in part by Charlie Tabesh, the TCM head of programming, and organized by producer Courtney O’Brien, looks to balance what Karger describes as the push and pull between nostalgia and criticism. Both Malone and Karger are acutely aware of the hesitance some classic movie fans might have about evaluating works from nearly a century ago through a 21st century prism, however the new program is intended to renew engagement with these movies—particularly in an era when there are just as many loud voices that attempt to dismiss or wipe away the legacies of these film’s from the cultural canon.

“That’s really important to remind everyone that this series is not here to shame these movies or to tell anyone that they can’t love these movies,” Karger says. “And if there’s a frustration that I’ve had in this last month, it’s to see some of the reaction to this series be along the lines of ‘you’re part of cancel culture with this series.’ It could not be more the opposite of that. We’re not cancelling anything; we’re showing the films a hundred percent in their entirety, we’re just talking about them.”

Malone further emphasizes this is what can keep so many of these movies vital in an era when sequences like the aforementioned Rooney scenes in Breakfast at Tiffany’s are being deleted from a Sacramento film festival—effectively erased from the collective memory.

“I think everyone at TCM sees this as the way forward,” Malone says, “the way that we can continue to make sure these movies stay alive for younger generations. We can continue talking about them, discussing them, they can change over the years, our feelings can change about them; you can love a film and not be able to justify parts of it at the same time. What’s so important though is just to have the discussion, to talk about these problematic areas and face up to them rather than hiding them. To me, if you take out a film from existence or you just delete parts of a film, you’re in a way saying these problems never existed.”

Indeed, even the opinions of folks as steeped in this history as the hosts of Turner Classic Movies can evolve as the culture does. Ben Mankiewicz, for example, is TCM’s unofficial statesman but he surprised some viewers two weeks ago when he revealed during a Reframed discussion that he can no longer comfortably watch Gunga Din (1939), a rollicking adventure movie set in British India. Based on a Rudyard Kipling poem, that classic film’s influences can still be felt in more modern blockbusters like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). However, Gunga Din is also a movie that glorifies the British Empire at the expense of then-contemporary Indian independence movement, with the villain being a character who Mankiewicz noted is physically modeled after Mahatma Gandhi, who would’ve been seen as subversive by some white audiences in the ‘30s.

“I’ve never been a huge fan of that movie, even though Cary Grant is my favorite actor,” Karger says. “And I was even a little surprised when Ben and Brad Bird included it on [the TCM program] The Essentials last year. Not because it’s not a revered classic movie, but because it’s more than a little offensive. And it was fascinating to be part of that conversation with Ben, talking about the evolution of his feelings for Gunga Din, because he’s been with the network 15 years. I can’t imagine how many times he’s talked about that movie, and it’s just showing you that culture and history are living, breathing things.”

Opinions change. Malone had a similar experience when she joined Mankiewicz and Muller to discuss John Ford’s seminal Western, The Searchers (1956), a movie where the director began reckoning with his depiction of Native Americans on screen. The film is a touchstone to this day for filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and George Lucas. Mankiewicz and Muller note that Ford is grappling with the racism of his earlier films via John Wayne’s lead character, an unrepentant bigot who becomes both the movie’s protagonist and antagonist. However, the film still bathes Wayne’s character in heroic imagery, and still relies on Native American stereotypes.

“Watching The Searchers again with the lens of talking about it during Reframed, I just saw so much,” Malone says. “I know John Ford was trying to have a conversation about racism involving Native Americans, but there’s just no doubt that many of his films contributed to the very dangerous and horrific stereotypes based around Native American people. And I think Native American people have suffered greatly because of the way they’ve been stereotyped in Hollywood films.”

That subject of intent comes up quite a bit during the Reframed series; Karger describes the movies they discuss as running the gamut from mildly problematic to extremely offensive, yet that ambiguity should invite education about the times they were made in, as opposed to preventing audiences from knowing about those eras.

Says Malone, “I think [Reframed] does show an attempted evolution on the parts of the filmmakers, and that’s interesting. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and The Searchers, and My Fair Lady are trying to comment on a particular issue. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers comments on the sexism of the brothers in the film; My Fair Lady comments on the misogyny of Henry Higgins; and The Searchers comments on racism. But at the same time, they are also sexist, misogynistic, and racist.” She ultimately concludes movies can be both progressive and not progressive because of the times they’re made in.

Read more

Movies

From Hitchcock to Star Wars: What Makes a Great MacGuffin

By David Crow

Culture

Was John Wayne High Noon’s Biggest Villain?

By David Crow

My Fair Lady (1964) will be the centerpiece of TCM’s final night of Reframed programming this Thursday. A lavish big screen adaptation of Lerner and Loewe’s Broadway musical, which itself was an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play, Pygmalion, it deals with the story of cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) being remade into Professor Henry Higgins’ (Rex Harrison) ideal woman through diction lessons. And the fact the musical, written in the 1950s, changed the more transgressive ending of the original play where Eliza leaves Higgins behind, will invariably come up on Reframed.

“Some people would look at that and say, ‘My Fair Lady? What could be the problem with that? It’s a very strong female character who stands up for herself and has so much agency and power in the movie,’” Karger admits. “But then when you really look at specific scenes, particularly the end of the movie, which is what I think we talked about a lot, there are certain things that just kind of make the movie, for me at least, have the tiniest bit of a sour note.”

The question of whether My Fair Lady is a sexist movie or rather a movie about sexism became the heart of its Reframed discussion.

Adds Malone, “We also talk about the fact that that ending has been changed by some stage productions. That is happening now, and we also talk about the idea of the makeover movie. I think the Pygmalion myth is something that’s fairly sexist and outdated when you look at it, but there’s also so much to love about My Fair Lady.”

The opportunity of having these discussions has been a gift for Karger and Malone. They both stress they don’t have the answers to all the questions they raise, and that even with added time for the outros on Reframed, there is no way to cover everything that needs to be said about a film in a handful of minutes.

“I thought about multiple things I wish I said or I forgot to say, or just didn’t have time to say,” Malone says. However, she hopes the series gives viewers the tools to begin engaging more seriously with these films and embrace a greater curiosity about the past. On tonight’s line-up alone, Malone and Karger will both get to engage in discussions of films they lobbied to have included in the Reframed series.

“I had just a brief conversation with Charlie [Tabesh] about including something around the idea of gender identity, or the transgender community, because I wanted to delve into that,” Malone says. “And of course from there, it becomes what do we have the rights to? What’s in license, what can we show? So there are certain limitations on the types of films we can show in the series.” The film they ended up agreeing on is Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

“I love the fact that it is one of the classic movies that everyone should watch, a horror classic,” Malone adds.

Karger by contrast will be discussing another Audrey Hepburn movie, this one dealing with Hollywood’s history of depicting LGBTQ characters on screen.

Says Karger, “I will never forget watching the documentary The Celluloid Closet in the mid-1990s when it was released, and that was one of the seminal moments for me, as far as looking at film critically. This was a history of LGBT characters in film history over the years, and one thing you learn when you watch a documentary like that, there was this trope in films where if there was a character who was gay, that character would not live to survive at the end of the movie. That character would either be murdered, have some kind of horrible accident, or end his or her own life.”

He continues, “So you think of The Children’s Hour in the early 1960s and at first you think, ‘Oh this is something to applaud. Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn playing two women who may or may not be lesbians. Wow! This is a great thing to bring attention to.’ And then you realize they couldn’t even use the word lesbian in the movie… then the character who ends up being gay also ends up being dead by the end of the movie, and I just think it’s this unfortunate trope that tells people, consciously or not, that you can’t be gay and you can’t be alive in society… It’s a shame, because it came so close to getting it right but you realize it didn’t have the opportunity to get it right in 1961. It couldn’t with all the restrictions in the film industry and society in general.”

It will be the last night that TCM dives so directly into the murkier waters of some of Hollywood’s legacy, although both hosts hope for a second season of Reframed. Karger, who admits he shouldn’t spend so much time on social media, has seen the predictable social media reactions of “you’re ruining these movies” by talking about these elements. But he’s also been heartened by responses from fans who wished TCM provided Reframed discussions on movies that aired later in the evening, like Stagecoach (1939) or Tarzan, The Ape Man (1932). Karger says if he has it his way, they’ll include all those movies in a second season of Reframed.

Meanwhile Malone would really like to continue a thread begun with the screening of the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy classic, Woman of the Year (1942), from several weeks ago.

“I love having discussions for films where we talk about the representation of female characters,” Malone says. “That’s something I’ve done a lot of work on, so that’s something I’d like to continue—to talk about the way women have been portrayed in films throughout Hollywood history, and we could talk about that in terms of their beauty and how that was seen to be the most valuable quality a woman could have, or the way they could search for love. I love all the women’s pictures that forces the woman at the end to give up everything for love, but for most of the movie she is a fantastically independent woman.”

Other examples of this trope she cites are His Girl Friday (1940), and nearly every movie Katharine Hepburn made after The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Karger conversely would be interested in revisiting movies with extreme age differences between couples.

“I’d love to look at films like Gigi or Love in the Afternoon,” the host says, “because I think there are some people who have issues with the much older man and much younger woman pairing. And I think I’d love to hear what my fellow TCM hosts have to say about that, because you never see it in the opposite direction.” In fact, based on just this one comment, Malone began thinking aloud about all the ageist movies spawned by Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), a camp horror classic that kicked off what Malone describes as “hagsploitation.”

When it comes to revisiting (and reframing) Hollywood classics, the options for learning more are limitless. Not that the lessons should be intimidating.

“I think it’s quite exciting the way things change,” Malone says. “Society changes so quickly, and you learn more and have different opinions, [including] on films. I love being more educated and finding out more of my own blind spots and trying to fix them.”

Reframed continues that search on Thursday March, 25, beginning with My Fair Lady at 8pm EST.

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[readmeinthehallway]

Author Spotlight: Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt is an American writer, who grew up in Greenwood, Mississippi. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages, and she won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel The Goldfinch. She’s known for being incredibly well-read, and her work surely shows this off. Her attention to detail in her setting, plot, and characters is so thorough that each book exists as its own little world, one that’s often impossible to draw away from. Her intense exploration of art, individuality, classics, religion, friendship, love and morality makes her one of our favourite authors, and someone we would love for Harry to discover, too.

The Secret History (1992)

New England scenery, a backwards mystery, and an eclectic mix of young individuals all jumbled together into one tiny Greek Classics classroom. The Secret History is autumn personified, carrying a darkness and grittiness that’s as enthralling, unique, and slightly insane as it’s characters. The book pushes the limits of morality, of human thinking, of relationships, and of the concept of beauty. It grips you from the very first line and has you on edge until it’s last.

Favourite quotes:

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves?”

“Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to really grasp ever at all. It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself - quite to one's surprise - in an entirely different world.”

“We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,”

“I liked the idea of living in a city — any city, especially a strange one — liked the thought of traffic and crowds, of working in a bookstore, waiting tables in a coffee shop, who knew what kind of solitary life I might slip into? Meals alone, walking the dogs in the evenings; and nobody knowing who I was.”

The Little Friend (2002)

The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, where one Mother’s Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents’ yard. Twelve years later Robin’s murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin’s sister Harriet - unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson--sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town’s rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family’s history of loss.

Favourite quotes:

“Running might take her forward, it could even take her home; but it couldn't take her back–not ten minutes, ten hours, not ten years or days. And that was tough, as Hely would say. Tough: since back was the way she wanted to go, since the past was the only place she wanted to be.”

“Even if it meant that she had failed, she was glad. And if what she'd wanted had been impossible from the start, still there was a certain lonely comfort in the fact that she'd known it was impossible and had gone ahead and done it anyway.”

“Restlessly, she stared at this. Like the woodcutter’s child at the beginning of a fairy tale, a mysterious longing had possessed her, a desire to travel far and do great things; and though she could not say exactly what it was she wanted to do, she knew that it was something grand and gloomy and extremely difficult.”

“All her grace was in her vagueness. Her voice was soft, her manner languid, her features blurred and dreamy.”

The Goldfinch (2013)

This is a sprawling tale of grief, devotion, memory; an ode to art and the lasting impressions objects leave on us when connected to the most significant moments of our lives. The Goldfinch spans years, and we’re taken on a turbulent journey through the eyes of the main character, Theo, as he attempts to navigate through his life and various relationships after his mother’s death in a gallery bombing, his displacement from his home out to Las Vegas and his eventual return to New York, all the while holding onto and obsessing over a piece of stolen art.

Favourite quotes: 

“We looked at each other and just laughed; everything was hysterically funny, even the playground slide was smiling at us, and at some point, deep in the night, when we were swinging on the jungle gymand showers of sparks were flying out of our mouths, I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe. For hours, we watched the clouds rearranging themselves into intelligent patterns; rolled in the dirt, believing it was seaweed; lay on our backs and sang "Dear Prudence" to the welcoming and appreciative stars. It was a fantastic night: one of the great nights of my life.”

“As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.”

“Isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?”

“We looked at each other. And it occurred to me that despite his faults, which were numerous and spectacular, the reason I’d liked Boris and felt happy around him from almost the moment I’d met him was that he was never afraid. You didn’t meet many people who moved freely through the world with such a vigorous contempt for it and at the same time such oddball and unthwartable faith in what, in childhood, he had liked to call “the Planet of Earth.”

Our top pick:

We’d love for Harry to read any of the books above, but if we could give him one, our pick is The Secret History. Nothing comes close to beating the dark academia genre, the gritty feelings, the lyrical wording of Donna’s prose, and the rag-tag group of impeccably and not so impeccably dressed students that inhabit the elite Vermont university. We think Harry would be drawn to Donna’s style, the story, the setting, and the deep character studies in The Secret History. We’d also love for him to play Henry in the movie adaptation that we hope never happens – let’s face it, the book is just too good to translate to the screen. They’ve already tried that once!

Discussion time!

What do you think of Donna Tartt and her writing? Have you read any of her books? If so, what are some of the stand out moments/quotes from the books that you loved? What would you like to see on the bookshelf next? We’d love to hear all of your thoughts!

[sweetteaanddragons]

Where Is the Power that Made Your Pride?

Title is from Rudyard Kipling’s “What of the Hunting, Hunter Bold?”

(Also, please note that the following story is from Celegorm’s perspective. All views expressed therein are Celegorm’s opinions, not necessarily mine.)

. . .

Curufin had always talked fast. His ideas flowed far faster than his mouth could move, but that didn’t stop his mouth from desperately trying to keep up.

Their father had done it to a certain extent too, but their father’s innate respect for language had at least kept him intelligible. Curufin had no such boundaries, and when he got particularly excited, his words had a tendency to run together into a block of sound that left intense impressions on the listener’s mind without imparting anything so mundane as specifics. 

Celegorm was the only one who could reliably translate those rants. He was well used to decoding messages no one else thought of as language. He was the one who could capture his little brother’s brilliant ideas and summarize them for everyone else. Language was Celegorm’s portion of the family genius, and he was never more proud of it than then.

What had finally slowed his brother’s lightning mouth was Sindarin. Curufin had learned to speak it carefully, even through his scorn. He had refused to give anyone grounds to mock him for his ability with the tongue, and so he was careful to speak it perfectly, which precluded speaking at his closest approximation of the speed of thought. By the time he had learned the language perfectly, he was out of the habit.

Celegorm still held a grudge against Thingol for that.

Curufin was talking slowly now, painfully slowly, and Celegorm cursed not only Thingol but every member of his line as he knelt in the accursed halls of Doriath and held his broken brother in his arms.

“It’s . . . dark,” Curufin managed. “So dark.” His voice shook.

“It’s just the torches,” Celegorm soothed. “The fire went out during the fighting. That’s all.” It had been pure luck that he had stumbled over Curufin as he called for his brothers. Caranthir hadn’t answered at all. He was trying not to think about that.

“No.” Curufin’s voice was barely more than a terrified breath. “The Void. The Void - “

Celegorm clung even tighter to his brother, hoping that the shared warmth would convince his brother that he was not yet in the eternal chill of the Void. “You will not go to the Void,” he promised. He didn’t say his brother wouldn’t die. He could hear the strange hitches in his little brother’s breathing. He could feel how much warm blood was even now soaking through his brother’s tunics to his. He couldn’t change that now. Only this. “Be he foe or friend, be he foul or clean, brood of Morgoth or bright Vala, Elda or Maia or Aftercomer, Man now born upon Middle-earth, neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself, shall keep me from redeeming our Oath. Our deed shall not fail, I swear to you. You will not be left to the dark.”

He was the one talking fast now, and it was just barely fast enough. Curufin’s breath was thin and desperate now.

Thin. Desperate.

Gone.

. . . 

By the time his men had finally managed to catch up to them, thankfully with torches, Celegorm had carefully lain his brother’s body and crawled onward. It had been possible, after all, that Caranthir was merely unconscious and might need aid.

The torches revealed the truth.

Caranthir had fallen on the far side of the room. His throat had been slashed messily.

Terrible technique, a coldly distant part of him noted. Nimloth was dead by Celegorm’s own hand, so presumably the one responsible was Dior, wounded to the point of death by Caranthir’s side.

If things had gone differently, he might have been my son.

He could walk over and finish him off. The king had mere minutes to live, all of them promising pain.

His brothers’ blood lay thick upon the floor.

He turned his back on the scene and looked to his followers. “What news?”

“We found his sons, my lord,” the captain said, shoving two young boys forward. “We’ve searched them thoroughly. Neither has the Silmaril.”

Celegorm looked at them for a long moment and tried to think what to do.

It was like that first terrible battle when they’d lost Ada and nothing had made any sense at all. He had been glad, so glad, that it was Maedhros’s role to be king, and then Maglor’s. It had been his role to hunt - hunt for orcs, hunt for food, hunt for a way to figure out the dark tongue Morgoth’s creatures spoke, hunt for a way into the terrible fortress -

And nothing had changed, he realized with something approaching relief. That was still Maedhros’s role, especially now that all that nonsense about giving up the crown was over and done with and they followed no one but Maedhros once more. It was Maedhros’s job to work out what to do. It was his job to hunt.

“Take them to Maedhros,” he ordered. “If they don’t have it, my father’s work must be with the daughter. I’ll hunt her down.”

. . .

The woods were thick with shadows and webs. The darkness had moved in quickly, eager to make up for lost time when Melian’s protection disappeared.

Celegorm had learned his art in the shadowed places outside the light of the Trees. He was well accustomed to hunting in the dark.

These days, he was even used to hunting with only the ghost of a hound’s footsteps at his side.

He had heard some whisper rumors that no hound would have him after Huan left him. Celegorm always wondered why they thought he’d given any other hound a chance. There was no possible replacement for Huan.

How far from here had Huan died?

He pushed the thought to the back of his mind where Caranthir’s ruined throat and Curufin’s terrified rasps rattled and waited to haunt his dreams. Later, he could think of them. Later, he could find a spot beneath the trees to hurl knives at the twisted wood until something else had as many holes ripped through it as he felt like he’d gained.

Later. But there was no room for distractions on a hunt.

. . .

He found them within hours. There were only two guards with the girl; they must not have run into any other survivors yet. They were out there, Celegorm knew. He’d run into other panicked trails through the woods.

He shot the first guard without thought. It came easily now.

Don’t worry, brothers, Father. I will not leave you in the dark.

He had another arrow nocked before the other guard turned around, not that such haste was fully necessary. The second guard’s arms were full of a little elleth, not a weapon.

“Give me the gem,” he ordered, directing his words to Elwing, not the guard. “Give me the gem, or I’ll shoot your guard and search you for it myself.”

She would be all alone in the woods then, and by her frightened eyes, she knew it.

The guard pulled her closer. “She’s a child, just a child, please - “

“And I’m not going to shoot her,” Celelgrom said agreeably. “Just you, if I don’t get my father’s work back. Now.”

He wasn’t sure quite how young Elwing was, but however young she was, it was too young to prize even the precious light of a Silmaril over the safe comfort of an adult’s arms. She opened her clenched hands, and light spilled out from them.

“Princess - “ the guard said.

She threw it.

Her arms were too weak to throw it far. It landed halfway between them, the light clearly visible even through the undergrowth. 

“Thank you,” Celegorm said. He raised his bow a bit higher. “Now I suggest you run.”

The guard took off immediately, the princess still safe in his arms. Celegorm waited until they were safely out of sight before he dared lower his bow and put the arrow back in his quiver. 

The gem was so close. It seemed impossible that he could just reach out and take it.

He stepped forward. Reached down.

And jerked his hand back as the light burned.

He stared down at the gem for a long moment.

It made sense, he supposed. A Vala had hallowed it, and the Valar weren’t exactly happy with them at the moment.

He used one of his knives to cut a strip off his tunic and wrapped the cloth around his hand before picking it up again. It still burned, but it was bearable, at least for long enough to drop it into his quiver since he didn’t have a better container at the moment.

His hand still burned, but that was alright. He could get it looked at when he got back.

And they were one step closer to keeping their vow.

. . .

Maedhros was dead.

Celegorm stared down at the light spilling from the quiver at his feet and tried to understand that.

For so long they’d stood invincible, he’d almost convinced himself that Ada would be their last loss, and now he’d lost three brothers in one day.

But he still had two little brothers to look after and Maglor to follow. He had to focus on that.

This war was a hunt, and he had to keep his focus until the very end.

. . .

Maglor kept them headed vaguely north. The Oath pulled them in that direction, but Maglor showed little inclination to actually get there.

Celegorm chafed at the pointless wandering, but even he had to admit that they need a plan before they attacked. Plans were now Maglor’s job, so he left that to him. 

Until then, Celegorm hunted. The twins rode out with him most days, and they brought in badly needed meat that grew ever harder to hunt down, even for skilled hunters such as they. 

Celegorm could hear what the animals murmured to each other, though there were fewer and fewer left to do it. The land was dying, bit by bit, and at this point he wasn’t sure even stopping Morgoth’s poison at the source would stop it.

Celegorm wasn’t afraid of dying. 

Not so long as he fulfilled his promise first.

. . .

The first they heard of Sirion’s fall was when Celegorm realized they were being followed by someone, and Maglor turned their people back to encircle the other camp, if it could even be called a camp. They’d crowded under the lee of a small hill for protection from bitter wind, but there was little supplies to give them more protection that that. 

It turned out to be Elured and Elurin, who had shown up with their nephews and about two dozen other injured, starving, exhausted people with orcs on their tail.

Of course there were.

The Feanorians outnumbered them and had the additional advantage of being comprised entirely of warriors. The other group held a few children and those who carried their weapons like they still weren’t quite sure what to do with them.

Maglor had been the one to let Elured and Elurin go free with a few captured Doriathrim guards, so it was Maglor who stepped forward, presumably on the idea that the frightened elves would be less likely to shoot him.

He was also the most diplomatic Feanorian brother remaining, though Celegorm found himself wishing fiercely that Maedhros was here for this.

“We have nothing,” Elured - Elurin? One of the two - called from where he stood protectively in front of his nephews. “We have no desire to fight. Let us go our own way. We bring no quarrel to you.”

“We want nothing,” Maglor said, a hint of soothing power in his voice, hands raised high and without weapons. Celegorm, safely hidden in the trees, had that taken care of for him. “Nothing but news. What brings you out this way and in such a company?”

“Morgoth’s forces have brought down Sirion,” the other twin said, wary, but willing to talk. As long as they were still talking, no one was fighting. “Most fled to the Isle of Balar, but we were cut off from the harbor. We had no choice but to flee. His forces ride hard against us still.”

“Then are you sure you wish us to go?” Maglor asked. “They cannot be far behind you now. Will you not accept aid in defeating them?”

It was an offer the beleaguered refugees could not possibly refuse, no matter how wary they were.

Celegorm’s grin was fierce.

At last, a proper fight.

. . .

It was a proper victory too, and the refugees ended up sticking with them after that. It was an awkward experience all around, but there was safety in numbers, or at least as much safety as anyone could get these days.

Celegorm kept the Silmaril well covered. 

No need to start another fight over its brilliant light.

. . .

They found out the Isle of Balar had fallen when Amrod and Amras came running back to camp with a report of a group of orcs dragging a line of elvish prisoners, one of whom they thought might be Gil-Galad, though it had been years since any of them had seen him - not since he was a child.

They attacked because they didn’t have better ideas and because, Celegorm suspected, Maglor, Elured, and Elurin had the same rising lump of dread in their throats that he did.

The attack was a success, more or less. The orcs were dead, at least, and they managed to save five of the prisoners, though Celegorm suspected at least one wouldn’t last the night.

Gil-Galad might make it, though. The orcs had been careful with him, probably because their master had wanted the fun of torturing the so-called king of the elves himself.

Gil-Galad reported the fall of the city in a blank voice. Elwing’s fate was unknown, a fact that cheered up her wide eyed children and worried her more worldly-wise brothers.

Celegorm felt an unwilling spark of sympathy. He remembered all too well when Maedhros’s fate had been unknown.

Then Gil-Galad announced his next bit of news, and all sympathy for outsiders fled.

Celebrimbor was dead.

Gil-Galad talked about how bravely he had fought as if that somehow made things better, as if they wouldn’t all have a hundred times over preferred it for Celebrimbor to run at the first sign of trouble, or for Celebrimbor to have been a little less brave in Nargothrond, all those years ago.

Follow the leader, Celegorm had told his nephew once on a hunt, when he’d been young and impressionable and mostly done as he was told. Stay with the pack.

But little Tyelpe had grown into stubborn Celebrimbor, and now he was gone.

At least his nephew wasn’t counting on Celegorm to save him from the Void.

. . .

Celegorm confronted Maglor in his tent. The question of power had been tricky since Elured and Elurin showed up and had only gotten more so with Gil-Galad’s arrival, but Maglor maintained the majority of it by virtue of commanding the absolute loyalty of the majority of the people wielding weapons. 

Maglor was the rightful leader anyway, but at least this way Celegorm only had to convince one person of his plan.

“We need to attack,” he said, and Maglor startled from his position of leaning over the battered map on an even more battered table.

“We have less than a hundred men,” Maglor said wearily. “If we couldn’t take Angband at the Nirnaeth, what makes you think we can do it now?”

“We can’t,” Celegorm admitted. “But if we can create a diversion outside the gates, we can sneak in and steal the Silmarils.”

Maglor stared at him for a long moment. “It’s a suicide mission,” he finally said.

Celegorm waved that off impatiently. “The whole continent’s dying,” he said. “We’re not getting out of this, you know that. But we can still keep our Oath.”

“Our Oath,” Maglor said bitterly and turned away.

Celegorm grabbed his arm. “I swore it again,” he said. “I swore it again as Curufin died in my arms, I swore I would not let him be devoured by the dark.”

Maglor closed his eyes and breathed deeply. His hands shook.

“Alright,” he finally said. “Alright. We’ve fought Elda and those born of Maia and Aftercomer, defied bright Vala and every law ever written. It’s time we fought dark Vala too.” His eyes opened. “But if we’re going to do this,” he said, “we’re going to do it right.”

. . .

Apparently, doing it right involved talking the others into not wanting to go gently into Mandos’s good night and then riding out to find as many of the small, desperate bands of Aftercomer, Eldar, and Naugrim that they could. If they were going to charge on Morgoth’s gates, Maglor wanted to make as much of a show of it as he could.

Celegorm wasn’t sure what number they got up to. It was still far less than they’d had at the Nirnaeth. It was still doomed, in every sense of the word.

But it would be distracting, and that was the main thing.

. . .

Maglor ceded leadership of the expedition to Gil-Galad, and Celegorm said not one word of protest. Elured and Elurin eyed them warily, but Celegorm just smiled.

These days, no one wanted to look at him when he did that, he’d learned.

Maglor couldn’t lead the expedition.

They’d need him for something far more important.

. . .

Amrod and Amras were the ones left to lead their men because it was decided that was the slightly less suicidal job, and the twins were the youngest, after all. Maglor and Celegorm were fully agreed on that; it was their job to protect them, one last time.

Celegorm was a hunter, and he was well equipped at finding game trails through places thought to be impassible.

Even if this time, the game trail in question had been made by orcs.

Below them, the free peoples of Beleriand made one last glorious charge. 

Meanwhile, Celegorm quietly led Maglor up the winding trail into Angband itself.

. . . 

Most of Morgoth’s forces were focused on the gate, so it was surprisingly easy to slip unnoticed to the throne room where Morgoth sat directing this last stage of the war.

His throne was at one end of a long hall, with thick pillars carved to look like agonized Eldar and Aftercomers groaning under the weight. 

Celegorm was relieved. Elves were hard to spot in hunting cloaks, no matter what the environment, and he was more stealthy than most, but this was would help his purposes immensely. 

Morgoth himself hurt to look at directly, so Celegorm didn’t try. Instead, he sidled to the side of the room, softer than a breath and noticeable as a dust mote while Maglor threw his cloak off and strode forward.

His brother had been beaten down by the war, but he was still a performer at heart. Even in the shabby finery that was the pathetic best the Noldor could still produce, he still commanded every eye in the room as he strode forward.

He didn’t bother wasting time with a formal challenge. Instead, he just burst into song.

The force of it nearly pushed Celegorm over, and it wasn’t even aimed at him. It must be costing Maglor enormous effort - too much to keep it up for long. And though Maglor was holding his own for the moment, with the added force of surprise on his side, against Morgoth surely it wasn’t doing much. His brother’s power was great, but he was no half-Maia brat to contend with a Vala.

And Morgoth would be warier now.

Any moment now, he would grow weary of this novelty and strike. Celegorm’s feet flew across the floor toward an appropriate position. His bow was ready at his side. He just needed the right angle.

And then two bright presences in his mind - distant, but always noted because it was always important to know where the rest of the pack was - went dark.

Amrod and Amras had fallen.

Maglor’s song faltered, and Morgoth smiled, opened his mouth - 

Celegorm raised his bow. The arrowhead that was nocked against it was dull but heavy. Very heavy.

He let it fly.

He had no illusions about killing Morgoth with it, but that was alright. He hadn’t aimed for Morgoth. Not exactly.

He’d aimed for his crown.

The iron monstrosity with its twin stars clattered to the floor.

In the moment of stunned silence that followed, the orc chiefs and twisted Maia stood frozen. Even Morgoth only stared.

Maglor renewed his attack.

Celegorm was already running.

He heard it when others finally started to move after him, but he hardly cared. He was the only one who’d known exactly when this moment would come - one of only two people who had known it was coming at all - and it didn’t matter if someone caught up with him in a few moments. 

A weapon whistled through the air. Celegorm hit his knees and skidded the last yard to the crown.

His brothers were counting on him. His father was counting on him.

Celegorm grabbed a gem in each hand, never minding the burn, just throwing back his head in a yell of triumph as he felt the Oath’s chain snapped.

He had one in his belt and one in each hand. All three gems were united in Feanorian possession once more.

There was no chance of prying the gems out of the crown, not in the time he had left, but there’d been an idea he’d been playing with ever since he proposed this mission, and he had nothing to lose now.

He let go of one of the gems and drew the third out of its pouch. His hand felt like he’d stuck it in lava, but it wouldn’t matter. Not for long.

The Silmarils were almost indestructible. The Valar had thought they could break one, and they were probably right, but Celegorm was no Vala.

He did, however, have a substance just as hard and powerful as the Silmarils in the crown.

Namely, another Silmaril.

Please, Ada. Let me be right. Let me do this one thing right.

He brought it crashing down with all his might on the Silmaril he’d let go of.

His whole world turned to fire, every fiber of him screaming out as the sacred fire scourged him, fused with him, and burst outward.

The clawed hand that had just reached him turned to ash.

Morgoth screamed out, and the sound ripped through whatever remained of his eardrums and twisted the world, because this was light undimmed, light unfiltered, light so holy that it was the antithesis of everything Morgoth was, and Celegorm didn’t know if this would kill the dark Vala, but it certainly seemed to be coming close.

Maglor screamed too, and it went on for just one agonized moment before his last brother’s light winked out.

The light built and burned and Celegorm would have been screaming if there was anything left of him that could -

And then everything was cool and dim, and Namo was looking down at him with an expression so stunned that even dead, all Celegorm could do was throw back his head and laugh and laugh and laugh.

[the-melting-world]

Strength | Side B: "Colder Heavens"

art by @ ligiawrites

~ In which a former Count breaks a very important rule…

The Trio Appearances: Kipling | Khleo | Ozy

Arcana LI appearances: Asra | Nadia | Lucio | Valdemar

Track Origins: “Colder Heavens” by Blanco White

Not sure if this is the right track? The full album can be found here: Strength

Khleo is Non-binary and uses she/they pronouns interchangeably

cw: language, alcohol, blood, violence, mild gore

~ 3.3k words

***

~ 17 years ago ~

Hans von Heine shrugged the heavy sack of potatoes off his shoulder as he arrived at the door of his small flat. He unlocked the door and shortly after letting himself inside, he was met with a very tired, “Careful. There’s glass on the floor.”

Hans looked up and locked eyes with his wife, Magda. She was still busy sweeping up the remains of broken ceramic bowls in the kitchen.

“What happened?” Hans asked, gracefully sidestepping the uneven shards. There was no alarm or urgency in his voice, only concerned curiosity. After dropping off the potato sack, he began to help Magda by collecting the larger pieces.

“Khlee.” Magda sighed. “She had another headache and panicked.”

Hans grunted as he stood up. “It’s been a while since her last one. I’ll go talk to her.”

Magda got up too and touched his shoulder. “She’s finally up and moving but…” The skin around the woman’s clear blue eyes wrinkled slightly. “She can’t lift her arms, Hans.”

He covered her hand with his larger one and used the other to gently massage a little tension out of her shoulders. When she relaxed some, he nodded in understanding. “Thank you, Magda. We’ll come help you with dinner soon.”

Magda looked around. “What did you bring for me this time?”

Hans’ dark beard stretched over his toothy grin. “Kartoffeln.”

Magda rolled her eyes. “Wieder, Hans?”

He chuckled as he disengaged from her and popped a kiss to her brow. “Yes. Again. Khlee likes them and they’re cheap.”

Magda drifted back to her task. “Hm. I can see what you’re doing. You want to take her to the beer garden this weekend.”

“The festival is in town,” Hans said. “And I’m willing to bet that wherever Khlee came from, she’s never been to one quite like ours.”

When Hans left the kitchen, he didn’t have to walk very far to get to Khlee’s room. He found his child sitting on the edge of her cot, swinging her legs and glaring at the wall. Though she hadn’t been a part of their household for very long, Hans still felt like they had brought her up since birth.

“Mama says you’re walking now,” He said as he closed the door behind him. “I’m very proud of you.” He took a seat beside her.

Khlee tensed underneath the warm poncho Magda had quilted for her. It was large enough to allow her arms to hide away unless she wanted it otherwise.

“Mama helped me.”

Hans lowered his gaze to Khlee’s knees, which bore fresh cuts from the broken dishes.

“Oh? So is that how you thank her? By breaking all of her kitchenware?”

Khlee drew in sharp breath and leaned over as if to cradle her head, but she couldn’t.

“Papa, I didn’t mean to, I swear! I… I was trying to remember something, but I–”

Hans cursed himself for taking it too far. “Khlee, calm yourself. No one is angry with you.” He gathered her head under his chin and held the wheezing child until her breathing was back under control.

“Now.” Hans sat her upright and pushed some of those wild curls out of her dark eyes. “What about your arms? Show me the progress you’ve made.”

Khlee puffed out her cheeks once, twice. Then she strained hard enough to grow veins in her neck. The only evidence beyond that of her effort was the rigid tension in her shoulders.

Hans smiled fondly. “That’s all right, Khlee.”

She gave a violent shake of her head and clenched her jaw against the resistance. “No. Wait, Papa. I can–”

Hans placed his hands on her shoulders. “That’s enough for now. You’ll grow into them…. Now come with me.”

As he pulled Khlee onto her feet, he glanced down at her knees to make sure she didn’t aggravate her cuts. Oddly, the cuts were still there, but no longer weeping. They looked more like scabs now, as if they were halfway done healing.

“Papa?”

Hans put the thought out of his mind before Khlee could notice the concern in his face. He looked down at her and ruffled her hair. “First we’ll help your mother in the kitchen. Then I’m going to show you how to use those legs.”

Khlee shrugged her shoulders in an attempt to adjust her poncho. “What do you mean?”

With a smile, Hans gently guided her towards the door. “There’s a few folk dances from the Heine that I want to show you. You don’t need your arms for those.”

Khlee grumbled something about how dancing was stupid.

Hans only chuckled. “Trust me, meine kleine Khleo, a dance will come in handy the next time you feel like you want to break something.”

*

*

*

~ Present Day ~

“Hey, Basil.”

Lucio beckoned the mixologist over. As soon as he found out that Khleo’s coworker with the cropped salt and pepper curls and cool blue eyes was helping out that night with the club’s activities, he took the opportunity to catch the barhand’s attention.

Lucio couldn’t tell if the look Basil shot him was wary or friendly or a little bit of both. But he came down to his side of the minibar anyway and started cleaning a fresh glass.

“Montag, right? Did you need something?”

Now that Basil was closer, Lucio could count the dark marks scattered about his olive-toned skin. Lucio, who was feeling a lot more confident these days, let his eyes linger a little longer than average before speaking again.

“Enjoying the view?” Basil whispered, his eyes still on his task.

Lucio cleared his throat and tore his gaze away from the barhand’s tanned forearms.

“Say, Basil. Do you know why Khleo never fights?”

Basil finally looked up, but instead of locking eyes with Lucio, he cast his gaze over the former Count’s shoulder at the rest of the members mingling about the basement.

“Sounds like that’s not the first time you’ve asked that question.”

Lucio surrendered his hands. “I’m just curious is all. Trust me, I don’t have any plans to challenge Khlee in a fight. I’m no fool.”

Basil’s eyes finally met Lucio’s. “Khleo doesn’t fight that often because they don’t bleed. Or at least, not for very long. I have a feeling they keep out of the ring just to make everyone else feel comfortable.”

Lucio made a curious sound. “They cast some sort of regenerative spell before the fight or..?”

Basil shook his head. “It’s not magic. They’re blessed or... bewitched. Whatever you want to call it. If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask Hefe.”

Lucio glanced over at the fireplace and shuddered. “I am. Not. Doing that.”

He was briefly reminded of a few days back when he woke up in the hearth with no clue of how he got there. He remembered most of everything that happened the day before up until after the fight club had let out for the night. The very edges of his memory contained snippets of Khleo pouring themself a drink and asking Lucio if he wanted some. After that it was just a haze in which Hefe’s face sometimes showed up. She would lock Lucio into her amber stare and somehow amplify the space around his head with headache-inducing vibrations.

“Like you said,” Basil smiled a bit more openly than before, “you’re no fool.”

They laughed together and after that, their conversation flowed with much more ease. Lucio managed to ask Basil on a date before getting dragged into club meeting activities. He walked out of the bar with fresh bruises and a split lip that suffered even more under his wide, content smile.

Lucio hardly noticed the days passing him by. By now he was a pro at reserving himself a place to lay his head at night and grab breakfast in the morning for free. On the days where he didn’t have fight club to look forward to, he spent his time volunteering at the very centers where he stayed. Most of the work was boring and the people who passed through made his gut twist in sympathy, but it kept him busy.

One day, Lucio was enjoying a late breakfast of grits and sardines when a rough-looking bunch filed in. After they got their food, they collected around Lucio, who couldn’t help noticing their stares.

Some things never changed with Lucio. He still enjoyed attention. Whether he was happily getting his ass kicked in the ring or peacocking around at a masquerade party, something stirred pleasantly in his abdomen whenever all eyes were on him.

And he knew exactly why the rough newcomers had gathered around to stare at him.

“Those are some gnarly war wounds.”

Lucio grinned quietly to himself as he finished the rest of his food. “Thank you.”

One of them scooted close enough to him to bump elbows. “Tell us where you got ’em.”

Lucio coughed in order to hide a burp before looking up at the twelve or so individuals.

“Well, see here’s the thing,” he said with a sly grin. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

The curiosity on their faces immediately turned into intrigue, which got Lucio’s pulse quickening. He was enjoying this.

Several of the group glanced at one in particular. The leader, if Lucio had to guess. He was a big fella with about a dozen rings decorating his ears, creating frills of copper and obsidian glass.

“Look, we get it. You’re no rat. But me and my friends, we’re uh… a restless bunch.” He leaned over the table in order to whisper to Lucio. “We’re not looking to cause any trouble. We just need a place to let off some steam, you know?”

Lucio hesitated for a moment. “I do. I know what you mean.”

The one who had brushed elbows with him earlier, slung an arm over his shoulder and said, “So, you don’t have to tell us anything, but maybe you can point us in the general direction?”

Almost immediately after he had, the group of friends took their food and abandoned the table. Lucio sat there, a little bewildered. A part of him had expected them to stay a while and chat him up a little more.

He tried to shake off the sour feeling and just focus on looking forward to fight club. By the time evening had rolled around, Lucio’s skin was tingling with excitement. He was one of the first to arrive at the tavern basement. Khleo hadn’t returned from her delivery shift yet, but it seemed she had already set the table with bread and pilsners. These days, there was a large sign propped up on the middle of the table that read: Clean up after yourselves or no bread ever again!

The rest of the members started to file in not long after Lucio sat down. The companions he had made greeted him and gave him the attention he had been craving since that morning. At some point, Khleo swept in, looking sore and sulky from a long day’s work. But the club members knew how to lift her spirits and very soon all of them were barefoot and clustering around the center of the room, trying to decide who would be fighting first.

The friendly atmosphere, however, turned cold the moment the door that led out onto the street opened and a new presence entered the space.

“You’re telling me that there was a fight club right here under the Chandrian this whole time?”

Lucio, who was positioned near the back wall, strained to look over all of the heads between him and the new voice. Whispers broke out among the fighters.

“Who the hell are those guys?”

The intruder stepped into the light and repeated himself. “Who’s club is this? We want to talk to the manager.”

Lucio blinked suddenly as he recognized the man from Temple District. It appeared that he had brought along his whole flock from that morning and then some.

“Heard you had a friendly little club going and we wanted to see if the rumors were true. See we’ve just stolen a brand new ship and we need a bigger staff. So I’m here to recruit.”

Finally, Khleo separated herself from the sea of members. She scanned her crowd and said coldly, “Which one of you ran your damn mouth?”

Lucio felt the blood drain from his face as he drifted back and back and back into the shadows. When his spine collided with the wall, he edged to the right towards the little hallway nestled under the stairs.

His skin jumped as he heard Khleo repeat her question in a sterner tone. Lucio scrambled over crates and stumbled through racks of costumes until he was sure he was safe.

“Hello, Lucio.”

Lucio swung his fist at the sound of the voice, missed, and tripped into the brick wall hard enough to split his lip back open.

“Interesting... that they let you stay in this club.”

Lucio steadied himself against the wall. “Quaestor. W-what are you doing here?”

All that was visible in the dim light was the silhouette of Valdemar’s mummified horns.

“Bringing my tuna home of course. It’s been fourteen days. Or have you in all your frolic not been paying attention?” They came closer and drew a deep, wet breath. “Not that I’m complaining. Your blood smells more rare and ripe than I could have imagined. Well done.”

Lucio swallowed. “Wait. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to go back to the Lazaret!”

It wasn’t in Valdemar’s nature to care what their experiments desired or craved. They unhatched a portal behind Lucio for easy transportation right before lifting their heel and kicking him square in the chest. Lucio stumbled backwards into the gooey blackness. Valdemar followed shortly after.

***

“You?” The challenger snorted. “You can’t be the one in charge. You’re just a squirt with freakish arms.”

“I bet they’re not even real,” one of his companions drawled. “Probably just some parlor trick glamour.”

“Get lost. You’re not recruiting anyone tonight.” Khleo said as they looked up into the eyes of the challenger with the frilled earrings. Without hesitation, he stepped up to Khleo and gave their chest an easy shove.

“We weren’t asking for permission. If your people don’t want to come with us, we’ll just take the ones we need.” He and some of his crew gestured vaguely to the weapons fastened to their hips.

Khleo lifted their chin. “If you weren’t looking for permission, why in the hell did you ask to speak to the manager?”

A couple of snickers erupted from Khleo’s side.

Earrings gave a nasty scowl before spitting by Khleo’s foot. “You got a lot of mouth for someone who calls themself the damn manager.”

“Meet me in the ring and I’ll show you how I got that title.” Khleo said. “If it ends in a KO or I tap out, you can take whoever you want.” They stretched out their hand. “And if I win, you leave us the fuck alone.”

The challenger snatched their hand up. “You’re on.”

Khleo could feel the eyes of all of the patrons. They knew what they were thinking. This wasn’t the first time some low life had found out about the club and came in trying to shake things up. The patrons must have been wondering why Khleo had chosen to fight.

I need this. I need to do this.

< I’m here. >

Khleo felt the soothing presence of their familiar across their mental link. They wished they could reach out and stroke her.

~ I know, Hefe. Thank you. ~

The challenger met them in the ring and didn’t hold back. He was a street fighter before this, that much was certain. His familiarity with Khleo’s style made them go into the defensive. He was much bigger than them and knew how to grapple correctly.

But Khleo wasn’t about to hold back. Not this time.

They gave the challenger an opening. With a sure punch, he knocked Khleo’s head back, filling the air was a short, sickening crunch. The challenger’s followers whooped in excitement while the fight club members gasped in disbelief.

Khleo staggered, but instinctively raised their elbows around their head.

“See?” The challenger scoffed. “I knew you were all talk. You practically let me hit you.”

Khleo stopped swaying and firmly planted their feet. They lowered their arms and pulled themself out of the hunch so everyone could see what happened to their face.

The challenger sneered in distaste at what he was seeing.

Khleo stared right back at him, refusing to cradle their unhinged jaw, seemingly unaware of the blood leaking from where teeth and jawbone had torn their skin apart. Khleo snapped their head hard enough to seal off the gaping chasm. The crowd’s disgusted groans turned into gasps of disbelief at the sight of Khleo’s jaw stitching itself together.

“Go on,” they said, wiping the leftover blood on the back of their hand. “Hit me again.”

The challenger didn’t look like he wanted to do anything of the sort, but it was clear that the approval of his crew meant a lot to him. Khleo hoped he would walk away, she really hoped he would. But all he did by staying was make himself a target. For their anger, their frustration, every weight that had been added onto them in the past few weeks.

Khleo didn’t hold back her strength as she fought. The challenger was no match for her and this fight was not fair. But Khleo went over the edge a long time ago. She didn’t care.

There were so many things she couldn’t fight back against. So she fought the challenger. She fought and fought and clawed at his decorated ears with her blunt fingernails. She emptied out all her kicks and elbows to his face until it was unrecognizable.

Khleo wrestled their opponent to the ground and fired a right hook to his cheek. All the bystanders were screaming now. This was no longer a fight. It was bloodsport. And Khleo knew better than anyone how silly with delight a crowd could get from it.

In an attempt to regain some control, the challenger roared in defiance and cracked his forehead against Khleo’s nose.

The crowd erupted with excitement.

Khleo slowed down, bringing the challenger close enough so that he could see her nose render and heal with his own eyes. The incredulous terror in the challenger’s eyes made Khleo break into a wide, blood-stained grin.

“You should kill me and see what happens.”

He tried to tap out. “Okay, you win. You win!” The longer he looked at her, the more his lip trembled in fear for his life. Tears and snot soon mixed with the blood leaking from his contorted face.

Khleo ignored their own rules and snarled, “What the fuck are you crying for? You’re the one who came up in my house! And for what? To intimidate my friends into joining your disgusting crew?”

“I’m sorry! I said I was done!”

The tapout had served its purpose – to snap everyone else out of their bloodlust. They tried to talk Khleo down, reminding her that it was over. When they started to pull her off of the man, Khleo thrashed.

“No – Let me go! If he wants to cry, I’ll give him something to cry about!”

She lunged. The challenger begged for his crew to help. The seconds that followed were simply pandemonium. Patrons and the intruders clashed, wrestling each other to the ground. Several fighters dogpiled Khleo at once in order to protect the challenger. She wheezed under their crushing weight.

Then the sounds of fighting were interrupted by a wild, guttural roar. The cacophony of screams that followed caused Khleo to twist in agony.

“There’s a fucking lion in here!”

Khleo drew in a ragged breath as the weight lifted from her back. She scrambled to her feet. Not long after she righted herself did she hear something that made her blood run cold.

The door at the top of the stairs flung open and a booming voice filled the space.

“What in the gods-damned fuck is going on down there!”

People were already running and tripping over each other, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the lion. Khleo tried to reach out to Hefe through their link, but it was too late. Otto was already at the bottom of the stairs, taking in the mess of the basement as well as the enormous lion terrorizing all of his potential customers.

~ Hefe. He saw you. Go! ~

Hefe didn’t argue with her human. She stole out into the street, chasing off the last of the challenger’s crew. Once she was gone, Khleo turned to face their boss. They took a deep breath because they knew they were in for it.

Khleo needed a miracle. Because she was certain that after tonight, there wouldn’t be any more fight club.

[austenmarriage]

New Post has been published on Austen Marriage

New Post has been published on http://austenmarriage.com/austens-words-soothe-soldiers-home-folks/

Austen's Words Soothe Soldiers, Home Folks

This year of 2020 is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of World War II. It is fitting, thus, to remember that Britain’s bulldog leader once benefitted from the soothing words of Jane Austen during the world’s largest military conflagration.

Churchill wrote of the comfort he got from listening to his daughter read him Pride and Prejudice during WWII. (Letter at Jane Austen’s House, Chawton.)

Winston Churchill lay abed with the flu during the middle of the war. His doctors told him: “Don’t work, don’t worry.” In a letter now at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Churchill wrote that he had long ago read Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and decided to try Pride and Prejudice. He had always thought it would be “better than its rival.” His daughter Sarah read it to him, which she did “beautifully from the foot of the bed.”

Speaking of Pride and Prejudice, and no doubt contemplating the burdens of his own position leading the war effort, Churchill remarked in his letter: “What calm lives they had those people. No worries about the French Revolution or the crashing struggle of the Napoleonic Wars. Only manners controlling natural passion so far as they could, together with cultured explanations of any mischances.”

The prime minister’s observations, of course, were true of the characters in the novel, but not the readers. British military strength totaled about 350,000 during the Napoleonic Wars, and at least as many more were volunteers to be called in case of invasion. Citizens read of the battles, they kept abreast of the casualties, and they observed the thousands of wounded veterans begging for bread in the streets. They knew war as well as their descendants in later titanic battles across the Channel.

Churchill was by no means the only warrior to find solace from the words of Austen during the world wars. A Rudyard Kipling story describes a soldier who served in an artillery battery in World War I. Imagining the existence of a secret society of “Janeites” because the officers keep talking of her, he comes to read her novels. After being wounded in a barrage that wiped out the rest of his unit, the artilleryman is stymied by a wordy nurse, who tells him there is no room for him on the hospital train. “Make Miss Bates there, stop talkin’ or I’ll die,” he complains. Catching the educated reference to Emma, the head nurse finds a place for him on the train to safety.

Janine Barchas’s recent book, The Lost Books of Jane Austen, reproduces the beautifully grim illustrations of Kipling’s story from Hearst’s International Magazine in May 1924. Barchas also has an image of a combined printing of Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, which was one of 1.4 million books donated to the War Service Library in World War I.

In this program, the American Library Association (ALA) raised $1.7 million, purchased another 300,000 books, and shipped 109,403 books overseas. The ALA placed 117 librarians in the field, erected 36 libraries across 464 camps, and also distributed 5 million magazines to military personnel. Britain had a similar program of collecting books and magazines for the troops during World War I. Details of the British program have proven difficult to uncover, however.

Barchas found that the cheap editions of Austen’s novels helped develop Jane’s reputation during the 1800s. She found several rare copies of the war paperbacks and included them in her book. The image of Northanger Abbey, above by the headline, is from The Lost Books of Jane Austen and used with permission.

Cheap books—in this case, free—may have had the same effect on modern writers whose books were handed out to soldiers in WWI or WWII. Scribner’s produced only 25,000 copies of The Great Gatsby from 1925 to 1942, but 155,000 were given to the army and navy overseas during the war. Not coincidentally, F. Scott Fitzgerald enjoyed a boom in popularity after the war. The book is now considered a classic.

Military readers often expressed their thanks to authors in writing. Some authors received hundreds of thank-yous, with soldiers saying the books were the first they had ever read through in one sitting—or possibly read at all.

Austen’s stories of ordinary life in quiet country villages proved a respite to readers of the crashing struggle around them in Austen’s time. Her novels also reminded soldiers, then and later, of the life they were fighting for.

The novels might be said to have participated in the war directly. Some of Virginia Woolf’s copies of Austen’s books were reported to have been damaged during the Blitz, and a book dealer in London offered a first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion at a discounted price “because it and other rare books had been water-damaged by firefighters battling an incendiary bomb.” The latter instance is recounted by Annette M. LeClair in the article “In and Out of the Foxholes: Talking of Jane Austen During and after World War II,” in the periodical Persuasions (issue 39). LeClair, who was investigating reader responses to Austen during WWII, concluded that she provided solace to the home folks as well as to the troops.

As much as the military owes Austen, though, the World War II anniversary should remind Janeites of all we owe the military. Jane Austen’s House, the most popular Austen site in the world, exists because of the sacrifice of Lt. Philip John Carpenter. He died at the age of twenty-two leading an attack in Italy in 1944. The Carpenter family purchased the cottage and gave it in trust to “all lovers of Jane Austen.” They had no deep connection to the author. But they were from Hampshire and wanted to honor their offspring. Philip is commemorated on a plaque near the entry.

One of the country’s many fallen sons gave rise to a sanctuary for one of the nation’s most beloved daughters.

—

The Marriage of Miss Jane Austen, which traces love from a charming courtship through the richness and complexity of marriage and concludes with a test of the heroine’s courage and moral convictions, is now complete and available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.

[notyetneedcoffee]

The Letter

Answer to Eliza’s challenge

Prompt: The Ludlows

No warnings 

The rain pelted against the storefront windows, blown sideways by the heavy wind. Being late afternoon in the middle of the week, there were only a few people in your little Brooklyn shop. A college kid who came in a couple times a week looked for another edition of the old seventies pulp scifi he liked for some reason. An older woman sat at one of the little tables, drinking a pot of tea and filling out the handmade cards she’d purchased. Your favorite regular sat in the old leather wingback chair in the corner. He took his coffee black and read for hours.  

You poured yourself a cup of coffee, preparing to dig through the boxes you’d bought at an estate auction upstate the day before. Only a little remained in the pot so you took it over Mr. Blue Eyes. His longish dark hair fell over his face as his slumped in the chair with a beat-up copy of Gaiman’s Stardust. He glanced up when you approached.

“Refill? I want to start a new pot.”

“Yeah, thanks.” He held out his cup. Even though it was plenty warm in the book shop, he always kept on his coat or sweatshirt. He always wore well used, but expensive looking leather gloves. You did ask why.  

“What do you think?”  

In the last year you discovered his taste ran the gambit from non-fiction history to modern scifi and everything in between. He’d come in today needing a new read. When you asked what he was in the mood for, he’d said something light and fun, with some adventure. Something to make him feel better. You knew he didn’t shy away from a romantic tale, so you pulled Stardust off the shelf.

“It’s good.” He smiled. His face lit up when he smiled. “Your recommendations are always good.”

“Not bad considering I don’t even know your name.” You teased as you turned back to the counter. He always changed the subject when you asked, so you gave up ages ago.  

You got about three steps when he called your name. Looking back, he granted you with a soft smile. “It’s Bucky.”

Smiling you returned to the counter, hoping you weren’t blushing. Your face felt warm, so you probably were. It was so simple, but it felt sweet and satisfying. There were plenty of long term customers you didn’t know by name. Somehow, though, this made you happy.  

As you sat down on the stool and sipped your own coffee, you caught Bucky watching you over the top of his book for moment more before he began to read again. Content with the little step, you pulled one of the giant boxes of books closer.

The boxes were auctioned as a lot. You did not get to look through them. Still, the house had been grand and the library large, so it was a good gamble. The only thing you knew of the owner was she was in her nineties and died without any family.  

Several old medical books were on top. A beautiful leather bound edition of Kipling’s poetry lay below.  You flipped through the pages, just the smell of old print hitting your nose. No musty mildew or foul odor meant they were likely well tended.  

Towards the bottom of the first box lay a book with loose pages sticking out. It was A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Unlike the expensive leather-bound and hard cover books in the collection, this faded old paperback was held together with ties of ribbon.  

Laying it carefully on the counter, you untied the buddle. An old photo of a woman in wool pants and a military jacket smiled at the camera as she leaned against an old WWII era jeep. Letters lay nestled between the pages. “Wow,” you breathed quietly as you opened the first one. The creases cut through the paper deep, as if some read the letter again and again.  

14 August, 1943

Dear Rose,

I ship out with Steve in the morning and I don’t know if I will have the chance to give you a proper farewell.  

This last week has been heaven. My body may have been beaten. I may have been starving and sick. But, having your beautiful face smiling down at me every day was like the sun shining after the storm. It made me feel washed clean and eager to grow under such a shining light.

I can’t thank you enough for the way you would read to me after the nightmares had me screaming and sweating like a kid. You never let me feel embarrassed or looked at me like I was weak. You just calmed me down with your lovely voice until I could rest again.  

You listened to all the horrors without flinching. You just held my hand and touched my face, like cool balm, bringing me more relief than the breaking of my fever. Your care did more to heal me than anything the doctors tried.

Every day I just wanted to make you laugh because it chased away all darkness. I know I wasn’t all the funny, but you laughed anyway. Thank you for humoring me.

I wish the situation was different. I wish we weren’t stuck in a ratty tent hospital close enough to the front to have the artillery keep us up at night. I wish we could get spiffed up and I’d take you on the town. I wish I could take you dancing just for the chance to hold you close for a bit.

If you don’t get this until after I go, just know that you will forever be my special Rose. I’m certain there’s a lot of fellas you take care of that fall hard for your kindness and beauty. Still, for a little while I got to have you at my side. I got to have you smiling at me.  

All my love,

James

“You okay?” A rich deep voice pulled your attention from your musings over the letter. When you looked up into Bucky’s face, you realized your eyes were wet.  

“Um, yeah.” You smiled. “I just found this old letter in the lot off books I got from this lady’s estate.” You passed it over. “Looks like she was a war nurse. Look I think this is her.”

Bucky’s hand covered his mouth. You watched his eyes grow wide and glassy. The paper quivered in his hand. He seemed to be reading the letter again and again.  

“Lovely, isn’t it?” You smiled.  

“How much do you want for it?” His voice was thick.

“What?”

“Can I buy it? I don’t care how much.” His eyes never left the page or the picture. You could see the intensity in his eyes, like it reminded him of something important or triggered an old memory.

“You know what.” You smiled. “You just keep it.”

“Really?” Bucky’s breathed, looking up at you in total surprise. When you nodded, a bright smile crossed his face. He gingerly folded the letter and tucked into his book with the picture. They all went into the inner pocket of his jacket. His hand covered the place where they rested. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Sure. See you later?” He nodded and left. That confirmed it. You knew Bucky was a romantic.  

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