#and these grandparents actually believe in climate change

[thesquidkid]

So I talked about my grandmother (and other family members) at New Year's, who did not believe in climate change and who generally annoyed me while I was there

Now I need to talk about my other grandparents, who are the polar opposite of the other ones. Whenever ppl tell me to be open minded towards older people not understanding new things or whatever, I think of my grandparents.

My grandparents who live in a very conservative part of England, yet who still participated until very recently in labour activities (they participated less after Brexit was voted due to being pissed off at the world, and then stopped due to covid and health reasons)

They are still very politically engaged, despite having most of the people around them being Tories

Of course, they don't know everything, and we don't always agree. But we listen to each other, and we learn from the different experiences

As an example, my grandma told me just the other day that she didn't agree with the Scottish bill on gender recognition. I asked her what she knew of the bill. She repeated what she had heard on the news: it's going to allow men to hurt women.

I told her that no, it only allowed people to change the gender written on the birth certificate, and that it was already possible. We went together to look up the official statement on the Scottish Government website (neither of them are very good with googling stuff), and they read it, and when we talked about it again later they said that they didn't see the problem with this bill.

When I cut my hair and started dressing "more masculine", my grandparents, without asking, took down any photograph of me with long hair, or me "feminine". When I asked about that, my grandfather said that I looked much happier now, and there was no point in having pictures of me unhappy.

It was that simple.

(meanwhile my other grandparents still have pictures of me with long hair, clearly looking uncomfortable af)

All this to say, old people are generally closed minded because they are old. Old people can be open minded, it only depends on the person in question.

[stalkerofthegods]

Zeus Greek god, deep dive

Zeus is the Greek god of weather and many things, He is a kind a merciful God, as long as you don't speak unwell or lie. he is a god, and I may add, the king of the gods.

Herbs • Holm oak, olive tree, star anise, dandelion, almonds, pine, vervain, oak in general.

Animals• cuckoo-bird, swan, bull, satyr, eagle, wolf, woodpecker, ants

Zodiac • Sagittarius and Pisces, maybe cancer.

Colors • Silver, blue, white, gold 

Crystal• White and yellow diamonds, Lapis lazuli, Blue and yellow sapphires, turquoise,  celestite, iron/steel, any quartz

Symbols• olive tree branch, throne, Lightning bolt, a crown, scepter, the Aegis

Diety of• sky and weather, the Greek gods, cities, the home, property, strangers, guests, and supplicants, law, order, justice, hospitality, Kings

Patron of• the sky and weather, men, the Greek gods, cities, the home, property, strangers, guests, and supplicants, law, order, justice 

Offerings• Wine, Whiskey, Milk, Tea, Coffee, Small cakes, Breads, Red meat, Scaled fish, Fruit, Rain water, Silver, blue, white, gold candles, Figures of eagles and bulls, Symbols of a thubderbolt, The scales of justice, Crowns, Statues of Himself, eagles, or thunderbolts, Cinnamon, Laurel, Art or pictures of eagles and bulls, Eagle and bull plushies/toys, Oak, Pine, Toy crowns, Imagery of thunderbolts (ex- art, keychains, pictures, toys), Photographs or art of storms, Golden oobjects, Blue, white, or gold flowers, Assignments you got good grades on anything you are proud of (ex-art, writings, a dance you made or perfected, your songs, your favorite toy that you’ve taken care of for years.), the fat on the bones of the animals, a scepter, throne photos &, etc, fruit juice, rainwater, wedding rings, White wine, medals, hammers, acorns, cotton balls, coins.

Devotional• Check the weather for the day, Learn to recognize the different kinds of clouds, Speak out if you see an injustice (do not speak over those actually receiving the injustice), Dance in the rain, Examine ideas on fatherhood, examine how any paternal influence you received may have impacted your life,  your parents for the good parenting you received, Listen to storms and bask in their glory (whether its a real storm or you’re just listening to a recording of one), Learn to appreciate different kinds of weather, learn the property lines of your house, Take care of yourself, Learn a little more about politics and the current political state of your country, fight for what you believe in (only if it is not harming others), Help sort out a conflict or an argument, Also learn about your country’s legal system, Be hospitable, Take leadership in a project that you’re doing, Destigmatize sex work and homelessness, Practice divination, Learn about your local hawks/eagles/birds of prey,  learn ornithomancy (divination from the flight of birds), study meteorology and climate change, study local and national politics, practice good citizenship, vote, volunteer to register voters, support issues and candidates, collect rainwater, support your family, help your grandparents, help people move, donate to charity & homeless centers, worship his family in his honor, singing his praises (he likes being complimented)

Ephithets• ABRETTE′NUS/Abrettênos-surname of Zeus in Mysia, ACRAEUS/Akraios-given to various goddesses and gods whose temples were situated upon hills, AEGIDU′CHOS/AEGI′OCHOS/Aigidouchos/Aigiochos- surname of Zeus, as the bearer of the Aegis when he strikes terror into the impious and his enemies, but also a surname of Zeus being fed by a goat, AENE′IUS/AENE′SIUS/Ainêios/Ainêsios- surname of Zeus when he was worshipped in the island of Cephalenia, AE′THIOPS/Aithiops-the Glowing or the Black, AETNAEUS/Aitnaios -an epithet given to several devine beings connected with Mount Aetna, AGAMEMNON/Agamemnôn- A surname of Zeus, under when he was worshipped at Sparta, AGATHODAEMON/Agathodaimôn/Agathos Deos-Good God, when Greeks drank a cup of unmixed wine at the end of every repast, AGE′TOR/Agêtôr- surname given to several gods, AGO′NIUS/Agônios- a surname or epithet of several gods used in the sense of helpers in struggles and contests, AGORAEUS/AGORAEA/Agoraia/Agoraios-epithets given to several divinities who were considered as the protectors of the people in agora, ALASTOR/Alastôr- surname of Zeus, describing him as the avenger of evil deeds, ALEXI′CACUS/Alexikakos- the averter of evil, AMBU′LIU/AMBU′LIA/AMBU′LII/Amboulia/Amboulioi/Amboulios- surnames when the Spartans worshipped Athena, the Dioscuri, and Zeus, APE′MIUS/Apêmios- a surname of Zeus when he had an altar on mount Parnes in Attica where sacrifices were offered to him, APESA′NTIUS/Apesantios- when zeus had a temple on mount Apesas near Nemea, where Perseus was said to have first offered sacrifices to him, APOMYIUS/Apomuios- driving away the flies, AREIUS/Areios-  either the warlike or the propitiating and atoning god, ASBAMAEUS/Asbamaios- protector of the sanctity of oaths, A′SIUS/Asios- surname of Zeus, from the town of Asos or Oasos in Crete, ATABY′RIUS/Ataburios- surname of Zeus derived from mount Atabyris or Atabyrion in the island of Rhodes, ATHO′US/Athôos - a surname of Zeus, derived from mount Athos, CA′RIUS/Karios-where he had a temple at Mylassa in Caria, CA′SIUS/Kasios-surname of Zeus, derived from amount Casion not far from Pelusium, CATAE′BATES/Kataibatês-who descends in thunder and lightning, CATHA′RSIUS/Katharsios- the purifyer or atoner, CENAEUS/Kênaios- derived from cape Cenaeum in Euboea, CHRYSAOR/Chrusaôr- The god with the golden sword or arms, CLA′RIUS/Klarios- the god who distributes things by lot, CO′NIUS/Konios- the god who excites or makes dust, CORYPHAEUS/CORYPHAEA/Koruphaia -the highest or supreme god, and is, CROCE′ATAS/Krokeatas- derived from Croceae, near Gythium in Laconia, CRO′NIDES/CRONI′ON/Kronidês/Kroniôn- a patronymic from Cronus, and very commonly given to Zeus, the son of Cronus, CTE′SIUS/Ktêsios - the protector of property, DICTAEUS/Diktaios- derived from mount Dicte in the eastern part of Crete, ELEUTHEREUS/Eleuthereus- used in the sense of the deliverer, and occurs also as the surname of Zeus, EVA′NEMUS/Euanemos- the giver of favourable wind, 

GAME′LII/Gamêlioi theoi- divinities protecting and presiding over marriage, GENETAEUS/Genêtaios- derived from Cape Genetus on the Euxine, HETAEREIUS/Hetaireios - the protector of companies or associations of friends, HOMAGY′RIUS/Homagurios- god of the assembly or league, HO′RCIUS/Horkios- the god who watches over oaths, or is invoked in oaths, and punishes their violation, HYES/Huês- the moist or fertilising god, HYE′TIUS/HYES/HY′PATUS/Hupatos-the most high, ITHOMATAS/Ithômatas- derived from the Messenian hill of Ithome, LABRANDEUS/Labrandeus derived from a temple he had at Labranda, LAPE′RSIUS/Lapersios- derived from the Attic demus of Lapersae, LAPHY′STIUS/Laphustios- derived either from Mount Laphystius in Boeotia, or from the verb laphussein, to flee, in reference to the human sacrifices which were offered to him in early time, LARISSAEUS/Larissaios- derived from the arx Larissa at Argos, LECHEA′TES/Lecheatês- the protector of childbed, LEUCAEUS/Leukaios- when he was worshipped at Lepreus, in Elis, LIMENO′SCOPUS/LIME′NIA/LIMENI′TES:LIMENI′TIS/Limenia, Limenitês/Limenitis, Limenodkopos- the protector or superintendent of the harbour, LYCAEUS/Lukaios- a surname of certain divinities worshipped on mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, MAEMACTES/Maimaktês- the stormy, MECHANEUS/Mêchaneus- skilled in inventing, MEILI′CHIUS/Meilichios-the god that can be propitiated, or the gracious, MESSAPEUS/Messapeus- derived when he had a sanctuary between Amyclae and mount Taygetusm, MO′RIUS/Morios- the protector of the sacred olive trees, NEMEIUS/Nemeios- when he had a sanctuary at Argos, with a bronze statue, the work of Lysippus, and where games were celebrated in his honour, NOMOS/Nomos-a personification of law, OGO′A/Ogôa- the Carian name of Zeus at Mysala, when he had a temple where a sea-wave was seen from time to time, OLY′MPIUS/Olumpios- the Olympian, occurs as a surname of Zeus and in general of all the gods that were believed to live in Olympus, O′MBRIUS/Ombrios- the rain-giver, PANHELLE′NIUS/Panellênios- the god common to, or worshipped by all the Hellenes or Greeks,, PARNE′THIUS/Parnêthios- derived from Mount Parnes in Attica, PATROUS/PATROA/Patrôios/Patrôia- all the gods whose worship has been handed down in a nation or a family from the time of their fathers, whence in some instances they are the spirits of departed ancestors themselves, PHY′XIUS/Phuzios ex- the god who protects fugitives, PI′STIUS/Pistios- the god of faith and fidelity, POLIEUS/Polieus- the protector of the city, SOTER/Sôtêr- the Saviour, STHE′NIUS/Sthenios- the powerful & the strengthening, XENIUS/XE′NIA/Xenia- masculine Xenios are epithets of Athena and Zeus, as presiding over the laws of hospitality, and protecting strangers,

ZYGIUS/ZYGIA/Zugia/Zugios-  surnames of Hera and Zeus, and as them as presiding over marriage, Ομβριος/Ombrios- Of the Rain,  Ὑετιος/Hyetios- Of the Rain, Αφεσιος/Aphesios- Releasing (Rain), Σκοτιτας/Skotitas- Dark, Murky, Κεραυνιος/Keraunios-Of the Thunderbolt,!Αστραπαιος/Astrapaios-Of the Lightning, Καταιβατης/Kataibatês-Descending, Λαβρανδευς/Labrandeus-Furious, Raging, Ικμαιος/Ikmaios-Of Moisture, Κονιος/Konios-Of the Dust, Μαιμακτης/Maimaktês-Boisterous, Ευηνεμος/Euênemos-Of Fair Winds, Λιμενοσκοπος/Limenoskopos-Watcher of Sea-Havens, Βασιλευς/Basileus-King, Chief, Ruler, Ὑπατος/Hypatos-Supreme, Most High, Ὑπσιστος/Hypsisto-Supreme, Most High, 

Κορυφαιος/Koryphaios-Chief, Leader, Κτησιος/Ktêsios-Of the House, Property,Ἑρκειος/Herkeios-Of the Courtyard, Βουλαιος/Boulaios-Of the Council, Αμβουλιος/Amboulios-Counsellor, Τελειος/Teleios-Of Marriage Rites, Μοιραγετης/Moiragetês-Leader of the, Fates, Κλαριος/Klarios-Of the Lots, Σημαλεος/Sêmaleos-Giver of Signs, Μηχανευς/Mêkhaneus-Contriver, Κοσμητης/Kosmêtês-Orderer, Θεος Αγαθος/Theos Agathos-The Good God, 

Επιδωτης/Epidôtês-Giver of Good, Πλουσιος/Plousios-Of Wealth, Φιλιος/Philios-Of Friendship, Ξενιος/Xenios-Of Hospitality, Strangers, Ἱκεσιος/Hikesios-Of Suppliants, Φυξιος/Phyxios-Of Refuge, 

Παλαμναιος/Palamnaios-(Punisher) of Murderers, Καθαρσιος/Katharsios-Of Ritual Purification, Προστροπαιος, Prostropaios-Turner of Pollution, Απημιος/Apêmios-Averter of Ills,  Σωτηρ/Sôtêr-Saviour, Deliverer, Μειλιχιος/Meilikhios-Gracious, Merciful, Πανελληνιος/Panellênios-Of All the Greeks, Λαοιτης/Laoitês-Of the People, Πολειυς/Poleius-Of the City-State, Σωσιπολις/Sôsipolis-City-Saviour, Ελευθεριος/Eleutherios-Of Freedom, Χρυσαορευς/Khrysaoreus-Of the Golden Sword, Στρατιος/Stratios-Of War, Warlike, Αρειος/Areios-Of War, Warlike, 

Σθενιος/Sthenios-Of Strength, Strong, 

Τροπαιος/Tropaios-Turns to Flight, Defeats, Φυξιος/Phyxios-Puts to Flight, Banishes, Ὑμηττιος/Hymêttios-Of Mt Hymettus (Attica), Παρνηθιος/Parnêthios-Of Mt Parnes (Attica), Ανχεσμιος/Ankhesmios-Of Mt Anchesmus (Attica), 

Απεσαντιος/Apesantios-Of Mt Apesas (Argolis),Λαρισαιος/Larisaios-Of Larisa (Argos acropolis), Νεμειος/Nemeios-Of Nemea (Argolis), Κροκεατος/Krokeatos-Of Croceae (Laconia), Ιθωματος/Ithômatos-Of Mt Ithome (Messenia), Ολυμπιος/Olympios-Of Olympia (in Elis), Λυκαιος/Lykaios-Of Mt Lycaeus (Arcadia), Κιθαιρωνιος/Kithairônios-Of Mt Cithaeron (Boeotia), Λαφυστιος/Laphystios-Of Mt Laphystius (Boeotia), Κηναιος/Kênaios-Of Cape Cenaeus (Euboea), Ολυμπιος/Olympios-Of Mt Olympus (Thessaly), Δωδωναιος/Dôdônaios-Of Dodona (Thesprotia), Αινησιος/Ainêsios-Of Mt Aenus (Cephallenia), Πελασγιος/Pelasgios-Of the Pelasgians (Tribe), Πελασγικος/Pelasgikos-Of the Pelasgians (Tribe), Δικταιος/Diktaios-Of Mt Dicte (Crete), Αταβυριος/Atabyrios-Of Mt Atabyris (Rhodes), Καριος/Karios-Of Caria, Λαβρανδευς/Labrandeus-Of Labranda (Caria), Λαβραυνδηνος/Labraundênos-Of Labranda (Caria), Καπετωλιον/Kapetôlion-Of the Capitol (Rome), Βουλαιος/Boulaios-Of the Council-Hall, Αγοραιος/Agoraios-Of the Market-Place, Σκοτιτας/Skotitas-Of the Dark (Oak-Forest), Λευκαιος/Leukaios-Of the White-Poplar Grove, Λυκαιος/Lykaios-Of the Wolves, Απομυιος/Apomyios-Averter of Flies, Λεχεατης/Lekheatês-Of the Childbed, Κλαριος/Klarios-Of the Lots, Τελειος/Teleios-Full-Grown, Αρισταιος/Aristaios-Of Aristaeus (hero Ceos), Μεσσαπευς/Messapeus-Of Messapeus (hero Sparta). 

Equivalents• Jupiter (Roman), Rigyeda (Hindu), Di Pater (Oscan), Ioues Patres (Marrucinian), Iupitar (Umbrian), Tina (Etruscan), Mitra / Varuna (Vedic, probably syncretized), Mithra (Old Persian), Dei-Patrous (Illyrian), Dyaus Pitar (Indian), Debess Tevs (Latvian), Attas Isanus (Hittite), Dievas (Baltic), Tatis Tiwaiz (Luvian), Papaeus (Scythian), Thor (Norse), Odin (Norse)

Signs their reaching out• Sudden signs of his animals, his statues, art of him, his mythos, a sudden pull to him. 

Vows/omans• His wedding vows.

Morals• Morally dark.

Courting• Hera/Juno, they are married.

Past lovers/crushes• I couldn’t find all of them, and please cut me some slack, but some are, Semele, Demeter, Europa, Eurynome, Métis, Callisto, Leto, Mnemosyne, Thaleia, Themis, Electra, Leda, Aegina, Alcmene, Ganymede, Persephone, Dione, Maia, Metis, Nemesis, AIX, Alkmene.

Personality• I heard he is funny, mercifully, calm and collected, and obviously father like.

Home• Mount Olympus. 

Mortal or immortal • Immortal

Fact• He led a rebellion with all the Olympians except Dionysus because he wasn’t born yet, against his own father, and won.

Curses• bad flying conditions, storms, lightning, thunder, justice, Eagle poop all over your car, marriage issues

Blessings• good flying conditions, good storms, good lightning, good thunder, having justice, help in creating an eternal fire, no marriage issues, help in legal matters

Roots• Crete, raised by the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, nursing Zeus, with the milk from the goat Amalthea, given to them by his mother Rhea.

Parentage• Rhea and Cronus

Siblings• Hestia, Hades, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, and Chiron.

Attendees• Kratos (Strength), Zelos (Rivalry), Nike (Victory) and Bia (Force), he is often seen with Hermes, his high councilor is Themis, Hestia in hall, and Metis in his stomach (the Greeks thought the stomach held knowledge, and wisdom) or mind, Harpies and Hebe and Ganymede

Pet• A golden eagle named Aetos Dios

Children •AGDISTIS (born when Zeus accidentally impregnated Gaia the Earth),AIGIPAN/Aegipan (son of Zeus and Aix or Boetis), ALATHEIA (daughter of Zeus)APHRODITE (daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Dione, most say she was born in the sea from the severed genitals of Ouranos), APOLLON/Apollo (son of Zeus and the Titaness Leto)

ARES (son of Zeus and his wife Hera.), 

ARTEMIS (daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Leto), ASOPOS/Asopus (son of Zeus and Eurynome, however most call him a son of Okeanos and Tethys), ATE (daughter of Zeus, others say she was born fatherless to Eris), ATHENE/Athena (Titaness Metis and Zeus), 

BRITOMARTIS (daughter of Zeus and the Nymphe Karme), DIONYSOS/Dionysus (son of Zeus and Semele or of Zeus and Demeter or Dione), EILEITHYIA (daughter of Zeus and Hera), EIRENE/Irene (daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Themis), ERIS (daughter of Zeus and Hera, most say she was a daughter of Nyx), ERSA (daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Selene), 

EUNOMIA (daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Themis), HARMONIA (Zeus and the Pleiad Elektra, usually a daughter of Ares and Aphrodite who was only fostered by the Pleiad), HEBE (daughter of Zeus and Hera), HEPHAISTOS/Hephaestus (son of Zeus and Hera, though many say Hera conceived him without the assistance of Zeus), HERMES (son of Zeus and the Pleiad Maia), HORAI/Horae (Dike, Eirene, and Eunomia--were daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis), KABEIROI/Cabeiri (sons of Zeus and the Mousa Kalliope, but call them sons of Hephaistos and Kabeiro), KAIROS/Caerus (youngest divine son of Zeus.), KENTAUROI KYRPIOI/Cyprian (sprang from Gaia the Earth when Zeus accidentally impregnated his failed attempt to make love to Aphrodite),

KHARITES/Charites (Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thaleia are daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Eurynome), KORYBANTES SAMOTHRAKIOI/Samothracian Corybantes (sons of Zeus and the Mousa Kalliope), LITAI/Litae (elderly goddesses of prayer were daughters of Zeus), 

MELINOE (She as a daughter of Zeus and Persephone), MOIRAI/Moirae (Atropos, Lakhesis and Klotho, who are daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis, others say they were daughters of Nyx, Ananke or Khaos), MOUSAI/Muses (Kalliope, Terpsikhore, Kleio, Euterpe, Ourania, Thaleia, Polyhymnia, Melpomene, Erato, were daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Mnemosyne), NEMEA (minor goddess-nymph, daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Selene), NYMPHAI/Nymphs (Nymphs in general were sometimes called the daughters of Zeus), NYMPHAI THEMEIDES (Three goddess-nymph daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis), PALIKOI/Palici (Twin gods of Zeus and Thaleia, but others say they were sons of Hephaistos and Aitna), PAN (son of Zeus and Hybris but others invariably call him a son of Hermes), PANDEIA (devine daughter of Zeus and the Titaness Selene), PERSEPHONE (Devine daughter of Zeus and Demeter or, according to one account, of Zeus and Styx), PHASIS (devine son of Zeus, other say he was a son of Okeanos and Tethys like the other Rivers), ZAGREUS (divine son of Zeus and his own daughter Persephone), 

AIAKOS/Aeacus (son of Zeus and the Nymphe Aigina), AITHLIOS/Aethlius (son of Zeus and either Protogeneia or Kalyke), 

AKHEILOS/Acheilus (son of Zeus and Lamia), ALEXANDROS/Alexander the Great (son of Zeus born to the Makedonian Queen Olympia), AMPHION (He was a twin son of Zeus and Antiope), 

ARGOS/Argus (He was a son of Zeus and Niobe.), ARKAS/Arcas (son of Zeus and Kallisto.), ARKEISIOS/Arceisius (son of Zeus, or according to others, of Kephalos and Prokris), ATYMNIOS/Atymnius (He was a son of Zeus and Kassiopeia), 

DARDANOS/Dardanus (He was a son of Zeus and Elektra), DIOSKOUROI/Dioscuri (Twin princes of who were hatched from an egg laid by Queen Leda. Polydeukes, was fathered by Zeus, but the other, Kastor, was the son of Leda's husband Tyndareus), EMATHION (son of Zeus and Elektra), ENDYMION (He was the son of Kalyke, either by Zeus or her husband Aithlios), EPAPHOS/Epaphus (son of Zeus and the much-suffering Io), GRAIKOS/Graecus (son of Zeus and Thyia), HELENE/Helen(daughter of Zeus by Leda or the goddess Nemesis), HELLEN (son of Zeus and Pyrrha, though others say his father was Pyrrha's husband Deukalion),

HERAKLES/Heracles (1) (Alkmene who was seduced by Zeus in the form of her own husband.), HERAKLES/Heracles (2) (A son of Zeus and Lysithoe), HEROPHILE (daughter of Zeus and the Libyan queen Lamia), IARBAS (Zeus and an African Nymphe), IASION A prince of the Island of Samothrake (son of Zeus and Elektra), 

KEROESSA/Ceroessa (daughter of Zeus and Io), KOLAXES/Colaxes) (son of Zeus and the Nymphe Hora), KORINTHOS/Corinthus (He was a son of Zeus but, according to others, of Epopeus), KRINAKOS/Crinacus (He was a son of Zeus.), KRONIOS/Cronius (Zeus and the Nymphe Himalia.), KYTOS/Cytus (Zeus and the Nymphe Himalia), LAKEDAIMON/Lacedaemon (son of Zeus and the Pleiad Taygete.), LATINOS/Latinus (son of Zeus and Pandora.), MAGNES son of Zeus and Thyia but some say he was the son to Aiolos and Enarete), MAKEDON/Macedon (He was a son of Zeus and Thyia), MANES (a son of Zeus and Gaia), MEGAROS/Megarus (son of Zeus and a Sithnid Nymphe), MELITEUS (He was a son of Zeus and Othris), MINOS (He was a son of Zeus and Europa.), MYRMIDON (He was a son of Zeus and Eurymedousa.), ORION (He was conceived by three gods--Zeus, Hermes and Poseidon--who urinated upon a bull's hide and buried it in the earth, to grow an earth-born infant), PELASGOS/Pelasgus (He was a son of Zeus and Niobe, but others calls him a son of Poseidon and Larissa or an Autokhthon), 

PEIRITHOUS/Pirithous (son of Zeus and Dia, most authors say the father was Dia's husband King Ixion), PERSEUS (son of Zeus and Danae), POLYDEUKES/Polydeuces (his twin brother were known as the Dioskouroi, the son of Zeus and Leda, while his twin brother was the son of Leda's husband Tyndareus), RHADAMANTHYS (a son of Zeus and Europa), SAON (he was the son of Zeus and a local Nymphe, but others say he was a son of Hermes and Rhene), 

SARPEDON (1) (He was a son of Zeus and Europa.), SARPEDON  (2) (He was a son of Zeus and Laodameia), SPARTAIOS/Spartaeus (one of three sons borne to Zeus and the Nymphe Himalia), TANTALOS/Tantalus (son of Zeus and the Okeanis Plouto), TARGITAUS (son of Zeus and a daughter of Borysthenes), 

TITYOS/Tityus (a son of Zeus and Elare others say he was a fatherless son of Gaia the Earth), ZETHOS/Zethus (He was the twin brother of Amphion and a son of Zeus and Antiope.)

Appearance in astral or gen• regal, mature man with a sturdy figure and dark beard.

Festivals • Diasia, Epulum Jovis, Hetairideia, Lykaia

Day • Tuesday 

Status• Greek major god, as the king of all gods, part of the Big three. 

Planet• Jupiter 

Tarot cards• the Emperor, Justice, Wheel of Fortune, King of Swords, King of Wands

Reminds me of• Vapes (my dad vapes), cloaks, marriages, and Dad jokes.

Scents/Inscene • Frankincense, myrrh, or rain sceneted incense, Vervain, Sage

Prayers• 

To attract more eagles 

Zeus, king of the Theoi, god of the sky, father of gods and men, Zeus, the one that holds sacred the sharp-sighted eagle and far-flying hawk, I come humbly before you with a single request. I ask for the friendship of your cherished eagle and hawk, The symbols of your power and grace, Gentle reminders of your ever-watchful presence and protection. I shall revere them as I do you. Great Zeus, Father Zeus, I thank you for this newfound friendship.

In general

Father Zeus, protector of the weak, help me to be strong against my fears. Father Zeus, protector of the wronged, help me to do right by all I meet. Father Zeus, protector of the home, help me to safeguard those within my walls. Father Zeus, help me to do what I must, be with me as I walk in the world.

Links/websites/sources •

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zeus https://www.theoi.com/Olympios/Zeus.htmlhttps://www.theoi.com/Olympios/ZeusFamily.html https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zeushttps://www.theoi.com/Olympios/ZeusFamily.htmlhttps://twelfthremedy.tumblr.com/post/626464048642408448/zeus-offerings/amp https://star-of-zeus.tumblr.com https://star-of-zeus.tumblr.com/post/638693970789138432/zeus-devotional-actshttps://star-of-zeus.tumblr.com/post/638790200476221440/tuesday-is-zeus-day https://star-of-zeus.tumblr.com/post/638790200476221440/tuesday-is-zeus-day https://star-of-zeus.tumblr.com/post/650165209920651264/acknowledge-the-duality-of-the-godshttps://honorthegods.tumblr.com/post/159458931171/what-offerings-would-you-recommend-for-zeus-and/amp https://www.theoi.com/articles/where-was-zeus-born/#:~:text=Greek%20mythology%20states%20that%20Crete,significant%20deity%20in%20ancient%20Greece.https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-equivalents-to-Zeus-in-other-god-mythologies https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-equivalents-to-Zeus-in-other-god-mythologieshttps://mythopedia.com/topics/zeushttps://www.desy.de/gna/interpedia/greek_myth/creation.html#:~:text=When%20it%20came%20time%20to,a%20handsome%20youth%20on%20Crete.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_(nurse_of_Zeus)#:~:text=According%20to%20Apollodorus%2C%20Rhea%20gave,were%20the%20daughters%20of%20Melisseus%22.https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-equivalents-to-Zeus-in-other-god-mythologieshttps://www.havefunwithhistory.com/facts-about-zeus/https://www.tumblr.com/alder-bos/669862051714318336/deities-and-their-tarot-cards-long-post https://star-of-zeus.tumblr.com/post/640511172666392576/prayer-to-zeus-for-hawkeagle-friends diana-thyme

This deep dive is a payment to my friend Bri @briislame, May you look up and find Zeus looking down with smiles.

~I use resources, I do not own the info, and most deep dives have UPG (that I use in my work.) And I only take some information from sources. I am 14, this is my hobby, I am learning but I spent many hours and days on this, and I am always open to criticism. I have been doing worship for 5 years. Please know you can use the info, I do not sue, but I will take action if this work is used without permission and not put as a resource if used in any work. without permisson and not put as a resource if used in any work, for the public.

[drstonetrivia]

Chapter 204 Trivia

What we thought may be a politics arc may in fact become a brotherly feud…

Galileo's quote is taken from his book "The Assayer", considered to be one of the pioneering works of the scientific method. At the time, most science was done by philosophical arguments rather than observation and trying to understand the mathematics behind them.

Math is the universal language because the symbols may change, but the meanings/axioms cannot. Because of this, the cover of the Golden Record placed on Voyager 1 (the probe leaving our solar system) has instructions written in math in the hopes some future beings can understand.

Ryusui wasn't wearing two swords last chapter, I wonder where they came from and why he's wearing them now…

(Maybe this is why Sai was running from him haha!)

Mathematical errors have ruined a lot of space missions: the Mariner 1 was destroyed because of a missing hyphen, and the Mars Climate Orbiter was destroyed on landing because of a failure to convert units.

Avoiding these errors was very difficult when it was all done by hand.

This seems to be at least partially true, however the practice has lessened over the decades. Indian-educated parents and grandparents may remember, but students these days probably only need to learn up to 19x19!

The HR industry in India is incredibly large, and are a very useful resource to have for any business looking to scale up. It's not surprising that the Nanami Corporation set up a university there!

Sai appears to be the 554th most popular name in India and can be used for both genders, but it's generally a male name.

The equations in the background here I haven't identified yet, but the gamma (γ) thrust here may be alluding to the thrust equation used with rocket engines in space. The gamma is the specific heat ratio of the gas.

The day is October 1st, so the team likely left Spain sometime between September 15th-20th if it did in fact take them 10 days to travel the distance (with some delays because of the Suez situation).

The food here may be a somewhat generic curry as the sound effect seems to indicate, or it could also be lamb gosht based on the color, region, and spices used.

Technically we don't know that Ruri specifically called for the defensive positions, but we do know everyone in Japan is probably in them.

I think this is the same sky image as the one Tsukasa saw in chapter 188, but with a different star pattern.

The Fellenius method and what Senku is actually doing here is dividing the slopes into segments and calculating how stable each one is using the properties of the dirt and rock. Putting the segments together should give you how likely a rock slide is. Strata are layers of rock.

The many-armed pose Sai is found in is a reference to Durga, a major Hindu deity. She is associated with protection, strength, motherhood, destruction and wars.

This comment I believe is Chelsea's from the "I'm not a fan" part, with the "baaad" learnt from Chrome's habit.

The meaning of her comment is confusing, but it might be because the last pretty-boy character introduced was a villain (Stanley), however shes also a fan of Hyoga…?

Sai's outfit is very simple and rather lacking compared to Ryusui's, however they share elements such as the collar type and addition of a belt.

The belt buckle is very interesting, it doesn't follow Ryusui's nor Nanami Corp.'s branding and looks like a C+.

My guesses for the meaning: -C+, the programming language, based off the fact he was petrified on his laptop presumably. -C, the Roman numeral, indicating 100+ because of the million-times brainpower comment (million in Japanese is 百万, 百=100). -C, from E=mc^2, for light speed.

Sai's odd yell ("peegyaaaah!") may be a computer joke, as the sound effect "ピ" (pi) tends to be used for computer beeps, like pressing a button.

A similar sound has been used in the past for Xeno's encryption device.

Sai's character could go a lot of directions since he's unlikely to be one of the traditional nerds they described, nor one like Joel since Joel exists. What Ryusui did to scare off his older brother though, I'm very curious about…

[atopvisenyashill]

i think it would be super radical if grrm has the others and the humans destroy each other and westeros once again becomes the dominion of the cotf and giants, as it was before the humans tried to genocide them.

unfortunately, it might be TOO radical.

i get where you’re coming from here but

a) i just don’t think the war between the cotf, giants, & first men can be counted as a genocide for like, a lot of reasons, most pressing of them being that genociders (like the spanish, french, british, and americans, which is what the fandom at large erroneously compares the cotf & giants to) do not actually respect treaties the way the first men and even the later andals did

b) that’s not the story george is telling even a little bit - see his comments about aragorn’s war of extermination against the orcs for what i mean there. this is why i do think at least part of ending the long night will involve another pact; i just don’t think the ultimate “message” so to speak is going to be “we defeat climate change by chucking nukes at the problem” ya know. i don’t think the story is going to end with the ice orcs fighting and winning a species wide genocidal war.

c) i simply do not think that eco fatalism ideologies are that radical at all, and in fact my opinion is that eco fatalism is best buddies with eco fascism. getting rid of humans doesn’t ~restore the earth~ humans are part of the earth!! us and our evolutionary ancestors have been trying to live on this flying rock as best we can. some people are better at it, some people are worse, but i personally don’t think that means we should write off humanity, merely rethink the way we interact with our home!

like i definitely do see your point here! i just disagree with the premise. call me a bleeding heart but i think there are still humans worth saving, in westeros and in our own world! i think we must answer for the ways we benefit from the sins of our ancestors, but i don’t believe we deserve divine or magical punishment for something my great great great grandparents might have done!

[continuations]

We Need New Forms of Living Together

I was at a conference earlier this year where one of the topics was the fear of a population implosion. Some people are concerned that with birth rates declining in many parts of the world we might suddenly find ourselves without enough humans. Elon Musk has on several occasions declared population collapse the biggest risk to humanity (ahead of the climate crisis). I have two issues with this line of thinking. First, global population is still growing and some of those expressing concern are veiling a deep racism where they believe that areas with higher birth rates are inferior. Second, a combination of ongoing technological progress together with getting past peak population would be a fantastic outcome.

Still there are people who would like to have children but are not in fact having them. While some of this is driven by concern about where the world is headed, a lot of it is a function of the economics of having children. It's expensive to do so not just in dollar terms but also in time commitment. At the conference one person advanced the suggestion that the answer is we must bring back the extended family as a widely embraced structure. Grandparents, the argument goes, could help raise children and as an extra benefit this could help address the loneliness crisis for older people.

This idea of a return to the extended family neatly fits into a larger pattern of trying to solve our current problems by going back to an imagined better past. The current tradwife movement is another example of this. I say "imagined better past" because the narratives conveniently omit much of the actual reality of that past. My writing here on Continuations and in The World After Capital is aimed at a different idea: what can we learn from the past so that we can create a better future?

People living together has clear benefits. It allows for more efficient sharing of resources. And it provides company which is something humans thrive on. The question then becomes what forms can this take? Thankfully there is now a lot of new exploration happening. Friends of mine in Germany bought an abandoned village and have formed a new community there. The Supernuclear Substack documents a variety of new coliving groups, such as Radish in Oakland. Here is a post on how that has made it easier to have babies.

So much of our views of what constitutes a good way of living together is culturally determined. But it goes deeper than that because over time culture is reflected in the built environment which is quite difficult to change. Suburban single family homes are a great example of that, as are highrise buildings in the city without common spaces. The currently high vacancy rates in office buildings may provide an opportunity to build some of these out in ways that are conducive to experimenting with new forms of coliving.

If you are working an initiative to convert offices into dedicated space for coliving (or are simply aware of one), I would love to hear more about it.

[drxwsyni]

Ties That Bind

Demon!Matsukawa Issei x f!Reader

Synopsis: You move into your grandparents old home, situated in a quaint little town for a fresh start. What you don’t expect is there to be a remaining occupant in your new abode, much less when it asks you to help him out.

8.5k words

Warnings: Noncon (starts consensual but turns non-consensual), unprotected sex, fingering, mentions of blood & injury, coercion, stalking, slight hair pulling, pet names, condescension, kidnapping.

_____

You were never one to believe in the supernatural, but you wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere along the lines of your lifetime, you were cursed.

From the rundown apartment you were stuck in, unable to afford a move into a nicer complex, to your recent break up with a long term, painfully neglectful and borderline abusive partner―nothing in your life seemed to work out for you. Over the course of a year, you managed to lose all of your friends, leaving you alone while you stumbled down the path of uncertainty since losing your companion, even if they were a shitty one at that. The job you had ate away at your sanity with each shift, and the fumes of energy it left you with made anything outside of working and tending to your basic human needs impossible.

What you needed was a fresh start, and out of pure luck, that’s exactly what you got.

A certain chill swept past you as you walked up the driveway to your new home. It was a pleasantly comfortable and secluded abode―once belonging to your grandparents, and now belonging to you. They’d recently made the move south, seeking a warmer climate and leaving behind the quaint little town they’d lived in all their lives.

By chance, they thought to call you and offer up the home, and the humble flower shop they ran before leaving. It would all work out impossibly well―the house was paid off, and you already knew how to handle the work of a florist, having seen your grandparents in action many a time when you were younger.

The opportunity was impossible to pass up.

As you finished unpacking the few belongings you took with you, the sense of constant anguish that always seemed to linger lately was already diminishing. With the welcoming smell of a lit fireplace, and the warm surroundings of not just the tasteful interior decorations, but the autumnal changing of the seasons outside―settling into this new lifestyle felt like second nature.

It was a breath of fresh air. Literally―their home was situated about a ten minute drive from town, surrounded by nothing but a colourful forest of maple and oak trees, leaves beautifully bathing your vision with oranges and reds. The change from the smog ridden atmosphere of the city you once resided in was entirely welcome.

You truly felt at ease here, and soon enough days turned into weeks, this utterly perfect way of life sweeping you off your feet and carrying you into what could only be described as complete tranquility.

_____

Your grandparent’s home wasn’t exactly new...it’s how you tried to rationalize the strange occurrences.

When you were younger you remember your grandmother telling you that the thuds and creaks you heard was just the house moving. Expanding in the warmth and shrinking in the cold, things falling in and out of place―normal happenings that you could ignore. However, she never mentioned anything about the sounds of scratching.

You knew what mice and rats that lived in the walls sounded like, no thanks to your shitty old apartment. But these sounds weren’t that. They were long, drawn out and following you. Down the halls, above you as you tried to sleep. Part of you tensed whenever the indescribable scrape of god knows what met your ears, before leaving just a few seconds after it came and not returning for hours, sometimes even days on end.

You rationalized that like all the other bizarre things, this was just a result of the house being old.

That, and the cold gusts of wind, things falling over, the occasional flickering lights. It was all just byproducts of an ancient home, right?

Only, that didn’t explain everything else.

How when you opened or closed a door, it felt like some invisible force was pushing or pulling more than you. When creases on your bed appeared without you having touched it since making it before going to work. Especially not when the things falling out of place were being put back into place. Soon even the items you sent astray yourself ended up where you were too careless to tuck away to begin with.

And certainly, an old home couldn’t explain this feeling.

It came and went, almost unnoticeable but indisputably there if you focused hard enough. A sixth sense of sorts―the one you get when you just know that someone is watching you. But you’re the only person in the house, and when you look over your shoulder there’s nothing to suggest why the distant and mildly unnerving feeling is just barely making itself known.

Not a single plausible thing can make sense of all the peculiar little things happening around you. You can’t fix it, and so the only thing you can do is try to ignore it.

For a while, it actually works.

It's easy to get over it when aside from the things that go bump in the night, everything is just as ideal as the day you moved in. The townspeople who welcomed you with open arms are still just as friendly. Many of them were already your close friends by now, sharing dinner with them a couple times, falling into idle chit chat as you stumbled upon them during a trip to the grocery store or grabbing take out at the local diner. Your new job as a florist was going better than you could’ve ever imagined. The somewhat old fashioned building was picture perfect―brick walls overtaken by wildly growing vines, the setting sun hitting it just right every evening as you were closing up. At the end of the day you could relax, knowing there wasn’t really anything worth worrying over.

At least, that was until you saw it.

You caught the obscure figure in the corner of your eye, but you could’ve sworn there was a man staring at you from the corner of your room. It was morning, and you were at your vanity prepping for the shift ahead of you. For a split second it seemed like the reflection in the mirror hosted an additional figure. But when you turned to face the corner, such a thing had disappeared. As your heart stopped racing, and you forced yourself to put a halt on the spiralling “what if’s” of your mind, you decided it was just your eyes playing tricks on you.

Just shadows creating false realities, nothing more.

But those shadows came back. Not just once, but multiple times.

The next day you saw something standing in the window of your bedroom as you pulled up into the driveway. Just like last time, it vanished in an instant. The same figure ghosted your vision at the end of the hall, a blink and it was gone all the same. At one point you were just reading in your living room, enjoying the warmth of the fireplace at the end of a successful work day. Your eyes were trained on the paragraphs of the pages, when out of nowhere a thick blanket of unease enveloped your body.

Something was in the room with you, and it felt like they were standing right behind you.

You dared not look, despite part of you knowing that if you did there shouldn’t be anything there. Instead, you screwed your eyes shut, wordlessly chanting like a hymn in your mind that you were alone, there’s nothing behind you.

All at once the near suffocating weight lifted. You opened your eyes, turned around and just like you suspected, or rather hoped―it was just you and the rickety old walls of your home.

Honestly, you started to feel like you were losing your mind.

The lifestyle you’d adopted in this homely town of yours was still as enjoyable as ever, only for that serenity to dissipate slightly when you returned home.

Eyes, eyes, eyes.

Eyes here, eyes there. Not false realities, but a presence that was real just as much as yours. It felt strange to be worried about such a thing, when nothing bad was coming out of the shadowy figure occupying your space, aside from the occasional feeling of being watched. You were unsure of what to think―whether you should get the hell out of dodge, or just accept this strange being that you weren’t convinced was even there.

Because aside from the innate instinct to be on edge when that presence made itself known, things were fine. You could ignore it since without fail it always went away when you looked hard enough.

One day, out of pure frustration from the back and forth of your conflicting mindset alone, you let it slip that you wished whatever the hell was haunting you would stop being such a coward and really show itself. You laughed at yourself after, having thrown the comment out to absolutely nobody, realizing how crazy you looked.

Little did you know, that was the invitation it wanted.

_____

You mentally cursed your grandparents for owning such inconvenient appliances. The washer and dryer in the basement’s laundry room were certainly worse for wear. But they weren’t broken yet, and you weren’t willing to pay for the expensive upgrade. Which of course meant that you were stuck trying to fish out a shirt from the bottom of the washer, a loose thread getting caught on a jagged edge that was notorious for holding your clothing hostage.

After nearly falling into the opening from having to reach so far down into it, you relaxed with a deep exhale as you deposited the once stuck article into your laundry basket.

Unfortunately for you, the washing machine wouldn’t be the only faulty part you’d have to fight against while in the cold and damp basement.

The door to the laundry room was just one of the many things that would inconvenience you. Unless you propped it open, it would always shut on it’s own. Normally it wouldn’t be an issue, but now as your hand reached for the doorknob, and it feigned to twist under your influence, it was becoming very much of the sort.

“C’mon….damnit!”

Frustratingly so, you yanked on the handle, jiggling it every which way―yet it would not budge. You noted that you’d left your phone upstairs before coming to do the laundry, meaning you were left to brute force your way out if you didn’t wish to waste away in this small room.

For a moment you paused, closing your eyes to steel yourself from those thoughts that only served to cause more panic.

“I was waiting to see how long it’d take you to get locked in here.”

You nearly yelped at the sudden voice behind you, practically jumping ten feet in the air as your body whipped around to face its source.

And whoever was standing just a few steps away from you―everything in your being knew that it was practically dripping in danger.

Standing well over six foot and sporting an impressively broad frame, with short and slightly curly black hair was...a man? All signs pointed towards that, except for the glaringly contrasting black and pointed horns protruding from his hair.

They were only about two inches long at the most, but they were there nonetheless. Entirely inhuman, matching the black abyss of his eyes, which somehow looked amused at your reaction. He was clad in similarly black clothing, but nothing that seemed abnormally fashioned―at least not in human standards.

He probably seemed amused because you were standing there quite literally frozen, mouth agape and at a loss for words. There were so many things you could say, the plethora of confused and afraid thoughts racing through your mind being ripe for the picking. However you still remained silent, a building anxiety inside screaming for you to do anything.

This unit of half man, half whatever returned your gaze, eventually letting out what may have been a disappointed sounding sigh. When he was the first to move, taking languid strides towards you, something snapped in your brain, allowing you the strength to break out of the astounded trance you were in.

“D-Don’t come any closer!” Frantically, you stumbled backwards, which wasn’t very far, your back colliding harshly with the still locked door.

The horned creature continued his slow approach, taking in your much smaller form with each step. He let out a low chuckle at your words, finding them if not a bit cute, when they were trying to be intimidating. “Oh? And what are you gonna do about it, little human?”

Before you could even begin to process a response, let alone voice the retort, he was already standing right in front of you. With a towering frame, he leaned down in order to face you, making you cower impossibly further into the door behind.

“This piece of junk gets jammed all the time, just gotta mess with it―kinda like….” His hand reached down beside you, the other casually pocketed. As he spoke, the overhead luminance of a lightbulb caught the glint in what you could’ve sworn were fearsomely large canine teeth. A resounding click came from the door, “....that.”

The frame you were leant up against disappeared, and your whole body was sent falling off balance. You should’ve gone crashing down onto the concrete floor beneath you―but a pair of strong arms wrapped around your torso before that could happen.

This time a small shriek did escape your lips when you were forcefully pulled into the stranger’s firm chest, your back pressing against it. A shiver ran through you as he spoke teasingly into your ear, his breath fanning against your skin. “So, you’re a clumsy thing too?”

Adrenaline finally kicking in, you squirmed in his hold, noting with horror as the hands that gripped you had significantly clawed nails, looking like they’d rip straight through your flesh if you weren’t careful. “Get the hell off of me!”

He was deeply entertained at the way you pushed against his chest, your strength paling in comparison to his. Just because he found the sight of you flustered being amusing to no ends, he made sure to relent on letting you out of his arms for a moment. But, in truth, he wasn’t here to scare the living daylights out of you. And so regretfully, he loosened the hold that hadn’t been straining him in the slightest, letting you put some distance in between the both of you.

You were downright mortified at the events unfolding, hair tousled and clothing wrinkled from your brief struggle. A part of you was appalled at how he seemed so nonchalant with his actions, and his appearance in general, that feeling only magnifying at his words.

“Don’t act so surprised now, this isn’t exactly the first time we’ve met after all…”

At that statement you were gone right back to being speechless―because deep down, you realized that he was right. Taking a step back, you could sense that the air hanging in the room carried similarities to the times you caught that shadowy figure lurking in your peripherals. It didn’t feel suffocating now, but the energy it held was a secondary hint at his unnatural presence.

Which would mean that this man who had appeared out of thin air...was the thing that’d been watching you all this time?

Still lost in thought, you barely registered that he’d walked past you and back into the laundry room. “That’s right, little human. It’s only ever been me.” Seemingly sensing the deep confusion you felt at his words, he continued. “Your thoughts are quite loud, y’know.”

You watched with bated breath as he picked up your laundry basket that was still resting atop the dryer, mindlessly letting him hand it to you. Choosing to overlook the fact that he’d blatantly invaded your head to read your mind, only because you didn’t have the capacity to unwrap what that meant, you figured it would be best to start with the basics.

“What...What are you even―” If your eyes could’ve gotten any wider than they already were, they absolutely would’ve.

Smirking to himself, the inhuman stranger picked up a piece of clothing that had fallen out of the basket. He held up the thin, delicately laced panties, snickering as you snatched them from him in a frenzied motion.

You shoved them under the pile of clothing in the basket, “What are you even doing here? And―And how are you here?”

Now that was the reaction he was waiting for.

The sinister smile he gave you did nothing to calm your rapidly beating heart, accompanied by the whole body tense you felt. There were those literal fangs again, bearing themselves as he responded.

“Well, cutie―it’s a long story. But if you’ll have me, I’ll gladly explain it…if it means I get to spend more time with you~”

With a white knuckled grip on the laundry basket, you returned his smug expression with a stern look. Regrettably, you realized that you’d be a fool not to implore on the reasoning behind his unwelcome occupation in your home. It was invasive, and you suspected that the answer to ridding the house of him laid somewhere in whatever tale he was offering to recount.

The knowing look in his blacked out eyes told you he was just as aware of this reality as you, simply awaiting the inevitable answer you were sure to give.

Defeatedly, you agreed to hear him out, a sickening feeling settling in your stomach in seeing his pleased demeanour.

And so was the beginning lines of a contract between you and this resident creature, one that in its completion would bind you to him forever.

_____

He was summoned for quite innocent purposes, it turns out.

This demon who’d slyly instructed you to call him Issei was brought to your world to assist your grandparents. They made a deal―he helps their business, and once they made enough money to move they would repay him.

The problem was, they royally messed up their part of the deal.

Issei apparently got his repayment, but they failed to properly banish him from their home, or rather your home, which he was tethered too. It just so happens that he didn’t realize this until after they’d left. He’d be damned to the home for all eternity, “If only there was a nice little human capable of freeing me…”

Before resigning yourself to assisting the demon in getting him back to where he belonged, you questioned him. And he didn’t really have a choice but to answer, that was unless he wanted you to move out just like your grandparents and leave the next poor soul to deal with him. Naturally, he was just as willing to respond to your questions as he was in previously explaining the circumstances for his entrapment.

Since realizing that he was the entity stalking you from the shadows, you felt a tad...unnerved by him. Why should you help the thing that was unashamedly watching you without your consent after all?

“You were just as much of a stranger to me as I was to you. Had to make sure you weren’t a bad person and all.”

Now that made you laugh, coming from a literal demon.

But, you suppose you couldn’t blame him. That’s not to say the whole thing didn’t creep you out, but in hindsight he could’ve done much worse.

The fact that all he did was keep an eye on you for a while had to show for something, right?

When it came down to it you could either find a way to send Issei home, or move out. Which would mean going back to your old life―being miserable in every capacity.

You’d take a demon over that any day.

The agreement was formed after having gone through three cups of tea, and a bag of potato chips shared between the two of you (it turns out demons liked junk food). Issei would quit being such a creep and stop lurking in the shadows, and you’d use your free time to figure out how to help him.

It was how you ended up in the dusty and dark attic of the house.

Now, your grandparents weren’t always the sentimental type. When they made the move south, they wanted to transition into luxury, which wasn’t exactly what took up the space of their old home. The antique furniture had its charm, but it was nothing compared to what they were anticipating for their new abode. It was for that reason that they left nearly everything behind. Unless it went for a good selling price, or it held legal importance, they saw no need for it.

When you first stepped into the place, it honestly felt like they left in a rush. But you knew better, and so you didn’t pay it any mind.

You were grateful for everything entrusted to you now though, because after nearly an hour of rummaging through the cramped attic, Issei doing little to help, you finally found what you were looking for.

Your grandma’s old journals.

The demon who was lazily lounged on the big wooden crates snickered a little as you coughed on the dust that flew into the air when you blew at books. And then, when you were sent into a sneezing fit, he full out started laughing.

You sent the menace a nasty side glare, “The least you could―” another sneeze, “―c-could do is help me, asshole.”

It was something you suspected had to do with his unnatural makeup, but Issei quite literally towered over you. As he drew near, giving your head a few pats, you once again found yourself in awe of the sheer size of him.

“Alright, hand it over. Clearly your weak human form is no match for these all powerful dust bunnies.”

Quite smugly, as if he was doing you a lifesaving favour, Issei took the box of journals from your hands and headed for the stairs of the attic. For now, you chose to ignore his irritating comment, realizing that the sooner you got to those journals, the sooner you could get rid of him.

_____

Well, at least he wasn’t lying to you.

After what felt like hours of reading, probably because it did take that long, you finally stumbled upon the entries that detailed the origin story of the demon’s summoning. All in all, you couldn’t exactly blame your grandparents for seeking supernatural assistance. Sure, making a deal with a demon to boost the popularity of the floral shop held a lot of uncertainties, but it seemed to go fine for them.

And you really couldn’t blame them when they just so happened to end up with such an easy going demon at that. You had no clue such business could be so simple and stress-free, but the pages of your grandmother's writing told you that you really did have nothing to worry about.

With that in mind, you decided to do some backtracking.

Surely somewhere in these faded and withering pages would hold the key to sending Issei back to wherever he should be. There was enough writing for her to have mentioned it at some point―but that was the issue.

In counting, you found a total of thirteen journals, each one about an inch and a half thick. All that reading, and you had no clue where the answers to your problems lay. However, whether you should be grateful or not, Issei didn’t seem to be in a rush to get home. Which meant you had all the time in the world to scan page after page of the journals.

It was safe to say that it’d be a while to complete such a task. Enough time in fact for the two of you to grow very comfortable with each other.

While it took a little bit to get used to, you soon found the demon’s presence to be much less of a weight on your shoulders than it once did. Since Issei stopped existing as a shadow, the strange looming sensation you felt disappeared.

You figured that, even though you strictly told him not to, he may have invaded your mind to find out how his more inhuman characteristics didn’t exactly sit well with you. Now, you couldn’t deny that he was easy on the eyes, but it was hard to focus on that when something so unnatural was also staring you in the face.

One day you came home to see that those demonic qualities were gone. Horns disappeared, eyes looking human, and razor sharp claws reduced to short and blunt fingernails.

Once again, you never said anything, but the knowing smirk he held gave away that he very well knew how attractive you found him to be in that moment. Of course, you’d grown used to his teasing attitude by then, steeling yourself and moving on with the rest of your day.

While you worked to understand the ins and outs of the witchcraft your grandparents used, things around the house were generally nice. He acted like an oddly supportive and chill roommate, if anything strangely attentive to you. When there wasn’t anything to do, Issei simply preferred to watch you go about your own business. Technically it beat him doing the whole hiding in the shadows thing, but you couldn’t say his eyes that you could’ve sworn became a little darker than normal when watching you made you feel a little antsy.

He was a demon after all―an entity stronger than you could ever comprehend, one that was choosing to simply follow your movements from his laid out position on the couch as you did one thing or another. Such a contrast in strength even in that state would naturally make you want to shrink under his unrelenting gaze.

It was safe to say that it took a while to get warmed up to him. But the journals were long, and you were still searching for answers. And so eventually you developed a fondness for the demon stuck in your home until further notice.

Despite how you started reading the journals the moment you found them, there simply wasn’t enough time in the day to put a significant dent in them over the span of maybe a few hours. One week turned into two, then three. A month had passed and you were only a quarter of the way through the pile.

Finally, four months later, you had reached the end...sort of.

In that time you’d learnt how your grandparents had been meddling in the demonic arts for many years now. Small things here and there, nothing as serious as summoning a demon. It was for that reason that you were quite regrettably unable to find anything that would tell you how to send Issei home. Even more so was the painful curiosity you got from discovering some severely burnt and unreadable pages in the last journal. It couldn’t have been more than a few of them, but for all you knew, they could’ve held the solution to your problem.

The last entry was detailed pretty normally. Your grandmother wrote of how they were nearing the end of the contract. With the flower shop having thrived for a long while, they finally had enough funds to make the move. All that was left was to figure out what the demon wanted in return for his assistance. But that’s where it ended, leaving you with nothing to help you with your own challenges.

Right now, all it really meant was that Issei wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

That fact held a strange reality―concerning how in these four months, you developed a strange bond with him.

It almost embarrassed you to say, and you’d never openly admit it to him knowing the relentless teasing you’d get, but a part of you didn’t want him to leave. You reasoned it was due to the neglect and general mistreatment you received from your last relationship, because you couldn’t deny the strange longing you felt to be around him.

At first when you tried to push Issei away, he laughed at you. All we wanted was to be there for you, provide some casual comfort as it was one of the few things he could do for you. The comment of it being ‘what you deserved’ didn’t go unnoticed by no means. In fact, it stuck in your mind and stayed at the forefront. Replaying in your head each and every move he made to be closer with you.

Sure, he could be a little cheeky at times, a few innuendos here and there. But other than that, you never quite minded his touch. If anything, you welcomed it.

He was everything you wanted in a partner. Observant, thoughtful, attentive when he needed to be. You didn’t have many reasons to be stressed in this new life, or in need of relief so to speak. But when you were, when you did need a distraction, he was always there.

You were no stranger to Issei’s more affectionate side. Four months of living together in such close and secluded quarters allows for a lot of exploration between what the two of you meant to each other after all. Up until now, you took how he always offered a shoulder to lean on, passing embraces and absentminded physical gestures to be something more platonic in nature.

Now however, you weren’t so sure.

While the flower shop was still thriving, you were the only person running it. It left you a little more worn out than usual, a particularly busy week leading you to have some pent up anxieties.

And of course, Issei noticed right away.

You brushed off his insistence to let him help you wind down at first, but a few days of the strain on your body had you yearning for something to ease the ache.

And the book you were reading just wasn’t cutting it.

You let out a huff of frustration, your mind unable to focus on the words. Also laying on the bed beside you, Issei quirked an eyebrow at the small commotion. You failed to notice the way his eyes took in the sight of you clad in your thin nightgown, how his lips quirked into a knowing smirk from your idea of trying to read to help you fall asleep for the night doing jack shit.

“You really gotta relax a little, sweetheart.”

You sent him an unserious glare before you returned your focus to the book. “I’m trying to.”

The bed creaked a bit as he drew closer, assumedly trying to see what story could possibly be so captivating that would have you acting this serious. Really, he was stealing a glance down the front of your nightgown, exposing your supple skin.

A shiver ran through your body as he leant down, speaking low into your ear. “Why don’t you just let me help, s’not like I haven’t done it before.”

While he wasn’t wrong, the reality was he’d never done anything like what he was insinuating. You never had to ask him how he wanted to help you relax, when a warm hand rested atop your thigh, giving it a gentle squeeze.

How the hell were you supposed to focus now?

You didn’t push him away as the hand curled into your inner thigh, thumb moving back and forth against your skin. Only a little worriedly, you attempted to press your legs together.

“Issei, I―”

“What, is my little human shy?”

Your heart began to race as the deepness of his voice, being so close made you physically shudder. The grip on the book's spine tightened. “T-That’s not it, I just…”

You were forced to pause mid sentence as his hand crept further up your thigh, his lips ghosting the shell of your ear as he continued to pull you deeper into the wanton trance.

“I think if you knew what was good for you, you’d finally let me take care of you.”

He hadn’t even touched you where you were finding yourself wanting him to the most, but the pooling heat you felt was already so incredibly intense. You could feel the slight dampness in your panties, body aching with need so quickly at his actions.

“...Why don’t you let me give you what I know you want.”

Of course he was able to tell how much you were losing yourself to his words, with the way your breath’s pace picked up, lids half shutting with anticipation. As the pads of his fingers finally grazed your clothed pussy, and you let an airy sigh escape your lips, the both of you knowing how you can’t deny his offer.

Especially not when those fingers push the delicate fabric to the side, teasingly trailing up your folds.

“I think it’s time that―” he accentuates those low spoken words by applying the perfect amount of pressure against your clit, “―you really relax, yeah?”

Almost immediately, your hips buck against his hand, grinding yourself into it and earning more delicious stimulation. You didn’t even realize the way your book slipped off your lap, too caught up in how Issei’s fingers began rubbing steady circles against the little bundle of nerves.

A hand flies to your mouth in an attempt to stifle the few high pitched moans escaping you. While you are a little confused as to why you feel so goddamn needy, you don’t really care. Quite the opposite, you eagerly part your legs as his fingers dip lower to your entrance, gathering up some of your arousal. You're unable to stop the whine as he pushes a finger in, skillfully curling it against your walls.

Even harder is it to stop the way your breath hitches and your walls clamp down as he adds a second finger, hitting that spongy and sensitive part of you seemingly easily.

It’s impossible for him to miss your cute little reactions, “That’s your spot, pretty girl?”

You all but keen at the saccharine tone lacing his words, head pressing into the pillow as his digits make languid thrusts into your heat. Wrapped up in the way he’s perfectly working you over, you didn’t fight him as he leant over your body and began leaving open mouth kisses against your neck. Or, when he latched onto a particular spot that had you writhing gently underneath him, hands gripping his biceps to ground yourself.

Much quicker than usual, that warm and familiar pressure was building inside you, lewd noises of your slick meeting your ears as Issei quickened his pace. He spoke against the skin of your collarbone, small marks growing darker here and there from his ministrations. “That’s it, little one. Give it to me…”

Although it was spoken quietly, you could’ve sworn the command felt like it was playing out in your mind. Reverberating through your fleeting thoughts, coaxing you to fall apart. A near blinding sensation ripped through you as his thumb repeatedly swiped at your clit, a few more seconds enough to push you over the edge that you reached almost shamefully fast. Issei didn’t let up, helping you ride out your orgasm as you remained in that intense state longer than you ever had before.

When you eventually came down from your high, panting and a light sheen of sweat adorning your face, you did feel more relaxed. But somehow, that same heat you felt persisted.

You must have been out of it longer than you thought, unaware of just how you came to be now entirely bare, nightgown and panties nowhere to be seen.

That, and the fact that Issei was just as uncovered as you, hovering over your mildly exhausted body. With glazed over eyes, you drank up the way the bedside candle bathed his body in a warm and flickering light, highlighting his tanned skin. You would have remained that way, enjoying the view of his broad and well built frame, if he hadn’t interrupted you. And, if you weren’t already so far gone in the motions, you might haven protested as his lips captured yours in a deep kiss. It was too late for any that now. Your mouth parted in a weak sigh as his hand came up to cup your breast, pinching the already hardened nipple and experimentally rolling it in between his fingers.

Out of pure need to breath, you pawed against his toned chest, relieved when he let up. Not before nipping at your now swollen bottom lip, he chuckled a bit to himself, having a proud smirk in seeing your blissed out expression.

“...Told you I could help.”

The burning ache in between your legs refused to leave, despite you just having experienced what was likely the most intense orgasm you’d ever had.

Issei could see the desire written across your face, bringing a hand to affectionately cup your cheek.

Even that contact alone was stirring the same need in you, making you lean into the gesture as you practically pouted up at him.

“What’s wrong, baby. That not enough for you?”

If it weren’t for the teasing lilt in his voice, you would’ve felt bad for what you were about to ask.

Lashes wetted slightly with tears, you peered up at the demon who was awaiting an answer.

“I want more, please…”

For the first time in ages, your drifting gaze landed on those sharpened canine teeth of his, shining in the candle light from his lighthearted grin at your pleading.

It was taking everything in him not to lose himself in your vulnerability. Having you so openly grapple for his touch was downright intoxicating, and even for a demon as strong as him, the pull to absolutely ravage you was almost irresistible.

But he couldn’t do such a thing―not yet.

Issei was quick to oblige your request, positioning himself between your legs and lining up with your dripping entrance. Just because the sight of your frustrated pout as you waited patiently for more was sickeningly addictive, he took a moment to tease you even further.

A jolt of pleasure shot through you as he rubbed the weeping tip of his cock along your glistening folds, nudging your clit and earning a desperate mewl from you. Your whole body felt like it was melting under even the smallest of movements, limbs beginning to grow weaker. Just as the tears welling in your eyes threatened to spill, Issei leant down and planted his lips softly against yours.

You suppose it was a distraction, as you felt him begin to push past your entrance. Having been previously drowning in the way he was eying you like prey, you never quite caught a glimpse of what was in store for you. You now knew all too well though, your nails digging into his biceps as he slowly split you open on his cock.

Hearing your pained whines, Issei brought a thumb back down to circle your puffy clit. In parting, you turned your head to the side as he began planting light kisses along your cheek, continuing along your jawbone.

“Takin’ me so well, such a good little human…”

The praise he purred into your ear had you keening, wanting to earn more as he finally sunk into you.

Out of mercy for your much frailer composition, Issei paused until you gave him those pleading eyes to keep moving, your lower lip tugged between your teeth.

And god, how could he refuse that.

He reared back before snapping his hips into you, the force causing you to yelp as your whole body was jolted. Issei looked down at you, an animalistic look in his eyes as he began a steady pace.

You clawed at his shoulders, the sheer size of him making it effortless to hit that sensitive and spongy spot inside you with each thrust. His whole body was massive, engulfing your frame and showing you just how small you were in comparison now that he was so close.

“Aren’t you just a mess for me. This tight little cunt is fuckin’ drooling.”

It felt like with each word that left his lips, the burning desire grew more and more intense. Maybe it was because you hadn’t properly gotten off since Issei had made himself known four months ago, but right now you couldn’t care less. The drag of his cock against your walls had you weakly writhing underneath him, back arching and legs kicking out.

Issei took pride in the way you squirmed, each slam of his hips causing you broken moans and high-pitched whimpers. You were babbling nonsense, of how good it felt, how good he felt. He saw the way your eyes were glazed over, rolling into the back of your head, not focused in any capacity on the way he was changing right above you.

A large hand wrapped around your throat, and distantly, you could feel a sharp sting against your sweat covered skin.

“Look at you, my sweet little human―you need me, right?” Issei all but growled out the question, squeezing your neck tighter when you failed to respond.

“Y-Yes! Fuck, I need you, need you s-so bad Issei.”

While you were falling apart, panting and drool seeping from your mouth, the demon was as collected as ever. With his rhythm increasing, you felt the coil tightening and threatening to snap with each passing second, your legs wrapping around his hips and trying to pull him impossibly closer.

“That’s right, you fucking need me, you belong to me―say it.”

You were so close to reaching that peak for a second time, too absorbed in the feeling to respond.

Issei felt the way your walls fluttered, clamping down against his length. As much as he wanted to see your face contort in ecstasy only he could deliver you, he still needed one last thing.

His hips stilled right as you were about to come undone again, pulling out almost all the way and leaving just the tip.

“Say it, human. Tell me who you belong to.”

The demand was harsh, ringing inside your head and mixing with the lust filled haze clouding your mind.

“You, Issei! I’m yours, please don’t stop, I-I’m―”

Your eyes shut tight as he slams back into you, pace quicker than ever as you fail to notice how the entire room begins to change. All you can register is the blinding sensation of your building release, it crashing upon you in waves. Somehow more powerful than the last, you’re reduced to a convulsing mess as he keeps moving inside you while you cum.

There’s a certain ringing in your ears, a muffledness that slowly fades as you calm down. Your heart is beating hard against your ribcage as you tearily crack open your eyes.

You’re not in your room.

The black ceiling that hangs above you is not your own, nor are the satin sheets of similar colour you lay upon. What was once your home is now everything but the sort, a bedchamber large and grand. The hanging chandelier and mounted sconces light your vision.

They light the still looming frame of Issei.

He’s changed too.

Those once hidden and inhuman horns have made their return, his eyes darker and sinister. And the fangs you caught a glimpse of earlier, crimson.

A thin trail of blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, falling and landing on your chest.

“Such a naive little thing you are…”

Startled and still far too sensitive, you gave a silent scream as Issei thrusted back into your heat in one fluid and harsh movement. You pawed against his chest, body still exhausted and turning your protests into nothing more than feeble pawing.

“S-Stop, Issei. S’too much, p-please.”

Instead of slowing down, his movements quickened, a brutal pace being set as you frantically tried pushing him away.

You didn’t know where you were, but in the back of your mind, you knew how you came to be in this strange place had something to do with the demon ignoring your pained sobbing.

Even in seeing your face twisted in anguish and confusion, he kept that self-righteous grin on his face. “Made me work to own you, I’ll give you that.” Issei’s hand, once wrapped around your neck, gripped you by the hair.

A sharp sting shot across your scalp as he forcefully beared your neck. With a swipe of his thumb, the demon smeared the still fresh blood leaving the bite wound on your neck. You cried out in pain as all of a sudden the punctured area began to burn.

“But with this, you’ll never be able to leave me.” A deep laugh reverberated in his chest at the prospect of his words, not ceasing the movements that were somehow lighting that same fire in your belly once again.

You mentally recoiled at the whole situation, the feeling of unbridled fear swelling inside you.

“I said st―” “Stop? That’s cute, sweetheart. But…” Eyes gleaming with hunger, drank up your messy and exhausted, small form. “...Little humans like you don’t get to make choices for yourselves―not anymore, at least.”

Despite his words doing nothing to encourage you to speak, if anything only frightening you with how they weighed down on your conscience, you still forced yourself too. To your appreciation, Issei slowed his pace slightly, giving you the chance to catch up with your thoughts.

“I-I don’t understand, why are you―”

A searing kiss cut off your questioning, his length stilling and remaining buried inside of you. He wasn’t anywhere close to being gentle like before. This time, his kiss felt rough, claiming as his fangs pierced the soft skin of your lower lip, the metallic taste of your own blood flooding your mouth.

When he pulled back, you were just as stained in red as he was.

“You were the deal, sweetheart.”

Issei reclaimed that fast and bruising pace, pelvic bone grinding against you and catching your clit with each cant of his hips. He relished in the way your nails left marks in their wake against his shoulders and back, finding your attempts to both search for something to steady you and push him away at the same time greatly entertaining.

“Your fuckin’ grandparents left once they realized they weren’t what I wanted―” Large hands met the underneath of your thighs, bringing them up to press against your chest, “Gave me you to earn their freedom.”

By now the tears once fleeting had developed into a steady stream, you hiccuping as you feebly attempted to form words. “That’s...s’not true, they w-wouldn’t do that.”

As the declaration left your mouth, you thought your mind was totally lost and playing tricks on you. In the palm of Issei’s hand appeared the burnt pages to journal number thirteen.

“It’s not? Then why did the crazy witch write it all down?” Carelessly, he tossed the badly blackened pages away, scattering them across the bed.

Your gaze followed the mess as they splayed across the sheets, view landing on the familiar scribbles and catching the last few lines jotted down.

“...Doesn’t deserve this…..I didn’..rea..ze…..he’s...monster…..the poor thing….......I’m sorry….”

Issei’s clawed hand turned your head back to face him, the sharp points of his fingers digging into your cheeks. While you knew he wanted your attention on him, all you could conceive was how this was just a repeat of your unfortunate history.

What you thought would be the start of a perfect new life was really the end of your already shameful one. Lured into fresh surroundings, only to find the air heavy with an awaiting darkness.

In a contrasting act of tenderness, Issei leant down, lips finding your fallen tears and kissing them away. Perhaps it was a pitying comfort, as you found those thoughts of despair suffocating, firmly cementing your fate with him.

But when he spoke, you knew it wasn’t because he realized your internal state from the look on your face, but from peering into the open book of your mind.

“I’ll take care of you, little human. Let me prove it to you.”

You might not have had the capacity to understand him then, but he meant what he said. In all of those months, he became everything you needed. And while it was to get you to trust him, to get you to give yourself to him―it wasn’t to say that he didn’t truly want to do all of those things.

From the moment you stepped into that house, Issei knew he was right in his judgment to respond to your grandparent’s summoning. The pull to heed their demands was strong, and for good reason. You were the being he was searching for. So he tended to all of your ailments, and in doing so realized he found what he’d been craving all these years.

He found the rush of feeling needed in you.

You’d have no choice to depend on him now, trapped in his realm with no way out.

Those details weren’t something you quite needed to know at the moment, however.

Whole body quivers washed over you, limbs feeling weaker than ever as both of you drew closer to release. Unrestrained moans left you as Issei’s length glided against your tensing walls, pressure building rapidly in your lower abdomen.

You weren’t anywhere near in your right mind as he relentlessly pounded into you, but you could’ve sworn the stretch of his cock felt bigger as his thrusts grew more erratic.

Showing that he really would take care of you, his hand snaked in between your bodies, the pad of his thumb rubbing messily against your sensitive nub.

With a few more rough thrusts, him still sloppily circling your clit with wide motions, you came around Issei’s cock for the second time.

He buried his head into the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent, and that of the wound he’d inflicted upon you. Chasing his own release, he sporadically rutted against you.

Far too exhausted to do anything about it, you could only lay breathless as a warmth spread inside you, uncaring of the mess dripping down your thighs as Issei eventually pulled away.

The night's events were catching up on you, maintaining consciousness being impossible no matter how much you tried. No amount of fighting to keep your eyelids open would help, simply delaying the inevitable.

As your grasp on the waking world slipped through your fingertips, the last thing you felt was the dulled sensation from the wound on your neck, spreading to feel like a collar chaining you down.

The demon, not nearly as tired as you, returned your body to a comfortable position. He’d deal with the mess he’d made once you were fully asleep and unable to protest, now choosing to watch you drift away.

That satisfied smile remained on his expression, thankful to have finally returned home. But more than anything, he was satisfied.

Issei found what he was looking for.

And, being the perfectly naive human you were, you finalized your fate in willfully agreeing to be his.

The contract was completed, binding you to him for all eternity.

[rockislandadultreads]

Complex Stories: Books to Read

Swimming Back to Trout River by Linda Rui Feng

How many times in life can we start over without losing ourselves? In the summer of 1986, in a small Chinese village, ten-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: her father promises to return home and collect her by her twelfth birthday. But Junie’s growing determination to stay put in the idyllic countryside with her beloved grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future. What Junie doesn’t know is that her parents, Momo and Cassia, are newly estranged from one another in their adopted country, each holding close private tragedies and histories from the tumultuous years of their youth during China’s Cultural Revolution. While Momo grapples anew with his deferred musical ambitions and dreams for Junie’s future in America, Cassia finally begins to wrestle with a shocking act of brutality from years ago. In order for Momo to fulfill his promise, he must make one last desperate attempt to reunite all three members of the family before Junie’s birthday—even if it means bringing painful family secrets to light.

When the Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain

Anna Hart is a missing persons detective in San Francisco. When tragedy strikes her personal life, Anna, desperate and numb, flees to the Northern California village of Mendocino to grieve. She lived there as a child with her beloved foster parents, and now she believes it might be the only place left for her. Yet the day she arrives, she learns a local teenage girl has gone missing. The crime feels frighteningly reminiscent of the most crucial time in Anna's childhood, when the unsolved murder of a young girl touched Mendocino and changed the community forever. As past and present collide, Anna realizes that she has been led to this moment. The most difficult lessons of her life have given her insight into how victims come into contact with violent predators. As Anna becomes obsessed with the missing girl, she must accept that true courage means getting out of her own way and learning to let others in. Weaving together actual cases of missing persons, trauma theory, and a hint of the metaphysical, this propulsive and deeply affecting novel tells a story of fate, necessary redemption, and what it takes, when the worst happens, to reclaim our lives--and our faith in one another.

Home Stretch by Graham Norton

It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony, a group of young friends, including the bride and groom, are involved in an accident. Three survive. Three are killed. The lives of the families are shattered and the rifts between them ripple throughout the small town. Connor survived, but living among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as carrying the shame of having been the driver. He leaves the only place he knows for another life, taking his secrets with him. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, he eventually makes a home—of sorts—for himself in New York, where he finds shelter and the possibility of forging a new life. But the secrets—the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind—will not be silenced. Before long, Connor will have to confront his past. A powerful and timely novel of emigration and return, Home Stretch demonstrates Norton’s keen understanding of the power of stigma and secrecy—and their devastating effect on ordinary lives.

Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North

From one of the most imaginative writers of her generation comes an extraordinary vision of the future… Ven was once a holy man, a keeper of ancient archives. It was his duty to interpret archaic texts, sorting useful knowledge from the heretical ideas of the Burning Age—a time of excess and climate disaster. For in Ven's world, such material must be closely guarded so that the ills that led to that cataclysmic era can never be repeated. But when the revolutionary Brotherhood approaches Ven, pressuring him to translate stolen writings that threaten everything he once held dear, his life will be turned upside down. Torn between friendship and faith, Ven must decide how far he's willing to go to save this new world—and how much he is willing to lose. Notes from the Burning Age is the remarkable new novel from the award-winning Claire North that puts dystopian fiction in a whole new light.

[marmolady]

New Horizons

Main Pairings: Estela x (f)MC, Graleister

Summary: Endless Ending. Liv and Reggie are starting school in San Trobida. Notes at the end!

Word Count: 9695

Chronology: After 'Growing Pains', before 'How the time escapes me...'

Tagging: @saivilo, @edgydepressedchoicesthot, @sceptilemasterr, @greengroove @mauvecatfic​

Thanks for reading!

San Trobida, July 2035

“Hey, Auntie Grace!”

Reggie looked up from his book at the sound of his cousin’s voice, and hastily placed aside his shiny new copy of ‘A Guide to San Trobidan History’ so he could rush out into the hallway.

Grace was already wrapping Liv in a hug. “Hello, sweetheart.” She kissed the side of her niece’s head, before her eyes wandered down to a bloodied knee. “Did you have a mishap on your bike on the way here?”

“Yeah… I clipped the kerb and crashed,” Liv said, offering her aunt a better view of her wound. As she heard Reggie’s footsteps, she looked up to meet his eye and smiled.

“Youch!” Reggie offered sympathetically as he came close enough to peer over Liv’s grazed knee.

Liv shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

Grace, though, was more concerned. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head when you fell?”

“No, just scraped my knee. It does actually sting a bit.”

“Hmm. Well, I think we’d better put some anti-septic that knee just to be safe.”

The new house was a mess. Boxes and misplaced furniture filled every room, and the twins-- six years old-- had been making forts with the packing boxes that had been emptied so far. The family had been in the house for just over a day, and some good progress had already been made. There had been a lot that had been left behind. Neither Aleister nor Grace put too much value on material possessions, so most of what had come with them and the children to their new home in San Trobida had been essential furniture, and the mountains of photo albums and memorabilia from a life with the kids.

Grace sat Liv down on a wooden ottoman, and, after a little bit of rummaging, found the first aid kit.

“Okay, this might hurt just a little,” she said gently, and she carefully dabbed Liv’s graze.

Liv yelped, “Fuck!”, causing Reggie to gasp, looking to his mother for a reaction, and Erin and Immy to burst out giggling from inside their box-fort.

Grace raised an eyebrow, but her warm smile didn’t shift. “It stings that much?”

“Yeah…,” Liv said, flushing a little. “Sorry about the language.”

“I’m sure I didn’t hear a thing.”

There was the usual bustling around as Aleister got the girls into their shoes; Immy and Erin had decided that swapping one shoe with one another was the peak of humour, but eventually, their father managed to get them each into a left and a right-- even if they didn’t match. Six-and-a-half-year-old sisters, Reggie had come to realise, made just about everything more of a headache than necessary.

Eventually, though, they were on their way. His mom and dad, walking beside the twins as they pootled along on their bicycles, had the address, but Reggie rode ahead with Liv, taking her lead as she zig-zagged through the streets of Valle Brava. Having only set foot on San Trobidan soil as a new resident some twenty-four hours ago, everything aspect of his environment set his senses alight. This wasn’t like being back in America. Perhaps it was the tropical climate, but he was reminded much more of La Huerta-- of home. Liv certainly seemed right at home here. She and her mothers had settled a few weeks before, and Liv had been coming here pretty much all her life. There were just a few blocks between their respective houses, and the wide cycle paths along the bitumen roads made for an easy journey. This, Reggie had been told, was a newly developed area; much had been re-built since the war he knew his Tia Estela had been involved in. The cycle paths ended as they came nearer to Liv’s place, a little way out of the main township. The foliage on either side of the road became thicker, and there was less street noise, more birdsong.

“Beat you!” Liv announced as she planted her feet into the ground, forcing her bicycle to a stop.

Reggie grumbled, pulling up beside his cousin in front of a humble bungalow-style house with outer walls a vibrant azure blue against yellow accents. The sound of a dog barking-- unmistakably Liv’s Robin, was further confirmation they’d arrived. “You didn’t beat me, Livia. I was following you. I didn’t even know where we were going.”

“Jeez, dude. No one likes a sore loser….”

“I am not a--!”

The door swung open.

“Reggie!” Taylor wasted no time in sweeping her nephew into a hug. “It’s so good to see you! I can’t believe you still have the energy for cycling over here-- didn’t you move house, like, yesterday?”

Reggie laughed. “Hi, Auntie Taylor!” There was something about seeing a familiar face in this new environment that made the pieces seem to click into place. Family made it home. “I’m a little bit tired but mostly just excited. I did sleep in today, so I guess I won’t crash until later.” His sisters on the other hand… there was no way they’d last the evening without overtiredness rearing its ugly head.

“I’m guessing your mom and dad are on their way with the girls?”

“Yeah,” said Liv, “but they’re pretty slow. I don’t have to wait to give Reggie the grand tour, do I?”

“Knock yourself out, kid. Hang on, Liv? Walk your bike through the house, please.”

“I was gonna!”

Reggie could only smirk. Like hell you were….

“Aaaand,” Liv finished off with a flourish, “this is my room!” She opened the door to a good-sized bedroom. It seemed to Reggie that what floor-space wasn’t taken up by the bed was piled up with boxes.

“I mean, I can’t say the mess wasn’t a clue.”

Liv gave her cousin a look as she flopped into her bed. “Hey-- moving house is hard. You’ll see soon enough. You get started all excited, but once you start living your life, you kinda get… stuck. Mama Taylor says we’re going to just blitz it all next weekend, and throw ourselves a pizza party as a reward.”

Reggie got up onto the bed and crossed his legs. “Do you like it here?”

“I love it here! I always liked coming here when I was little, so I guess it doesn’t feel like something completely different. I reckon my tio abuelo is over the moon that we’re here for good; it’s like I’ve got a grandparent now.” Liv’s cheeks flushed pink, and she glanced away.

Understanding, Reggie nodded. Together, they’d grown up in a family that didn’t take the traditional shape. There were some things that simply couldn’t be explained to other friends; like why Reggie’s grandma could help him with his homework, but could never come in for grandparents’ day, and why Liv had a whole side of the family with no grandparents at all-- not even dead ones.

“And,” Liv continued, “people don’t really look at my Mama Estela funny. I noticed that years ago. I guess ‘cause of the war, people don’t look twice at someone who’s maybe a little bit banged-up. I got so sick of it back in America. Every time we met someone new, they’d put on that ‘God, what happened?’ face. Maybe Mom doesn’t want to explain the whole ‘revolutionary in a civil war’ thing to every random person who can’t mind their own business. Some people have scars-- big freaking deal. It’s better here.”

“Yeah, that would be a nice change. The amount of times I’ve seen you and Auntie Taylor look at a nosy idiot like you want to deck ‘em--”

Liv burst out laughing. “True, that.”

The sound of excited barking rang out from the backyard. It seemed pretty likely to Reggie that his parents and sisters had just arrived. When he and Liv arrived in the backyard, Erin had already joined Estela at the barbecue, desperate to be involved, while Immy was passionately talking to Nicolas about goodness-knows-what. Reggie made a mental note to rescue him in a few minutes; that kid could be intense, and the poor old guy had come out here for a relaxing lunch with his niece.

Nicely, but firmly, Reggie nudged the wriggling, writhing form of Robin the dog to the side so he could join his mother and Auntie Taylor at the large alfresco table under the porch. And Robin returned to his favoured position at the feet of the barbecue-- Erin was just a kid, surely, she’d drop something….

“Do you need a hand with the salads?” Reggie asked as he greeted his mother with a hug. He’d been seeking a lot of those. With so much changing, familial comfort meant a lot, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

Perhaps more than anything, though, he was grateful to have Liv by his side. It was the way it had always been; from their toddler days on La Huerta, through elementary school, to their adventures in home-schooling. Some things might change-- some things might change immeasurably-- but he always had his cousin.

___________________________

La Huerta, 2028

Liv yelled out as she splashed down into the shallow surf. “Reggie!”

“I got her, Xiraana!” Reggie cried, and soon he was joined by a young Vaanti girl, who helped restrain their victim.

“No, no!” Liv squealed as she struggled. Vaanti kids, she’d long ago realised, were strong. “You’ll never take me alive!”

“Five-- four--- three….” Xiraana counted down, not letting Liv out of her grasp.

“Two-- one!” Reggie finished triumphantly, and he let his cousin fall unceremoniously back into the water. “The klaawyi ate all the meat off your bones. You’re one of us now!”

Liv pouted, but admitted defeat. It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen; she was pretty good on Team Klaawyi anyway. Or, she would have been… had she not seen the figure of her favourite uncle descending onto the beach from the great tree of Elyys’tel.

“Tio Diegoooooo! Hiiiii!” Liv ran across the sand, almost tripping in her desperation to reach him.

“Hey, Livia!” Reggie cried out, indignant at being suddenly abandoned. “You’re meant to help us catch them!”

But Diego had crouched down to wrap Liv in a hug, and Reggie might as well be talking to a pile of rocks for all that was being absorbed.

“Tio, they got me! Reggie and Xiraana got me, and now I’m a klaawyi!”

“You?” Diego laughed. “You’re no klaawyi-- I’ve never seen a klaawyi that was ticklish!”

“Wha--?” Oh no. Once again, Liv was shrieking with mirth, this time dodging the tickling hands of her tio.

Still standing in the shallows, Reggie stomped his foot, which achieved little but splashing himself in the face. The game went on without them; games of Klaawyi Chase didn’t stop for anyone. The usual fun on the beaches outside Elyys’tel would go on like this every day… whether Reggie and Liv were there to join in or not. And Reggie didn’t want to miss out now.

“Come on, Livia!”

She just shook her head, not letting her adoring gaze up at Diego slip for so much as a heartbeat. “Nah,” she said. “I’m done.”

Torn, knowing that whichever direction he ran in, he’d lose out on precious time with friends, Reggie admitted defeat and rushed back to Liv’s side on the shore. He looked back over his shoulder and waved goodbye-- for what he’d been told would likely be a long, long time. Engrossed in their game, his friends gave just the most fleeting of farewells before continuing to race through the small waves that lapped the beach.

Liv, in contrast, had eyes only for her tio. She clasped his hand tightly; if she held on tight enough, perhaps he’d have no choice but to come with her to wherever her mothers were taking her in the big aeroplane.

Where exactly she was going, Liv didn’t quite understand. It was away from La Huerta, but they weren’t going back to live with Tio Nicolas, they were going… someplace else. Someplace with no Tio Diego and Varyyn, where all the other kids would be boring shades of pink and brown rather than blue and green, and where no one knew about the yeti-bear, or the magic crystal alien that made her mom, or about The Story of the Year the World Stopped.

“I want you to come, Tio Diego…,” Liv softly beseeched.

Diego’s eyes grew misty, her earnest words having tipped him over the edge after what had been a long period of emotional build-up. Goodbyes were never easy, and Liv’s family was his family. He squeezed her little hand gently.

“I’ll visit you, Livi-- I promise. Cross my heart. And your mommies will bring you over to visit us here too; you are going to learn so many new games at school that you can teach Xiraana and the other kids.”

“But I’ll miss you…”

Having rejoined Liv, Reggie peered up at Diego’s teary face with concern. “Diego, you’re making your glasses all foggy.”

“Ha. I know, I know!” Diego wiped his eyes. “You might have a point there, Reggie; I want to spend this last night with you guys actually being able to see you!”

Liv giggled and wrapped her arms around her uncle’s legs, only to be peeled off and hoisted into the air. “We can still have fun until bedtime, can’t we? Will you tell us a story?”

On the ground, Reggie danced around, his arms waving. Diego-time was the best story-time.

In the arms of her tio, her playmate since she was a baby bouncing on his knee, Liv was a mess of emotions; of fear and excitement, of merriment that competed with the looming sorrow. It was more than her little self had a clue what to do with. She was only five.

Sensing his cousin’s turmoil, Reggie reached up a hand and took hold of Liv’s, hanging down by Diego’s side. “Don’t worry, Livia! If you worry, you won’t enjoy story-time.”

Liv stuck out her bottom lip. That little nerd-face could be pretty smart sometimes. Tomorrow night, there would be no goodnight story from Tio Diego, but tomorrow night was not now-- now, everything was as it should be. Her wavering grin returned, and to her delight, it brought matching smiles to the faces of her companions.

“Do you think Varyyn, and my mommies, and Auntie Grace and Uncle Alli, and Auntie Grace’s tummy babies want to listen to the story too?”

“Yeah,” Diego said, letting Liv back down to the ground, where she immediately found another hug in Reggie’s arms, “I think everyone would really like that.”

_____________________________

San Trobida, August 2035

“I don’t get it,” Liv said thoughtfully, as the car rolled right on past the turn for her Auntie Grace and Uncle Al’s place. “It’s right on the way; wouldn’t it have been easier for us to pick up Reggie?”

“Hon,” Taylor replied, “I think Reggie wanted his mom and dad to take him to orientation. They’ll probably be better at helping with his jitters than we would be.”

“I guess.” Liv looked out the window, watching the surrounding vegetation thicken once more as the car followed the road up out of the valley. “Orientation Day shouldn’t be too bad, right? Just, like, meeting our teachers, learning where stuff is, that kinda thing?” And you’ll have to try and make friends. That would be a laugh.

By the time they pulled up at the Las Selvas Secondary School, however, Liv fully understood her cousin’s nerves, and realised that was probably why she’d been so disappointed that he didn’t share a car with her. Through every big change in their young lives, his presence had been a reassuring constant.

“Uggghh,” she groaned. “Can I change my mind? Home-schooling was all right; more of that, please.”

Estela leaned from the front seat and gave Liv’s knee a squeeze. “You know, I don’t think he’d ever say it, but I’m pretty sure Reggie would be really scared if he had to walk into this without you. Besides, you were so excited about starting here; you owe it to yourself to at least giving it a shot.”

Again, Liv groaned, this time even louder. “It’s so annoying when you’re right.”

“Story of my life,” Taylor laughed, while Estela smirked.

When they pulled up at the school, Reggie was already waiting, standing beside the car-park while his parents fussed over him.

“You have your phone?” Grace quizzed, checking for the fourth time since they’d set off.

“I told you, yes!” Reggie replied, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket to wave around for good measure. “I’ll send you a message when I’m ready to be picked up, I promise.”

“In that case, you just have a wonderful time, darling.” She wrapped him in a hug-- already Reggie was easily as tall as her. “Go well, and have fun.”

Liv rushed over, all smiles. Her own nerves were a whole lot less bothersome when she had the distraction of friendly faces.

There were a few more rounds of hugs exchanged-- and then, suddenly, Liv and Reggie were on their own.

“You wanna head over? Looks like people are already crowding around-- it’s probably gonna start soon.”

Reggie’s expression brightened, as if he’d been just waiting for a little push for his confidence to surge back forth. “Well, it will hardly be an auspicious start here if we miss the principal’s address. Get a move on, Livia!”

The morning passed relatively quickly. Liv placed herself next to Reggie at all times-- they’d been put in the same Grade Seven home room as requested, making him one of the eldest in the class, and her one of the youngest. The whole set-up wasn’t entirely different to the school they were accustomed to, other than the bilingual approach. They were given a small pile of boring paperwork, and outlines of what to expect in their new classes; as English was their first language, they’d be taking ‘Spanish as a Second Language’, and Liv was also excited about ‘Nature Studies’, a subject she’d never been offered in America.

As far as Liv was concerned, the most traumatic part of the session was being expected to stand up in front of a room of strangers and give a short spiel about themselves. The perfect opportunity to officially balls-up any chance they might have of making new friends, or at least that was how she saw it. She mumbled down into her chest; something about enjoying hiking and gymnastics, something about liking Batman, and animals, and then she hurriedly sat right back down with flaming cheeks. Reggie, she observed, handled the brief foray into public speaking with rather more poise. Even though he was shy-- perhaps even more than she was-- he seemed able to go into ‘school presentation’ mode, and breeze through. When he sat back down, though, his hands were shaking-- but that was for the eyes of his trusted friend only.

When the lunch break came along, Liv was ravenous; a new and challenging social situation could do that to a person. While Reggie sloped off to the bathrooms, she tested out the school canteen, emerging a little while later with a hot empanada. It wasn’t quite as good as her Mama Estela’s, but it was definitely a step up from what was on offer at her old school. Maybe she could get used to this place….

Liv watched this new world go by all around her as she ate, cross-legged beneath the tree she’d told her cousin to meet her by. Kids moved in their little circles, talking loudly, laughing. Most of them coming into Grade Seven had come from the local primary school, and many knew each-other. Liv and Reggie would be starting out on the outside… and that was daunting. She could not be more grateful that she wasn’t taking this on alone.

Or… at least, she shouldn’t be. The lunchtime queue moved on, the gaggles of kids spread out, and still Reggie hadn’t returned.

Damn, constipated on your first day. Sucks to be you, Reggie.

Tentatively, Liv approached the boys’ bathroom and, having ascertained that no one was watching, slipped in. Her footsteps were unheard, drowned out by the loud, frantic breathing of young Reggie, slumped over the sink. Alarmed, Liv rushed over. Tears were spilling down his cheeks.

“Reggie… it’s okay,” she said gently. A little unsure, she reached out a hand to rub his back, and to her surprise, he didn’t flinch away. Slowly, he seemed to regain control of himself.

“Liv…,” Reggie panted. “You know you’re not meant to be in here; this is the guys’ room.”

“Hey! Like it’s my fault you didn’t take your anxiety attack into the unisex bathroom. That’s on you.” Hmph. Ungrateful, much?

Reggie scowled, and dragged his cousin out of the toilet block by her arm. He slumped down by the wall, and scooched over to encourage her to join him.

“You’re a pain in the arse.” He was still shaking.

“It’s been said, yeah.” Liv huddled a little closer. “You don’t need to worry, okay? You’re not going to have any trouble making friends. Did you see they’ve got a chess club, and a photography club as well? At least that’ll get you talking to people.”

“That’s,” Reggie said quietly, “not exactly what I’m worried about.” When Liv looked at him expectantly, he continued. “When I was in a room with all those kids, my head just went back to being at our old school… and what happened. I know this place is meant to be progressive and all that, but that doesn’t mean that everyone’s okay. What if I think I’ve made friends with someone, and they find out about Erin, and they make it a big thing, and then some arsehole finds out….”

“Man, you’re really spiraling,” Liv observed, not especially helpfully. She wasn’t exactly surprised by what was troubling her cousin; getting into a fight in defense of his young transgender sister had completely unseated Reggie from the comfortable life he’d had at the last school. It had changed everything.

“You would too, if she was your sister!”

“Probably. But I think you should at least give people a go. It sounds like they’re really strict on any kind of bullying against minorities. Swinging back hard in the opposite direction after that fascist dictatorship.”

“Those are some awfully big words for you to be throwing around there, Livia; watch you don’t hurt yourself….”

“Hey! I know my stuff!” Liv demanded. “Do you think my tio abuelo would have it any other way? But anyway, I’m right. All the people who didn’t fit in before have come to this part of the country. Probably a lot of the kids have parents who saw really horrible things in the war; they wouldn’t want to send them somewhere that was bad like before. My Mama ‘Stel gave the principal the grilling of her life, and I bet she hasn’t been the only one. People are gonna want to make sure their kids are being looked after.”

A smile quirked on Reggie’s face as he imagined his aunt on a school tour. “I bet Tia Estela left Principal Sanchez quivering under the desk.”

“Yeah… after what happened in the last school, there’s no way they’d let us go anywhere unless they were sure it was a place that treated people right.”

Reggie knew that much. But his parents, and even his fierce aunt, could not shield himself, his sisters and his cousin, from everything. He contemplated silently, grateful for the patient companionship.

“I guess,” he said at last, “if no one gave anyone else a chance to be anything but the worst, then we’d be pretty lonely.”

“Yup. We should at least give it a shot. And if it all goes in the crapper, I’ll sic my moms on the fools that mess with us. And the freaking yeti.”

Reggie couldn’t help but roll his eyes. That had always been Liv’s answer to everything. “Livia, I hate to break it to you, but if you go around threatening people with yetis, everyone’s gonna think you’ve got a screw loose. Except me; I know you’ve got a screw loose.”

“So damn rude,” Liv growled. “Anyway, you really should eat something. It probably won’t help you feeling crap and light-headed if you’ve got an empty stomach. They’ve got arepas!”

“...I could eat an arepa,” Reggie admitted. There was only so much a young boy of thirteen could control; he couldn’t wave a magic wand and guarantee that his little sister would never be hurt by cruel, ignorant words, but he could look after himself, so that he was the best him he could be-- and the best brother.

_____________________________

USA, 2028

“You did a great job, sweetheart,” Taylor said kindly as Reggie delicately placed his knife and fork atop his small plastic plate, signaling that he’d finished. Immediately afterwards, the little boy’s small hand had dropped to his side to get a reassuring touch of his teddy’s scruffy fur. “It was nice of Big Bear to join us for dinner. Does he like lasagna as much as you do?”

Reggie yawned widely as he nodded to his aunt. He hadn’t known it was possible for a kid to be so full of yawns, but living with newborn twins had shown him just how big a tired feeling could be. “Big Bear likes to watch from the floor.”

“That’s nice of him to let you have the whole plate for yourself. We’re gonna have plenty to bring over to your mommy and daddy for them to eat tomorrow.”

Lasagna had been Reggie’s choice. This whole sleepover was to be all about him; giving him a welcome break from the stresses of being a new big brother to two babies at once. He’d been on many, many sleepovers at Tia Estela and Auntie Taylor’s place before, but this time felt different. Reggie knew that at home, his parents were busy with their other children… and in his sensitive state, it took no time at all for him to miss them.

Twins, Reggie had come to realise, were very hard work. They cried a lot… and his mommy cried a lot, and his daddy cried a lot, and he cried a lot. All crying and no sleeping was not a whole lot of fun. Reggie wanted so badly to get away from the babies, but at the same time he longed to be with his parents. However much fun it was to take a break at his aunts’ place, the worry in him just wouldn’t go away.

Side-by-side, he and Liv changed into their pyjamas. Five-year-old Liv, true to form, nattered away to him the whole time. Babies, of course, were the subject of choice.

“My moms say we’re probably not gonna get another baby. Maybe ‘cos you have two I can borrow one if I get lonely. Do you have one that you like best?”

Reggie shrugged.

“Maybe next time your mom and dad will have three. You could have all these babies like a baby army, and if someone’s ever mean to you, you will have like a hundred poopy diapers you can throw at them. No one likes poop.”

“I don’t want lots more babies,” Reggie said softly. I want no more.

“If you don’t like babies, you can come and live with us forever!” Liv suggested brightly, oblivious the the wobble of her cousin’s bottom lip.

When Estela popped her head around the corner to check on the kids, Reggie was in tears and Liv looked totally bewildered.

“Mommy, Reggie’s crying…,” she pointed out, rather unnecessarily, for her mother had already scooped the little boy into a cuddle.

“It’s okay, mijo,” Estela soothed as she gently rocked her nephew in her arms. “It’s okay to cry. This has been really hard. You know what? You have been such a good boy for Mommy and Daddy.”

Liv, not quite sure what to do, but nothing if not well-meaning, draped herself over Reggie and patted him on the back. “There, there. It’s okay.”

Estela took Reggie into the lounge room for some cheer-up time, and Liv took Big Bear. Taylor quickly joined them, and pulled Reggie into her lap for a cuddle.

“Are you feeling a bit sad, sweetpea?”

Reggie nodded. “Uh-huh. I liked it better how things were before. Everything’s different.”

Taylor gently rubbed the little boy’s arms. “Change can be really tough. It’s like you’ve got to figure out how life works all over again!”

“Yeah, it’s not nice.”

“So, it’s okay to have a good cry. We will give you as many hugs and cuddles as you need.”

“Reggie,” Liv piped up, “do you wanna play a game? That could make you feel happy?”

Reggie sniffed and nodded again. Pleased-- she had this cheering-up business down-- Liv plonked herself in Estela’s lap and leaned forward to her cousin.

“Do you wanna play… ‘Klaawyi Chase’?”

Estela intervened quickly. “Maybe something with a little less running around. It’s nearly bedtime, Livi.”

“Okay. Ummmm…. ‘Duck, Duck, Goose’?”

“Livita.”

Well, you’re no fun. Liv gave a soft huff and pondered. By her best guess, ‘Hide and Seek’ would be a ‘no’ too… especially as last time she’d hid, no one managed to find her for a full hour.

“How about,” Taylor suggested, “we have a game of ‘Fortunately-Unfortunately’?”

“I wanna play that one!” Reggie said enthusiastically. “Can I start? Fortunately, we all had ice cream for dessert.”

Liv bounced in her mother’s lap. “Unfortunately, the ice cream was smelly-feet flavour!”

“Livi!” Taylor exclaimed, rolling her eyes. Why was everything smelly-feet with that kid? “Okay, then-- fortunately, Robin Dog likes smelly-feet, so he ate all the ice cream for us.”

“Oh!��� Liv cried. “I’ve got a really good one!” Hehe, Robin with smelly-feet farts….

“Unfortunately,” said Estela. “It was Mama Estela’s turn, and Miss Livita just had to wait.”

Liv turned and poked her tongue out at her mom, making Reggie giggle. He snuggled in against his Auntie Taylor’s chest, his mind far away from worries about his new role as big brother to a pair of very needy twins.

“Fortunately,” he said, smiling, “Furball was visiting, and he made us some new ice cream with no yucky flavours in it.”

“Unfortunately….”

_________________________

San Trobida, September 2035

It was the last weekend before school started, and a lazy warm day at the Montoya house. Estela was up a tree, hammering boards into what would soon be a playhouse for the kids. She’d already finished up a two-storey-high climbing wall on the other side of the yard, which, at Liv’s request, would eventually be connected to the new tree-house by a zipline. Then, there’d be a slide, and monkey bars, and a tyre swing, and a fire pole. Basically, Estela had made it her mission to put together the best backyard playground on the Costa Libertad. Taylor, meanwhile, had been busying herself with a vegetable garden, with the help of a fascinated Erin and her parents, who turned out to be quite clever when it came to soil chemistry.

Liv had been up and down her new climbing wall like a yo-yo, leaving her dog, Robin, running rings around the base and all but tripping Reggie up as he tentatively took his first steps towards ascending.

“Are you coming?”

“I’m trying! Your dog’s getting in the way.”

Eventually, Reggie managed to clamber his way up, with a little help from Liv who hauled him over the top.

“See; piece of cake.”

Reggie couldn’t quite agree, and now that he was up twenty feet, he was already dreading his descent back to solid ground. Keen to distract himself from the dizzying height, he passed Liv the rope that he’d carried slung across his shoulders.

“What do you want me to do with it?” she demanded. “You’re meant to drop one end back down….”

“I’m not going near the edge!”

“Fine. Immy! You down there still?”

On the ground, and trying to wrestle a squeaky toy giraffe from Robin’s mouth, Immy craned her neck up.

“Yeah-- but you’re lucky I am, Reggie was so slow.”

“Careful. I was careful. You should bloody well try it sometime.”

Immy rolled her eyes dramatically, but nonetheless took the rope end that Liv had lowered to her, and ran it over to Estela so the distance could be measured.

“There we go,” Liv said, after having marked the rope at the edge of the platform. “Done. Reggie, if you’re just going to look down, you might as well be on the ground. Come on-- check out the view!”

Begrudgingly, Reggie sat up properly and looked around.

“Woah.” Maybe he could see the appeal of being up so high, even if he was immensely grateful for the safety rails around the platform. “You really can see everything up here.”

“Isn’t it cool?” Liv beamed as she pointed her cousin towards the paddock behind the yard. “You wanted to see our horse? Right in there at the side of the sheltery-shed thing….”

“Oh, wow! Okay, fine, I believe you now. I guess she was just hiding earlier.”

“That’s Miel. She’s like, older than dirt; Mama Estela used to ride her when she was a teenager.”

“And she’s still alive?”

“Just about. I think she’s uh… nearly thirty? Pretty ancient. Mom found out she was all on her own after her friend died, and she bought her so she could retire here with us. She’s kind of a bitey asshole. Uh, the horse-- not Mom.” Liv quickly amended, glancing to the in-progress tree-house. “So, we’re keeping her, and if she wants to make friends with the new horses we’re getting, she can, otherwise at least she can, like, neigh rude horse words at them from over the fence.”

Reggie snorted. Weirdo.

“I’m super excited. I know Mama ‘Stel was kind of nervous about us moving over here because of how things were when she was a kid-- but it actually… feels nice. I love our new house. I love cranky Miel. I love that we’re gonna get chickens, and maybe a new friend for Robin. Even the school seems pretty good.”

Swallowing his fear, Reggie joined Liv at the railing, dangling his legs over the side of the platform.

“Yeah, I think I like it here, too. Mom and Dad seem really happy; Dad says he can make more of a good difference in the world here than in America. So, I guess that’s got to be good. Did I tell you we’re going to put a pool in?”

“You might have mentioned it. When you’ve been whining about the heat, for the hundredth time.”

“It’s so humid!”

Liv giggled. It was like being back in the tropics of La Huerta, and to her, that felt right. Granted, it might have been nicer if they could just pop on over into a neighbouring alpine region that was inexplicably right next to the hot, sticky jungle, but she really loved it.

“Well,” Reggie said, “it’s going to be great. And it should be done by the time Quinn and Michelle come to visit.”

“Do we even know whose house they’re staying at yet?”

“It should be my place.” Reggie puffed out his chest, as if to emphasise the rightness of his point. “You’re definitely getting Jake and Sean and Mikey. You can’t take all the visitors. And besides… we’ll have a pool.”

That was hard to argue with. “It’s up to the adults anyway,” Liv conceded. In the end, it didn’t matter; she was going to make the most of having her La Huerta family around even if it meant camping out in Reggie’s back yard. “But, I will be a much better San Trobida tour guide than you. I’m still showing you around.”

Reggie hmphed, and Liv laughed.

“Come on, Reggie,” she said, dropping gracefully down the side of the wall and taking up hand-holds. “I’m getting hungry.”

It was at that point that Reggie made the sobering discovery that going down, was rather more intimidating than going up a sheer vertical surface.

“Um, Liv…,” he said quietly. “I, uh, don’t think I can do that.”

“Oh!” Liv responded. “Sorry, I forgot you’re new to this. Maybe you should’ve started smaller. But don’t worry, I’ll get you down….”

“Okay…,” he murmured, clearly not remotely convinced.

“Mom!” Liv hollered, all but making her poor cousin topple over the edge in surprise. “Reggie’s stuck!”

Reggie felt heat rise in his cheeks as his sisters, hanging out on the grass below the wall at the worst possible time, burst out laughing. Like they could even get up this high to begin with.

Up in the tree-house, Estela looked up and wiped off the paint from her hands. Rescuing kids from scrapes had pretty much become her specialty at this point; twelve years with Liv had seen to that. “I’m coming,” she called back.

“I’m not exactly stuck,” Reggie muttered defensively, as his Tia Estela easily scaled the climbing wall to join him and Liv, who’d already rejoined him to offer moral support. “If I really wanted to, I could climb down; I just feel I should practice climbing up a few more times before I try that.”

“You’ll get there,” Estela said kindly. As far as she was concerned, the fact that her nephew had a realistic view of his own capabilities was only a good thing. “I’ll have that zipline going in no time anyway, so you’ll have no hurry to work it out.”

With his aunt’s back offered to him, Reggie took the cue and wrapped his long arms around her neck, and his legs around her middle. Getting rescued by one of the team of protective grown-ups? Basically, the story of both his and Liv’s lives.

“Hang on, Regito,” Estela laughed.

____________________________

La Huerta, 2034

The frigid wind howled against the cabin door, and it took all of Liv and Reggie’s combined might to wrestle it closed. Both kids were panting heavily-- and shaking like leaves-- as they nervously stepped away.

“Thank god this little hut was here, really,” Liv heaved. “I dunno about you, but I’d rather be stranded in a snowstorm with walls around me.”

Reggie said nothing, and just shivered, wrapping his arms around his own torso. He’d wrapped up-- as if his parents would let him go wandering into the colder pockets of the island without a heap of layers-- but the snow had wet his gloves through, and a chill was now spreading through his body.

“Hey,” Liv said, “we should… we should get a fire going. You look like you’re halfway turned into a popsicle right now.”

As his cousin busied herself at the fireplace-- thank goodness there was some firewood left-- Reggie fiddled with his emergency phone. His heart sank. No signal. His mom and dad were going to be so worried when he and Liv never came home….

“Uh, Liv… I think the storm’s screwed up the reception here. It won’t let me phone Mom and Dad.”

Liv looked up, and for the first time, she looked truly fearful, her usual intrepid spirit extinguished in a flash. “They’re really gonna panic,” she said softly. She shuddered. If their parents came out looking for them, it meant walking out into a blizzard, and all the danger that came with it. If she could just tell her mothers that she was safe, that she and Reggie had shelter… they could wait out the storm. Anything could happen, anything….

“Are you okay, Livia?” Reggie asked, and he handed her a heavy blanket as he sat down cross-legged in front of her feebly burning fire. “You look kind of spaced-out.”

“Hng?”

“They’ll find us; it’ll be okay.”

“I don’t want them to come and find us,” Liv snapped. “I want them to stay where it’s safe. They could get hurt or, or worse because we were stupid enough not to turn around when the weather changed.” She placed a stick too roughly, and her firewood tower collapsed, extinguishing the flame. “For fuck’s sake!”

Reggie, wisely, stayed quiet, letting his cousin fix up the mess and get a new fire started without interference. He watched her with concern as her eyes welled. “Livia…?”

She huddled close to him, but for a long while, didn’t speak.

“Reggie,” she murmured at last, “something really horrible happened a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t want to talk about it with you, ‘cause… ‘cause I didn’t even want to think about it…. It just made me feel too bad. But, uh.... I was… I was playing in the sea with Mama Estela. Just like we always do. We were just goofing off. Then, um, I got all tangled up in those freaking weeds. They grabbed me and held me under.”

“That must have been so scary….”

“Of course, Mom got me out of there. B-but there was a sea-snake in there. It bit her. It happened so fast… I hardly even saw what happened, but she suddenly just... could hardly even get out of the water. I somehow managed to haul her up out the water, but she was all limp and… and I gave her the anti-venom, and she just started having some kind of fit.. Like her body was jerking around, and her mouth was all frothy.” She gasped through a sob. “Then she… she stopped breathing, completely.” Liv shuddered as the memory filled her mind, vivid as if it were yesterday. She could feel Reggie’s wide, horrified eyes upon her. “I screamed. I screamed for help. Mama Taylor was up the beach, she couldn’t hear me. S-so I did CPR. My hands were shaking so-- so bad. And all I could think was ‘I’m gonna screw this up. I’m gonna screw this up and my mom’s gonna die’.” Her voice cracked and she sputtered through hot tears that she wiped away with her arm. Before she knew it, Reggie had his arms around her and was holding her tight. “I don’t know how long it was,” she said. “It felt like forever, but it was probably only a few minutes. Then she started breathing and I just… I cried, and cried, and cried.”

Reggie gently rubbed Liv’s back, and it soothed her.

“I, uh, I guess I always thought Mama Estela was invincible. To me, she always was. There was nothing I couldn't do either, because she would always be there to protect me. It was so close, Reggie… it looked like she was gone.”

“I… didn’t know it was as bad as that. My dad told me she’d been bitten but…,” Reggie mumbled. “You must have been so scared. Have you… have you talked to your moms about it much?”

Liv sniffed, and wiped her face again. “Yeah. You know what my Mama Taylor is like; we’ve talked it through lots, I’ve told them how I’m feeling. But I haven’t… like… had a big cry since it happened.” Until now. Now, she just couldn’t seem to stop the tears from coming. Reggie didn’t seem to mind; he just sat with her, and rubbed her back, and told her it was okay.

After what seemed like an age, her tears slowed.

“It is going to be okay, you know?” Reggie said gently. “Obviously, they’re going to come out looking for us, but they’re smart. They’ll be prepared; just like your Mama Estela was with the anti-venom.”

“Yeah…,” Liv said, her voice small. You could be as prepared as you wanted, but sometimes the world managed to stay one step ahead. The storm outside was wild and furious, battering on the roof and walls… and it was frightening. Liv could only snuggle under her cousin’s arm, and trust that whatever search and rescue party was out there would come through.

The two kids huddled together beneath their blanket, speaking little, but making their mutual support known without words. Just the squeeze of a hand through the most blood-curdling howls of the wind, and the simple offer of presence.

Somehow, the creak of the door shoved open cut through the dull roar.

“Oh, thank goodness!”

“Dad!” Reggie leapt forward and flung his arms around his father, his face lighting up further when Grace followed in behind. “Mom!”

Grace put her shaking hands to her son’s face, gently sweeping hair from his eyes. “Darling, are you all right?” Then she pulled Liv into a fierce hug, and in a moment Aleister had his arms around all three of them. “We were so worried!”

Liv whimpered against Grace’s shoulder. “Are my moms out in the storm?” She knew the answer already.

“Yes, honey. They’re out searching for you. Don’t you stress, okay? We’ve got a flare to set off so they’ll know we found you here-- and Varyyn and Diego too.”

“Woah,” Liv murmured, “you got a whole search party out.”

There was a buzzing, and the flickering of blue light, then Iris materialised.

Reggie beamed. “Hey, Grandma! So, a ‘whole search party’ is pretty much correct.”

“I will say, being able to scan for nearby lifeforms is quite handy in situations like these.”

So, find my moms and Tio Diego. Liv hugged tighter to her Auntie Grace, with no words pleading for help.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Grace said gently, stroking Liv’s face, while Aleister saw to setting off the flare. “It’s going to be just fine. We’re not far from Elyys’tel; we all fanned out from there, so no one is going to be too deep into the mountains.”

That… actually made sense. It was enough, just enough to keep Liv a step above panic-mode. She headed back to the fireplace, but as her backside hit the floor, a guttural roar rocked the cabin, and she leapt back to her feet.

“What the--?”

“You two stay back!” Aleister ordered, his voice shaking. Why, oh why, did the children want to go gallivanting out in the frozen wilderness when there was a perfectly serviceable tropical paradise right outside their front door? He was going to be old before his time at this rate….

Grace, though, was already hauling open the door, to reveal the hulking figure of the Mountain Guardian.

A growl rumbling in her throat, Arktos loomed in the doorway, looking down at Grace with a questioning gaze.

“Hello…?” she said cautiously. The gigantic bear-like creature was generally reasonably friendly…. “Did we… did we disturb you with the flare?”

Arktos grumbled, her furry ears flicking with curiosity.

“Our friends are out there in the storm,” Grace continued, certain that the yeti would understand; her past experiences had only supported the fact that this creature was incredibly intelligent-- and benevolent. “The flare was to bring them to this cabin.”

With a soft huff, Arktos shuffled backwards, and all of a sudden, it seemed as though she was surrounded by a force-field… a bubble that the wind and blinding snow couldn’t penetrate.

Understanding, Grace turned to Iris. “I think we’re going hiking again-- with a little extra help this time. Al, you’ll stay and watch the kids?”

“I--I--” Aleister stuttered. “Well, of course. Stay close to the… the bear thing.” Scrambling a little, he pulled off his outer layer and offered it to her. “I won’t have you catching hypothermia.”

And Grace stepped into the snow, Iris hovering behind her, and found shelter in the yeti’s protective shield. She looked up at the beast, now rearing up onto colossal hind legs to scout for signs of nearby human activity. “Thank you, Arktos. I guess… I guess, you choose the direction, and we’ll start the search.”

The unusual trio headed out into the storm, and within moments, they were invisible for the wind thick with snow. Aleister, a look of dumbfoundment upon his face, closed the door, and again, the cabin was quiet.

“Damn. Auntie Grace is a fricking badass,” Liv breathed, face alight in awe.

Aleister, recovering from his wife’s shock exit quickly-- he’d seen her steely courage in action enough times to just about take it in his stride, nodded. “Indeed.” He brushed the last flakes of snow from his coat, and looked around the room. “Well, I don’t suppose the wait will pass any faster with us standing around here. Reggie, did we leave any board-games here last time?”

“Uh, looks like we’ve got ‘Scrabble’?”

Well, Liv thought, I don’t have a hope in hell against these people. Should’ve left ‘Twister’ here….

Reggie sat himself down in front of the crackling fire and started unpacking the box. “Hey, Livia-- team up with me?”

He was clearly still a little worried about her. If there was an opportunity to thrash her at something, Mr Pedantic-Always-Right would take it without fail. Or so Liv had believed.

She plonked down cross-legged beside him. “Yeah? Yeah, all right.”

The two kids exchanged a high five, and Liv couldn’t help but grin. You are going down, Uncle Al.

___________________________

San Trobida, September 2035

As the car pulled up the neatly paved pathway to Aleister and Grace’s house, Liv excitedly rolled down the window.

“Reginaaaaald!!!” she hollered.

“How,” Aleister wondered aloud, “can such a small person-- and the offspring of Estela and Diego of all people-- sound so eerily like a bloody foghorn?”

A beaming Reggie followed his father out the front door. He exchanged hugs with both his parents-- and his two little sisters-- and then rushed to join his cousin on the back seat.

“Are you ready to go, mijo?” Estela checked in, suppressing a laugh as Taylor all but did a contortion act to give her nephew a hug from the front seat.

He had Liv, didn’t he? So, basically, he was ready for anything.

The short drive to the school saw the return of those pesky jitters, and Reggie knew from the way his cousin jiggled her leg the whole way there that he was definitely not alone in that. The school ground, filled only with kids their own age when they’d been there for orientation, was swarming with adolescents of all sizes-- and just about all of them were bigger than Reggie and Liv.

With an awkward hug and a kiss to her mothers in the front of the car, Liv bit the bullet and, bulging backpack in hand, stepped out into a brave new world. There was only one thing for it; Reggie would just have to take the plunge. He swung his backpack over his shoulder, and followed after his cousin.

“Welp,” said Liv, “here goes nothing!”

Reggie gave a nervous laugh and playfully bashed Liv with his backpack, putting a reassuringly silly grin on her face.

We’ve got this.

_______________________

NOTES

Little Xiraana is @mauvecatfic's baby. Check out her stories; you won't regret it!

If you read 'A Ride to Remember', you might remember Miel. She's the very same horse.

Aaaaand, the incident Liv is recounting during the snowstorm is the one you can read from Estela's perspective in 'Teething Problems: Part Two'.

[croa20an]

“It seems to me that many of the people who were hippies and flower children in the 60s and 70s are now ultra-conservatives. What made those people have such as huge change in their opinions and outlook?”

“My mother said they learned they couldn’t fight “The Man.” She said her generation didn’t expect that their parents and grandparents would let the government do the things they (FBI, CIA, National Guard, police) did when the kids in the US started revolting in the 1960s and 1970s.

You’ve got to remember that the 1950s-1970s was a period of global instability. The Colonial Powers of England, France, and the Netherlands struggled to recover from WWII and their colonies around the world started pushing for human rights and independence. The CIA saw communist Soviet and Chinese boogeymen in all the uprisings and supported dictators whose greed and ruthlessness could be appealed to in order to prevent “communism” from overtaking fledgling countries. Civil Rights, Human rights, democracy— these were things we supported ideologically as Americans, but in practice, our military and intelligence communities considered communism/socialism a greater risk to “American interests” than the dictators and fascism who stood between their people and democracy. The Blacks pushing for civil rights was upsetting enough, but then the Indian Rights Movement picked up, the Anti-War Movement picked up, the Black Panthers militarized, etc. Focus turned to suppressing “the kids” by hook and by crook, by kettling protestors in the streets, assassinations, and setting people up for arrest through entrapment and falsified informant reports.

Baby Boomers, hippies and flower children, saw their friends going off to Viet Nam or resisting the draft by going to jail or Canada/Mexico. They saw their friends busted for murders they didn’t commit, drugs they didn’t run. They saw them beaten in the streets, hit with fire hoses and tear gas. Some went back to nature. They moved to Vermont and Montana and Alaska. Others gave in and joined the economy. They became Alex P Keatons from Family Ties. Good little capitalist consumers. Because really, what choice did they have? Their faith in the government and their parents was shaken. They took the path laid out for them, and bucked the system when and where they could, and some, some gave in entirely, and drank the Koolaid. They became Uber-conservative because they became Believers. It beat disillusionment and poverty.

In the late 80s, freshly graduated from High School, I yelled at my mother for giving up when they’d gotten so close to changing everything. And she sat me down and told me the US History I hadn’t been taught, and that still isn’t taught, but is readily available, if you take the time to look for it.” -Kelly Graham 

Source

I found this interesting. I’ve been wondering about this a lot lately, because I know the Boomer/Millennial stereotypes are BS to make people hate each other, and I know the typical answer you hear from a tumblr user, a teen, a tween, or someone with a popular social media account is completely made up out of bitterness. 

But this level headed answer makes me realize something. 

We, all the people alive now and in the future, regardless of “generation” or birth year, the masses who actually want the human race and the planet to survive pandemic and climate change, are going to have to be a lot more crafty if we’re going to get out of this alive. The system, the society that puts money and the rich and powerful above all, has had hundreds of years to be perfected, to be upheld perfectly. Just protesting or in-fighting won’t work. Asking people to care and shaming them or even threatening them won’t work. No modern form of government or economic system has ever worked, obviously. This needs to be action, it needs to be secret, hidden in plain sight, it needs to happen fast and it needs to happen now. Infiltration and action on all levels, we need to learn from the organized people and systems in power and we need to dissolve it from the inside and the outside including by using their own tried and true methods against them. And it has to be decentralized, no leaders, no figure heads, no manifesto, nothing. We just have to KNOW. All of us equal and wanting the same thing. Peace and safety and a planet. Leaders can be turned, smeared, framed, jailed, murdered. Labels and calling cards can be used against you. Don’t make this your identity. Live your life and have your money and home and safety and hide and plain sight but know what you want and spread the word. Not based on identity. Talk to your neighbors, no matter who they are. Talk to your coworkers, no matter who they are. Don’t give this a name, just know what you want. If we spread the word on this and don’t make it about an identity or a name or a leader or a type of government or a manifesto, they can’t use it against us, they can’t find us, and they can’t stop us. We want peace and safety and a planet, and it’s that simple. We can start taking this apart and fixing it from the inside out. That’s the only way it’s going to happen. And we have to stay focused. Don’t accept bribes. Don’t turn on people. Don’t judge people based on any aspect of their identity, or expect people with the same struggles as you to be “safe” for you. We need unity. They separate us on purpose. All of us together, we can do this fast. Don’t lose hope. Keep our secret and do the work because getting this done before they even realize it’s happening is the only way we get out of this alive. “Climate Change” is a nice way of saying we’re having more natural disasters in more places than we have in a hundred years, and it’s going to kill most of us fast. “Pandemic” is a nice way of saying most of us are going to die horribly, and there won’t be any society left, at this rate. It’s getting worse fast. Spread the word. Now or never. Fix it or we all die. The people with money and power aren’t going to change or feel pressure. They’re so high they don’t even feel anything anymore. This is all a game to them, it will be for their entire lives. We have to do it. Alone. Not through government avenues, not through pressure, not through complaining, not from the outside alone where we’re easy to smear and kill. Action. From the inside out. Unseen. No glory, just a mass of people from every kind of background and lifestyle dedicated to the same thing. 

Find loopholes. Change the laws quick. Take advantage of the system to the fullest extent. Block the people destroying the world at every turn, until they give up and join us in equality and environmentalism and peace, safety and healthcare. Not through protest, not by asking, but by screwing them over with their own methods and beating them at their own game. We need to get creative to win these figurative battles and then and spread the news about these kinds of successes as much as possible. And stay dedicated, ignore the setbacks. We’re used to it. Keep going. Push through. This is our last chance. It’s this or death, and nothing left of us or anyone like us. No legacy, no peace or life, nothing. 

[alexannah]

MLB Incorrect Quotes: Gabriel Has a Plan

Nathalie: Let me see if I’ve got this correct. You plan to akumatize your own parents.

Gabriel: Yes.

Nathalie: In your own house.

Gabriel: Correct.

Nathalie: Don’t you think that’s a little risky?

Gabriel: I’ll be subtle!

Nathalie: Subtle? You? I can’t wait to hear this.

Gabriel: I won’t provoke the negative emotions directly. I have it all planned out.

Nathalie: I’m listening.

Gabriel: They’re arriving by train, so I booked them tickets for the weekend in which there’s maintenance works on three-quarters of the journey.

Nathalie: Won’t they wonder why you picked that weekend?

Gabriel: They know we have a strict schedule. I offered to book them a flight instead but they turned the offer down, as I knew they would.

Nathalie: Alright, what else?

Gabriel: I created a fake social media account for the sole purpose of setting up a huge climate change protest on their route from the station to here, encouraging the throwing of rotten produce onto environmentally unfriendly vehicles.

Nathalie: I was wondering why you’d told my brother the limo was in the garage and asked to borrow his car.

Gabriel: They’ll have to pass the Dupain-Cheng bakery on the way, and they’ll stop to admire the cakes.

Nathalie: Won’t that put them in a good mood? And how do you know they’ll stop?

Gabriel: I created another internet persona for the purpose of arranging a novelty cakes competition, and ensured the Dupain-Chengs’ entry will be in the window. I’ve spent the last six months using words associated with gardens in all conversations with Adrien in which he talks about Miss Marinette—

Nathalie: Which is a lot.

Gabriel: It is. And as expected, the moment she mentioned the competition to him, he immediately suggested a garden-themed cake. As you know, my father is absolutely obsessed with gardening. He won’t be able to resist stopping to take a look.

Nathalie: And that will cause negative emotions how?

Gabriel: Because no-one with a functional sense of smell can get near enough to that place to see the window display properly and not go in to buy something. My mother loves macaroons, and I bought up a large supply of flavourings to sell to the bakery, under a different name of course. She’s allergic to rosehip, and I spiked her favourite flavours with rosehip juice—not enough for the taste to be detected, but enough to cause a non-lethal reaction. Not putting that in the ingredients list, obviously.

Nathalie: …

Gabriel: What?

Nathalie: Knowing your parents, they’ll sue. Marinette is Adrien’s friend; I’m not sure he’ll like that.

Gabriel: I’ve already prepared a letter of apology from the “supplier” accepting all responsibility, so it doesn’t fall on them. And because Marinette is associated with Gabriel it gives me a justification for offering legal aid.

Nathalie: …

Gabriel: What now?

Nathalie: I’m actually impressed you thought through the consequences of your actions for a change.

Gabriel: I saw how worked up Adrien got last month when one of my victims sent the school furniture flying and caused a tiny graze on Marinette’s forehead. I know he’ll understand once he knows the truth, but seeing him that angry at Hawk Moth was quite … unsettling. I decided to minimise the mission’s effect on that girl where possible.

Nathalie: I’m proud of you.

Gabriel: *blushing*

Gabriel: …

Nathalie: Anyway, after the spiked macaroons?

Gabriel: Oh—yes. Well, by then they’ll both be frustrated and angry, and my mother will be feeling unwell on top of that, so when they arrive here, I’ve put in place two proverbial last straws.

Gabriel: Though last anvils might be a better indication of impact.

Nathalie: What’s the first?

Gabriel: Chloé will greet them.

Nathalie: So that’s why you offered her work experience. What will you have her do?

Gabriel: Be herself.

Nathalie: *winces* Poor bastards.

Gabriel: And then they’ll find Audrey in here, finishing up a meeting with me which will have run on because I will have ‘mislaid’ one of my designs.

Nathalie: *winces again* Knowing your mother’s lack of fashion taste, that will be excruciating.

Gabriel: *sounding gleeful* It really will.

Nathalie: Forgive me if I’m missing something, but … aren’t you going to a lot of trouble? Why exactly are your parents worth it? Do they have some amazing skills I don’t know about which will help you get Ladybug and Cat Noir’s Miraculouses?

Gabriel: Er … no.

Nathalie: So … why?

Gabriel: …

Gabriel: Revenge.

Nathalie: …

Nathalie: Revenge? On whom?

Gabriel: My parents, of course.

Nathalie: For what? Causing you to grow up emotionally stunted?

Gabriel: No.

Nathalie: Not supporting your ambitions?

Gabriel: No.

Nathalie: Not buying you the childhood toy you desperately wanted?

Gabriel: No.

Nathalie: I give up. Revenge for what?

~*~

***TEN YEARS AGO***

Gabriel: … I don’t believe you’ve met Nathalie Sancoeur, my executive assistant.

Nathalie: It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr and Mrs Agreste. If you’ll excuse me; I promised to tuck Adrien into bed and read his favourite bedtime story with him.

Nathalie: *exits*

Gabriel’s Mother: *gives a disapproving tut*

Gabriel: What was that, Mother?

Gabriel’s Father: Why is your secretary putting your son to bed?

Gabriel: Executive assistant, Father.

Gabriel’s Mother: That’s a glorified secretary. And you didn’t answer the question.

Gabriel: Because Emilie is filming and I’m waiting for an important conference call. And because Adrien likes her. Your tone makes it sound like you think that’s a problem.

Gabriel’s Father: It is a problem.

Gabriel’s Mother: I can’t believe you would hire someone, especially live-in staff, without doing a thorough background check.

Gabriel: I beg your pardon? What makes you think I didn’t?

Gabriel’s Parents Simultaneously: Because you hired her!

Gabriel: …

Gabriel: I see you’ve been doing your own research into my employees.

Gabriel’s Mother: I’d say that was a good thing, considering your lack of sense in this area.

Gabriel: I’ve known Nathalie several years, and I have never met someone more loyal and hard-working than she. I don’t care about her history.

~*~

***PRESENT DAY***

Gabriel: …

Gabriel: …

Gabriel: …

Gabriel: Did I say revenge? I meant … er … relationship. Yes, relationship.

Nathalie: *disbelievingly* Relationship.

Gabriel: Yes. I thought they could do with a break from their monotonous routine. To, you know, grow closer as a couple.

Nathalie: …

Nathalie: You do realise you’re not fooling me in the slightest, don’t you?

Gabriel: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Adrien: *enters room* Are they here yet?

Adrien: *senses awkward atmosphere* Is everything okay?

Nathalie: Everything’s fine, Adrien. We were just discussing your grandparents’ arrival.

Adrien: Great! I can’t believe it’s been so long since they visited. Father, why haven’t we seen them in ten years?

Nathalie: Yes, Mr Agreste, why haven’t we?

Gabriel: *glares at her*

Nathalie: *holds his gaze*

Nathalie: *stares him down*

Adrien: *looks from one to the other, trying to work out what’s going in*

Gabriel: *gives in*

Gabriel: Fine! If you must know, they took issue with … *now mumbling* where you spent your gap year.

Nathalie: *eyes widen*

Adrien: *curiously* Why, where did Nathalie spend her gap year?

Nathalie: …

Nathalie: Prison.

[vanhelsingenthusiast]

Thoughts on dracula characters in general???? 👁️👁️👁️

OOHH ok — 

Van Helsing: I don’t even think he has Dad Energy. I think he just has Grandpa Energy. Also Chaotic Academia Energy. Would get into fights with climate change deniers and anti vaxxers in facebook comments. Feels like he failed his son so he makes up for it by being as fatherly as possible to everyone he thinks even remotely needs it. 10/10 would let him adopt me. 

Mina: I LOVE HER!! She’s amazing. I named my bat stimmy after her. I hold her lovingly in between my teeth. She deserves the world. She’d be the kind of mom where all of the neighborhood kids want to hang out at her house because shes so cool and has the best snacks. 

Jonathan: He’s doing his best and does NOT deserve any of the bs he goes through in the book. Him and Mina are so in love and I love how JonMina is getting the representation it deserves. Some people don’t like him bc he’s “too boring” but he’s supposed to be just a Regular Guy. 

Lucy: An angel. the epitome of humanity. She has so much love in her heart to give, and no where to put it it might destroy her. It doesn’t, though. That’s not what does. Gone too soon. 

Arthur: Who even is he. Some Guy. Lucy loved him. She probably still does, even beyond death and death again. Ultimately, he was the best one for her. She knew that, but he didn’t. 

Jack: Probably the kid in class who would always start debates with the teacher over the most useless things. It was annoying but his classmates didn’t mind because it got them out of doing work. Definitely did not get enough attention as a child. Probably says shit like “separate the art from the artist” so he can keep listening to Morrissey. Does he actually believe it? He says he does. Isn’t that the same thing? 

Quincey: Cool older brother who buys you beer but he hangs out with you and your friends while you drink it so you don’t get yourselves in trouble. Hates westerns because they’re historically inaccurate and portray Native Americans in a racist way. Just sunshine personified. Loyal to a fault but also has a weirdly hard time opening up to people. 

Dracula: Gross old man. Hairy palms. He has three gfs but they don’t even like him. Had no power as a child and is trying to gain it back. Excellent villain. Horrible person. In all honesty if he really existed he’d be killed in his first decade bc he’s a dumbass. I would say himbo representation but he’s not buff enough or nice enough to be a himbo. 

Renfield: Just wants love!!! Just wants someone to accept him!! Dracula was the first person to even try. He deserved better. He could have lived happily had someone just cared enough. 

Mr Swales: I love reading abt him but I feel like if I met him irl he’d make me cry.  OR he’d be best friends with my grandparents and would like my grandma too much to be mean to me. 

Anyways anon I have no clue if this is what you wanted but I hope it was fun to read anyways. 

[cosmoscourge-a]

🌇 - How does your muse feel about big cities? for renate rubin and weiss. 🏆 - What is the greatest battle accomplishment (or just general accomplishment tbh, if they value something more than battle success) your muse has achieved? for tobias, ngozi and flosshilde, if possible!

🌇 - How does your muse feel about big cities?

Renate Rubin prefers the countryside. She lived in an Eisenwalder suburb for most of her life with her grandparents while her parents were fighting in the rebellion, and she likes being away from the hustle and bustle of a big city. She’s autistic, so the loud noises and the constant flashing lights of a big city are a nightmare for her. If she went to Times Square in Cameira’s New York City, she’d probably panic.

Weiss Schnee was raised in Glacialis’ biggest city, the one in which she has her Gym. She was originally told by her human father that living in the countryside was “for poors and animals” and that she should be grateful that she lived in a big, beautiful house in the middle of a great city. Since she has broken free from him and gotten back in touch with her mother’s Ninetales roots, though, she has started preferring the countryside like Renate. She doesn’t care anymore that people in the Glacialian countryside often live in poverty, because she wants to help lift them out of poverty so they can live a better life. She feels more aligned with nature there, and with other Pokémon as well.

🏆 - What is the greatest battle accomplishment (or just general accomplishment tbh, if they value something more than battle success) your muse has achieved?

Tobias’ biggest accomplishments by far are the defeats of Aquilaeon host Wilhelmine von Hohenlohe and Lotor Sincline, the two dictators that threatened to plunge Dispara into decades or even centuries more of strife and despair. No one can question that. However, the things that he considers to be his greatest accomplishments are actually not anything related to battling. He believes his greatest accomplishment is seeing past Lotor’s lies to acknowledge that Lotor actually would have been just as bad for Dispara as Wilhelmine if not worse--because Tobias was literally groomed and lied to for three years to become a weapon of Lotor’s terrifying regime, during which he was fed all the disgusting double-speaking bullshit that might accompany that. Following that, he believes his greatest accomplishment is finally taking responsibility for how much he fucked up his own life due to his complete lack of coping mechanisms, instead of just blaming his abusers for his behavior.

Ngozi’s biggest accomplishment, though she will not say it because she is hard on herself regarding it, is facing down Giovanni and winning. Like Tobias, whom she mentored, she managed to fight the person who had tormented her all her life--the person who personally trained her to do evil from a certain point of her childhood. The reason why she doesn’t consider it an accomplishment, though, is because her victory was not perfect: Giovanni managed to escape. Counting Wilhelmine von Hohenlohe, that makes Giovanni the only other one of her targets to EVER survive her, and she still beats herself up over it as a reflex due to how Rocket drilled into her that sometimes death is preferable to failure.

Flosshilde, like Tobias, considers her biggest accomplishment to not be battling. She is an immortal river goddess, so she has important things to worry about other than magical creature fights! She would consider her biggest accomplishment to be that working with other deities, she managed to help slow down global climate change in both universes and also hashed out a failsafe plan to punish humanity in case the gods’ efforts were not enough. Other than that, as a fae she’s very proud of the fact that for the past 5,000 years, nobody managed to defeat her in games of riddles other than--you guessed it--Tobias. 

[alarawriting]

Inktober 2020 #3: Bulky

The entity scowled, tapping his (its? Their?) foot impatiently. “I told you, you get to bring one thing.”

Sara smiled brightly at him. “This is one thing. My garden.”

Ganymede looked down at her, his expression even more supercilious than usual. “Do you honestly think I’m going to allow an entire garden as one thing?”

Sara sat down on the tree stump. Part of her still couldn’t believe she’d lost the house, that all of this – the tree stump her father had cut down to prevent the wind from knocking it onto the house, the tire swing he’d put up for her, Mom’s rose trellises all around the house and the herb patch she’d had Sara weeding and tending from the age of 5, the screened-in porch, the attic bedroom – all would be gone in a matter of weeks. The bank would take it, and sell it to someone who would probably destroy everything her parents had built to make the place special and unique, and she would never see any of this ever again.

She’d thought Ganymede’s offer would allow her to take at least a part of her home with her, but he was balking.

“When you think about it, can we describe anything as just one thing?” she asked. “Everything we have is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which are made of quarks. We’re all a multiplicity. We all have legions contained within us. So how is a garden not ‘one thing’ but, say, if I wanted to bring a bicycle, that would be ‘one thing’ even though it’s made of so many things?”

Ganymede’s expression went from deeply irritated to reluctantly amused, and he chuckled. “A nice argument, but no. Your garden’s too bulky. It can neither transport you, nor can it be carried around with you.”

“You never said there was a weight limit.”

“It’s not a weight limit. If you wanted to bring a car, you could. I don’t advise it, but you could.”

“Are any of the others bringing a car?” Sara asked.

Now Ganymede laughed. “Tsk, tsk. I told you I wouldn’t tell you anything about what the others are choosing.”

Ganymede – who appeared to be a tall, slender man with pale skin and curly green hair, like he was some kind of comic book character, and who claimed to be a very bored alien with godlike powers who was taking human form so that he could interact with Sara – had showed up at the café Sara waitressed at, three weeks ago, and was apparently very impressed with Sara’s ability to put up with entitled idiots and even get them to calm down and do what they were supposed to do. He’d ordered cherry pie and asked her if she’d ever wanted to travel into the past, and when Sara had pointed out that in the past, she would have had her rights severely curtailed because she was a woman, he’d asked, what if she could bring one thing from this time, one thing in her possession?

Sara’s master’s degree in the history of plant cultivation in Europe and how it impacted society had never done her a damn bit of good. It had resulted in crushing student loans that a job as a waitress couldn’t keep up with and still pay the mortgage her parents had left to her when they’d died in a car accident, and it hadn’t resulted in a good-paying job in academia like she’d expected when she started college. She was about to lose her parents’ home, the only place she’d ever considered home in her life. And before her boyfriend had dumped her last month, he’d turned most of their friends against her with lies and distortions.

Sara didn’t want to die, but she had lately been seriously reconsidering how badly she actually wanted to live.

So she’d agreed to Ganymede’s offer. Go back to the pre-Renaissance medieval era – or something very much like it – with one thing brought from the future. He’d explained that she wouldn’t actually be going to her own world’s past, so she couldn’t create a paradox by changing the future – she could freely do whatever she wanted without worrying about making her grandparents never born or something. He’d also told her that he was making the same offer to several other people, but that she wouldn’t necessarily get to meet them unless they happened to run into each other by chance in the past-world. And she had a month to get the thing she wanted to bring to the past.

Sara had spent the last three weeks digging up her garden and potting everything in ceramic pots, figuring ceramic wouldn’t be an issue in the past like plastic would be. Sadly, she’d had to abandon the apple trees, the peach tree and the grapevines – she couldn’t exactly dig out trees and pot them – but she’d gotten everything else. The potatoes had been a challenge – exposing potatoes to light while they were growing would make them inedible, so she’d had to dig them out on a cloudy night with no moon, more or less digging by feel instead of sight. Carrots, potatoes and onions had needed very large, deep pots. She’d wound her zucchini around a tomato cage in the large pot she’d put it in. The small fruit bushes – the blueberry bush, the raspberry bush – were already in pots. She had her peppers, her tomatoes, her tiny soybean bush, her arugula.

And now, after she’d done so much work to pot everything, Ganymede was telling her she couldn’t bring it?

“Look, if I had a caravan wagon and a horse, I could definitely carry all of this.”

“But you can’t bring a caravan wagon and a horse back with you.”

“No, but I could get one there.”

Ganymede chuckled. “You think I’m sending you with money? You get period-acceptable clothes, the ability to speak the language, immunity to all the local diseases, and the thing that you bring with you, and that’s it. If you appear in the middle of a field, or a town square, surrounded by potted plants, how are you going to bring them with you to whatever shelter you need to take?”

“They’re plants. If I have to leave them out in a field for a few days while I carry them all to wherever I end up going, nothing bad’s going to happen to them.”

“And what if you appear in the middle of the town square?”

“Then I prevail upon some good gentlemen to help me move them someplace safe.”

A deep sigh escaped Ganymede. “I’m almost tempted to let you. Just to let you find out first hand how much your plans are not likely to work. But no. An entire garden is too bulky, and I’m quite certain that most humans would define a garden as a collection of things, not one thing.”

“Come on! I did a lot of work to put all these plants into pots! Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Sadly, no.” Ganymede walked around the garden of pots, randomly touching most of the plants. “You did do quite a lot of work. I tell you what, I feel bad for you. Pick something else to bring and I’ll make sure all your plants get donated to people who like to grow things and are good at it.”

“And aren’t racists,” Sara insisted.

“It’s interesting that that matters to you; aren’t you part of the dominant ethnic group in this nation? Racism doesn’t affect you, generally speaking.”

It was true that Sara was white, and therefore, racism rarely directly affected her, but she had an answer for that. “Racist people in this country have been brainwashed into believing that climate change is a hoax, that gay and transgender people are some kind of terrible threat, and that it’s more important to make sure the government doesn’t tax rich people than to put any accountability on big corporations. Everything bad that we can’t get solved in this country and we can’t even begin to start solving it, because people won’t let us… it’s because rich people have figured out how to use racism to brainwash white people into voting against their own interests.”

“Oh, I understand.” Ganymede grinned broadly. “You’re a hippie, aren’t you?”

“Uh… not really? That was sort of my parents’ generation? I think of myself more as solarpunk. But if what you’re trying to get at is that I’m someone who cares about the environment and wants people to be happy and healthy and to care about each other, then yeah.”

“All right, very well. I’ll hand them over to people whose political beliefs generally track with yours, who are good with plants, and who have space to grow them. Now, pick something else.”

“A big sack that I can carry on my back, maybe 50 pounds, and I get to fill it with seeds and bulbs and anything else plant-related that I can fit in the sack.”

Ganymede raised his eyebrows. “You’re really dedicated to this bit, aren’t you?”

“I know how to use plants to change history. I don’t know how to change history with anything else – not in a way I might want to. I mean, I could bring a gun, but after I was out of ammo, what good would it do me? And also, I don’t like guns.”

“All right,” Ganymede said. “I’ll allow it. As long as you can carry the sack on your person, you can stuff as many seeds into it as you want.”

Sara smiled at him with her best customer service smile. “Thank you, I really appreciate that.”

“One more week,” he said, and vanished.

One more week and she’d leave all this behind. One more week and she wouldn’t have to worry about the foreclosure and impending eviction anymore, because she’d be in a whole other world.

[wished-bone]

As I enter my 27th yr like an Easter egg 

Here are 27 things I’ve been “up to” 

Recent fake but actually real baptism 

Consciously choosing to not suffer 

6th months sober 

Only willing to talk about my pants (pictured) 

Only trying to be touched by soil plants animals air or water 

Writing in my journal in Latin only 

Praying over my food and water to no one and no thing 

ReCalibrating my microscope to view Hocking River water 

James Joyce 

Celibate 

Burning my box that reads “sentimental paper scraps” 

Advocating for psychedelic mushroom use despite sober 

Peppermint tea x3 sans cig 

“Let me pull a card before answering that” (crone/hermit) 

Honestly body high from 1.5gal water intake 

Virgin Mary thought patterns 

randomnumbergenerator.com 

Pros and cons of microdosing 

Falling asleep to the same music I fell asleep to as a child (New Age God-pop cassette that grandparents got from their cult) 

Convincing myself I’m more flexible than I am until I am 

Meditating on Saturn eating his own children 

Unapologetically Crying about climate change in environmental studies capstone zoom meeting (cam on) 

“rolling with it” 

Rplace true crime podcasts w/Sound of Music soundtrack 

Imagining the spaces btwn my atoms expanding to hold more space for this world and it’s beautiful bs 

Finding it hard to believe in the things I do but doing them anyway 

If something has a color it’s going to be blue

[cleverfox]

Not to be too much of a Tumblr Ancient, but I know exactly how many Rock The Vote style memes and tweets and etc you’ve seen while doom scrolling this app, all trying to make you see how valuable the youth vote would be if it just like, freaking happened for once. And I know from every other election throughout my life that most of the Youths™️ still don’t plan to vote.

You think the electoral college will fuck you like it did in 2016, you think it’s all rigged. You think your vote doesn’t count, you think your state is too red, you’d vote for a third party if you were gonna bother. Politics is boring, everything is cake anyway so let’s all just die! Ha! Ha!

Listen, you know who else has beliefs that are only sorta governed by reality and are at their essence totally selfish? My grandparents. They don’t believe in climate change, or your right to control what happens to your own body, or that immigrants should be treated like human beings, or that it’s their problem if they aren’t, that Black Lives Matter, that our criminal laws and the cops you see in your streets every single day have to be looked at carefully. They genuinely think Trump is not just a good president but a good man, and you know what else? They will vote.

They will and so will all of their friends. They will all vote, and they will vote against you.

So please. Please for the love of the literal air you breathe, don’t just vote. Harass your friends, pack them into your car, and make them go vote. Take your cousins and their spouses and your brother and your neighbors. GET PEOPLE REGISTERED. Do it on your phone, do it NOW. And on Election Day, make sure they all have rides. Ferry people. Carry them on your goddamn back if you have to, but this year HAS to be different or we won’t just joke about all dying. We will actually all fucking die. It IS that serious. We have got to get out the fucking vote and to do it, the Zoomers HAVE TO take the chance on changing the world.

It comes down to one form, one day, one hour for the rest of your life. Let’s fucking go.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Star asked the leaders of Canada’s major political parties to talk about the issues that move them deeply. In the first of the series, federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh identified the challenges faced by today’s youth as the cause he wanted to talk about. Singh spoke with the Star about why he chose the topic and what he’s going to do to address the issue:

Why are young people and the challenges they face so important to you?

All the major crises we’re faced with, they’re the ones feeling it the most. Young people are the ones who are priced out of the (housing) market, can’t imagine ever buying a place. It was not unattainable for their parents and grandparents.

So, they really embody all of the poor decisions that have been made by governments in Ottawa. Young people have that look of hopelessness. They have this fear, this uncertainty, and I want to replace that look in their eyes with one of hope and positivity and optimism. I really believe young people have gotten a raw deal. And that’s why they need a new deal. I want to now revert to making decisions that actually put young people — and by doing so, people in general —at the heart of the decision-making.

How is being a youth today different from what it was like when you were growing up?

The challenges are just a lot worse. I kind of remember what that’s like a bit. Because my father was ill and couldn’t work, and because of his addiction, it meant that he lost his ability to continue practising and we fell into debt. So we ended up losing our home and not being able to keep it, which meant that I felt that anxiety about having a home. But that’s otherwise something I didn’t think about. Like, I wasn’t in high school worrying about housing. That’s why what I went through is really different from what young people are going through now.

I wanted to find a way out of my financial difficulties by going to school. And, for me, school was kind of affordable. Undergrad was in the $2,000 range, and going to law school was $8,000 a year. Even in my difficult situation, it was something that I could see my way around. I got some loans and I was able to pay my tuition.

But for young people now, they’re faced with economic uncertainty and they want to take university or other courses to upgrade their skills, or, if they want to go to professional school, it’s really limited for those who don’t have the means. It’s so expensive that it could be scary and maybe even just a barrier that’s not surmountable.

Full article below read more (due to paywall):

Why do you think you’re the right candidate to tackle these issues?

(Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer) don’t have the courage to take on these issues. They’re kind of like the old boys club. It’s in their best interest to maintain the status quo. They’re not really going to bring in the change that people need. They’re just maybe going to tamper around the edges, tinker here and there. They’re not going to bring in a new deal. I’m proposing a bold new deal, a new way of looking at the way we should be prioritizing people over the wealthiest and the people at the very top. And I know it’s achievable. I really care about making life better for people, and I’m not afraid to bring in the changes.

Why focus on young people when many of them can’t vote, and the ones who can often don’t bother?

When I got elected in 2011, I got elected because I had all these young volunteers and many of them couldn’t vote. I was 32 and I was the oldest person in my campaign by far. We had all these young, passionate people that work hard, and they care, and they got me elected.

I really think young people shouldn’t be counted out because they have parents and they have grandparents. For some people, that could be as many as six people they can influence and say, “hey, this is my future, if this matters to you, please care about this issue or vote this way.” So, I see immense power in young people. Though they can’t vote right now, I still think they can really influence the outcome of the next election.

How will you convince the next generation, and all Canadians who care about climate change, that it’s a threat to their future that you take seriously?

Since being elected, I’ve taken really fierce positions on the environment. We are the only official federal party that has opposed things like the Trans Mountain pipeline. We’ve taken strong positions on environmental issues historically as a party and I’ve taken on that and taken us to the next level with really bold announcements and really concrete commitments. I want to end fossil fuel subsidies, something that I know a lot of people are really frustrated by. I think my track record of positions that I’ve taken, the boldness of our vision and our plan, really speaks to the fact that we take this seriously and I’m committed to doing something about it.

Students who graduate from school can no longer rely on that degree to land them stable work. In today’s gig economy, many end up doing internships, contract work, part-time work or freelancing for years without any prospects of stability ahead. What will you do to help young people in these precarious situations?

People used to be able to get a job to get benefits. Now in the gig economy, people don’t have those benefits. That’s why it’s more important than ever that our health-care system step up and provide that head-to-toe coverage that includes dental care, medication for all, eye and hearing care and addiction and mental health services, so that all the needs that someone has for their health are not something they have to depend on the job for.

Right now, employment insurance is basically not something that self-employed or precariously employed or a freelance person can have access to. I want to change the way we look at employment insurance and modify it so that it does cover people who are working in these precarious positions. The new vision I see is cumulative hours — I propose 360 — and looking at someone’s best 12 weeks as the way we set someone’s employment insurance. I want to extend our parental leave to allow self-employed people to take advantage of it.

I also want to continue to fight for good pay and good jobs. For federal regulated jobs, I’m pushing for a $15-minimum wage and also changing the labour code so we offer better protection, set a better standard for what a job should give to workers and hopefully inspire other provincial and territorial governments to follow.

Owning a home or even being able to comfortably afford a place to rent feels like a pipe dream to many youth today. How will you make housing more accessible and affordable for this generation?

Really boldly invest in building new homes. What I’m imagining is 500,000 or half a million new homes over the next 10 years. The focus is going to be rental, cooperative, non-market housing so that people can have a place where there’s a confidence in knowing they can live there and that it’s affordable.

We want to waive the GST on bills where private developers build affordable housing to encourage the building of rental or affordable housing. To reduce the cost of housing, we want to end money laundering, which is driving up speculation. We want to impose a federal foreign buyer’s tax, which would get at the foreign investment that’s actually driving up the cost of housing.

For first-time homebuyers, we want to double the tax credit that’s available now and we also want to expand the mortgage to a 30-year mortgage which would lower the monthly payments so that someone can actually afford to buy a house.

This interview has been edited and condensed.