#and the mark i is a boot knife produced for only five years in the late 70s

[bittsandpieces]

Kink rating: knife play?

No | rather not | I dunno | I guess | Sure | Yes | FUCK yes | Oh god you don’t even know |

hi here is a selection of my knives. my favorites are the top left (old timer sharpfinger) and top row, second to the right (gerber mark i)

[magic-missle-blog]

Ghost division

approx 5k words

The teacher stood in front of her class, looking over the rows of teenagers. The red sun shone through the glass illuminating the brightly coloured room and the wooden desks. The youngsters were mostly green skinned mammalian Drek, like herself, although she did have two reptilian Gath, shorter and stockier than the Drek, they sat on specially made chairs to accommodate there long tails, Their parents had recently moved to this colony, the new mines and the wealth therein drew sentients from all over the galaxy. Most were dressed in a similar fashion, dark blue trousers and skin tight teeshirts with a Varity of symbols of cartoon characters. She inwardly shuddered at the fashion sense of the young,

:readmore:

Off to the side was a older Drek, he was an elder, over 70 years old and even though his once blue hair was now all grey, and his back had a slight stoop, he stood proud and his eyes were bright. He had on a dark green military uniform, a couple of shades darker than his skin. The rank badge on his chest showed he was a captain, the dagger with wings on his sleeve showed he was in the war fleet.

“Class” the teacher began “We have a special guest with us today. As you know tomorrow is 'Alliance day', the most important holiday we have, and it’s a very special one. Tomorrow marks fifty years since the alliance between Drek and Gath, fifty years since the foundation of the united galactic council, fifty years since the Canidations were defeated and peace was restored to the galaxy.”

She took a breath. “Please give a warm welcome to captain Furon.”

The teacher clapped her 6 fingered hands together and sat down behind desk.

Captain Furon walked smartly to stand in front of the class. He precisely placed a bottle of water down next to some paperwork on the crowded wooden desk. All eyes were on his uniform and side arm.

He looked at the teacher. “Thank you for the most gracious introduction.” He said with a smile.

“I want to tell you about the battle for this colony; it was the turning point in the great war, but ...before I begin, who can tell me how the alliance started?”

A forest of hands rose in the air. Furon pointed to one of the Gath students. The student stood up and said in a hissing voice. “Sixty or so years ago a race called the Canidations tried to conquer the galaxy, they invaded and destroyed many worlds. The Canidations attacked both the Gath and Drek our empires bordered one another. We stood together, and fought off attack after attack, eventually driving the Canidations back into their space. After the war ended, our peoples joined in the alliance and started the galactic council, over the years we invited four other species into The Alliance.”

The reptilian sat back down.

As the student spoke Furon nodded along. Once the Gath had returned to his seat, the captain said “That’s the official bare bones history, but it’s not the full truth.”

Captain Furon looked around the class. “It started with the Canidations, that right enough, but what you don’t realise is just how powerful they were. They had more ships, more weapons than any other species, several times over. In their home system there was a gas giant with many moons, these moons were the size of small planets and the Canidations built factories. Giant factories that could mass produce warships in great numbers. Their fleet had tens of thousands of fighters, thousands of cruisers and hundreds of capital ships. The Canidations were a strong warrior race, with a high birth rate. The soon outstripped the resources on their home worlds and wanted more.” his voice turns cold “They were a plague. They couldn’t be reasoned with or bargained with, they believed they were the only true form of intelligent life, everything else was simply an animal to be destroyed.”

He looks lost in memories for a moment, the room is silent, hanging on his every word, For the first time the students actually grasped that standing before them was a warrior, a man who had lived through the horror of the great war .A man who had stood toe to toe with the Arachnidiod Canidations, who had spat in there ruby coloured multifaceted eyes.

Furon continued “In ten years the Canidations invaded and slaughtered five species and with every conquest their blood-lust grew and grew, they gave no quarter, gave no mercy. The wounded, civilians, even children were all fair targets to them.

The seemed unstoppable, we knew it was coming of course. The Drek and Gath were next in line, as the Canidations territory expanded it was a matter of time until they were at our door. We tried to build up our fleets, improve our weapons and fortify out colonies but it was futile.”

He reached for the bottle of water on the teacher desk and took along slow sip, then continued.

“Around 7 years after the war started the Canidations attacked a Gath border post, a few months later they attacked one of our convoys. Normally only a fool starts a war on two fronts, but the Canidations were so powerful and so arrogant they didn’t care. Then they made a mistake. They opened up another front. They attacked The Terrain Empire.”

The class murmured and looked around. This was new information. The Terrans don’t have an empire, they are generally vagabonds or mercs, and they are rare. The population only a few hundred thousand individuals across know space, in fact, no one in the class had ever seen one.

Furon continued “The Terrans, or Humans and they were sometimes known, were a relatively young race. They only had interstellar travel for a few decades, but they quickly built up a small empire. As a young race no one really considered them a threat, including the Canidations, but they were wrong. You see humans had one great strength, adaptability. The Canidations became warriors, but Humans were born for war. In the 5000 years of recorded human history there was not one single day when some part of the planet was not at war. They could see as well as we could what was coming so they built up their fleets and dusted off ancient tactics renewed and improved for a new age. When the Canidations first attacked the Terran Empire, they terrans would lose three ships for every one Canidation vessel killed, but with every battle, every loss the humans learned. They studied the enemy, they adapted. After six months it was one to one, and after a further six it took five Canidation warships to kill a Terran vessel. The humans tech advanced at an unmatched pace. They created new and unique weapons and defences, but it was not enough. Even with losses of 5 to one the Canidations were so many that those loses was a victory, however it slowed the advance into Terran space, and forced then to pull resources from Gath and Drek space to fight the Terrans, giving us much needed breathing room. The advance slowed, but it did not stop,”

Furon took a breath

“I want to tell you about a battle, a very important battle that took place here, in orbit of this colony towards the end of the war. This was the most important battle in the history of the Drek, because it paved the way for the alliance.”

“Back then this colony had around ten million people, and it was an important supply and repair centre for the fleet. At first it was far inside Drek space but as the Canidations pushed onwards this world soon became a target. We tried to evacuate the civilian population but we didn’t have the ships or resources, our fleets were spread so thin as Canidation attacks hit all over the empire. Around seven million people were left when the Canidation death fleet arrived. I was a young officer stationed in the bridge of the Warship 'Firestorm', part of small defence force, all that high command could spare. Our orders were to defend the colony at all costs.”

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

Ensign Furon looked up from his screen. The green and black display flashed in warning. “Captain....sensors have just picked up a large Canidation fleet heading this way. We have 30 minutes until they reach the system.”

The captain looked around his small bridge. The red emergency lights shrouded his crew in an eerie glow, various consoles beeped for attention, chair creaked as people shifted. His crew were at battle stations, ready to fight and die if needed. The Firestorm was destroyer class Warship, Small and fast yet it packed a punch. He was proud of his ship and knew it inside and out. “How large?”

Furon checked his screen, “six capital ships, thirty cruisers, five carriers....we're outnumbered six to one.”

The captain checked the status of the other ships in his fleet. A ragged assortment of cruisers and destroyers most damaged to some extent from the constant warfare, they were only here as this was the closest repair station to the front. There were various other civilian ships in orbit and a large ring of defensive satellites. The civilians he could discount as they were unarmed, but the satellites might be able to help...and then there was the repair station itself, upgraded with the latest weapons..... Captain Brekka shook his head, in his heart of hearts he knew it wasn’t enough, the firepower the Canidation fleet had would cut through the colonies defences like a hot knife through butter.

“Comms open a general distress call”

“Channel opens Captain”

The captain

“This is captain Brekka of the Drek warship Firestorm. We have incoming hostile craft; we are in orbit of Baldur colony. If anyone can help. Please come. We have transport full of children, please assist.”

The Comms office waited a few moments, “nothing captain, no reply”

The first officer, a tall Drek with long lanky limbs replied “all ships are battle ready and moving into formation, plasma cannons are charging. The colony rail guns are active and defensive satellites fully powered. We'll squash those fucking bugs like a spider under our boots'”

The captain smiled a rare smile. He appreciated Firsts attempt to raid the crew’s spirits but everyone knew they didn’t stand a chance.

“Furon. Status of the evacuation ships”

Furon checked his screen. “Three are fully loaded and taking off, the remaining ten will be airborne within twenty minutes. There have been delays, people are crowding on. Its chaos down there.” The main view screen showed various scenes of the plant below. Parents trying to push their children onto the waiting transports, civilian craft fleeing. People fighting each other and trying to flee.

“Cutting it close...” the captain said. He pressed a button on his command console, opening a channel to his fleet. “Prepare to break orbit, defend the transports at all costs.”

The bridge crew looked at the captain. The first office spoke up. “But captain...the planet....there are seven million people...”

The captain, his face drawn, heart heavy, looked at the sensor display. He knew what was going to happen. Those capital ships would smash the space dock as the cruisers destroyed the satellites and ground cannons. Once the defences were down they would bombard the colony with fusion bombs. A few might survive in outlying settlements, or if they managed to get to the bunkers....but by this time tomorrow most would be dead. “There’s nothing we can do for them, but if we defend the transports at least the children will survive.”

Minutes seemed like hours. Furon checked and rechecked the status of the Canidation fleet as they drew closer. The tension was unbearable. A trickle of sweat crawled like a spider down his spine.

CLICK CLACK.

CLICK CLACK

Someone was clicking a pen.

CLICK CLACK

CLICK CLACK

CLICK ...

The first office strode across the bridge and plucked the pen from the officer at fire control. With a grunt the pen was crushed in the firsts strong hand.

Blue eyes glued to the screen, Furon was the first to see the Canidations dropped out of hyperspace just shy of the planets gravity well and began their approach at sub light.

Heavy cruisers bristling with weapons, smaller but faster destroyers, behind that the capital ships. Monsters made of titanium and horror, each one ten times the size of his own vessel. Last but certainly not least the carriers with their cargo of small deadly fighters.

“Five minutes until weapons range” Furon said. The captain sat in his chair, still as a rock watching the sensor display on the main screen. The transports had all reached orbit and were slowly moving out of the gravity well where they could safely activate hyper drive, but they were slow, far too slow.

“Captain” Furon said with alarm “Enemy fleet is breaking formation.”

On the screen the carriers offloaded their cargo of small sleek fighters. Fast and deadly shaped like locusts, they were moving around the Drek fleet to try to flank the transports, as the main body of cruisers attacked head on. The capital ships headed straight for the colony, where their large guns and mass drivers would rain death on the helpless people below.

The captain knew the colony was doomed; all he could do was try to save the transports. Save as many people as he could. He knew his duty, but hated himself for abandoning the colony.

The captain pressed a button on his command console “Sword, Wildcat, intercept those fighters, the rest of you, battle formation, buy those transports as much time as you can....it’s been an honour serving with you.” He cut the channel, nothing else needed to be said. He looked around the bridge crew, emotion plain on the green faces, anger, hatred, but no fear. They faced death but they wouldn’t go down easy and with luck their sacrifice would save thousands of Drek on those transports. The captain couldn’t have been prouder.

“Two minutes until weapons range” Furon said

The incoming ships slowly grew in size as they drew closer.

“Weapon range in 90 seconds, the first transport is 3 minutes from the minimum safe FTL jump point, the last transport is 10 minutes away. Fighters will intercept transports in 3 minutes” Furon said.

So, Captain Drek thought, it’s not all in vein, a few transports will be safe and we’ll buy the rest as much time as we can.

“Weapons range in one minute....wait...captain....I’m picking up something on Comms, its an audio . it sounds like a...a howl?” when the captain nodded furon opened the channel. An eerie moan, filled the bridge. Words, almost two low to catch were mixed in the scary sound, “we are the ghost division, we are your death...”

Furon had turned a sickly pale blue colour. He cut of the channel, and turned to the captain, he was about to speak when his station beeped. “Captain, its a distress call its...it’s from the Canidation capital ships... they want aid....the call has cut off”. Furon said confused.

The screen zoomed into capital ships closing in on the planet, but where the there should have been six monstrous death machine, only four could be seen. Two expanding clouds of debris still glowing, were the remains of the others. As they watched a bright red explosion blossomed from the main hull of another ship, it quickly consumed the huge vessel. As it died a bright yellow explosion from the rear of the ship, the fusion plant loosing containment no doubt, finished it off.

On the main screen an explosion destroyed an enemy destroyer, and then another destroyed a cruiser. Within a few second ten Canidation ships were no more than glowing space dust.

The line of incoming ships dissolved into chaos. They fired weapons all around. The Drek couldn’t see anything though, the Canidations seemed to have gone mad, firing at empty space.

The first office looked up “the cruisers and fighters are breaking off they’re heading to the capital ships...what the fuck is happening?”

The bridge was a jumble of activity. Sensor reports were coming in, the Comms system was going crazy as the other ships in the fleet reported the same thing, asking for orders.

Furon shouted over the noise on the bridge “something is attacking them, I’m reading...fuck I don’t know what I’m reading. I’ve never seen anything like this. Weird gravity spikes, then ships appearing then vanishing. If I didn’t know better I’d say the sensors were damaged.”

The screen showed the Canidation fleet in full retreat. Black ships around the size of destroyers appeared out of no where, fired a barrage of projectile and energy weapons then vanished again. It didn’t matter where the Canidations turned or how the dodged, a ship always appeared, fired and vanished. It made it impossible to target them, or get an accurate count of numbers. When the new sleek warhips were sure of a direct hit they would fire a large torpedo, the weapon didn’t seem to have any guidance, but it packed a punch. Any cruiser it hit was killed, and even the monstrous capital ships were destroyed. With one missile. Brekka had no idea what the warhead was, but it was immensely powerful. It seemed to vapourise anything it hit rather than exploding like a normal missiles

The Comms office piped up “incoming hail”

“On screen” Brekka said

The screen changed from the confusion of battle to a video call.

A tall dark skinned human in a dark grey uniform appeared on screen.

“I’m captain Conroy of the Terran warship Lucifer; we received your distress call. Your transports will be safe now, want to help us mop up the rest of these bastards?” he asked with a grin.

Brekka let out a Drek war cry and said to the crew.

“You heard the good captain. Give them Hell”

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

“The battle lasted less than 30 minutes. We didn’t lose a single ship, neither did the humans. Only one Canidation ship survived, and that was because the humans let it go. ‘Teach them to fear the wrath of Earth’ Captain Conroy told us. We offered the humans shore leave but they declined, they had a mission. To spread fear among the Canidations, to hit hard without mercy and vanish like ghosts. That battle was a major victory, it inspired our people, and it showed that non Drek could help, would be willing to help so in turn we could help others. Due to the humans example the Firestorm was the first Drek ship on the scene when a small flotilla of Canidations attacked a Gath supply line, we helped save a half dozen Gath ships. The Gath returned the favour and soon we were fighting side by side. It was from these small actions the alliance was born. If it wasn’t for the Terran ghost division, the alliance would never have happened.”

Hands rose as Furon finished history. “What happened to the humans? How could they make their ships invisible, what kind of weapons did they use?” a jumble of voices asked various questions.

Furon smiled and raised his hands for silence.

“We don’t know what stealth tech the human ships used, we think they could manipulate artificial gravity in some way to bend light and sensor beams around the ships but we can’t replicate it yet. As for the weapons, well they used tungsten projectiles fired from rail guns and plasma based energy weapons for the most part...but those torpedoes... they were something else. We managed to recover a few that missed their targets. From what we gather they used some kind of exotic matter with negative mass to generate an antigravity wave, That wave was unstoppable, and any matter caught in it was destroyed and changed into energy. This caused a chain reaction, if effectively turned the ships own armour into an energy blast. “

Furon took another drink.

“As for what happened to them....they spread fear among the Canidations. For months Ghost division stuck Canidation ships. Burned colonies, wherever that eerie sound would play Canidations died by the hundreds and thousands. They spreads So much fear that the Canidations halted their advance into Gath and Drek space and committed almost everything to the destruction of Earth. The humans fought hard and made the Canidation bleed for every inch but eventually the humans were pushed back into their home system. tens of Thousands of Canidation ships dropped out of FTL into the Sol system, almost the entire Canidation fleet, almost every and solider so they could watch humanity die.

The terrans had pulled everything back into Earth orbit, every ship, and every colonist. Everything other than ghost division

It must have been an amazing sight, the two biggest fleets the galaxy has ever seen...ready to fight to the death.”

Furon looked around the class

“But the humans...they were vindictive bastards, and clever. From what we gather they built one last torpedo. It must have been huge, at least a mile long, and filled with millions of tonnes of exotic matter. They fired it directly into their own sun causing it to go supernova. The Gravity wave of the dying star made FTL impossible. The entire Canidation fleet was wiped out in one go, millions of Canidations, dead In a heartbeat, I sometimes wonder what when through their mind before they were blasted into ash. Then the alliance struck. Our ships, the combined might of the Gath and Drek empires attacked. We hunted down and wiped out every last Canidation ship, but when we arrived in the home system, we found it had already been killed. The ghost division had been there first...no Canidations survived the human’s wrath. The home world had been cracked open like an egg. Every planet and moon that had even a hint of canidation presence was sterilized.”

The Gath that had spoken earlier said with awe “the humans destroyed their own home world rather than let it fall...they must have been mighty warriors.”

Furon smiled

“Oh they were re than mighty warriors. They were inventors, thinker ands dreamers. After the supernova had passed and it was safe, mercy vessels from the alliance went into the remains of the sol system... we knew it was hopeless but we owed it to the terrans to look for survivors. We found the smashed remains of the two inner planets, and the irradiated husk of the fourth planet. We found a diamond thousands of miles wide, all that remained of the planet after the atmosphere had been blown away. But of earth there was nothing, no debris, no wreckage, nothing.”

“ Just before the supernova wave reached earth, our long range scopes picked up something odd, a massive energy spike. We think the humans somehow created an artificial wormhole, they used the power from the supernova to rip open time and space. They shifted their entire planet, their moon and the whole fleet and left the Canidations to die. They used their own planet as bait and their star as the biggest bomb the galaxy has ever seen. You might say its impossible, but Humans could dream the impossible and make it possible...I don’t know if it s true or not, but they might still out there somewhere and could come back one day., and if they do i hope to all the gods that they come in peace.

[fiadhulresims]

All outfit descriptions for Annabeth Chase

hi i'm weird so i decided to reread all of the books in which annabeth appears to transcript all the times her clothes and items are described.

i hope this can help someone out there in some way, like drawing her!

Observation: I might have skipped something

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

The Lightning Thief

“From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.”

“The air shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she'd just taken it off her head.”

“Annabeth became visible, stuffing her Yankees cap into her back pocket.”

“Annabeth was bringing her magic Yankees cap, which she told me had been a twelfth-birthday present from her mom. She carried a book on famous classical architecture, written in Ancient Greek, to read when she got bored, and a long bronze knife, hidden in her shirt sleeve.”

“Her hand crept up to her necklace. She fingered a glazed white bead painted with the image of a pine tree, one of her clay end-of-summer tokens.”

“Annabeth kept worrying at her necklace. She was pinching the gold college ring that hung with the beads.”

“A few minutes later she came out in Waterland flower-print shorts, a big red Waterland T-shirt, and commemorative Waterland surf shoes. A Waterland backpack was slung over her shoulder, obviously stuffed with more goodies.”

“Annabeth rubbed her necklace like she was thinking deep, strategic thoughts.

‘That pine-tree bead’, I said. ‘Is that from your first year?’

She looked. She hadn’t realized what she was doing.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Every August, the counselors pick the most important event of the summer, and they paint it on that year’s bead. I've got Thalia's pine tree, a Greek trireme on fire, a centaur in a prom dress — now that was a weird summer...’

‘And the college ring is your father's?’

‘That's none of your —‘ She stopped herself. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it is.’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

‘No... it's okay.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘My dad sent it to me folded up in a letter, two summers ago. The ring was, like, his main keepsake from Athena. He wouldn’t have gotten through his doctoral program at Harvard without her...’”

“At the bonfire, the senior counselors awarded the end-of-summer beads (...) The design was pitch black, with a sea-green trident shimmering in the center.”

The Sea of Monsters

“She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over her orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. Her blond hair was pulled back in a bandanna.”

“She had a ragged backpack slung over her shoulder, her baseball cap tucked in her pocket, a bronze knife in her hand, and a wild look in her storm-gray eyes, like she’d just been chased a thousand miles by ghosts.”

“She was wearing a sleeveless silk dress like C.C.'s, only white. Her blond hair was newly washed and combed and braided with gold. Worst of all, she was wearing makeup, which I never thought Annabeth would be caught dead in.”

“She undid the golden braids in her hair.”

“‘S'okay,’ I grunted, though I'd never really wanted to know what Annabeth’s sneaker tasted like.”

“One grabbed Annabeth and Grover by their T-shirt collars.”

The Titan's Curse

“Her blond hair was tucked into a ski cap and her gray eyes were the same color as the ocean.”

“She used to wear no jewelry except for her Camp Half-Blood bead necklace, but now she wore little silver earrings shaped like owls — the symbol of her mother, Athena. She pulled off her ski cap, and her long blond hair tumbled down her shoulders.”

“I thought of some harsh things to say, and I might've said them too, but then I looked down and saw something navy blue lying in the snow at my feet. Annabeth's New York Yankees baseball cap.”

The Battle of the Labyrinth

“She was wearing jeans and an orange camp T-shirt and her clay bead necklace. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail.”

“He slung a leather satchel off his back, unzipped it, and produced a sleek silver laptop computer — one of the ones I'd seen in the workshop. On the lid was the blue symbol ∆.”

The Last Olympian

“It's not that she tried to look good. We'd been doing so many combat missions lately, she hardly brushed her curly blond hair anymore, and she didn't care what clothes she was wearing — usually the same old orange camp T-shirt and jeans, and once in a while her bronze armor.”

“He brought out a bronze shield and passed it to Annabeth. It looked pretty much standard issue — the same kind of round shield we always used in capture the flag. But when Annabeth set it on the ground, the reflection on the polished metal changed from sky and buildings to the Statue of Liberty — which wasn't anywhere near us.

‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘A video shield.’”

“My brain started seizing on little random details, like the fact that she was still wearing those silver owl earrings from her dad, who was this brainiac military history professor in San Francisco.”

“She wore her orange camp T-shirt and jeans. Her hair was tucked up in her Yankees cap, which was strange because that should have made her invisible.”

“She was dressed in black camouflage with her Celestial bronze knife strapped to her arm and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder — ready for stabbing or surfing the Internet, whichever came first.”

“The girl had tangled blond hair and was wearing flannel pajamas.”

“Annabeth was wearing new clothes — jeans and an oversize army jacket.”

“She had pulled her owl helmet low over her face, but I could tell her eyes were red.”

“Kronos whirled to face her and slashed with Backbiter, but somehow Annabeth caught the strike on her dagger hilt.”

The Demigod Files: Percy Jackson and the Bronze Dragon

“She bumped me with her shoulder, which I guess was supposed to be friendly, but she was wearing full greek armor, so it kind of hurt. Her gray eyes sparkled under her helmet. Her blond ponytail curled around one shoulder. It was hard for anyone to look cute in combat armor, but Annabeth pulled it off.”

The Demigod Files

The Heroes of Olympus

The Lost Hero

“Two teenagers stood in the chariot — a tall blond girl maybe a little older than Jason, and a bulky dude with a shaved head and a face like a pile of bricks. They both wore jeans and orange T-shirts, with shields tossed over their backs. The girl leaped off before the chariot had even finished moving. She pulled a knife and ran toward Jason's group while the bulky dude was reining in the horses.”

The Mark of Athena

“She took out her camp necklace, strung with her dad’s college ring and a colorful clay bead for each year at Camp Half-Blood. Now there was something else on the leather cord: a red coral pendant Percy had given her when they had started dating. He'd brought it from his father's palace at the bottom of the sea.”

The House of Hades

“She'd tied her blonde hair back with a strip of denim torn from her jeans, and in the fiery light of the river her grey eyes flickered. Despite being beat-up, sooty and dressed like a homeless person, she looked great to Percy.”

“In his massive hand, the white shard looked like another toothpick, but when he offered it to Annabeth she realized it was a sword – a blade of dragon bone, honed to a deadly edge, with a simple grip of leather.”

The Blood of Olympus

“Piper and Annabeth were disguised as lovely Greek serving maidens. Even in their white sleeveless gowns and laced sandals, they had no trouble navigating the rocky path.”

“She looked uncomfortable in her serving-maiden outfit. She kept hunching her shoulders to keep the dress from slipping. Her pinned-up blonde bun had come undone in the back and her hair dangled like long spider legs.”

“Annabeth slung her own amphora off her shoulder. She, too, had a concealed sword, but even without a visible weapon she looked deadly.”

“Annabeth re-adjusted her golden belt.”

“She ripped through her supply pouch and unwrapped a piece of godly food.”

“She fingered the red coral pendant on her necklace – a gift from Percy when they started dating.”

The Demigod Diaries: The Diary of Luke Castellan

“As soon as I lifted the sheet of tin, something flew at me — a blur of flannel and blond hair.”

“Her ribs were bony under her flannel pijamas”

The Demigod Diaries: The Staff of Hermes

“She was wearing her regular orange camp T-shirt and shorts, but her tan arms and legs seemed to glow in the sunlight. Her blond hair swept over her shoulders. Around her neck hung a leather cord with colorful beads from our demigod training camp — Camp Half-Blood.”

“She wore a dark green sleeveless dress that showed off her long blond hair and her slim athletic figure. Her camp necklace had been replaced by a string of gray pearls that matched her eyes.”

Demigods and Magicians

The Staff of Serapis

“At the moment, her most deadly weapon was her backpack, which was loaded with heavy architecture books from the public library.”

“She pulled out something she hadn’t carried with her in a long time: her battered blue New York Yankees cap”

The Crown of Ptolemy

“I'd never actually seen her wearing her Yankees cap before, since she vanished every time she put it on, but there she was — wide-eyed with surprise, caught in the act of sneaking up on Setne.”

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard

The Sword of Summer

“She was dressed more sensibly in snow boots, jeans and a parka, with an orange T-shirt peeking out at the neckline.”

“She was better dressed than me — orange North Face ski jacket, black jeans, lace-up winter boots — but if people saw us together they would've mistaken us for brother and sister.”

The Hammer of Thor

“Annabeth was there before me, standing on the platform in jeans and sandals and a long-sleeved purple shirt with a laurel-wreath design and the letters SPQR: UNR.”

“Her blond hair was loose around her shoulders today. She seemed to be growing it out.”

The Ship of the Dead

“Her long blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her dark blue T-shirt was emblazoned with the yellow words COLLEGE OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN, UC BERKELEY.”

[09yards]

Night Glo

You alone is enough. Tell me, can we work this whole thing out?

part one of the series

“Why would you give a ten-year-old a knife?”

“He felt unsafe.”

“Now I feel unsafe!”

“Would you like a knife?”

“Don’t you mean another knife? I’m good I have enough weapons on me.”

“I thought we agreed no more knives in the bedroom!”

“Fuck off Johnny. Frankly, you can’t complain at me for giving Jisung a knife, he’s sixteen not ten. How old was Mark when you first gave him a weapon?”

“Shit, he was fifteen.”

“Sorry, I thought we’d established that grown men don’t mumble. Speak clearly to me Johnny.”

“He was fifteen when he first had a gun. B-but it was only in training, he didn’t leave the centre with any weapons! I swear!”

“I gave Jisung the knife because he gets scared about people breaking into his room, it’s never happened and I’m the only one who ever wakes him aside from Kun who rarely does so; we know what we’re doing. He happens to be trained to use it too but as you know, we’re planning for Kun to start teaching him on a more permanent basis. I can’t keep him from violence but I can make sure he does something good.”

“Now, strip.”

“Oh, angry sex? Tae you are killing me today.”

“No. We agreed no weapons in the bedroom, get them out.”

“Hey, it works for Yuta and Sicheng apparently! Maybe we could give it a go sometime?”

“I really, really hope you’re joking. For your own sake.”

“Are we done fighting now then? I’d very much like to kiss you and not to be brash or anything but I would very much like a cuddle session with the countries scariest mafia boss who is definitely the little spoon whether he admits it or not.”

“Shut up and kiss me already you twat.”

“Ooo, talk dirty to me... baby boy.”

≪ ≫

Johnny loved waking up to the sight of Taeyong curled up into his side. Their bed sheets tangled between them as were their naked bodies, a sliver of moonlight spilling into their home - not enough to see clearly but enough for Johnny to make out the sharp structure of Taeyong’s body, his pale skin almost sparkling at the contact.

It was moments like this he really thought it was worth it. The hiding and the lying was all worth it to spend time with the one he loved. Even if it was only for a few hours - it was enough.

But, once again, he was painstakingly brought back to reality at the sound of a crash downstairs. They lived alone. Carefully trying to slither out of bed, untangling his limbs from being intertwined with his lovers.

“Johnny, it’s cold and late, where are you going?”

“Sshh, don’t worry, I think there’s someone in the house. I’ll take care of it, go back to sleep.”

“Just don’t make a mess, blood is a bitch to clean off the walls and I deep cleaned the house yesterday.”

So, Johnny made his way downstairs, grabbing his gun from the pile of his clothes, as quietly as he could, missing the steps where he knew they would creak and keeping close to the wall. As he turned to go the kitchen where the back door was now left slightly ajar, he noticed the lamp on in the living room and the soft muttering of “what the fuck?”

Clicking the safety off, he gently pushed the door open, “Freeze! Don’t move, who are you and why are you in my house? Talk.”

That was when the anonymous figure turned to face Johnny, the most definitely not anonymous figure and in fact very, very familiar figure.

“Dude, what the actual fuck. You live here? You’re in what looks like a long-term relationship with Taeyong?! And why the fuck are you naked?”

“Jaehyun, your order tonight was working the bar, was it not? I think I’m the one who should be asking the questions.”

“Sorry boss but we’re all sick of you not telling us where you’ve been going! It was either Lucas or me who was going to follow you tonight and you better be glad it was me – for both your sake and Lucas’s because Yuqi is not doing well with his shifts getting longer. Now, I’ve explained my part - you need to start talking.”

“I’ll go put some clothes on then I’ll explain everything, I swear.”

“Hey babe, it’s Jaehyun, got some business to discuss - don’t worry he’ll stay downstairs he doesn’t know anything.”

“Too bad, I hate seeing you put clothes on.”

≪ ≫

“Okay boss, let’s hear it.”

“Right. Well, yeah, I live here and have done for nearly four years. Me and Tae have been together for five years, this time anyway - we were together for a couple years back in high school too. It’ll be six in a couple weeks.”

“Jesus Christ. I know the two of you were never rivals but you come home at the end of the day to him?”

“He usually comes home to me to be honest; they’ve got more business he has to finish up whereas we’ve only got the bar and the garage.

Look, I know this is going to be hard for you to understand but we are in love, we’re happy and who knows maybe we will work together in the future. I want to marry him Jae, I’m planning to propose on our anniversary. If he says yes, we will all be working together - whether you like it or not.”

“I just can’t believe we never knew. And that you felt like you had to hide this when you didn’t, we’d always support you, we love you. At least you didn’t hide it because you never told any of us you were gay!”

“Literally everyone aside from Lucas is gay, even he dated some guys before he got with Yuqi. The bar is a whole gay parade. I’ve literally talked about how hot certain people are with you, did you think I was gushing over Namjoon’s man tiddies and dimples because I thought it was the right thing to do? No, he’s hot and Jin is one lucky guy.”

“I’m so going to have to call Jaemin and get him to stop trying to set you up with Kun then if you’re practically married. Jaem did say he was being pretty stubborn about it though so to be fair I really think he just wasn’t interested.”

“Of course, Kun’s not going to agree to a date with me when he’s the one helping me pick an engagement ring.”

“Oh fuck.”

“Oh, fuck indeed. Honestly you guys are such morons at times. And if you’re here, who’s working the bar?”

“Oh wow, keeping quiet, now are we? I thought I told you about working Mark at night, he’s too young and he has to go to school! I enrolled him in that private academy place for a reason and its costing a bloody fortune, you could at least make sure he goes. You’re dismissed Jaehyun. I don’t want to see you out of place for a while, and don’t breathe a word of this to anyone else. I will not hesitate to punish you.”

“Yes sir, sorry boss. It won’t happen again – I’ll tell everyone I came up with nothing.”

“Good night Jaehyun.”

≪ ≫

“JOHNNY!”

Shit, shit, shit.

“Whose muddy boot marks are in my living room and kitchen. If it was Jaehyun oh my god so help me, he treks through the forest when it’s been raining for two weeks straight.”

“Sorry babe, I didn’t have chance to lecture him on his boots with everything else.”

“What’s happening, is it work?”

“Just some issues with an, uhm, with a delivery yeah. New shipment, new items, you know how it goes.”

“Did Ten send you new weapons?”

“No, no. It’s a shipment for the garage, new parts so hopefully I’ll finally get the 1957 porsche working.”

“Sure, okay. Pancakes?”

“I gotta dash, I love you.” With a quick kiss to the forehead Johnny was gone, practically running out the door.

≪ ≫

“I am so sorry I’m late Kun, I know you don’t get much time. Taeyong was questioning me on some business this morning, couldn’t exactly tell him the new shipment I was talking about was an engagement ring.”

“It’s not a problem, I’m only tutoring Jisung today. They gave me the day off, something about the chairman being worried at the number of hours I’ve been working. Oh well, gives me more time to find this ring – he’s going to be so happy.”

“Thank you, this really does mean a lot.”

“I am happy to help, two of my best friends getting engaged? Count me in.”

“Do you think I’m crazy for asking us to join our businesses if we do get married?”

“Not at all, I spoke to him about it once. He said it’d be nice to have someone to share it all with, he does get lonely sometimes.”

“I would give him the world if I could, every moon and every star. I just want him to be happy.”

“You make him happy Johnny, more than you could ever know.”

≪ ≫

“Hey, I know, I am so, so sorry I am late but I had to stop by the garage on my way home.”

“It’s fine, I was late too so I just picked up a takeaway, well Sicheng did and I got it from him but not the point. It’s in the oven heating up now.”

“Good, we need to have a quick conversation.”

“Johnny, what’s wrong you look all serious?”

“Happy anniversary Tae.” He was clutching a small blue velvet box in his hand, good thing it was strong or he probably would’ve broken it with the death grip he had on it.

“I told you not to get me anything.”

“And, contrary to popular belief, I am smart enough to know that meant get you something. But, you don’t like roses and besides they’re expensive and only die anyway, so I got you this instead.”

Hesitantly, he got down on one knee, then proceeded to struggle to open the box and Tae couldn’t help but let out a small snicker.

“Fuck, oh there we go. Will you, please, do me the honour of marrying me?”

“Of course, you idiot. Yes, yes, yes.”

Johnny pulled him in for a soft kiss, sweet and tender.

“Kiss me properly now Johnny.”

“Always so demanding.”

Johnny leant down once again, pulling Taeyong into a passionate, deeper, hungry kiss. One hand holding his waist, the other reaching down to cup the back of his thighs. With a quick tap to his leg and a breathy “Jump”, the kiss turned needy, pressed against the wall – the sound of whiny moans soon filling their kitchen.

“You know Tae,” kiss to his jaw, “I think that ring,” kiss to his neck, “will look a lot better” kiss to his collarbone, “when it’s the only thing you’re wearing”, kiss to the sensitive spot below his ear – producing a breathless moan of Johnny’s name.

“Johnny, bedroom now.”

“Takeout can wait?”

“We can eat later?”

With hungry eyes and a quick smirk towards Tae once again, “I think I could eat now.”

“Oh really, what kind of food were you thinking?”

“You.”

[ingloriousblasters]

Second Chances (Merle x OC) AU - Chapter Ten

Synopsis: Finding herself pregnant and unwed, Nora Buckley thought she’d never return to the small town of Redwater, Georgia. Five years later, life has brought her back to the town she swore she’d never go back to. In a hurry to find a place to live and a job to provide for her daughter, Anna, Nora reluctantly takes a position at the old Dixon farm on the outskirts of town, where she meets fellow Redwater outcast, Merle Dixon. Takes place in early 1960s. 

Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Four | Chapter Five | Chapter Six | Chapter Seven | Chapter Eight | Chapter Nine

A/N: So the song that is playing in this chapter is “I Want to be Wanted” by Brenda Lee. It took me forever to find an era appropriate song that I felt was needed for this scene. Hope it’s okay. And also, I know it’s probably unlikely for two people to fit on a tractor at the same time, but let’s suspend disbelief for a little bit? Thanks for reading!

Chapter Ten

“Your total is $1.50.” Nora told the balding old man. Digging into his khaki pants, held up by navy blue suspenders, the man fished out his money and handed it over.

“Thank ya so much, Miss,” he croaked out. “I do hope we’ll be seeing more of you. Nice change from the man usually here,” he winked at her. Nora gave a polite smile and turned around to the bed of Merle’s truck and grabbed some more vegetables to restock.

After Merle’s accident, Nora took over the farming duties, including driving two towns over into Greenwood for the weekend market. It was her third weekend there and she was finally getting the hang of things. The first time, Merle came with her to give prices on items and to help setup and breakdown the stand, which turned into small arguments between the two the entire day. Merle still acted like he didn’t have a hurt wrist and Nora kept having to keep her eye on him and the customers. She forced him to stay home the next time.

When the market ended, she boxed all the unsold produce back up into Merle’s old truck and folded up the small white table. Her total haul for the day was about ten dollars, which she knew would make Merle happy.

Nora found herself enjoying her role on the farm. No longer feeling like she was intruding on Merle’s life, she felt like they were sort of partners now. The farm their responsibility. She stopped by the dairy on her way home to get a pint of ice cream for them to celebrate with after dinner that night.

Pulling up the long gravel road, Anna and King ran up the hill with the truck to greet Nora.

“Mama!” Anna shouted at her over King’s barking.

“Hi, baby,” Nora answered. She slipped out of the driver’s seat and the two of them walked together to the back of the truck. “Were ya good for Merle today?” she asked.

“Yep. I got to pick the baby tomatoes.”

Nora smiled down at her daughter. Merle was going to get anyone he could out in the those fields while he was healing. Just as her mind thought about him, the rowdy farmer appeared from the front of the truck.

“How’d ya do, darlin?” he asked, adjusting the sling around his arm. A tick Merle had developed after being stuck in the thing for only a week.

“Not bad at all,” Nora responded and told him their total. Merle let out a happy holler and gave her a one armed hug, lifting and spinning her in the air for a couple seconds. He hadn’t forgotten about the car ride home from the doctor. As much as his brain was scrambled that day, he had meant what he said. Nora was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. It just took a good bump on his head to finally admit it to himself, and accidentally her. Merle wasn’t sure if Nora remembered or not, but he didn’t have the courage to bring it up.

Nora handed Anna the bag with the ice cream in it and yelled at her to put it straight in the freezer box as the little girl ran towards the house with the German Shepherd. Merle lifted the lightest box he found and helped Nora take the unsold produce back to the barn for storage.

When they finished, Nora told Merle she was going to head back to the shed for a second and would be back up to the house. Merle nodded at her as he took count of how much produce they had left. It angered him more than anything that he couldn’t be more help to her, only being able to pick a vegetable here and there. It amazed him that Nora took it all in stride, and he was very conscious of trying to control his temper around her. His anger only came out in the barn, nicks and knife markings covering one of the wooden beams the only evidence of his frustration. Nora’s dedication to the farm was worth far too much to him to go and ruin it.

They had dinner and ice cream on the back porch later that evening and Anna fell asleep on the faded wood, her head resting on the black and tan coat of her four-legged best friend.

“Ay, Bug,” Merle called to her. “Ya still alive down there?” he didn’t get a response and Nora laughed under her breathe.

“Well, I guess we better call it a day,” she said.

Merle smiled, putting out the butt of his cigarette with his boot.  “Guess so.”

Nora picked up her daughter, whispered goodnight to Merle, and headed back down the pathway to their small dwelling. The sun set quickly as they left and Merle cleaned off the back porch as best he could, threw the leftovers out for King to eat, and went inside to get ready for bed. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed brown fur laying on the kitchen table. A stuffed teddy bear laid on its side, its beaded eyes staring back at him. Merle looked at the thing for a few minutes. The Dixon house never had toys in it, even when he and Daryl were kids. Unless you counted the chipped pieces of wood they would use as swords. Seeing something so normal in the abnormal farmhouse gave Merle a laugh. He may have hated the memories held in these walls, but the new ones were starting to outweigh the old.

Thinking the kid would want it for bed, he picked the bear up and headed down the now darkened path to the shed. He could see a dull light coming through the front door window and stopped in his tracks a few feet away. Nora stood in the middle of the shack, unbuttoning the top of her blouse. Merle scooted over by one of the oak trees and watched as her delicate hands slid down her body, button after button, revealing her white nylon bra. His grip on the bear tightened when Nora slid the thin fabric of her blouse off her shoulders. He couldn’t peel his eyes away from her, watching her maneuver around the small room. She turned herself away from where he knew the bed sat, and reached behind to unclasp the back of her bra. When she had the band undone, a strap slowly fell off her shoulder. Merle’s mouth went dry and he felt a tightness in his pants. Before he could see anything else he turned around, heading back towards the house. He set the bear back down on the table where Anna could see it in the morning and walked to his room. Sitting on the edge of his bed, Merle nervously adjusted the sling on his arm. Flashes of Nora’s bare skin running through his mind. He rubbed a hand over his face before laying down.

Ah, Dixon, whatta ya doin? he thought to himself. Ain’t no way she’s gonna want ya.

________________________

As August drew nearer, Nora took Anna into town to register her for Kindergarten at the elementary school. Entering the double red doors, the swift odor of old wood and tangy glue filled Nora’s head with nostalgia. In this building were some of the only happy memories she had of growing up in Redwater, before her mother went off the deep end, before her father passed away, and before Rodger showed up in her life. They walked into the front office hand in hand and a woman in her early fifties with thin, gray hair looked up from her typewriter when Nora introduced themselves and asked for a form. The woman gave her a knowing look, standing up from her desk and walking over to the metallic filing cabinet to grab a registration form.

Nora took Anna over to the line of chairs near the door of the office and began filling out the paperwork. She felt the cold eyes of the secretary on her as she wrote. Anna turned around in her seat and kneeled to look out the window of the office that led to the hallway. She rested her small arms on the ledge and looked up and down at the mostly bare beige walls. At her old school the walls were covered in bright papers with drawings from her and her classmates. She wondered if she would get to draw here too. Mama had mentioned she’d be starting school soon, but that it wouldn’t be like the daycare she was at in the city. There would be less kids in her class, but more kids of all different ages. She would go all day now and even get to ride on a bus like a big kid.

As Nora continued filling out Anna’s information, she noticed the secretary walk down the hall and whisper to an unseen person. Nora’s ears perked up when she heard her last name. The secretary and her acquaintance were apparently unaware that their whispered voices still carried down the hall.

“Buckley? Are you sure?”

“Mhmm. Came right in like no one would recognize who she was,” said the secretary.

“I never thought she’d come back here, and with the child,” the mystery voice continued.

“Ya know they’ve taken up at the Dixon farm, right? God only knows what goes on there.”

“That poor child.”

Nora gripped the black ballpoint pen tightly in her fist. No matter how much she tried to avoid and ignore the gossip, it always seemed to find a way to slip into her life.

“What they talkin about Mama?” Anna asked turning back around in her seat.

“Nothing baby,” Nora said softly.

The two women appeared back in the office a few minutes later, one carrying a manilla folder and some pencils in her hand.

“Ms. Buckley,” the secretary announced. “This is Mrs. Wells, she is the school’s counselor and will need to take your daughter back for the standard screening for Kindergarten.”  

“Oh, alright,” Nora replied. Anna jumped to her feet when the counselor asked if she was ready to do some exercises. The blonde tuft of curls waved back to her mother and disappeared down the hall. The old secretary went back to her desk, doing busy work while glancing over at Nora every now and then.

Not able to stand the silence or wandering eyes sitting in the office, Nora excused herself to the bathroom. She walked up and down the hallways, her heels echoing off the plaster walls. She wished the testing was done already, but not because she was worried for Anna. She knew her daughter was as smart as a whip and get on just fine at school. It was just frustrating having to hear the quiet rumours about living with Merle. Not once did he ever lay a hand on or raise his voice at Anna. It was quite the opposite, Nora thought, Merle doted on Anna. Whether he would admit to that or not was another question.

It angered Nora that the people in this town only thought of him as nothing more than a mirror image of his father. They didn’t know that his brother was his best friend, even though they quarreled often. They didn’t know about the willow tree he used to hide in to escape his father’s abuse. And they never saw how his blue eyes lit up whenever he talked about the farm. A smile formed on Nora's lips as she thought about those eyes, bringing a small comfort to the rambling going on in her head.

“Excuse me, Miss,” the counselor called bringing Nora out of her thoughts. Nora turned around at the voice to see the woman standing in front of her with Anna at her side. “Your daughter did very well. She should be all set to start in a couple weeks.” Anna grinned widely at her mother and hopped over to her side.

“Great,” Nora replied. “Thank you.” She grabbed Anna’s hand and they walked out of the brick building into the sunlight. Both ready to head back to the farm after spending all day in town.

________________________

Before they knew it, the first day of school arrived. Anna woke up before Nora and was bouncing off the walls with excitement. It took Nora ten minutes longer to brush through and tie her daughter’s hair back for her first day. They had gone into town the week before and picked up a couple of new dresses for Anna, who decided to wear a navy blue dress with capped sleeves today. When she was all dressed, Anna sprinted up to the house for breakfast.

“Merle!” She screamed running into the kitchen. “I’m going to school today!”

Merle smiled at her over his coffee mug from his seat at the table. The kid’s smile was infectious, even at seven in the morning. His gaze moved from Anna to Nora, who walked in the door a few seconds later. Adjusting his sling, he smiled at her as she closed the kitchen door. Merle was itching to get out of the thing and wasn’t expecting it to take this long. He was dying to get back into his fields. After the tractor incident, Daryl had reached out to one of his customers who had mentioned he had a tractor he needed to get rid of. Apparently it wasn’t the newest John Deere model, but it wasn’t the rusted old piece of metal that almost crushed Merle to death. Daryl was stopping by later that day to bring it over.

Nora made them some eggs and toast for breakfast, while fixing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Anna’s lunch. Anna washed up in the bathroom and Nora checked her watch.

“Well we better get outside for the bus,” Nora told her. As time ticked closer, they both notice Anna became quiet. Slowly, the five year old got up from the wooden chair, suddenly the realization of going somewhere different finally hitting her. Nora handed her the purple tin box that held her lunch and Anna tiptoed towards the hallway when Merle held his good arm out, gently grabbing Anna’s sleeve and turning her to face him

“Don’t ya worry, Bug,” he told her warmly, and winked at her brining a smile to her face. Anna wrapped her arms around Merle’s stomach and walked down the hallway a little more confidently with Nora following behind. They walked down the gravel drive, King joining them, and waited for the school bus. Within a few minutes, the faint hum of a large engine caught their ears and the yellow machine appeared from the over the hill. As the bus drew nearer, the whispered conversation at the school a couple weeks before entered Nora’s head.

“Uh, listen baby,” she said bending down to Anna’s height and fixing her dress. “You may hear things around school about us, but I want you to know it has nothing to do with you, alright? You didn’t do anything wrong and don’t let anyone make you think you did.” Anna squinted her eyes, not quite fully understanding as the bus pulled up in front of them. “People like to talk about me, but I don’t want you to worry about it. You go get on that bus and make some friends and I’ll be waiting for ya when you come home, okay?”

“Ok, Mama,” Anna replied. She gave Nora a hug and started walking up the large steps of the bus. Turning around, Anna waved at her mother and then yelled goodbye to Merle. Nora turned her head around to see him standing at the edge of the wrap around porch, leaning against one the wooden beams. She hadn’t notice him come out, and watched him nod in response to Anna’s words.

When the bus kicked into gear and left a dusty path in its wake, Nora walked back up the hill towards the house and wiped at the tears that formed in the corner of her eyes. She didn’t think she would get that emotional over Anna starting school, but emotions were a funny thing. Meeting Merle on the front porch she forced a smile on her face looking at him.

“She’ll be fine,” Merle told her, leaving his spot from the porch and walking over to the front door.

“I know,” Nora nodded her head. “I just didn’t think it would hit me so hard.”

“Does it make ya want another one?” he asked holding the screen door open for her. “Heard that happens sometimes.”

Nora laughed lightly at his question. No one had ever asked her that before, most likely do to the fact that she was a single mother. She stared at the deserted road in front of them while thinking it over.

“Maybe,” she said with a sniff. “With the right person.” Nora ducked under Merle’s arm holding the screen door to get back inside. Merle didn’t follow her in the house, instead walking with King to the fields. Though he still couldn’t do much to help, just walking on the soil and being surrounded by the lush green crops helped ease his mind. Walking the rows, he would bend down every now and then, using his good hand to pick at a stray weed.

Not able to think of anything but Anna, Nora decided to clean the house to keep her mind busy. She spent the morning on the first floor and had just made her way up the staircase to the second. The spare bedroom on the right was littered with papers, books, and random household items that had seen better days. An old radio sat at the top of a bookshelf and Nora grabbed the pale blue rectangle and searched for an outlet. Plugging the cord in, a wave a static filled the small room. Turning the silver dial, the white noise was replaced with a monotone voice listing off the days news followed by the frantic screech of a man preaching the word of god. Nora fiddled with the dial until the aching melody of Brenda Lee’s voice filled the air.

When I am kissed I want his lips to really kiss me When we're apart I want his heart to really miss me I want to know he loves me so his eyes are misting That's the way, I want to be loved

Nora wandered around the room, deciding where to start first. She walked towards the window that faced out towards the fields, opening the ragged curtains to allow some sunlight into the room. She was about to turn away when Merle caught her eye. Nora watched him wander through the fields, King at his side. In his usual wife beater, he adjusted the strap of his arm sling before bending down to pick a deep red tomato. His sun kissed arm flexed as he pulled the bulb from the vine and inspected it before taking a bite. His strong, stubbled jaw moved slowly as he savored the sweet taste. Nora watched as his thick body continued to maneuver through the vines, admiring the way his jeans hugged his thighs and bottom when he bent down again.

Oh god Nora, stop ogling she thought, but couldn’t turn her eyes away. Merle fascinated her. His rough exterior hiding his kindness from the outside world. Nora thought about all the times he came to her aid since she’d been here and how he treated Anna almost as if she were his own child. She felt a warmth run through her body. The same warmth she felt in the car ride home from the doctor. Merle had called her beautiful and she wanted to know if he meant it. She hoped he had meant it she admitted to herself.

I want someone to share my laughter and my tears with Someone I know I'd love to spend a million years with Where is this someone somewhere meant for me

As if he knew he was being watched, Merle turned his head towards the house, his eyes scanning the old building and Nora scooted away from the window like a child with their hand caught in the cookie jar. She walked to the opposite side of the room where papers laid scattered on the floor and picked them up. Going through them she started to organize them into a trash and keep pile. When she had a good amount of keep papers, she scanned the area to find an empty space to place them.

The bottom drawer of a small desk hidden in the corner was stuck halfway open. Nora went to jiggle it free, but being caught on an angle, the drawer was not budging. She tugged one more time when it finally slipped out and a scrunched up sepia toned paper came with it. Nora unfolded the paper and saw an image of two boys. A crease ran down the middle of one boy with short cropped hair. He was hanging from a tree in a light colored shirt, probably no older than five and a hint of a smile on his face. However, it was the older boy that caught Nora’s attention. He wasn’t much older than twelve, barefoot and shirtless, baggy overalls covered his body. A familiar looking scowl set on the young man’s face and a mass of dark curls covered his head. He leaned against the tree, unimpressed and with folded arms. There was no denying the familiar glare in the boy’s eyes as Nora brought a hand to her mouth and stared at the younger Merle.

Her first thought was how adorable he was, given the stern look. A thin ringlet of hair brushed against his left eye and it reminded her of Anna’s hair. God, our kids would have the curliest hair on the planet. Nora’s eyes widened as the thought passed through her mind and she set the photo down in the drawer, along with her organized stack of papers, and closed it. She walked back towards the window to see if Merle was still watching the house, like he could read her mind and knew what she was thinking, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. He must have gone into the barn. The sound of squealing brakes brought Nora out of her train of thought and she glanced at her watch. She was surprised at how fast the day had gone by and hurried down the staircase to greet her daughter back from school.

Shortly after Anna arrived home, a red tractor appeared from down the road. Soon the mess of hair that was Daryl came into view as he rode the tractor up the hill of the front yard and back towards the barn.

“Well, here she is,” he told Merle shutting the engine off and hopping down.

“Mm.” Merle responded. As much as his old tractor was a piece of shit, it was his piece of shit and he wasn’t the biggest fan of change. It also didn’t help that he only had one good arm at the moment. They left the tractor to go inside for a late dinner, all four sitting at the table listening intently as Anna talked about her first day of school. She had made a new friend name Carly, whose family took over the bookstore last year.

When they finished, they all walked back outside to look at the new machine, while Merle carefully climb into the driver’s seat. The cushioned bottom was a far cry from the curved seat of metal from the old tractor. This one even had a back to the seat. Merle rested against it while running his hand over the black steering wheel. Maybe this one wouldn’t be so bad. His eyes roamed over all the different levers and gears before glancing up at his audience. He noticed Nora’s lips curved halfway up in a smile as she watched him. She and Anna walked up to the new tractor looking it over.

“Watch out for them rippers back there, Bug” Merle called over his shoulder to Anna as she walked around to the back of the tractor.

“I will,” she acknowledged, staying far away from the row of long, sharp pieces of metal attached.

“So ya ready for your lesson?” He turned his head back around towards Nora, who looked up at him in confusion.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on darlin, as far as anyone knows I’m outta commission for the foreseeable future and I need these fields dug so we can plant more seeds.” Merle rested his arm against the steering wheel waiting in the silence for Nora’s reply.

“Alright, fine.” she agreed and walked towards the tractor, standing near the step waiting for Merle to get up. “Aren’t you moving?” she asked.

“I ain’t letting ya drive this thing alone.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Nora folder her arms.

“Climb on up.”

“What?!” Nora remarked incredulously. “Merle, there’s no room!”

Sitting up straighter in the seat, Merle spread his legs out further creating a small pocket of space between them. “Sure there is.” he replied.

Nora glared at him, wondering if this was a joke. She looked around to make eye contact with Daryl, but he had been whisked off by Anna who wanted to show him all her school supplies back in the house. Nora stood frozen in place not sure what to do. Part of her wanted to climb up. But the other part of her, the part she tried not to acknowledge, was flustered at the idea of practically sitting on Merle’s lap.

“This doesn’t seem very safe, ya know?"

“Only got so much daylight left, darlin. Ya gonna let my fields die or not?” Merle hollered.

Nora’s eyes turned to slits as she took the first step up on the tractor while Merle gave her a toothy grin. Making sure to watch out for his bad arm, Nora squeezed herself between the steering wheel and Merle. Smoothing out the denim jeans she was accustomed to wearing now, Nora held her breath and slowly sank down on the sliver of seat visible between Merle’s long legs. Immediately, she felt the warmth radiating from his body on her back. Merle tucked his bad arm close to him and sat up straighter on the seat to give Nora some more room. She glanced back at him, her concerned eyes reiterating her statement only a couple minutes ago.

“We’ll be fine, darlin. Just gonna drive for a couple minutes, ain’t like I’m asking ya to plough the whole field.”

Trusting Merle, Nora turned back around. “This is just like driving your truck, right?” she asked.

“Almost,” Merle replied finally getting situated. “‘Cept this thing’s got a little more bells and whistles to it.” He pointed around Nora’s body to a gold key. “Right there’s ya ignition.” Then pointed down. “Here’s ya clutch and brake, and over there is the gear shift. This thing here’s the draft control for the ripper and controls the depth for even ploughing.”

Nora nodded her head taking it all in. Merle shifted the gear into neutral and told her whenever she was ready to release the break, press down on the clutch, and start the ignition. The tractor came to life and Merle quickly placed his hand on Nora’s thigh to balance himself. The engine lurched them forward down the long field. Nora tried to focus solely on driving, and tucked her hair behind her ear to keep from blowing in the wind, and Merle received a pleasant aroma of strawberries in his face.

“Ya can press down on the clutch some to switch gears if ya want,” he patted her leg to get her attention over the loud humming of the engine. Nora nodded her head that she understood and they picked up a little speed, distancing themselves from the house. Her body was on fire, the result of a culmination between the summer heat, the vibrations of the tractor, and Merle’s strong body jostling behind her. She bit her lip as she came to the end of the row and Merle rubbed her leg again, instructing her on how to tightly turn the machine back around. As he talk closely to her ear, Nora could feel his husky voice travel through her whole body like the burning warmth of alcohol.  

Satisfied in what he saw, Merle let her park the tractor and turn off the ignition and throttle. “Ya did good.” he said.

“Thanks,” Nora muttered as her nervous eyes wandered. The sun had begun setting on their little test drive, casting the sky in a light pink hue with soft hints of orange tucked behind the clouds over the fields. “Oh, wow” she exclaimed as she took in the scenery. Merle followed her gaze and looked at the beautiful expanse as well.

“Yeah,” he agreed in a whisper. A few moments later his hand that was on her thigh travelled up and slowly started stroking her arm. Nora did not deny his advances. His touch prickled her skin with goosebumps and Nora held her breath as she felt him move closer to her, his nose brushing over the side of her neck. She leaned into his caress and Merle’s arm wrapped around her waist, bringing her closer to him.     

“Merle?” Nora’s quivering voice called out. She had to know if this all was real or if she was just imagining everything.

“Yeah?” he answered, his hand still firmly wrapped around her waist.

Nora lowered her head, she didn’t have enough confidence to look at him while she asked him the question that had continuously been on her mind. “Uh, do you… do you remember the ride home from the doctor? After you hurt your wrist? You were kinda-”

“I meant it,” Merle cut her off knowing exactly what she was bringing up. He felt her body exhale the long breathe she had been holding.

“You did?” she asked. Nora’s voice was low and her head still bent. She couldn’t bear to look into those blue eyes, afraid they might somehow betray the words Merle had just spoken. Merle removed his arm from her waist and his hand moved under her chin, gently nudging her face up so he could look at her. Nora bit her lip, lifting her eyes slowly to meet his, and Merle nodded his head. The setting sun reflected in his eyes, illuminating the tiniest hints of yellow buried within the blue, and Nora knew he wasn’t lying. Merle leaned his head closer to Nora and she felt her heartbeat pick up. Her eyes watched his lips as they came closer to her own and she closed her eyes with anticipation.

“Hey Merle!” Daryl yelled from yard separating the fields from the house. Jumping, the voice startled both Merle and Nora, popping the intimate bubble they had found themselves in. Merle closed his eyes in frustration.

“Yeah?” he screeched back, craning his neck around to give his brother the ugliest scowl he could muster up at the moment.

“The doc’s on the phone. Wants ta make an appointment with ya ta get them stitches out.”

[exitinertianovella]

The True Story of the ‘Free State of Jones’

A new Hollywood movie looks at the tale of the Mississippi farmer who led a revolt against the Confederacy By Richard Grant.

With two rat terriers trotting at his heels, and a long wooden staff in his hand, J.R. Gavin leads me through the woods to one of the old swamp hide-outs. A tall white man with a deep Southern drawl, Gavin has a stern presence, gracious manners and intense brooding eyes. At first I mistook him for a preacher, but he’s a retired electronic engineer who writes self-published novels about the rapture and apocalypse. One of them is titled Sal Batree, after the place he wants to show me.

I’m here in Jones County, Mississippi, to breathe in the historical vapors left by Newton Knight, a poor white farmer who led an extraordinary rebellion during the Civil War. With a company of like-minded white men in southeast Mississippi, he did what many Southerners now regard as unthinkable. He waged guerrilla war against the Confederacy and declared loyalty to the Union.

In the spring of 1864, the Knight Company overthrew the Confederate authorities in Jones County and raised the United States flag over the county courthouse in Ellisville. The county was known as the Free State of Jones, and some say it actually seceded from the Confederacy. This little-known, counterintuitive episode in American history has now been brought to the screen in Free State of Jones, directed by Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, The Hunger Games) and starring a grimy, scruffed-up Matthew McConaughey as Newton Knight.

Knight and his men, says Gavin, hooking away an enormous spider web with his staff and warning me to be careful of snakes, “had a number of different hide-outs. The old folks call this one Sal Batree. Sal was the name of Newt’s shotgun, and originally it was Sal’s Battery, but it got corrupted over the years.”

We reach a small promontory surrounded on three sides by a swampy, beaver-dammed lake, and concealed by 12-foot-high cattails and reeds. “I can’t be certain, but a 90-year-old man named Odell Holyfield told me this was the place,” says Gavin. “He said they had a gate in the reeds that a man on horseback could ride through. He said they had a password, and if you got it wrong, they’d kill you. I don’t know how much of that is true, but one of these days I’ll come here with a metal detector and see what I can find.”

We make our way around the lakeshore, passing beaver-gnawed tree stumps and snaky-looking thickets. Reaching higher ground, Gavin points across the swamp to various local landmarks. Then he plants his staff on the ground and turns to face me directly.

“Now I’m going to say something that might offend you,” he begins, and proceeds to do just that, by referring in racist terms to “Newt’s descendants” in nearby Soso, saying some of them are so light-skinned “you look at them and you just don’t know.”

I stand there writing it down and thinking about William Faulkner, whose novels are strewn with characters who look white but are deemed black by Mississippi’s fanatical obsession with the one-drop rule. And not for the first time in Jones County, where arguments still rage about a man born 179 years ago, I recall Faulkner’s famous axiom about history: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

After the Civil War, Knight took up with his grandfather’s former slave Rachel; they had five children together. Knight also fathered nine children with his white wife, Serena, and the two families lived in different houses on the same 160-acre farm. After he and Serena separated—they never divorced—Newt Knight caused a scandal that still reverberates by entering a common-law marriage with Rachel and proudly claiming their mixed-race children.

The Knight Negroes, as these children were known, were shunned by whites and blacks alike. Unable to find marriage partners in the community, they started marrying their white cousins instead, with Newt’s encouragement. (Newt’s son Mat, for instance, married one of Rachel’s daughters by another man, and Newt’s daughter Molly married one of Rachel’s sons by another man.) An interracial community began to form near the small town of Soso, and continued to marry within itself.

“They keep to themselves over there,” says Gavin, striding back toward his house, where supplies of canned food and muscadine wine are stored up for the onset of Armageddon. “A lot of people find it easier to forgive Newt for fighting Confederates than mixing blood.”

I came to Jones County having read some good books about its history, and knowing very little about its present-day reality. It was reputed to be fiercely racist and conservative, even by Mississippi standards, and it had been a hotbed for the Ku Klux Klan. But Mississippi is nothing if not layered and contradictory, and this small, rural county has also produced some wonderful creative and artistic talents, including Parker Posey, the indie-film queen, the novelist Jonathan Odell, the pop singer and gay astronaut Lance Bass, and Mark Landis, the schizophrenic art forger and prankster, who donated fraudulent masterpieces to major American art museums for nearly 30 years before he was caught.

Driving toward the Jones County line, I passed a sign to Hot Coffee—a town, not a beverage—and drove on through rolling cattle pastures and short, new-growth pine trees. There were isolated farmhouses and prim little country churches, and occasional dilapidated trailers with dismembered automobiles in the front yard. In Newt Knight’s day, all this was a primeval forest of enormous longleaf pines so thick around the base that three or four men could circle their arms around them. This part of Mississippi was dubbed the Piney Woods, known for its poverty and lack of prospects. The big trees were an ordeal to clear, the sandy soil was ill-suited for growing cotton, and the bottomlands were choked with swamps and thickets.

There was some very modest cotton production in the area, and a small slaveholding elite that included Newt Knight’s grandfather, but Jones County had fewer slaves than any other county in Mississippi, only 12 percent of its population. This, more than anything, explains its widespread disloyalty to the Confederacy, but there was also a surly, clannish independent spirit, and in Newt Knight, an extraordinarily steadfast and skillful leader.

On the county line, I was half-expecting a sign reading “Welcome to the Free State of Jones” or “Home of Newton Knight,” but the Confederacy is now revered by some whites in the area, and the chamber of commerce had opted for a less controversial slogan: “Now This Is Living!” Most of Jones County is rural, low- or modest-income; roughly 70 percent of the population is white. I drove past many small chicken farms, a large modern factory making transformers and computers, and innumerable Baptist churches. Laurel, the biggest town, stands apart. Known as the City Beautiful, it was created by Midwestern timber barons who razed the longleaf pine forests and built themselves elegant homes on oak-lined streets and the gorgeous world-class Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

The old county seat, and ground zero for the Free State of Jones, is Ellisville, now a pleasant, leafy town of 4,500 people. Downtown has some old brick buildings with wrought-iron balconies. The grand old columned courthouse has a Confederate monument next to it, and no mention of the anti-Confederate rebellion that took place here. Modern Ellisville is dominated by the sprawling campus of Jones County Junior College, where a semiretired history professor named Wyatt Moulds was waiting for me in the entrance hall. A direct descendant of Newt Knight’s grandfather, he was heavily involved in researching the film and ensuring its historical accuracy.

A large, friendly, charismatic man with unruly side-parted hair, he was wearing alligator-skin cowboy boots and a fishing shirt. “I’m one of the few liberals you’re going to meet here, but I’m a Piney Woods liberal,” he said. “I voted for Obama, I hunt and I love guns. It’s part of the culture here. Even the liberals carry handguns.”

He described Jones County as the most conservative place in Mississippi, but he noted that race relations were improving and that you could see it clearly in the changing attitudes toward Newt Knight. “It’s generational,” he said. “A lot of older people see Newt as a traitor and a reprobate, and they don’t understand why anyone would want to make a movie about him. If you point out that Newt distributed food to starving people, and was known as the Robin Hood of the Piney Woods, they’ll tell you he married a black, like that trumps everything. And they won’t use the word ‘black.’”

His current crop of students, on the other hand, are “fired up” about Newt and the movie. “Blacks and whites date each other in high school now, and they don’t think it’s a big deal,” said Moulds. “That’s a huge change. Some of the young guys are really identifying with Newt now, as a symbol of Jones County pride. It doesn’t hurt that he was such a badass.”

Knight was 6-foot-4 with black curly hair and a full beard���“big heavyset man, quick as a cat,” as one of his friends described him. He was a nightmarish opponent in a backwoods wrestling match, and one of the great unsung guerrilla fighters in American history. So many men tried so hard to kill him that perhaps his most remarkable achievement was to reach old age.

“He was a Primitive Baptist who didn’t drink, didn’t cuss, doted on children and could reload and fire a double-barreled, muzzle-loading shotgun faster than anyone else around,” said Moulds. “Even as an old man, if someone rubbed him the wrong way, he’d have a knife at their throat in a heartbeat. A lot of people will tell you that Newt was just a renegade, out for himself, but there’s good evidence that he was a man of strong principles who was against secession, against slavery and pro-Union.”

Those views were not unusual in Jones County. Newt’s right-hand man, Jasper Collins, came from a big family of staunch Mississippi Unionists. He later named his son Ulysses Sherman Collins, after his two favorite Yankee generals, Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman. “Down here, that’s like naming your son Adolf Hitler Collins,” said Moulds.

When secession fever swept across the South in 1860, Jones County was largely immune to it. Its secessionist candidate received only 24 votes, while the “cooperationist” candidate, John H. Powell, received 374. When Powell got to the secession convention in Jackson, however, he lost his nerve and voted to secede along with almost everyone else. Powell stayed away from Jones County for a while after that, and he was burned in effigy in Ellisville.

“In the Lost Cause mythology, the South was united, and secession had nothing to do with slavery,” said Moulds. “What happened in Jones County puts the lie to that, so the Lost Causers have to paint Newt as a common outlaw, and above all else, deny all traces of Unionism. With the movie coming out, they’re at it harder than ever.”

Although he was against secession, Knight voluntarily enlisted in the Confederate Army once the war began. We can only speculate about his reasons. He kept no diary and gave only one interview near the end of his life, to a New Orleans journalist named Meigs Frost. Knight said he’d enlisted with a group of local men to avoid being conscripted and then split up into different companies. But the leading scholar of the Knight-led rebellion, Victoria Bynum, author of The Free State of Jones, points out that Knight had enlisted, under no threat of conscription, a few months after the war began, in July 1861. She thinks he relished being a soldier.

In October 1862, after the Confederate defeat at Corinth, Knight and many other Piney Woods men deserted from the Seventh Battalion of Mississippi Infantry. It wasn’t just the starvation rations, arrogant harebrained leadership and appalling carnage. They were disgusted and angry about the recently passed “Twenty Negro Law,” which exempted one white male for every 20 slaves owned on a plantation, from serving in the Confederate Army. Jasper Collins echoed many non-slaveholders across the South when he said, “This law...makes it a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”

Returning home, they found their wives struggling to keep up the farms and feed the children. Even more aggravating, the Confederate authorities had imposed an abusive, corrupt “tax in kind” system, by which they took what they wanted for the war effort— horses, hogs, chickens, corn, meat from the smokehouses, homespun cloth. A Confederate colonel named William N. Brown reported that corrupt tax officials had “done more to demoralize Jones County than the whole Yankee Army.”

In early 1863, Knight was captured for desertion and possibly tortured. Some scholars think he was pressed back into service for the Siege of Vicksburg, but there’s no solid evidence that he was there. After Vicksburg fell, in July 1863, there was a mass exodus of deserters from the Confederate Army, including many from Jones and the surrounding counties. The following month, Confederate Maj. Amos McLemore arrived in Ellisville and began hunting them down with soldiers and hounds. By October, he had captured more than 100 deserters, and exchanged threatening messages with Newt Knight, who was back on his ruined farm on the Jasper County border.

On the night of October 5, Major McLemore was staying at his friend Amos Deason’s mansion in Ellisville, when someone—almost certainly Newt Knight—burst in and shot him to death. Soon afterward, there was a mass meeting of deserters from four Piney Woods counties. They organized themselves into a company called the Jones County Scouts and unanimously elected Knight as their captain. They vowed to resist capture, defy tax collectors, defend each other’s homes and farms, and do what they could to aid the Union.

Neo-Confederate historians have denied the Scouts’ loyalty to the Union up and down, but it was accepted by local Confederates at the time. “They were Union soldiers from principle,” Maj. Joel E. Welborn, their former commanding officer in the Seventh Mississippi, later recalled. “They were making an effort to be mustered into the U.S. Service.” Indeed, several of the Jones County Scouts later succeeded in joining the Union Army in New Orleans.

In March 1864, Lt. Gen. Leonidas Polk informed Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, that Jones County was in “open rebellion” and that guerrilla fighters were “proclaiming themselves ‘Southern Yankees.’” They had crippled the tax collection system, seized and redistributed Confederate supplies, and killed and driven out Confederate officials and loyalists, not just in Jones County but all over southeast Mississippi. Confederate Capt. Wirt Thompson reported that they were now a thousand strong and flying the U.S. flag over the Jones County courthouse—“they boast of fighting for the Union,” he added.

That spring was the high-water mark of the rebellion against the Rebels. Polk ordered two battle-hardened regiments into southeast Mississippi, under the command of Piney Woods native Col. Robert Lowry. With hanging ropes and packs of vicious, manhunting dogs, they subdued the surrounding counties and then moved into the Free State of Jones. Several of the Knight company were mangled by the dogs, and at least ten were hanged, but Lowry couldn’t catch Knight or the core group. They were deep in the swamps, being supplied with food and information by local sympathizers and slaves, most notably Rachel.

After Lowry left, proclaiming victory, Knight and his men emerged from their hide-outs, and once again, began threatening Confederate officials and agents, burning bridges and destroying railroads to thwart the Rebel Army, and raiding food supplies intended for the troops. They fought their last skirmish at Sal’s Battery, also spelled Sallsbattery, on January 10, 1865, fighting off a combined force of cavalry and infantry. Three months later, the Confederacy fell.

In 2006, the filmmaker Gary Ross was at Universal Studios, discussing possible projects, when a development executive gave him a brief, one-page treatment about Newton Knight and the Free State of Jones. Ross was instantly intrigued, both by the character and the revelation of Unionism in Mississippi, the most deeply Southern state of all.

“It led me on a deep dive to understand more and more about him and the fact that the South wasn’t monolithic during the Civil War,” says Ross, speaking on the phone from New York. “I didn’t realize it was going to be two years of research before I began writing the screenplay.”

The first thing he did was take a canoe trip down the Leaf River, to get a feel for the area. Then he started reading, beginning with the five (now six) books about Newton Knight. That led into broader reading about other pockets of Unionism in the South. Then he started into Reconstruction.

“I’m not a fast reader, nor am I an academic,” he says, “although I guess I’ve become an amateur one.” He apprenticed himself to some of the leading authorities in the field, including Harvard’s John Stauffer and Steven Hahn at the University of Pennsylvania. (At the urging of Ross, Stauffer and co-author Sally Jenkins published their own book on the Jones County rebellion, in 2009.) Ross talks about these scholars in a tone of worship and adulation, as if they’re rock stars or movie stars—and none more so than Eric Foner at Columbia, the dean of Reconstruction experts.

“He is like a god, and I went into his office, and I said, ‘My name’s Gary Ross, I did Seabiscuit.’ I asked him a bunch of questions about Reconstruction, and all he did was give me a reading list. He was giving me no quarter. I’m some Hollywood guy, you know, and he wanted to see if I could do the work.”

Ross worked his way slowly and carefully through the books, and went back with more questions. Foner answered none of them, just gave him another reading list. Ross read those books too, and went back again with burning questions. This time Foner actually looked at him and said, “Not bad. You ought to think about studying this.”

“It was the greatest compliment a person could have given me,” says Ross. “I remember walking out of his office, across the steps of Columbia library, almost buoyant. It was such a heady experience to learn for learning’s sake, for the first time, rather than to generate a screenplay. I’m still reading history books all the time. I tell people this movie is my academic midlife crisis.”

In Hollywood, he says, the executives were extremely supportive of his research, and the script that he finally wrestled out of it, but they balked at financing the film. “This was before Lincoln and 12 Years a Slave, and it was very hard to get this sort of a drama made. So I went and did Hunger Games, but always keeping an eye on this. ”

Matthew McConaughey thought the Free State of Jones script was the most exciting Civil War story he had ever read, and knew immediately that he wanted to play Newt Knight. In Knight’s defiance of both the Confederate Army and the deepest taboos of Southern culture McConaughey sees an uncompromising and deeply moral leader. He was “a man who lived by the Bible and the barrel of a shotgun,” McConaughey says in an email. “If someone—no matter what their color—was being mistreated or being used, if a poor person was being used by someone to get rich, that was a simple wrong that needed to be righted in Newt’s eyes....He did so deliberately, and to the hell with the consequences.” McConaughey sums him up as a “shining light through the middle of this country’s bloodiest fight. I really kind of marveled at him.”

The third act of the film takes place in Mississippi after the Civil War. There was a phase during early Reconstruction when blacks could vote, and black officials were elected for the first time. Then former Confederates violently took back control of the state and implemented a kind of second slavery for African-Americans. Once again disenfranchised, and terrorized by the Klan, they were exploited through sharecropping and legally segregated. “The third act is what makes this story feel so alive,” says McConaughey. “It makes it relevant today. Reconstruction is a verb that’s ongoing.”

Ross thinks Knight’s character and beliefs are most clearly revealed by his actions after the war. He was hired by the Reconstruction government to free black children from white masters who were refusing to emancipate them. “In 1875, he accepts a commission in what was essentially an all-black regiment,” says Ross. “His job was to defend the rights of freed African-Americans in one of Mississippi’s bloodiest elections. His commitment to these issues never waned.” In 1876, Knight deeded 160 acres of land to Rachel, making her one of very few African-American landowners in Mississippi at that time.

Much as Ross wanted to shoot the movie in Jones County, there were irresistible tax incentives to film across the border in Louisiana, and some breathtaking cypress swamps where various cast members were infested with the tiny mites known as chiggers. Nevertheless, Ross and McConaughey spent a lot of time in Jones County, persuading many county residents to appear in the film.

“I love the Leaf River and the whole area,” says Ross. “And I’ve grown to love Mississippi absolutely. It’s a very interesting, real and complicated place.”

On the website of Jones County Rosin Heels, the local chapter of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, an announcement warned that the film will portray Newt Knight as a civil rights activist and a hero. Then the writer inadvertently slips into the present tense: “He is actually a thief, murderer, adulterer and a deserter.”

Doug Jefcoate was listed as camp commander. I found him listed as a veterinarian in Laurel, and called up, saying I was interested in his opinions on Newt Knight. He sounded slightly impatient, then said, “OK, I’m a history guy and a fourth-generation guy. Come to the animal hospital tomorrow.”

The receptionist led me into a small examining room and closed both its doors. I stood there for a few long minutes, with a shiny steel table and, on the wall, a Bible quotation. Then Jefcoate walked in, a middle-aged man with sandy hair, glasses and a faraway smile. He was carrying two huge, leather-bound volumes of his family genealogy.

He gave me ten minutes on his family tree, and when I interrupted to ask about the Rosin Heels and Newt Knight, he stopped, looked puzzled, and began to chuckle. “You’ve got the wrong Doug Jefcoate,” he said. “I’m not that guy.” (Turns out he is Doug Jefcoat, without the “e.”)

He laughed uproariously, then settled down and gave me his thoughts. “I’m not a racist, OK, but I am a segregationist,” he said. “And ol’ Newt was skinny-dipping in the wrong pool.”

The Rosin Heel commander Doug Jefcoate wasn’t available, so I went instead to the law offices of Carl Ford, a Rosin Heel who had unsuccessfully defended Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in his 1998 trial for the 1966 murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. Ford wasn’t there, but he’d arranged for John Cox, a friend, colleague and fellow Rosin Heel, to set me straight about Newt Knight.

Cox, an animated 71-year-old radio and television announcer with a long white beard, welcomed me into a small office crammed with video equipment and Confederate memorabilia. He was working on a film called Free State of Jones: The Republic That Never Was, intended to refute Gary Ross’ film. All he had so far was the credits (Executive Producer Carl Ford) and the introductory banjo music.

“Newt is what we call trailer trash,” he said in a booming baritone drawl. “I wouldn’t have him in my house. And like all poor, white, ignorant trash, he was in it for himself. Some people are far too enamored of the idea that he was Martin Luther King, and these are the same people who believe the War Between the States was about slavery, when nothing could be further from the truth.”

There seemed no point in arguing with him, and it was almost impossible to get a word in, so I sat there scribbling as he launched into a long monologue that defended slavery and the first incarnation of the Klan, burrowed deep into obscure Civil War battle minutiae, denied all charges of racism, and kept circling back to denounce Newt Knight and the simpering fools who tried to project their liberal agendas on him.

“There was no Free State of Jones,” he concluded. “It never existed.”

Joseph Hosey is a Jones County forester and wild mushroom harvester who was hired as an extra for the movie and ended up playing a core member of the Knight Company. Looking at him, there’s no reason to ask why. Scruffy and rail-thin with piercing blue eyes and a full beard, he looks like he subsists on Confederate Army rations and the occasional squirrel.

He wanted to meet me at Jitters Coffeehouse & Bookstore in Laurel, so he could show me an old map on the wall. It depicts Jones County as Davis County, and Ellisville as Leesburg. “After 1865, Jones County was so notorious that the local Confederates were ashamed to be associated with it,” he says. “So they got the county renamed after Jefferson Davis, and Ellisville after Robert E. Lee. A few years later, there was a vote on it, and the names were changed back. Thank God, because that would have sucked.”

Like his grandfather before him, Hosey is a great admirer of Newt Knight. Long before the film, when people asked where he was from, he would say, “The Free State of Jones.” Now he has a dog named Newt, and describes it as a “Union-blue Doberman.”

Being in the film, acting and interacting with Matthew McConaughey, was a profound and moving experience, but not because of the actor’s fame. “It was like Newt himself was standing right there in front of me. It made me really wish my grandfather was still alive, because we were always saying someone should make a movie about Newt.” Hosey and the other actors in the Knight Company bonded closely during the shoot and still refer to themselves as the Knight Company. “We have get-togethers in Jones County, and I imagine we always will,” he says.

I ask him what he admires most about Knight. “When you grow up in the South, you hear all the time about your ‘heritage,’ like it’s the greatest thing there is,” he says. “When I hear that word, I think of grits and sweet tea, but mostly I think about slavery and racism, and it pains me. Newt Knight gives me something in my heritage, as a white Southerner, that I can feel proud about. We didn’t all go along with it.”

After Reconstruction, with the former Confederates back in charge, the Klan after him, and Jim Crow segregation laws being passed, Knight retreated from public life to his homestead on the Jasper County border, which he shared with Rachel until her death in 1889, and continued to share with her children and grandchildren. He lived the self-sufficient life of a yeoman Piney Woods farmer, doted on his swelling ranks of children and grandchildren, and withdrew completely from white society.

He gave that single long interview in 1921, revealing a laconic sense of humor and a strong sense of right and wrong, and he died the following year, in February 1922. He was 84 years old. Joseph Hosey took me to Newt’s granddaughter’s cabin, where some say that he suffered a fatal heart attack while dancing on the porch. Hosey really wanted to take me to Newt Knight’s grave. But the sacred rite of hunting season was underway, and the landowner didn’t want visitors disturbing the deer in the area. So Hosey drove up to the locked gate, and then swiped up the relevant photographs on his phone.

Newt’s grave has an emblem of Sal, his beloved shotgun, and the legend, “He Lived For Others.” He’d given instructions that he should be buried here with Rachel. “It was illegal for blacks and whites to be buried in the same cemetery,” says Hosey. “Newt didn’t give a damn. Even in death, he defied them.”

There were several times in Jones County when my head began to swim.

During my final interview, across a brightly colored plastic table in the McDonald’s in Laurel, there were moments when my brain seized up altogether, and I would sit there stunned, unable to grasp what I was hearing. The two sisters sitting across the table were gently amused. They had seen this many times before. It was, in fact, the normal reaction when they tried to explain their family tree to outsiders.

Dorothy Knight Marsh and Florence Knight Blaylock are the great-granddaughters of Newt and Rachel. After many decades of living in the outside world, they are back in Soso, Mississippi, dealing with prejudice from all directions. The worst of it comes from within their extended family. “We have close relatives who won’t even look at us,” says Blaylock, the older sister, who was often taken for Mexican when she lived in California.

“Or they’ll be nice to us in private, and pretend they don’t know us in public,” added Marsh, who lived in Washington, D.C. for decades. For simplification, she said that there were three basic groups. The White Knights are descended from Newt and Serena, are often pro-Confederate, and proud of their pure white bloodlines. (In 1951, one of them, Ethel Knight, published a vitriolic indictment of Newt as a traitor to the Confederacy.) The Black Knights are descended from Newt’s cousin Dan, who had children with one of his slaves. The White Negroes (a.k.a. the Fair Knights or Knight Negroes) are descended from Newt and Rachel. “They all have separate family reunions,” said Blaylock.

The White Negro line was complicated further by Georgeanne, Rachel’s daughter by another white man. After Rachel died, Newt and Georgeanne had children. “He was a family man all right!” said Marsh. “I guess that’s why he had three of them. And he kept trying to marry out the color, so we would all keep getting lighter-skinned. We have to tell our young people, do not date in the Soso area. But we’re all fine. We don’t have any...problems. All Knights are hardworking and very capable.”

In the film, Marsh and Blaylock appear briefly in a courthouse scene. For the two of them, the Knight family saga has continued into the 20th century and beyond. Their cousin Davis Knight, who looked white and claimed to be white, was tried for the crime of miscegenation in 1948, after marrying a white woman. The trial was a study in Mississippian absurdity, paradox, contradiction and racial obsessiveness. A white man was convicted of being black; the conviction was overturned; he became legally white again.

“We’ve come to terms with who we are,” says Blaylock. “I’m proud to be descended from Newt and Rachel. I have so much respect for both of them.”

“Absolutely,” says Marsh. “And we can’t wait to see this movie.”

[zamrockbilly-blog]

NAME:Lorenzo Enzo Michelangelo de Angelis

SEXUAL PREFERENCE: pansexual-Pansexuality, or omnisexuality, is the sexual attraction, romantic love, or emotional attraction toward people regardless of their sex or gender identity. Pansexual people may refer to themselves as gender-blind, asserting that gender and sex are insignificant or irrelevant in determining whether they will be sexually attracted to others.[4][5] Pansexuality may be considered a sexual orientation in its own right or a branch of bisexuality, to indicate an alternative sexual identityBecause pansexual people are open to relationships with people who do not identify as strictly men or women, and pansexuality therefore rejects the gender binary, it is often considered a more inclusive term than bisexual. To what extent the term bisexual is inclusive when compared to the term pansexual is debated within the LGBT community, especially the bisexual community “Whoever said I was gay? What is gay anyway?

BIRTHDATE:october 31st 1990 AGE: Note in some verses such as the movie verse and in Enzo's ghost verse he will be twenty five because that's how old he was in the movie and book and I won't have him age. Thank you.Twenty-six verse dependent GENDER: Male HOROSCOPE: Scorpio R/S STATUS: Note in some verses the movie verse and the Single verse dependent taken in other verses dating Hayley st claire in canon verse and Jack St Claire in a canon verse. HOMETOWN:Texas LOCATION:LA verse dependent OCCUPATION: Guitarist, singer in the band Plush. Director, songwriter, composer and producer and serial killer verse dependent HOBBIES: Crashing yoga classes, singing, song writing, dancing, spending time with his mother,making movies with his father's old Bolex, repearing old toys and vintage musical instruments. PAST OCCUPATION: Drug dealer DOMINATE HAND: Left Hand he’s right handed. He is ambidextrous his left hand is his guitar playing hand. WEAPON: Enzo carries around with him a bowie knife that his mother gave him when he was younger to protect him from the kids at school that wanted to bully him. RELIGION:Catholic, but he stopped going to church when he got older. LEVEL OF EDUCATION:: Highschool INSTRUMENTS.: Guitar, Piano, Voice, violin. He is self taught in piano his mother had a piano and he taught himself how to play when his father wasn’t home. Just like with the guitar his mother gave him a guitar when he was punished by his father and locked in the basement because he didn’t want to play sports and do what his father wanted him to do and act how the man wanted him to act. FACE CLAIM :Xavier Samuel verse dependent|Christopher Craven HEIGHT:5 ft 10 inches WORD: Fuck WISHES:: To be loved Back by his soul mate. SECRETS:Enzo caused his father’s car to go off a ridge by taking his bowie knife and cutting the brake lines of his father’s car after a fight they had. He has his father's old shoes to remember him by. His older sister isn’t really married with two kids and living in New York she’s dead. Enzo tortured and murdered her for a video he was working on with his father’s Bolex. He kept her shoes and her hand to remember her by. Jack St Claire was murdered by Enzo, who injected his former lover with heroin one night after a plush concert. Enzo killed him because Jack didn’t love him back the way he loved him. He after the other’s death joined the band taking the guitarists place. He murdered Claire a girl in his school who told everyone that Enzo after playing a game of seven minutes in heaven in a locked closet freaked out and was banging on the closet to be let out. So after getting kicked out of school at sixteen Enzo who is now seventeen found her at a party and he lied to her and told her that he was going to give her free drugs if she goes with him to this old house in town and she said yes and he tortured and killed her just like the Texas Debutant killer did with those he killed. Enzo kept a lock of her hair to remember her by with the article about her death. He waited until he was ready to kill her. The issue happened when they were in school together and he was sixteen. KINKS/FETISHES: Bondage, Handcuffs, Knife Play, hair pulling, dressing up, Blood Play, tattoos, Branding and more. >

PERSONALITY: Caring, protective, Friendly, Loving, the protector type,Gifted,Idealistic, Innocent, Headstrong — someone who is energetically wilful and determined. This means the character is very strong-willed and if they want something, they won’t let anyone stand in their way. Negative traits: Secretive, Immature, Violent, dishonest, Jealous, unsympathetic,Sadistic, Obsessive, Controlling, Bold,Lustful,Liar, Manipulative, Covetous — someone who is has a great need to have something they can’t have. This is similar to jealousy except someone who is covetous will do whatever it takes to get what they want, whereas a jealous person just envies the other. Envious - Showing extreme cupidity; painfully desirous of another’s advantages; covetous, jealous, Immature - Emotionally undeveloped; juvenile; childish.troubled [ beset by problems or conflict ], vulnerable [ susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm ], dependent [ a person who relies on another ],, manipulative [ characterized by unscrupulous control of a situation or person ] Lewd - Inclined to, characterized by, or inciting to lust or lechery; lascivious. Obscene or indecent, as language or songs; salacious. Liar - Compulsively and purposefully tells false truths more often than not. A person who has lied or who lies repeatedly. Lustful - Driven by lust; preoccupied with or exhibiting lustful desires. Masochist - The deriving of sexual gratification, or the tendency to derive sexual gratification, from being physically or emotionally abused. A willingness or tendency to subject oneself to unpleasant or trying experiences. Abusive - Characterized by improper infliction of physical or psychological maltreatment towards another. Addict - One who is addicted to a compulsive activity. Examples: gambling, drugs, sex LUCKY NUMBER: 13 FOOD:: Anything his mother cooks. : DRINK: Irish gin COLORS:Black,Red,blue-Just like his nails are painted. INSTRUMENT: His bass guitar that was given to him by his mother when he was a teenager and his father used to punish him and lock him in the basement. Occupation: Rock star verse dependent ANIMAL: Volture HOLIDAY: Halloween WEATHER: Cold weather SEASON: Winter BAND/GROUP: Plush SONG: Head Like a hole, Any song from Plush anything off their older records. MOVIE/FILM: Howls Moving Castle QUOTE: It’s so universal Pain, pleasure, light, darkness. In order to create, you have to embrace the dark side.” Number:13 PERSON : His mother

( &&. SKILLS) TALENTS : Repairing old toys, vintage microphones and vintage musical instruments. Enzo can put out a cigarette with his tongue. When he was nineteen he was at a party and he wanted to get attention from the other guests at the party. So he said to them look what I can do and he took his cigarette and he put it out on his tongue and he threw it down stepping on it with his boot heel. One of the guests asked him if it hurt when he did that. Enzo said no it didn’t and he started laughing like a madman after the person asked him about what he did with putting out his cigarette on his tongue. Enzo fears: Enzo fears not being loved by someone. Being without his mother. not having the person that he loves love him back the way he loves them. Just like it was with Jack and his sister and father. Enzo knows that he can make someone love him the way he should be loved by them Fear headcanon: closets Dark places Enzo has a lot of fears from when he’s a child such as being locked in a closet and being locked in a dark basement thanks to his father always punishing him and locking him in a closet or in a basement when he was a little boy until he became a teenager.Enzo would hear the sound of the birds chirping outside as he got older he hated being locked in small spaces and he would freak out all the time and have flashbacks of his abuse and of being that boy in the closet that his father would abuse all the time. That lasted for hours until the man let his son out of the closet or his mother would by taking, the key and letting him out so he could get something to eat. When he turned sixteen Enzo was at a party and he was asked to play seven minutes in heaven with this girl the same girl that he killed at that party when he turned seventeen Claire. The boy started kicking and screaming to be let out of the closet and the girl started laughing at him and telling him that she is going to tell everyone about his freakout the next day at school and he will never be able to live it down and Enzo wasn’t about to let that happen. Finally, he got let out of the closet and the boy left the party and he came home and he told his mother what happened at the party and about what the girl did to him and she is the only person that knows about his fear of closets outside of the kids at school and at the party. The next day at school Enzo was teased by everyone in his class and he cut class and he made a vow to never ever show his fear of closets and small spaces ever again to anyone because they might use it against him. About enzo’s tattoos : Enzo has on his lower back Hayley and jack forever and he got it to celebrate the bands second album. The photos were on the bands website Enzo wanted to prove his devotion to the band by getting the tattoo of Hayley and Jack but it was another part of his plan that only made Jack think that he was weird for having that tattoo on his lower back. THE SECOND TATTOO was on his right arm black dots going up and down them hiding track marks from years of herion use. He got the tattoo when he turned twenty to hide the needle marks on his arm. But he still shoots up in other areas never in the place where he got his tattoo. He would shoot up in that arm all the time. His father saw the marks in his arms and he asked him about it. Enzo got into a fight with his father and he left home for a few days to escape and he got high to numb the pain. He had always loved tattoos and he plans on getting something else soon when he has the time. The only thing his father ever gave him was an old bolex and scars. It’s so universal pain pleasure, light,darkness. in order to create, you have to embrace the dark side [ Bold which is most applicable to your muse between the two options! ] Book smarts OR Street smarts Extroverted Sensible OR Imaginative Brave OR Foolhardy Family OR Friends Wrath OR Greed Sunrise OR Sunset Indoors OR Outdoors Night owl OR Early bird Technology OR Old fashioned Left-handed OR Right-handed < ( &&. Firsts) Childhood memory : When Enzo was six years old his parents were fighting and the boy was playing with his sister’s dolls in his room and his father walked into his sister’s bedroom and he beat the boy for acting too girly and Enzo will never forget that for as long as he should live. Crush : Jack St Claire JOB : Drug Dealer KISS: Jack St Claire from the band Plush. LOVE : Jack St Claire SEXUAL EXPERIENCE : Jack St Claire even though it wasn’t his first time. ( &&. THIS OR THAT) EXPENSIVE OR INEXPENSIVE TASTES?: Expensive HYGIENIC OR UNHYGIENIC? : Hygienic OPEN-MINDED OR CLOSE-MINDED? : Open-minded INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT? : Introvert OPTIMISTIC OR PESSIMISTIC?:Optimistic DAREDEVIL OR CAUTIOUS? : Daredevil LOGICAL OR EMOTIONAL? : emotional GENEROUS OR STINGY? : Generous POLITE OR RUDE?: Polite and rude BOOK SMART OR STREET SMART? :Street smart DOMINANT OR SUBMISSIVE? : Dominant and submissive POPULAR OR LONER?: Popular and Loner DAY OR NIGHT PERSON?: Night person CAT OR DOG PERSON?: both Closet door open or closed while sleeping?> : Closet door open ( ( &&. Miscellaneous) Do they have a fake I.D.?: yes Are they a virgin?: No Do they travel? Yes One place they would like to live: Anywhere with the person that he loves BROKEN A BONE | GOTTEN STITCHES | HAD A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE | KILLED SOMEONE | tried and failed to kill someone | invented something | BEEN HUNG OVER | KISSED SOMEONE | SLOW-DANCED | BEEN IN A LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP | HAD SEX | HAD SEX AND REGRETTED IT | HAD A ONE-NIGHT STAND | HAD A THREESOME | EXPERIMENTED WITH THEIR SEXUALITY | had a kid | gotten married | SELF-HARMED | TRAVELED TO ANOTHER COUNTRY | been in a play | RECEIVED AN INHERITANCE | been the cause of a car wreck | LOST A LOVED ONE | BEEN DUMPED | dumped someone | SMOKED | GOTTEN HIGH | BEEN SLIPPED SOMETHING IN THEIR FOOD/DRINK | WON A CONTEST BEEN IN A BAND | HAD A JOB | been fired | been in a wedding party | OWNED A PET | SEEN A GHOST | SKIPPED CLASS/WORK | LEARNED AN INSTRUMENT | GOTTEN A NOTICEABLE SCAR | gONE MORE THAN ONE DAY WITHOUT EATING | HAD A RECURRING NIGHTMARE | BEEN BULLIED || SEEN SOMEONE DIE | attempted suicide | been tied/chained up | shot someone | STABBED SOMEONE | saved someone’s life | BEEN CHEATED ON | HAD BEEN A STALKER | BEEN BETRAYED| BEEN IN A FIGHT | BEEN ARRESTED | BEEN TO A FUNERAL | HAD SURGERY | BROKEN SOMEONE’S TRUST || GOTTEN A TATTOO | USED A FAKE NAME | BEEN TORTURED | TORTURED OTHERS | BEEN ABUSED HAD AN ATTEMPT ON THEIR LIFE | GOTTEN AWAY WITH A CRIME | GONE ON A ROAD TRIP | BEEN IN LOVE cross off the things you've done [ ic ] Graduated high school. Kissed someone. Collected something really silly. Smoked a cigarette. Got so drunk you passed out. Rode every ride at an amusement park. Gone to a rock concert. Helped someone. Watched four movies in one night. Gone long periods of time without sleep. Lied to someone. Snorted cocaine. Failed a class. Smoked weed. Dealt drugs. Been in a car accident. Been to a funeral. Burned yourself. Cried yourself to sleep. Spent over $200 in one day. Flown on a plane. Been cheated on. Written a 10 page letter. Had a best friend. Lost someone you loved. Shoplifted something. Dangerously close to being in jail. Skipped school. Had detention. Got in trouble for something you didn’t do. Stolen books from the library. Gone to a different country. Dropped out of school. Watched the “Harry Potter” movies. Had an online diary. Been fired from a job. Voted for someone on a reality TV show. Written poetry. Read more than 20 books a year. Gone to Europe. Loved someone you shouldn’t have. Used a coloring book over age 12. Had surgery. Had stitches. Taken a taxi. Seen the Washington Monument. Overdosed. Had a drug or alcohol problem. Been in a fist fight. Suffered any form of abuse. Gone surfing in California. Had a hamster/guinea pig. Pet a wild animal. Dyed your hair. Got a tattoo. Made-out with someone. Snuck out of the house. Swore at a teacher. Dated someone. Been on the TV. French braided. Skinny-dipped. Driven a car. Performed in front of an audience. Been in love. Been on a train. Seen a ghost. Been to Mexico. Crashed a car. Sky dived. Been kissed in the rain. Made an 11:11 wish. Drank alcohol. Forwarded a chain letter. what do you prefer? Autumn winter? astrology or astronomy? romance or horror? halloween or christmas? ocean or sky? mermaids? dolphins or sharks? dawn or dusk? sunsetorsunrise? fireplace? hot chocolate or hot tea? black coffee or coffee with creamer? strawberries or blueberries? lemons ororanges? apples or peaches? What has been their greatest achievement?:When Enzo joined the band Plush after the death of guitarist Jack St Claire. Ending up like his father, Not being loved. Being locked in a closet or basement in the dark. WHAT IS YOUR ARCHETYPE? from here. repost, don’t reblog! your archetype is the warrior. traits: purposeful, adaptable, loyal, agressive, mindful, decisive, skillful, isolated, destroyerthe warrior is most commonly used to symbolize the victory of a war. raised in the image of their trainer, and at most times, their parental figure, the connection that is fundamental in building relationships is extremely weak. although warriors find it difficult to trust, once they do, it is a bind that lasts until death. while warriors are fiercely loyal, they are extremely wary of strangers. their greatest wish is to be credited in their achievements, and they tend to isolate themselves if they aren’t validated, taking things personally. warriors tend to things for the greater good, and destroy to protect.fictional characters that are warriors: arya stark, indianajones, lisbethsalander, siriusblackother personality types that go with this: athena, ares, achilles, wampus Golden Compass Daemon Test Social Joker Soul You an an extroverted, playful and confident sort of person. You seek out excitement, and you love to be right in the thick of things. You are enthusiastic, garrulous, and you love to attend large social gatherings. You love to laugh. If you spend too much time at home, away from friends and fun, you tend to "fade", becoming tired and a little depressed. A fun night out with your friends soon re-energizes you, though. You make friends easily, and you probably jump between several groups of people. You probably have a group of friends for every need - the friends you drink with, the friends you jam with, the friends you talk with about the meaning of life... You blend in with each group of people, showing your sensitive side when you are with certain friends, and hiding it from others. You love to meet new people, and to make new friends. However, you are not a slave to popularity. You will speak your mind to defend yourself or one of your friends if necessary. You are no shrinking violet, and you are more than capable of fighting your way out of a tight corner. That being said, your confidence and your enthusiasm for fun can sometimes lead to your making thoughtless comments which hurt or insult people. These people, however, are probably over-sensitive squares who don't appreciate your sense of humour. You don't have much time for people like that, anyway. Your daemon's form would represent your social, playful, yet honest personality. He or she would probably urge you to create further mayhem, or would make snide comments in your ear about the people you meet on a daily basis. Suggested forms: Toucan, Crow, Macaque or Bonobo, African Wild Dog, Macaw. Enzo's favorite colors are red,blue,black and white YOUR CHARACTER: IN 5 QUOTES. tell us your favorite quotes from your character. give us an idea of who they are by five things they’ve said. then tag your friends. ❝ NOPE! Not my fucking sister. She was a daddy’s girl and he gave her EVERYTHING she wanted. And I mean EVERYTHING. Dance classes, private vocal coach, any clothes she dreamed up. She was nothing like your brother. At least you guys had each other. You were a team ❞ ❝I had to I loved Jack, but Jack didn’t love me back. Not like you did Not like you did !.❞ ❝Who ever said I was gay? What is gay anyway?❞ ❝ “I heard him yelling at you. And NO ONE fucks with my Hayley. My soul mate. My love. Mother of our future genius-child… Hayley, he doesn’t get you. You and I aren’t meant for people like that.” ❞ ❝ Dad was super alpha male and tried to beat the weirdness out of me. Wanted a jock, you know, a real man. .❞