#and my ability to read latin came about because i wanted to read old texts and dont like modern literature

[sometimesanequine]

man I'd be absolutely killer at two truths one lie, example;

i can read latin halfway decently

given the chance id be around horses every day

i knit with sewing thread

[dwellordream]

“…There is a real belief on behalf of a not insignificant subset of society that the medieval Church was a shadowy organisation dedicated solely to suppressing knowledge and scientific advancement. This is not true.

The Church was in all actuality the medieval period’s largest benefactor of scholars of all stripes. Initially, in the early medieval period much learning was focused in monastaries in particular. Because monks took a vow to eschew idleness, they were always looking for new ways to work for the greater glory of God, or whatever. Sometimes this took the form of doing manual labour to feed themselves, but as monasteries such as Cluny rose to prominence they did more and more work in libraries as well.

Monks copied and embellished manuscripts and kept impressive libraries. Sometimes this work took place inside what we call “scriptoria” where more than one scribe is working at a time. They saw themselves as charged with transmitting knowledge. A lot of that knowledge was, of course, pagan, because they were extremely into classical thinkers. They were also reading this work of course, and writing their own commentaries on it. Many of them took the medical texts and used them to set up hospitals within their monasteries, as we have talked about before.

Lest you think this is all one big sausage fest, women were also very much about that book life within nunneries. They also had their own scriptoria and were busy scribbling away, reading, writing, and thinking. If you wanted a life where you strove for new scholarly heights, odds were that in the early medieval period you did that inside a monastery on nunnery.

As the medieval period moved on, scholarship eventually moved out of the cloister and into cities when the medieval university was established. The first degree awarding institution to call itself a university was the University of Bologna established around 1088, though teaching had been going on there previously and students had been going to Bologna from at least the late tenth century. Second was the University of Paris, which was established in 1150. Again teaching had been happening there from much earlier, and at least 1045.

Medieval universities weren’t like universities now, in that they didn’t have established campuses or anything like that. They were, more or less, a loose affiliation of scholars who would provide lessons to interested students. The University of Paris, for example, described itself as “a guild of teachers and scholars” (universitas magistrorum et scholarium).

In Paris there were four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. Everyone had to attend the Arts school first where they would be asked to learn the trivium, which was comprised of rhetoric, logic, and grammar. Basically that meant all undergrads spent their time learning to argue, which is how the whole Abelard thing comes about. Then if they wanted more they could go do medicine, law, or theology. Theology was considered the really crazy good stuff, as medieval theologians were sorta held up in the way we worship astrophysicists like Neil de Grasse Tyson (ugh) or Stephen Hawking now. But if you wanna be a dick and super modern about it and think that nothing is more important than science, you will note that medicine is there and actively pursued.

So what, what does all of this have to do with the Church not being suppressive? Well literally everyone, both scholars and students in a medieval university was a member of the clergy. That’s right. Are you a Christian and you wanna learn about medicine? Well you need to take holy orders first. So every single scientific advancement that came out of a medieval university (and there were plenty) was made by a man of the cloth.

The quick among you might have spotted that the thing about unis is that they were just for dudes though, and that is lamentably true. Women weren’t able to take the same orders as men, which means they were excluded from university training. Plenty of them got tutored if they were rich. (See poor Heloise who just had Abelard, like, do himself at her.) Otherwise there was plenty of sweet stuff going on in nunneries still and always, as the visionary natural biologist Hildegard of Bingen can attest. Monasteries were also still producing good stuff as Thomas Aquinas would be happy to let you know from the comfort of his Dominican order.

Given that all of this is the case, it’s hard to square that circle of “the Church is intentionally suppressing knowledge!” with the fact that everyone actively working on acquiring and furthering knowledge was a member of it and all. The Church was a welcoming home to scholars because it was a place where you got the time needed to contemplate subjects for a long time. If you have your corporeal needs taken care of, then you can go on to think about stuff. The Church offered that.

Having said all of this, there were, of course, plenty of Jewish and Muslim scholars at work in medieval Europe as well. The thriving Jewish communities of the medieval period had their own complex theological discussions about the Talmud, and produced their own truly delightful sexual and scientific theory that I will never tire of reading.

I’ve also talked at length about how Islamic medical advances were very much taken on board by medieval Christians in Europe. The fact that the Christians in holy orders beavering away at the medical faculties of universities across Europe were very much looking to a Muslim guy called Ibn Sinna for medical knowledge makes it hard to see the Church as an oppressive hater of all things non-Catholic. I’m just saying.

What else is at play here? Meh, society writ large. A lot of us in the English as a first language speaking world, and in northern Europe more generally have been raised in a Protestant context even if we ourselves are not Protestant. The thing about that is Protestants, famously, is that they are not huge fans of the Church. Big news, I know. In the Early Modern period this could get kinda wild, with things like the Great Fire of London being blamed on a nefarious “Papish plot”, for example, becoming a nice early example of a conspiracy theory. (That conspiracy theory was still written in Latin at the based of The Monument built to commemorate the fire until 1830 when the Catholics were officially emancipated in Britain. LOL.)

When the whole Enlightenment thing went down, generalised distrust of Catholics was then later compounded by the fact that “serious” thinkers aka Voltaire’s ridiculously basic self began to categorise the accumulation of knowledge specifically in opposition to religious thought. This is the old “Age of Reason” which we currently allegedly reside in, versus the “Age of Faith” idea. The Church as an overarching institution from the age of faith was therefore thought of as necessarily regressive, and it became assumed that it has always been actively attempting to thwart advantage for vaguely sinister reasons that are never fully articulated.

…Now, plenty of people were killed for witchcraft because they were doing medicine. The witch trials were a very real thing, and you know when and where they happened? In the modern period, and usually with a greater regularity in Protestant places. Witchcraft trials peak in general from about 1560-1630 which is the modern period. The most famous trials with the biggest kill count took place in Trier, Fulda, Basque, Wurtzburg, Bamberg, North Berwick, Torsåker and Salem. You know what was going on in most of the places? The Reformation. Witch trials sort of reflected various confessions of Christianity’s ability to effectively protect their flocks from evil. Did Catholics kill “witches” oh you bet your sweet ass they did. So did Protestants, and it was all fucking ugly.

What is important to note is that in countries where Catholicism was static witch trials were largely unheard of. Ireland, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy, for example, just didn’t go in for them even though they were theoretically in the clutches of a nefarious Church bent on destroying all medical knowledge or something.

Now, none of this is to excuse the multifarious sins of the institutional Church over the years. In many ways my entire career as a medieval historian is a product of the fact that I was frustrated with the Church after 16 years of Catholic school. If you had to go to a High School named after the prosecutor in the Galileo trial, you might also end up devoting yourself to picking intricate theological fights with the Church, OK? (Yes, this is my origin story.)

And that brings us to the crux of the matter: if you make up a bunch of stuff that the Church did not do it makes it harder to critique them of the manifold things they actually did do and are doing right fucking now. We need to be critiquing the Magdalene Laundries; the international cover up of pedophile priests; signing an actual concordant with Nazi Germany; the regressive attitudes towards abortion and contraception that happen still, now, and endanger the lives of countless women. All of this is real, and calls for the strongest possible condemnation.”

- Eleanor Janega, “JFC, calm down about the medieval Church.”

[jungcity]

bane of the devil. | x

genre: romance, fantasy, erotica

pairings: vampire!jaehyun x college!female reader

words: 12k

warning: bane of the devil deals with themes of deaths, physical, mental, and sexual abuse as well as toxic relationships. which may be upsetting for some readers. you are advised not to continue if you feel uncomfortable to these types of plots.

“You can romanticize me all you wish, but the devil wrapped in silk is still the devil.” — A Word to My Lovers

“With all due respect, Juana, but are you like…” Jaehyun paused as he shifted casually on his seat, a cigarette bud adorning his fingertips. “... sick in the head?” he asked, finger pointing to his temple to visualize his insult towards the witch.

“Every hunter had done it! I don’t see any reason why Y/N must refuse,” taunted Eva, which earned her a solid look from Lucas who was sitting beside Jaehyun.

Jaehyun echoed a humorless laugh as he leaned back on his seat, casually reaching for your hand with his. Hands that you have learned how to love these past few months of being in the Academy. It was insane how a simple gesture could give you a lot of strength during this dreary time. Jaehyun has that impact on you.

When no one answered, Eva straightened her back and plastered you a smirk. “Besides, the ball is in a month. It’s only right to test Y/N’s abilities to know if she’s qualified to kill… Alena.”

Your heart made a jump. It’s been months since you’ve known that Eva knows your true intentions for coming to the Academy. But she was too bold to admit that now. Yet Juana didn’t even give her a warning look as she remained composed on her own seat. Lucas was the only one who kept judging Eva.

“So… the truth has been unveiled. You really do know my intentions,” you sarcastically stated. Since Juana lied to you, it wasn’t far-fetched to expect some apology.

But she only smiled, the endearing and youthful one that betrayed her deception of you. “Eva’s really talkative, don’t you think, Y/N?” she sighed, “But I hope you don’t mind me telling her about your plans. She’s my most trusted hunter alongside Lucas,” Juana pronounced while holding Eva’s arm.

What about the collateral damage? You wanted to ask, but you kept your mouth shut and flashed her your jovial smile instead. They think they’ve deceived you, little did they know that you were better than that.

“Of course, Madame. Eva has been good to me ever since, after all,” you said that with a lingering stare at Eva’s frame. Both of you held each other’s eyes for a minute before she looked away. An infinitesimal triumph, but triumph nonetheless.

“So… it is settled then? Next week, Y/N, be prepared—”

“No one’s preparing because she’s not doing it. You are a mad witch—”

You cut off Jaehyun before he gave way too much information and insult, “Next week, Madame.”

Jaehyun’s burning gaze bore into you, his blatant judgement about your decision evident in that pretty face of his. You stood up before a scream would erupt from your throat. Being in a room with these deceitful people felt as if poison clawing in your veins.

You pressed a palm on your chest and gave the witch a low bow before pivoting on your heels and walking away. Jaehyun’s reassuring presence followed behind you. As the door to Juana’s chambers closed, you let out a heavy sigh.

“What were you thinking?” Jaehyun snapped. “You are going in a suicide mission!”

Forcing yourself to be strong in front of the witch and her hunters have sapped all your energy. Treacherous tears threatened to fall from your eyes as you looked at Jaehyun. His hard gaze softened upon beholding your weakness that he quickly enveloped you into a tight hug.

Against the warm embrace, you mumbled, “What would you have me do?”

In his moderate voice, he answered, “Quit. Now. We’ll find another way to avenge your parents.”

“We have another way, but I need Juana’s protection,” you whispered before pulling away.

Jaehyun wiped your tears with his thumb, “Can’t Rhianon do that?”

“I’ll have to ask her. But Juana’s the one who cursed Alena. I believe her protection would be the strongest against the Primus.”

He nodded before placing a kiss to your head. “Let’s go to Rhianon. We have to plan everything now.”

At your nod of approval, Jaehyun held your wrist and walked side by side with you. Thankfully, no more students could be seen walking in the corridors and Juana’s chamber was a private place, you don’t have to worry about venatrixes seeing you hold hands with a vampire.

It has been two months since you came to the Academy. One more month until the dreaded gathering would take place, and Juana has never been stricter to you. Once in a while, she would supervise your eating. Doing so much as to sit across from you in the canteen to watch you eat. She has been observing your training to see how strong you’ve become since joining the Academy, too.

There were improvements, according to Jaehyun and Lucas. Your bones had become stronger because of sparring with the hunter in daylight, and training with the vampire at night. It was tiring and bone-jarring, but fulfilling nevertheless. Muscles have developed and your stamina has been boosted. But they don’t need to tell you that it still wasn’t enough to kill Alena. You have never seen her, and didn’t dare ask them to describe her to you. A small part of you was surely scared— no, a large part of you. But when you stare at the ceilings and remember your parents, all fear vanishes.

You opened the door and spotted Rhianon sitting on the floors, stacks of books were sprawled in front of her. She has been working non-stop to study the spells that would be useful for your case. At the sound of the door opening, she quickly closed all the books.

“It’s me,” you announced with a smile.

Rhianon breathed a sigh of relief before opening her books for the second time. “I thought there were some unwanted visitors— oh.” She whistled upon seeing Jaehyun’s frame entering the room.

Jaehyun gave her a small smile before joining you in sitting across from Rhianon.

“How was the meeting?” she asked as she adjusted her glasses.

You shared a glance with Jaehyun, then you cleared your throat, “Juana… well, it was stupid—”

“It really was,” Jaehyun muttered.

You gave him a look before proceeding, “She would enchant the whole forest so the season would be winter over that specific place—”

Rhianon slammed her book shut and stared at you with her brows knitted together. “She would what?!”

Running a hand through the thin pages of one of her books, you sighed, “You heard me, Rhi. She’s a powerful witch so she’d turn the season to winter over the forest and would leave me there alone to fight off entities she hadn’t bothered to describe.”

After your sparring with Jaehyun, Rhianon came dashing towards the both of you and told you of Juana’s summoning. It was past seven p.m. then. Eva and Lucas were already sitting on the couches when you and Jaehyun arrived. Lucas’s apologetic look gave off the storm that was about to take place. And it did.

Juana waited for you to sit comfortably on the sofa before breaking the dreadful mission: she would enchant the forest and turn the season to winter. She would leave you alone in the forest and would observe your strategies on how to survive such desolate and cold places. Not only that, she decided to include different types of monster of her own craft to make everything much worse and dangerous for you. That’s why Jaehyun had gone batshit over the meeting— he didn’t want you to do it.

“And for what?” Rhianon scoffed, “To ged rid of you?”

“Perhaps that’s the true reason behind this foolishness. But Eva also stated that every hunter goes through this mission.”

“Well, that’s bullcrap. I haven’t heard of that before.”

Some part of you knew that. The mission could be a trick made to finally oust you out of the Academy and from the Earth for good— because according to Juana’a description, nobody would survive her mission. They view you as a collateral damage, and that’s how they treat you. What a sickening joke. You wanted to kill them for that.

“As expected. They are trying to deceive you, Y/N,” Jaehyun uttered beside you.

“I know. But I am deceiving them, too, by this—” You motioned the books splayed on the floor, “— if we could find the right spell to find Hubert’s lost tongue before next week, I wouldn’t have to do Juana’s mission.”

Rhianon hummed, “That’s right. And the three of us could fuck right off this Academy.”

“What’s the spell you’re searching for?” Jaehyun decided to ask.

“Something about restoration and divination. But the latter is my priority. We won’t be able to restore Hubert’s tongue if we don’t know where it is,” Rhianon explained while pulling another book out of the stacks. “And before I forgot… we have to have something of Hubert’s possession to locate his missing body part.”

“We have to revisit the cemetery and ask Hubert if we could borrow anything from him,” you chimed in.

Jaehyun crossed his arms. “I know that ghost. He’s old and ornery. If we want something from him, we have to steal it.”

“With that, I need to read about ghost-binding spells. We don’t want Hubert to follow us after,” Rhianon suggested.

Information suddenly weaved its way through your mind. Upon weeks of reading Latin because of Rhianon’s books, you have known some things already. You hurriedly searched for the book who has a tight binding on it and splayed its contents wide to search for the spell.

“It’s here. The ghost-binding spell.” You pointed to the text. “We have to bring candles and salt.”

Rhianon leaned and craned her neck to see the text herself. Then she nodded while whispering the words, “Alright. This is easy and I’m confident that I can do this. We could visit the cemetery tonight.”

“I’ll take a shower and get ready,” you stated before standing up. Rhianon and Jaehyun both nodded at you then you left them to continue their readings with a wide smile plastered on your face.

—

The cascading water from the shower was the only noise that could be heard in the whole room. But Jaehyun’s other senses could pick up elements which couldn’t be seen by the naked eye. It was Jaehyun’s first time to go back here after the night with you. But the scent was strong. And this pungent scent that was incessantly piercing his nostrils was surely getting on his nerves.

No, it wasn’t Rhianon nor Y/N’s smell. Jaehyun has grown accustomed to the former because of spending time reading books and discussing plans with her. The latter, Jaehyun has already memorized like the scent of his favorite perfume. This couldn’t be your smell.

Because it was Sicheng. What was he doing in this room?

Jaehyun feigned reading to observe Rhianon. You trust her. But Jaehyun couldn’t do the same. He needed answers before he could do that.

If they would do this together, he has to trust Rhianon. And the girl must give her a reason to.

“Rhianon,” Jaehyun stated. The girl looked up to him while raising both her brows. “What was Sicheng doing here?”

The woman didn’t even blink, let alone act surprised. She only sighed and placed the book from her lap to the floors. Jaehyun heightened his senses for any attacks nor incantations, but Rhianon only leaned her back to the sides of her bed.

“How do you know him?”

Jaehyun answered, “He’s a friend of mine.”

“It took you awhile to notice,” Rhianon sighed, “But… let’s wait for Y/N to finish up so I could tell you both.”

As if on cue, the door from the bathroom suddenly opened. You stepped outside wearing fresh jeans and a simple shirt. The tension from Jaehyun could be felt to where you stood. It drew your forehead in a crease but you shrugged it off and sauntered up to them.

“Aren’t you showering, Rhi?”

But instead of Rhianon, it was Jaehyun who answered. “She has something to tell you.”

So, there was truly something going on while you showered. You could only hope that whatever Rhianon has to tell you, it wasn’t terrible.

Rhianon glimpsed at Jaehyun before clearing her throat and talking, “This is something that I should’ve told you before. But I really wasn’t sure whether I could trust you with this secret.”

You reached for her hands and squeezed them with yours. “I understand,” you said. It was true. And you know how it feels like to want to trust someone but couldn’t because of inhibitions.

“My… my brother went here months ago to visit me.”

“You have a brother?”

She chewed on her lower lip before speaking, “Yes and he’s a vampire.”

Your jaw dropped. Rhianon has a sibling, and he’s a vampire. “Wha… how? Are you a vampire, too?” You glanced at Jaehyun, who was looking at Rhianon with a careful examination.

“No, silly. I’m not,” Rhianon chuckled lowly, “My brother… he was turned.”

“Turned? Like Juana—” Your words were halted as realization dawned on you. You stared at Rhianon, wide-eyes with your mouth dropping to the floors. At your perplexed bearing, she nodded.

“My brother is her son.”

If your eyes could roll off from their sockets, they surely would. Everything seemed to make sense right now. “That’s why you are helping me. To save your brother.” You huffed out a breath, “I would help you, Rhianon.”

“That’s the thing, Y/N. My brother, Sicheng, doesn’t want to be saved. Juana only crafted it in her mind that he needs her help. But no. Sicheng’s turning was consensual.”

You have tons and tons of questions in your mind but one thing is for certain: Juana lied to you, over and over again. She convinced you that she needed to save her son. But here was the truth, slowly unraveling itself to you.

“How… oh my God. Then Juana is your—?” Sweats formed in your forehead by the realization. If Rhianon truly is Juana’s daughter, how could you guarantee that the witch isn’t privy of your plans?

Rhianon quickly put a finger to your lips before you could utter the word. “Yes. But she doesn’t know how to raise a child so I’d appreciate it if we don’t call her my mother.” At your confused expression, Rhianon added, “We weren’t really on good terms, Y/N. Trust me. And I didn’t tell a soul about your secrets. I’m merely telling you this to let you know that there isn’t any need to kill Alena and put your life in danger while doing Juana’s dirty work.”

That explains all her book of magic and enchantments, of her little vials of potions, and her ability to understand Latin. And that also confirms your question of her true nature. Rhianon truly is a witch.

“What’s in it for you?” Jaehyun chided in. He bore a flat expression on his face while asking the question. You know, deep in your heart, that Jaehyun would dive into every detail to make sense of Rhianon’s revelation. For that, you are thankful. He was always the steady flame beside you: prepared to burn brighter if needed.

Rhianon let a bitter smile on her lips. “I love my brother. He’s the only relative I have out there who cares for me.” Then she looked at Jaehyun, “He’s your friend, right?”

“He’s your friend?” you repeated dubiously. He didn’t tell you that. Then you remember that you have no idea about Jaehyun’s life aside from him, being a vampire.

“Yes. But I didn’t know that they were brothers and sisters,” Jaehyun explained, “I caught Sicheng’s scent here. So I decided to ask.”

“Don’t worry, Y/N, Jaehyun doesn’t really know,” Rhianon chuckled at your agitated face. “That’s it. I love my brother. And I want to end Juana’s rashness. Sicheng’s contented to have a life of his own: one he didn’t had the chance to experience while being a half-mortal and half-witch before.” Sadness made its way to Rhianon’s face, her lips frowned by the memories flashing in her mind. “If you’re a boy and a witch at the same time, you’re next to nothing when it comes to the witches. And… this might sound wrong, but I’m really thankful that Alena took him. Now, he has a purpose, albeit being a Primus’ dog.”

Jaehyun made a sound. “You wanted to prove Juana wrong. You wanted to defeat her without fighting her.”

Rhianon nodded at Jaehyun while holding your hands tightly. “She thinks of me as a weak girl who won’t cast a simple spell in her life. But I’ll prove her wrong.” She smiled at you, her dark irises twinkling with what you could only perceive as hope. “I’ll prove her wrong and I will help you, Y/N. So let’s buckle up and find your parents’ murderer, shall we?”

—

The moon was a ball of white light in the heavens that night. A witch was engaged in murmuring incantations under her breath to heighten the magic pouring from her system. Latin echoed through the silence with the soft whispers of the wind against the curtains through the open windows commixing with the sound.

Juana counted the days since she’d lost her son to a vampire— to her worst enemy. Alena Detritius, the vampire Primus of this wretched town.

They say it was her fault. Her late husband's mother, Sicilia, had pointed her fingers at Juana and told her wretched names, accusing her of letting the witches kill her son. Her own daughter— Rhianon— has never failed to remind her of her weakness and the dwindling magic in her veins. She won’t let that child render her impotent. If it comes to that, Juana won’t hesitate to drive her knife through the girl’s chest. This magic in her blood is hers and hers alone. She hasn’t eaten mud and dust, struggled to survive against other witches’ cruelty just to let this happen to her.

The glory is hers. And it is no one for the taking.

The words pouring out from her mouth have become stronger and sinister. Juana raised up her arms to call upon the known incantations and the power behind them, drawing them closer and closer to her— when a presence suddenly caught her attention.

Juana opened her eyes in alarm. There is someone in the shadows. Someone with a wrath so great it could rival Lucifer’s. Juana drew her fingertips to the air to intensify the glow of the candles. They made a hissing sound as they burned brighter to illuminate the dark corners of the room.

“Show yourself,” Juana commanded.

The shadow emerged from the darkness, revealing a man whom Juana yearned to hug all her life.

“My son,” she gasped before stepping out from her circle and walking towards Sicheng.

He backed away while raising his hand in warning. “I’m not here to reunite with you, and I’m not here to play games, either,” he declared, stabbing the hope of the witch, “Who is Rhianon’s roommate?”

Juana withdrew her hands and placed them on her sides instead. The question wasn’t something she had seen coming, still she struggled to remain unruffled. “An aspiring hunter. Her parents were killed by a vampire, she’s here to learn what befell them.”

She heard her son’s sardonic chuckle as she turned her back against him. Juana walked towards her wooden table to pour herself some wine. The night is cold and jarring and she needed something to warm her veins.

“Aspiring hunter?” Sicheng hummed, “Or maybe… she’s a hunter that you’d send to rescue me, no?”

“All of this is for you, Sicheng. To rescue you—”

Sicheng bared his fangs and hissed, “I don’t need saving!”

Juana gulped down the contents of her glass. “You do. That vampire took you and turned you without your consent—”

“No. She didn’t. You know that,” Sicheng said with enough hatred, “I crawled my way towards her when the witches failed to kill me.” The vampire took a step towards the witch. “Where were you when they had me flogged?”

Juana whirled on her son, cheeks damped with the shed tears. “What would you have me do? I was becoming a Supreme, Sicheng! They wanted me to prove that I have power in my veins—”

“By watching your son being tortured to death?!” Sicheng screamed, his eyes widening in utter fury. “And you still call yourself a mother after that?” he asked with repugnance.

Tears fell like waterfall from the witch’s eyes, yet the vampire’s heart in front of her doesn’t beat no more. And even if it could, it won’t certainly feel any ounce of pity.

“I am your mother,” Juana sniffed, desperation laced with her voice, “You won’t ever change that.”

“You disgust me,” Sicheng seethed, “As long as I live, I will always despise you.”

Juana felt as if her innards were being hurled out of her by the words. She knew that her son hated him— but it never failed to hurt whenever he reminded her of it.

“I will become better for you.” Juana desperately clutched Sicheng’s shirt when he turned to leave. But the man only looked at her as if she wasn’t her coven’s Supreme. As if she wasn’t powerful. As if she wasn’t his mother— and swatted her hands away with a raging touch.

“Do me a favor and fuck off,” Sicheng spat, “mother.”

With that, the vampire turned to leave through the windows. He gripped the windowsill tightly and jumped, leaving a devastated witch alone in her chambers.

—

Whatever he does, and whatever he says, Sicheng’s wrath couldn’t be quenched. He never wanted to see Juana’s face again. Her mere shadows could pull Sicheng back to the night where he was whipped to death in a circle made by the witches.

Juana stood on the sidelines then, her face inscrutable. She watched as Sicheng bled and wished for death.

All he wanted was to live; to bask in the sun and swim in the ocean, to feel the crisp wind at night and hear the owls hooting from the trees. He was a simple boy with simple dreams in a simple town.

Sicheng once believed that he was untouchable. His mother is a witch, the next Supreme. But what was his age when the world proved him wrong? Eighteen. He was a fruit ready to ripen, but they plucked him from the branches before he could be something. Because of what? Because he was born as a man in a coven of witches.

He never understood it, no. Why would you suffer for being born the way you were? Why did the witches decide him as nothing because of the male hormones in his system? He could be something. But they took that away by flogging him— too many times to count.

It was a ritual— Juana said. It was a ritual for the greater good. For the protection of the witches. But Sicheng was a witch, too, right? Why would they sacrifice their likes for their protection? Wasn’t that hideous?

Bound and gagged, nobody heard Sicheng’s prayers nor scream but his little sister, Rhianon. She was eleven years old when she defied the witches. In the dead of the night, she and her grandmother risked their lives by helping Sicheng flee from the sordid situation he was into.

With his wounds screaming at every step he took, Sicheng struggled to run for his life. The gods had listened— but their ears were of consequences. So Sicheng ran, towards nowhere. Until he fell face first to the ground in front of Alena’s mansion.

She gave him another life. Purpose. And for that, he was forever grateful.

“How was your visit to your… mother?”

Sicheng shook off his thoughts when he heard Alena’s sultry voice. She was in her usual place, at the end of the hall, sitting on her throne. Silver against the moonlight infiltrating from the gothic windows behind her, Alena’s hair was bound in a tight coil at the back of her head.

He stood rigid before bowing. “The girl’s parents were killed by a vampire and she wants to be a hunter, she said. But I know that she’s meant to rescue me,” he explained.

Alena’s lowly chuckle echoed through the hall. “She’s a crazy bitch, don’t you think?” Then she stood up and walked languorously towards Sicheng. Her feet were bizarrely white against the stygian floors. “How about my beloved fiancé? I could smell the particulars from you already,” she hummed.

Jaehyun is his friend. But Alena is his Primus. Even if he lied, Alena would know the truth one way or another.

So Sicheng cleared his throat. “I saw him at the Academy and told him about the incoming gathering. He refused, my lady.”

Sicheng couldn’t perceive the emotion in Alena’s face, for it was forbidden to look at her in the eyes. But he could feel the unleashed animal roaring inside Alena.

“Why?” The word was laconic, but the danger in it was overflowing.

“He… he’s protecting a student. I was told— by Jaehyun himself— that he would kill for h—”

Alena heckled, “What an imbecile son-of-a-bitch.” Then she sighed. “But we couldn’t really choose whom we love, could we? Imbecilic or not, I love that fool.” Her gown swooshed as she whirled towards her throne. “It’s time I meet the girl.”

“Do I bring her to you?”

Alena sat and propped up her chin to her palms. “No. She’s coming on her own.”

—

With the same eeriness and mystery to it, the name of the cemetery greeted you by prickling the hairs on your neck. Unlike the first time you visited, the wind was balmy tonight, making droplets of sweats to coat your forehead. You tried not to view the atmosphere as an ominous sign and proceeded to walk alongside Jaehyun and Rhianon.

“Where’s Hubert?” Rhianon whispered beside you while holding her flashlight.

“We still have a long way to go,” you whispered back.

Jaehyun didn’t need any flashlight because of his vampiric vision, so he walked ahead of you. “Be careful of the mud,” he reminded.

Despite the stifling weather, the cemetery was surprisingly damped. Murky patches of soil could be spotted here and there, caking the soles of your sneakers with mud.

“Where do you plan to do the spell?” you uttered before hopping over a muddy plot of earth.

Rhianon followed suit before answering you, “Near Hubert’s lair. Or in his exact lair.”

After minutes of trekking the familiar pathway, the rusty railings of Hubert’s den loomed from afar. Crickets sang their songs as you drew nearer, with the hooting of owls to join the sound.

Jaehyun roamed his eyes around, probably searching for intruders or any unwanted guests. “Alright. You could start your spell now,” he announced.

You helped Rhianon set the candles to the ground, with Jaehyun guarding your backs. The earth was dry, it was hard to dig a small hole to make the candles stand.

“We have to make another circle.” Rhianon, then, fished for the salt inside her small bag and clutched a handful of it. She sprinkled the salt in a circular shape. “Shit,” she muttered, “I forgot the matchsticks.”

Jaehyun walked towards you and offered his lighter. “Here.”

Rhi took it from his hands but before she could light a candle, the air blew harshly. The hair on your nape stood immediately, not because of the cold, but because of the entity standing in front of Hubert’s den.

It was Hubert himself. And he doesn’t look happy as he took in the circle on the ground.

“Hurry,” Jaehyun hissed, “I’ll draw him out. Y/N, you know what to do.”

You gulped and nodded. Jaehyun has planned the stealing on the way to the cemetery. You would be the one to steal from Hubert, and because of him being a ghost, you would have to try and make your way into his den to search for something, anything. While Rhianon would work on the ghost-binding spell.

“Hubert,” Jaehyun said with his endearing smile, “This is a misunderstanding. The girls are only—” He didn’t finish his sentence for Hubert let out a snarl and sauntered up to you and Rhianon.

“Shit, shit,” you muttered incessantly.

Rhianon have successfully kindled the candles. She was whispering Latin while Hubert drew closer. You gave Rhianon one last look before dashing towards Hubert’s den.

He let out another roar when he noticed what you were trying to do. Instead of interrupting Rhianon, he focused his attention solely to your running form. Jaehyun stood before Hubert, blocking his way to you.

Your eyes grew frantic, realizing that Hubert was nothing but a phantom. He could easily walk past Jaehyun— or so you believed.

The balmy air grew brisk as some energy exuded from Jaehyun’s frame. You have no idea what it was, nor how did he do it. Perhaps it was his being half-dead which drew Hubert in a halt. You wasted no time to ponder what happened and sprinted inside Hubert’s den.

It was no larger than a cubicle in a public bathroom. And it was empty. There was nothing but dried leaves, dust, and rust.  

“There’s nothing in here!” you shouted as you peeked your head to the corroded railings.

Rhianon was still kneeling on the ground, with Hubert’s spirit slowly stepping back to be captured by the circle. Jaehyun snapped his head towards you, his fangs visible with the glint of red on his pupils. Seeing him in his vampire stature never failed to amaze and creeped you out at the same time.

He sauntered up towards the small space of Hubert’s den, and sniffed the air around him. You stood in the corner, anticipating Jaehyun’s next move. Then he walked to the wall behind you. You watched him pull out a brick to reveal a small niche. A small paper was inside it.

“What is that?” you asked, peering into the paper on Jaehyun’s hand.

It was a picture. A picture of a woman and a girl.

“Is that Hubert?” You pointed to the man standing beside the woman who’s carrying a small girl in her arms. The three of them were donned in Victorian clothing. Written at the back of the paper were the words, ‘1861. Agatha and I yearn for you, my love. Please, return safe. — Diana’

“His wife and… daughter,” Jaehyun uttered.

Something pulled on your heartstrings. Time had taken its toll upon the paper. The edges were slowly decaying, leaving Hubert’s arm missing. This could be the last memory of him or his family. It would be wretched to steal it away.

“We… we can’t take that. Let’s find—”

Jaehyun looked up to you. “This is his last possession, Y/N.”

You rolled your lower lip with your teeth. “That’s why we couldn’t simply take it away.”

“I know this is hard. Trust me, I’m having second thoughts myself. But this is the only thing that belongs to him. If we don’t take this, we won’t have a chance to make him talk.”

He has a point. No, Jaehyun was correct. In order to make everything work, you have to do this. You took the picture from his hand and stared at it for a while before nodding.

When the two of you exited Hubert’s home, he was already standing in the circle, with Rhianon watching him in amusement.

“Did you find anything?” she asked.

You glanced at Jaehyun before nodding at Rhianon.

At once, Hubert wailed as he realized what you’ve discovered. Feeling as if your heart was nailed to the ground, you sauntered up towards Hubert and put a distance between you.

“I know you know what we’ve found.” Literal tears fell down his cheeks at that. You sharply inhaled. “I promise I will return it to you as soon as possible. You love them, I know. I understand you. I lost my parents, too. And this is the only way to find their murderer— I’m sorry, Hubert.”

He tried to move, but he was bound to the circle. You fought off tears as you turned your back against him. The poor man’s ghost wailed until you were out of his sight.

Rhianon and Jaehyun exchanged suggestions on how best to perform the divination. But your mind was clouded— unable to think clearly. Hubert’s cries haunted you back to the Academy.

He had a family. What happened to them… and what happened to him? It’s 20**. The picture was taken back in the 1800’s. Almost two hundred years. Certainly, his family had already died. But why is his spirit still tied to the mortal realm? Why hasn’t he seen the white light yet?

“Y/N?” Jaehyun clutched your shoulder softly, willing you back to Earth.

You blinked. “What is it?”

“Rhianon and I have decided to do the divination tonight. Is that alright with you?”

Gulping, you smoothed your shirt and gave them an encouraging smile. Your bones felt sluggish, but you have to do this as soon as possible. “Yes.”

The trip back to your room was occupied with tiptoes and elated hearts. It is not pleasant to prowl these spaces in the dead of night. The security guards are extremely harsh when it comes to reckless students.

Rhianon shut the door, wasting no time to grab something inside her closet. As you sat on the floors yet again, you occupied yourself in reading the contents of Rhianon’s first book of magic. Jaehyun did the same.

“Could you understand Latin?” you curiously asked. He was skimming way faster than you did which made you inquisitive.

The edges of his lips turned upwards, revealing a small smile. “My vampire nature had somehow made it possible.”

And perhaps it was his favorite part of being a vampire. It was a dead language, but his eyes had an unusual enthusiasm to them as he scanned and read through the letters. You felt your heart ramming against your chest at the sight of him. As if all the burdens in his shoulders have been lifted.

“Oh, there it is. Divination,” Jaehyun uttered in amusement while tapping the word on the parchment. Then he caught you staring as he looked up to you. “We’re one step closer, Y/N.”

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Reaching out for your cheek, Jaehyun uttered, “Anything for you.”

Rhianon suddenly cleared her throat, gaining both your attention. You shifted and looked up to see her holding a cup. She sat and took the book from Jaehyun’s lap.

Pointing at the golden cup in her hand, you inquired, “What’s that for?”

Different types of pebbles rolled off the floor after Rhianon threw the contents of the cup. “For guidance.” Then she stretched out a hand to Jaehyun. “What did you find?

Familiar stinging wrapped your throat as Jaehyun pulled out the picture from his back pocket and handed it to Rhianon. With sadness like your own, Rhianon observed the picture.

“This is… his family,” she said. “I wonder what happened to them.”

Laying the picture flat on the flooring, Rhianon circled the air above the picture with open palms. She stared hard at the picture, brows furrowed and jaw clenching. It was clear that she’s having a rough time locating Hubert’s tongue.

What if it couldn’t be detected at all? You shook off the thoughts. There is no point being pessimistic right now.

Rhianon murmured something under her breath, hands steady above the picture. You heedlessly reached out for Jaehyun’s hand and grasped tightly. Agonizing minutes had passed, yet Rhianon continued to murmur Latin.

Then she gasped, as if she was punched in the gut. Your knuckles were white, holding Jaehyun in a bone-crushing force.

“A mansion,” Rhianon began, “Its floors were the blackest of stones. There is a throne… at the edge of the hall— and— shit.” Veins protruding, Rhianon’s hands trembled. “A huge tree. Oak.”

This time, it was Jaehyun who grasped your hand firmly. It didn’t hurt, but there was something in it that made you look at him. His face was ashen as he waited patiently for Rhianon’s next words.

“In its roots there lay a wooden box.” Then Rhianon stilled. “Something inside it belongs to Hubert.” She retracted her hands to her sides and looked up to you. “I… I’m not sure if it’s his tongue, Y/N. It’s… blurry.”

You forced a smile despite the failure. “At least we now have a starting point. We only have to search for that place.”

“We don’t have to search anymore,” Jaehyun chided in. Both you and Rhianon looked at him. His jaw was clenched in concentration. “I know where it is.”

A wide smile spread out on your lips. Destiny was still on your side in this battle. Delightful, you held Jaehyun’s shoulder. “Where is it?”

“Alena’s mansion.”

��

Like a winking white flame in the heavens, the stars scattered themselves throughout the whole vastness of the skies. You sat on the grass, with Jaehyun playing with your hair.

Yesterday, you had ventured to the cemetery and stole a family picture which belongs to a ghost. After that, your witch friend performed Divination using her power. And you have found out that Hubert’s tongue has been kept in the backyard in Alena’s mansion because of your vampire lover, Jaehyun.

Yet you felt as if the supernatural occurrence was still far from ending.

“How did you know that it was Alena’s mansion?” You turned your head sideways to ask Jaehyun. He seated himself behind you, attempting to tie your hair to whatever bun it would fit.

The man wrapped his arms around your torso. “I’ve lived with her since I was turned. That’s why.”

Alena turned him. And he’d lived with her ever since. They were engaged. So you cleared your throat. “Did you love her?” You did your best to sound indifferent as possible.

Jaehyun hummed, placing his chin to your shoulder. “To be honest? I think so. I won’t tolerate everything she’d done for me if not.”

When you anticipated for a little pang in your chest and felt nothing, you leaned your head back to his own shoulder. “What did she do to you?”

He chuckled— so deliciously masculine that you won’t mind hearing it forever. “That’s a secret.”

“We couldn’t hide secrets from each other, you know. Lovers don’t do that.” The word tickled your insides— like butterflies fluttering their wings in your stomach.

“Oh. We are lovers?” He faked amusement. You wiggled yourself free from him, but Jaehyun held tight. A rumble of chuckles echoing through him again. “I love you.”

You stilled, then whirled to face him fully. “What did you say?”

Adoration danced in his irises, paired with a smile which transformed his whole face into something… human.

Jaehyun took your face with his hands, cupping your cheeks protectively before placing a kiss on your lips. He drew back in an inch, then whispered the words again, “I love you.”

You didn’t know what it was— but tears seared the back of your eyes. The words were full of love for a person whose heart doesn’t beat.

“Are you sure?” You breathed. “I… Jaehyun, I am a human. I—”

Jaehyun shut you up by kissing your lips again. He pulled away, still wearing his smile. “Let’s not worry about that.”

You couldn’t help but worry. You are a human. No matter what relationship you would build after all this chaos, the eternity of him and your humanness inside you would hinder a happy ever after.

What would life be with Jaehyun? If he’s half-dead, if he isn’t human? There would be life— yes— if you would force destiny to bend at your will. Yet you didn’t want to fool yourself. However strong the love you have for him, it’s not enough to ask him to bite and turn you. You love this life— you cherish the humanity in you.

“I would die. One day,” you persisted, “And you will live, for as long as time exists.”

“Angel,” Jaehyun whispered as he placed his forehead against yours, “Yes, I am afraid to lose you. Fuck, it makes me mad just thinking about it. But whatever this life would offer us, no matter how constrained it might be, I’ll be forever grateful that once in my lifetime I’ve met and loved you.”

Wrapping your hands around his neck, you inhaled sharply. “Oh, Jaehyun. I love you too.”

He breathed you in and embraced you tightly. “We’ll do everything. Together.”

—

“Are we ready?” Rhianon asked, strapping her dagger to her waists and knives to her legs.

Securing every strap on your suit, you did the same to your weapons. “I am.”

A night after finding out where Hubert’s tongue could possibly be, the time has already come to finally retrieve it from Alena. If you were having second thoughts on whether to kill the Vampire Primus, you shook all the uncertainties off. The one thing you have been yearning to find is located at her mansion. You needed to come to her one way or another.

But in the deepest part of your heart, you wished that the night would show you mercy and would let you leave her mansion unscathed.

Truthfully, you could ask nicely. However dumb it might sound— you truly could. But if Alena has something to do with that part of Hubert’s body, you weren’t certain if she’d let it go by simply handing it to you.

Why was it kept hidden six feet under the ground if she’s not hiding something, right? There must be a reason for that. Chopping off a ghost’s tongue isn’t usual, even for a vampire. Not unless she’s hiding something— and only Hubert knew what it was.

Rhianon suddenly handed you a vial of clear liquid. “It will not save us from the vampires, but it would lower the chance of them sniffing our scents.” She took another vial from the pocket of her suit and drank it straight. Rhianon wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I’ve worked on that the night you went out with Jaehyun.”

You stared at the vial. There were tiny bubbles inside. You pulled the stopper out and drank it wholeheartedly. It left a bitter taste in your tongue, like ants biting the flesh. But it gradually lessened until it vanished.

Rhianon took the empty vial from your hand and threw it to the trash can. “Let’s go.”

You nodded and started walking behind her. It was ten p.m. according to the wall clock.

Both your gasp echoed through the whole room as Rhianon swung the door open and saw Lucas standing in the doorway.

He stared at the both of you— eyes wide. “Where are you going?”

Rhianon reached for your hand and squeezed tightly, willing you to speak on her behalf. You couldn’t even speak yourself, lest you would burst open all your plans to Lucas. “I— we… are going to practice!”

His brows furrowed in confusion. “It’s ten p.m.. No hunters are allowed outside anymore.”

“Why don’t you come inside for a while? Hm?” Rhianon offered, turning her body sideways to let Lucas walk in.

He glanced at the both of you, confusion and intrigue tattooed in his eyes. But he walked in nonetheless.

You cleared your throat when Lucas had finally seated himself to Rhianon’s swivel chair. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m checking up on the students.”

“That’s new. Why?” For someone who claimed to be enthralled with Lucas, Rhianon surely has improved to conceal her feelings. She looked at Lucas with nothing but curiosity.

Wandering his eyes through the whole of your room, Lucas answered unambiguously, “Juana’s command.”

Rhianon, from beside you, let go off the steam from her body by snorting loudly. “We’re quite fine. You could tell your master that.”

Lucas whirled, hurt clear on his features. “She’s not my master. I serve the corporation, not Juana.”

You wanted to get this over with. Whatever was Lucas’s intention to be visiting at this ungodly hour doesn’t sit well with you. Yet you didn’t know how to tell him to nicely fuck off.

“Are you done? Could we carry on with our business now?” Rhianon folded her arms together.

“Why are you so eager to get rid of me?”

Sighing, you massage your temple. Is this some lover’s quarrel unraveling in front of you?

Rhianon didn’t answer. Then she sauntered up to her closet. You stood there, watching her as her hands grasp something from inside. Sand? You weren’t quiet certain.

“Where are you—” Lucas didn’t finish his sentence for Rhianon blew out whatever was on her palm towards his face. The hunter slowly blinked, trying to fathom what was happening. Then his eyes slowly drooped, as well as his body, and he fell asleep on the floor.

You blinked, confused as to what just happened. But Rhianon clapped her hands to wipe off the last bits of the something in her palms.

“Let’s go. The magic only lasts for thirty minutes. We have to hurry,” Rhianon informed before wrapping her hand around your wrist and pulling you out of the room.

You gave one last look at Lucas’s lethargic state before letting Rhianon guide you away. He’s good to you, but he’s Madame’s hunter. His royalty would always lie to her.

According to Jaehyun, Alena’s mansion was miles away from the Academy. He reckoned that it would take at least three hours to arrive there. If you were swift, you’d arrived at one a.m.: not so perfect time to carry out this mission.

You wanted to do this in the daylight, but Madame didn’t allow you out of her sight. As the gathering gets nearer and nearer, she remained strict. Here and there, she would remind you of her challenge. Once she does that, you wouldn’t be able to gulp down your food no more. And Eva… well, she’s Eva: spiteful, irrational, and brash.

Jaehyun was leaning on a black Camaro with a cigarette adorning his lips when you arrived. Tossing his cigarette like a clapper, he beckoned you closer. “What took you so long?” he asked.

“Lucas saw us.” You gave him no time to speak. “But Rhianon already took care of it.”

He raised a brow at Rhianon, while the latter only shrugged. She ran a hand through the roof of the Camaro, fingers leaving traces because of the dust. “I missed this car.”

“It’s yours?”

“My grandmother’s.” She opened the door for you. “You sit on the bullet.”

Jaehyun would drive, it was planned out already. You hopped on the bullet seat, while Rhianon made her way behind. When all of you had settled yourselves comfortably, Jaehyun revved through the night. Copse became a blur as he picked up the pace, then the Academy behind you became smaller and smaller.

You rode in silence, the tension inside the vehicle was staggering. Guilt wrapped its claws around you as the realization that two lives would be in forfeit tonight because of you hit. You would’ve done this on your own. Truly. And yet behind the courage, you are merely a girl. A human one at that— and you were still scared.

Admitting trepidation doesn’t make one weak: that, you have learned from your parents. It’s alright to ask for help. But this isn’t a normal favor: you would break inside a Primus’ house. No sane human being would offer to come with you— but two souls did.

“I don’t know how to thank the both of you,” you began, eyes still roaming the quiet streets ahead of you. “But… as long as I breathe, I want you both to know that I’m forever in your debt.”

Rhianon stretched out a hand to hold your shoulder. “I’m glad to help you, Y/N. We’ll do this together. You’ll find out who killed your parents and we will exact vengeance.”

You placed a hand above hers. “Thank you, Rhi.”

“I’m here. I’ll protect you as long as I can. And I’m a hard bastard to kill, angel,” Jaehyun chimed in, laying his hand on your thigh.

You placed a hand above hers. “Thank you, Rhi.”

“I’m here. I’ll protect you as long as I can. And I’m a hard bastard to kill, angel,” Jaehyun chimed in, laying his hand on your thigh.

The fear in your heart has been replaced by something that you could only regard as courage. You have your heart, and it is enough. This is for your parents, for your brother. And for your own peace.

The road ahead was deprived of any life. Darkness blanketed the asphalt sinisterly. Insects danced ahead as they were captured by the light provided by Rhianon’s vehicle. Then a huge mansion peeked through the thick fronds of trees covering its vastness.

Jaehyun killed the engine before you could see the whole image of Alena’s mansion. From your distance, even her vampires won’t catch any scent of you— nor hear a beat from your heart.

“We’re here,” Jaehyun announced.

Crickets sang in unison the same time the three of you opened the car doors. Since none of you could see through the dark enshrouded surroundings, Jaehyun led the way.

The sound of squelchy grasses joined the crickets as you entered the groups of tall trees. Not even the moonlight could peek through the thick leaves, resulting in little to no light to guide your way.

“The oak tree you’ve seen is located in her backyard. The walls are high, but not high enough to stop us,” Jaehyun whispered, his head busy scouring the surroundings for any unforeseen danger.

You tried to locate Rhianon with your human eyes, but to no avail. Hands gripping the hilt of your snake dagger, you focused on following Jaehyun instead.

At last, after the long trek towards Alena’s backyards, the tall cemented wall greeted you. In this area, no more trees obscured the moonlight, allowing you to take in the vastness of the wall.

Rhianon deadpanned, “You mean, not high enough for you?”

There was no way you could climb this bland wall. It wasn’t even a gate, but a literal wall. You wouldn’t be able to climb it yourself. There was no niche— nothing.

“This is a thick wall. Once I throw you up, there’s space for you to hold on to.”

“What?!” You and Rhianon exclaimed by whispering in unison.

“There is no other way. This mansion is guarded by vampires. The only area they don’t give much attention to is the backyard,” Jaehyun sighed, “Would you rather knock on her front door and be killed? Trust me, I know my way here.”

You gave Rhianon a shrug before sauntering up to Jaehyun. “Alright. Let’s do this.”

“Don’t be scared,” he teased.

“I’m not.”

He chuckled before standing behind you. Jaehyun placed a hand to both your waists, sending bolts of electricity down your spine. His touch was always fire and thunder against your skin, leaving marks in the deepest parts of your soul. You prayed that after this night, you would still have your vampire beside you.

“I’m ready,” you exhaled.

Jaehyun’s grip tightened, then he threw you upwards. The experience made your stomach curl, as if your insides were being tickled. You quickly grabbed to the top of the wall where the space he was talking about was located. Your body couldn’t even fit, so you stayed crouching, gulping down the fear that you might fall.

Vast was an understatement to describe her backyard. Trees lined up the premises, with the back of her mansion looming from the distance. As an architecture student, you’ve reckoned that the space could still allow two residential houses.

There was a thud beside you, followed by Rhianon’s curses. Not a second after she landed, Jaehyun followed suit.

Like cats over the wall, the three of you crouched. Rhianon almost slipped, earning a gasp from you. But Jaehyun caught her arm before she could fall and break all her bones.

“Fuck, Jaehyun. You said we could fit in!” Rhianon seethed.

“We are fitting in, Rhianon,” Jaehyun chortled, as if he was enjoying the sweats streaming down your faces, “I’ll jump and catch you below.”

You blew out a breath. “Here we go again.”

“Let me jump first, Y/N,” Rhianon gulped.

After Jaehyun made a soundless landing, he once again roamed his eyes around the vicinity. Then he glanced up to Rhianon and gestured to her to jump.

“My ghost will haunt you if I die, Jaehyun,” Rhianon warned before jumping. Just like how Jaehyun threw the both of you, he caught Rhianon by her waists, too.

Rhianon rubbed her hands together before looking up to beckon you to make the jump. You  closed your eyes before jumping. The familiar tickles inside your stomach frenzied as you felt the whip of the wind and the fall all at the same time.

Strong hands caught your waists with ease. You opened your eyes to see Jaehyun’s own staring at yours. A ghost of a smile smeared his lips as he put your stray hairs behind your ear.

“Uhm… excuse me? Could we please, you know?” Rhianon chided in, breaking the moment you shared with Jaehyun.

You straightened and rubbed your hand in your hips. Jaehyun’s silly smile grew wider by your embarrassment.

He cleared his throat. “This way.”

But your steps were halted as someone spoke from behind you. The voice was lurid, but the edge was there. It was crooked and it was dangerous as it said: “Welcome, hunters.”

Frozen on your feet, you remained standing. The tautness of your muscles was like a painful numbness. You were caught— without even taking your first step towards the answers.

Jaehyun was the first one to pivot his heels. “Alena,” he said.

If your nerves could scream, they clearly would have. Alena. Jaehyun’s fiancée. She’s here. One circle of your heel would allow you to see her, finally. As much as your curiosity wanted to cage you in its grasp, you couldn’t find the strength to whirl around and face her.

“Rhianon?” Someone gasped from behind you when Rhianon turned on her heel. The voice was masculine, with a particular softness laced with it.

“Sicheng,” Rhianon laconically stated.

Sicheng. Her brother... he’s here with Alena. Somehow, the reality of all that was leafing right now was a lump blocking your air passage. Is there any escape to this chaos? To this danger?

“Welcome back, my love.” Alena’s voice was like a song. A lullaby. For its emotion, you would believe that she had nothing but rainbows in her chest and roses in her heart.

Drinking the last bits of courage to prevent yourself from shaking, you pivoted on your heels.

A woman wearing a dress as red as blood, her skin porcelain and white as bone and hair like a piece of moonlight in itself, smiled at you with red luscious lips. You must admit— you have never seen a woman so beautiful, so alluring at first glance. She was like a goddess, a divinity in her utmost glory. Her dress hugged her body perfectly, revealing the soft curves of her waists. And the plunging neckline displayed her full breasts.

It wasn’t the perfect time for jealousy. But taking in Alena’s features have proved you something: it won’t be a surprise if ever Jaehyun had loved her before.

“What are you doing here Rhianon?” Sicheng asked before giving you a once-over. You stood rigid.

“Oh.” Alena smiled, flashing her pearlescent teeth. “Is she your sister?” she asked before she sauntered up towards Rhianon with leaden steps. Rhianon didn’t back nor flinch away when Alena touched her cheek with her finger. Her proximity allowed your nose to inhale her rich perfume— a sharp smell of a flower you couldn’t name.

Jaehyun took your wrist and pulled you behind him. The action didn’t go unnoticed as Alena snapped her gaze towards him with dead eyes. Then she tugged on Rhianon’s hair forcefully, eliciting a painful groan from your friend.

“Rhianon—!” You took a step forward. But Jaehyun stopped you with his arm.

Sicheng didn’t even move a muscle to where he stood, baffling the wits out of you. Why isn’t he doing anything? Has Alena’s omnipotence rendered him hard-bitten? Is that what a Primus could do?

“Your sister’s a bit of trouble, don’t you think?” Alena catechized before she turned her full attention to Rhianon. “What are you doing here, little dove?” When Rhianon didn’t utter a word, Alena inclined her head towards Sicheng. The latter brought out a dagger from his belt, then handed it willingly to Alena, giving his sister a hard look before returning to where he stood earlier.

You grasped Jaehyun’s arm to wrench it away from you. But he caught your wrist in a viselike grip.

“Don’t move. I beg you,” he whispered, eyes glued to Alena and Rhianon.

Alena faked a sob. “I am hurt, my love. You have never shown me that affection before.” Then she drew the blade closer to Rhianon’s open neck.

You wanted to scream, but your mouth didn’t allow you. This is a trick. If Jaehyun would continue protecting you from Alena, Rhianon’s life would be in forfeit. You’d lose Rhianon, or you’d lose yourself one way or another. The realization of what lies above this night has left a painful throbbing in your heart. How did it go so wrong?

“Again,” Alena hummed, “What are you doing here?” Rhianon still didn’t speak.

You wanted to vomit from the trepidation. This is defeat. And it turned your heart ice-cold. Alena pressed the blade to Rhianon’s neck, drawing blood from her skin. She inhaled the scent, then licked her lips.

Jaehyun must’ve felt something in your bones— the gnawing force to succumb to this trick and save your friend, and the growing fear poisoning your heart. “Don’t say a word, Y/N,” he warned.

Rhianon screamed as Alena slowly dragged the blade along her neck. You saw how it sliced her skin open, allowing blood to stream violently from her neck.

“Please! Stop! Stop!” she shouted. “It hurts!”

Tears pricked the back of your eyes. You shut the world around you as you shouted, “We are here for me!”

A fresh smile had spread out on Alena’s lips as she withdrew the dagger. She snapped her fingers, then two figures emerged from the shadows. The other one held Rhianon by her arms.

“I’ll kill you if you touch her,” Jaehyun bared his fangs towards the other vampire.

Alena chuckled. “Such huge ball sacks for a pea-sized brain, my love.” Jaehyun tensed from the words. Your eyes grew harder as you stared at Alena’s frame. Then the Primus sighed. “Shall we play this game, then?”

Once again, Alena inclined her head to Sicheng. Things happened in a blur, but you felt the sharp air as Jaehyun unsheathed your snake dagger and spun around so fast. Then you stared in horror as he wrapped his hand around Sicheng’s neck, the tip of the dagger pressed to his chest.

“Touch her. And I’ll drive this dagger to your chest,” Jaehyun warned.

“Jaehyun—” Sicheng tried to speak but Jaehyun drove the dagger deeper. Its tip disappeared, making Sicheng hiss in pain.

You glance at Rhianon, who was sitting on the ground while clutching her wounded neck. Her hands were bloodied, but the color of the suit obscured the blood that has surged from her neck. You wanted to run to her, but Alena was standing right in front.

“Let it go, Sicheng,” she echoed.

The tip of the dagger was red with blood when Sicheng backed away. Jaehyun gripped the hilt tightly, not letting his eyes stray away from his friend’s walking figure. When Sicheng arrived at Alena’s side, he crouched and held his sister by her shoulder. With the remaining strength from Rhianon, she flinched away.

“Leave us,” Alena commanded. Her face impassive, intensifying the danger that lies behind her eyes. “Tend to your sister, Sicheng. Once I saw her in my house again, it would be the last time you’d see her.”

You purse your lips together as you watch Sicheng lead his sister away. Rhianon backed away, as if disgusted to be touched by her own brother. Sicheng’s lips formed in a thin line, his eyes speaking a language only the two of them understood. Rhianon gave you one last apologetic look before she left with her brother and the two other vampires.

In the dead of the night, a human stood together with two vampires in a place she didn’t know, waiting for the predator to finally pounce and cage her like a weak human being that she was. Still, she refused to falter.

You remained standing, chin held up high despite the weakness in your knees. She would never have the satisfaction of knowing that she scares you.

“Let her go in peace. And I’ll do as you like,” Jaehyun said out of nowhere.

“Jaehyun!” you seethed. You won’t go without him and Rhianon.

“What’s the fun in that?” Alena smiles your way. “I want to know my visitor. What’s your name?”

She was only standing there, her hands behind him. But her presence was like a slap to your cheek.

“Don’t speak,” Jaehyun commanded as he looked at you. If you’d do as you were told, you would only irate Alena. None of you knew what would happen then.

“I’m Y/N,” you answered. Jaehyun shut his eyes.

“Y/N,” Alena repeated, as if your name was blood and she’s tasting every drop of it. “I know who killed your parents.”

Your forehead drew in a crease. Glancing at Jaehyun who had the same confusion etched through his face, you purse your lips. “What do you mean?” The gods only know how hard you tried to sound strong. Alena’s mention of your parents felt like centipedes crawling down your spine with their thousand legs.

“Come closer, and I’ll tell you.”

“Damn you, Alena,” Jaehyun hissed, “Stop this nonsense.”

Her laugh boomed against the wholeness of her backyard and against the silence. “Fascinating, my love. I’m utterly entertained.” She cocked her head towards you. “But I do know who killed her parents. All she has to do is to come closer, and her sleuthing would finally end.”

Tempting, it truly was. Because you know, deep in your heart, that you’d do anything to know who killed your parents. And if jumping into the claws of a Vampire Primus would give you the right answers, you would dive head first. But the promise of danger in her smile was a risk you didn’t know how to take.

“The madmen might listen, but we are not mad, Alena.” Jaehyun stood his ground. You would’ve held his hand and thanked him for his courage. But Jaehyun now stands between you and the possible key to your questions. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps the madmen are listening, and you are one of them.

You looked at the ground with clenched fists. “Do you really know who killed them?”

“Y/N!” Jaehyun spun around to face you with dilating pupils. Pain was evident in his eyes as you looked up to him. You could almost hear him begging you. “We’ll find another way. Don’t do this.”

Jaehyun knew: compared to the power Alena has, he was nothing. The defeat was swirling around you with its acrid taste.

“You are here. I am safe,” you whispered with a smile. You wanted to believe that love would protect you tonight.

When he perceived the certainty in your eyes, Jaehyun let go of you. He knows you need this more than anything. “I’m with you,” he said.

Alena’s boredom was loud as she picked on her nails. “Darling, walk faster,” she ordered.

You took a step towards her without a backward glance at Jaehyun.

With a malignant smile, Alena caressed your cheeks with her cold hands. “What beauty,” she pronounced in wonderment, then she snapped her head towards Jaehyun, “No wonder you’re in love with her.”

Your eyes widened as Alena pressed her lips to yours. She penetrated your mouth to taste the flesh inside, and all you could was whimper.  She pulled away with a sneer. “Tell me, did he put his cock inside you?”

You choked on your own saliva and you’ve found it hard to answer. Is that why she kissed you? To taste Jaehyun with your mouth?

“No.”

The next thing you felt was Alena’s palm on your cheek. You gasped at the intensity of her slap.

“Liar,” she sneered the same time Jaehyun shouted your name. “Don’t fucking move, Jaehyun,” Alena warned as she grabbed a handful of your hair.

Jaehyun was on his edge. He had his soles buried to the ground. One movement and he would sprint towards Alena with his bared fangs. But he didn’t do it. For there was a dagger pressing on your side, straight right to your ribs. He knows that however swift he could be, Alena was still a vampire. She has the same fleetness as him. If not more.

You gulped down a cry. Everything will be alright— you forced yourself to believe.

“Now, I’ll ask again,” Alena whispered, “Did he put his cock inside you? Did you make him fuck you like a whore that you were?”

“N—”

“You underestimate my power, human. I could taste him in your mouth: the pleasure, your moans, the way he climaxed because of you.” She let out a peevish chuckle. “I know it all. Because we’ve fucked each other all around this mansion. Jaehyun fucked me right where you stand.” She pressed her lips behind your ear. “So, don’t lie to me.”

You gulped the shame and the fury all at the same time. “I’m not lying to you— ah!”

“Stop, Alena! Stop!” Jaehyun stepped forward. You cried out as Alena pushed the tip of the dagger to your ribs. Then Jaehyun stood still, his teeth bared in utter rage. “I will kill you.”

Her laughter pierced your ears, then she grabbed your hair forcefully, hurting your neck in the process. “1803 was the year I crawled out of my mother’s womb,” Alena began. “How many years have I been a vampire, Y/N?”

“Two hundred years!” you whimpered.

“I’m old, am I?” She chuckled. “But I know someone younger than—”

Bits of soil stuck to your cheek as you fell to the ground. It happened too fast— Jaehyun sprinting and pouncing Alena behind. You crawled and stood up on your feet, clutching the back of your head as it throbbed painfully.

The sound of muscles slapping to one another dominated the night, willing you to face around. Then you saw Jaehyun combatting Alena. Their teeth were bared— their pupils raging like lava. With a blow, Jaehyun staggered.

“Run!” he croaked before he toppled over the ground once more.

Where do you run? You have no idea. Your heart was beating too painfully inside your ribcage, and the pulsating of your wound from Alena’s dagger slowed you down.

You have to find the oak tree. All isn’t lost.

Once again, you tasted the bland soil when someone attacked you from the back. Doing her best to snap your spinal cord, Alena clutched a handful of your hair from behind. Again. You cried out in pain, but it didn’t last long. Jaehyun grabbed and tossed her to the ground before jumping on her. He had her dagger right in front of her chest, while she had her hand wrapped around Jaehyun’s throat.

You sat and crawled away from them. Whimpering and fighting the sore vibration of your bones.

“But I know someone who’s younger than me,” Alena managed to say. Jaehyun struggled to draw the dagger nearer, for Alena’s grip on his neck was viselike. “Why don’t you tell her when did you become a vampire, Jaehyun?” Her chests rumbled with the familiar laugh she echoed.

You tried to catch your breath. That… you didn’t surely know. When did Jaehyun become a vampire?

“Ask him,” Alena ordered.

You wanted to grab the nearest stone and throw it right to her face. But the question left a cumbersome force to your chest, pulling you under until you find it hard to breathe once more.

“R… run, Y/N,” Jaehyun stated through his suffering.

You stood up and ran. Towards where? You don’t exactly know. If Rhianon is still inside, now is the best time for her rescue. But before you could make it a meter away from the brawling vampires, Alena echoed something which drew you in a halt.

“Tell him when did your parents die!”

You whirled and saw Jaehyun clutching his stomach to the ground, with Alena’s foot on his side. Your eyes widened but before you could do anything, Alena picked up the dagger from his hand and sprinted towards you.

Alena was behind you when she whispered, “I promise, I’ll let you both go to live your love story. Just say the words.”

Jaehyun stood up. “Don’t listen to her.”

“I swear on the Athanar, and to whatever god there is, I’ll let you go in peace,” she said, you could almost drink the sincerity with it. “Say it.”

With parched lips, you said, “My parents died ten years ago.”

Jaehyun stilled, as if he was punched by a solid mitt.

Alena sneered behind you. “Ten years ago, I turned Jaehyun. It’s a coincidence, is it not?”

Your heart dropped. The rope of hope that seems to hold you had already snapped. If Alena would let go of your arm, you would surely collapse to the ground.

What a cruel joke. A tear slid down your cheek. All this time— the murderer was right in front of you.

“Did you kill my parents, Jaehyun?” you managed to cry out.

He was lost for words— lost for anything as he stared at you, flabbergasted beyond reckoning. “I… I didn’t—” Jaehyun’s eyes widened. “Y/N!”

His apoplectic snarl was the last thing you heard. Along with the sound of your flesh tearing as Alena drove her dagger behind you. You gasped and looked down at the protruded tip before froths of blood bubbled from your mouth. As you felt the life slowly leaving your lungs painfully, you knelt on the ground.

Alena’s voice was vacant as she said, “You love her. Now, mourn for her.” She disappeared, leaving the dagger into your body.

Before you fell face-first to the ground, Jaehyun caught your body in his arms. The world faded away as the life in your eyes died. Your irises were coated with unshed tears, staring up at the heavens lifelessly.

Vampires couldn’t cry. So Jaehyun held you with his arms, his mouth hanging open by grief. “No, no, no,” he chanted hopelessly, brushing away the strands of hair from your face, painting your cheek with your own blood from his fingertips. “Don’t do this to me, Y/N.” He shook your body while screaming your name.

But he was a devil. So the gods didn’t hear his prayers.

“Y/N!”

Jaehyun sat there, with your lifeless body. With the moon and the stars staring down at him with pity.

No one heard him— no gods had saved you. They didn’t allow you to have answers. They let you die without knowing who really killed your parents.

Jaehyun couldn’t tell himself. He was dazed when he crawled out of his grave. But one thing is for sure— he wouldn’t let you die in vain.

… and he wouldn’t let you die at all.

Jaehyun took your wrist. He bared his fangs, allowing vampire venom to coat the tips of his teeth.

The stars stared in horror, and the clouds grew heavy with grief. The rain fell.

With the moon as the witness— Jaehyun bit you.

[propsandmayhems]

Hiiii first of all, thanks for following me!!! (I'm also a WH lovebot lol) Can I have 59. “I want you to be proud of yourself. I want you to believe that you’re good enough because you are. You’re so amazing.” with James and Cordelia? 😊

thank YOU for following me back!! if you ever want to scream about will my inbox is always open lol. this got a bit long I got carried away - i hope you enjoy!! 

“I want you to be proud of yourself. I want you to believe that you’re good enough because you are. You’re so amazing.”

James Herondale x Cordelia Carstairs 

Cordelia woke to the weight on the right side of the bed shifting; she recognized it as her husband pushing himself up from their shared mattress. The room was pitch black and her eyes adjusted to the darkness just in time to see James silently slip out of the room. With a sigh, she pushed the coverlet off and lifted herself from the soft embrace of the bed, willing the witchlight lamp on her bedside table to turn on. Now sitting on the edge of the mattress, bathed in the soft glow of witchlight, she reached across the bed to grab James’ watch from his nightstand. Four A.M., Cordelia groaned inwardly. This was the third time this week James had awoken in the middle of the night, the previous times Cordelia had left him to have some time to himself. Tonight, she rose from the bed and wrapped herself in her dressing gown, following her husband downstairs. 

They were three months into their second year sharing this home. The first year was extremely different from this one, due to many factors. First, their marriage was a sham, organized just to protect Cordelia’s reputation from ruin amongst the Enclave. Unbeknownst to him, James’s emotions had been controlled by a bracelet given to him by Grace Blackthorn. Lucie had befriended Grace in their pursuit to bring back Grace’s brother from the dead, and when she found out Grace was using her brother, she forced Grace to remove the bracelet. It took a while, but after he was released from the hold of the bracelet, James came to realize he loved Cordelia as she loved him. Secondly, James’s grandfather, Belial, had wreaked havoc on London, testing the abilities and fortitude of shadowhunters throughout England. Many had lost their lives fighting against Belial and James couldn’t help but blame himself. With help from his family and parabatai and Cordelia, James had slowly begun to heal.

Cordelia took a guess that she could find James in the library and she was correct, entering to him kneeling in front of the fireplace, stirring up the coals with a poker. The library of their home was nowhere near as extravagant as the one in the London Institute that James had grown up reading in, but it had still quickly become his favorite room in the house. Most of the furniture was selected by James - who had surprisingly good taste - and he rapidly filled the shelves that lined the room with mundane novels and texts on demons and old tomes written completely in Latin. Of course, Cordelia also contributed some of her favorite Persian literature. James picked up on the language rather fast, even impressing her mother with a short conversation entirely in Persian during their last dinner together. 

Cordelia watched by the doorway as James tossed a match into the fireplace. It wasn’t particularly cold enough to need a fire - being that strange time of spring when it’s too chilly without a coat but too hot with one on - but James always loved to read to the soft crackle of a fire humming in the background. She supposed this was another habit picked up from his growing up in the Institute; the big, drafty building always had fires burning in all the rooms no matter what season it was. 

Content that the fire was successfully started, James pushed himself up from the fireplace. Turning to make his way to the sofa he always stretched out on while he read, he stopped when he noticed Cordelia watching him from across the room. “Oh - er - hi,” he began, quietly, as if there was anyone else in the house to wake. “I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I would come down here and read.” His eyes flicked to the ground and he scratched the back of his neck above the collar of his pajama shirt. He was wearing the set she picked up for him last month while out shopping with Lucie; they were made of soft cotton in a deep burgundy, oftest by a thick cream-colored vertical stripe. Cordelia thought the dark red color would offset his eyes and had been correct, although, James’s eyes would shine beautifully regardless of what color he was wearing. 

“I know, it’s okay,” she started, moving further into the room. She reached him and took one of his hands in hers, “this is the third time this week you’ve woke in the middle of the night, James, is everything alright?”  

“Yes, Daisy, of course,” he responded, sounding as if he was forcing out his words. Facing away from the fire, his face was shadowed, but Cordelia thought she could see remnants of tears on the skin of his cheeks. Reaching up to cup his face in her hands, she swiped her thumb across his cheekbones and felt wetness. He tried to pull away from her, but she tightened her hold on his face. 

“James, eshgham, please talk to me. What is burdening your mind?” 

He looked to her with wide eyes, the yellow shining a deep gold in the dim light of the room. “Daisy… my Daisy, I simply do not deserve you.” 

She gasped, “how can you say that? Have I not made it clear that I have only ever loved you, James Herondale?” 

He searched her face timidly, “you have, I- I just don’t understand it. You could do so much better than me” 

Moving her hands from his face, she grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the sofa. Sitting him down, she curled up next to him, taking his hands in hers, and faced him. He stared straight forward into the fire, watching the flames intently. “There is no reason for you to ever feel like you do not deserve me. I want you to believe that you’re good enough because you are.” 

Her words caused him to finally turn his head to her, golden eyes shining with unspilt tears. She pushed on, “You are so amazing, James. I know there are things that trouble you that my love alone cannot heal, but I want you to be proud of yourself. I want you to be proud of the son that you are, the brother that you are, the husband that you are. Most importantly, I want you to be proud of the Shadowhunter that you are, because there will never be anyone else like you.”

He blinked at her, letting the tears finally fall, and wordlessly gathered her into an embrace. They held each other until the fire burned down low in the hearth and James never left their bed in the middle of the night again.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Anonymous asked: I hugely appreciate how educated you are with your education in the Classics (at either Oxford or Cambridge I think) but I ask with sincere respect how does any of it inform your privileged life in this day and age? It’s easy to say how much we should value our European traditions and heritage it is quite another to live it out don’t you agree? What do you personally get from it?

This is a very relevant question and I apologise if I have stalled in answering it as I was busy with work and life to formulate a worthy reply. But your question is an important one indeed for anyone who harkens to the past as a guide for the present and the future.

I won’t waste space here and tick box all the purely academic reasons why the Classical world is still relevant for us today. I think you can find that in easy to read books and articles written by eminent Classicists who do an admirable service in making the Classical World come alive for the general public (Mary Beard, Bettany Hughes, Emily Wilson, Edith Hall, Peter Jones, Bernard Knox, Robin Lane Fox, Paul Cartledge, and Donald Kagan amongst others that come to mind). But it’s an uphill battle to be sure.

Classics - at least in United Kingdom - has been regressively marginalised with each passing generation starting from school up to university entry. It has an image problem. Few pay much attention to scholars of Latin and Greek. The impression is that Classicists are snobbish and is the education of privileged elitists who master languages that are not spoken. They learn to write them only to read them better. They slap your hands when you write a Latin word common in Sallust or Livy, rather than in Cicero. There is some truth to that sadly. To a large extent Classicists themselves have not been a good advertisement for why anyone should appreciate let alone study the classical world.

At one end those educated in the Classics can come across as encouraging elitism, snobbish pedantry and a sniffy social superiority and at the other end those not versed in Classics but through Hollywood (any sword and sandal film like Gladiator etc) and PC white washed TV series (BBC’s Troy is a good example) have formed a romantic attachment to the ‘heroic’ past by having blue pilled themselves into escapism. Both extremes makes Classics a fetish rather than a guide for life through the beauty and power of the language and culture of the singular Greeks and Romans.

The study of Classics can become the proverbial dog who can dance on two legs, but for what practical purpose? There is the rub. Classics, at its best, offers the historical, philological, and literary foundation and discipline to apply a critical method to every general aspect of learning - and living.

I was fortunate that I had Classicists - both within my family and also my teachers - who were cultured and had led such interesting lives and were able to marry their Classicist mind to their life experiences (often through the experience of war). So learning European languages was not just to get one’s head around arid esoteric articles by 19th-century Frenchmen on the Athenian banking system or Demosthenes’ use of praeteritio and apophasis, but also to appreciate the genius of Dante,Voltaire and Goethe. Classics should never just be about philology though because it can result in a life mostly missed.

Perhaps others might call it privileged but I consider my childhood blessed because I was surrounded by family members who were educated in the Classics - more rare than one might suppose. Through my great aunts and grandmother they instilled the discipline that the mastery of Latin and Greek fuelled the ability to speak and write good English -- and why the latter mattered as much or more than the former.

By the time I left both Cambridge and Oxford behind, I could cite passage numbers in Greek texts of what Thucydides and Plutarch thought of Nicias. But it was only when I went through Sandhurst to pass out as a commissioned army officer did it truly jump off the page and become alive for me.

Moreover having had long fire side conversations with both my grandfather and father - both Oxbridge educated Classicists and both served in distant different types of wars as swashbuckling officers - did I use that learning to understand why for example was Nicias such a laughably mediocre general of the Peloponnesian War. And this was essentially the practical point of reading Thucydides and Plutarch about Nicias in the first place.

I spent many hours in my down time during my service in Afghanistan between missions re-reading dog earred favourite Classicist texts. I began to see the ghosts of the Greeks in the characters of those with whom I was serving. Some began to resemble Sophoclean characters - especially the less well-known ‘losers’ like Ajax and Philoctetes - the sort of tragic heroes whom we root for but the odds are against them - think of any American Western film or the more pathological Tarantino films. Like Sophocles I saw majestic characters (some special forces operators) out of place in a modernising world who would rather perish than change - but in a context where their sacrifice schools the lesser around them about what the old breed was about and what was being lost.

A running thread from a childhood spent in many other countries - from South Asia to the Far East - to the present day is learning to appreciate our landscape as the Ancient world did. The cultivation of curiosity of cultures was seeded in childhood. Respecting and even admiring other cultures - Indian, Iranian, Chinese and Japanese primarily come to mind - led me to appreciate and treasure my own cultural heritage and traditions. The DNA of both the Roman and Greek world went far and wide and so teasing out their fingerprints was fun. In northern Pakistan, we came across ‘Alexander’s children’ - children with blonde and blue eyes who were said to be descended from Alexander the Great’s time in Afghanistan and India - and wandering around the banks of the Jhelum river imagining how Alexander beat his respected foe (later ally) King Porus at the Battle of Hydaspes in 326BC.

These days despite having a busy corporate career I help support running a French vineyard managed foremost by two exceptional cousins and their French partners. As such the Classics still resonate in how I look at the land beyond the vineyard - bridges, roads, towers, walls  - and imagine the Greeks not with ink and papyrus but as men of action, farmers and hoplites, in a rough climate on poor soils. I suddenly envision them pruning and plowing in Laureion, the Oropos, and Acharnae, more like the rugged local farmers with whom come harvest time I roll my sleeves up and get my hands dirty in the vineyards than as the professors in elbow patches who had claimed them.

Knowing and learning about the Classical roots of our Western heritage isn’t just a question of culture it’s also about what personally motivates us in life and how that determines how we make consequential choices in life.

I live in fear of one Greek word  ‘akrasia’. Ancient Greek philosophers coined the term to explain the lack of motivation in life. Most of the philosophical conundrums explored by contemporary philosophers were already explored in Ancient Greece. In fact, Ancient Greek philosophers laid the solid foundation for all philosophical approaches that appeared throughout history: theories of Kant, Hegel or Nietzsche would never exist without Socrates, Plato or Aristotle.

Among the many problems that baffled the Ancient Greeks, one of them gets quite a lot of attention today. Why don’t we always do what’s best for us? Why do we abandon good decisions in favour of bad ones? Why can’t we follow through on our plans and ideas?

Many people would say that the answer is simply laziness or decision fatigue, but Ancient Greek philosophers believed that the problem lay much deeper, in human nature itself. ‘Akrasia’ describes a state of acting against one’s better judgement or a lack of will that prevents one from doing the right thing. Plato believed that akrasia is not an issue in itself, because people always choose the solution they think is the best for them, and sometimes it accidentally happens that they choose the bad solution because of poor judgement. On the other hand, Aristotle disagreed with this explanation and argued that the fault in the human process of reasoning is not responsible for akrasia. He believed that the answer lies in the human tendency to desire, which is often far stronger than reason.

As with almost all philosophical concepts, a consensus has never been reached and akrasia remains open to interpretation. But its practical consequences are all too real in today’s world. Motivation is what makes us unpredictable and persistent, and the life circumstances of the modern world often make motivation disappear.

Today - regardless how old or young one is - many are more and more tempted to exchange a long-term goal for an immediately available pleasure in all its forms from the emotional band aid of porn from a lifeless relationship (or a lack of one) to escaping loneliness for the false intimacy of social media friendship. The lack of motivation can cause us to reduce ourselves to someone else’s standards when we know we can be or do better. 

The Greeks felt that the way you think and feel about yourself, including your beliefs and expectations about what is possible for you, determines everything that happens to you. When you change the quality of your thinking, you change the quality of your life. I’ve been deeply influenced by Aristotle’s idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. “The control of the appetites by right reason,” is how he defined it. Another way to reframe this is to say, “Virtue is knowing what you really want,” and then building the intellectual, spiritual, and moral muscle to go after it.

To be cultured - as opposed to be merely educated - is how you put what you’ve learned to work in your own life, seeing the world around you more deeply because of the historical, literary, artistic and philosophical resonances that current experiences evoke. This is the privilege of being cultured. For me Classical stories come often to my mind, and some times provide guides to action (much as Plutarch intended his histories of famous men to be guides to morality and action). The classics then are a part of my mental toolset and the context I think with some of the time. I see that as the real blessing in my life.

Thanks for your question.

[phoebehalliwell]

hi! do you have any headcanons abt henry jr. particularly as the only nonmagical member of the fam?

i most definitely do!! okay, so for starters, both kat & tam were raised “without magic”; they still went to magic school and paige definitely used magic around the house but they had no active powers, just like henry. and they were all raised on these grand stories their mom would tell of these amazing adventures of the charmed ones and how they were all going to have these great adventures of their own what i’m getting at was for like the first six or seven years of his life henry thought he was magical. it wasn’t until all three of the mitchell kids were with piper and piper was explaining certain elements of her power to the twins and telling them how to use it once their powers get unbound and all that and henry was like what about me what will my power do? and piper’s like you have the most special power of all because you’re really smart & good at learning : ) and then like immediately texted paige like honey you need to explain to henry he isn’t magical bc the longer you wait the harder it’s gonna get. 

it’s actually henry sr. who sits his son down and explains to him that he’s not like his sister or his mother, but how that’s not necessarily a bad thing. he’s mortal, but that doesn’t mean he can’t help people and do great things without magic. and henry sr. really tries to sell him on this whole idea of being a mortal, especially one that knows about magic, gives you a completely new viewpoint on the world, and allows you to see and understanding things in ways no one else will. (and uhh between you & me it doesn’t really convince baby henry that much but the fact that his dad takes him on fun little “mortals only” adventures helps)

uhh that being said henry still really Really wishes he was magical. uhh enter the reading phase. so, for starters, henry was already like smart and really good at / enjoyed reading. but in this sorta late elementary school thru middle school period he develops sorta two obsessions: 1) ya (specifically fantasy) novels. because all of these novels sorta follow the same basic rules of the plain protagonist becoming something great, being whisked away to this great world where they find out they have magic, where they find out they have this amazing destiny to fulfill, the nobody to somebody progression. and uhh henry really craves that. he really wishes that he is somehow magic, in some overlooked way, in some way that will manifest and prove him to be great enough to be a significant part of the charmed line, not some mortal afterthought. and then 2) magical texts/histories. and this is sorta the more shameful/secretive ones, the books he reads under the covers with a flashlight bc he just doesn’t want anyone to know that he spends hours scouring texts and stories of the charmed ones and various magical creatures desperately trying to find something he could be. no one knew who his biological parents were, it could be possible that somehow magical blood runs through his veins. he studies telekinesis and then and midnight hops out of his bed and spends an hour trying to knock a book off his shelf. he reads about orbing and it’s mechanics and tries to move himself across the room. his studies different creatures, and tests how high he can jump, how fast he can run, how long he can hold his breath underwater, trying to find some trait of him that could somehow be significant. (and of course, he keeps all of these trials secret to the best of his ability bc he would be embarrassed as all hell if it ever came out)

eventually, his studies of magical texts become less of a desperate search for something in his bloodline to more a flex on other witches. bc yeah, they might have magic, but he can still hold his head high knowing he will know more than they ever will. when tam & kat get their powers unbound and their practice moves from the hypothetical to the practical, henry still goes with his sisters to magic school, but instead of spending time in the classroom, he chooses to spend his time in the library.

he also loves studying the book of shadows. yeah, the library has loads more information on its walls then the book could ever contain, but the book has heart. it has this undeniable spirit and energy that ties to countless generations of the warren line, and he really likes to run his hands over the pages and pretend he’s really a part of the warren line (which his family is always ready to fight him on this and say he is a part of the line and blood doesn’t matter, but he’s just like come on guys. you’re my family and i love you but the warren line is a line of witches and i am undeniably not a part of that. but he still likes to imagine).

and y’know like henry’s like twelve or thirteen or something but he really has a lot of information and an insanely through knowledge of book and he’s just like flipping through it or minding his own business in the attic when wyatt (who at this point would be seventeen or eighteen) orbs in looking to id the demon he’s currently after and henry’s like oh you know like what’s it like and he really you know doesn’t want to be an asshole about it or imply he knows more than wyatt (though if you’re outside the family and questioned this kids intelligence he’s demolish you) henry really tries to pass it off as a casual curiosity/polite conversation. and wyatt’s like well im looking for this one demon with like x, y, & z and henry’s like have you thought about this demon? and he’s definitely right and wyatt can tell how much this w means for henry and really starts this sorta tradition of trying to incorporate henry into the research phase of demon fighting (which henry absolutely loves)

and it’s sorta like this self-feeding cycle he gets this role bc he knows a lot but he feels like because he has this role he has to know even more so if you feel like he was a voracious reader before,,,, whew boy are you not ready for now ( in my canon henry Can read latin). and i feel like he’s really close with wyatt bc wyatt is Also A Nerd and genuinely loves to hear henry ramble about this cool new thing that he learned and i feel like wyatt’s totally game to go get boba with henry and hear about all these things the kids been learning i feel like these two have a really close bond. 

and while i’m on the subject of relationships, i feel like henry was definitely one of those kids who had more girl friends than he did guy friends bc a lot of his formative years were spent with his sisters who in turn spent a lot of time with melinda and pj as all four of of those girls were born in 07. so like you know henry would do movie nights with mellie, tam, kat, pj, & parker (and then peyton when she was old enough to watch movies without getting nightmares)

and you know right now he’s like seventeen and a senior in high school and i feel like he’s pretty settled into who he is. he and his dad definitely still to their little “mortals only” adventures, and like a part of him will always sorta be bummed that he isn’t magical, but he’s come to terms with who he is. and he’s not gonna let the fact that he is a mortal you know like hold him back or diminish him, because he is a part of the charmed legacy and the warren line, and he is carving out his own role for himself. and everyone else in the family definitely recognizes him as capable and yeah sometimes he does get left behind bc it’s objectively too dangerous to bring a mortal along and he’s gotten pretty good at being okay with that (or telling himself he’s okay with that). he knows who he is and who he is is undeniably self made. he didn’t coast by on some unearned, hand-me-down skill, and he wears that fact with pride. he may be mortal, but he doesn’t let anyone look down on him for it.

[masterheartsxiii]

Notes from mass 9-27-20

>Finally got around to this.

Got to mass on time this time, accompanied by my Lutheran friend (she came cause we had to get groceries right after)

Started singing in Latin (why?)

>this always has bothered me and feels like it fits the trend of exclusionary tactics. Why continue to chant in Latin? Chanting in Hebrew I could understand as that was the original language of our Lord, but Latin is just Latin.

> an additional note as I talked to my Lutheran friend about this point today. She brought up the idea that the Latin sets it apart from our normal speaking. It’s the reason we say “amen” instead of “woohoo” despite them meaning the same. It becomes too familiar to use English. And perhaps there is something too that.

So many recitations (why? Does recitation make it real, like Pledge of Allegiance)

> this is something I’ve wrestled with for awhile. The pledge of allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer, the nicene creed. All of these have their place, but when we recite them endlessly, how long does it take until they’re just words? Until you’re speaking then because everyone says too. That’s not a way to have a connection with prayer. When Jesus taught that prayer, I always felt it made more sense as an example, a template, not a script. Your heart must be in the words each time you say them or they are just words.

Why the “singing” priest?

>Yeah I’ve found it odd that priests sing the opening stuff with that pseudo chant with no actual tune? Is there a reason for it, or is it tradition like everything else?

Reading 1: Ezekiel 18:25-28/136(?)

“Lord’s way is not fair”

No u

>haha. Lovely shorthand. The verse was on how we say the lords ways and rules are not fair, but the lord says his ways are just and the worlds are unfair. I suppose that’s accurate. Don’t really have anything I disagree with here or question

Responsorial Psalm

“Remember your mercies, O Lord”

(Why remember? He’s god)

>god is all knowing, as such he cannot forget. Why do we beseech god to “remember” when he clearly would. Mercy is sparing from punishment that we deserve. So ultimately it’s up to god if we deserve to not get what we deserve, right?

Reading II: Philippians 2:1-11

Do nothing out of selfishness.

Regard others as more important

Look not for your own interests, but for others

(My dear friend has both been wronged by me & is guilty of such)

(Not my place to judge. Log in my eye)

> so this text hit me hard. There’s been some massive changes in my life, and selfishness has been at the peak of them. You’ll notice I struck through and added a new note. That new note was added near the end. At the time of writing shorthand, I just wanted to lash out at the choices being made, because of the ripples of pain they caused in a single pursuit. I will refer back to when this second revelation was made when it happened in the sermon.

Gospel: Matthew 21:28-32

Parable of 2 sons

1 son went out to the fields after saying he wouldn’t.

1 son did not after he said he would.

They were asked which one was right, the correct answer being the first son, because the work was done.

(It’s never too late to change)

(Forgiveness is given even late, but if so, what’s the point?)

>ah the age old question: if the leader of the axis powers in 1945 (don’t want tumblr to block me) genuinely repented on his deathbed, would he go to heaven. According to this yes. But if so what’s the point of doing good in life, or being good and staying away from carnal pleasures if it can all be proofed away? What do we gain from this lifestyle. Seems like the best way to do life is do whatever you want, then accept Jesus on your deathbed and be spared.

Homily

Talking about worddetective (a website)

“Proof is in the pudding” really “proof of the pudding is in the eating”

>so effectively they are saying that you can say all you want, but unless you actually do the things you say, it’s worthless. Makes sense so far.

Knowledge of the law = holy (we do the same)

>back then the religious leaders were seen as holier than the rest because they had knowledge of the law. We do the same. We see both lawyers and judges as more just and priests and pastors as more holy just because they know the information. We conflate the knowledge and therefore the ability to avoid crimes and temptations as the same as somehow being above them. It’s also why we see it as somehow worse when they fall. But that isn’t the case. We are holding them to a higher standard but god sees us all as the same. It’s also why, while I acknowledge the benefit of having a learned man to confess in front of, I don’t understand the need to go to a priest for confession rather than just confessing to the Lord himself. But that is perhaps a tangent for another time

In the parable, which is right? The son who said yes first, they now how, but didn’t put their faith into action. Therefore they were wrong.

(Action speaks louder than words)

(I say I am not judging, but my actions say otherwise. I feel I need to say “well in my defense, she...” and that is the same as saying “yes I’ll stop judging” and doing it anyways.

Lord help my hypocrisy. Let me leave my burdens and worries in your hand)

Is our yes authentic.

(I started this, wanting to find fault with and condemn she who I call my dear friend. What kind of a dear friend is that. My hypocrisy must be acknowledged & dealt with)

>at last I come back to the strike through above. When one enters a church, one gets back only what they allow themselves to hear. In anger and sorrow, I went into this service, and upon hearing the first words of the verses, I felt vindicated, knowing that at the same time, a person I care very much for was hearing them and I felt vindicated. But as it went on, and I opened up. I didn’t hear a voice agreeing with me. I heard a voice condemning me. That it is not my place to judge, and in doing so, I have become a worse person. So I prayed before I left, and I have attempted to pray each night for the ability to leave my burdens behind and to not cast judgement. I have apologized to my dear friend, but those are just words. Actions must show it, and I’ve done my best in limited communication to show a difference in how I interact. It’s a work in progress, as selfishness seems to be my current greatest sin, and I must monitor it regularly, but I hope that a notable difference is seen as I work on myself.

>I got a lot out of it this time. I still didn’t stay through communion. Not til I’ve had time to talk to the priest, and start getting my questions answered firsthand. Only then will I stay for a ritual that as of now still excludes me, though my discussions with my mentor have alleviated a few issues with that.

Closing

Asking for money even in prayer. :/

> ok so during the final prayers for everything in the world basically. They basically included a shameless plug for people to give to this specific donation. I get you need money, but that felt borderline sacrilegious. Maybe that’s just me.

[trivialqueen]

Here’s the next section of that original story. 

As always, I’m neither a doctor, nor British.  I’m just a girl who fancies herself a writer and likes slow burns, smart women, and tall men. 

St. Sebastian’s was a world class hospital with some of the worst aesthetics he’d ever seen. The exterior was in an uninspired brutalist style. The interior had been remolded several times since the early 1960s, but only ever with an eye toward function and technology, never design or comfort. The cardiothoracic ward, known as Harvey, was as bland as the rest of the hospital, but with the extra unattractive feature of ghastly aqua accents throughout. As if that was a substitute for style. Felix leaned against the nurses’ station, feigning interest in a chart. It had been over a week since his introduction as Director of Surgery. In the subsequent ten days his true role in the hospital had spread like, well, gossip in a hospital. He’s the Dread Pirate Roberts here for your jjjoooobbb!! The rumors were absolutely true, but he didn’t want to let that on. To make an accurate assessment of viability and redundancies he needed to see the hospital in action, not performance. Changes were only as good as their usefulness and longevity. So whenever possible he preferred to observe as inconspicuously as a man of his height could. This tended to involve a lot of pretending to read and “sneaking”.

Even if he wasn’t half secretly overseeing a major shakeup in the hospital, being the Director of Surgery meant he bounced from ward to ward far more than his colleagues did. Which was how he found himself on Harvey that afternoon. He appreciated the challenges that this brought, it tested and stretched diagnostic muscles he’d not used since deciding a specialty, but it also ate into his time as a surgeon. He’d accepted a more administrative position as it was the next logical career move, but in his heart, he was a doctor first and foremost, a bureaucrat a distant second. His pantomime reading of one of Paul Elliot’s old transplant cases was interrupted by a sandy haired teen with a strong Belfast accent.

“It’s ma Dad, he needs help.” A quick survey of the room told him two things: one, no one was collapsed on the floor, meaning the Dad in question was already a patient in a bed, and two, none of the CT consultants, or even a registrar, were in the immediate vicinity. The boy was talking to him.

“Who’s his consultant?”

“Ms. Hale.” The boy fairly spat.

“Then I suggest you wait for her.” She was likely doing something maverick and self-righteous, but he had no doubts she’d be back.

“She doesn’t know a damn thing what she’s doing! She’s done like fifteen tests on ma Dad and all she says is ‘wait and see’. Now you tell me to wait! I’m sick of waiting. He’s in pain, real pain.”

“Alright.” He could at least do something about the pain, if nothing else.

Sofia Grace Hale had a scrivener’s hand, surprising for a doctor. It was large, round, looping, and very legible, unlike his own tight, scratchy scrawl. ‘Abdominal pain’ jumped out from the meticulous notes. Most of Mr. Patrick Baxter’s ailments were CT related and not necessarily caused by his MS– the dilated aorta first among them. Ms. Hale was undoubtable chasing all of their causes and symptoms, but the abdominal pain… well he could check on that. It would also make the teen happy, hopefully, if he could even answer one question.

“Mr. Baxter, my name is Felix Magnusson, and I’d like to do a few tests regarding your abdominal pain, I’ll be arranging for your transfer to our general surgery ward, St. Irene’s.”

Ms. Hale’s red tassel earrings matched her lipstick and made her double take particularly dramatic as she passed Mr. Baxter, his son Kevin, and the porter taking them to the third floor.

“Where are you taking Mr. Baxter?”

“Down to Irene.” Her coffee colored eyes widened and that fire he’d seen during their first meeting began to smolder. She had eyes that could lead a man to hell. Perhaps one day she might look at him without an indignant flame in her gaze. But until then he would warm himself by the fire in her eyes.

“What?”

“He needs an ultrasound.”

“Why isn’t he having one here?” She crossed her arms under her breast as she glared up at him. Even in her high heels her head only came to about his shoulders. To keep eye contact she was forced to crane her neck slightly. Which she did, pale throat exposed, creating a lovely long line down her neck to her décolletage, where he resolutely refused to look, no matter how tempting.

“There seems little point in taking up a CT bed when his problem is clearly GS related.”

“Clearly GS related? The worst pain is in his chest, and the echo shows a dilated aorta.”

“I’ve read your notes. He also has severe abdominal pain. So, what’s your diagnosis?”

She wanted to scream. That arrogant bastard. That absolute arschloch. ‘What’s your diagnosis?’ like she was a bloody F1. God, his tone. ‘Was ist deine diagnose?’ It was that same clipped, ‘I don’t think you have this in you’ tone her clinical skills lead at Tübingen had taken with her. Except he was speaking English. And she wasn’t a F1 anymore. She was a consultant, goddamnit.

(The worst part was, of course, the fact she didn’t have a diagnosis. Not yet anyway, and that uncertainty made her feel even more like a bloody first year all over again. ‘Was ist deine diagnose?’ ‘Keine Ahnung.’)

“I’ve ruled out ischemic heart disease but I’m still waiting on his blood pressure.”

“That is not a diagnosis.” Her eyes flamed beautifully. Her temper was quick and exquisite.

“I’m well aware! As I said, I’m waiting on his test results.”

“The patient was admitted thirty-six hours ago, and you don’t have a diagnosis yet. Surly a change of tact can only assist in figuring this out.” He cocked a brow, his supreme confidence in his own ability shining in his eyes, the quirk of his lips. He took a step closer to her, forcing her head back further, as if he wanted to force her to look away. She wouldn’t. She’d hold her ground and his gaze, even if meant he put her in Anuvittasana to do it. She could catch a whiff of his aftershave, something with sandalwood in it. He smelled of it, hospital, fresh laundry, and perhaps faintly, of old books.

“Is it common elsewhere to steal other consultants’ patients? Or is this because you think you know everything?” He stared at her a moment, tongue moistening his thin lips before he spoke.

“We are both consultants, are we not?” He could see her hands flexing at her side, as if she was thinking about strangling him, and he could taste her anger, capsaicin hot.

“Yes.” She spat out from between cayenne colored lips.

“then surly Mr. Baxter can be our patient. Now let me see what I can learn about the GS part of our current problem, hm?” And with that patronizing hum in his throat he left. Left her in the hallway struggling to keep from screaming, her breath coming in choppy, short burst.

She really did not like that man.

He heard her before he saw her, the determined click of spike heels on linoleum making the announcement: Gird your loins. The moment Mr. Baxter was back from his ultrasound she was at his bedside, chart in hand.

“Your blood pressure is constantly going from high to normal-”

“Of course, it is Love, you keep bothering me. Now, I don’t wanna be rude…” His tone suggested otherwise as his gaze raked down her body, coming to rest on her legs with appreciation. “I’ve lived with this condition for fifteen years; you’re not going to tell me anything I don’t already know.” She did have stunning legs, but that did not give the man the right to stare like that. Felix could feel his jaw tighten as he watched patient and consultant converse.

“Right, Jeyne, I’d like to do a blood culture and another echo, please.”

“Love, you’re not listening to me. You’re wasting your time running these bloody tests.” Ms. Hale was very clearly listening to the man, her back was visibly tense from across the room, spine straight and hard as steel. She gave him a curt nod and walked away, his eyes following her with a lascivious grin spreading across his face. He caught her eye as she brushed past him down the hall, for once that burning anger wasn’t directed at him. Once the click-click of her heels was out of earshot he released the breath he’d not realized he’d been holding. The glower he knew he wore, however, remained.

The ward was mostly dark as he made his final rounds for the evening. Meetings had taken up most of his afternoon, bowel resection aside, and had pushed any patient follow ups or paperwork into late in the evening. Most of the residents on the ward were asleep, with a few readings or playing on their devices, providing patches of light throughout the otherwise dim floor. Mr. Baxter was asleep, looking almost peaceful. He snagged the man’s file and retreated to the better lighting of the nurses’ station.

“She said I could sit here.” The voice almost startled him, if he was the sort to be startled. Kevin Baxter sat at the nursing station, text book and papers spread about him in messy piles. Felix felt his fingers twitch, itch to straighten them up, keep them from jumbling together or with anything important still on the desk.

“Who did?”

“Sister Jacobs. Gotta do my homework somewhere.” He held up a battered German language primer.

“Ah! Sprichst du Deutsch?”

“Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof.” He could only smile at his response. There was always something deliciously ironic about complaining that one did not speak the language in idioms of the language.

He’d learned Latin at his father’s knee, and learned it perfectly, for his father would not have settled for anything less. It was both his personality and his profession, as a professor of classics and philologist. English had come quickly in school and become his primary language when at ten he’d been sent to boarding school. He’d learned French first, having tested out of the Latin classes, followed shortly by German. At the time French had been the easier language to pick up, but after quickly realizing that speaking it frequently would require interacting with the French, he’d not pursued it beyond conversational. His mastery of German had been improved tremendously the year he spent in Heidelberg but since his return to the UK it had fallen by the wayside, reading skills aside. He still enjoyed keeping up with his former colleagues’ research. He now also had a stack of publications by S.G. Hale sitting on his desk to peruse.

“Deutsche Sprache, Schwere Sprache.”

“Ja, und ich mag es nicht. Es ist eine mean, hateful Sprache.”

“If you need help, Ms. Hale is a fluent German speaker, she went to school there.” The boy pulled a face. “Do you always work at night?” He was not interested in hearing the boy complain about one of the hospital’s more talented surgeons because his father had a particularly difficult case to diagnose; sifting out preexisting MS symptoms from the new ones, causes still unknown.

“It’s the only time we get any peace, when he’s asleep. Then it’s like everything’s… dunno, normal, I guess, whatever that means.”  He sounded so old for one so young. Felix followed the boy’s eyes as they rested on his father, who was still resting as peacefully as one could in a hospital bed. I could not be easy for either of them, as far as he could tell there was no one else in the Baxter household at the moment except Patrick and Kevin. Being primary caretaker and a teenager was no easy task. “It’s become secondary progressive, hasn’t it?” His jaw clenched.

“What makes you say that?”

“Cuz it’s obvious,” The boy said in that way that only teenagers could. “The migraines, the flashing before his eyes, the coughing like he’s got consumption, the going crazy mad for no reasons.” Felix felt his body tense. This was new information. Important and new. Given how consistently condescending and rude he’d been to Ms. Hale while simultaneously ogling her admittedly very fine legs and even better backside, he’d assumed the man had always had a bad temper. That it was a personality trait, not a symptom.

“He’s not always had a temper?” His mind buzzed with new connections.

“Just lately. Why?”

“Do your homework.” The Baxters might complain about excessive tests but he was fairly confident the next two would provide all the answers they needed.

She was too old for this shit. Sofia Grace did her best to stifle a yawn before going to speak to Mr. Baxter. She’d been up entirely too late trying to figure out his diagnosis, but she’d finally made one. It was a pity that as her vice of choice, she’d developed a tolerance to caffeine so high that the amount necessary to actually keep her awake would also, quite possibly, kill her. But given how Mr. Baxter rankled her with his distain and condescension she knew that her blood would undoubtedly be pumping in now time. Straightening her blouse, she approached his bed, Kevin had already left for school it seemed.

“Good morning, Mr. Baxter. My sincerest apologies for it taking so long, but I think I’ve come up with an explanation for your symptoms.”

“No need, Love, really.” It was a dismissal but not nearly as rude as his usual attitude.

“Sorry?” In fact, he looked rather resigned.

“Catecholamine.” A baritone voice in her ear supplied. Sofia Grace felt herself jump out of her skin. She wheeled around. There, standing in her personal space was Felix Magnusson. Tall as ever, as immovable as a brick wall, and radiating a warmth from his chest that made the rest of the room feel chilly. She’d had no idea he was on the ward, let alone able to stand directly behind her.

“What?”

“I’ve explained it all to Mr. Baxter already,” He continued on, as efficient as ever, pulling out a CT scan from its large brown envelope with flourish. “It accounts for all the symptoms and really, it’s blindingly obvious when you really think about it. I feel a little ashamed for not realizing sooner.” He held the scan out in front of her, he was so close to her back and his arms were so long that she only needed to lean back slightly into his chest to see what he was looking at. “Textbook Pheochromocytoma.” There was indeed a tumor on the adrenal gland and up into the chest cavity, partially around the diaphragm. The pain, headaches, palpitations, elevated heartrate and blood pressure… all the signs and symptoms. The dilated aorta was a problem, but not related to the other symptoms. It really was a general surgery problem, Hurensohn! He lowered his arm but didn’t step back from her.

“So, what do we do now?” It was the first time the man in the bed had looked up at her with anything other than contempt.

“Well,” his MS did complicate things, he wasn’t wrong when he’d asserted that. They’d have to determine if he was fit for surgery, speak with the neuro and physio specialists, get a theatre slot if he was determined fit or wait longer if he wasn’t.

“There’s a procedure. We have a slot in theatre this morning.” She did step away from him then. They needed to have a discussion, now. And it couldn’t be in front of Patrick Baxter. Her fingers itched to grab him by the tie (burgundy silk against a pale blue shirt and navy suit) and tow him away from the bed.

“Mr. Magnusson, could I have a word?” Keeping her tone light and professional was a challenge. They’d only worked together for two weeks and Sofia Grace wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t developed a twitch in that time.

“Just a moment, Ms. Hale.” He didn’t quite hand wave her away, but it was close. God grant me the strength to deal with condescending men. “There’s a theatre slot this morning; would you like us to call your son?” Magnusson was hard to read, but this look was particularly inscrutable.

“No, not till after. If that’s possible. He’s got a maths test today and doesn’t need more worry than he’s already got.” Ever so slightly the lines around his eyes and mouth relaxed as he studied the man in the bed.

“Mr. Magnusson, if you don’t mind?” It took some effort to steer him away, mostly with herself to keep from grabbing him by the tie to do it. Instead a firm hand on his elbow did the trick, only making her feel slightly like a tiny tugboat, although instead of bringing a Nordic cruise ship out to sea, she was dragging a Swedish surgeon over to the light box.

           “You’re just assuming he’s fit for surgery!” She hissed.

           “The Neuro and Physio specialists seem to agree with me.” He hung the scan on the viewer, turned it on, and then reached into his breast pocket for his glasses. Resolutely not looking at her.

“So, let me get this straight,” Sabrina had suggested that he wasn't awful, but she’d just let him get under her skin. And then he did shit like this. “You talked to Stewart and Noah before you talked to me about our patient?” He ignored her. Outright.

“If you’re still concerned, let’s get a second opinion.” He turned and spotted Griffin Richards walking across the ward, cup of coffee in one hand, a stack of files in the other. Sofia liked Griffin; he was an excellent GS surgeon with a flair for the upper GI. He was committed to helping people and passionate about the NHS. Patients came first and she’d only ever seen him play politics to that end. He was a good colleague, even if his personal life was a bit of a shambles. Discreetly she peeked at his hands, no wedding band this morning. So, he was on the outs with his wife this week.

“Ah, Mr. Richards, would you be so kind as to act as arbitrator?” He waved Griffin over politely.

“For what?” He asked, giving Magnusson a wary look but gifting her with a warm smile. He was a handsome and charming man; it was easy to see how he got his wife. It was only a shame that it didn’t seem like he was able to keep her.

“Pheochromocytoma on the adrenal gland that has attached itself to the diaphragm.” Magnusson used the ear piece of his glasses to point to the tumor.

“Mr. Magnusson seems keen to slice and dice, despite the fact the patient has MS.”

“And you would do what exactly, Ms. Hale? Key hole through the chest?” It was a valid option, but he said it as if he might have said, “Try crystal healing?” Griffin put on his own glasses and studied the scan quietly for a moment, sipping his coffee.

“Well if it were my patient, given the position of the tumor, I would suggest you and I operate together.” Another smile, this one less charming as he’d just sold her out. Magnusson was smiling as well, thin lipped and smug as hell.

“And there’s our answer,” he tapped the scan with his glasses, “a CT/GS collaboration, as I was saying. Thank you, Mr. Richards. I’ll see you on the ice, Ms. Hale.” And with that he walked off. Just like that. Sofia knew she was gawping, but she couldn’t help it, the arrogance of the man left her speechless.

Dieser Arschgesicht!

Well, perhaps not entirely…

Ms. Hale was already at the sink when he arrived for surgery. She was in pale blue scrubs today, unlike the wine-colored ones he’d first met her in, her dark curls covered by her floral cap. She didn’t look up at him as she scrubbed her hands but gave him a slight nod as he took the faucet next to her to begin his own cleansing ritual.

“I have reasons for wanting to do a keyhole procedure on Mr. Baxter, it’s not just a ‘CT’ thing or whatever you seem to think. If we do keyhole-”

“We’re doing this open procedure, Ms. Hale.”

“But there’s a risk of-”

“The theatre is set up.” Her cayenne lips pursed into a stubborn line. Her face was already so expressive, but with her mouth painted bright red it was impossible not to look at her lips. They were full, with a cupid’s bow, and clearly holding back several things she’d like to say. Her eyes said them for her, sparking as she gave him a last look before heading off to get her gown and gloves on. If she was half as dynamic of a surgeon as she was as a woman this was going to be quite the operation.

Perhaps it was because she had a scalpel in her hands, but Magnusson was at least inclined to follow her instructions while they were in theatre. He retracted when asked, clamped where she needed him to clamp and generally stayed out of her way as she dealt with Mr. Baxter’s diaphragm. She also didn’t need to look up from her work to know that he was watching her every move with a critical eye.

“Enjoying your foray into Cardiothoracics?” He’d declined the suggestion of background music, leaving nothing to fill the silence except for either one’s thoughts or small talk. And Sofia Grace never much liked being alone with her own thoughts.

“Believe it or not, I was not considering my life lacking in any way for not spending time playing with people’s hearts. What is it about CT surgeons thinking the heart is the only organ in the body?” She’d meant it as small talk, a reference to the fact he was currently assisting her. But nope, he was gunna be an ass about this too. Jesus H. Christ and a windmill full of corpses what is his problem?!

“To be fair, it is kinda important.” He didn’t look up and neither did she as she finished off the last stitch she needed, and they could transition from the more CT oriented to GS oriented surgery.

“It likes to think that, certainly.” He said, picking up a scalpel. “Whereas the kidneys just get on with their job, filtering toxins out and letting the body function. Efficient, beautiful, and secure enough in themselves that they don’t need to shout about it.” Normally she would argue that picking a favorite or most important body part was a stupid endeavor. Most of the organs in the body were necessary and linked together in ways that pulling one out of the system without compensating for it would lead to problems in a variety of other areas. There was no one organ that was better than any other body part, there was only what needed to be dealt with immediately or later to ensure quality of life.

This being said, if he was just going to talk shit because he had some weird hang-up about CT surgeons, she’d double down for the heart. (It was her favorite organ, even if picking favorites was stupid).

“So indispensable you can lose one and still survive.”

“Hack a piece of kidney off and it’ll just grow back,” He picked up a scalpel, “the minute the heart breaks it becomes a useless piece of tissue. And then of course there’s the fact we can now replace a faulty heart with a machine the size of a cigarette packet.” He shot her a look over the top of his glasses before he started cutting, she could almost see the smug smirk behind his surgical mask.

“And in some cases, Mr. Magnusson, it seems as if people can survive without any heart at all.” She met his eye steadily, arching one brow defiantly. He stared at her for a moment. Somewhere behind her, someone sounding a lot like Dan Flannery whispered, “Ooo burn.”

“We need to keep moving.” He muttered awkwardly, getting back to the task at hand.

A hit, a very palpable hit.

They worked in silence after that, only the beeps and pings of the machines and occasional request breaking up the quiet.

“BP is plummeting.” Magnusson reported calmly. This was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to do open surgery in the first place.

“If we had gone with the keyhole procedure-”

Which we did not so I fail to see the usefulness of that comment.” He snapped, voice cold and quick and sharp.  Brooking no retort.

“We did not go with the keyhole procedure because you decided that we shouldn’t, not because we mutually agreed this method. You decided what was best for this procedure, without listening to my reasons, I might add.”

“I am trying to concentrate, Ms. Hale, if you don’t mind?” Out of respect for Mr. Baxter she bit back the rest of what she wanted to say. At least for the moment.

“It’s funny that of all the words to get lost in translation, partners, seems to mean nothing to you.” Mr. Baxter was now Pheochromocytoma free and on his way back to bed for his recovery.

“What?” Magnusson looked at her sideways as she began washing her hands beside him at the sink. Thoroughly washing her hands gave her something to focus on while she tried to find the right words. There were so many things she wanted to say. Most of them rude. But as therapeutic she’d find it to smash his face in and curse him out, it wouldn’t change what she needed to have changed. Word on the street was he would be staying at Saint Seb’s for the foreseeable future, she needed to play the long game, not for immediate gratification.

“In addition to unilaterally deciding on the method of today’s surgery without consulting me, your CT specialist for this surgery and Co-consultant. You also figured out some significant information about our shared patient and did not tell me.” He stopped washing his hands to stare at her, hands raised slightly, allowing the soap and water to drip down his long forearms to the floor. “No, instead, you went straight to the patient himself and explained everything, leaving me in the dark, and then looking like a complete ass with my dick in the wind trying to discuss his condition without the full picture. To compound this, you swoop in and make me look even more stupid in front of our patient. A patient who already had limited regard for my expertise and position as a Doctor.” She turned the faucet off with her elbow and flicked the excess water from her hands into the sink with a flourish before turning to face him. He was staring at her intently, square jaw working but his mouth wisely closed.

“You complain that I make arrogant, rash decisions and that surgeons who make decisions for their own ends are a menace. Next time you work with me, you either keep me in the loop and treat me as an equal or find someone else to handle your heart.” She didn’t wait for his response, instead she grabbed a towel from beside him and brushed past, leaving him alone in the scrub room.

[witchyweirdness]

Flower Spotlight: Snowdrop : January

Hello, Magical Darlings and welcome back to another installment of Witchy Weirdness! 

Today’s topic is a Flower Spotlight for the beautiful birth flower for January! 

The Snowdrop! 

A sweet and simple little flower used for a myriad of purification and protection magic, the Snowdrop is a power flower for January and a great asset to winter magic! 

The Snowdrop is often seen as the first flower of the year to show it’s flower/blooms and therefore is seen as a symbol of new beginnings, growth and hope! 

This is a beautiful flower to incorporate into your Imbolc festivies for this reason! 

In some cultures, seeing the Snowdrop flowers is a bit like the groundhog tradition -which is also at the beginning of February by the way -  because it’s said that to see a snowdrop is a sign that winter is coming to an end and spring will begin! 

Now, before I get into anything else I just want to mention...do not eat them.  They can cause vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea and many other things.  

This is not a plant for ingesting. 

Ok, PSA over, lol. 

On a slightly bittersweet note, this is also a flower given a lot in association with consoling someone or offering sympathy.  I give this flower a lot to people who have lost loved ones because as mentioned, it represents hope, growth and new beginnings. 

It’s never easy to lose someone you love but we must always press on. 

Interestingly enough, Victorians used to believe just the opposite! In fact, the snowdrop was seen as an sign of death and it was considered bad luck to bring one inside the home.  They say these are symbols of death. 

Of course the snowdrop is positively RIPE with religious and cultural lore and references. 

There is a Romanian legend about  the sun taking the form of a young girl who came to warm the earth for spring and how the villainous Winter refused to give up earth and took her hostage.  But a hero appeared and they battled but he was wounded.  And when he fell to the ground his blood stained the earth and the snowdrops bloomed.   It’s still considered a sign of spring for some Romanians.

  I wonder if Sebastian Stan believes this.  Sorry, bad Kenny. Bad, Kenny! Stop letting your fan girl mind wander! No cookies for you! 

Anyway, lol. 

It’s referenced in some very old fairy tail books that it’s a variation of the ever popular Snow White. 

In some text, her name was original Snowdrop but along with a couple of plot changes, she became know as Snow White. 

It’s even mentioned in the bible to comfort Eve after she and Adam were cast out of the Garden of Eden. 

I feel it is most commonly linked with the Celtic goddess, Brigid- which is very useful as she is one of the deities associated with the upcoming Imbolc! 

Now, this is particularly useful because Imbolc, sometimes known as Candlemas, is a holiday known for bringing the sun and warmth back to the earth. 

The reason this is so relevant is because Snowdrops actually produce their own heat and have the ability to melt the snow around  them. 

Quite the durable little plants aren’t they? 

They’re name in latin is Galanthus which means Milk Flowers - named as such for their appearance that eluded to three drops of milk hanging from a stem. 

Imbolc is a time full of dairy! 

If you noticed, you’ll see lots of dairy foods associated with Imbolc! 

Milks, cheeses, yogurts, creams!  The whole lot! 

And the latin word,Nivalis means resembling snow! 

Therefore, the perfect name for the Snowdrop! 

Just some fun facts to wrap us up! 

Planet: Saturn

Deity: Brigid 

Month: January-February 

Holiday/Sabbat: Imbolc 

I hope you enjoyed this little witchy tidbit and I hope you’re all having a beautiful January!  Imbolc is fast approaching so I definitely wanted to get it out to you guys before! 

I hope you enjoyed this piece of content and if ya did please be sure to let me know in the comments! If you’d like to read more of my work check out my main blog, @littlemessyjessi . There you can find my masterlist as well as my two other blogs for my witchy content @witchyweirdness and my monster blog @monsterbaesbymamakennysaurus !  Enjoy and Happy Reading!

Love, Mama Kennysaurus

@frankie2902

@pleasantdreamqueen   @becrazy–beyou –beyou

@becrazy-beweird

@littledeadrottinghood @blackirisposts

@therealmrshale @woodworthti666

@jimmys-afterlife-love-deactivat @the-great-irene @fanfictionandjunk

@angelus320

@alanlizzingtonshore @buriednurbckyrd @disneymarina@@tubbypeachwriting

@sullybot @georgiagrl1990 @whenallsaidanddone

@mischiefnevermanaged94 @inumorph

@congurl

@centerhabit

@bubblymusiclover13

@meetcally

@qtmeryr

@thisismysecrethappyplace

@tnupsweetpie

@alisoncdariel

@hannahloveslife

@wormyboi

@blackirisposts

@maggyme13

@amethyst09

@lostdarksoul6

@fanfics1717

@coffeebooksandfandom

@gruffle1

Love, Kenny

[blogofvanya]

READING AND WRITING

So let's find out which one came first ! Reading or writing? In my modest opinion I would say it's like the chicken and the egg. Which one was first we don't really know. Yet I can say and I know that numbers were created thru mere lines that were added to one another so that starting with the number one a straight line ; then two, an angular one at the bottom of the one and then three with yet another one etc etc! Of course after that we composed more esthetically pleasing figures that made up today's Latin numbers! If we look at the alphabets of the world starting from the Far East we can easily see how this evolved into the alphabet as we know it in our country ! Starting with bold and simple lines in Chinese it became rounded without completing the circles in Arabic and finally became the Latin alphabet in the western world! Yet when did the people actually start writing letters to one another and why and were they still carving and etching into stone to send messages to one another we don't know ! I am sure that there is pretty good documentation in the world almanac! We people of this century who have forgotten these difficulties will probably not understand nor find it that interesting anymore . I still visit countries where there are a lot of seniors besides children who are learning to spell and to read! They come from villages without the ability to get proper education ! Then they cherish this newfound trade to read whatever is published or handed to them. They love to read the news in a simple letter or newspaper ! Yet we; the lucky ones snub the news be it fake or not and sometimes prefer viewing TV and movies instead of reading. Be it this way or not ; don't you think that reading especially books ought to be a two way communication ? I mean instead of receiving the text from the writer we should also be capable of asking or placing our own opinions as well. Thus we can understand what he or she wanted to say and why! Wouldn't it be interesting if we could do that? I know that some books have given different endings to their stories depending on the variety of options . But again the majority of books are written to address the issue or story from the author's point of view. Today the ones who publish or can; do that through monies to market their books . The new who are very good or lucky sometimes prevail ! Otherwise in this competitive market a writer may not have the chance of the book going public. That is sad of course ! That being the truth and once the author has made his or her debut then they have to come up with more and more books! This some times makes the author lazy and then they hire a professional writer with good editing qualities who helps them in producing more and more books of the same kind ! Yet this wasn't that way before ! We don't see too many Tolstoy's or Dostoyevsky's and Shakespeare's! ! These great authors who already established themselves in a time frame when the stories were interesting and the literary accomplishments were remarkable ! Shakespeare with his many stories that presented human emotions and behavior in many ways spread these across continents and made indelible imprints even in the days of no internet and poor communication devices ! The visual technology has also brought out many actors who now portray the words and characters of these authors in a remarkable manner ! Sometimes instead of referring to the book we visualize the actor who brought it to life! Yet every day when we watch these shows maybe many many times we forget that they are not true but acting! Are we fooled that easily ? Maybe ? So once more we can go back to reading and pick up the book where we can imagine the characters as they are portrayed in the words and give them the emotional and physical imagery that we want ! So how do we choose the books we want to read? Is it a friend who tells us that they liked that book ? Is it the curiosity we have towards that kind of action or story? It's probably both ! The same way people guide us to go to such and such a restaurant because they thought that the food was great! Tastes and color are subjects we don't discuss ! Cause they are variable ! Anyway getting back to books and reading ,we already know that in today's world there is a lot of fake information! That is true from the beginning of world history ! Every author writes his or her opinion and story! There is the famous story Rashomon a Japanese classic when many different people describe an event and thus they write that many variations of a story ! Imagine! To top it some of these people are even dead! Those writers who serve royalties like emperors or great companies are mostly assigned to these posts to document the achievements of the peers? The higher sources which dictates them want to see positive remarks about their accomplishments! Be it true and sometimes not! Yet there are others who see happenings around them just as they are and report them like decent journalists with proper resources! They tell these events through their own eyes and resources ! Bravo! Yet there are also liars ! The phishing in writing and producing fake news both in books and other written format was started years ago! War time was the best period of false news and intended propaganda so that they could incriminate and destroy the country opposing them ! Incriminating their leaders so that they would be despised was purposefully done and even went down in history even though they were lies! Some of these authors wrote these hate books that were supposed to be published in fifty years or later so that the person in question would not be able to defend themselves ! Just think how history was twisted to befit those slandering authors with their malicious books ! Indeed even today when someone sends written remarks over the social media how many of us readily accept the news without even checking the source or truth! Yes my friends writing and reading are great tools to be carefully examined before we take them to the level of acceptable or true; no matter what ! Let us not forget that even though there are people children or old who are new and want to learn the alphabet so that they can become educated and enjoy the thoughts of others there are those who abuse the system and yet go without punishment because of a certain freedom that we all have yet sometimes tend to ignore ! Writing is putting black on white ! It is as important as etching or carving the stone before sending it to the another person . I found out that my grievance period was diminished after the death of my parents because I opted to write ! This was a great time for me to get out of my inner thoughts and emotions ! If anything this was and is a great way of releasing ones inner feelings! But before sending it to someone please read it many times cause you may want to rethink those thoughts and examine those emotions once more! May there be many more true and different writers who can bring us back to our interdependent life style !

[secretsocietyofstuff]

The

Egsa (old english | scary)

Spell (old english | news)

Ok.

The Biblical Patriarch Abraham (called the father of nations) had one wife and one sister- the same person- and several concubines and mistresses- each of whom begot him many children. Now, when these children grew up- he gifted them each with magical secrets and one by one sent them east as magi to gather initiates for the creation of Mystery Schools.

We know that, with the exception of Issac, the sons and grandsons of Abraham made their way through India, and even further into the Middle East where Abraham is credited as being the progenitor of Islam as is described in the Quran, though the religion did not officially begin until Mohammeds involvement many centuries after Abraham sent his sons away.

So, when during the birth of the Nazari

in Bethlehem he was visited by '3 foreign Magi from the East,' it takes a special significance in my mind that itches and begs to be tussed out.

That is why I am writing this.

It should be noted that there was never any mention in the original texts of exactly how many Magi attended his birth. It is thought that the authors were drunk. No. It is thought that the authors simply assumed that since there were three gifts..there must have been 3 magi to deliver them. Probably wrong. A supposed eye witness account of the magis journey popped up 300 years after the fact claiming that there were 12 or more traveling in the party.

This lends credence to the idea that this was an entire magical order (or at least its senior brethren;) that this order was almost certainly seeded by one of Abrahams sons or grandsons; and that they traveled not only to attend the Nazaris birth but also to examine the god-child and make sure it was of satisfactory health and temperament. The mother would have been looked at by a normal physician.

There are so many thing in just these two stories alone that I want to share with everybody. Things that would make a Southern Baptist stone my ass to death. Things that would make a Methodist very seriously consider leaving the church to worship Satan.

People just don't realize how fragmented the testaments have become. It was intended as a living document that existed in space but outside of time. There was a reason that the original Hebrew texts contained no punctuation and no vowels..at least until the Masoretes got ahold of it. Despite the scores of Southern parishioners taking absolutely everything they read in the Bible at face value- much of what is taken as 'Gospel Truth' has been either misunderstood, mistaken or even simply mistranslated. It isn't conjecture at this point.

Take the following example:

Go to Google translate and type in

"I am a peaceful man."

Now translate from English to Latin to Greek to Hebrew to Greek to Latin and then back to English again. (Almost exactly how we arrived at our most modern Biblical translation minue English at the begining..by the way)

Surprise, surprise. It now reads

"I have an airplane ticket."

The Nazari himself anticipated this ridiculous game of telephone, which is why he communicated his most important messages with parables. Because parables require deeper thought from the listener, deeper thought from the reader and thus deeper thought from the translator as well.

Moving on..

As mentioned in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas:

II. 1 This little child Jesus when he was five years old was playing at the ford of a brook / and he gathered together the waters that flowed there into pools and made them straightway clean [unintelligible] commanded them by his word alone.

2 And having made soft clay, he fashioned thereof twelve sparrows and nd it was the Sabbath when he did these things [or made them,] / and there were also many other little children playing with him.

3 And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, making things upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father:

"Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds. He hath polluted the Sabbath day."

4 And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying "Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do?"

So Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping.

5 And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.

And Jesus smirked. [I added that last part in]

!! Astonishingly, at only 5 years of age the Nazari was demonstrating not only a latent understanding of magical systems but also an ability to apply that system to a PHYSICAL ALTERATION OF THE NATURAL WORLD. He was also showing signs of disdain towards the human beings for whom he had been created to protect. And that coupled with observations of the boys power had everyone in town, not least of all "his parents" deeply, deeply terrified and concerned.

Here again from the Infancy Gospel:

1 After that again he went through the village, and a child ran and accidentily dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked. He said "Thou shalt not finish thy course." And immediatelhetbe boy who provoked him fell dead at the Nazari's feet. and when some of the onlookers saw what he had done they wrenched at their garmets and said

"From whence was this creature born that every word of his is a great work or a miracle or an act of nature."

And then the parents of the boy he had slain marched unto Joseph, and blamed him, saying: "Thou who has such a child cannot dwell with us in this village unless he is taught to heal and not kill and to bless and not curse. For if he remains as is, he he will slayeth all our children / and then what of us?"

1 Immediately Joseph called the young child apart and admonished him, saying:

"Why are you doing these things? Why do you inflict such unforgivable suffering upon these people? So that they hate us and persecute us? Is this what you wish? But Jesus said,

"I know that these words are not your own (!!??) nevertheless for your sake and for the sake of suffering I will hold my peace.

"But them" Jesus pointed to the parents of the young boy he had slain."Them that accused me.. Them shall bear the weight of their punishment, too."

And straightway they that accused him became blind / and they began to moan and to scream in confused horror until little else could be heard in the town.

2 And they that saw it became even more afraid and even more perplexed / and said that every word which he spake whether it were good or bad, was a deed, or a marvel. So they began to very carefully walk away / pretending not to hear the anguish of their neighbors.

And when he saw what the Nazari had done / he arose and took hold upon his ear and wrung it purple. 3 And the young child was wroth and said unto him:

11l

O. "It sufficeth them to seek but not to find, and verily thou hast done unwisely: Don't you know that I am not my own? Vex me not."

I know what you're all thinking. I spent a year of my life going over this document and asking every difficult question that I could think of. So let me save you some time..

1. The document is authentic. The narrative account matches those of others which which say the same thing in their own texts. Even with evidence, perhaps out of fear, I might have dismissed this manuscript if it weren't for similarly described behaviors by another, far older 'Son of God(s); Gilgamesh, King of Uruk- The (weirdly) 3/4 God King of Mesopotamian Sumeria. If you'll recall, Gilgamesh would routinely rape women in the streets in from of their Fathers and Brothers. He once enslaved a quarter of HIS OWN people....HIS OWN PEOPLE...to build ziggurauts in honor of the Gods- a pantheon to which he technically belonged.

Both Gilgamesh and the Nazari began their brief human existences as supremacists. Their distaste for humanity was oozing off of every word they spoke and off of every action they took. And both of them had to be 'corrected;' Gilgamesh by the Gods (through the creation of Enki-Du, a bizarre man-animal hybrid who challenged Gilgamesh to fight after fight until his rage and hatred subsided.) And the Nazari by his human keepers...though not NEARLY as successfully as Gilgamesh. Here is a link to something I wrote about Gilgamesh a few months ago. It may help to clarify whats happening here in case I miss something.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=246927900243739&id=100047795931957

The Gospl continues:

VI. 1 Now a certain teacher, Zacchaeus by name, stood there and he heard in part when Jesus said these things to his father and he marvelled greatly that being a young child he spake such matters. 2 And after a few days he came near unto Joseph and said unto him: Thou hast a wise child, and he hath understanding. Come, deliver him to me that he may learn letters. And I will teach him with the letters all knowledge and that he salute all the elders and honour them as grandfathers and fathers, and love them of his own years.

"And Joseph chuckled." Is what I would have written, because..

3 And he told him all the letters from Alpha even to Omega clearly, with much questioning. But Jesus looked upon Zacchaeus the teacher and saith unto him: Thou that knowest not the Alpha according to its nature, how canst thou teach others the Beta? thou hypocrite, first, if thou knowest it, teach the Alpha, and then will we believe thee concerning the Beta. Then began he to confound the mouth of the teacher concerning the first letter, and he could not prevail to answer him. 4 And in the hearing of many the young child saith to Zacchaeus: Hear, O teacher, the ordinance of the first letter and pay heed to this, how that it hath [what follows is really unintelligible, but it disturbingly picks up..]

VII. 1 Now when Zacchaeus the teacher heard such and then so many allegories of the first letter spoken by the young child, he was perplexed at his answer and his instruction being so great, and said to them that were gathered there:

Woe is me, wretch that I am, I am confounded! I have brought shame to myself by drawing to me this young child.

2 THIS CHILD IS NOT EARTHLY BORN: this is one that can tame even fire: this is one begotten before the making of the world!

WHAT BELLY BORE THIS? what womb nurtured it? Woe is me, He putteth me from my sense, I cannot follow his understanding. I have deceived myself!

Goddamn. GODDAMN. I mean what the fuck, man? I remember reading this for the first time and simultaneously remembering what the older version of this creature said to his people in Mathew 10:34;

'Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.'

~shudder~

I'll explain how truly terrifying that statement really is in part 2.

-Chad

[snickerl]

The Birds and the Bees Through the Years

Alternative X-Files universe where Scully is allowed to raise both of her children, telling them how babies are made at different stages in their lives.

tagging @today-in-fic

CHAPTER 3/? - GLASS BOWL

"What's up, Will? Did you have a good day at school?"

It's always the same question he gets asked when he returns home. Either by his mom or by his dad, depending on who sees him first. Sometimes his parents are both away on a case and his grandma takes care of him. She doesn't ask him this annoying question he doesn't want to answer. He doesn't want to talk about school as soon as he leaves the building. His grandma understands, his parents always want to know. William thinks that might be the difference between parents and grandparents, the former want to educate and raise you and make you a better person, the latter just want to spoil and love you. His parents love him too, William knows. Still, his only answer to his mother's question is a non-committal, "hmpf."

"What's that supposed to mean? Mind talking to your mother in whole sentences?" She isn't letting him off the hook, and actually today there is something the boy would like to share.

"Jimmy is such a liar, mom!"

Jimmy is his friend since kindergarten, but from time to time they argue about something and today is one of those days. William's still confused about what came up in school today.

"He said his parents made him in a glass bowl and that's why he's so bright and gets A's in maths all the time."

Scully looks up from the kitchen sink where she's been doing the dishes. "Oh? You've gotten your maths results today?"

"Yup."

"And what have you got?"

"B+," the boy huffs, signaling he's not happy about it.

"That's perfectly fine, Will. Congratulation."

Scully hates it when her son is never satisfied with his accolades. Ambition is a good thing, so is stamina and will-power, but he's also just a kid who should enjoy life. Scully remembers her own ride through school all the way until graduating from medical school. She spent too much time with her nose in her books and too little out with her friends. It had earned her the best grades but her social life had fallen a bit by the wayside. It had become a recurring pattern in her life. For a long time, her job had played the most important part she sacrificed family dinners and free weekends for. Even a date once in a while. Her priorities hadn't shifted until she became a mother. First, of a three-year-old girl she adopted and then, three years later, of a baby boy who turned eight last month and is upset about something she hasn't got a clue of yet.

"But Jimmy got an A."

"I don't care what your friends get and neither should you. You've had problems with that particular topic." Text problems, of all kind. The child that was able to read at the age of four had difficulties solving maths text problems. Scully believed it had something to do with compartmentalizing. For William, reading didn't have anything to do with maths. He read the text but just didn't see the maths behind it. It had taken quite a few private lessons until he understood how to approach the task. "But that didn't keep you from making an effort. You studied hard and you are redeemed with a very good grade. You don't have to be perfect, honey, or the best of your class. We love you no matter what grade you're bringing home. And I bet Jimmy's parents tell him just the same."

"But he still is a liar."

"In what sense a liar?"

"Because he brags about being made in a laboratory. He says he's some kind of superhuman because a scientist created him in a glass bowl. But babies are made in the bedroom by their moms and dads when they like each other very much, right?"

Scully clears her throat before she answers. She feels they are approaching difficult territory. "You're right, William, most babies are made when their parents make love to each other in bed, but not all of them. Jimmy might have told you the truth, it's possible he was conceived by artificial insemination."

"Artificial what?"

"Insemination. It means the mother's egg and father's sperm are brought together outside the woman's body."

"In a glass bowl?"

"Well, it's called a petri dish, but yes, it's more or less a glass bowl, rather a small, shallow saucer. The procedure is also called in-vitro fertilization. In vitro is Latin and means within a glass, observable in a test tube or any kind of artificial environment."

"And it's done to make smarter babies?"

"No, it's done when a couple wants to have children but can't the natural way. In the bedroom." She clears her throat again. Talking to her children about the birds and the bees has never been easy for her. Making it sound like a lesson in biology class is her MO most of the time.

"Oh."

"It's a demanding procedure. It puts the future parents under a lot of stress, especially the mothers, but also the fathers. It's not much fun. And it costs quite a bit of money. Only couples that have tried for a baby without success for a long time would try in-vitro."

"Hmmm."

William lets the information sink in. His mother is always good at explaining those things to him. It's so much easier to ask her than to look it up in a book. She seems to be a resource for any kind of topic. "How come you know so much about everything, mom? Even about this in-vitro stuff," he marvels.

"I'm a medical doctor, remember?"

"But you examine corpses to find out why they died, you don't create babies."

He has a point, Scully has to admit. She works on the opposite side of the spectrum. She doesn't deal with the creation of life but with its termination. Some of her classmates at medical school chose to specialize in gynecology exactly for that reason, to be working in a medical field that entailed joy and health and not mainly sorrow and illness. She deals not only with illness but with murder, crime, and death. She's being called when the worst things have happened and nothing she can do will help the victims, their families, and friends. All she can do is help find the offenders and bring them to justice.

Scully struggles a bit with what she should reply, then decides her son is old enough to understand. "I have first-hand experience, Will."

"What? I'm also a test tube baby?"

"No," she hurries to erase that thought from his mind, "no, you're not."

"Emily?"

"Daddy and I adopted Emily, remember? You know she came to live with us when she was three years old." It's only half the truth, but Emily hasn't been told the story of her genesis yet, and she can't learn from her little brother. Mulder and Scully have been procrastinating the conversation with their daughter so far, waiting for the right moment. The moment just never seems right.

"Ah, right. So where does your first-hand experience come from then, mom?"

Eagerness for knowledge. It characterizes every child, but William in particular. He drinks in information like a sponge. Scully sighs barely audible. Now that she has started, she has to finish.

"I was once told that I couldn't have children. Doctors call it barren or infertile. I suffered from a condition that prevented for me to conceive a baby naturally."

"In the bedroom. With daddy."

"Um...yes."

"What condition?"

Tenacity, thy name is William. Scully puts her thoughts into an order for a moment, tries to think of the right words to explain it to an eight-year-old.

"A woman's body usually contains enough eggs to provide one every month to get inseminated by a man's sperm. If this happens, the egg starts dividing and settles down in the uterus. The woman is pregnant. The baby grows and nine months later it's born. My condition was called Premature Ovarian Failure which means that there were no eggs in my ovaries, and without an egg, there couldn't be a baby."

Thank God for science. As long as Scully can quote from one of her textbooks, even if it's one explaining the wonder of propagation to children, she's on a secure footing. She once read in a guidebook for parents that it's important to respect the child's natural curiosity without being judgmental, that if she avoids these talks, her children won't learn her values about sex, but will develop their own from what they hear from friends and the media. And she doesn't want that to happen. From a psychology professor, she heard that the most important thing is for a parent to explain the difficult topic without seeming anxious, that the child picks up the melody line, not the exact words. Both children have come to her in mysterious, inexplicable ways but she doesn't want either of them to believe they were an anomaly or some kind of freak.

"But mom, where is the baby daddy and you made in this...uh, what is the bowl called again?"

Answer the questions as they come, that's what the guidebook also said. Don't overload a child with information but don't try to steer the conversation elsewhere either. Scully wants to be an 'ask-able' parent, doesn't want her children to think the topic is a taboo in their family.

"Petri dish. There is no guarantee the procedure works, actually it fails more often than it is successful. We tried twice but it didn't take it. We don't have any other children besides Emily and you."

"Okay, but how come I exist then? If dad and you couldn't make babies in the bedroom neither in a petri dish?"

Once again, William's quick thinking mind, his wit and ability to always see the bigger picture surprises Scully, in a pleasant way.

"You, my son, are a miracle," she whispers in an uneven voice, stroking his hair lovingly.

To this day, Scully is still clueless how it had been possible for her to become pregnant. The only logical explanation would be that they hadn't been thorough enough when they took the ova from her. Somewhere in her ovarian tubes there had to be an egg hiding from the insidious harvesters, waiting for the right moment to make its voyage one fine day to join up with a sperm, Mulder's sperm. When she calculates back from the day William was born, she must have conceived him during one of their first times in bed. What a lucky stroke of fate. It seems that at least once in their lives the stars had aligned and fate had been on their side.

A pair of cerulean blue eyes just like her own stare at her, spanned by the cutest wrinkled forehead Scully has ever seen, for the boy tries hard to throw his mother an appraising look. The only thing missing is that he quirks his left eyebrow, and when he does, Scully almost laughs at the smaller version of herself. Are gestures and facial expressions hereditary or has she looked at him like this so often that he imitates her subconsciously?

Don't overload your child with information, rings in the back of Scully's head, another advice from one of the brochures she'd been reading about parenting when she became a mother. Going into detail about how science failed to provide an explanation for a natural conception would overwhelm the boy for sure.

"You are a miracle because you came to us at a moment of our lives we'd almost lost hope that something really good would ever happen to us. We had already accepted that Em would never get a little brother or sister, and suddenly, totally unexpected, you announced yourself. It was so out of the question that I could be expecting a baby that your father and I misinterpreted the first signs as symptoms of a serious illness. I didn't believe the doctor when he congratulated me on being pregnant. I truly thought he was making a joke."

"That would have been very mean of the doctor. I bet you were sad that you couldn't have children and playing a prank would've have been really nasty."

William is not only smart but also remarkably sensitive for a boy his age. In such moments, Scully sees the young Mulder in him, Mulder at a time he was still called Fox. An attentive, empathic, and caring boy and protective older brother to his sister Samantha.

"Yes, definitely. But he wasn't mean, he was being very nice actually."

"So, I'm not a test tube baby. I'm a completely normal child."

"Yes, you are."

"Normal is okay."

"More than okay."

"Even if I don't get A's?"

"Your school grades have nothing to do with what you're worth as a person, Will. I want you to remember that well. What really defines a person is their compassion, their ability to truly love another human being, to give instead of taking. When you think about yourself, I want you to pay attention to how you interact with others, with your friends, with your family, and most certainly not to a grade you got in maths."

"Hmmm," the boy lets his mother's words sink it. They seem heavy and significant, but there's something else bothering him.

"So, you chose Em as your child but you had to take what you got in me."

"I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Will." Her son's trains of thought take unpredictable turns sometimes.

"You saw her and liked her and then you decided to adopt her, but when I was born you had no choice, you had to keep me. Would you have adopted me too? I mean, if you had been given a chance to decide? If you had found me somewhere, in an orphanage or some other place, would you have chosen me or would you have looked for another kid? Someone you liked better?"

It takes Scully a moment to fully grasp the idea behind William's question. Usually, the adopted child in a family questions if they're being loved as much as the biological child. They are usually the ones who are unsure about their position in the family, not the biological one. Her son surprises her once again with the way he looks at things, with how he sees the world around him. She feels the urge to pull him close and shower him with kisses but she doubts he would appreciate this kind of answer. He needs a reasonable explanation he can verify.

"There is no difference between Emily and you as our children, William. I can speak for your father as much as I'm speaking for myself. We were blessed with two little individuals enriching our lives and it doesn't matter how we became a family, the only thing that matters is that we did. We're linked together by our love for each other, not by how we joined this family."

"Is that why grandma calls dad her son once in a while? Because he isn't her son, right? Uncle Bill and uncle Charlie are."

"Daddy is grandma's son-in-law. That is what he's called officially because he's married to me, her daughter. But she loves him just like she loves uncle Bill and uncle Charlie. Even before we were married, she loved him and treated him like family. See, love has nothing to do with how the other person came into your life. You either do love someone, or you don't."

"Complicated."

"Well, actually, it's quite simple. You'll understand better once you're older, sweetie."

"Ugh, mom, don't call me that! I'm not a baby anymore!"

"No, you're not," Scully admits, hiding her melancholy at how fast he has grown. "I'm sorry. William."

"Will is okay, but not sweetie or jellybean or pumkin or-"

"I got it, sugarplum." She grins and hurries to add, "just teasing."

"Good." The boy is really serious about this. "I'm going to also tell dad. I hate it when he calls me fuzzybear. Only because his parents chose to call him Fox doesn't give him the right to annoy his own children likewise. I wonder why Em still lets him call her kitten. I mean, seriously, she's all grown up."

She's fourteen, Scully thinks, and still their baby. They will always remain their babies, their sweetpeas, their angels, and it strikes her as funny that when it comes to naming their children, Mulder is even more prone than she to this syrupy tawdriness. The man who demands to be called by his last name picks of an embarrassment of riches coming up with pet names for his offspring. Maybe it's because he missed this kind of fluffiness as a kid, the sugary sweetness with which parents coat their children.

"What's for dinner?" William asks all of a sudden, letting go of the topic of his conception abruptly which, the guidebooks say, is typical for children his age.

"Chicken curry with rice," Scully answers somewhat relieved the conversation is over. It won't be the last time she will be bombarded with questions, either from him or Emily. She will be open and willing to answer each and every one of them.

"Oh, yum! I'm in my room, call me when it's done." He's already halfway up the stairs.

"I'll call you when the table needs to be set."

"Just as well," the boy shouts down from the landing, ten seconds later Scully hears his door slide shut.

She turns to the stove where the chicken curry has been simmering for almost an hour now, lifts the lid off the pot and stirs absentmindedly. She marvels at how mundane her life is at times. Preparing food, waiting for her husband to come and her family to gather at the dinner table. She worries more often about school, the grocery list and how fast her kids grow out of their shoes nowadays than liver-eating psychopaths, men regrowing body parts and immortal photographers, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. Not at all.

Who would have thought life had this in store for her when young, green, ambitious Special Agent Dana Scully took her first ride down to the basement to meet her new partner?

She loves it, and she knows Mulder loves it as much.

[bolbianddolanhouse]

BNHA self insert AU [Book 3]

New? Read here! Then here!

Chapter 6: What’s More Manly Than This? Just Guys Being Dudes!

Not gonna lie chief....I’m excited for once to be training with my mom on something that’s unrelated to quirks! I really want to know how she does things, what makes her tick.

“Okay Iwata, sit across from me” instructed mom as she sat on the grass in the backyard “today, we’re going to tap into stamina. It’s not as easy as it sounds, in fact, it’s not my favorite thing about the quirk BUT it comes in clutch.”

I sit down comfortably, still kinda full from breakfast “I’m ready to learn!” I responded eagerly.

“I like to hear it!” she giggled “Okay, it starts with mentality. Telekinesis takes a lot of brain power, but the stamina enhances it so there’s no lagging and you can focus on multiple things.” She sat up straight and closed her eyes “I unlocked this stamina when I was a child, my sister was about to body slam me in the living room, the fear triggered me to stop her mid-air. Before I struggled to float more than two inches off the ground and to see that made me realize the potential of my quirk.” She floated off the ground, along with a few other things laying around the yard “The stamina allows me to sense things with my telekinesis, my thinking is sharp and lets me continue the fight beyond what my body can sustain.”

“Is that what’s going to happen to me?”

“Well, that’s the thing, I don’t know!” she opened her eyes “Everyone is different. My mom’s muscles strengthen and it heightens her other quirk, not her telekinesis. My aunt Imelda’s trigger is anger and she creates invisible walls. OH! And my cousin Julie needed to get on blockers because she gets unstable when she triggers it.”

“Oh” I said, feeling a little nervous.

“But I will say, male telekinesis users are rare” Mom stated “3 out of 5 girls in Latin America have telekinesis, 1 in 30 boys in the same demographic. Nobody in my family on either side has a male telekinesis user! To think I birthed two in one generation is a miracle” she say proudly “If only everyone else knew.”

“Your family doesn’t know about me?” I was surprised to hear that.

“Nope, only my immediate family does” she sighed “Oh but the things my aunts would do if you knew about you and Tensei! They’d do everything for you and treat you like royalty!” she chuckled “They did that when I was born, I was the only one in my generation that was born with telekinesis. I was spoiled by my aunts and uncles.”

“So what you’re saying is that I might not like what happens?” 

“Yea, but only one way to find out” she threw a rubber ball in my face, getting me off guard “I’m gonna have to break you just a little, sorry in advance.”

Giving me no time to react, she came at me freakishly fast. While her strikes and sneak attacks were erratic and nearly impossible to dodge, I was starting to feel my mind overwhelm. My mind started to cloud and spin, like the beginnings of a tornado. What tipped me over the edge was when mom’s hand went for my face, for whatever reason, my head went to a dark place. I grabbed her by the wrist and put it in a vice, I felt a second wind of power and suddenly the cloudiness cleared. It was like everything was firing off at once and had no way of controlling it.

“Iwata!” mom’s voice broke through to me “Can you hear me?”

“Yes! Mom? Help!” I cried out, unable to loosen my vice on her “I can’t stop!”

“Do your breathing exercises, try to calm yourself” she calmly spoke “Don’t focus on your hand, only your breathing.”

I closed my eyes and did the exercise “Breathe in...hold....out for 10....breathe in...hold....out for 10.”

“Good, keep it steady” she encouraged me until I finally let go of her “How do you feel?”

“Scared, I didn’t have control over myself” I uttered, then I looked at her wrist “Mom! Your arm!” I took a closer look at what I did “I- I hurt you”. Tears were welling up in my eyes as I saw my engine mark on her arm that almost broke her skin.

“Hey, don’t worry about me” Mom covered the mark with her other hand to get me refocused “I’ll heal and this isn’t the worst thing to happen to me. Walk me through your experience.”

I wasn’t convinced that I didn’t do a bad thing to her “I felt the fog in my head when I got overwhelmed and your hand coming for my face triggered me.”

“What thoughts came up when you saw my hand?” she asked “How would you describe it?”

“My mind went somewhere...dark” I admitted “Like something out of a horror movie when the white teenagers go in the basement.”

“Oh my sweet baby” she brought me in for a hug “I feared it might of been that.”

“What do you mean?”

She took a deep breath “It’s rooted in trauma, because your quirk activated on that night.”

Pause this shit! Okay.... flash back time! When I was about 5 years old, back in the old house, somebody broke in. I didn’t know what was going on but I was grabbed by my dad and taken to the twin’s nursery. All of us were in there, except for mom. We were told to stay put and be quiet, but listening to the sound of fighting and things breaking in the living room was too much for me. So I ran out of the nursery to get my mom, I knew I couldn’t do anything to help but I wanted my mommy so badly. At the top of the stairs, I saw the scene that I relive in my nightmares; My mom was badly beaten on the ground as the home intruder was about to finish my mom. I screamed for the bad guy to get away from my mom, but then he dashed toward me. Before he could reach me, I held my arms out and my telekinesis activated and I threw them down the stairs. Mom finished the job but my memory is hazy from that but all I know is that if I didn’t step in, she wouldn’t be here. After that incident, I was going from doctor to doctor and put in therapy. I couldn’t sleep well unless my mom was in the same bed as me and I woke up next to her. I was scared of this new quirk, I was scared of losing my mom...I was scared to be alone.

I got over my anxiety of losing my mom and I controlled my quirk better...but, I still get the nightmares of that night. That event made me resent having quirks and all the evils in the world. I put it in my head that you can hurt me all you want, but you don’t hurt my family ESPECIALLY my mom! I vowed to never hurt the people I care about, if I do, then I’m no better than a villain. That event shaped my fate and I’ve given up a normal life when I was a child...this is my purpose and I shall live up to what I put in my mind!

...flash back end! Unpause this shit!

“Is that a bad thing?” I asked, pressing my chin on her chest.

“I- can’t say” her voice cracked “if this is really your trigger, then you relive those repressed traumatic feelings every time.”

That shit hurted, hearing my mom lose her cool. I had to say something to put her at ease.

“Then I guess that’s how it’s gonna be” I made eye contact with her “I want to get stronger and control this ability. I promised myself that I’d become stronger and protect my family. And I won’t stop now” I broke the hug “Please, teach me more.”

Mom stood there for a moment, tears falling as she looked at me, but snapped out of it “Okay then, onto the next part.” She wiped her tears and continued.

Over the course of a month, I mastered activating my stamina. And it payed off in the classroom! I can use more weaponry without using my arms, I figured out how to enhance my engines with it, AND (my favorite part of it all!) I’m crushing it in the hero course. It’s amazing how everything is falling together...it’s late April at this point. Beizu has been tweaking the device a bit more and we’re fast approaching the sports festival.

-Friday, Hero class-

“...And Iida-kun, since you’re a dual enrolled student, you have the option to do the sports festival or not” announced Mineta sensei “It won’t affect your grade or anything, it’s more for scouting than anything really.”

“Hmmm, in that case” I didn’t hesitate “I will not participate this year.”

The class roared with confusion, clearly not liking my answer.

“Bro! What do you mean no?!” yelled Gon as he shot up from his seat “You’ve been on the gains with me! Plus you moved up in the class rank! You have to duke it out with us!”

“You’d get tons of offers Iida-kun” added Kage-san “why refuse?”

“Well, I’m focusing more on my agent stuff this year” I defended myself “they have something similar, so I’m not worried about not getting noticed. Besides, my uncle is going to be there personally to scout and he’s just gonna do the thing where he offers one to me because I’m his ‘favorite’ nephew.”

“Wait, who’s your uncle?” asked a different classmate.

“Former Ingenium” I responded “He might be out of commission but he runs his agency and refuses to retire!” I chuckled “Good for him though, he worked hard to start up back in the day. Also I’d rather that offer go to one you guys, he already knows what I can do.”

“Fair enough, thank you Iida-kun” sensei said as he wrote on his notes “And that’s all the business we had to take care of! Time to go into this educational video.”

I didn’t pay much attention to the video. I was much more excited for after school activities! It’s Beizu’s birthday and that means it’s sleepover time at his place! I got him the perfect gift and I’m ready to sleep in and eat way too much pizza. It’s the ritual we’ve been doing since we were babies and I wouldn’t have it any other way! Once the bell rang, I just shoved all my things in my bag and sped off to meet with Beizu. I kept my duffle bag with him and we giddily waited for his mom to pick us up.

“Hello boys, how was school?” asked his mom once we hopped in.

“It was good!” we said in unison.

“Ready for your festivities I assume?” she questioned as she drove out of the parking lot.

We nodded vigorously and couldn’t sit still the whole ride to his house. We immediately washed up to get into our jammies.

“Oh shit, almost forgot to text my mom that I’m here” I said after putting on my sleepytime sweater.

“What do you want on the pizza?” asked Beizu, looking down on his phone “I’m ordering it online.”

I stopped my text “Uhhhhhhh”

“AND DON’T SAY NONE PIZZA, LEFT BEEF AGAIN!” scolded Beizu “I won’t fall for that again!”

I chortled remembering “It was hilarious! The pizza place had to call to make sure we input the information correctly” I wheezed breathlessly “then the lady was all like ‘the beef won’t stick on the bread without the sauce and cheese’!”

“That’s why! Every year it’s the scandal of the none pizza, left beef” Beizu groaned “Just say what you want or I’m just getting 3 green pepper pizzas!”

“Ugh fine!” I cringed at the idea of bell peppers “Get the Meat’za Treat’za and the Hawaiian with extra pineapple.” I finish my text and flop onto his bed “Hey, I have an idea!”

“Hm? What is it?” Beizu responded as he clicked away on his phone.

“Lets look at our 5 year old selves building a pillow fort.”

Beizu stopped his clicking and turned to face me with that twinkle in his eye “Hell yea! I’ll get the cube!”

As he opened his desk drawer, his mom called out to us “Boys? Is there anything you want from the store?”

Beizu slammed his draw closed “Yea! Some juice!”

“Also some almond milk!” I requested.

“Okay, I’ll be back soon with everything!” She responded “Don’t get too rowdy while I’m gone!”

Beizu waited until his mom drove out into the street to open his drawer again “That was close!”

“Why did you close your drawer like that?” 

“Mom doesn’t know that I’m working on this” he said, taking out the device “I’m scared that if she finds out, she’ll flip and deconstruct it.”

“True, I didn’t think about that” I changed the subject “But lets see our 5 year old selves!”

He input the day and the scene changed to 12 years in the past. In this room, all the tech stuff on the walls disappeared and were blank again. We saw our little bodies trying to build a fort out of bedding.

“aaaand done!” squeaked little Beizu, putting on the final pillow “Inside! Hurry!” little me huffed and little Beizu followed. “Hugs!” little Beizu tackled, knocking down our fort in the process “Oh no!” Little me giggled “We’re trapped! But it’s okay because we’re both under here.” “You’re my bestest friend Iwa!” “You’re my bestest friend Bei!” “Boys, pizzas here!” Our little heads popped up from the pile of pillows and blankets “PIZZA!” We clawed out of the pile and ran straight into the door “Owie!”

“We were a so dumb!” I laughed at the little boys wincing in pain.

“But we were so cute” Beizu fawned “I remember this was the birthday that your mom finally let you sleepover!”

“Yup, we were both super excited and I almost peed my pants when preschool was over for the day” I laughed at my memory “glad to see that we at least learned how to build better forts.”

The hologram fizzled and all the tech stuff reappeared on the walls. Beizu puts the device on his desk “Put those skills to the test!” he walked over to his closet to have all these pillows fall out once he opened it “I got more pillows.”

We built and perfected our fort, out doing ourselves from last year. We had our usual fun of nesting ourselves in the fort with our pillows and snacks while watching youtube videos. This time around, we shut off everything after midnight and just talked.

“Hey”

“Hm?” I responded as I move to my side.

Beizu was tracing the piston on my palm with his finger “When we graduate and get jobs, do you think we’ll be drift apart?”

“I don’t think we will” I look at him “I meant it back then when I said you’re my bestest friend, I always want to be around you.”

“Then, if we’re not in serious relationships by then” he paused for a bit “do- do you want to live together?”

“Sure, I’m down” I think about it for a bit “If you don’t mind me hoarding up the bathroom with my personal care.”

“Deal!” Beizu laughed “But that makes me happy that we’ll always be together. I really can’t imagine life without you.” 

“I can’t imagine it any other way” I hold his hand, then I remembered something “unrelated question, who’s your crush?”

He turned red “Um, I uhhhh can’t tell you.”

“Aww why not?!” I whined “You said you’d tell me.”

“That was then, it hasn’t changed but I’m a little shy” he admitted “But I will say that they’re amazing, handsome and caring. Sometimes they say dumb things and I just want to kiss them to shut them up.”

“Oh you’re into dudes?” I asked “Didn’t expect that.”

“But they’re the only guy I’ll ever feel like this toward” Beizu clarified “I kind of wish they’d make the first move so I don’t live with the rejection. I don’t know what I’ll do if they reject me!”

I brought him in for a hug “Don’t worry about, if they don’t feel the same, then it’s their loss! I’ll be on stand by to beat his ass.”

Beizu started laughing “I believe it” he snuggled up to me “you’re like one of those big teddy bears at department stores, soft and snuggly.”

“That reminds me!” I float my bag toward me “I got you a gift, here.”

He opened the box and gasped “It’s one of those teddy bears with the small head! I love them!”

“Thought you might” I beamed at his reaction “You share those memes with the bear and figured you’d like the real thing.”

“I do! But what should I name them?” Beizu looked at the bear’s little face “it has to be fitting.”

I blurted out “Shamwow”

“Like the infomercial product?” Beizu questioned “Why?”

I shrugged “I dunno, feel weird giving pets or stuffed animals people names.”

Beizu thought about it “Yeah you right” he held the bear up “Shamwow McHeadinson it is!”

“I love it!” I laughed at the name, then I felt Beizu snuggle up with me again “still want to squeeze me instead?”

“It’s like we’re a family now” he pointed out “This is our son.”

“Then who’s the mom?” I asked, playing along.

“Uhhh....shit, didn’t think that through” Beizu furrowed his eyebrows “Guess we’ll take turns being the...mom?”

“We need a third person to be mom” I suggested “I’m not responsible enough to be a mom, but I’d be more than happy to be the protector!”

“And I’m too focused on my projects to be a mom!” sighed Beizu “But I’m down to be the bread winner!” He put the bear between us “Two Dads, Mom and a baby with a small head.”

“Sounds like the title of an American sitcom” I snort-laughed “But could you imagine? Us part of a polyamory partner-hood? The third person would have to be on a whole other level to have us in the mix.”

“Would you be down?” Beizu curiously asked “Like, lets say, we both like the same person and we don’t feel like making the other choose sides. So we just all date each other?”

I put some thought into it “Hmm, if we were in that situation sure, I’d hate to be divided against you” I put my arm around him “I’d never want to deny you of happiness and love, I want you to have it all, even if I don’t have any.”

“Love triangles are for anime and young adult novels!” Beizu said as he fixed himself to lay more comfortably on me “You’re warm and comfy” he yawned “I’m just gonna sleep here.”

I pulled a few pillows to support my body for this sleeping position “Then I won’t move so you can sleep” I say as I put my arm around him “Nighty night Bei.”

“Good night Iwa” he responded sleepily “I love you.”

“I love you too” I closed my eyes so I could sleep too. 

To think that Beizu and I are so close that we can cuddle and say soft things. All without crossing the line of friendship! He’s more than that to me, he’s part of my family. I can’t wait to live with him later down the line, all that talk about after graduation plans got me motivated to get stronger.

The weekend was going great until dad had to do some work related thing on his day off, so I had to go back home Saturday night. Mom had some agent work that came up too, so Uncle Jin had to portal me home to tend to the brats. Yeah they’re old enough to not have a baby sitter BUT they shouldn’t be left alone like that.

“I’m home you shits” I announced myself in.

“Welcome home!” responded Hanaka “we’re in the living room!”

I walk into the area and see the twins and Nikita “You too Nikita?”

“Everyone got called into action” sighed Tensei, sitting at the dining room “All of our friends are here.”

Before I could groan, Hanaka’s friends tumbled down the stairs.

“How was that?” chirped the girl with the bird head.

“Nya! You’re squishing me!” snarled the other girl with paws for hands.

“Needs landing work” Hanaka responded, then turned to me “We’re practicing stair surfing for a stunt.”

“Nya! We’re going to attempt to stair surf on a mattress down the spiral staircase at school!” said the girl “No cap!”

“I’m telling you guys that it’s not gonna work!” stressfully groaned Tensei “now shut up! I have to do research for my next debate!”

“You’re no fun!” huffed the girls.

“Does it look like I care about your little stunt?!” retorted Tensei “At least I know I’m gonna pass elementary school without a misconduct record!”

“Okay settle down!” I demanded the room “It’s late for y'all niños, so if you already ate, go to bed! I’ll be staying up in the living room” I point to the stairs “If I hear a single peep after midnight, Ima give you a powpow.”

That last part made everyone scramble upstairs. Sometimes being part latino has it’s perks. But I took my things to my room and found that Tensei’s friends were already asleep on his side of the room. Looks like staying up downstairs was the right move. I head back downstairs to make myself an iced coffee and heat up some leftovers, like the gremlin I am! 

I don’t know how long my parents are going to be gone, it’s been a long time since the last one of these things. Last time I was like 10 but Lili was the one in charge. Since our parents and their friends are in hero careers, emergencies spring up often and sometimes both of our parents are called in. When that happens, usually their friends get called up too, so they drop off their kids at our house since our house is protected by it’s own system that my mom created. It’s a system not sold by her company! She says it may not even be legal to sell on the security market and that just makes me both laugh and be in awe by her innovation. 

“Iwata, what would you like to do?” asked the robo dog, awaiting command.

“Oh uhhh, can you check the surroundings of the house?”

“Scanning now......all clear.”

“Put up the level 2 security shields” I say before taking a sip of my iced coffee, feeling particularly mischievous.

The screams of the children followed “AHHHH WHAT THE HELL?!”

“GO TO SLEEP!” I yelled back “DON’T MAKE ME GO UP THERE!”

Then there was immediate silence...good! Level 2 on this security system blocks any and all internet connection in case of hackers or transmission locating by an intruder. Yeah, mom thinks of everything! But my little stunt didn’t make me feel any better from leaving the birthday festivities early. We had planned a whole night of binge watching Steven Universe and talk about our feelings! 

Yea, it’s a classic cartoon but I grew up watching it because my mom has all the episodes and movies saved in the family media library. She’d put it on when she had to have some time to herself and didn’t want to deal with our asses. It was the only times we’d stop and watch something as kids, all four of us on the couch. We’d play ‘Crystal Gems’ in the backyard sometimes, I’d get stuck being Garnet only because Tensei didn’t have a quirk like Steven...so he’d be Steven by default. But low-key, all of us wanted to be Steven! Lili was Pearl and Hanaka was Amethyst, and if Beizu was over, he’d be Peridot. Good times....good times.

Time ticked on, it was nearly 4am when our parents came back. Mom deactivated the shields and entered the house with the other parents.

“Welcome home” I greeted my parents “And glad to see everyone is alright. Your kids are all upstairs, asleep.”

“Thank you for taking care of things Iwata” thanked my dad “Sorry that you had to pull away from the birthday festivities, I know how important they are to you and Beizu.”

“It all good” I said before yawning “He understands that I’m the oldest and the twins can’t do this on their own.” I noticed that everyone was still in costume “Hm? You’re still in your hero fit.”

“Yes, that’s because we all changed at home” he explained “We all work at different agencies, it would be inconvenient to go change at work then fight.”

“Oh, fair I guess” I look around for Mom “Where’s mom? Is she okay?”

“She’s a bit under stress at the moment” he looked at the stairs leading to her office “Wish I could tell her to calm down and sleep it off, but she wants answers to what we just saw.”

I didn’t pry for more answers “Hope she finds what she’s looking for” I yawned again “I’m going to bed.”

“Sleep well” Dad said as I turned to the stairs.

“Same to you!”

-Chapter 6, End-

<Previous - Next>   

[condensed-theorem-shop]

Here, let me take a break from ranting about cults to talk about something nice and uncontroversial (ha): homeschooling.

And by “talk about homeschooling,” I mean “copy/paste a comment from Ozy’s blog, because it got sufficiently long to be maybe worth sharing on my own.”

I was homeschooled much like this! And so have Many Thoughts. Apologies for the absurdly long comment.

(Well, my parents would never describe themselves as “unschoolers” in a million years — they’d say “classical/eclectic” if asked — but “classic homeschoolers who pay serious attention to the child’s interests” and “unschoolers who pay serious attention to the three R’s” probably converge at some point.)

I had a very very positive experience with homeschooling overall (and am happy to expound on it at length; my parents are very Into educational theory, and included me in the discussions as I got older).

(Braggy data on success thereof, which I blush to include, but: I ended up graduating at 16, attending a college in the top 20 in my field, and recently getting accepted to a good grad school with tuition waiver, TA position, and fellowship. On the non-math side, I double-majored in honors liberal arts, and was nationally competitive in fencing in high school. My 13-year-old sister is auditing her first college class (discrete math), regularly runs local 5- and 10Ks and places top in her age group, and wants to be a surgeon. The 10-year-old is on Suzuki book 3 for cello, and one of the top students in the local string project. All of us were reading at two, reading chapter books at three, and won various impressive things in lots of math competitions as well as the private-school-equivalent-of-UIL.)

So from that experience, some thoughts:

(1) The sleep thing is so so so true. Easily the #1 thing my non-homeschooled friends were jealous of. (#2 was not having to take the state’s standardized tests.) Possibly this is outdated science, but my understanding is that teenagers are actually just biologically wired to go to bed later and sleep in later than adults.

(2) Exercise, yes! Homeschooling and exercise and free-range kids all fit very nicely together. I did lots of biking and swimming and hiking and roller-blading and just running about wildly; it definitely contributed that by the time I was in double digits I was allowed to ride my bike anywhere within about a ten-block radius (the boundaries were defined by the nearest streets busy enough to be dangerous), so I got lots of exercise just getting around.

(3) Something of a follow-up on that last: if your kids are going to be running around unsupervised outdoors during school hours, you should probably make sure you’re clear on the local homeschooling laws, and then coach them on how to talk to a policeman. My parents did that for me, which was good, because it did in fact happen a few times that a policeman stopped me and asked some very pointed questions about whether I was playing hooky.

My instructions were: be polite; say “yes, officer, no, officer”; explain that I was homeschooled, and it was my recess [we didn’t have anything that formal, but easier to say that than explain your entire homeschooling philosophy]; if they insisted on taking me to the station, comply and then ask for my parents until they were provided.

The last stage of that never in fact came into play; the policemen always went “oh, okay. My sister homeschools! Do you like it?” and let me go (once with instructions to go get a better lock for my bike).

(4) I absolutely approve of homeschooling as “hey, let’s test out our kooky educational theories!” That’s exactly what my parents did. (My dad’s pet theory is that algebra should be introduced alongside arithmetic, and slopes alongside fractions. All three of us turned out super-math-y. Just saying…)

(5) One of the best things about homeschooling is a 1:1 (or close to it, if you have multiple kids) student:teacher ratio. Take full advantage of this.

(6) Yes, the math thing! A depressing number of homeschooled kids end up with poor math skills. It doesn’t help that it’s usually the mom homeschooling, and women seem to have even more of a tendency to go “oh, I can’t do math, it’s scary” than men. (Not claiming that women are inherently worse at math or anything; this seems to be pretty clearly a response to cultural pressure.)

Hiring grad students is a good idea; they’re interested in the subject, have some teaching experience, are usually lonely for their own families/younger siblings, and will work for dirt cheap. My family did a lot of that for me.

Beware of Khan Academy and various other “teach your kid math for you” services; these tend to prey on this phenomenon. Parents will pay ridiculous amounts of money for canned math curricula, because they’re so nervous about their own abilities; and while I know a lot of public-schooled people who used Khan Academy on their own after school and liked it, it really doesn’t substitute for an actual math teacher, especially for kids who aren’t inherently super-math-gifted. If you want a math curriculum, consider looking into Art of Problem Solving.

(7) A common unschooling failure method is: the kid spends twelve hours a day playing minecraft, the parent decides this is Probably Educational He’s Learning About Architecture Or Something, at eighteen he still can’t read or multiply. (My parents tend to refer to this as “nonschooling.”)

Making the three R’s less optional will probably help with that. Also, it seems like there’s something to be said for helping kids do things that they first-level don’t want to do but second-level do want to do. Plenty of adults use things like leechblock, or accountability to a friend, to serve the same function; a kid can’t reasonably be expected to have mastered using those tools, so a parent reminding them to turn off the computer and go work on their exhaustively detailed pyramid replica they love seems like a good thing.

C. S. Lewis actually brings something like this up in the Screwtape Letters (as part of an analogy for spiritual growth, but whatever). He points out that reading children’s versions of Greek myths is fun, and learning the first handful of Greek words is fun; and that being able to read Hesiod in the original is also fun; but in between, there’s a lot of drudgery with memorizing paradigms and struggling through translations. Even a kid who’s really passionate about Greek may need to be nagged a bit on a day-to-day basis to go review their verb tenses; it seems hard on a twelve-year-old to require them to have the intrinsic motivation to do that without any authority figure nudging them.

In my family, what this looked like on the day-to-day level was: my parents would tell me things like “no, go do your translations before you play” or “don’t forget you need to spend 30 minutes working on chemistry at some point this evening.” (Not very unschool-y, I admit.) But they’d be flexible about it, if I’d gotten really into researching the mathematics of swarming behavior or something.

And if some subject was consistently a cause of misery for me — not just “ugh, organic compounds, whyyy” but genuine “I hate this, it’s boring, I don’t want to do it,” every time over a period of days or weeks — they’d discuss with me whether I genuinely wanted to quit the subject. (It was really really clear that this was actually an option, and I wouldn’t be in trouble for choosing it or anything, which was crucial.)

I nearly always, given some space to think about it, decided that I wanted to keep working on the subject. Sometimes we’d decide to put it on the back burner for a while and come back to it next semester, or to skip to a different part of the subject and come back to that one another time, or try a different textbook, or find a tutor. Occasionally I did decide I was done with the subject, and they respected that.

I think this worked out really well. The only two subjects I can think of that I decided to totally quit were piano and Latin, and in retrospect both were absolutely the right call. Piano I quit after a year, and I recall absolutely none of it; I’m profoundly unmusical and was a disaster at it and hated it, and don’t wish in the least that I’d kept trying. Latin I quit after eight years and an audited university class; my parents and I had a serious discussion, and agreed that while I was glad to have studied Latin I wasn’t interested in pursuing it at a higher level, and that “took a class on the Aeneid in Latin” would be a good milestone for having mastered it to a casual-reading-of-Latin-texts level, and so I did that and then quit. I’m a little rusty, now, but given a dictionary and grammar can still read Latin texts fairly comfortably.

(8) I think you’re overestimating the difficulty of learning a foreign language. I had a friend growing up who was German/English bilingual, as was his mother; my mom tutored him in literature in exchange for his mother spending an hour or so a week talking with me in German. Afterwards my friend and I would hang out, and were encouraged to talk in German.

In addition, I did Rosetta Stone (pricey but effective, immersion-based) and later the Foreign Service Insitute’s course (free online if you can find it, or cheap to buy; immersion-based; meant for diplomats who are told ‘okay, you’re going to Germany in a month, be ready.’) (I also did another online course at one point, but it wasn’t very good.)

By the time I graduated high school, I was able to (with reference to a dictionary) read genuine literature in German; Goethe and Rilke were my favorites. My accent was apparently very good; I was asked more than once if my parents were native speakers (e.g. by the instructor in the not-so-good online course). I got a 4 on the German language AP test, which exempted me from all foreign language requirements in college (which I’m very grateful for; college language classes are super-intensive).

And — in some sense, the most important — when I spent a semester abroad, I was comfortably able to get around Vienna for a week or so speaking to people in German. (It helped in Hungary, too; Hungarian is hard and I learned very little, but nearly everyone spoke either English or German.)

I think key elements in that were: I started early (I was seven when I met my friend); I spent a good amount of time with a native speaker; and everything I did was immersion-based. The not-so-good course I took wasn’t mostly immersion-based, and I actually found that very frustrating, because I had to keep switching languages in my head; eventually I convinced the teacher to just talk to me in German all the time, which everyone else found very impressive but made it much easier for me.

(9) What you’ve said about the social issues all sounds right. I think the value of just escaping the social pressures of middle school isn’t to be underestimated; I know a surprising number of people whose parents homeschooled them /just for middle school/.

I got to spend my early teens dressing however I felt like (frequently ridiculously), wearing no makeup, hanging out with boys as friends, and not being at all self-conscious about any of it. My friends in public school were constantly worried about their appearance and their weight — and I don’t mean this as “I was a better person than them” or anything like that, I mean that other girls made nasty remarks to them constantly, and I escaped that. I’m very glad to see my sisters getting the same benefit.

(10) Also: bullying. Or, rather, not. The vast majority of my friends who were in public school were bullied, at least at some point; many of them still deal with ongoing trauma from that.

I encountered bullies — twice, total. The first time was in elementary school, in a homeschool group, and my mom promptly picked up on it and got the bully kicked out — she was able to both notice and do something about it, neither of which parents of kids in school can usually do. The second time was in middle school, in my fencing club; I took it to the instructor promptly, because I had spent my whole life with authority figures who listened to me and trusted me and acted productively on that. She had a very stern talk with the much older teenager in question, and he left me alone from then on.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure the bullying issue alone justifies homeschooling.

[quillandsaber]

30 Days of Beauty and the Beast: Day 6 (First)

I had great fun designing the castle chaplain's backstory and personality.  I hope to involve Pére François heavily in the future, because he's pretty uniformly awesome.  Adam did not deserve him.

BE WARNED: There is a premature newborn in this story.  As in, might-not-live premature.  I can assure you as the author that the baby survives (he's been referenced in an earlier short), but my characters don't know that.

"Your Highness, you have a son."

Cogsworth delivered the news gravely, and Adam knew instantly something wasn't right.  From the moment he'd been told Belle's pains had started, he'd sat in the chapel, alternatively praying, hoping, fearing, feeling utterly powerless...and now it had all come to this.  Cold dread settled in the pit of his stomach.  "What is it?  What's wrong?"

"The midwife and doctor agree it best that the baby be baptized immediately," the older man said carefully.  "I was asked to fetch you; I've already found the chaplain."

Adam did not need to be told twice.  He raced out of the chapel, up the stairs, dodging servants as they came from Belle's rooms carrying linens, ewers, other random items he couldn't make out in his mad dash towards his wife's bedchamber and the small cluster of people gathered outside the door.

Pére François was already there, stone-faced, preparing the holy water and the oil--he must have had it with him in readiness, Adam thought, and his stomach sank further--but Adam barrelled past them towards the doctor and midwife.  He could see blood on their hands, the smell of it frightening him even more.

"What's wrong?" he asked, darting between the two.  "How are they?"

"The princess is as well as she can be, but your son is...very small, and his cry is weak.  We believe he was born earlier than he ought."  The doctor looked to the midwife, who nodded.  "It is possible he may live--thrive, even--but for the sake of his immortal soul, I cannot recommend taking that risk.  However..."

"The princess won't allow anyone to take the child from her," the midwife finished.  "It's not uncommon for new mothers to be possessed with this sort of madness when they know their child is...unwell, but he is still unbaptized, and he will need to be fed if he is to thrive."

"I can perform the sacrament for the child in his mother's arms, there is no impediment," the priest interrupted, bowl and cloth in hand.  "But for the sake of his soul, we must act now.  His Highness should come with me and be witness."

"I'll go first," Adam returned, mind racing with all the new information; it was too much, too much at once to absorb.  "I might be able to calm her down."  Actually, he had no idea if he was able to calm her down--it would be a first if he did--but he needed to see that she was all right, at least.  The vague notion that he might have lost her (might still lose her, a voice said in the back of his head) was near enough to drive him insane.

With trembling hands, he opened the door to look in on the birthing room.

From what little he knew of birth, it seemed as if the servants had already been in to remove the soiled sheets and other things, but the smell of blood was still in the air, barely masked by scented candles.  Belle sat in her bed, hair a tangled, damp mess, eyes sunken and red, but--God be praised--alert and alive.  In her arms she clutched a tiny linen-wrapped bundle as if she was afraid it would disappear from her arms.

"Adam!" she whispered, fear coloring every syllable.  "Adam, is the priest here?"

"Yes, love, he is."  Adam glanced over to Pére François, who had bustled past him to the bedside.

"I won't let him go," she insisted, and the bundle let out a weak whine.  "They won't take him from me, not if...not if…"

"Be at peace, daughter," the old priest said, placing the bowl of water on the bedside table.  "All I need is to be able to see his face to baptize and anoint him, and to know his name."

"Jean-Alexandre," Belle said, her tight grip loosening just enough for the bundle to start turning, though Adam couldn't see past the black-coated back of the priest.  "We agreed that it would be Jean-Alexandre for a boy."

The priest began muttering in Latin so quickly Adam couldn't follow it, and he craned his neck to try to catch a glimpse of his son.  When Pére François backed away, he could finally see the child's face peering out from swaths of linen and silk wrappings.  It looked like no child he had ever seen before, pinched, somehow pale and ruddy at the same time, and so unbelievably small.

Then the child's nose twitched, and he gave out the tiniest wail Adam could possibly imagine, and a surge of some primal nameless emotion threatened to overwhelm him.  That was his child, his son, his and his wife's.  His firstborn, no matter what else happened tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.

A woman--the wet-nurse, Adam was fairly certain, though he only vaguely remembered being told that Mrs. Potts had selected one to be added to the nursery staff--shuffled past him.  "The young master is hungry.  Madame, if you please--"

Belle's eyes flashed with desperate fire as she clutched the swaddled baby close to her chest.  "'It is fit that every mother should nurse her own child because her milk, which is nothing else but the blood whitened of which it was made and wherewith he had been nourished the time he stayed in his mother's womb,' that's what Guillemeau says."  She looked to the ancient book that she'd kept next to her nearly as long as she'd been sure she'd been expecting; she must have read it cover to cover at least five times.  "You aren't taking him!"

"Madame--" the nurse began again, but a withering look from Belle silenced her.  The nurse looked to Adam, who looked to his terrified, distressed wife, then to the doctor.  He hadn't the faintest clue what to do, he didn't even know if there was anything he could do that would actually help, but everyone was looking to him to make a decision.

"Is there any reason this would be dangerous to either of them, anything that wouldn't be in the book?" Adam asked at last.

The doctor seemed to choose his words carefully before speaking.  "If you will permit me to mention it, ladies of noble lineage are often too delicate for it, and if any tried, it is likely that their milk would be insufficient.  However, considering the...unusual circumstances of the princess's birth..."

"It's her decision, then."

The entire room was silent for a long moment after Adam's proclamation except the small cries that came from the child.  Then the nurse spoke.  "Very well, Highness.  If his Highness would…?"

"No, let him stay, if he wants."  Belle's voice cracked.  "I want Alex to know his father, no matter what happens.  As much as he can."

The nurse looked startled, but as soon as the doctor left, she proceeded to assist his wife, murmuring quietly as they adjusted chemise, baby, and breast according to some set of rules Adam couldn't guess at, but he took the opportunity to sneak around to get a better look at his wife and son without intruding on what seemed strangely like a sacred scene, perhaps reminiscent of the Madonna and Child paintings he had seen in Italy in his youth.  Finally, the nurse backed up, muttering something about being back in ten minutes, and then the small new family was alone.

"You can come closer," Belle said, gaze fixed on the child at her breast.  "He has your eyes.  I was hoping he would."

His hands were still shaking so much he was afraid to even suggest he touch the baby, but he scooted onto the edge of the bed so he could wrap an arm around his wife's waist and look over her shoulder at their child.  The baby had stopped nursing, lying very still with his eyes closed, moving just enough to indicate that he was still breathing.

"This is your papa, Jean-Alexandre," Belle whispered.  "He's been waiting very patiently to meet you for many months now, and he's loved you every minute of it.  Didn't you?"

Adam nodded, blinking back tears.  Sitting there, arms around his wife and son, he vowed to be grateful for this day.  God only knew they might not have many more of them, but he'd always cherish this memory of his firstborn in his heart.

Some important history information for this one, presented as an information dump: the Prince and Belle would necessarily be Catholic, being French post-Huguenot removal.  According to Catholic tradition (as in, how most people believed, which is not necessarily what the detailed theological texts said), an infant's soul would be condemned to hell if they died unbaptized, so a baby who was born weak or sickly would be baptized as quickly as possible.  It's very realistic that Adam would have never seen an infant before; noblewomen didn't raise their own children until they were four or five, and even servant women sent their children away to be wet-nursed as soon after birth as possible so they could return to work.  90% of all French babies at the time were wet-nursed for practical or traditional reasons, and modern scholars believe this was a contributing factor to high infant mortality rates.

Jacques Guillemeau (1550-1613) was the first French obstetrician.  While his seminal work on birth and nursing would have been considered ancient and questionably-sound in Belle's day--which is why Adam doesn't trust it as much as Belle does and why a lot of its information was ignored by doctors and midwives of the era--it was (to the best of my ability to determine) the only obstetrics text to be written in French until later in the 18th century.  The line in the book immediately after the sentence Belle quotes lists reasons why women would have to use a wet-nurse, one of them being that their husbands won't permit it; Adam, legally-speaking, had the power to force Belle to give the child to a wet-nurse, which is why everyone looked to him to make the call.

[minditruitt]

Misunderstanding the Misconception of Miscommunication

They say you continue to learn until the day you die. That may be true with regard to some things but miscommunication has been around since the beginning of time and most likely won’t end.

We have many ways of communicating with each other....speaking and writing are the two major ways along with sign language. The rest of them vary depending on who’s doing the communicating.....

Emails, and before that, ‘snail mail’ as we now call it....slang, texts, slang texts (lol), the correct form of punctuation, various hand gestures....including the one we sometimes use from the window of our cars, memos at work, jokes, letters, cards and most importantly touch are used daily. A pat on the back, a shoulder massage from someone special during a time of stress, a kiss or a slap across the face which I hope very few people have experienced but I’m afraid that’s not the case....are all ways of communicating.

When I was a child, in the glorious days of 70′s flower power, we thought we had it going on when we would speak “pig-latin” and no one over the age of 12 understood us. In the 5th grade my best friend and I taught ourselves sign language to get around the rule of ‘no talking at lunch’ which happened a lot. I guess a room full of children gave our teachers a collective headache because for some reason they had a teachers table and not a lounge they could escape to. They would hold up one finger or two and if it got to three we all had to shut up immediately.  We got in trouble anyway for the sign language, my friend and I, because we broke the rule of no talking...wait...what? We weren’t talking, we were ‘communicating’.

Isn’t that different?

Apparently we had a misconception of what Mrs. whatever-her-name-was meant. We were pretty impressed that we were helping the collective headaches of our teachers and still able to discuss who the cutest boy was at the table was.

WRONG.....

We got in trouble anyway. So that meant that she misunderstood what we intended by teaching ourselves a primitive version of sign language by thinking we were breaking her rule while we thought we were doing her a favor.....Misconception.

There is nothing worse than a text but I’m someone that uses it frequently. But I know what kind of mood I’m in when I send one. The person on the other end of  doesn’t....although most people who know me know that I am very rarely angry. As a matter of fact I tend to NOT be angry when I should be. Or that’s what my father often told me...

I use emoticons a lot to help with the intention of my communication. Over the last few years I had misunderstandings with a couple of people.

One in particular.

But....

My emotions were all over the place with both of them. and the more I tried to explain what I was thinking it made things worse. I started to put “the tone of this email (or whatever) is....” I would put sad, or confused or happy....to help this person understand that I was not angry as they thought I was but actually conciliatory and caring in what I was saying. With the other one I was trying to be overly accommodating. This even sounds confusing to me as I write it because it seems exhausting and so ludicrous but at the time I felt like I was not explaining the way I was feeling very well and they were misunderstanding me, my meaning and my intention. They thought I was pushy and aggressive when actually I was feeling confused, abandoned and frightened. Those two concepts are almost polar opposites but they were misconstrued into a completely different scenario than the intention. Confused? Yeah...me too. lol (slang-text)

Back in the dark ages of the pre-internet days when we all wrote things down either on pieces of paper, letter head or fancy notecards with our monograms....we could (and did) use various handwriting skills no longer taught. I remember watching my mother write in cursive when I was young and being so excited to learn it in school. In my teenage years I embellished my writing with grand flourishes. A sign of a true Leo, I’m sure.

I’m still a little dramatic....ok, a lot. :-)

Yes.....I used the little circle over my ‘ i’s ‘. I was one of those.....

Handwriting could tell a lot about someone and there were even handwriting experts to decipher the tone or intention and actually would compare styles of different writings to see if possibly they came from the same person.

My handwriting would slant. Sometimes in two different directions in the same paragraph. My teacher said it was caused by the fact that I was actually left handed but was forced to use my right hand when I was younger. Interesting concept. I just thought it was because my brain raced faster than my hand and that was why my handwriting differed a lot. My mood also influenced my handwriting style. I could tell when I would go back and re-read a journal entry or something that my words were slanting all over the place or neatly slanted to the same side. Maybe I was rushing or maybe I was either happy or hurt. At any rate, it’s interesting....

Using different languages can also add to misunderstandings. I was born in Germany and had a pretty regular sitter that was a wonderful German lady we still communicate with. She taught me a lot of German and when I came to the United States at almost 2 years old for the very first time my grandmother said...’oh my goodness, teach this child some English’. Which was silly because my parents were American and I was an early version of a military brat.

At several points in my life I studied German and despite “pronoun hell” I could speak better and understand a little more than I used to. My husband at the time took me to Munich for our 10th anniversary after a business trip to Switzerland and we went to non touristy places so he could hear me communicate in German. It was exhausting but fun. I am to this day jealous of people who are bilingual and like to watch them switch languages in mid speech. I find it fascinating.

When we lived in Greece for two years I learned a little Greek but sadly the only thing that I remember now is the ability to order a half a watermelon and the words to their national anthem.  

Writing and speaking, different languages and all forms of communication appeal to me even though sometimes I’m not able to get my point across well because of an inability to relate to people who are smarter than I am. Which includes the vast majority of folks..... 

So I guess despite all the ways we can communicate with each other the best way is still face to face in conversation which sadly is becoming a bit of a lost art.

It, I think, can make some people uncomfortable because you can’t hide behind words and your entire persona is put on display when speaking directly to someone but at least you can read the body language and facial expressions of either happiness or exasperation of the person you're talking to. The only other option is the phone which can also not work as well because 90% of us are doing something else while talking...especially with ‘speaker phone’ option. I’m even driving and talking hands free, sometimes, and lord knows when you do that you’re communicating with dozens of people all at once through blinkers, brake lights and sometimes hand salutes. This is distracting to the person with whom you’re actually on the phone with because they are now involved with your traffic issues too whether they want to be or not.

So today, when you speak with someone whether it’s on the phone, in person, email, text, messenger, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, sign language or one of the thousands of foreign languages be sure to either incorporate a smile or an emoticon that your intended understands....

It will make your day better and hopefully theirs.