#anyway i feel like making pine needle soda

[arctic-hands]

this never having alcohol again thing is killer I have the desire to drink exotic sodas to make up for it

[the-hate-keeps-me-warm]

I've had a bad few days at work so im gonna make a rwby so self indulgent it kills me so most if it will be oscar and team arson fluff and maybe some angst

Do I think any of these are or should be cannon probably not but they make my heart fuzzy

Cuddle piles all of arson take naps together a tradition originally started by Nora after she found Oscar napping after training and decided to join him eventually it evolved into the whole team cuddling while they nap at first emerald is super weirded out by the question but agreed anyway and Nora kinda doesn't want her to join in at first but she cant say no to oscars puppy dog eyes as soon as it started emerald melts and passes the fuck out and ever sense she gets grumpy(more than usual) if they don't nap in a few days

After atlas leadership falls on Oscar winter tries but the others don't trust her like they trust Oscar and winter honestly isn't opposed to not being in charge for fear of becoming like James

Speaking of winter she respects Oscar a lot and doesn't let him being a kid stop her from trusting him not as blind as she did James but trust none the less

They also do some training together as winter is the most experienced fighter besides ozpin with them she's a good teacher as we see with Weiss and Oscar likes her tough love teaching style

(This one's very specific shit and a little dumb)

After loosing jaune ren and nora start to get a little over protective Nora holds Oscars hand whenever there in crowds and ren always walks behind him if there's a chance of him slipping away I think that if its not addressed it gets worse to the point of almost paranoia because of how horrified of loosing another teammate they are some refugees get into a fight over sleeping spots and Oscar tries to break it up and gets shoved down and Nora overreact threading the assailant more than necessary and after Oscar and her have a long conversation about her fears and some of them are put to bed

Oscar doesn't give up on team rwbyj if the others belive they are dead hes not super vocal about still beliveing there alive but if hes asked he doesn't hide it

He keeps a journal of everything that happens while there gone for them and even writes letters to each of the fallen lots to ruby and jaune most of which he never gives either of them out of embarrassment

Oscar is more angry than he seems but is too scared to blow up or yell like he wants so i think he writes to take out his frustrations maybe some of its poetry or self indulgent revenge tales he feels guilty no matter what and hides them

Oscar and Whitely are friends its not instant i think Whitely is wary of anyone who isn't willow or winter at first but I think he warms up to Oscar the fastest it starts with awkward small talk but grows quickly

I think they play swords with sticks and winter find them and turns it into training but there both still having fun so it doesn't matter

I think winter starts training Whitely and asks Oscar to spare with him sense he's closest to his skill level Oscar takes it easy on Whitely till he gets his bearings and finds Whitely fun to fight so they spare often even with winter training him I don't think Whitely wins often as Oscar has real combat experience but there not overly competitive

Not a head cannon but just an idea since long memory is basically used like a blunt rapier it would be cool if Oscar adopted sword and pistol or sword and dagger like winter i just think it would be neat as well as Oscar to differentiate himself from oz (also if he does sword and dagger the knife is called either pine needle or roses thorn)

Oscar is a morning person on his team only jaune is also a morning person so this leads to his whole team groaning at his morning chipperness

Oscar and jaune are the only ones who drink coffee on team arson ren likes tea emerald prefers energy drinks and Nora hates the way caffeine makes her feel and can barely tolerate soda

Oscar drinks his coffee black and jaune likes lots of sugar so Oscar wakes up extra early to make jaune coffee so he doesn't have to and so he can spend more time with jaune

Southern Oscar

he says y'all and aint like a mother fucker and it pissed Whitely off to no end because of how much of a grammar Nazi Jacque probably was

He also loves country music and has a soft spot for the sad stuff he also likes to sing and is pretty good he even sometimes sings while jaune plays guitar he gets very shy tho and will only let team arson listen and maybe the others but he needs to be hyped up first

Oscar and ozpin sing duets in there head all the time it's very cute and even if oz can't sign he likes to hear Oscar sing and he's less embarrassed if someone sings along

Emerald finds Oscar needs to be hyped up pretty often and just decides that she's gonna take every opportunity to do so oh hes feeling insecure about his looks she tells him how handsome he is and how much she likes the way he dresses he doesnt like his height short king all the way of if he's doubling himself she reminds him that she trusts him tho usually not those exact words

(if y'all think this is me shipping them grody let friends gas up friends platonically)

Emerald is very nice but lived in a way where being nice hurt her so now she's catching up on all her kindness with Oscar shes instantly glued to his hip as I think she's an awkward person at heart when she's not scamming or lying and uses being mean and sassy to hide it and she knows Oscar the best so she sticks with him but she feel like she's being annoying so unnecessarily bribes him with food and stuff to hang out with her most of the time they plan on going to eat but do something completely different

Oscar can dance not waltz or tango or nothing fancy just simple things line dancing and stuff you learn in school

Oscars aunt is a big smocker and when he was 12 she got the nastiest brand of cigarette she could and left is somewhere gross so it would get all tar tasting and let him smoke it safe to say Oscar still gags if he smells tobacco smoke

Now these are some rosegarden ones so you can skip that if that's not your style

Oscar has never even kissed a girl before ruby not counting his aunt kissing he cheeks or forehead so he's really scared of messing it up but I head cannon ruby as maybe having kissed one other person but him so she's not any more experienced and there just so perfectly bad at it together

Ruby knows Oscar isn't a huge fan of pda so she tries to keep it to incocent hand holding and occasionally a kiss on the cheek or a goodbye kiss

Oscar is little spoon he likes to feel safe and ruby is a protector and likes to make Oscar feel safe rarely and usually only when she's had nightmares is she little spoon and Oscar doesn't mind

They both are confident people in many ways but are also deeply insecure about many other things oscar doesn't like his height or his scars and i think ruby doesn't like her hands (I actually have a wip I'll never finish about this exact thing )

Ruby definitely gets jealous more than Oscar especially before there officially dating and she hates it she knows its stupid to get jealous over him blushing at neon or holding noras hand or giggling at one of yangs dumb jokes and she tries not to let it get to her especially sense she knows for sure Nora and yang Arent doing it on purpose but she does politely ask neon to stop and she does instead now she teases ruby

I think they don't fight often its usually more tension than fighting them both knowing something is wrong but can't or wont talk about it but when they do fight its usually not for very long they both hate it however they argue constantly but its in good fun and usually about meaningless things like what comic is better or what to have for dinner

As we've seen in volume 8 if ruby gets upset she can yell and she hates doing it especially cause oscar hates it so much

And Oscar is stubborn as hell if he believes he's in the right until ruby yells then he folds and looses all his confidence and that's usually how there arguments end is them apologizing to each other and maybe crying a little

When ruby and Oscar first meet Oscar has never read a comic book before his local library didn't have any so ruby loves showing him the world of comic books which leads them to staying up late into the night discussing them and falling asleep on each other while reading yang and Nora take lots of pictures to tease them with later

I actually don't know if they ever get married I think neither would feel the need but say they do Weiss definitely plans it and is rubies brides maid along with the rest do wby

Jaune is Oscars best man and helps Weiss with the planning

Both of there stag parties are polar opposites Oscars is just him and the guys hanging out and chilling while having fun and rubies is a 9 hour journey where multiple felonies are committed and someone maybe dies ruby made all of them swear to secrecy cause oscar might have a heart attack otherwise

When they first get together yang decides to give them both the talk and its so awkward and yang is so bad at it so eventually blake and ren step in and explain things to them and ruby and Oscar are both still super embarrassed

Yang is very supportive of there relationship she wants ruby to be happy and trusts her to make her own decisions and trusts Oscar not to intentionally hurt her

Qrow on the other hand does not his reasoning being that Oscar might not be long for this world and that will only make ruby more unhappy in the long term but he doesn't stop them hes not her dad and he doesn't get to tell her what to do he knows that and he respects rubies decision to stick by Oscar very early on he decides to try to talk Oscar out of it and he in essence tells qrow to go fuck himself in the least insulting way possible and he respects Oscar for it

Tai and oscar hit it off when they meet they share in a loving of cooking and gardening they are both also huge softies tai of course does the shovel talk but doesn't even take himself seriously when he does and neither does Oscar

[alittleoptimistic]

Object Impermanence

A short (horror?) story by me for no reason other than ive been listening to the magnus archives and thinking about how it’s nice to sit on the ground and exist.

__________________________________

Summer of 2004, I’d just quit smoking. I remember because I was pissed off for no reason all the time, and I packed more gum than I packed food. My entire backpack smelled like awful, sweet, artificial grape flavoring.

My little sister is home and she’s been hiking with those rich friends of hers and she’s like, ‘lets go hiking on the weekend.’ I’m all, do I look like I go hiking? But whatever, she was just gonna leave by herself if I didn’t go, and what did I have going on anyway? We were going to leave Friday, hike up the mountain, stopping at various lookout points to camp until we reached the top, and then we’d come home by Monday morning.

It started off fine. My feet hurt by the end of the first day. I was wearing sneakers cause that was all I had, and I couldn’t even complain about it because Sara, that's my sister, said that would happen if I wore them, and I told her to buzz off. It was just the two of us, wandering up a mountain. It smelled clean and sharp. The air was cool, almost too cool for the lungs, and I didn’t say how much I was actually enjoying myself. Yeah, there were mosquitos, and the undergrowth left scratches on my ankles, and Sara laughed at me when I struggled. She had a nice laugh, tough, kind and genuine. But it was all worth it when we reached a peak.

One of the first lookout points sat above the valley. It was a flat, stone outcropping. We dangled our legs over the edge. We ate our sandwiches and sunned on the rock like lizards. It was the first time in a long time I’d truly felt… solid. I was so used to this screaming, crashing in my head. I had too many tabs open at once, and I barely looked at any of them. And now I was just a creature, laying against my backpack in the sun, feeling the clouds pass over. It was good that way. People would be a lot nicer if they just shut their mouths and lay on the ground more often.

I heard Sara get up, but I didn’t bother to open my eyes. I was sort of asleep, and the weight of my body had settled into my limbs. I might have melted into the rock and been content there. It wasn’t until a cold wind swept hair into my eyes that I finally squinted and sat up, groggy from my half-sleep.

Sara was gone, her pink ‘rucksack’ (that was what it was called, according to Sara) abandoned a few feet away from me. I had gravel pressed into the palms of my hands, and I brushed it off as I looked around for her. Something settled into my stomach, a deep ill-ease I couldn’t quite shake. Her boots lay next to the backpack, socks sticking out of the top like little white tongues. Thinking back, I wasn’t really worried. If she’d left her shoes, she couldn’t have gone far.

I looked for her, grumbling. The forest here was made up of tall pines, and not much undergrowth anymore, so I should have been able to see her with relative ease, but when I stepped back into the forest, I saw no one. My steps made no noise on the pine needles. The trees swayed.

I called out her name and heard nothing in reply. Actually, to be honest, I heard nothing at all. No wind, no twittering birds, no crunching leaves. Have you ever heard of those rooms that suck the sound out of them? I had a buddy in high school who used to make music, and he rented a soundproof room to record. I went with him one time, mostly because his sister was really cool, and I’d reasoned she might be there (she wasn’t). The point is, the forest felt like that room. My voice died as soon as it left my lips, right in front of me. In the quietest soundproof rooms, they say you start to hear your own heartbeat, the sound of your digestive system, your pumping blood. Spending too long inside a room like that can drive you mad. I kept thinking about that; about soundproof rooms, and about how I didn’t know what my own body sounded like, not really. How can you live in a body its entire life, and not know everything about it? Do bones make noise when they move? The firing of nerves, do they make a sound? I had no idea. But right then, I felt that if I stayed here long enough, I would find out.

I wanted a cigarette.

A twig snapped behind me. I whipped around. I wasn’t sure what had me so tightly strung. There wasn’t anything to be frightened of. Not really. It was Sara. Of course, it was Sara. She’d pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail, and she gave me an odd look, like I was being weird, and she asked if I was okay. I told her, yeah, I was fine, where did she go?

Sara shrugged and walked back to the lookout without answering the question. I guess that was the first sign that things weren’t alright, but I didn’t pick up on it at the time. I was distracted by the quiet and soundproof rooms and my own hammering heartbeat.

We kept on up the mountain as the day stretched. My backpack dug into my shoulders and neck as I followed behind Sara and her hot pink rucksack.

At some point, I looked at my watch, only to realize it was gone. I’d never owned a wristwatch. Except, I had. I got it for myself as a treat after I managed to keep my job as a waiter at Sonic for a month. I couldn’t skate for the life of me, but they kept me on. I tried once. Skating, I mean. The experience was so beyond embarrassing I refused point-blank to do it on the job again. Have you ever had orange soda spilled on your crotch before? I had to walk around for the rest of the shift with this massive sticky stain down the front of me like I was a two year old with a melted popsicle. Disgusting. The manager on duty thought it was hilarious. It was, I guess. You have to find humor in jobs like that or else you won’t get through the day. I’m getting off-topic again. I bought myself a wristwatch from Walmart after the first month of working there because I could.

And now I didn’t have the watch. I’d… well, I thought I possibly could have just left it behind. But now that I thought about it, I couldn’t picture the watch in my head. Had I bought the watch, or did I just think about buying the watch? Either way, I didn’t know what time it was. We’d been walking for hours at this point, long enough that I’d gone through two whole packs of gum. My stomach growled. I told Sara we should stop, citing the setting sun.

Not pausing, Sara told me it wasn’t much farther. That was it.

I pressed the issue. I complained about how hungry I was, how my feet hurt, how I needed to sit down.

“It’s not much farther,” she said again.

Up to this time, I didn’t think anything was wrong. I was just irritated she was being so stubborn. I told her if she didn’t stop I was going to sit down, and she could go up by herself. I’m not exactly an athletic guy, you see? I never have been. In middle school, kids called me Scrawny Shawny. They weren’t wrong. Mom used to resew my pants because the store never had pants with the right sized waist and length. They were always too short with a waist that fit fine, or long enough with too large of a waist. I wasn’t as skinny as I was at thirteen, but smoking hadn’t helped me gain any weight, and I sure wasn’t used to hiking for hours on end.

I told her I was stopping to sit and eat something. I wasn’t getting bossed around by my baby sister. Sara was already a good distance ahead of me, up a slight hill in the trail. She stopped at the top. From that incline, I noticed the first really weird thing. She was barefoot.

Had she not put her shoes back on? How long had she been walking without shoes? And how? The trail was filled with sharp, sand-stone gravel. The trail wound around tree roots, and boulders. I’d stubbed my toe already from inside my shoe.

I called out to her. Where were her shoes? Was she stupid? What was she thinking?

She looked down at her feet, as if noticing them for the first time.

Then, smoothly, she twisted her neck to look at me. Her face was blank. But that could have been that she was too far away for me to see clearly. I told her to stop messing around and come eat a snack.

“It’s not much farther,” she said.

I felt that twist in my stomach again, a tightness in my lungs that wasn’t from the exercise or the thinning air. Her tone was flat, dull, like… this might not make sense, but like soft wood hitting soft wood. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. I heard her clearly, but the sound wasn’t traveling? It hung in the air for a second before dropping into the dirt.

I had my backpack in my hands, and I realized I was clutching it, my nails digging into my palms. Sweat coated my back from the hike, but I was getting cold.

All at once, I wasn’t hungry anymore.

Also, I hadn’t brought any snacks. I hazily unzipped my backpack, eyes still on my sister, who stared at me but didn’t turn around. When I opened the backpack, the smell of grape candy wafted up to meet me. But there were no snacks inside. No trail mix. No cans of beans. No dried fruit. No energy bars. And you’ll remember I said before, I hadn’t packed much food, but I definitely packed some. Had I eaten it all already? It was only Saturday. Or was it Sunday? I couldn’t remember.

Had I never packed any at all? I asked Sara if she’d taken my snacks. She said, “We don’t need a snack yet. It’s only a little farther.”

I gave in then. I’m not sure why, really. Something in me knew she wasn’t going to let me rest. I walked until I was a few steps behind her. She twisted forward again. And then Sara kept going. Up the mountain.

The sun should have set eventually. But it didn’t. That’s the thing. It stayed half set, not quite gone, but clearly not totally in the sky, for… I don’t know how long. Because it was halfway like that, I couldn't tell if I was imagining it or not. I couldn’t tell if it was moving. The shadows stretched like taffy, and the light was golden. We walked through this striped forest of light up the mountain. My stubbed toe was bleeding. I could feel the stickiness and warmth in my sock. Sara’s feet were bloody too, but she didn’t seem to notice. If anything, she walked faster the longer we went. I didn’t dare say anything. Everytime I tried to make an excuse to stop, I’d suddenly realize that excuse did not exist.

I told her we needed to set up camp.

We did not have tents. We would sleep beneath the stars, when they finally came.

I was thirsty.

We did not have water bottles. We’d planned to drink from the streams.

I told her my shoes were breaking.

I wore hiking boots. Of course they weren’t breaking. My toe was still bleeding, however, and that was the only thing that kept me certain that I had been wearing sneakers before.

A particular strain of fear settled in my gut, a familiar feeling I had not laid claim on in a long time. I used to be terrified of losing things when I was a kid. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving something behind. I forgot a stuffed animal at a playground once when we were on a road trip. It was a little green bear named Ugly. I left him inside the jungle gym of a grubby Mcdonald's play area somewhere in the middle of Utah. It put this gaping hole in me, a seemingly un-proportionate terror I couldn’t escape. I was five, and I could not keep everything safe with me forever. When I closed my eyes, there was absolutely nothing making sure the world would be there when I opened them again. Worse, perhaps nothing was there when I wasn’t looking at it. At a certain point, you grow out of fears like this because you learn, logically, that there is something holding the universe together. You are not so important that your gaze keeps the world spinning. So I hadn’t felt that fear in a long time.

Walking up that mountain, the fear came rushing back to me in waves. Everything was unravelling under my fingertips, twisting into something else. If I didn’t look at it, it could disappear any second. I didn’t have a backpack anymore. I never had. Sara’s pink rucksack bounced ahead of me, mocking me. It was a rucksack, so it couldn’t be smug, but it was. I felt its zippers and rings and straps all straining and stretching and grinning at me. It was huge, bulging at the seams, certainly bloated with all of the things I lost.

Barefoot, I stumbled over a tree root and tried to catch myself on a tree, but my hand sunk into the wood like soggy parchment. It was rotting away, hollow, not really a tree at all. I jerked back and hurried onward. I couldn’t stop. Something horrible would happen if I stopped. We kept going, and the trees loomed above, taller than they were before. They leered at me, bent in so I could hardly make out the fading light of the sky above. Stretched high into eternity, the mountain would never end. The trail became gradually steeper, slowly enough that I did not notice until we climbed hand over hand up the face of the rocks. Pine needles rained down on me from Sara’s movements above.

As we climbed, I asked one last time, how much farther we had to go.

The silence gripped me. It stole the breath from my lungs. This was what it was like to be in space, where sound waves could not travel. I was stuck breathing sawdust and mud and wood shavings. If you’d like to know, bones do make noise when they move. Mostly when the joints bend. There are soft crackles, popping bubbles, and a wet scrape like a fingernail against a mud covered stone.

Sara paused.

Her head twisted toward me. Her neck should not have been able to turn that far, but everything was just so slightly off that this final thing did not shock me as much as it might have in other circumstances. I stood frozen in mute horror, not daring to touch the trees for support, but barely able to keep my grip. I swiped sweat out of my eyes and tears too, I think. I’d started crying. How long had I been crying?

Sara smiled too wide. Her eyes were too large and they glistened a dull, sickly yellow. Her smile held too many perfect teeth packed inside and her fingers were too long. This thing, whatever this thing was, was not my sister. In fact, I had never had a little sister.

There was just me. I was just me, climbing a mountain into the sky, and I had never been anything, or done anything else. The grit under my fingers, the rough stone under my feet, the salty sweat I tasted on my lips, these were the only things I knew. I would not know them for long, because when I stopped thinking about them, they would no longer exist.

“I think it’s time for a snack,” the twisted thing said.

I wanted to weep in relief. Maybe I did. I couldn’t let go of my hold on the stones and the roots on the path or I would fall, so I did not move. The twisted thing started toward me. It’s limbs moved in a jagged way, like a video played in reverse, as it climbed back. I reached out a shaking hand, hoping for some assistance, some food, some water. Something.

But as the twisted creature reached its long fingered hand to me, its mouth wide and grinning, a jolt went through my skull like I’d been kicked. Before it could touch me, I pulled away. This creature would not give me anything. It could not. I knew what I had to do the moment that clarity passed through me.

I stared up into the eyes of a poor imitation of my sister, and I hoped Sara escaped somehow. I doubted it. After all, I didn’t have a sister.

The creature must have sensed my intentions because it snarled and leapt down to grab me. However, I was too quick. I had myself. I had my body and I had my bones. They existed still. Even if they had not, I existed. And I was not sure it could take that. What was a person anyhow, that they can be taken?

My fingers. Even now, I had fingers. They loosened their grip. That was all it took. I plunged downward through the whistling wind. And finally, the sun set. Or perhaps, I just could no longer see it. I fell and I continued to fall, solace flowing across my skin like a balm. There was nothing around me but darkness. The forest was no longer there. It had been, but my eyes were closed, and the illusion did not need to continue. My heart ached.

Then I realized, I could hear the whistling wind. I could feel the coolness of the night. There it was, the sickly sweet smell of grape flavoring. It flowed through the wind. I smiled with lips I still owned.

[dreams-for-the-apoplectic]

something i will probably never finish but like enough that im posting it anyway

Bro leans in the doorway of your room, 

(and you see him from your periphery: boxers loose on bony hips and patterned with hearts, no shirt, can of orange soda in hand with shades neatly tucked on the bridge of a strikingly crooked nose) 

and tells you, 

(over the sound of the fans, three, overclocked on some jury-rigged upgrades he threw together last year when the air conditioner went schizo cherry apeshit, just like now, again, for the second time this week spewing out mad fumes all grey-black and choked from its old, dusty vents) 

that you and he should just ollie outie of this midsummer popsicle stand and move somewhere the sun don’t actively to attempt murder you in the crispiest degree, KFC style. 

And you jokingly tell him sure, fuck it, anything is better than clawing my way up Fire Death Concrete Mountain aka Texas Mordor, clutching this bitchin’ ring of power and muttering all manner of rapturous obscenities and salacious innuendos for my precious. Sign me up Major Douchenozzle, I’ll shimmy my fine ass up this fabled air-conditioned igloo any day. 

A week later and you've packed your shit, grabbed your ticket, and are hopping the next flight to Vermont.

--

(four hours, fifty-one minutes, seven seconds, and Bro practically jumps off the plane hyperventilating when you touch down. you didn’t know how much he hated flying. you’ve never been on a plane before; if you didn’t know better, you’d think he hasn’t either. and if you quirk an eyebrow just over the rim of your aviators, and the side of your mouth makes a confused downturn for a second or two at just how fucking strange that that is, well, that was just a trick of the light, and the light is a dirty liar.)

He and you stick out like sore thumbs here 

(with Bro in a crumpled white polo and asshole jeans and dumb fucking anime shades, one hand in his pockets with an impassive, calculating kind of expression that you’re more used to than the panic, checking through tabs on Complete Bullshit for god knows what reason; you in the same shirt you wore yesterday, hair a meticulously crafted unkempt, posture slouching something awful as you bop right the fuck along to some sicknasty new bassline Jade dropped on you the night before, thinking of ways to remix it into this new beat you’ve been working on) 

among a crowd of home-grown New England faces haughty white and upturned and staring down at you and Bro like some trash that just rolled in from Doesn't Fucking Belong Here, USA.

(the luggage belt is moving so slow, so, so slow, it’s like watching a retarded crippled snail attempt a marathon against the goddamn salt shaker, and you wish you could just shake off the lingering, disdainful stares these people give the two of you, and you can, and you do)

(except you don't.)

--

You’re rolling through Montpelier an hour later, crammed up in the shotgun seat of an old, dirty, piece of shit pickup Bro apparently had nesting in the airport storage unit,

(it’s a rust hulk straight out of the early eighties, all torn up vinyl and engine rattling, with tacky, outdated bumper stickers on the back and a pine air freshener that does nothing to mask the smell of two-decade old cigarettes, and somehow you aren’t surprised this is his car because it is exactly how you imagined it.)

(you want to ask why he had a car in bumfuck, vermont and not in houston. you want to ask him if he even knows how to drive, but you hold your tongue nice and pretty and settle into the split vinyl seat cover)

moving past the city limits and into the countryside, over the state border and into New York. You give Bro the ‘what the fuck are we doing out here, man, is this the setup for a horror movie or some shit, because I’m not down to being the unwilling accomplice to some new echelon of fucked up smuppet snuff’ look, your fingers tapping in 4-4 on the dash, not really nervous so much as habitual. 

(he ruffles your hair with a smirking, mean kind of half-smile, all teeth and teasing and unnatural. you swat at him uselessly.)

And then the road is quiet, and the sky is misting grey. It’s all evergreen and shrubbery and dark soil here, and small towns by clear water: fishing ponds, creeks and rivers, and more wildlife roaming these secondhand backroads than you’ve ever seen in Texas. It starts to rain a bit, ghosting against the glass, and over the soft creak of the windshield wipers Bro asks you if you wanna put on some music, little man, heard you were working on a new track and can I get a sneak peak at that delirious biznasty? And fuck yeah you have, even if it isn’t quite done yet, and you plop your phone on the dashboard, and the drive is comfortable, 

(and you cannot shake this feeling that something is wrong.)

---

It isn’t an apartment, it’s a house in the goddamn woods; no, a fucking mansion in the goddamn woods, the design of it ripped straight from the personal architectural smutjournel of Frank Lloyd Wright, complete with white-foam waterfall and neo-American art deco pretension. Your mouth hangs open, and you know, you just fucking know a fly is about to buzz in that shit and set up a cozy little cottage, but you don’t care. This is straight wack, man.

(it looks vaguely familiar too, like something nostalgic stuck in your mental gears, cracked and rusted from disuse; something you saw once, a long time ago, in a place you can’t quite remember.)

Bro gestures you along along the concrete path, and you tell him no, wait, put the fucking brakes on Anime Goldilocks, what the fuck are we doing here, because this sure as shit can’t be where we’re living now, and I don’t wanna piss off the three bears. He pinches the bridge of his nose, and tells you in that deep southern mumble of his that, shit, kid, did you expect we’d just take a plane and end up in the same shitty apartment? And of course you didn’t

(even though you kind of did)

because that would be ridiculous, but-- you don’t know, you’ve been sharing a seven-hundred square foot living space with him for the past fifteen years. How are you supposed to react to a fucking mansion that just suddenly up and settled before you on delicate foundational popliteals and a stark-white concrete strapless all alluring and sultry? Just stand there stone-faced morose and stoic and fuck, that is exactly what you should be doing, isn’t it, because that was what he taught you, to

(stitch up the cuts slowly, careful with the needle and don’t fucking rush it, lil’ bro, even if they’re shallow you can’t just take it and jab that shit in, and for the love of god you gotta work on your dodge game, how the fuck do you expect not to get your ass served up sunnyside in a real fight?)

(̶̥̘͗̉̾̊͝ ̷̦̙̦͌͊̒́̍͛̀̀̈́́̚͘̕̚n̷̨̜̲͓̹̪͎̒͋́̊̎̐̍͌̆͘͝ͅͅͅ ̸̤̥̏́̌̑͒̈́̿́̃

̶̧̝͎̝͔͔̣̬͈̗̥̠̔̀͌̈́͆̒̇̋̋́̈́͐̈̚͝ ̷̡̛͕͚̰͉̦̼̤͍̘̝̹̮̩̈́̑̇̃̔͝͠ơ̷̡̧͔̘͇̖̫͉̳̳͖͇̰̻͗͛̿̋̾̏͘͝ ̸̨̧͈̱̫̩̲̦̭͖̿̃́̔͛̓̓͌̌͗̍̔̾͜ͅ

̷̢̮̮̠̠̬̖̙͈͋̍͛͆̔̈́̓̌̂̀͌̽͝͠ ̸̨̗̯̓͐̿̇͂͊̓́́̄̃̚͘͜͜.̷̲̙͓̮̮̬͓̈́̋͂͒̓̃͘͠͠)̸̧̖̪̦̥̪͙̫͍͙̩̻̺̩̒̌̈́͒͋͝ͅ

̵̬̯̪͛̓̈́̎̒́̂

It isn’t our house anyway, he says, 

(and your mind slams on the brakes so hard you think you might flip this shit frontways, slam the roof on that motherfucker into the burning asphalt and skid off the edge of this brutal synapse fuckup.)

(you can’t remember what you were thinking. it’s blurry, and forgotten, and everything is normal again)

moving forward in long, atypical strides that you scramble to follow. The rain is still coming down, you realize, in a softer drizzle that dampens your shirt. Friend of mine lives here.

Holy shit, he has friends?

Yes, I have friends, you little shit, and you flinch when you realize you must have said that out loud. His arms flex, shoulder blades audibly popping with the contraction of muscle, and you flinch, and nothing happens. Her name is Roxy.

And shit, you guess that’s all there really is to say on the matter, because he doesn’t provide any further explanation and you sure as hell don’t ask. You duck under the porch roof and he raps a fat bar of knuckles on the door.

---

Roxy isn’t anything like you expect. 

You don’t know what you were expecting, actually, considering you’ve only just heard about her, but she is perky and kind-eyed and so fucking sincere that the saccharine emotional font of exuberant delight that straight up sparkles from her is making you real uncomfortable.

She hugged you.

She hugged you and you liked it.  

(and she hugged Bro too, made his spine go all weird fucking c-shaped wrongness as she crushes him against her chest, calls him Dirk like she fucking owns him.)

You’re ushered in as she turns on heel and sways away with a tipsy strut, sauced and sauntering and high stilettos tapping on the dark hardwood. She tells you to drop your things by the door, she can set each of you up with a room in a bit, and Dirk, honey, we have got so much catching up to do, I haven’ seen you and the lil’ guy in ages, and god yer both so fuckin’ tall I forgot about that bit,

(christ on the cross, she can speak at a mile a minute, accent a thickly laced New York staccato that matches Texas about as close to the intersection of nil and fuckall as you can get without running head-on into traffic.)

and Dirky, Dirkle, Dirk-a-licious, oh my god come here right now, I gotta show you this badass shit I‘ve been working on, it’s fuckin’ lit as hell, it has got switches and gizmos and all of the cool techy shit I know you swoon over, and you need to check out this code I wrote because you know I’m not about to trust anyone else to parse my sick lines, so come ooooooooooooon and there they go, Bro dragged stiff as cardboard across the floor by the hem of his fucking shirt. He gives you a side-eye look that says crosses somewhere between  ‘don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back’ and ‘help me.’

You shrug and flip him off and leave him to his fate. His death glare could kill a lesser man.

(holy shit.)

And then, quite suddenly, you are alone.

It’s not quiet, you notice - just a more subtle murmur than the scream of a city, made emptier without Roxy to fill up the room. Slow, churning movement below signals the languid rush of water as it tumbles beneath the floorboards and off the cliffside. Some woodland creature skitters in wet dirt beyond the window pane, which filters in ghost-grey light and shakes a bit when a particularly heavy set of raindrops hit. 

You shuffle about awkwardly, and glance around for a second,

(the interior is lavishly decorated, you notice. posh white starkness for fineass digs. sir asshole the stone swamp wizard sits plainly in the foyer, nested in arcane robes of the dimwitted and tacky. a cat is nuzzled up at the foot of some kind of bronzed vacuum. the whole place smells like perfume and vodka. it’s kind of intoxicating.)

before deciding the panicked, lingering gaze is kind of stupid, and waiting for Bro to come back like a pining factory girl in the nineteen-forties writing sappy missives to the brave boys in Okinawa was lame as shit, so you flop down on the couch, all loose, gangly puberty limbs and feigned indifference and the muted light of your phone glaring back at you. You pull open a pesterchum window, shoot a few messages to Harley,

(some off-the-cuff rap cooked slow on these sick fires, like just put some whip cream and a goddamn cherry on that shit and call it a sunday. you also make sure to attach a file for the new sbahj comic you’ve been working on. you’ve lovingly dubbed the new arc ‘the spaztastic furry hatesex maelstrom,’ and you hope know she’ll love it.)

and Egbert,

(and you admit, muddled up in tangents and similes that take forever just to get to the goddamn point, that you actually took his recommendation and stuck through the bitterly tasteless cinema assassination of the week. you even wrote a shitty review for it on one of your ironically maintained critic blogs, and send him a link)

(you won’t admit you laughed at groundhog day. he will never let you live it down. never.)

and Lalonde,

(who is on, surprisingly, because you know she has school right now, and fuck if the flighty broad doesn’t take every swat of the educational ass whooping with a snide, condescending seriousness that has a way of getting just under your skin. she wants to go to Harvard, or Cornell, or Oxford, because she is smarter than you, and John, and maybe not Jade but damn is she close.)

(she doesn’t respond either, though, so you cast the thought away and send her some custom made memes deep fried in a hundred layers of crystalline  jpeg illegibility and wait, fuck, holy shit)

and then someone is standing over you, peering with an appraising interest, like they’re looking at a slab of beef splayed out dumb on the chopping block. And you don’t flinch, you really don’t, even though you’re about five seconds away from flipping this shit backwards and kicking dust up as you run for the hills. 

You can tell this girl is nasty. She is stygian lips and white-blonde hair and violet eyes that politely inform you that this is indeed the fucking slaughterhouse, that you guessed it right, and you’re about to get served up with a side of collard greens and barbecue sauce.

So of course the first words out of your mouth are 'sup, Rose.

Wait, wh

(you see her past the glow of a verdant sun, because even a double universe killing superbomb can't outshine her. cascading orange silk stitch wrapped in a star-shimmering supernova of violet eyes and pallid skin. it's like a goddamn angel come from the heaven; a smirk beneath the hood and fire in her belly. she is the fucking sun now, and nothing can even fucking compare.)

at.

(what the fuck.)

What the fuck.

(what the actual fuck dude.)

Do I know you? Her voice is just dripping contempt.

And you don't fucking know her. She isn't here. Rose is a billion lightyears off in the gay space commune, deep encoded digital vaporware that went out of style twelve fucking years ago. She is a string of chat logs and embarrassing Fruedian slips that didn't happen, no, Rose, you don't have undercover mother-lust. 

And she is here.

You've never even seen her picture, but you know. You know far beneath the skin, something deeper than blood or bone or anything else seething something above that spiritual core. You know on a fucked kind of metaphysical. It's self-evident. It cannot help but make itself true.

Uh.

Shit.

Shit dude fucking say something. She’s just standing there, and the downward curvature of those lips is about to break out of the spatial plane and into some hyper paranoid fourth dimension. You guess she has a right to be weary. Your gangly ass is seated firmly in her territory.

[cass-trash]

Honey and Rain (Part One)

A/N: I had to post it twice since the Continue reading button wasn’t working for mobile, but hopefully it’s up and running by now. 

Warnings: Mild swearing, blood

Next Chapter: Part Two

You had never asked for this to happen to you.

You weren't a believer of God or angels and demons and that sort of stuff. You thought it was all crap. That is, until you were rudely awoken by a pair of muscular arms holding you down, another hand keeping your mouth open while somebody brought a container holding some sort of bright white light towards your face.

The pastoral fragrance filled your nose, practically hitting you in the face with a mixture of honey, pine needles and rain. Was that from the light? No, that's impossible.  

You kicked and thrashed against the men's holds, but it was as if they had you tied down. Your arms could barely move an inch. Screaming out for help only seemed to make them angrier, causing one of them to get a few punches into your stomach.

The men shoved the light into your mouth, finally releasing your struggling limbs once you had swallowed it. The light had left a lingering taste of honey behind. Maybe it is possible? Soon after, they vanished into thin air. Did they really vanish into thin air or were you going insane?

Seconds after they had left you could feel a sharp pain running from your head all the way to the bottom of your spine, as if somebody was running a blade deep into your flesh and pouring some sort of burning substance into the wound. Running to the joint bathroom, you stared into the mirror and watched as something black and feathery sprouted from your back. You screamed in pain, wishing your roommate was here to help you, but she had left to Hawaii a week ago. "What the hell!?" You growled.

You fell to the floor on your knees, the cold tiles sending chills up your legs. Your arms being the only limps cooperating with you, keeping you from falling face first into the floor. "Those ba-" You screamed out again, watching something that looked like a wing stretch out from your back. "Bastards!" You yelled.

Ever since that night, you hated angels. You couldn't explain what happened to you and your friends only thought you were insane. After three days of constant talking about wings and weird abilities, they sent you to a physiatric ward. That's when you figured out how to teleport.

A day later, you had orders from angels to protect and watch over a child named Liam. That didn't go as planned. You were supposed to make sure nothing happened to him, he was important. A prophet.

You had found Liam's body hanging from his living room's ceiling fan, his neck purple and bruised from the tight rope and his eyes open with tears. His parents were out on a family business trip to Texas and the babysitter had chosen to not do her job. You remember the horrible smell of expired Chinese food filling the house, the soda cans littered everywhere, but you remembered the look on Liam's lifeless face the most. Complete and utter sadness.

After that, you had enough. You hated angels with a passion. You killed any angel you found, whether they tried to persuade you they "weren't like the others" or not. You hated angels for making you into this monster and forcing you to go through the pain of watching a child's body hang from his own ceiling.

Within days, you killed nearly a decade worth of angels. They had tried to boss you around, giving you complicated orders on who to follow or who to protect, but you eventually blocked them out of your head. Until today.

"Y/n." You heard the familiar voice of the angel that was bossing you around from day one. You still didn't know his name but you decided one for him. Bastard. He never showed his face to you, but that never stopped him from talking to you in your head.

Scowling at his voice, you gripped tighter to the blade in your hands. "What do you want, Bastard?"

He chuckled. "Still have that silly name for me? Anyways...I have your next human's name for you."

"No." You growled. You swore.

"Yes."

"NO." You shouted, placing the blade into the back of your pants and punching the closest wall towards you.

Bastard's voice got deeper. "Yes. You will protect this human, otherwise I will kill your brothers. Do you hear me? I have them in my sights right now, and don't even try to warn them." Fearing you'd never be able to see your brothers again, you agreed.

"Fine." Your voice was strained. Great, just great. Typical, threats from an angel.

"His name is Castiel. His last location was Sunshine Road motel, hurry."

With that, you flew to the motel, forgetting about the angel you were hunting down at the warehouse. They'd probably manage to find you anyways.

Angels only ever asked you to protect humans that were important, or ones they could eventually use for powerful vessels, so what was up with this Castiel guy? Was he supposed to be a vessel?

You glanced around the run-down motel, noticing water stains in the corners of the ceiling. This only has a few years left. Taking a step towards the desk, you stepped on a newspaper lying on the brown patterned carpet. Picking it up, you saw the headline read "Two females dead, hearts missing." You would do anything to go back before you knew what that meant. Warewolfs.

With an uninterested stance, you threw the paper back to the ground and walked to the cream coloured front desk. "Excuse me, has somebody named Castiel checked in here lately?" You walked up to the lady at the front desk. Violet, her name tag read.

She rolled her eyes. "I can't give that information out." Violet loudly chewed on a piece of gum, wishing you could just smite her for being annoying.

"I'm the boss's niece." You sassed back, you didn't have time for this rubbish. "He needs it."

She gave you a questioning look and reached for the phone. "My boss is a woman,"

Without hesitating, you pressed two fingers to her forehead and knocked her unconscious, listening to the satisfying sound of her body falling to the floor. You wiped her memory of this encounter while she was out, before moving behind the desk and looking over the security tapes.

There had been three people that came in last night. Two were obviously a couple, that probably couldn't afford a better motel.

But the third had caught your attention. A scruffy looking man wearing a dark blue hoodie was clutching onto his side. You zoomed in, barely able to recognise the red liquid from the pixelated image on the screen. His knuckles looked as red and bloody as his clothes, you were unsure whether he was the attacker or the victim. In this line of work, he was probably both.

Following the man through the cameras, you found his room. Retracing his steps, you tried to think of a way to introduced yourself to him. Finally reaching the eleventh door on the left, you knocked on the wood and listened closely. Nothing.

You flew yourself inside of his room, too impatient to try the handle. You were being hurried, after all. Bed sheets were messily placed, hanging off the near side towards the window. Looking even closer, a trail of items lead to the window.

A chilly breeze flew into the room, causing the thin fabric hanging above the window to sway back and forth before finally resting once again. Stepping in front of the open window, you placed your hand on the sill, leaning out and taking a look around. He was no where to be found. As your hand retreated back to your side, you felt something different. Exposing your palm upwards, you saw blood smeared across your palm to your fingertips.

"In a rush?" You asked yourself, looking back to the window sill. Blood was smeared across the wood but you could make out a hand print, the white paint peaked out underneath telling you it was beginning to dry.

This was definitely Castiel. You just had to find him now, and fast. If any of the angels find out you've already lost him, you're dead. Luckily for you, you learnt how to find locations of people by thinking of their name.

Castiel.

Nothing. It was as if he vanished from the face of earth. You prayed- no. Hoped. You hoped he wasn't dead, for yours and his own sake.

Whoever this Castiel guy was, he must be important so you had to make sure he stayed alive unlike Liam. You couldn't see another one of your humans die because of you or your actions.

Thinking hard, you managed to remember a witches name you met a while ago.

"Circe," you whispered to yourself. Flying yourself to her apartment complex, you were met with a strong familiar scent. Herbs, a lot of them, too.

"What the fuck?!" She yelled, crossing her arms. "Fuck sake, Y/n!"

"Sorry," You mumbled, trying to neaten up the paper stack you had blown all over the place. "Uhm- I'll just...place these here..." You said, placing a heavy box full of animal bones on a shelf, only for it to fall to the floor along with even more herbs.

"Oh my-" She frustratingly growled, slapping you in the back of the head. "Just leave it alone you damn angel."

Rubbing the back of your head, you took a step away from the mess and awkwardly sat at the table with bowls full of blood and other witch stuff. "I uhm- I should have called." You mumbled, finally looking into her brown eyes.

"Yeah, you should have." She growled, crossing her arms like a mother. "What do you need this time?" She asked, tilting her head slightly, allowing her brown curls to cover one eye.

For a witch, Circe wasn't that bad. She only used her spells on people who deserve them. Criminals. "Uhh, I need a guys location, names Castiel." You said, gnawing on your finger nervously. Sure, you were an angel and probably could smite her with a flick of the wrist, but Circe scared you. She was more human than witch, at least her personality was, and that scared you. After you had swallowed that light, you basically lost all humanity that was ever inside of you. Who wouldn't be afraid of Circe after everything she's done, she can still act and feel like a human?

Circe understood your panic and hurry and removed the bowls from the table immediately, replacing it with a map of Kansas. You watched impatiently, listening to her chant something and light the map on fire. Within seconds, the map had burnt to ashes besides a spot in the left hand corner. "He's there," She said, tapping on the street name. "Most likely in that motel," She tapped on the closest motel.

Smiling gratefully, you nodded your head as a thank you and quickly flew to the motel she had mentioned. Just like the other, this motel was on its few last years. Wallpaper looked as if it had been slowly torn day by day, while the furniture's mould was bent in and looked incredibly unclean.

Without bothering to check-in at the front desk, you went from door to door trying to find this dang human. After the fifth door, you finally saw the face from the video cameras. "Hello?" He asked wearily, hiding behind the door.

You squinted at his behaviour, wondering what he was hiding behind the panel of wood separating the two of you. Remembering you had strict orders from heaven, you came up with a lame excuse. "I'm Y/n. I saw you outside earlier and was wondering if you'd like to go out for drinks later tonight?" You smiled, pretending to act as normal as possible.

He smiled warmly and moved something around behind his back before stepping away from the door. "I'd really like that, Y/n,"

"Can I uhm- know your name?" Like you needed it.

"Steve,"

Ooh, he is important isn't he?

"Nice to meet you Steve,"

"You too," He shifted on his feet and glanced around before finally opening his mouth to speak once again. "What time do we leave?"

Perfect.

[epicwinsauce]

since I have to do everything my damn self around here these days

moon: what is your astrological sign? lamb, Capricorn.

gingerbread: your moral alignment um??? like DnD moral alignment? chaotic neutral probably

birdseed: family or friends? family, but I do love me some friends.

sheets: your sexual orientation graysexual, but still technically straight.

warm milk: when do you usually fall asleep? when my work is done.

pot of honey: your gender identity masculine because I’m too lazy to do anything else. words, words, words.

snow: what is your favorite time of year and why? summer because it’s warm!!! and any time when it rains!!! I love warm rain.

yarn: what are your most enjoyable hobbies? language learning and gaming.

bicycle: what are you talented at? taking surveys (but not in a timely manner obv) and memorizing shit.

folktale: what stories remind you of your childhood? the 2nd story, usually.

woods: where do you feel at peace? in REM sleep.

chicken feet: what is your emotional “flaw”? I get stuck on romance for years, and complain at night when that person has been history for a long time. I also get really irritable when there’s too much noise that shouldn’t be happening, apparently

red cheeks: what makes you nervous? respawnsabibities.

sunflower: what do you love and cherish? sleeeeeeep. and my car. I know, typical man answer. but listen. Esmerelda gets me where I need to go.

bells: what sounds are your favorite or calm you the most? the electric triangle.

turnip: what is a food you could eat everyday? pasta. and I kinda do. also I need my daily fix of soda, I ain’t even gonna front about that.

spit: do you get jealous easily? I don’t like to think of myself as that kind of person but I definitely do, actually.

mushroom: list unique things you like about yourself my speaking voice is awful but I don’t mind my singing voice sometimes. I’m also equipped with a nice, efficient brain that I don’t use nearly enough outside of when I’m forced to. I’m also goofy just as a general manner of being.

cupboard: a good childhood memory walking to my best bud’s house in the blistering heat with no shoes just because it was summertime and I had nothin’ better to do.

eyebags: what do you think makes a person attractive? I’m a sucker for brown eyes and dark hair, and a casual morbid humor.

fallen log: something you’ve gotten over that you never thought you would public speaking. holy shit. I talk in front of people all the goddamn time. it’s amazing.

dagger: your worst fear waking up every morning. and my fear comes true every day

whisper: do you have any secrets? probably.

wild boar: which person do you feel closest to? tbh??? Morganstern. I also super love Luke & Jamie (but I worry Jamie is getting tired of my shit lmfao), Amanderz, and my sisters. my buddies Lucas, Julian, Chris and Sturgis at work help a lot, too.

sweet: what candies or cakes are you fond of? give me some goddamn starbursts and kitkats, you coward

footprints: do you remember your past lives? I used to.

fur: name an animal you feel connected to I don’t know any animals around here

vodka: do you drink? I do, and vodka is one of my favorites.

sour cherry: an obscure tradition from your family? none of my family traditions are obscure. your families’ are just wrong. (this is my way of saying “I don’t know don’t care” basically all we ever do is Christmas anyway tbh)

pine needles: what is your favorite scent? the sweet, sweet aroma of 8 hours of unbothered sleep

heart-shaped: do you believe in love? are you in love? I do, but I don’t really think I’m in love right now. I’m just mopey and lonely.

home: where do you dream of living? I’m already in Florida, my dudes. I just never knew what to do after that.

spice: list your favorite herbs oooooooHHH SHIT you activated my goddamn trap card. I love oregano like shit. Paprika holds a special place in my heart. and if I can shove garlic onto anything, I fuckin’ will, a’ight.

mud: something you’re insecure about but trying to love my voice.

tobacco: do you have any addictions? soda.

sock: how would you describe your clothing taste? I don’t eat clothes, thanks

cuckoo clock: are you a morning, a noon, or an evening person? evening. I have to do mornings next week and I want to die.

wooden fence: a favorite memory all the nights on the couch lied up next to each other and petting the cat. sigh.

[sketchy-moonlight]

Title: Something to calm you down

Characters: Mason (16) Tom(my)(17)

Setting: Tom’s town

Ships?: none fam, just some friend stuff

I definitely didn’t want to be here. Unfortunately, in order to be less conspicuous in this town meant I had to be in school. At least it’s wednesday, so just a couple more days of pointless classes for the week.

I’ve only been here for a week, but I’ve already made a friend. He sort of just came up to me and started talking to me just a few days after being here. His extroverted energy made me uncomfortable at first, but he’s kind and sweet, so I guess I have no choice to be his acquaintance. I don’t remember his name, but I nicknamed him “Puma”, since he wears a lot of cat shirts.

We stare at each other from across the classroom, smirking as we caught glances of the clock. Only five minutes until the bell rung, and we’d be free from this place. I was hoping to spend the rest of the day in my camp, but Puma insisted on taking me somewhere after school. He didn’t tell me where, so I’m definitely nervous. I fix my hair and adjust my hoodie strings to where I usually have them, and pack up. Well, pack up is a loose term, all I had with me were sketchbooks, some art supplies and a binder filled with lined paper to make myself look busy. The teacher let us out a minute early since we were being quiet, and Puma led me to wherever he was taking me.

We didn’t talk much on the way there, except for a few “how was your day”s and “only two more days left”s. He knew I liked walking with music on, so he handed me an earbud and we walked close to each other so we wouldn’t yank the cord out our ears. Strangely, the music he was playing was from the mixtape I brought with me, guess he keeps it in his cd player. I appreciate his retro æsthetic, sorta makes me feel comfortable going to school in my mum’s old band shirts and trench coat.

Before we got there, Puma covered my eyes. “Just to heighten the suspense, Blue.” He chuckled, leading me to the place.

“Okay, okay. Are we almost there?”

“Yep! Just a fewwww... more... steps... aaaand.. here!” He gave me back my ability to see.

We were on top of a hill, in a peninsular clearing in the forest of evergreen trees. There was a moderately sized cliff on one side, and a small creek ran down it. Despite it being bright outside, it had more shade than in the neighborhood. There were two chairs near the creek, and a lunchbox in the creek, acting as a makeshift cooler.

“Oh wow...” I gasp. Perfect tranquility up here.

“I know right? Sandy and I come up here sometimes just to hang out. It’s sorta earlier than I usually am up here, and it’s definitely more beautiful when it’s nighttime.” He read my mind about that.

“If it’s yours and Sandy’s secret place, why did you show me?” I kneel down on the cilantro-green grass, fidgeting with a fallen bunch of pine needles.

“Well, your my friend, and I know how much you like space, so I thought this would be a nice place to hang out from now on.” He sits down next to me, neglecting the chairs.

I start getting teary-eyed, and glance at Puma, smiling genuinely. “Thank you, Tom. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

“Anything for a friend.” After a few moments, he stands up, and helps me up. “Anyways, we should head back to my place to study for the geometry quiz tomorrow.”

I chuckle, lightly punching his arm. “You mean play video games ‘til I go home?”

“Yeah, but this time you could stay the night if you wanted to. You can sleep on the couch on the bottom part of the loft bed?” He smiled at me curiously. “I’m sure my mom would let you cook for us tonight~.”

I smirk, and start to walk with him to his house. I’d never pass down an opportunity to sleep inside for once. “That sounds nice. Thanks, you’re awesome, ya know that?”

Puma hands me a bottle of soda from the cooler as we walk, and puts the music back in our ears. “Nah Blue, you’re the most awesome.”

I couldn’t ask for a chiller friend than him, I’m glad it’s difficult for me to fly solo.

[hennyjolzen]

“In mythology, the archetype of the ‘trickster’ is often the character that keeps the world from appearing black and white. These characters dance over boundaries and between peoples. They often carry secret knowledge, which they divulge at the times that serve them best. It’s hard to be entirely sure whose team they are playing for, or what they are playing in the first place. Rarely trustworthy but always interesting, trickers are often my favorite characters.

“One of the reasons I’m so fascinated with tricksters is because they often break societal rules and expectations, playfully disrupting normal life in their antics. They are the ones that ask us to pay attention and to question the rigidity of the world we know. I sense a bit of that drive in myself. After all, throwing secret parties for strangers out in the woods is not exactly a societal norm! Gently encouraging my guests to cross the boundary away from the mundane world and join me in a magical feast is something I do with much pleasure. (That said, I’m less fond of many of the other ‘trickster’ activities, such as stealing cows, bribing gods, and causing plenty of other mischief.)

“While archetypes of the trickster appear in cultures all over the world, the ones that are most fascinating to me are the tales from this continent. Stories of tricksters - particularly Raven and Coyote -  have been gathered from many Native American tribes, but there are some common threads running through them. First, that the trickster is integral to growth. By shaking things up and questioning rigidity, the trickster often leads the people to view something with a new perspective. (After all, the biggest catalyst to growth is uncomfortable or curious change.)  Secondly, tricksters often left their physical mark upon the landscape. In fact, the famous Multnomah Falls outside of Portland was said to be a result of either Raven or Coyote’s efforts.

“In fact, many of those other marks on the landscape are found throughout our region here in the Pacific Northwest.  “Wila” is a type of black lichen (Bryoria fremontii) that drapes itself from branches in dark woods. Several different First Peoples tribes of the Northwest Region have legends about Wila being from the hair of Coyote. In various versions of the story, Coyote somehow gets his fur caught in a tree (after he’s been dropped by a swan, tricked by a spider, etc.) After he safely returns to earth, he decrees that his fur should be revered as food and not wasted. Nice save, Coyote.

“So, when I wander through the darkened forests dripping with black lichen, I smile to myself and wonder just how Coyote came to be stuck in that first tree anyways. The lichen I gaze at  is also known as Witch’s Hair Lichen, Old Man’s Beard, and Horsehair Lichen. It grows plentifully in the interior forests of the Pacific Northwest, giving them an eerie dark feeling. These are the sort of woods that I would imagine a witch would build her cottage in, and naturally would probably be one of her favorite ingredients to cook with as well.

“As Douglas Deur says in his book Pacific Northwest Foraging, ‘[Wila lichen] is blandly nutty and can be used raw or in porridge and breads. It was traditionally pit roasted and was an important part of the diet of Native Americans in the Northwest, serving as an everyday delicacy as well as an easily gathered year-round food for lean times… It was traditionally pit roasted or boiled into a somewhat nutty-tasting but bland porridge; usually it is sweetened or mixed with other ingredients for sweetness and textural diversity. The lichen can also be used in breads and other baked goods, and when pulverized it can be used as a leavening agent.’

“My interest in this ingredient was piqued when I read  that it could be used as a leavening agent in breads or cakes. As baking an airy gluten-free loaf is a bit of a challenge, I figured it was worth putting it to the test. I am happy to report that I saw a noticeable difference in the texture of my bread!

“Keep in mind when gathering that lichen grows almost unbelievably slowly. Never harvest it from trees; instead, take a walk after a good windstorm and pick up the pieces that have fallen to the forest floor. Never take all of it, as other animals depend on its rich carbohydrates for sustenance, especially during winter!

“Processing/Safety: Lichen contains vulpinic acid, which is what helps it dissolve the surfaces upon which it grows. Wila is naturally lower in this acid than most other local lichens, making it easy to leach out safely. You should be sure of identification, and gather the darkest pieces you can find, which will be lower in vulpinic acid. To process, first pick through your lichen to remove any unwanted debris such as pine needles or other kinds of lichen. Then fill a big pot ¾ full and add 2 Tbs. baking soda. Fill with water and bring to a boil, then strain. Repeat the process. Then, fill the pot with clean water and bring to a boil, then turn off and let sit overnight. Strain out the lichen and dry it (you may need an oven on its lowest setting or a dehydrator for this), then grind into flour using a spice grinder or flour mill. At various points in this process, it may look like you are cooking tar or preparing an unappetizing and gloopy black slime. I would encourage you to tap into that trickster energy and ask your family what they think of your dinner preparations. (I certainly had fun with that!)

“We’ll be mixing up the story of Coyote and the hair he left behind into a loaf worthy of the best forest witch. It’s a gluten-free loaf, similar in texture to a good rye bread. It has a pleasantly earthy and nutty flavor rich in umami, thanks to both the lichen and the sesame seeds that coat it. This bread rose far more than any other gluten free bread I’ve made and, while still denser than a typical gluten bread, had a pleasantly light and chewy texture. It also stayed fresh and moist for longer than is typical with gluten-free breads as well - just as tasty the second day as the first! “To make these loaves extra beautiful, I tried out some new bread-baking techniques. (These are described in the recipe.) I wanted to push the idea of boundaries, so I created a bread that looks like the night sky is cracking to reveal a sparkling beyond. If you want to dive into that metaphor like I did, it makes for some great mealtime conversation. If not, it’s just a really beautiful bread! The outer crust is firm and can be broken off and used like a pita chip for scooping up dips or butter. The interior is soft, with a faint smoky and umami flavor. This bread is wholesome, a little bit nutty, and absolutely delicious after a day in the woods.

“Wila Witch Bread (gluten free)

Ingredients:

I c. (1/4 lb)  brown rice flour

1 c. (1/4 lb) teff  or sorghum flour

1 ¼ c. (¼ lb) oat flour

1 c. (1/4 lb.)  tapioca starch

3 Tbs. (1 oz. black lichen flour)

1 Tbs. black cocoa powder, culinary charcoal, or regular cocoa powder

1 Tbs. + 1 tsp. xantham gum

2 Tsp. granulated yeast

2 Tsp. sea salt

2 (or 2 1/2 c.) lukewarm water (or brewed tea??)

2 Tbs. molasses

2 eggs

1/4 c. white rice flour, for dusting

A star stencil, optional

Another 2 Tbs culinary charcoal

Extra brown rice flour

About 3/4 c. black sesame seeds

Oil, to brush

Directions:

Whisk together the brown rice flour, tefff or sorghum flour, oat flour, tapioca starch, black lichen flour, black cocoa powder, xantham gum, yeast, and salt in a large bowl.

Add 2 cups water, the molasses, and eggs and mix well with a spoon or a stand mixer until everything is well combined. The dough should be fairly wet and sticky.

Cover loosely with a piece of saran wrap and allow to rest at room temperature for about 2 1/2 hours or until the dough rises slightly (unlike a normal wheat bread, this dough may not double in size)

Separate out ¼ of the dough and knead 2 Tbs. culinary charcoal into it, plus enough rice flour that you can easily roll it out (about 4 Tbs.) Cover and set aside.

On a piece of parchment paper on a pizza peel or a silicone baking mat, gently shape the main dough into a round loaf. Dampen your hands with water and use them to gently brush the outside to smooth it and make it sticky. Coat thoroughly with black sesame seeds.

Roll out your black dough into a large circle. Brush the back with oil, leaving 2” around the edges. Brush the edges with water. Gently set the black circle oil-side-down on top of the loaf. Tuck the ends in underneath. Place a star stencil over the loaf and dab with water, then sift white rice flour over the surface to leave a starry design. Cut an X in the top of the loaf, going through the charcoal layer only. (Kitchen scissors work well for this!) Then cut 4 more 2” slashes on the side of the loaf in the middle of each quarter, again being careful to just cut through the charcoal layer. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rest at room temperature for half an hour.

Meanwhile, preheat a baking stone in the middle of your oven to 450F for half an hour. Place an empty metal pot or pan in the oven that won’t interfere with the rising bread and that is accessible to add water to.

Carefully slide the loaf onto the hot stone. Pour a cup of hot water into the other pan and quickly close the oven door. The resulting steam will help the crust develop nicely. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until firm.

When you remove the bread from the oven, brush the sesame-encrusted areas with a bit of vegetable oil to really make them sparkle!

Allow to completely cool before slicing. (This is a great time to bake the onion blossoms below!) *As tempting as it may be to dive right into a delicious-smelling loaf, it is really important with gluten-free breads to allow them to cool at room temperature first. Otherwise the interior has an unbaked texture and will then dry out very quickly.

Sumac-roasted red onions and grapes:

I’ve included another wonderful fall recipe to serve with the Wila bread; sumac-roasted onions and grapes. These red onions “bloom” in the oven, creating a stunning accompaniment to the earthy flavors of the bread. Roasted grapes burst with sweetness and both are fantastic when paired with a bit of butter and eaten atop the wila bread. They are flavored with a sprinkling of tart sumac and herbs.

[d-llewyn]

The boy next door

He was cute, dark hair, a Beatles' cut coming down over his brown eyes a bit. And he had a smile that cut through to my heart. Not much younger than I was, except he was summer born and I was winter. We would hang out in my room above the garage, usually after we went swimming.

We'd been neighbors for a number of years, sharing backyards and pools, just two guys. He was in private school and I in a public one. In ninth grade, he joined the wrestling team. I had been taking judo for a few years, so I would practice partner for him. At first, we would just practice various moves, especially ones he saw on TV. Over time things got interesting beyond anything we ever had ever imagined.

Eventually we would start in the pool, chasing each other, so slippery when wet. Then stroll back to my room, maybe playing a little grab ass. Sometimes I would let him win. He was bit shorter, but stockier than I, so we were evenly matched. He was a bit stronger and would take advantage of his slightly lower center of gravity. But I was wily, wiry and wriggly, especially when wet!

At some point, after ages of serially sharing the shower, we discovered that naked was infinitely more fun. Parallel bodies. After the first time we tried it, it was de rigour. The feel of our bodies sliding together always made us so very aware of our mutual manhood, our shared pleasure points.

At first we were always in a rush. Over those first few years we learned to slow down, to drag out the pleasure to fill the time allowed. Sometimes we would lose ourselves in an entire weekend if both sets of parents were away.

We were grabby, horny teenagers. You know the type, insatiable. We touched and explored each other any, I repeat any time we were alone. Once, when our parents had dinner together at his home, we each had a hand in the others pants, albeit discreetly, at various points during the evening. I believe it was an underwear optional evening.

We were both circumcised. He was beautiful and would come to full attention at the touch of my fingers. Sometimes I would just put my hand on his thigh and he would harden so quickly in his tight jeans that he would yelp in discomfort as there was no room to expand! We were at it as often as we could manage. He was a little shorter down there, about a half inch, than I was. His testicles much tighter and drawn up than mine. And surrounded by a a lovely crown of dark shiny pubic hair that was soft, curly and tangled as my fingers explored the base of his phallic glory. Slightly thinner at the base, expanding a bit as it came to the crown, the glistening corona, that which I craved above all else.

As you can tell, I was, and still am, a very oral person. The scent of his always Ivory clean white briefs always beckoned. I would lower his jeans and press my face to his crotch and revel in the clean smell of Ivory soap that was ambrosia to me.

There were times he stepped, clean and scrubbed from the shower, a mini-god in my hands as I gently dried him off and attended to his manhood. We tended to think of ourselves as hedonistic Romans or Greeks. And we knew about the the naughty bits of Greco-Roman history. That made it so much fun! Long before NatLampCo's Animal House came out we had fun with togas.

I remember well the day I saw him in the shower playing with himself. I had stopped to pick up so chips and soda from the main house. Even with the creaky stairs of the ancient garage apt he didn't see me enter and take in the water dripping off his sweet tan skin, running off those lightly fitted orbs. I ran, sliding on the tile as I went to my knees before him, inhaling his cock as I tickled his balls and teased his tender taint. I gently grazed the clean wrinkled arse. It pulsed as I traced a delicate finger tip around it.

It was a supremely intense happening.

As mentioned, he was in a private school, Catholic, and I in a public one. This was fantastic. We could each have our separate, public, more sexually "normal" lives, at least for the 60s. Our school buddies never had to know.

Now we were just two guys that had sex together. It was good clean, if often sticky, fun. Neither of us really thought about the implications. There a book the parents library, a psychology text, that explained that what we were doing was normal for boys our age. Exploration was natural.

Then one day, the world changed.

We liked to camp. I was damned good at low weight, high comfort bedding. I like my comfort, but I don't like to lug too much around. Extensive Boy Scout experience.

It was one fine Spring morning as we camped under a blooming dogwood tree. White petals were strewn around us on a soft bed of pin needles. The scene would have made a beautiful painting or picture, had I a decent camera. The tall pines swayed gently around us as the morning sun danced and peeped between them. It was so very quiet except for the rustle of the trees in the gentle morning wind. Glorious and sensual privacy, yet exposed to the world.

My god I loved my dear friend and bedroom adventurer! And sex with him was always more passionate and sweaty than it was with my girlfriend. She was good, but someone the same sex always had a better clue as to what turned you and them on. And a hard phallus was always so damn obvious in its desire to cum.

Anyway, I woke this absolutely beautiful morning and gazed over at my friend. We slept under a simple tarp, a lean-to, but open on all sides, exposed in slumber, except t-shirts and sleeping boxers. I had woken his my usual teenage morning boner. (CisGuys will understand this!) He lay, sleeping on his bedroom, his blanket mostly tossed off during the night. He so obviouly was erect, his shorts tentpoled. After a few moments of quiet appreciation and rather horny thoughts, I got up and crossed to his bedroll. I gazed down and reached out, tracing butterfly touches about his manhood. He twitched a bit and, dare I imagine, smiled! I took this as a sign to dip down and kiss it. I had done this a thousand times before, but this was different. He was, in this moment, the most lovely and desirable person on the planet.

I realized that sex with him was right and normal in my life. And then I promptly deep throated him for the very first time without trace of discomfort while comfortably breathing through my nose as I worked my lover's sweet business.

Even if I could not let most of the kids a school know, I enjoyed sex with both sexes rather equally, although each supplied unique pleasures to relish and sometimes wallow in. And I knew then that I always would love a good man and his cock.

Now, here's the part some people find surprising. Even though I started my sexual explorations and dalliances in early junior high, 7th grade, I remained a virgin with men and women till I was 21. This was not for lack of desire or trying.

Part of my issue was that I am and always have been very adamant about consent. There was also my style. I was polite, yet obviously interested and girls liked that. I just played hard to get. From the first, I never touched unless invited.

For example, the first time I ever played a hand on that other most glorious creation, the breast, I was sitting under a tree in a park on a pleasant day. Peggy lay with her head on my thigh, my hand on her stomach making light, lazy circles on her stomach.

At some point she looked up, a look of pleased exasperation on her face, a smile in her eyes, mischief a making. She reached down and took my hand in hers, squeezed, gazing into my eyes, a sense of secure satisfaction in her visage. Then she lay it upon her breast.

First impression, soft! I suppose I should mention that she was, ahem, 34DD and soft like pillows of finest down. And this in spite of the fact that I prefer smaller B cups. I was quite pleased with myself. She was rather pleased with my seeming natural talent for playing with her nipples with what was to get the proper amount of gentleness and roughness. She didn't have to know I developed the skill with my buddy and his cute brown little nubbins.

Yes,I have a talent for the art of gentle, barely restained and appreciative eagerness that anyone, regardless of sex, gender or interest, who was capable of sexual arousal sorely appreciated.

Now you may rightly get the impression I was politely and discretely brazen. Indeed I was. However, parents, for the most part, liked me and, gasp, trusted me, more or less. It was to my benefit that I was (usually) a well dressed long-hair. (Preferred classical, but Led Zep and Zappa had their place amongst my interests.) I was unfailing polite without pandering. I would take a date to a play, get ourselves off on the way home, then discuss the play, say Brecht's Galileo, with a parent. They would mostly ignore the fact that we had missed curfew a bit.

Dressing up or down was both natural and schooled. I could pull off pink, single needle shirts, with French cuffs, and arty, modern cufflinks to match at school without being thought of as different. I also had a penchant for old saddle Oxfords with red rubber soles. Classy looking, yet good on the court.

I learned early in life that the manners my grandmothers taught worked with almost everyone, no matter the situation, or desire. Always polite and at the ready to hold the door for friends and especially the sweet young things, irrespective of gender or sex. I was a gentlemanly, exceedingly polite collection of intellectual interests and animal desires.

(Not quite finished yet. This is relatively unedited, so far. Will be breaking it down as I go. A sort of autobiography, slightly fictionalized for a variety reasons, that will probably morph, expand and sprawl, much as any living thing might, then divide into more discrete and coherent chunks. Enjoy.)