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crackinglamb · 10 months ago

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7 snippets, 7 mutuals

Tagged by @theluckywizard, thank you! 💕

Tagging @lilbittymonster, @ir0n-angel, @mordinette, @fogsblue, @pikapeppa, @natsora and @the-desert-dancer. No pressure!

...I actually have almost the right number of WIP's to just use those, but I'll include some posted stuff too. And being super, super long, I'll put it all under a cut.

From WG, ch 63 (Solas/OFC, complete):

“Tell me something of your world, arasha.”

“My parents got divorced when I was ten. That means they permanently ended their marriage. I lived most of the time with my mom, but I spent summers at my dad's. He married again when I was thirteen. Jill, my stepmother, likes to garden.” She shifted away from him as she spoke, rinsing the soap from her back while he watched, listening intently. She took the soap back from him and turned him around, so she could return the favor.

“She planted herbs and vegetables that grew easily where we lived, peas, beans, tomatoes, that sort of thing. But she planted flowers too. I used to help her when I was younger, pulling weeds from the rose bed, trying not to get snagged on the thorns. In the evenings, we'd sit on the back deck and watch the wildlife in their yard. Sometimes there were hummingbirds that came and sipped from her bee balm. They're so tiny, no bigger than a butterfly. And they're quick and shy. You have to stay really quiet if you want to watch them. It always gave us a thrill to see them, especially late in the summer, when they were teaching their fledglings to fly.”

She cupped water in her hands to rinse away the soap and ignored the sting in her eyes. He was motionless under her touch, his head cocked, still listening. “My world is filled with technology, with busyness and noise and everyday chaos. To sit in the garden, perfectly still, to watch hummingbirds takes time and patience. A mindfulness to appreciate nature that isn't the least bit affected by the world around it.” She made a final pass of clean water over his back and then laid her palm against his skin, feeling him breathe. “I haven't seen any hummingbirds here.”

He turned in her arms and drew her close. She rested her head on his heartbeat and let him smooth back her curls, pressing the water out of them until they were springy. “We shall have to find them, you and I.”

From Junkyard Dogs, ch 14 (Hancock/F!SS, complete):

When the music was done, and settlers began drifting off one by one to seek their beds, Nora took his hand and walked with him to the quiet spot where they’d buried Nate. A simple small plinth marked it.

“There are no rituals left,” she said, grazing her fingers over the cut stone, “to mark the passing of those we’ve lost. No comfort in faith, no tokens of remembrance. In this new world, a cemetery is only a place you’ll likely find ferals. The meaning behind it has been lost.” He stood quietly by her side, wondering what she was getting at. “I didn’t want that for Nate. I don’t want that for myself.”

She faced him then, and he could see she’d been crying silently, the tears steaking down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumb. She took his hand and pressed something small and warm into it. When he looked, he saw it was a ring of gold.

“Nora…”

“I want you to wear it, and I want you to understand what it symbolizes. It is the union of two people, who have agreed to commit themselves to each other.” She held up the hand bearing the ring’s twin. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, any more than I knew what was going to happen that day we stepped into the Vault. So much of my life has ended, or changed beyond recognition. But this idea, at least for me, has not. I once had a dream of spending my life with the man I loved, of raising a family with him, of living out our lives together in harmony and happiness. And it was stolen from me, by Kellogg, by the Institute. Nate is gone, but the dream is not.”

From The Turning Tide (Iron Bull/OFC, WIP):

Mira ducked into her tent to find Bull propped on his elbow on her bedroll, the journal where she’d taken all her notes spread across his hands. It was all in shorthand, of course, the same one she’d used for years working for Leliana. She wasn’t sure if he could read it. She was equally unsure about whether or not she wanted him to. It would make things easier for her as far as explaining what she’d seen, but the disadvantage was that he could send back a far more detailed report to his superiors than she thought she wanted him to have access to.

“How’d he take it?” Bull asked. She would think it was absently given his tone of voice, but she knew him. Half blind or not, he never missed a thing.

“Academically. I don’t think the whole weight of it has hit him yet,” she replied, plucking the journal from his hands as she sat down in the space between his arms. He took the tacit invitation and wrapped them around her. Solid, strong and real. She leaned back against his chest and he held her up. She closed the journal and waved it at him. “Let Sister Nightingale see it first, okay? Then I’ll give you something to report back to Par Vollen.”

“Hmm. How bad was it, Chestnut?”

“In your own words, it wasn’t pretty. And you were right, it wasn’t.”

“Was it a good death?”

“No.” She let her voice turn flat. Because there was no universe in which what happened to him was a good thing. “It was only the best you could make it.”

From Destiny Is Just In the Timing (Varric Tethras/Shae Cadash, WIP):

Hawke was still tacking up when she reached him. He smiled down at her. “You don’t have to see me off.”

“Yes, I do.”

His smile turned a little melancholy, as if he was remembering that morning too. The day he left Kirkwall and she stood in the snow to watch him go. “I suppose there’s a precedent set.”

“Yes.”

He finished packing his mount and knelt down to her. They embraced as tightly as they could bundled up as they were. Fereldan he might be, but even Hawke wore a coat in these mountains. When he stood again, it was with reluctance, the first he’d shown since announcing his intention to leave them. But the decision was made, and none of them could change it now. Weisshaupt was expecting him.

“I’ll see you again, Inquisitor. This isn’t goodbye.”

“I will hold you to that, Champion.” She watched him get into the saddle and made way for the scouts who would be going with him down the trail. Before they left, however, he turned to her a final time and she called up to him. “Write to Fenris. Living, not just surviving, remember? Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“Fair weather and open roads, Garrett.”

“And to you, Shae.”

From Right Beside You (Eric/Sookie, WIP):

“You don’t entirely trust me, but you’re not afraid,” he said. Again, it was an observation, not a question. “My house. My things. Yours.” He cocked his head at her. “Are you mine?”

“I’m not.”

“Would you like to be?”

She opened her mouth to give him an automatic ‘no’, but the phrasing made her pause. His tone was so genuine, so earnest. He was actually asking, as if her opinion mattered to him. As if he would respect her wishes, no matter what they were. He seemed to realize that this was something more serious than an offhand inquiry, and let her go. But he didn’t move away, and neither did she. He always loomed over her, he was so tall and broad. And he was accustomed to using his size to intimidate. In all their years of acquaintance, she’d never let it bother her, and that had always seemed to entertain him. So many people feared Eric Northman. She often wondered if that was part of her appeal to him. She had never been one of them.

From Not a Bad Life? (Nine/Rose, WIP):

“Hey, come sit with me. Wearin’ out the floor isn’t going to get us out of here any faster.”

He grumbled a bit, but then he sat behind her, pulling her into the meager shelter of his body heat. They shifted the leather around so it covered her front while he was at her back. His knees rose beside hers and he leaned against the wall. They had a pair of bunks on the other side and a tiny toilet behind a screen, and that was it for the night’s accommodations. She supposed it could be worse; they hadn’t been separated.

She nestled against his hearts, listening to the double thump. As always, it soothed her. “We’ve gotten out of worse scrapes than this.”

“I know. I just don’t like being forced to wait around.”

“You’re so impatient.” Superior Time Lord, indeed.

“Aye.”

She stifled a snicker at the Northern coming out so strongly. “Ya know, you could always try resonating the concrete.”

He huffed against her hair. “Never gonna live that down, am I?”

“Nope. Hey, want you to know something. I wouldn’t trade any of the danger we’ve faced. You know that right?”

“Why not?”

“Because in exchange for it, I got you. You’ve shown me all these things, shown me a better way to live. To be. I wouldn’t give it up for anything. You’ve changed my life.”

From All the Earth and Air series (Lark Cadash/M!Hawke; Lark/Solas, WIP):

Hawke was surrounded by everyone who could fit into the tavern, telling tales and drinking more than a few tankards, judging by the empty ones littering the table. She pushed her way through the crowd, bringing two more with her. He made room for her next to him, sitting sideways on the bench so she was bracketed by his knees even with a polite distance between them. She made sure he ate.

Later, when the tales were all told and the bard was playing soft music to lull the patrons into peacefully finding their beds, they found themselves in a dark corner, nursing one last tankard each.

“Does it come off?” she asked, indicating the stripe of red across his nose and cheeks with a pointed finger. He swiped his thumb over it, grimacing behind his hand for a moment before looking back to her with his typical insouciant expression.

“Are you trying to get under my armor, Lark?” he asked with a sloppy sideways grin and another gulp of his ale.

She smiled back, soft and small, like a private joke. “Bare skin is honest. I have enough masquerading going on around me.”

“And all of them either too in awe of the title or too terrified of your mark to let it fall?”

“Yes.”

He made an effort to sit up straighter, to even out the crookedness of his commiserating look. “I'd ask if you wanted to go to your place or mine, but...well...” He gestured around at the tavern, and the fortress at large. “It seems to all be yours, doesn't it?”

“Come with me,” she said, standing up with barely a wobble and offering her hand to him.

From Some Kind of Resolution, ch 1 (FemShep/Nihlus Kryik, complete):

“Isn't henna a type of ink?”

“Yes, it is. I'm surprised a turian would know that, no offense.”

He gestured at his face. “Call it something that stands out culturally, as a form of marking.”

She nodded, thinking about the N7 tattoo on her upper arm. “Okay, I get it. In my case, it's just short for Jehanne.”

He was giving her a thorough look now. “Jehanne. Would that be Jehanne Shepard?” he asked after a moment.

This is it, she thought. Once they recognize my name, it's all over.

“Yes,” she answered, wary.

“I thought you looked familiar. Commander,” he inclined his head briefly. “You showed remarkable courage and skill at the Blitz. It made you something of a celebrity, didn't it?”

She made a face, equal parts disparagement and accepting. “Yeah.”

“It can be hard to live with.”

“Oh, would you know about that?”

“Some. Turians don't place the same sort of entertainment value on our heroes. Doing one's duty should be enough of a reward. You humans love to gossip, though, and put people on pedestals, if that's the right expression.”

“Ah, yes. Meritocracy, right? And yeah, that's the right expression.”

“You're well informed on the Hierarchy.”

“Alliance,” she said with a shrug of one shoulder. “I've studied your race, its history and whatnot. Well, really, we've gotten a crash course on all the races. It's a bit mind boggling, I'll admit. But...fascinating.”

“Hmm, fascinating,” he echoed her, and his voice had distinctly dropped from polite to interested. She wondered what it would be like...

“You wanna stay here and exchange cultural differences or you wanna get out here and experience some?” she asked boldly. His gaze turned calculating, but he smiled just the same. Without another word he signaled for the check.

#tagged #7 snippets; 7 mutuals #long post #dragon age #fallout 4 #southern vampire mysteries #dr. who #mass effect

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ellies-cycling-notes · 1 year ago

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Day 17: Findley State Park to Van Buren State Park

Distance Covered: 81.27 miles

Total Time (including rests): 7:10 (8:03am-3:13pm)

Time spent riding: 6:22

Average Speed: 12.8 mph

Apples Eaten: 4 (fuji - 7/10, fuji - 6/10, fuji - 7/10, fuji - 5/10)

Today's ride was another boring, yet alright, one. It was basically 80 miles straight West from one State Park to another, only going North or South to switch to less busy roads. The entire ride was on various state roads and side roads, most of which had rather good pavement. I made rather good time for a few reasons. There was the good pavement as mentioned, and then also I had a tailwind for most of the ride, and thirdly, this ride was really flat. I barely had to switch gears at all, and when I did, it was more likely to be because of a sudden change in wind making the ride too hard or too easy, rather than because of going up or down a hill. The weather was also really nice, barely getting above 70 Fahrenheit, and oftentimes cloudy for miles on end.

I stopped twice on the ride, once about half-way through, and once only 10 miles from my campsite. I wanted to not take that second stop at all, but I was getting really hungry and didn't want to hold off on lunch.

Today's ride's main focus was on conserving the battery on my phone. One of my power banks is dead, and I think I might have to use my laptop as a power bank to get my phone fully charged for tomorrow. Because of that, I took various measures on the ride to extend my phone's power. For one, the fewer number of stops meant I spent less time just sitting looking at my phone (of course, that didn't really matter in the end because it meant I arrived at my campsite earlier, and this would have more time reading stuff on my phone). I also kept my phone's brightness as low as I could, and even turned off my maps whenever I was about to be on a straightaway for several miles, only turning it back on again when I believed myself to be close to the next turn.

I saw a few interesting birds on today's ride. In addition to the normal ones, I also saw a peacock on a front porch, a vulture by a field, a bird I think was a hummingbird (it was moving too quickly for me to be sure), and what I think was pheasants in a yard. Apart from those, today's ride didn't really have anything that stood out, which is kinda what I expected, biking across rural Ohio.

Design Notes

Today's notes are probably going to be short (I don't actually know, I have a few key points that I wrote down during the ride, but most of the substance has yet to be written).

I've been thinking about character stats/ability scores. This train of thought comes from 2 places.

1) Yesterday's ruminations on Procedural Generation got me thinking about Characters, Inc. again, in which each character has 6 (maybe 5, I can't remember) stats that affect how well they do in a dungeon. I'll go more into detail later in this section, because I spent a lot of time specifically thinking about Characters, Inc.

2) I've been reading LitRPGs, which are a fantasy sub-genre where the fantasy world has game-like elements, often including ability scores.

Ability Scores

I understand the necessity of ability scores in games in order to simplify complex systems of the world, but there's always something about them that feels awkward. There's always too much overlap between certain abilities, or cases where it doesn't make much sense for you to automatically become better at multiple unrelated things. For example, bench pressing should increase your Strength, but in most games that would also increase your leg power, even though they're different muscles. With that being said, I do enjoy the use of ability scores as measures of characters that aren't directly controlled by players, because then those abilities end up being used in more broad stroke ways, and so it makes more sense. For example, if you have a character with high dexterity, you can't guarantee that they'll succeed at a certain parkour move, but if you give them an entire parkour course, they'll probably complete it more quickly than someone with a lower dexterity score. That brings me to my discussion of Characters, inc.

In Characters Inc, you the player send a party of characters out on a quest, and only receive the results of said quest. As such, this is the perfect place to make use of ability scores, as they can be used to broadly define a character's strengths. Here are the ability scores as I remember them in Characters, Inc. I will describe the ability and what it used to do, if I can remember, as well as what I would have them do if I was to remake the game.

Strength (STR) - Every quest in Characters, Inc has a hidden power level the party has to beat in order to complete the quest. STR contributes directly to meeting that power level. In addition, when distributing damage amongst the party, characters with more STR will have been targeted more by enemies, and so will receive a larger portion of the damage.

Agility (AGI) - I don't remember what this does in the original version of the game. If I was to remake it, it would have 2 main effects: it would influence how long it takes for a party to complete a quest, and it would act as a buffer relative to one's STR such that they are targeted less if they have high AGI.

Endurance (END) - Endurance directly impacts how much health a character has.

Toughness or Defense (TOU) - After getting assigned damage, TOU reduces the amount of damage that a character takes. If I remake the game, it might also increase the amount that the chosen character is targeted, because otherwise a high TOU character is useless without high STR.

Magic (MAG) - Similar to STR, this directly contributes to the power level of the quest. It also increases the chance the character is targeted, but at a much lower rate than STR. Thus, it pairs well with characters that have lower END or TOU.

Luck (LUCK) - Increase the rewards characters receive from the quest. Every quest has guaranteed rewards, but this stat increases the chance for additional gold and/or item rewards. In the original version, each character's luck was used independently to figure out additional gold and items, such that you could get at most +1 item per character. If I was to remake it, I'd probably have it that the character with the highest luck is taken as a base, and each other character's luck is added on to that, but not to the full amount.

That's all. There's no pics today, as the ride was rather bland and boring. Tomorrow I'm headed straight North to Ann Arbor. I hope the wind will've calmed down a bit by then, because I'd rather not ride 80+ miles with a headwind.

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bounce-a-coin-off-your-witcher · 3 years ago

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And Tomorrow, Too.

I'm back!

Much love and many thanks to @stinastar @hailhailsatan @newnamesamecharlotte and @veritasrose for helping me yank this thing out of my brain!

Please enjoy this hurt/comfort that ends with glorious, glorious fluff.

TW: Blood, canon typical injury, infection

Jaskier was having a very rough day, objectively speaking.

He’d just finished dressing after a dip in the river when a lone bandit surprised him, shoving him to the dirt and kicking him in the ribs to keep him down. Having dealt with a gut-punch from a Witcher, Jaskier had recovered faster than anticipated and tackled the stranger to the ground.

“Foolish troubadour,” the bandit snarled. There was the quick flash of something silver and a sudden white-hot pain shot up the bard’s side from his hip to his ribcage.

“Shit,” Jaskier gasped, clutching desperately at his slashed doublet. The panicked bandit scooped up the largest of the bard’s travel bags and darted into the woods, leaving his bloodied weapon lying atop a pile of leaves beside his victim. When Jaskier pulled his hand away from the wound on his ribcage he grimaced; that was more blood than he’d been hoping to see. “Fucking cock.”

After he stripped to the waist and rinsed off in the river a second time, Jaskier took inventory of himself. The cut started at his left hip and slid up his ribcage to just beneath his left shoulder, and it was practically impossible to bandage; any attempt to wrap the upper half of his injury made him bite his lip to keep from screaming in anguish.

It was agony to move more than a few inches in either direction, since the twisting motion pulled at his torn skin and stung like hellfire. All he could really do was apply a loose poultice of chewed mint leaves to ward against infection and tie his shirt around his torso in lieu of a bandage. His cloak would have to work even harder than usual to keep him warm until Geralt arrived.

“Alright, well,” he muttered to no one as he accounted for the rest of his scattered clothing and supplies. “I need to find somewhere to rest and gather what wits I still possess… somewhere that’s still close enough for Geralt to find me. Shit, this isn’t good.”

The bard thanked every god he knew when he managed to find a small cave less than a hundred yards from the enormous oak tree where he met Geralt every year. He limped his remaining belongings into the slightly cramped space and deposited them against the left wall.

---

Fortunately for Jaskier, the idiot bandit had declared his beautiful elven lute “too bulky and annoying to carry”, and had left Sexy well enough alone. Unfortunately, the ruffian had still made off with all the bard’s coin from at least two months’ worth of contracted performances, most of his medical supplies, and most of his rations, as well.

But Jaskier had spent years at Geralt’s side and the Witcher had taught him how to deal with emergencies of every variety. Jaskier wasn’t about to disappoint his companion by flailing about ineffectively like some noble-born dunce at a time like this. No, Jaskier was determined to be healthy and ready to travel again by the time Geralt arrived in Kaedwen to find him. They only had a week or two together before they separated again for the winter and he wasn’t going to lose a single precious second in Geralt’s presence due to some silly highwayman.

Lovelorn fool that he was.

The bard used his remaining strength to gather a few armfuls of firewood and light some dried leaves with his flint and steel. He laid out his bedroll against the back wall so that he could see clearly if anyone approached from outside and wrapped his arms around Sexy to keep her safe. He re-wrapped his wound with more crushed mint and laid down to try and get some sleep.

Hopefully Geralt would arrive soon with his medical supplies and more water.

Hopefully.

---

After two long days spent huddled in a miserable lump at the back of the cave, anxiously scanning the horizon for any sign of another bandit (or Geralt) and unable to gather food or kindling, Jaskier was exhausted from lack of sleep. The wound in his side ached and burned far worse than it had on that first afternoon, aggravated by sweat and debris that had crept through his makeshift bandages.

Any added pressure around the edges of the cut made the skin nearly creak with the building strain of infection. He whimpered involuntarily every time he took a breath and trembled at any shift in the autumn breeze. It seemed as if his very bones were aching as his body flashed between the white-hot and freezing cold of a raging fever.

Slowly, and with a great effort on the part of his illness, Jaskier succumbed to the injury and sank into the quiet warmth of unconsciousness.

---

“Jaskier?” Geralt called, guiding Roach around another circuit of the old oak tree. “Are you there, Jaskier? We need to make it to the fork in the Pontar before the harvest ends and I’m in no mood for practical jokes.”

Nothing.

All his Witcher hearing picked up on were leaves twitching in the wind and a few rabbits foraging off to his left. Not even Jaskier could stay so still, even for a joke; his heartbeat and the uptick in his breathing would give him dead away.

“Well, I’m going to town.”

Geralt was about to wheel Roach back toward the road in search of a nearby inn when he caught a whiff of something on the wind - something that sent his heart plummeting into his boots.

Blood.

Jaskier’s blood. And it wasn’t fresh.

He dropped silently from the saddle and gave the signal for Roach to stay put. After a few careful breaths and some shuffling through the autumn leaves, Geralt discovered the bandit’s discarded dagger, still rusty-red around the tip and left edge.

“Fuck! Jaskier!” Geralt called, glancing around the small copse in the woods. “Jaskier, where are you!?”

The Witcher closed his eyes and tilted his head back to better clear his airways. He took a deep breath in through his nose and focused every one of his heightened senses on locating the bard. There it was again to his right, but slightly stronger. “Fucking hells.”

Geralt did his best to follow the trail without panicking. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if he lost his head while the bard was in mortal danger. If the bard was in mortal danger, he tried to reassure himself.

But if Jaskier had recovered he would have been waiting at the oak. Geralt knew that. He knew it with every fiber of his being, though he wouldn’t admit anything aloud. Jaskier’s long autumn absence had already set him on edge when he’d caught the blood-smell. “Gods-dammit, bard. Please be alive. Please, Jaskier, I can’t-”

Geralt bit his tongue and continued to follow the bard’s weak scent into the woods. After too many minutes - perhaps five or six at the speed Geralt was moving - the Witcher reached a small cave. The mouth of said cave was nearly covered-over with dry leaves and Geralt could tell, even from this distance, that Jaskier was not faring well at all. The whole area smelled like rot. Like decay. If it weren’t for the bard’s fluttering heartbeat echoing faintly from within the tiny cavern, the Witcher would have fallen to his knees and wept with despair at his untimely death.

When Geralt ducked inside and reached to pull Jaskier into his arms, the bard struggled weakly. “No, please,” he rasped. “D-Don’t kill me.”

“I’m not going to kill you, Jaskier,” Geralt replied softly. He shifted the thick leather strap of Sexy’s case over his shoulder and hefted the bard into his arms in one swift movement. Those usually brilliant blue eyes looked up at him in utter confusion. The irises were dull and foggy with sickness; the Witcher’s heart lurched in his chest and he turned back to the path, doubling his speed in his hurry to reach Roach. “You don’t have to worry any more, sweet Julek. I’m going to get you to safety.”

“If you must kill me-” Jaskier continued, muttering frantically as if Geralt hadn’t said anything at all “-then p-please do me one last f-favor. I need you to p-please find a Witcher. F-Find the White Wolf. Tell h-him… Tell him that I…”

Then the weight in Geralt’s arms seemed to increase by a fraction and the bard went silent. The Witcher shook the sweating, shaking bundle in his arms but Jaskier remained quiet.

“What do you want to tell him, Jaskier?” Geralt glanced down. His eyebrows furrowed deeply when he realized the human had fallen unconscious. The hummingbird pace of Jaskier’s fluttering heartbeat began to hammer even faster and his breaths were far too shallow. The Witcher rumbled out a determined, desperate plea the universe to save his darling songbird, followed by a quiet but emphatic, “Fuck.”

---

“Eskel!” Geralt kicked down the door to the kitchen of Kaer Morhen with one solid boot. He hadn't slept in two days and his body ached from sprinting up the path with a full-grown man in his arms. “Eskel, Vesemir, please!”

“Fuck, is that Geralt!?” Eskel came whipping around one corner at a sprint. Lambert and Vesemir were close behind, Lambert with a sword drawn and a scowl on his face. He lowered it when he saw that Geralt wasn't being pursued.

“Please, Ves, Eskel, please, help him to survive because I can’t- I can’t-” the White Wolf, for all his bravado and stoicism, was panting furiously. His kinsmen knew that he'd be crying if he had the capability to do so and crowded closer to help. Geralt immediately handed a warm, damp bundle to his Eskel with incredible gentleness and care. He looked up at the slightly taller Witcher and begged with all the strength he had left: “Please. I can't let him die.”

---

Jaskier woke up with a sharp gasp. His side radiated a dull, persistent kind of agony and he felt sick to his stomach. With a low groan he turned to retch off the side of the bed, into a conveniently placed bucket. He shouted when the movement made his wound ache all the more. “Fuck!”

The bard heard a heavy thud from his left followed by some clattering and a quietly whispered, “Shit.”

“G’ralt?”

“Jaskier!” the Witcher appeared at his side in a flash. Geralt leaned over him with a damp cloth in hand and wiped at the corners of his mouth. “You’re alive! Melitele be thanked. Do you need to be sick again? Would you like some water?”

“You’re o-oddly verbose,” Jaskier managed to half-smile.

“Was worried.”

“There’s my monosyllabic Witcher,” the bard grinned through his blinding pain. “It hurts, Geralt. Rather terribly.”

“Fuck, I’m sorry. I don’t- We’re all Witchers so it’s not…” Geralt sighed and turned away to rinse the cloth in a bowl of cool water that had been resting on the sill. “We didn’t know which kind of herbs were safe for humans and which weren’t.”

“We?”

“How’s the patient?”

Jaskier's snapped to the doorway and his body automatically jerked in surprise. He whimpered at the reaction it elicited from his injury, his ribs blooming with a sharp sting. “Shit!”

“Fuck!” the red-headed man in the door replied, slamming his hands over his face. “I’m so sorry. Shit in the fucking nine hells.”

“Uh…”

“Jaskier, this is my brother Lambert. Lambert… This is Jaskier.”

“Ah yes,” the shorter Witcher smirked. “I’ve heard so much about you, Master Jaskier.”

“That I’m a royal pain in the ass?”

“Quite the opposite, really. In fact, when the two of you arrived, Geralt was nearly-”

Lambert’s statement was interrupted by a small wooden bowl to the side of the head, chucked across the room by a grim-faced Geralt.

“Nevermind. Anyway, glad to see you’re awake. I’ll let the others know that he's no longer going hand-to-hand with Death.”

“Others?” Jaskier glanced between Geralt and Lambert with wide, confused eyes. “Am I… Am I in Kaer Morhen!?”

“Aye,” Lambert winked. “And you slept through the first two days of snowfall, so I’m afraid to inform you that you’re stuck at Kaer Morhen for the rest of this season. I’ll let you and Geralt hash the rest of the details out in private. Tootles, Buttercup.”

And just as suddenly as Lambert had appeared, he was gone.

The bard turned to make eye contact with the White Wolf and blinked owlishly. “Wh-What did he mean about being here all winter?”

“I’m afraid he wasn’t lying,” Geralt returned to the stool beside Jaskier’s bed and sat down slowly, as if waiting for Jaskier to order him out of the room entirely. “Your injury was heavily infected and you were close to death when I found you in that cave at the base of the mountains. I ran the Killer in two days instead of one and brought you to Eskel and Vesemir for healing; they were the closest people I could think of who knew what to do to save you. I’m so sorry for trapping you here for the season when you should be teaching and composing in Oxenfurt. If you’d like, I can try to contact Yen or Triss and have them portal you back to the University before Yule.”

“Nobody would want to inconvenience a sorceress on their behalf,” Jaskier answered. "Myself included."

“So you don’t mind staying?”

Jaskier glanced up through his lashes, more self-conscious than Geralt had ever seen him before. “Were you really worried about me dying? Did you really carry me up the path all by yourself? In two days?”

“...Yes.”

“Why?”

Geralt felt his heart shatter to pieces in his chest. All these years spent thinking that if he was too obvious about his feelings he’d hurt Jaskier... and Jaskier had simply been waiting for any confirmation of his affections, friendly or otherwise.

"Because I..." the Witcher stood again and started to pace. "Because, Julek, I love you. I can't bear the thought of being parted from you. It's even worse because I know, I know that you're human and that I'm going to lose you too soon no matter what happens. Illness, age, injury... No matter how many years we have together they will never be enough."

Jaskier sniffled and Geralt turned on his heel to face the bard, hands already outstretched to offer comfort. "You enormous fucking idiot."

"Huh?"

"I have loved you since the moment I saw you sitting in the corner, brooding away," Jaskier grinned. Tears flowed freely down his cheeks and dripped onto the blanket. "Why didn't you tell me? You couldn't even look me in the eyes and call me your friend..."

"Witchers aren't very good at romance, if you haven't noticed," Geralt laughed humorlessly. "I knew I was going to hurt you eventually. It was only a matter of time."

"Well now we have all winter to figure things out," Jaskier offered, sliding his hand across the mattress to twine his fingers with Geralt's. The Witcher's skin was cool against his own and it felt glorious.

"Hmm."

"No! No going silent on me now, you fucker!"

"Get some rest," Geralt smiled, leaning forward to press a kiss to Jaskier's sweaty fringe. "I will be here when you wake."

"And tomorrow, too?"

Geralt smiled oh-so-softly and kissed him again, on the lips.

"And tomorrow, too."

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oriocookie · 3 years ago

Note

"The Horror and the Wild" by the amazing devil for the song prompt. No fandom. Go wild.

no fandom?? time to make up ocs

"Weapons out, Doves!" Captain Charles Smith called from the front of the flock. "We're close to the Ravens. Today's the day we stamp them out once and for all."

Over the rush of the wind in his wings and ears, he heard metal against metal, the sound of his soldiers drawing their swords.

Ahead of Charles, the clouds parted like curtains, revealing the ship of the Ravens.

It was a thing of beauty, Charles had to give them that. A massive galleon, with rippling black sails and emblazoned feather patterns in the gold trimming around the wood. It sped through the air almost as fast as the quickest fliers in Charles' flock, and they'd been hunting it for months.

Finally, he would bring the rebels before the Kingfisher.

"Flank the ship!" he commanded. "Don't let a single Raven escape. If you see Briar-" He swallowed. "Do not engage. I will take her on myself."

The Doves shouted assent, and they all landed on the deck of the Raven's ship, almost in perfect unison.

Of course, the Ravens drew their own weapons and hurled themselves at his soldiers, but that was expected. Charles stalked through the fray, fending off random Raven attacks and throwing them back to his soldiers to take care of.

Then he saw her.

Briar, the captain of the Ravens.

She was assisting her fellow Raven in their battle against one of his own soldiers, her torn wings spread wide as she fought dagger against sword.

Charles hurtled into the battle, slamming his sword against her blade and deftly flicking it, sending it skittering across the deck.

"Well." she said teasingly. "Captain Smith, what an honor."

He didn't miss the sarcasm laced into her words, but he stood firm. "Briar Canina, you are under arrest for theft, public disturbance-"

"And rebelling against the crown, yes, yes." Faster than he thought she could move, Briar lunged across the deck and grabbed her dagger, spinning around to meet Charles' sword with an almighty crash. "Charlie, when are you gonna give this up? I've heard your little speech at least eight times in the last six moons."

Charles stiffened. "I have been tasked to bring you before the Kingfisher, alive. And don't call me Charlie."

"But that's boringgg." Even with the little act Briar was putting on, she slashed and struck as fast as a Hummingbird wing-beat. No doubt, she was good.

"It may be 'boring', but it earns me a solid wa-" Charles was suddenly cut off by a sharp blow to his temple. A different, smaller Raven had bested him, while he was distracted by Briar. Idiot.

When he woke, he was fastened to the main mast, along with the rest of his soldiers, all of them in varying stages of consciousness. Briar knelt a couple yards away from him, tinkering with something, then she spotted him moving and gasped.

"Charlie! Welcome back, sleepyhead." She hooked the thing she had been working on over her shoulders, but Charles' mind was too foggy to realize what it was.

"You will never get away with this, Briar." Charles growled. His wings were bound uncomfortably behind his back, and his muscles were straining to break free.

"Captain?"

Both Briar and Charles answered, "Yes?"

"Captain Canina," the Raven amended. "I wanted to tell you that, um, it's ready."

"Ooh, really?" Briar said cheerfully. "Oh great! Now, Captain Smith, wish I could say it's been fun talking to you, but it really hasn't. If you'll excuse me-"

She turned and ran for the rail of the ship, and for a second, Charles thought she was going to jump, which would be stupid, because Briar couldn't-

Fly.

Briar pulled a small string on her chest, and her torn, oil-black wings extended, now with a bronze addition to replace the missing flesh and feathers of her wing.

Briar did it. She finally managed to fly again.

The ship was now empty except for the dazed Doves, but Charles couldn't help thinking something was off.

Why did he smell smoke?

Oh.

Oh no.

#what do i even tag this #the doves and the ravens #mmmm #feathered #bro idk

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the-wolf-who-kissed-the-moon · 4 years ago

Text

• Randvi x female reader 💋

a sapphire for your heart, part IV

Morning found you wide awake and restless. Your bedding was a mess on the floor and you were lying on the fresh straw which filled your bed. Nausea threatened to spill with every little movement you made; nausea from lack of sleep, and from overthinking. But with a bit of effort you managed to push yourself to sit and wash down the bile with a jug full of lemon water.

The day was promising. It seemed a lot of passers-by had stopped by the docks to bring news or tend to various local business, and many curious young men and women were flocking around Reda’s tend of exotic wonders. You made a careful selection of your own items and brought them outside for the visitors to see and admire, and eventually purchase. Saxon women were especially interested in your variety of colorful fabrics; bright teal, gold, and crimson shawls which powerfully contrasted their otherwise somber outfits. But it was your natural charms that convinced reluctant men to buy expensive gifts for their wives and daughters, and by noon you nearly sold out everything you’ve selected for that day.

All, but one.

It was an emerald green, pure silk scarf, beautifully ornate with golden threads and precious garnet beads. You were offered a hefty sum for it, but you declined with a smile and neatly packed it in your bag.

There were several locals and guests in the longhouse, chatting and enjoying the first course of their supper. Among them, you spotted a beautiful Viking with bright auburn hair and a jug of mead in her large hand. She was accompanied by several friends whom she chatted and laughed with; perhaps it was not the best of times to speak with her. But before you could take your leave, a dark-haired woman waved her arm and asked you to join them at their table. Randvi turned her head to look and when she saw you, she smiled the most beautiful smile you’d ever seen. Your heart raced like a hummingbird, sending little thrills of excitement through every cell of your being.

God… you were bewitched.

“You must be Sapphire! I’m Petra, it’s nice to meet you.”

The woman who beckoned you grinned as she made room for you to sit next to her, and right across from Randvi. You fiercely battled to keep your emotions hidden, to appear collected as you spoke with the people who would accompany you the next day in your treasure hunt. You’d be a group of five, with Petra helping you explore paths safe from dangerous wild predators, and the other three were warriors meant to protect you. A small, but capable group. You drank in their names, clashed jugs with them, and with Randvi, and promised a good journey tomorrow. However, there was a troubling feeling gnawing at your thoughts – the fact that she wouldn’t be there with you.

Soon, the longhouse was full of people dancing and singing, and enjoying the pleasant company of one another as they feasted. In the overwhelming loudness of cheering and music, you excused yourself and went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The night was crisp, sobering you up and lessening the ache at your temples.

“Were we too much for you?”

Your heart jumped at the sound of a beautiful familiar voice caressing your ears. When you looked back, Randvi was standing right behind you on the wooden porch. The light from within cast a glow upon her tall, godly silhouette, making her appear holy. You tightened the hold on your bag, momentarily deciding to postpone gifting her the shawl.

“Not at all. It was the smoke, it stung my eyes.” You answered with a smile.

She slowly closed the distance between you, and with a kind palm at the small of your back she encouraged you to walk with her further away from the longhouse. It was a simple, ghostly touch which lasted a moment, and yet it set your heart ablaze.

How cruel fate must’ve been to plant the seed of desire so deep into your core, only to watch you twist and struggle against the shackles of sapphic love. The way Randvi seemed to glow beneath the pallid moonlight was enthralling; the whole blanket of shimmering stars reflected in her deep cobalt eyes.

“How do you like Ravensthorpe so far?”

She asked.

You glanced at her briefly; beside the lingering smell of smoke in the longhouse and her anguished cries in the night, everything was perfect! But you wouldn’t dare say that out loud.

“It’s lovely. I’ve never been to a Viking settlement before. Your architecture and clothing designs are breathtaking.”

“Clothing designs?” She echoed, slightly amused; perhaps it was the mead.

“Yes. The fabrics you use, the intricate patterns and choice of color… the carvings in your shields and weapons. It’s beautiful.” You confessed with a smile. The way you spoke of her traditional wear made Randvi’s mirth dissolve into surprise.

There was a knot in your throat and your chest felt heavy, as if you were about to spill all the thoughts and feelings you’ve been silently enduring since the day you’ve been acquainted with her. The sound of the river reminded you of her pained, secret cries; you wanted to ask why. Yet all you could do was stand very still as you slowly lost yourself in the depth of her intense, beckoning gaze.

“What else do you like?” She inquired as she shifted from one foot to the other and crossed her large arms over her bosom. Her authoritative pose caught you off guard – heavens, she was a force you could not resist. Your gaze lingered on her dazzling eyes, and then slowly followed the trail of her sharp cheekbones and perfect jaw, all the way to her full lips.

“Your spirit.” You answered. “How your people fight – courageous, almost reckless, unified and strong. There’s something about you…”

Randvi’s interest slowly seemed to grow as she listened. You locked your eyes with hers again, and this time you couldn’t look away. It was beyond sinful to have certain thoughts about a married woman, and yet her allure was stripping you of all reason. If Sigurd was there, he’d probably raise a fist against you, and you’d be crazy enough to challenge him.

“I want you to join us tomorrow.”

Suddenly, you spoke.

“On the hunt you mean? I’m afraid I cannot. There is work I must tend to, here.” Randvi declined, albeit she was pleasantly surprised.

“Whatever work you have cannot be more important than such a great find – I want you to be there, to see the gold for yourself.” You felt as if you found a small grip on her will, and you weren’t about to let go. Something burned deep within you; a flame which would consume you whole if Randvi would refuse you again. Thankfully, she promised she’d consider it.

Delighted, you turned your head to hide a smile in the crook of your shoulder. All of a sudden, tomorrow seemed like decades away.

The graceful Viking walked you to each and every house of Ravensthorpe, introducing you to their current stores and notable landscapes to admire. The abundance of colorful flowers and their sweet smell was intoxicating, lulling you closer to Mother Nature’s chest. There was a soft bed of moss right beside the pool at the base of a waterfall, and that’s where you sat down to tell each other stories.

“Norway's mountains are quite treacherous. It snows heavily most of the year, and unless you’re an experienced tracker, you’d surely find your demise in those steep valleys.”

She spoke with a smile as she fondly remembered her homeland. You were intrigued, absorbing every word and watching her attentively as you learned about the Aurora Borealis and the myths of Odin and Freya, and ragnarok. How fiercely Asgard battled against Jotunheim, and how humans eventually outlived both gods and Jotuns. It was easy to picture these fables coming to life when Randvi told them in such refined detail and with so much confidence. There must’ve been a grain of truth to her words.

“Ymir's tear… I would die for that stone. I’ve heard stories of that gem scattered all over Asgard.” You sighed as you leaned back to stretch over that soft moss and gaze up at the night sky, in awe. You felt those precious blue eyes on you, yet you didn’t dare look, fearful that you’d lose yourself in them all over again.

“Sapphire is a very beautiful name.” She spoke, and you smiled.

“That’s not my birth name…” You confessed.

“Oh?...”

“When I was six years of age, I had this… feeling, as if I knew something was beneath my feet, pulsing, calling me.” You begun your tale and Randvi lowered herself on her side, watching you.

“I had this uncontrollable urge to dig, to see what lured me in and never let me sleep. I broke four of mother’s spoons trying to tear apart the dry, hard soil.” A brief laugh escaped you as you reminisced.

“At last, my older brother stole a shovel from the neighbor one night, and by morning we dug a hole thrice our size. The neighbor was furious, and mother was about to smack us when she saw what we did to our yard.

But then… beneath the damp, muddy floor of the cavern we dug, I felt it again. That urge, that call; I ripped the soil apart with my bare hands, and out I pulled a little satchel. Inside it were two sapphires. I can see them now… shimmering in the light of dawn… they felt sharp and cold, and fit perfectly into my hands, as if they were made for me.” You bit back a smile as you turned your head and saw Randvi, in all of her beauteous glory, propped on her elbow and watching you in awe. Her eyes were just like the sapphires you fell in love with.

“And then?...” She asked with vivid curiosity.

“Mother sold them to buy a farm. And when I was nine summers old, a cart with two travelers stopped by and took me. They promised mother silver, and that I’d be returned by fall with a bag full of precious stones. But… when we returned… We found the farm abandoned, burnt to the ground.”

Randvi’s gaze seemed to soften with sorrow, yet your grin never faltered as you shook your head.

“I kept on traveling, I saw the world. They called me Sapphire ever since, and I forgot my birth name as the years went by… The world, Randvi… it’s so beautiful…” You pushed yourself to sit, drawing closer as you whispered to her.

“Come with me in the morning, let us explore and travel together...”

Her auburn lashes fluttered, as if she was awoken from a trance. She took a moment to think, to find her words or collect herself; but when she turned to meet your gaze again, she answered with a nod.

“I will. I wish to see you dig for gemstones, to see your blessed hands pull treasures free from the earth.”

Your chest swelled with joy, and all at once you were buzzing with excitement.

- To be continued…

*part V.

#valhalla #randvi x reader #randvi fanfiction #randvi #lesbian love #sapphic love #lesbian fanfic

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captainseaweedbrains · 4 years ago

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49 + everlark?

Prompt: “It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

Summary: During the months between their first Games and the Victory Tour, Katniss can’t help keeping an eye on the boy with the bread.

“You’re staring again.” Katniss jumped at the sound of her sister’s voice from behind, turning to glare at Prim before quickly composing her features to a neutral expression. It wasn’t Prim’s fault she was always on edge now, waiting for the next attack to come. For the next weapon flung her way, aiming to dig itself into her unprotected backside. Prim didn’t know how everywhere Katniss went, dead tributes followed, their bloody bodies torn to shred by mutts, eyes glowing. Was it worth it? they always asked, blood and venom dripping from their disjointed mouths. Was killing us worth coming home to this life? She wanted to say Yes, of course my family is worth it. I had to kill you to get home to them. But it’s been two months since the Games and Katniss wasn’t so sure about that anymore.

Was it worth the sleepless nights? The painted target surely on her back now that the Capitol was livid with her and her stunt with the berries? The feel of Rue’s blood on her hands that no amount of scrubbing ever made go away?

She pushed those thoughts away, turning back around to their new front yard. It was still strange seeing a house directly across from their front porch instead of the forest. Her heart pulled again at the absence, missing her forest desperately. She still went, nearly every day now that school wasn’t required, but not seeing the trees from her home made her feel more trapped inside the district than she’d ever felt before. Suffocated, even. She hated this house and wished her and her family could just go back to their home.

To have everything go back to how it was before the Games.

“Does he know you watch him?” Prim asked, sitting down next to her. She offered a plate of cookies Peeta must have dropped off while Katniss was at the Hob. Accepting a cookie shaped as a hummingbird, Katniss wondered if she wasn’t the only one doing some watching across the courtyard. Peeta always seemed to manage to drop off his homemade masterpieces while she was out.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said nonchalantly. She snapped the bird’s wing off and took a small bite. As usual, the cookie was amazing. He must be experimenting with cinnamon now, Katniss thought, because its flavor filled her mouth and she took another bite, trying to hide just how good it was.

Prim didn’t look convinced. “I don’t understand why you broke up. He seems sweet and you’re always watching him from the porch—”

“We didn’t break up, Prim.” It was hard explaining the intricacies of the Games like this to her sister, the things you have to do in order to survive in that arena. Prim was so young and saw the good in everyone she encountered. Of course she took to Peeta and his endless amount of kindness. Peeta and Prim seemed to be spending more time together these days than the sisters seemed to. Katniss wasn’t sure how she felt about her sister’s budding friendship with the boy with the bread. It was all so confusing. “It was for the Games, remember? He was play acting just as much as I was.”

Except that’s not true, that annoying voice in her head argued again. Parts of it was real. Katniss pushed those feelings deep, deep down and focused on the cookie.

For weeks she’d been trying to detangle all of these feelings that suddenly appeared overnight, choking her at how strong and sudden they came. But it seemed the more she thought about them—the way his warm lips felt against hers in the cave, the hopelessness she felt when he was dying in her care. The way his body pressed against hers in the sleeping bag while they slept made her feel safe and protected. Something she hadn’t felt since her father’s passing and in the arena, of all places! Katniss didn’t know what to make of any of it.

And she certainly didn’t understand the urges she felt to run to him whenever she saw him walking down the gravel lane, his curly blonde hair bobbing against his stilted gait. To wrap her arms around him and pull him close to her, hear his steady heartbeat against her ear, a reminder that he was alive and here with her.

Other times, at night when she sees him through the open window, she’s choked with the desperate need to run across the courtyard to his home and bang on his door until he answers, needing to know how he’s been holding up. To see if he’s just as haunted by the bloodied tributes as she is. Do they hate him as much as they hate her?

She barely knows him, but she missed the boy with the bread. Missed his kindness and quick jabs she grew accustomed to during the Games. He lived next door, but he could be in another district with the amount of space they’ve given each other since returning to Twelve.

Real? Not real?

Katniss didn’t know. She just knew she was confused and hated it.

She finished off the cookie and took another, biting the head of the mockingjay off. Prim gave her a knowing look that she actively ignored, keeping her eyes forward.

“It sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself,” her sister said at last, standing back up with the plate of cookies. Katniss didn’t say anything. Prim sighed and went back inside, the front door clicking softly behind her.

Maybe she was trying to convince herself it was all an act, but that’s all she could handle right now. Love was messy and heartbreaking and Katniss wasn’t sure she wanted any part of that.

#Everlark fanfiction #The Hunger Games Fanfiction #Post-Games #In-Panem #Let me know what you think!#I'm always open for prompts #My writing

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fairyqueenofthedragons · 4 years ago

Text

Key to Knowledge

Fablekingdom chapter 3

Glad you all seem to like the story :D I'm having fun writing it. Sorry for the slight delay, life happens. Finals are coming up and I have a bunch of projects so I might be a bit slow on updates for the next few weeks.

(Find Chapter One with a server of “Fk ch 1″)

Come chat with me on discord: https://discord.gg/nwwcSQSUjh

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Breakfast the next morning was good. Lena had called it “cream of wheat”, mixed with berries and homemade raspberry preserves. There was also toast and butter, and orange juice.

Seth had his tongue poking out as he angled his butter knife to bounce sun rays in Kendra’s eyes. She was not close enough to the window to retaliate, so she settled for kicking his foot.

“Don’t blind your sister, Seth,” Grandpa said.

Seth put his butter knife down with a sigh, turning to Grandpa, “Where’s Dale?”

Kendra wondered the same thing, she hadn’t seen him today, was he still asleep? It was almost nine.

“Dale and I got up a few hours ago, finished most of the morning chores. He’s still out working, I’m just here to keep you company since it’s your first morning.”

“Will you guys be back for lunch?” Kendra asked.

“No, today I’m going to the North fields, I’ll be bringing lunch with me.” He studied the wall above them, looking uncomfortable. “I’ll likely be back for dinner.”

“Oh...” Kendra murmured, nibbling on some toast. She supposed he hadn’t particularly wanted them here anyways. He wasn’t required to spend all his time with them.

“You kids remember my rules?” Grandpa asked.

Seth nodded, shoving some cream of wheat in his mouth, “This is good.”

“Stay out of the woods and the barn,” Kendra answered her Grandpa. “And keep things neat and try not to break anything.”

“Good girl,” Grandpa said with a small smile. “There’s a swimming pool out back, it’s all set up so feel free to swim in it. If you don’t feel like swimming there are gardens as well, plus the yard as a whole to run around in. You might even find some surprises if you look around.”

He stood, folding his napkin.

“You’re also welcome to play in your room. Any questions?”

Kendra nodded, “When is Grandma coming back?”

Grandpa faltered, gaze darting to the clock.

“That depends on your Aunt Edna. If she recovers quickly than Ruth could be back next week, or it could be a couple of months.”

“Good thing Grandma’s not sick anymore,” Seth said, putting some jam on his toast.

“Sick?” Grandpa asked.

“You know,” Kendra said with a frown. “The illness that kept her from the funeral.”

“Oh yes,” He nodded. “That one. Well, she was still a little under the weather when she left but was feeling much better.”

“I’m sad we missed her,” Kendra said.

“Yeah, we haven’t seen her in years,” Seth added.

“She was sorry to miss you too,” Grandpa assured them as he pushed his chair in. “I’d best be off. Don’t forget sunblock if you swim and keep your video games inside.”

“Yes Grandpa,” Seth said.

“We’ll be good,” Kendra promised.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Kendra was dressed in her blue swimsuit, a towel over one shoulder, as she stepped onto the back porch. She had a water bottle under one arm and a very pretty handheld mirror she’d found in the nightstand by her bed in her hand.

She paused to admire the gardens that covered a good portion of the backyard. There were paths of white stones meandering through the flower beds and hedgerows. She could see the edge of a vegetable patch peeking out behind some hedges to the right of her, and some dry fountains over there too.

Just in front of the porch seemed to be an herb garden and around the pool were more flower beds and a ring of fruit trees. She didn’t recognize all the fruit there, only the two apple trees and cherry tree. Maybe that one was a peach tree?

She wondered if it was okay for them to eat any of them.

The flowers were really beautiful though, Kendra had never seen such brilliant blossoms.

Seth was already swimming, throwing some sinking toys and diving after them.

The pool looked really cool, with a black bottom and rocks surrounding it you could almost mistake it for a pond.

Kendra grinned and headed down the steps, following the short path to the pool side.

The garden around her was filled with birds and insects.

There were quick moving hummingbirds, wings nearly invisible as they moved from flower to flower.

Huge bumblebees buzzed around, two coming very close to her. She stilled for a moment, remembering the rule her dad taught her. As long as you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. They drifted past.

Kendra paused again as two butterflies alighted on some flowers by her, wings brilliant hues of blue and red. She’d never seen such brilliant butterflies. Then again, she’d never visited a garden this incredible either, it’s no wonder Grandpa Sorenson had so many chores.

“Beautiful,” she murmured.

The butterflies fluttered back up, flying around her for a moment before drifting away.

“Wow,” she whispered as she arrived at the pool. This really was an amazing backyard.

The poolside was paved, with some recliners and a circular glass table with a big umbrella in the center.

Seth climbed out of the pool as she arrived, waving as he leapt from a stone outcropping with a whoop. He hit the water with a big splash.

Kendra set her towel and mirror on the table and grabbed a bottle of sunblock. She took a few minutes to smear it on her skin, rubbing it in until it disappeared.

While Seth dove under water for another one of the sinking toys, Kendra picked up the mirror, carefully angling it so it reflected the sunlight. When Seth came up she aimed a big splotch of sunlight right in his eyes.

“Hey!”

Seth ducked back under water, coming back up in another spot. Kendra pointed the light right back at him.

“Cut it out!” Seth called.

“But I thought you liked playing with sunlight,” Kendra said.

Seth turned to glare but had to look away with the light in his eyes.

“I only did it a little! And Grandpa already told me to stop.”

Because that always stops him from doing something, but Kendra put the mirror down anyways.

“Don’t try to blind me again,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, swimming over to the side of the pool.

“How’s the water?” Kendra asked, walking over to the edge.

Seth grinned, and shoved the water forward to splash her.

She shrieked, surprised by the cold, before her eyes narrowed and she leapt over him into the water.

It took a moment to adjust to the temperature but then she quickly swam away from Seth, ducking under the water to avoid his splashing.

It ended in a splash fight, Seth swinging his arms in wide arcs and doing big but weak splashes. Kendra pushed to water in focused waves, hitting Seth head on more, though he dodged more than she did.

She ducked under water after a few minutes, when the fight was slowing, yanking Seth under water.

The fight began anew, Seth and her wrestling in the water until they were both tired.

“I definitely won,” Seth said.

Kendra rolled her eyes.

The two of them played some games with the sinking toys, racing for them and seeing who could get the most. Then they tried different dives into the deep end.

Kendra was the best at the clean dives, making only a small splash. Seth was great at doing big splashes though.

Kendra grew bored after a bit, getting out of the pool to rest on the edge.

Seth had her judge his dives.

“Watch this can opener!” He yelled as he jumped with one leg straight and the other bent.

“Eight and a half,” Kendra called back when he surfaced.

“That was definitely a nine,” he said as he swam back to the edge to jump again.

“You bent your leg when you hit the water,” she countered.

“Oh, come on!”

Kendra grinned, standing to grab her towel, but stopped when she saw the mirror.

Hummingbirds, bumblebees, and butterflies swirled in the air around the mirror. Several more butterflies and a couple of large dragonflies were actually sitting on the mirror face.

“Seth,” Kendra called quietly. “Come look at this.”

“What?”

“Come here.”

Seth sighed, walking around to reach Kendra and doing a double take at the insects and birds around the mirror.

“What’s up with them? They’re acting like the fairies from Grandpa’s stories.”

“I’m not sure,” Kendra said. “Do insects like mirrors?”

“Ones that are secretly fairies do,” Seth joked.

Kendra rolled her eyes, “This isn’t Grandpa’s fairytales, Seth, what are they doing?”

“Admiring their lovely wings?”

“Well they are pretty wings.”

They stared for a moment.

“I dare you to grab the mirror,” Kendra said.

“Sure.”

He moved forward carefully, before snatching up the mirror and bolting to the pool, diving in.

Some of the insects and birds scattered, but most drifted after him for a moment.

“How strange,” Kendra muttered before shaking her head. “Seth, get the mirror out of the pool, the chemicals will ruin it!”

“Chill, it’s fine,” he said, stroking over to the side.

“Here, let me see it,” Kendra took the mirror from him and wiped it dry with her towel. It didn’t seem damaged.

She paused, eyeing the assorted insects around the pool.

“Want to try something?” Kendra said as she placed the mirror face up on a lounge chair and backed away.

“Do you think they’ll come back?” Seth asked.

“We’ll see.”

Kendra and Seth sat down at the table, not too far away from the lounge chair. Kendra sipped her water as they watched a hummingbird glide over to the mirror. Soon it was joined by a few butterflies, and then some bumblebees, and then some dragonflies.

“Go turn the mirror face down,” Kendra suggested. “I wanna see if they like their reflections or the mirror itself.”

Seth crept forward slowly, the animals taking no notice of his approach. He reached forward carefully, then quickly flipped the mirror and bolted back to the table.

The ones that had landed on the mirror took flight when it was overturned, but only a few of the creatures flew away. A pair of butterflies and a dragonfly landed on the lounge chair at the edge of the mirror.

Kendra gasped as they took flight and flipped the mirror over, nearly sliding it off the chair in the process.

“Is that even possible?” Kendra muttered.

“That was so weird,” Seth agreed as the swarm pressed close to the mirror again.

“How are they strong enough to lift it?”

“There were a few of them,” Seth pointed out. “Want me to flip it again?”

“No, it might break… I don’t think butterflies are strong enough to flip that, it’s too heavy.”

“I dunno,” Seth said, draping his towel over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go change.”

“Take the mirror with you?”

“Sure, but if I get stung I’m telling Grandpa it was your fault.”

Seth moved to towards the mirror slowly, then snatched it up and rushed to the path back to the house. Part of the swarm drifted after him but didn’t follow far before scattering.

Kendra stared after them for a moment, frowning as she tried to figure out what was up with them. Seth was right, it really did remind her of the stories Grandpa told them about fairies.

How strange.

Kendra sighed and wrapped her towel around her waist, grabbing the sunblock and her water. She headed back to the house.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Kendra found Seth dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved camo shirt. He was checking through the cereal box that served as his emergency kit.

“What are you doing?”

“Just checking if I need anything else,” he said innocently.

“How about some water?” Kendra said, eyes narrowed.

Seth brightened, “Good idea! I’ll grab some on my way out.”

He scooped up the kit and headed to the door.

“Where are you going?”

Seth paused, sending her a sly smile, “Promise you won’t tell?”

She huffed, “You’re going into the woods.”

He shrugged, “Wanna come?”

“You heard Grandpa, there are ticks in there, you’ll get Lyme disease.”

“Ticks are everywhere, so’s poison ivy. If people let possible dangers stop them then no one would ever go anywhere.”

“Grandpa will be mad, you’ll get in trouble.”

“Grandpa isn’t here. As long as you don’t tell, nobody will know.”

Kendra frowned, “Grandpa has been really nice. He didn’t want to have us here, but he opened his home to us. We should follow his rules, he only gave us like three of them.”

Seth rolled his eyes, “There’s no adventure in the garden.”

“Have you explored the whole yard yet?”

“How about this. If I don’t find anything interesting or weird or anything like that in the woods today, I’ll spend the next week only in the yard.”

Kendra considered, that sounded fair. What were the chances the forest had much in it?

“Grandpa’s livestock or whatever he has here doesn’t count.”

“Sure, but if I find a satyr or evil witch in the woods-“

“If you find an evil witch in the woods I’m not letting you back in the woods or you’ll get cursed.”

“But then how is Kendra the fairy princess gonna save me?” He asked, batting his eyelashes.

“Fight me.”

He laughed, “It’ll be fine, are you coming?”

Kendra hesitated, it did sound interesting but…

“No, not this time.”

“Will you tell on me?”

“If they ask I won’t lie.”

“I won’t be long,” Seth promised, hurrying out of the room.

Kendra sighed and stared around the room for a moment, what was there to do?

Oh yeah, she’d almost forgotten.

Kendra hurried to the nightstand, the mirror was resting on it. Beside the mirror was the key ring Grandpa had given her.

She’d already figured out what the biggest key opened, a jewelry box on the dresser that was full of costume jewelry, and a few pieces that looked real.

There were some fake necklaces and earrings and pendants and rings and bracelets, but also some that looked real. She was pretty sure the hair clip was real silver, and the bracelet looked like real rubies. She’d put them all back in the jewelry box, not sure if they were allowed to use it despite what Grandpa had said.

Did he mean for her to keep them in giving her the keys? Or was there a different purpose?

She wasn’t sure.

There had also been gold wrapped chocolates, only three of them, she’d had one and it was undoubtably the best chocolate she’d ever had.

She decided to check out the rest of the room for more key holes. She had two more keys, both smaller than the first. The smallest was no longer than a thumbtack. Where would she find such tiny keyholes?

The night before she’d tried all the drawers and toy chest, but none were small enough, and most unlocked anyways.

Her eyes scanned the room, trying to figure out what might have a small enough keyhole. They landed on the Victorian dollhouse.

Of course, if anything would have tiny keyholes, it would be a tiny house.

She unlatched the clasps of the house and opened it, revealing three stories and many rooms full of miniature furniture. Five doll people lived in the house—a father, a mother, a son, a daughter, and a baby.

The detail was incredible, the dolls had individual hairs on their heads and the clothing had patterns. The rooms themselves had just as much detail, with the beds having quilts, blankets, sheets, and pillows, and the couches having removable cushions. The bathtub even had movable knobs and the sinks had tiny cosmetic supplies on them.

The dollhouse’s master bedroom had an intricate armoire, with a large keyhole in the center, or well, large for the size of it.

Kendra inserted the tiniest key and turned it, smiling when the doors sprung open.

Inside were more of the gold wrapped chocolates, along with a small golden key. It was larger than the one that opened the armoire, but smaller than the one that opened the jewelry box.

Kendra carefully tucked the two wrapped chocolates away, they were two good to eat all at once.

She checked the rest of the tiny house, under every couch, bed, and carpet, behind every painting and dresser, in every closet and cabinet, but there were no more keyholes.

She closed up the dollhouse once more, determined to play with it later, this really was the dream dollhouse, she wished she’d had one at home.

Looking around the room, Kendra debated what to check next. There was one key left of the originals, plus the new one… was there a key in the jewelry box too?

She went back over to it, shifting through the real and fake jewelry to see. On a charm bracelet she found another little golden key, about the size of the one she’d found in the armoire. She took it off the bracelet and slipped it onto the keyring.

So that’s two new keys, and one of the originals.

She looked around again. Kendra had already checked all the dressers and toy chests and wardrobes (they were filled with fascinating stuff, the wardrobes had some of the softest fur coats and scarves and gloves she was jealous) but she could always double check. It was possible a key hole could be behind something, or under something, but she didn’t think it would be that crazy, the first two weren’t.

She decided to check the telescope, it seemed reasonable enough with all the knobs and different sections.

A thorough check later led her to be sure that there were no key holes.

Maybe she could see Seth through it though.

She opened the window, noticing Dale walking along the lawn at the outskirts of the woods. Kendra thought that he was out doing chores, why was he at the yard?

He stooped, putting something that he’d been carrying behind a low hedge, making her unable to see it. He set off at a brisk pace, glancing around as if worried someone would see.

Kendra considered for a moment, that seemed strange, but not bad. Her curiosity got the best of her though and she headed down the stairs.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Reaching outside, Dale was nowhere in sight. She headed over to the low hedge beneath the attic window, weaving through the beautiful gardens and past a few lovely fountains.

The hedge was about six feet before the edge of the forest and laying on the ground just behind it was a large pie tin full of milk.

Kendra crouched down, staring in fascination at the assorted animals hovering around it and drinking the milk.

An iridescent hummingbird hung suspended over the pie tin, along with several butterflies. One swooped down and splashed in the milk, before fluttering back up.

The hummingbird flew away after a moment and a dragonfly approached.

All the animals were very pretty. The butterflies wings the brightest colors and the dragonflies large and almost sparkling in the light.

“You’re all so pretty,” she murmured to the winged animals. “But why are you all drinking the milk?”

She gasped as a butterfly landed on her hand, wings fluttering delicately.

“Hello,” she whispered, staying still so as not to scare it away.

It’s wings fluttered, and after a moment it drifted back into the air.

She glanced back at the pie tin, surprised by how much the milk level had fallen.

Who knew that butterflies, dragonflies, hummingbirds, and bees liked milk?

She carefully straightened, grinning at the winged animals that drifted around her.

“I’ve got to go, enjoy your milk.”

She walked back towards the house, then paused partway. She studied the attic window for a moment. The house was pretty big, but the attic was fairly long.

Studying the window, she visualized the room. It only took up half the space that should be there.

She walked around to the opposite side of the house, distracted slightly by the many beautiful flowers, and the assorted fruit trees that dotted the lawn.

Arriving on the far side, she studied the top of the house. There were another set of attic windows, window that the room Seth and she were staying in couldn’t see. So, there was another side to the attic.

Maybe there was a secret passage to it in the playroom! Maybe that’s what the keys were for.

She was just about to head back to the attic to check when she noticed Dale coming from the barn with another pie tin.

She could always check the attic later.

She hurried over to Dale, frowning when he suddenly looked uncomfortable.

He pasted a smile on his face as she reached him, “Hey Kendra.”

“Hi, what are you doing?”

“Just taking some milk to the house,” he said, changing direction to head towards the house. He had been heading towards the woods.

“Why’s it in a pie tin? And why’d you leave the other tin behind the hedge?”

“Hedge?” he said innocently, looking incredibly guilty.

“There were a lot of butterflies there, drinking it.”

Dale stopped, studying Kendra intently. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course.”

He glanced around as if there were spies nearby. “We have a few milking cows, and they make a lot of milk. We sell some of it, and use some, but there’s a bit excess. I put it out for the insects, seems to make them happy.”

“Why’s it a secret?” Kendra asked.

“Well, I never really asked if it was alright. Your grandfather might not be happy about me doing it when I could be trying to sell it.”

“It seems nice,” Kendra offered. “The animals seemed to like it.”

He nodded, “Yeah, they seem happy with it.”

“So you weren’t taking that tin to the house.”

He coughed, “No, no. This milk hasn’t been pasteurized. It’s full of bacteria, you could catch all sorts of diseases. People should not drink it, but the insects seem to like it best like this. You’ll keep my secret?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks,” he winked at her.

“Where are you putting that one?”

“Over there,” he jerked his chin towards the woods. “I set a few on the border of the yard every day.”

“Does it go bad? Or attract anything dangerous?”

“I don’t leave it out long. And some days they’re empty when I collect the pans, haha, they’re thirsty little critters.”

Kendra nodded, “Cool.”

“I’d best get back to work, I’ll see you around Kendra.”

“Yeah, see you later.”

She turned to head back inside.

“Oh yeah, you seen your brother around?” Dale asked.

“I think he’s in the house,” Kendra said. “He wanted some water last I checked.”

“Kay, just checking.”

Kendra waved, heading back in the house.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Thanks for reading! Don't forget to reblog and leave a review, they feed my soul.

lmk if you’d like to be tagged.

#fablehaven #dragonwatch #fh #dw #fhdw #kendra sorenson #seth sorenson #fh fanfic #fh fanfiction #fablehaven fanfic #fablehaven fanfiction #fablekingdom ch 3 #fablekingdom ch. 3 #FK ch 3 #grandpa sorenson #Dale Burgess #fh dale #fablekingdom

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mariasmemo · 3 years ago

Text

My Little RBG

Yeah, no, not Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sorry.

This is actually one of my favorite birds – a Rose Breasted Grosbeak (which basically means “big nose”). Cardinals – my favorite – are grosbeaks as well.

But in any case, I have not seen a RBG yet this spring. For quite a few years, I believe the same one showed up at my feeder at home like clockwork every May 7th or 8th until he didn’t anymore. That was really sad as I figured he was likely gone. But on May 10th, I was walking into the backyard of the Mitchell House. The sun was finally out after being cold and rainy and I saw something flutter from the ground and grab the side of the Solomon’s Seal where it paused. I figured that it was a robin – they are building nests back here – but realized it was smaller. I looked more closely and there was the RBG in all his scarlet/pink glory.

If you have not seen one before, they are stunners. He looks like someone shot him in the neck – it’s a large splotch of color with a line (like a drip) running down his breast. I have never seen one on Vestal Street so I am still rather excited. I took a photograph – it’s pretty far as I didn’t want to scare him. He seemed to be eating bugs or taking water off the Money Plant (the purple flowers) and then doing the same to the Lily of the Valley. Initially he flew off over the fence into the neighbors but after a few minutes he came back and continued to peck and hunt about on the ground for quite a while. I am hoping this was not just a weigh station and that perhaps he and the Missus have a nest. I’d love to be an auntie. Each spring we have multiple nests and babies in the Mitchell House backyard. It’s fun to watch them albeit at times a bit stressful!

It was a banner bird day for me that day. When I got home later that evening, I was happy to see a Ruby-throated Hummingbird at my hummingbird feeder and then, the next morning, a Baltimore Oriole on my oriole feeder!

Spring IS here!

P.S. About May 12th, baby Robins fledged from the nest in the Mitchell House yard so I am an auntie, I guess.

JNLF

#Nantucket #Maria Mitchell #Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association #Rosebreasted Grosbeak #RBG #Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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thiswasinevitableid · 5 years ago

Note

For a fic prompt! How about Duck and Indrid are childhood best friends who are college roommates. Indrid has been in love with Duck for years, but when Duck starts dating Minerva it throws Indrid into a deep depression. Ideally Duck and Indrid do get together in the end (though hopefully Duck and Minerva’s breakup isn’t nasty) and you can get as angsty as you’d like! Honestly the angstier the better is my motto! Also I’m all for Indrid still having future sight, if you’d like! Thank you SO MUCH!

Here you go!

Quick content note: it contains trans Duck, including a scene where Indrid takes his side when he comes out in PE and, it’s implied, that coming out is not well recieved.

Indrid Cold lays face down on his bed. His phone is shoved under the black cotton of his pillow case, and he’s drawn the windows shut against the warm August air.

This is a misery of his own making, he knows this. He can’t decide if the fact that it’s a misery nearly two decades in the making is impressive or pathetic.

To understand the origins of it, one has to rewind the tape of his life back quite a ways.

——————————————————-

Duck Newton is six years old and hunting for miners lettuce in his backyard, when he feels like he’s being watched.

Looking up, he finds a face framed with shaggy dark hair, glasses perched on a pointy nose, peeking over the fence at him. As soon as the face sees him, it ducks back down.

Weird.

He goes back to foraging, only to find the face watching him again a minute later. This time, when it disappears, he clambers up the oak tree alongside the fence and scoots carefully out onto a limb that sticks out into the neighboring yard. The face, which belongs to a boy about his age, is staring up at him, as if he expected Duck to appear. He’s standing on the edge of the decorative fountain the old neighbors put in the yard.

“Why’re you watchin me?”

“I wanted to know what you were doing.”

“How come?”

“I’m bored. My dads are putting the house together and I don’t want to draw anymore.” He points to a stack of pictures, next to some crayons that are melting in the sun.

Duck thinks; he hasn’t had anyone to play with since school got out. Leo, who lives down the block, is nine, so not as interested in having Duck trailing after him like a little brother as he used to be.

“…You wanna go see a huge crawdad?”

The other boy perks up, “I have no idea what that is. But yes.”

“C’mon, meet me in the front yard. What’s your name?”

“Indrid.”

“That’s a weird name.”

“What’s yours?” Indrid crosses his arms, eyebrow raised

“Duck.”

Indrid stares at him, wide mouth curling up at one side. His stare is a bit unnerving, and Duck feels the need to explain himself.

“It’s a nickname.”

————————————————————

“I think that’s the same large one from last year.” Indrid peers over his sketchpad, staring down at a crawdad scuttling through the clear creek.

“Told you we shoulda put a colored tape on them or somethin so we could keep track.” Duck looks at the crustacean, and then back at the project he’s working on.

They’re nine years old, hazy and sleepy in the summer afternoon. This part of the creek is shaded, keeps them hidden from passersby and parents alike (they’ve learned to tell at least one parent where they’re going, after Greg, one of Indrid’s dad’s, panicked looking for them).

“What are you making?” Indrid wiggles next to him in the grass, gnawing his pencil as Duck shows him.

“S’a reed raft. I’m gonna see how far I can float it down the river.”

“I will draw a flag for it.” Indrid scribbles, and Duck grins at him. He continues, “I’m glad you’re back. I hate when you got to your uncle’s during the summer. I have no one to talk to.”

“You could talk to Dani.”

“She’s busy a lot.”

Duck looks a little guilty, “Did you get the postcards?”

“Uh huh.” Indrid nods, smiling at his friend to show there’s no harm done. He knows it’s not up to Duck where he goes. The postcards are pinned to his wall, along with his own drawings, some horror movie posters, and the postcards from the last two summers.

“Oh, look at what I found while we were at the lake.” Duck reaches into his pocket, pulling out a smooth, wiggly-striped stone, “Uncle Jeff says it’s agate.”

He holds it out and Indrid takes it, runs his fingers along the smooth, cool surface. It feels lovely. And it reminds him of what he likes most about being Duck’s friend; Duck can make anything, even a rock, seem interesting and special.

Indrid is reminded of another reason he is lucky to have Duck the next morning.

All the adults are down in the living room, talking worriedly. There’s been a car crash on the nearby highway, and one of the trucks was carrying something toxic. The school is closed, and everyone has been told to stay home because the air could be unsafe.

Indrid is under all his blankets, his sketchbook thrown to the other side of the room.

“‘Drid?” The door creaks as Duck enters the bedroom.

He wants to beg him to hide under the covers with him. He wants to tell him to go away.

He sniffs, wipes his nose on his arm, and hears Duck turn towards the bed. The covers slowly lift, and Indrid blinks blearily, tearily up at him.

“Have you been cryin?” Duck looks worried.

He nods.

“Did you know someone who got hurt?”

“No. I, I saw it happen. In my head. Over and over last night. I thought I was imagining it. But then it happened. Th-that happens a lot, ever since my birthday. It’s like, like I see things and then sometimes they happen and sometimes they don’t. I draw them but, but I’m afraid if my dad’s find out they’ll, they’ll think I’m wrong, somethings wrong with me.”

As he’s talking, Duck sits down next to him, rests his arm around his shoulders.

“Nothin’s wrong with you ‘Drid. This is weird, but it don’t make you bad. You should tell you dads. They’re nice, they’ll help you.” He squeezes Indrid’s arm, smiling at him as he rests his head on his shoulder, “I’ll help you too.” He slips the agate from his pocket and into Indrid’s hands, moves their fingers over it in tandem until the motion soothes Indrid’s breathing down, then tucks it into Indrid’s pocket.

————————————————————————————–

“You okay ‘Drid?” Duck plops down on a cafeteria bench Kepler Middle School, Indrid poking glumly at his fruit salad.

“We had oral presentations today. I did mine on my moth.” He taps the jar in front of him. A week or so ago it had contained a caterpillar that he and Duck had identified as belonging to a Banded Tiger Moth. Indrid had decided to raise it into adulthood, Duck helping him figure out which weeds to feed it before it went into its cocoon. When it emerges, he and Duck have the perfect spot picked to release it.

“What’s wrong with your moth?”

“Nice glasses, mothman!” A voice yells, two boys high-fiving when Indrid shrinks in on himself.

“Hey, fuck you, mothman rules!” Duck thanks his lucky stars none of the cafeteria monitors heard him. He recognizes those two; they’re in Indrid’s CORE class with him, meaning the nickname has already spread. Indrid, with his tics and his tendency to finish people’s sentences, his glasses and scraggly appearance, has been pegged as a target for months. It makes Duck’s blood boil to see them turn something Indrid spent time looking after into an insult.

That night, he grabs a sharpie and one of his grey t-shirts.

The next day, he turns up with “Mothman Rules” scrawled on his chest. Indrid’s smile is worth the lecture he gets about messing up his clothes.

———————————————————–

Indrid and Duck sit side by side in the principals office. Their gym clothes in Kepler Middle’s colors, grey and maroon, seem even grimmer right now.

They haven’t done anything wrong, not as far as Indrid is concerned.

Duck stood in the boys line-up during P.E, that’s all. When he refused to move to the girls line, the teacher told the rest of the boys to line up all over again, elsewhere. They all moved, except Indrid, who insisted that Duck was in the right line and refused to play along with a bid to deny that.

They have been sent to the principal for “causing trouble.”

“You didn’t have to do that.” Duck murmurs.

“I did. You’re my friend, Duck. And Mr. H is an asshole.”

He thinks, but does not say, that it would take far more than a gym teacher and the threat of detention to leave Duck’s side when he’s in trouble.

———————————————————

It’s Indrid’s 16th birthday, and his dads are throwing a very subdued sweet sixteen. He dyed his hair silver, and they’ve ordered an entire table of desserts from a local bakery, and he, Duck, Juno, Dani, and Barclay have stuffed themselves while watching movies and teasing Dani for being ga-ga over her long-distance girlfriend, Aubrey, who she met playing an online tabletop games.

Once the other three leave, Duck grabs Indrid’s jacket and hands it to him.

“C’mon, lets go to the creek. Got somethin to show you.”

Indrid follows him, teasing him as they turn down the creekbed, “We’re not going to have a repeat of the beer incident are we?”

Duck laughs, “No. Learned better than to give that hummingbird palate of yours booze.”

They hit the familiar dirt of their favorite spot, and Duck gets on tiptoe and reaches into the trees above them. Strings of lights, red to match Indrid’s new glasses, and white, snap on. Below them is a blanket, and Indrid sits down with a perplexed smile. Then he checks the futures, and understands.

“Is this entirely sanitary?”

“Enough.” Duck grins, pulling out a lighter and safety pin, “I did it on mine and I still got the ear.”

“Very well.” Indrid crosses his legs, checks the futures it be double sure this won’t end in infection, and braces himself, “left ear please.”

“Right. Okay, one, two-”

“OWowowowow.”

“Done!”

“Ow.” Indrid winces as Duck cleans the newly-pierced ear, loosens his grip on the agate in his fist.

“Can’t believe you still carry that thing around.”

“I find it soothing. Ooh, how nice.” Indrid picks up the black moth-shaped earring Duck hands him.

“Figured it’d be better to start with a smaller one. And now that you’re all done, you can officially burn your list.”

Indrid pulls a worn sheet of binder paper from his pocket. When he, and then Duck, turned fifteen, they wrote out lists of things they wanted to do before they hit sixteen. He crosses out get ear pierced, then mutters, “I’m still missing one.”

Duck looks at him quizzically. He turns the paper around and points to first kiss.

“Wait, I thought you and Carlos-”

“Nope. Never got that far before we broke up.”

Duck sits next to him, gets a mischievous grin on his face, “Think I know how to help.”

“How’s tha-”

It’s barely a kiss, Duck bringing their lips together just long enough for Indrid to feel him sigh happily. Then he pulls back, still grinning.

Indrid is certain that if he looked down at himself, his veins would be pulsing technicolor, his body lit up like the cheap neon in their tiny downtown.

“Ta-dah, list complete.” Duck whispers.

“Thank you.” Indrid whispers back.

He doesn’t think much of it for the rest of the night, figures it’s just a meeting of Duck’s goofier side with his desire to help a friend.

It’s only when he’s laying in bed, playing the kiss over and over again like a favorite song, that he realizes he might be in trouble.

————————————————————-

Indrid knows the likely outcome, but that doesn’t stop him from leaping up excitedly when Duck bangs the front door open.

“‘Drid, I got in! did you, oh, hey Mr. Cold, did you?”

“Yes.” Indrid grins from the bottom of the staircase.

“Oh hell yeah! Juno got in too! Maybe we can all be roommates.”

As much as Indrid would like that outcome, the arbitrary housing system of UWV Huntington has other ideas. Duck ends up partnered with an affable if often absent psych major, Juno gets a single in the same dorm, just two floors down, and Indrid is stuck with a frat-boy business major.

That doesn’t stop them from making the most of their first year of college. Indrid crashes on Duck’s floor some nights, and the two of them manage to swing having a film class together during spring semester. They each dip their toes into the wild sea that is college dating, with mixed results, trading advice and anecdotes in the dark of Duck’s room.

And none of that, not one single bit, does anything to dampen Indrid’s romantic feelings for his friend.

It’s not that he doesn’t try, just as he’s been trying every day since his 16th birthday. He loves Duck as a friend, wants to be in his life forever. He can’t afford to love him any other way. It’s too risky. And so he tries, over and over and over, to quash those feelings. Sometimes they ebb, sometimes Indrid happily dates or hooks up with other people.

But they always come back, like a faithful hound finding it’s way home.

Because Duck will laugh in that ridiculous way of his, be vulnerable with Indrid in those private moments, make Indrid feel understood in a way no one else can. And he falls in love all over again.

(And that’s before he even gets to the moments where Duck will strip his shirt off on hot days, or wander into the room in his boxer shorts, and Indrid feels the urge to plead with him for the privilege of feeling him up).

It’s because of all this that, when Duck asks if Indrid wants to move in together their sophomore year, he almost says no.

But then he and Duck are sharing celebratory take-out in a half-unpacked apartment and he’s happier than he ever thought he could be.

It’s not perfect by any means. Indrid can be messy, Duck can be terse, money can be tight. But Indrid is so at home with Duck, all that fades into the background. They have friends over, compare notes on dates, have junk food strewn study sessions on the couch, keep each other company during all nighters.

Then, in May of their Sophomore year, things change.

“‘Drid? Oh good, you’re still up. Um, I wanted to tell you somethin. Minerva and I are goin out.”

“Oh. That’s a bit unexpected.” Indrid sets his drawing aside.

“You tellin me you don’t use that magic-eight ball brain to spy on my love life?” Duck teases, plopping down onto the bed with him.

“Never. So…why the switch from work-out buddies to this?”

“Dunno, just seemed like we’d been spendin a lot of time together. She actually tutored me back in high school, remember, so it’s kinda fun to be around someone who’s known me that long. Y'know, someone who watched me grow up.”

“I see.” Indrid kicks his jealousy until it goes limp and sinks back under the surface of his feelings, “well, that’s awesome then. I’m glad you’re excited Duck.”

And he is. It’s not a lie, goodness knows he’s well aware he has no claim to Duck’s affection or time. And Minerva does seem to make him happy, encourages Duck’s good habits like going to the gym (something Indrid has tried once and will never do again. Yoga and walking are fine by him).

But soon he cannot go anywhere with Duck, including his own apartment, without Minerva there. Duck spends all of his time with her, and Indrid learns it’s not just him; while Minerva is gladly included in their group get-togethers, Juno hasn’t seen Duck in weeks. And has barely heard from him. She is also a bit loud and Indrid, who has always had trouble with over-stimulation from noise, finds himself out of the apartment more and more often.

Indrid can’t blame Duck for spending time with Minerva rather than him; she’s jockular, active, attractive (even if she does call Duck by his first name). Indrid is odd, reclusive, and well, weird looking.

It all goes to hell at the end of August.

“‘Drid! The study abroad program offered me a scholarship. I get to go to Brazil. This is so fuckin cool!”

“Wonderful!” Indrid claps his hands, “I know how badly you’ve wanted to go. You have to promise me to send me pictures of brightly colored bugs for art inspiration. Oh, and now we can tell Dani she has somewhere to stay while she and Aubrey look for a shared place.”

“Exactly. And guess what, it gets even better.”

“How-” he sees the answer coming, tries to keep his face neutral.

“Minerva’s comin with me!”

“I wasn’t aware wildlife conservation and management was her area of interest.”

“It ain’t, but she’s comin as part of a grad study program. It’s gonna be so fuckin amazin.”

“I’m sure it will be.” The pull between his true feelings and his need to seem supportive renders his answer flat.

“What’s up?” Duck sits down in the kitchen chair opposite him.

“Nothing. Or, well, I suppose I’ve just now realized that I’ll be without a good friend for a semester. I’ll miss you.”

“Aw, I’ll miss you too, you big sap. Don’t worry, I’ll write you a bunch, send pictures too when I can.”

Indrid looks at the futures, then down at the table, “No, you won’t.”

“Huh? Why wouldn’t I?” Duck looks hurt.

“In all the timelines, you send me one postcard at maximum. In most of them, you send none. I slip your mind entirely, it seems.” His voice is tight.

“The fuck? How is that pos-”

“Any time not spent in the field, you are too engrossed by her to do anything else.”

Duck’s face hardens, “So that’s what this is really about.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He lies.

“You’ve been bothered by her since the start! You don’t think I notice that forced smile you get when she’s around, or the fact you leave the house when she comes over?”

“I get overstimulated when there is too much noise, you know that.” Indrid snaps back.

“You hardly come out with us anymore, and you make it sound like she’s controlin me or some shit.”

“I, I do not. I just don’t enjoy when she barges in randomly.” He rubs his temples with his hands, trying to keep calm.

“Christ, you really makin me choose between my best friend and the first girlfriend who’s made me feel this way? Why the fuck can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Because it should be me and not her!” Indrid spits out, hands dropping to the table and gaze meeting Duck’s own.

Duck blinks back at him, “Really? Really? You had a million goddamn chances to confess how you feel and you choose now?”

“I, I didn’t, I tried so hard to ignore it, but, fuck, I didn’t mean to say it now but since I did: I’ve been in love with you for years. And, and I just, after everything, we’ve been so close-”

“What, you think that what, because we’ve been friends since we were kids and you been pinin after me for however the fuck long, I should just date you? Like it’s destiny or some shit? What the fuck man?” He stands and Indrid mirrors him.

“Do not put words in my mouth. I never wanted to interfere in your life, I never, you can’t possibly know how I feel!”

“Oh yeah? You think I’m really that fuckin oblivious? I suspected you felt some kind of way about me, and I gave you chances to show me I was right!”

“Name one.” Indrid growls, stepping closer.

“Homecomin, my eighteenth birthday, about a dozen times last year where I asked if you had your eye on anyone and you’d change the goddamn subject,” Duck counts out on his fingers, closing the remaining distance, “hell, coulda used those weird powers of yours to see what would happen if you told me.”

“I was too scared to. And if you were so observant, and apparently not opposed to the idea, why didn’t you make a move on me?”

“What do you think me kissin you on your birthday was?”

“A joke! Goodness, Duck, you know I’m not great with social cues. I didn’t think you’d ever care about me that way.”

“You think I’m that fuckin shallow?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” He growls.

“So what was your end-game, huh? Just wait out everyone else, circle me like a fuckin vulture until I’d settle for you? Fuck, Minerva was right, you are creepy.”

Duck may as well have punched him. He sort of wishes he had.

“Fuck. you. Wayne.” He hisses out, stepping around him and towards his room.

“Nah, fuck you, Indrid. Fuck you for makin me think you actually cared about me when all you were doin was bidin your goddamn time!”

“That’s not, no, nevermind. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

Duck tosses back, “That’s as good as a confession in my book, you creepy, mothman lookin motherfucker,” and Indrid slams the door.

There’s ten minutes of hurried, angry movement in the rest of the apartment, and then the front door bangs shut.

He cycles through anger (at himself, at Duck, at these obnoxious powers for not helping him prevent the fight), hurt, and numb acceptance that he has blown his oldest, closest friendship to smithereens.

When he finally calms down enough to think clearly he realizes that, if nothing else, he doesn’t want that to be the last conversation they have before Duck leaves.

He faceplants onto his bed, pulls out his phone, and types.

Indrid: I’m sorry for losing my temper, and for not telling you the truth sooner. Even though it would have been helpful if you’d been clearer in the past. Can we talk about this tomorrow, and try again?

The answer is immediate.

Duck: Staying with M until we leave. Don’t text me again unless the apartment is on fire.

He stares at the response, then slides the phone under his pillow, presses his face to the mattress, and lays there numbly until he falls asleep.

——————————————————

“Nope, you are not having a sad hook-up on my watch.” Barclay’s tone freezes Indrid in place, and he slumps back down into the booth at the bar.

Barclay is only a year ahead of him, but at times he reminds Indrid of a mother hen. A very, very large mother hen.

“I cannot believe I allowed you to drag me out on Homecoming weekend.”

“Indrid, you’ve been miserable for almost two months, and I’m honestly really worried about you. Plus, this place has super cheap, real good appetizers.”

“Thank you for not saying ‘apps.’’ Indrid sips his soda.

“That word is an abomination. And you’re avoiding the actual topic.”

“I destroyed my best friend’s trust in me, and am wallowing here while he cavorts in the rainforest with his girlfriend. I’ll survive, but there’s no rule that says I have to enjoy it.”

Barclay sighs, “Look, if I give you permission to be miserable while you do it, will you come to trivia night with me, Joe, and Jake? Dani’s usually out fourth, but she’s helping Aubrey get her magic show up and ready to open.”

Indrid blows a strand of hair from his face (the black patches are getting worse, he needs to dye it again), “I can mope as much as I want?”

“You can cry into your beer for all I care, as long as you let me buy it.”

Trivia night turns out to be much better than anticipated, though Joe, Barclay’s boyfriend, is terrifying to behold in a battle of information.

Movie goes better, game night even better still, and soon Indrid is hanging out with the others more days than not. He even helps Aubrey design and draw up some last minute posters for her show.

It’s the morning after opening night (and the following celebration) that his phone alerts him to a new email. The subject simply says “Bug.”

It’s from Duck.

All it contains is a photo, clearly taken at night on a phone, of a moth with bright pink wings and red eyespots.

He types, Neat! Then, after a moment, adds What species?

He doesn’t expect a response. But the next day, another email awaits him.

Dr. Graslie (Entomologist here) thinks it’s Leucanella apollinairei. Here’s someone more familiar

This picture is of a small crustacean. Indrid smiles; it’s a crawdad.

He replies Careful, maybe it followed you all the way from Kepler. Seen anything else interesting?

This time he waits two days for a response, but it opens with, sorry, internet is real spotty. Big shock, I know.

This is followed by two paragraphs describing trees. Indrid has never been so happy to hear about root systems.

Soon Duck is emailing him whenever he can. At first, it’s only about the wildlife, the field work he’s doing, and the terror of trying to practice hygiene in the middle of a rainforest. Slowly, other details appear; the things he’s homesick for, the ways in which he and Minerva are starting to grate at each other (you’d think being in the middle of nowhere’d get you some peace and quiet. Nope).

Indrid responds with updates from school, pictures of the outings he and the others go on, news about the promo art several places in town have hired him to do after seeing the posters for Aubrey’s act. Says he hopes Minerva and Duck are able to work things out.

Winter break comes sooner than seems possible, and he assumes the next time he sees Duck will be when they’re home visiting their folks.

Which is why, when he’s sitting at home reading after his last final, the door opening alarms him (Dani has already moved out). That is, until he glimpses the future.

“Duck?” He calls softly.

His friend appears in the doorway, luggage left behind him in the entryway.

“Hey, ‘Drid.”

“I, ah, assumed you’d be staying with Minerva until you could officially move out.”

Duck shakes his head, “I ain’t movin anywhere. Unless you want me to.”

“No.” Indrid fidgets with the agate, tucked safely in the pocket of his sweatpants.

“We, uh, we broke up. Minerva and me. It was, uh, mutual, though she was the one to pull the trigger, so to speak. Just found there were some things we didn’t agree on. Weren’t compatible on neither.”

“I’m sorry.”

Duck snorts what’s almost a laugh.

“I mean it.” He stands, voices earnest and gentle, “I know you were happy with her, and the relationship meant a lot to you.”

“Yeah” Duck sounds tired, “It did. But it turns out another one meant more.”

Indrid stops moving. Also, possibly, breathing.

“I…well, I sent you that first email instead of apologizin because I was still kinda hurt, but I realized I missed you. I didn’t want you gone from my life. And the longer I was gone, the more times I turned around wanting to tell you somethin and was sad you weren’t there, got excited at the thought of showin you somethin or sending you pictures, I realized I did plenty to fuck things up. And that’s before we get to the fact I was dreamin about you most nights.”

Duck steps awkwardly forward, until they’re toe to toe, “I missed you, ‘Drid. So fuckin much. And I’m sorry for the things I said durin the fight.”

“As am I. I ought to have thought how my confession would appear to you. I’m sorry I did not.”

“I guess, what I’m tryin to say is I feel like a real dipshit for havin to go halfway across the globe to realize what I really want.”

“And what do you want, Duck?”

Duck cups his cheeks, and then Indrid is tipping forward, into a kiss he’s dreamed of for years. His arms close around Duck’s shoulders, his lips taste chapstick and cold night air. He pulls away to breathe and gets only an instant to do so, Duck chasing his mouth for kiss after kiss, his eagerness sending them tripping onto the bed.

Indrid lands on top of Duck, hears him whimper when his name leaves Indrid’s lips.

“‘Drid, ‘Drid, please-”

“Yes” He kisses his cheek, “whatever it is, the answer is yes.”

Duck giggles into his neck, “You got no idea how bad I wanna make a goof on that. But, fuck, ‘Drid, I can’t, all I want is you.”

“Likewise.” He purrs, hooking Ducks leg around his own, nuzzling up his neck before attacking his lips with kisses.

“That, that a rock in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” Duck tugs on his lower lip.

“Both. See?” He produces the agate, holds it where Duck can get a look at it.

“Holy shit, is that the one I gave you a million years ago?”

“Indeed. It became a sort of grounding object, because it was pleasant to touch and reminded me of you. Later it morphed into a sort of good luck charm.”

Duck closes Indrid’s fist around the rock and kisses it, grins, “There, now it’s twice as lucky.”

Indrid holds him close, basks in the love radiating from him as he murmurs, “It’s not the luckiest thing in the room, though. That honor, I believe, belongs to you and I.”

#Indruck #indrid cold/duck newton #reader request #college au #duck x indrid

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asgardian--angels · 4 years ago

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My Syracuse Pollinator Garden - Year 2

Hi everyone! I’m sure a lot of us are facing stress during these troubling times and so as I’ve mentioned before, gardening is an excellent way to take your mind off of current events, de-stress, reflect and connect yourself with nature while remaining in the safety of your own property. Last year, when I moved into my Syracuse apartment (technically a room in my landlady’s house; I’m here for grad school), I was granted permission to start a pollinator garden. I am a pollinator ecologist slash conservation biologist so I bring some expertise with me here. I say this because I always encourage anyone who sees this and is curious about doing it yourself to come and ask me questions! I highly recommend you check out last year’s post which thoroughly goes over 1) the principles of gardening for pollinators and wildlife, 2) resources to help you learn more and get started, 3) what plants I have in this garden, and 4) how it progressed over the course of the summer in 2019. Unfortunately, because of fieldwork and coursework I had trouble keeping up with it regularly so I think I missed a fall installment. I intend to be more thorough this year. Quite a lot has already happened, and I will review it the best I can and from this point forward, attempt monthly updates.

I also want to mention that I’ve learned a lot since last year too - better ways of doing things, since I’m not a landscaper. Such as, you don’t have to break your back digging up turfgrass for hours on end. Instead, you can smother it for three months with old newspapers and get rid of it that way. It’s also important to note that the way I have my garden laid out is not ideal for a pollinator garden, it doesn’t follow every recommended principle. That’s because I had limitations and conditions under which I had to work, given that it’s not my own land and I had limited funds. But any effort is better than nothing, so don’t think that just because it’s not perfect, it’s not worth it. It is! You can always build, change, or improve upon it later.

In the second year of a new garden with perennials, you can expect a lot more vibrant growth - the plants have established root systems and can put more energy into above-ground growth and flower production. Thus, I was thrilled to see my plants growing more vigorously than before!

MARCH

Here in central New York, March was still freezing, wet, and snowy. But, by the end of the month, the garden was starting to show signs of life, sending up the first shoots of hardy native perennials.

In particular, the Jacob’s ladder already had quite a lot of new growth, with the nodding onion and yarrow close behind. In my herb garden, the chives had erupted with force from the leaf litter. The yard was still messy, with dead stems and fallen leaves blanketing much of the ground. My landlady insists I clean these, but if it’s your choice, leave the leaf litter around where you can. It’s important habitat for invertebrates and returns nutrients to the soil as it decomposes.

APRIL

The world was beginning to wake up. I had cold-stratified hundreds of seeds of native plants I’d collected last fall, and it was time to take them out of the fridge. The wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata) had already sprouted, so I planted them in pots. The rest, I put in a seed starter tray.

Next, within the first few days of April, male hornfaced bees (Osmia cornifrons) started emerging in multitudes from my bee hotel. These are a non-native, but naturalized, species of mason bee common in suburbia and they are the most frequent users of bee hotels in the northeast. I watched as they dug through the mud cap on their natal nests, peeking out with fresh eyes at the sun for the very first time. I felt like a proud parent. (You can see more pictures here)

At the same time, male Dunning’s mining bees (Andrena dunningi) were patrolling the new nest sites of females, dug in the soil between the stones laid down near the front door.

There wasn’t much for these bees to forage on yet, mainly the wild violets that grow each year on the lawn and my landlady’s invasive vinca. But many more of my perennials had started to come up, and I decided it was time to cut the dead stems.

It is best to cut dead stems back in April or so if you’re in a northern clime; the purpose of this is to offer nesting places for stem-nesting bees, which will start flying in April and May. Don’t cut them to the ground, give them several inches. Leaving stems through the winter also allows birds to forage on the seedheads.

Towards the end of April, despite several more snowstorms, the barren strawberry began to bloom.

I also saw the emergence of the female hornfaced bees, with males pursuing close behind. It is advised that you discard a bee hotel after the bees have emerged, or else they will try to nest in it again, which can lead to high mortality rates, as an old structure harbors parasites and is generally dirty.

MAY

May was a month of excitement. Given that I have been at home almost every day instead of being on campus, I was able to closely monitor the progress of the garden, apart from a week spent at home for my birthday. The dandelions dotted the yard, attracting gynes of common eastern bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) and the first honeybees (not native, need I remind you).

Alongside the dandelions was ground-ivy, which sent up stalks of purple flowers also used by the bumblebees. Almost all my plants had sprouted at this point.

My wild cucumber, which is a vine, had grown so rapidly that I couldn’t give it support fast enough, and eventually it decided to wind itself around my drapes. I brought one home as a gift for the parents, and placed the other two outside and snaked them around the front banister. However, despite my best efforts, only two other seeds from the hundreds I cold-stratified sprouted. A disappointment for sure; I was hoping to have swamp milkweed in the yard. But, there’s a chance for the wild hibiscus! Alas, with new growth comes deer, traipsing through the yard each night intent on nibbling my natives. They hit the columbine heavy this year as they did last year, and that stunted its growth and prevented it from flowering on time. I managed to protect it by putting a recycling bin over it each night. From the 7th to the 17th, I went home and visited a local native nursery.

There, I picked up a new plant for the garden - scarlet bee balm, Monarda didyma. I already have bee balm (M. fistulosa), but this species blooms red and is attractive to hummingbirds.

When I got back to Syracuse, I was astounded to find how quickly everything had shot up.

Among new blooms were the Jacob’s Ladder, woodland stonecrop, and finally, the wild columbine. The chives and thyme began to flower as well.

The milkweeds were one of the last to come up, being late to break dormancy. But once they did, they grew like lightning, gaining a foot in a week.

I planted my row of annuals (cosmos and sunflowers) along the walkway, and added beans to my herb garden. The dill and basil sprouted and once they get a bit bigger I’ll transplant them outside.

Then, in late May, I visited my advisor’s farm, and he gave me two new plants for the garden, from his own land - Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea), which is a lovely yellow-flowered member of the carrot family which blooms in spring, and the classic purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). They transplanted well.

Honestly, everything is doing better than I could have hoped. What were ungainly spaces between the plants last year are starting to fill in as they grow more vigorously - the single-stalked milkweed I put in last May is now 17 stalks, and I see seedlings of the biennial brown-eyed susans coming up all around it in a three foot radius. Even the purple prairie clover which was eaten to the ground by rabbits last summer has miraculously returned. The only thing I am still waiting on is the bottlebrush grass, which remains dormant. It’s a warm-season grass, so I hope as we get sustained high temperatures in June, it will come back! But its seedlings too are popping up all around the beds.

And this sums up spring! It has become cold again for the week, but that won’t halt the growth once it’s started. The New England aster is almost half as tall as me, and my black raspberry has flowered and hopefully will produce a small handful for me to enjoy!

Check back in late June for another update on the garden!

#pollinator garden #pollinators #bees #nature #gardening #mine

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haztobegood · 4 years ago

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💜Digging Deeper💜

@newleafover and @alienfuckeronmain tagged me to answer these interesting questions! I tag @himynameiszayn @beelou @evilovesyou @jaerie @runaway-train-works @oopsandhiforever if anyone wants to answer these too.

1. Do you prefer writing with a black pen or blue pen? black in my lab notebook at work and blue on loose paper, and in college I always had a rainbow of colored pens to take notes with

2. Would you prefer to live in the country or city? It changes all the time. I want to live close to the city for concerts and restaurants, but I also want a little farmhouse with wildflowers all over the yard.

3. If you could learn a new skill what would it be? I want to be fluent in so many languages.

4. Do you drink your tea/coffee with sugar? yes I prefer sweet drinks

5. What was your favourite book as a child? I loved the Amelia’s Notebooks series by Marissa Moss so much when I was little. They were written like diaries and looked like composition notebooks. I loved the idea of keeping a diary with doodles all over and a bunch of keepsakes taped to the pages.

6. Do you prefer baths or showers? Showers

7. If you could be a mythical creature, which one would it be? Werewolf

8. Paper or electronic books? ebooks! I used to always carry a book with me, so it’s great to be able to carry hundreds in my phone where ever I go

9. What is your favourite item of clothing? my collection of concert t shirts

10. Do you like your name or would you like to change it? I have a love/hate relationship with my name

11. Who is a mentor to you? I never thought I would have a mentor, but one of my colleagues has become one and it is really helpful to have someone with so much STEM industry experience to help me in the early stages of my career.

12. Would you like to be famous and if so, what for? Nope

13. Are you a restless sleeper? I don’t move hardly at all when I sleep

14. Do you consider yourself a romantic person? Yep

15. Which element best represents you? Earth

16. Who do you want to be closer to? So many people, but I am a capricorn so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

17. Do you miss someone at the moment? always

18. Tell us about an early childhood memory. When I was around 5 years old, I wanted to be a radio DJ on the local country radio station when I grew up, because I could think of nothing better than to spend your whole day at work listening to music. That dream was short-lived because I hate public speaking and hearing my own voice on recordings.

19. What is the strangest thing you have eaten? It’s not weird to me because I grew up with it, but in theory it sounds like a strange food, so I will say pickled fish

20. What are you most thankful for? Family

21. Do you like spicy food? No

22. Have you ever met someone famous? Other than when I’ve gone to meet-and-greets for bands, I once met Halsey at a Catfish and the Bottlemen concert. It was a super awkward encounter 😬

23. Do you keep a diary or journal? I’ve never been able to keep a journal despite numerous attempts, but I do keep a monthly planner where I track habits and goals with stickers. Right now I have some holographic dinosaur and glittery flower stickers!

24. Do you prefer to use a pen or a pencil? For most things, pencil. At work pencil is not an option, so I tend to be really particular about how smooth a pen writes.

25. What is your star sign? Capricorn

26. Do you like your cereal soggy or crunchy? somewhere in between.

27. What would you want your legacy to be? That I was kind

28. Do you like reading, what was the last book you read? I love reading! I omstly read fics now, but the last book I read was Canotras by Carolina de Robertis and it was a very good book, 10/10 would recommend.

29. How do you show someone you love them? I make things or give gifts.

30. Do you like ice in your drinks? I am indifferent to ice

31. What are you afraid of? failure

32. What is your favourite scent? campfire by the lake

33. Do you address older people by their name or surname? Usually just their first name, unless they were a teacher.

34. If money was not a factor, how would you live your life? I would buy a little house in a suburb and travel a ton

35. Do you prefer swimming in pools or the ocean? When I was little I spent so many days at the pool that it wore out its appeal. I’ve only seen the ocean once and it wasn’t somewhere I could swim, so I don’t know if I would like swimming in the ocean

36. What would you do if you found £50 on the ground? Finders keepers

37. Have you ever seen a shooting star? yes, one summer my friend had a birthday party sleepover where we slept in a tent outside during a meteor shower

38. What is the one thing you would want to teach your children? To be willing to try new things

39. If you could get a tattoo, what would it be and where would you get it? I already have a snail and a hummingbird. I want a set of three triangles on my wrist next.

40. What can you hear now? The 40 year old air conditioner unit in my apartment (why can’t it just stop working already so I can get a quieter, more energy efficient one 😩)

41. Where do you feel the safest? at home

42. What is the one thing you want to overcome/conquer? My anxiety of talking on the phone

43. If you could travel back to any era, what would it be? The sixties for the music

44. What is your most used emoji? 😂

45. Describe yourself using one word. Cryptic

46. What do you regret the most? Believing the person that told me there would be available parking in the lot at the radio station for the meet and greet I won at a radio station. I am usually very anxious about parking in the cities, but they said there was plenty of space, so I didn’t plan for any extra time. My friend and I ended up parking nine blocks away and missed half of the event and I’m still pissed about it. And now I’m even more anxious about parking any time I go into the cities.

47. Last movie you saw? Titanic was playing on tv, but I only saw the second half after the ship had already hit the iceberg so I missed all the good romantic bits 😢 and the last one in theaters was Spies in Disguise

48. Last tv show you watched? I started watching Golden Girls this winter and I’m on season 4.

49. Invent a word and it’s meaning. Coronastalgia - the longing for events that were cancelled because of the pandemic 😩 rip to my 4+ concerts I was looking forward to

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keelywolfe · 5 years ago

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Drabble: Always the Prettiest (baon)

Summary: Based on twitter conversations, Edge is a secretly a Disney Princess.

Notes: So, nothing I'm supposed to be writing is cooperating, so I wrote this based off of a twitter conversation here hj_skb already made some adorable art for this so how could I resist?

Tags: Spicyhoney, Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Edge is Secretly a Princess

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

The birdfeeders were Edge’s idea. Probably.

Not that he’d actually said anything about them. The feeders had just been there, hung up for Stretch to find the next time he went outside. One day the small corner at the front of their house was relatively empty, the next it had a pair of feeders, filled with bright red liquid and a little patch of flowers planted around the base.

Not exactly unusual, Edge tended to do things like that without consulting Stretch about it. He didn’t mind, nah, generally when it came to the Home and Gardens section of their daily lives, he was more than happy to have Edge take care of it without a chat. Though he did wonder sometimes whether it was because it simply didn’t occur to Edge to bring it up or if it was more deliberate, Edge trying to see how long it would take for Stretch to notice. A way of hiding little treats around the house for him to find.

It was entirely possible it’d been there for a week or longer and Stretch walked past the damn thing without even noticing. Look, his attention wandered, okay, he couldn’t notice everything.

He might never know exactly when Edge did his little Bob Villa act. Edge didn’t bring it up and Stretch didn’t ask, because there was a more subtle mystery for him to follow, his curiosity hopping like popcorn on a hot pan: what exactly were those feeders for?

Yeah, that was the good stuff and Stretch watched them eagerly to see what Edge was trying to coax into their yard.

For a while, there wasn’t much happening. The feeders stayed filled, swaying lightly in the breeze, but nothing was dropping in for a snack. Then one morning he glanced out and saw it.

A hummingbird, so tiny he nearly missed it. Bright green feathers with a splash of ruby at its throat, it flitted around the feeder, zipping this way and that. Stretch watched it in utter fascination. He knew the physics behind flight, knew how the little bird did it, but seeing it was different, like watching something magical. Not magic in the way Monsters knew it, the inborn gifts that allowed them to heal or manifest tools for an attack, no, this, this was like nothing he’d grown up seeing every day and twice on Sundays. He sat for too long, watching in wide-socketed enchantment, watched as others joined it, a family of such tiny, delicate creatures sipping from the plastic flowers.

It was soothing, in a way, got to be a habit of his. He’d get up in the morning and pour a cup of coffee, go outside and sit on the porch steps while he drank it and watch the hummingbirds flutter around, occasionally interrupted by the lazy passage of a butterfly. Not a bad way to start the day.

None of that prepared him for what came later.

It was much earlier than he normally got up on a Saturday. He’d woken up to an empty bed and if Edge was already gone, wasn’t much point in lingering anymore, was there. The roller coaster was shut down, the amusement park was closed. He’d try again tonight to see if they could get the bumper cars going.

He shambled on downstairs, following his nasal bone to the glory that was fresh coffee and poured a cup, breathing in the fumes as he wandered out into the living room. Just as he was taking a sip, he looked up and that was when he saw it.

Edge was outside, filling up the feeder. That in itself wasn’t an impressive sight, survey said that he had to be doing it sometime. What had him gaping, his coffee cup hanging in the air inches from his mouth, was the hummingbirds.

He didn’t go near the feeder himself, that’d been a lesson learned right off. Tiny little birds weren’t real happy about horribly tall skeleton Monsters tromping around them. Two steps in that direction and they’d zipped away, so now Stretch stayed on the porch.

Except that theory was currently being thoroughly disproven because Edge was out there right now with half a dozen birds fluttering excitedly around him, doing little zoomies around his arms and strafing past his skull.

Cautiously, Stretch opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. It was so worth it because all the little stars, Edge was talking to them like a skeletal Snow White, all he needed was a tiara to sparkle in the sunlight.

“Calm down, I’m almost finished,” Edge said and the amused exasperation in his throaty voice sent shivers up Stretch’s spine. “Always so impatient for breakfast.”

He topped off the feeder, screwing the lid on and hanging it back up. The tiny hummingbirds instantly flew in, rapturously sipping from the clusters of plastic flowers.

All except for one, who flittered around in dismay, unable to push in through its brethren to find a spot.

“Greedy things, aren’t they,” Edge told it and he shook his head in mock dismay, to Stretch’s everlasting delight. “Here, you must be starving, no need to wait.”

Stretch could only watch in disbelief as Edge picked up something from the tray. It looked like a small jar lid. He filled it with some of that red liquid and set it on his palm, holding his hand out flat and still. The hummingbird went to it instantly, lighting on Edge’s hand, tinier than one of his phalanges, its glossy feathers bright against the black of his gloves as it dipped its needle-thin beak into the sugar water.

Stretch stared, dumbfounded. Holy shit, he was married to Snow White.

Long minutes were probably ticking by, but it felt like they were frozen in time, that daily magic moment opening up to let his husband inside. Edge smiling faintly at the little bird in his hand while half dozen others fluttered around him trustingly, magic of a kind Stretch never knew, but he treasured a chance to witness it.

Wasn’t any telling what finally broke the spell. Maybe he absently sipped his coffee too loudly, maybe his bare feet scraped against the concrete and sent out a warning. Whatever it was, it was a turning point. One second the hummingbirds were there, the next, they’d vanished, leaving Edge standing out there alone.

His shoulders rose and fell in a sigh as Edge turned to gather up his tray.

Stretch could only give him a remorseful look as he walked over. “i’m sorry, babe, i didn’t mean to scare them off.”

Edge only shrugged, unconcerned, “They’ll come back. They have their meal ticket now, they won’t stay away long.”

“kinda cynical there for a princess,” Stretch teased and it was made sweeter by Edge blinking in confusion.

“What did you call—” Stretch didn’t give him a chance to finish, flopped his arms around Edge’s neck and took a nuzzly little kiss.

Maybe he could persuade his princess to make a different kind of magic this morning.

-finis-

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #by any other name

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luluwquidprocrow · 4 years ago

Text

the twin peaks chapter of the pacific northwest birdwatching association

originally posted: september 3rd, 2020

word count: 859

rated: gen

margaret lanterman, tommy “hawk” hill, william “doc” hayward, pete martell

birdwatching, slice of life, look. this is just four adults sitting around birdwatching, but inexplicably talking about fish

summary: on saturdays, they go birdwatching.

opening notes:

for @countdowntotwinpeaks wonderfulxstrange 2020, someone nominated 'the varied thrush from the opening' and i felt compelled to also write about that thrush

don’t ask me where in canon this is because i don’t even know

when she was ten, margaret saved up her allowance to buy a big, heavy pair of binoculars that barely fit in her hands, so she could climb up into the trees in the woods—carefully so she didn’t scrape her knees—and go birdwatching. she saw slim sparrows turning gold in the light, fluttering jewel-bright hummingbirds bursting through flower bushes, round little warblers she would sometimes hold in her hands if she could get close enough. towering owls in the dead of night, watchful ravens on a still afternoon, steady, constant thrushes, always. she has seen years of migrations and hibernation and these small, precious creatures with their hammering heartbeats come and go and come again. it is one of her favorite hobbies.

margaret is older now. she can’t climb into trees anymore. hiking is hard for her too. but she has a house deep in the woods with a decent yard and all the birds come to her, so on saturdays, she sits on the weathered back porch with her binoculars in hand, her log in her lap, and the twin peaks chapter of the pacific northwest birdwatching association joins her. she makes extra cookies for them.

today it is snickerdoodles.

hawk and will arrive together. margaret thinks that hawk offers to drive him every week. it’s very kind of him. they sit on either side of her, the fading grass tickling their ankles, and the three of them take one cookie each. if it is a good fishing day, pete arrives late, but he always arrives. the thrushes have been more active lately, and pete will not miss the thrushes. sure enough, he comes into the backyard much later than hawk and will, breathless and taking off his crumpled fishing hat, stuffing it in the pocket of his jacket. margaret has told them all many times that she has no use for apologies or regrets. so he doesn’t say anything, but sits down on will’s other side and watches the skies. margaret offers him the plate of cookies. he takes two with a grateful, lopsided smile.

“seen ’em yet?” he asks. pete martell talks like a bird himself—his voice wobbles and wanes and follows its own rhythm. they argue a good deal, and have since they were children, but margaret still thinks he has a good voice.

she points at a spot on the far side of the yard, closer to the trees. a male thrush has been picking his way around over there, the pumpkin-orange stripe over his eye bright against the green. pete reaches for will’s binoculars—no one ever takes margaret’s—and will hands them over wordlessly.

hawk, meanwhile, has his eyes on a fat goldfinch, perched on the rim of margaret’s bird bath, which was a gift from hawk many holidays ago. he has been working on a poem about goldfinches, and he has a pen in one hand and another snickerdoodle in the other. margaret gets to read most of his final drafts. she likes them a great deal. he writes in free verse, and margaret hates rhymes. she almost wants to read over his shoulder as he writes, but that’s impolite, and margaret is a patient person. time is a concern for other people.

“what’d you catch this afternoon?” will asks.

“salmon,” pete says. he looks at the thrush for a moment longer and then hands the binoculars back to will. he holds his hands out, almost two feet apart. “best one i caught yet.”

“they’re in season,” hawk says. “caught one myself over the weekend.”

margaret doesn’t care much for fishing, but she knows salmon is, at least where pete is concerned, an eating fish, not a stuffing fish.

“you got any lemons, margaret?” pete asks.

an excellent eating fish. “i should,” margaret says. she pauses, watching the male thrush stop in the earth and dig something out from beneath him. “if you brought bear claws.”

hawk smiles; will hides his laughter very well; pete looks exasperated, and jerks a thumb behind him. “got them in the truck,” he says.

“then i have lemons,” margaret says.

“how about asparagus?” hawk asks.

will makes a face, which he does not hide as well.

“asparagus,” margaret agrees. “and potatoes,” she adds, so will stops wincing. it will be a good dinner for the four of them.

a high, shaking whistle cuts through the air, the sound drawing out until it fades away. the four of them still completely, listening. then it happens again, loud and echoing in the silence. a rustle, and—

“there they go,” pete says, half-rising up from the porch, the broadest smile on his face.

the group of varied thrushes take off into the air with that feathery, fluttering thwip. they dart through the air, chasing each other’s tails, orange and brown between the leaves. it’s a sight that only lasts for a moment, as the thrushes dive, and disappear again. one leaf falls. somewhere out there a killdeer chirps once, twice. the afternoon settles and continues.

margaret puts one hand on her log. she smiles, and keeps her eyes on the birds, and thinks of bear claws.

#twin peaks

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veridium · 5 years ago

Text

shot at the night

Good morning and happy Sunday, folks!

Time for a College AU Update to end the suffering of that beautiful cliff-hanger @bitchesofostwick set up for us last week. Hope you enjoy the highs and lows of college soccer!

fic master post // last chapter

One minute they are having a great time, even though it’s freezing and the Beam isn’t helping nearly as much as she hoped it would. The crowd is lively and drenched in school sweaters, beanies, and scarves -- Ellinor being a perfect example. It’s overwhelming. But only one moment pushes her over the edge: seeing a crowd of jerseys around the goal, the same goal Cassandra volleyed around that night after practice. The same one she was laying in front of, back on the grass and leg curled up against her.

An unbearable ringing in her ear. Ellinor’s voice from her standing position next to her. The cheez-its all over them and their feet. The crowd isn’t noisy anymore. She wishes it was.

“...Liv! Liv, hey…” she hears Ellinor as she sits down, shaking Liv’s thigh. She feels her, she hears her say her name, but she can’t follow. She’s consumed in the sight of Cassandra’s face straining with pain: biting her lip, opening and closing her eyes harshly while her chest rises and falls rigidly against her knee.

Olivia’s heart beats faster than she can count, like a hummingbird’s hopped up on a red bull.

Ellinor’s hand switches from her thigh to her shoulder, shaking again. “Liv!”

Olivia shakes her head. “Ellinor…”

“Liv, it’s okay, they’re gonna--”

“What happened? What did they do?”

“I don’t know!” she says, aggravated. She seems distracted, and she probably is. A couple yards away Cullen looks like a Bull preparing to charge at the man in bright blue, and the players are mean-mugging the other team. There’s cursing, and shouting, so loud the stilled crowd can hear them from the bleachers.

“What happened?!” she repeats, as if now she’ll know. As if she saw something Liv didn’t see, even though they were sitting together in the same spot at the same time.

“I think...I think a player did Cassandra dirty,” Maryden offers.

Ellinor stands up again, probably to see it all better. Olivia doesn’t need to. She can’t bear to take her eyes off of Cassandra still on the ground. One of her teammates crouches beside her and is talking to her. But are they saying the right things? What are they saying? Are they being nice to her?

Olivia’s panic heightens. “Someone...s-someone did this on purpose?”

“That player would get a yellow card, I think. It’s a big foul to play aggressively like that, especially with a goalie.”

Ellinor puts her hands on her hips. “Red card, they have to! That was a red card!” She must be reading Cullen’s lips. She is an expert on the subject of his lips, after all.

“What are they saying?!” Olivia asks, hands tugging at the knee-cap rips in her jeans.

“They’re….they...shit, the ref is being an idiot,” Ellinor replies. “He’s arguing with Cullen...fuck, and now Lys is walking over…”

“W-why is he arguing? Isn’t it a fault--”

“A foul…”

“A foul, yes, thank you Maryden,” Olivia tries her best to maintain diplomacy, but it’s falling fast. Before she can think to say anything else, however, the crowd erupts in boos and groans. Their side of the crowd, that is. The players start to disburse from the area, all except for a few of the who remain near Cassandra. A couple guys in navy blue jumpsuits with a medic bag jog over -- what took them so long?

Then, the Knights side of the audience starts booing even louder than before.

“Fuck that! Fuck you, Ref!” Ellinor shouts, hands cupped around her mouth.

Olivia’s ear ringing intensifies as Ellinor sits back down in a huff. “Wait...w-wait, what?” she looks at her.

“The ref is yellow-carding the player.”

“Normal people words, Ellinor!”

“It means they won’t take them off the field! Just a warning. Cullen was right, they’re gonna play like devils.”

Olivia’s brows lift so high they stand to broach the stratosphere. The ref is indeed walking with a small yellow card above his head, whistling so that both sides see. The ringing in her mind turns to Kill Bill sirens. Hearing ‘stern warning,’ it’s yellow-jumpsuit-and-sword time. She slowly turns her head and sees the Warden’s side, where one player is being talked to more than most. It’s someone pretty with a long, brown ponytail and a hairband. Someone whispers something, and they smile. Laugh, even. Their teammate pats them on the shoulder. It’s all congratulations disguised as comfort. No respect, no remorse.

Oh, hell no.

Olivia slides her jacket off of her shoulders. Cold? Fuck cold. She takes out one stud earring. While working on the other, she catches Ellinor’s attention.

“Uh, Liv...what are you--”

“Hold these.” Liv shoves her jewelry in Ellinor’s lap without a damn to give. Ellinor acts like the cheez-its have been spilled all over again.

“Liv, no.”

“Yes.”

“No, don’t--”

“Be right back.”

“No!”

She laces her fingers to crack her knuckles. As if entranced by seeing red, she rises and side-steps to the stairs, pushing past a nice older couple. Her nose and mouth are crinkling, hot air fuming out her nostrils as she races down.

“Liv!” Ellinor screams again.

Feeling like she is being followed -- which she most likely is -- Olivia only hastens. Down the fence aisle, boots hitting the concrete as she nears the opening to the field. Then, hands grab her right arm.

“Olivia Berenice, do not even think--!”

Liv’s mouth arrives before her body does, and she turns toward the Warden’s side of the field. With her free hand she punches against the fence; a loud hissing sound reverberates and further concerns the masses. If they weren’t already, surely what followed would be the cherry on top:

“YOU WANT TO BRING THAT SMILE OVER HERE, YOU SON OF A BITCH? I’LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO SMILE ABOUT! NUMBER 14! YEAH, YOU! HOW ABOUT YOU TAKE THAT TACKY-ASS HAIRBAND AND SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT! THAT’S RIGHT! CHOKE YOU RANK, ABHORRENT BASTARD!”

Maryden, with Ellinor’s help -- or someone, Olivia can’t really tell in the moment -- hoist Olivia up over their shoulder. That does nothing to break her focus, especially considering the player has noticed her rancor and is staring worriedly at the bleachers where some bouncy goth blonde is frothing at the mouth. Their teammates see, too, and their faces are even more grim. The sick glee has gone.

While she clamors and nearly knees the person who’s carrying her in the gut several times, she gets one last promise in: “THERE IS NOT A CHAIN OR LOCK OR WALL THAT IS STRONG ENOUGH TO KEEP ME FROM SHOVING MY FOOT SO FAR UP YOUR ASS YOU’LL BE FLOSSING WITH MY SHOELACES!”

The crowd is nervously observing her when she is returned to their seats. Turns out it was Maryden, the taller of the three, carrying her while Ellinor was reinforcement and likely smiling at everyone to save face.

“AND FUCK YOU, WARDENS!! FUCK YOU AND YOUR GRIMEY ASSES!”

Apparently that is a much more popular sentiment. The crowds start applauding voraciously, as if they’re front row for a Boxing match. They could be, if only her friends wouldn’t be such killjoys and let justice be brought down.

“Liv, contain yourself, dammit!” Ellinor lands next to her, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. More shaking.

Growling, Olivia frees herself from her grip, spitting her own hair out of the side of her mouth. “Kindly kiss my ass Ellinor, you’d be melting the fence down to get to her if it was Cullen!”

Ellinor opens her mouth, finger pointed, but she stops. Slouching a bit, she looks away and concedes quietly.

“Still, you could have caused a penalty,” Maryden warns over Ellinor’s shoulder, all cool and collected as if she was just picking daises somewhere, and not man-handling a 5’2” enraged queer girl like a disgruntled shih tzu.

“I hope I do. Maybe then the Ref will recognize one when they see it!”

Unfortunately, in her fury Olivia has lost track of the most important thing -- the most important person -- and she races to catch up. Cassandra is not only standing, but walking. Limping heavily, she has her arm around Cullen. Is that Cullen? Curly blonde, red face...yes, that’s Cullen. The crowd applauds with relief and encouragement.

“See, Liv? She’s up!”

Olivia, far from satisfied: “Yes, that’s just her natural swaggering gait.”

“Well…”

Maryden clears her throat. “Cassandra is very fit and capable. I’m sure she’ll bounce back super fast!”

Olivia scowls, still watching as Cass is escorted off the field. The medic is on her like bees on honey. Meanwhile, she seems more concerned with talking to Cullen, who’s listening intently like he’s being told a litany of life-altering secrets. Perhaps that there’s writing on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Cassandra, though, Cassandra still seems focused. She can barely put any weight on her foot; despite that, it’s as if it hardly matters to her. Maryden is right.

Though her knuckles turn white from clamping on the bench edge, Olivia remembers a lick of sense enough to do as Ellinor wishes. She even feels a bit ashamed, like waking up from a fever dream having made lunatic choices all night long. Ellinor’s mounting agitation provides a distraction.

“Shit…”

Olivia blinks. “What?”

Ellinor watched like a hawk, nose tipped toward the sky. “I think Cullen is working as Captain now.”

Olivia follows her stare and sees the two teams congregating back to their respective formations. Cullen is back to his spot, talking to two other players, pointing and gesturing towards them like he’s calling some shots. Maybe Ellinor is right. It would make sense, with their bromance and Cullen’s experience, that Cassandra would default to him. Olivia glances to the sideline one more time to see that the medics are still tending to Cassandra and her leg, all three looking much calmer.

With a deep breath, she curls her arm around Ellinor, who stops bobbing her anxious leg up and down. “Well then, we’re in good hands.” And so they were.

Continuing to keep calm as best she can, Olivia pays more attention to the game. The Knights, having lost their leader unjustly, are reinvigorated. The replacement goalie looks younger but is ready for business. And Cullen? Cullen goes from Golden Retriever to German Shepherd. For the bulk of the second half the Wardens try time and time again to make it past the Knights’ defense, to no avail. With each advance Ellinor nearly skyrockets into the air watching out for him. When the time outs hit, Cullen is the one talking the team through the huddle, and he does so with considerable fortitude.

It’s getting to be final few minutes in the game -- or so Maryden and Ellinor promise after it goes longer than the promised 90. Time making up for all the penalties, they say. Well, to Olivia it’s just time preventing her from finding out if Cass is okay. During the last 15-20 minutes of the game, she was taken off the field. It looked like the ankle was causing more pain, too much to just be taped up on the bench. But no one can know for sure. It’s a little harder to breathe without her there.

With all this said, the moment the whistles finally sound off, and their half of the crowd leaps to their feet, it’s a good moment. Good because the team deserves it, and even better because Ellinor loses her damn mind.

“AHHH DID YOU SEE HIM! DID YOU SEE HIM THAT LAST TIME? THAT SLIDE TO BLOCK?!” Ellinor yells as she hops up and down. Maryden is dancing with her, which is a God-send, because all Olivia can do is stand up and clap. That, and a sweet, sweet smile that is dual-purpose for showing her teeth as the Wardens slip off the field. To no one’s surprise, the hand-shakes between the two teams is kept brief to avoid further injury.

The team is also going wild on the field, tackling and running around each other like excited kids. One or two get a water bottle sprayed in their face. Laughter, smiles, and joy. When the trophy gets handed off -- yes, a trophy, a real trophy -- Cullen is the rightful receiver. The players hoist him up onto their shoulders, up and down with fists up in the air. He’s smiling modestly but sincerely as he holds the hunk of metal above his head. Ellinor is almost crying as she pulls the collar of her sweater up over her mouth and holds it there.

It kinda aches to watch, knowing how much Cassandra worked to lead them here. However, Olivia notices Cullen gaze down at everyone supporting him. Though she can’t hear what he says, by the shape of his lips he seems to say something like “for Cassandra, guys.”

Then, smiling feels easier to do.

Ellinor takes hold of her hand, pulling her along with Maryden down to the steps. The majority of the audience is doing the same to get down to the grass and join in. “Come on!” she says, “let’s go see them!”

Olivia follows along until they make it to the field, where she can better see the nearby locker rooms. She pulls back, and Ellinor turns. Olivia slows to a halt and eyes the lockers. Without having to utter a word, Ellinor gets the message. A brief respite in her wide smile.

“Liv, she’s going to be okay. Don’t worry!”

“What if she isn’t?”

From across the field, Cullen’s champion voice calls Ellinor’s name. Then, several others repeat it, like she’s the First Lady of Soccer. Ellinor waves a hand at them, as if they’re interrupting some private conference, but Olivia quickly stops her.

“Hey, go! Go see him!” she encourages, “I’m just gonna hang back and see if she can answer my texts.”

Ellinor eyes her, but when the boys call after her a second time, she gives in. She gives Olivia a one-armed hug before running off toward her Knight-in-shining-jersey and his comrades. It’s all rather romantic, what she sees of it. Olivia follows the boundary sideline and keeps her distance; luckily for the Wardens, they decide to clear out rather expediently.

Watching the players and their loved ones congregate, Olivia pulls out her phone. No messages, no calls, no nothing. She wonders if Cassandra would even have phone access, or think of using it. Wouldn’t this be a time to call family, anyways?

She sends along a message just as a shot in the dark:

-- Hey, you okay?

Her eyes light up when the message is almost immediately read, as if Cass had their messages pulled up already. The typing symbol appears. Then, a response:

Cassandra: Was just about to text

Cassandra: Is the game still going?

-- No, the Knights won!

Cassandra doesn’t reply. Olivia’s ear ringing sets off again. She twitches her freezing fingers, teetering on how to act. The boundaries of what is too much and what is too little seem so incoherent. She hadn’t exactly read the part in the new budding romance manual titled “What To Do If Your Girlfriend Falls in Sport Combat.”

-- You need help? I’m out here if you need me.

Cassandra: I’m okay. Medic says I should think about hospital.

-- Really? I can drive you

Cassandra: It’s probably just a sprain, I’ll be fine

-- Do you need a ride? I can give you one! It’s fine!

As she hits send, the grass in front of Olivia becomes vastly overshadowed. Looking up, she sees part of the party has come to her. Cullen, with Ellinor under his arm and the trophy in his free hand, along with several others: Rylen, Lys, Krem and Maryden, and a still more. They’re all looking at her expectantly, and it feels like the field lights all hone on her. A day ago, she would have said they all thought her too bizarre or scary to do this. How things change.

“Hey, Liv,” Cullen says first, face glistening with sweat and likely Powerade, “any news?”

Wait...they all just expect that I know? She scans from right to left. Their previous expressions of raw, unadulterated joy have become sorrier. She folds her arms against herself, phone tucked.

“She says she’s good. They said to go to the hospital, but she disagrees.”

“Fuck yeah, she’s a tank,” Rylen remarked. “That asshole had a red card coming!”

They sound off in groans and growls of agreement. Olivia silently sighs and tucks hair behind her ear.

Cullen frowns. “If she needs to, she should go. She knows we won, right? I should go check on her--”

“Yeah, she--”

“Yeah, I know!”

They all turn on a dime toward the commanding voice behind them. Olivia is the last to see through all their broad figures, but she really doesn’t need to. She knows that voice. What’s harder to take is the sight that comes with it: crutches, right lower leg wrapped in ice and tape, and brow just as sweaty as her team’s are. Still in her uniform but with a down jacket over it.

While they rush over to her, doing everything short of tackling her to the ground, Cullen, Ellinor, and Olivia hang back. Ellinor watches Olivia as she tries her best not to shrivel up and die, mortified with her own over-sentimentality. She gives her a caring look, one of those ‘it’s okay, dude, don’t beat yourself up’ looks.

Cullen has his own matter to settle. Breaking from Ellinor’s hold, he joins the group and faces his friend and roommate who’s everyone’s talking at with exuberance and concern at the same time.

“Hey, Cass,” he says, the trophy in both hands. “Look, I, uh, if anyone deserves this, it’s you.”

He holds it out to her, which is a bit charmingly clumsy considering both Cassandra’s hands are occupied with crutches. Several others murmur in affirmation, things like “yeah, Captain,” “Oh Captain, my Captain!” and “Boss Lady.” A few whistles. Cassandra locks eyes with him and smiles as she straightens up as much as possible. She glances at either side of her before shaking her head.

She gently pushes the trophy gently back towards him. “You brought it home, Cullen. The honor is yours. And all of you! You have made me the proudest Captain this side of the continent.”

The happy mob’s affirmations grow louder. Some claps, even. Cullen chuckles heartily and, unable to help himself, hands off the trophy to Lysette and pulls Cassandra into a hug. She almost loses her crutches, but no matter. Her one capable arm reaching back around Cullen’s shoulders, patting him with as much strength as she can, says the embrace is anything but unwelcome.

Olivia bites back a sigh of relief, one Ellinor notices of course.

“Hey,” she says out the side of her mouth, “you good?”

Olivia slides her phone into her back pocket. Guess I won’t be needing this anymore. “Y-yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“You sure?”

“I just...”

Rylen’s rallying voice cuts through the merriment, just as it all seems concluded. “Hey! If anyone needs a trophy, it’s ‘Livia!”

Olivia freezes as she looks back to the group, who is once again all turning to look at her. Cullen and Cass are the last to, but when they do, Cassandra’s eyes land directly on her.

“Yeah, man,” Krem laughs, “scared the shit out of the offense, you hear that?” he asks Cassandra, who doesn’t so much as sniff in his direction. She’s still staring, hard to read as ever. Suddenly the infamy feels more like an embarrassing tattle-tale, and Olivia can feel her cheeks growing red from something other than Whiskey during a November night. More players chime in with their version of the sordid event:

“Yeah, see that? The--”

“--she had what, three people holding her back? Chr--”

“Yeah, we should have had her on the field to back up Rylen!”

“Shit, no kidding--”

“Hate it if that was what was waiting for me on the side-line”

“--that shoelaces line? Man--”

“Hey, hey, everyone,” Cullen intervenes, hands out and dad voice on full blast. He’s tuned into Olivia’s embarrassment like the nightly news. “Give her a break, okay?”

They all go solemnly silent, which makes it even worse. Olivia’s finally brave enough to lock eyes with Cassandra, who still hasn’t flinched. Dammit, if only she knew how she was taking all this. It’s not like she meant to go back on her WWE ways tonight. Dammit, lowkey, Olivia. We’re supposed to be lowkey. This is not lowkey! This is like the opposite of lowkey! High-key! Mt. Everest Key!

A nudge from Ellinor knocks her out of her mental death spiral enough to realize they’re all expecting her to see what she has to say for herself.

“I, uh…” she says to Cassandra, not daring to move.

A sudden, uneven grin. One could almost say cocky. Regardless, it’s a grin, and it’s on Cassandra’s face as she speaks her first words to her:

“Let this be a lesson, then, everyone: don’t cross my girlfriend.”

Blush? No, not blush. Lava, molten to the core, floods Olivia’s cheeks. Her heart nearly stops dead after so much racing. ‘Oohs’ and ‘aahs’ surround them, not nearly as rambunctious as before, but then someone wolf-whistles. Olivia wants to simultaneously jump her bones and roar about how much she scared the living shit out of her.

She said it. Loud and clear.

“Olivia?” Cassandra then asks, amidst the reactions.

“Uh...u-uh...yeah,” she mutters, taking one last look at Ellinor before coming forward. Step by step, until she’s as close as she can be while still being respectable. Then, a halt.

The others go even quieter. Cassandra smirks a bit. “I have a favor to ask.”

Olivia’s brows lift sincerely. “Yes?”

A pause, wherein Cassandra takes a stiff breath. Her throat catches on something that sounds like pain under good, honest humor.

“Could you please take me to the hospital so that I can get this son-of-a-bitch x-rayed and some ibuprofen?”

She waits until there’s just a hint of doubt in Cassandra’s face. So much so the “audience” of sorts shuts up again to hang on her word. When it’s just the right moment, she comes even closer.

“...get in my car, Pentaghast,” she commands, slipping her keys out of her coat pocket and twirling them around on her finger.

As if the moment wasn’t momentous enough, either the adrenaline or savvy romance of it proves inspiring. Cassandra smiles even wider, reaching just enough to snag the edge of Olivia’s coat and pull her in. In return, Olivia takes hold of the neck of her jersey, just enough for the drama without pulling her off her already-precarious balance. It’s the fourth time they ever share a kiss on a soccer field.

Everyone erupts in laughter, more clapping, and whistling. Olivia and Cassandra end their kiss in order for a proper congratulatory hug.

Rylen, again, proves the most dedicated to capping off the moment: “I told you, Krem! Pay up!”

“I didn’t bet no, dude!”

“Yeah but you bet maybe! $5 or three fireball shots at the afterparty!”

From farther away, Ellinor’s voice squeaks with a bit of shivering: “Did you say ‘fireball’?”

#day & age #college AU #ellinor trevelyan #olivia sinclair #college!Olivia #modern!olivia #THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF COLLEGE INTRAMURAL SOCCER

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