#bee watches brilliant minds

[slightlyobsessedwitheverything]

“in the meantime, why don’t you borrow my mom” wolf is an angel 😭 i love him

also MANDY?

[rel124c41]

PSILOCYBIN AND HONEYCOMB. jade leech

There is something terribly wrong with the queen bee. Gentle and kind. Out of her mind. inspired by @merakiui dabbles and @pathosprit asks about god!floyd/cultist!reader

tags: alternative universe - cults, implied/referenced drug use, old gods, falling in love, blood and gore, beekeeping, fluff and smut, unhealthy relationships, thought projection, gentleness, inspired by psilocybin and honeycomb by harley poe, murder

word count: 11,895

When you are ten, round-faced and small, you watch the Reverend heat up the branding iron. He twirls it in the fire like it is a marshmallow, making sure the iron is covered evenly with a brilliant scarlet red. Gold dances over the thick, ebony gloves that the Reverend wears and shadows jump across the stone creases of his aged face. You watch the sigil rotate in numerous circles. 

A foreign hand pulls up your dress, exposing your stomach and underwear. You keep watching the circle of iron and fire; as the speed of the Reverend's hands pick up, the two materials blend together in a racing whirlpool of a red and gold comet. Beautiful. 

“It won’t hurt will it, Mom?” Your small voice is full of terror; your wrists tremble in the hold of the two adults pinning you down to the table.

“No sweetie, no it won’t.” Your mother, the unmarried woman who got pregnant, presses a kiss to your forehead.

When the Reverend presses the branding iron down on the skin on your hypogastric skin, right under your belly-button, it is the last time you know fear. 

By the stream, God – The Odd One – calls and beckons and sings.

Hands fall idle in surprise. You were not expecting a summon from Him today. Raising your head from your task, you listen closely. It could have just been the snapping branch under a rabbit’s foot or the breeze blowing too roughful in a bush. You wait patiently for that divine melody to resume itself. 

In the pregnant pause, a white dress rustles through the current of the stream. Its arms wave helpless. Under the water, the fabric mimics a dead gray hue. 

There is no secondary call or beckoning. Holding your breath long enough, you fall back into your task. 

White dress in hand, you scrub it with a mixture of mammal fat and lye. The cleansing agent bubbles and carries down the stream. If the heart of your God resides anywhere on land, it is here, your favorite place; in His heart, you do your laundry, domestic. 

The Reverend would be appalled at that thought. You think with a smile. Water collapses from the dress as you wring it out. But it is an entirely true thought. The deeper you venture in the forest, the more you can hear Him. It is only when you reach for the robin egg blue dress does He come back, voice oscillating through nature. 

A testing call? Dropping the garment, you listen intently, waiting to see where you can jump into the melody. After a beat, you find your place in the song. The construction of the deut sounds like this:

A stream sweeping in a downward incline, splashing in playful, petite waves as it tickles lower. It is bordered by plentiful grass. Like boats caught in a fierce storm, a handful of pine-cones freckled in the water move across the stream. Rocks break apart the smoothness of the water. The song emphasizes that the rocks give it a fresh uniqueness rather than damage the serenity of the stream. 

The chorus is a bumble bee landing on a black dahlia. Silk, ebony petals curl off the center like a hundred thumbnails in a bouquet. In the light of nature, the black of the flower shines a red-violet. Nestled in the middle like an arrow in a bullseye, the bumble bee robs and rapes the center of the black dahlia, stabbing at the nectar with their needle-thin legs. 

Carrying your voice higher, you sing about the breeze. The breeze puppets the leaves to give a graceful, continuous wave to the visitors of the forest. The bridge focuses on an earthworm. It is alone, red with speckles of earth. You take your voice past its limit when you find yourself singing about a forest fire. The ballad continues under two watchful, olive-brown eyes.

Unnoticed, the son of the village’s livestock handler watches you break your vocal limit for God. So devoted to him. Piety works itself over the tendons of your throat, pushing and pressing too hard, like a violin’s bow. As the unknown, dueting voice, Jade watches and listens to your consecrating voice, peeved.

Around you, Jade finds that his inhibition has been escaping. 

He has been alive for numerous generations, witnessing patterns of human speech, human practices, and most importantly human fears. Fear is older than Jade. Older than the sediment on the ground that you sing to. Thus, innate fears often stay with generations – the fear of death, thanatophobia, is a prominent recurrence. 

As the God of nature, Jade knew. He had felt men press their heads into the crust of the earth, begging for the other men chasing him to let him live. Felt people rack up dirt with fingers, feverishly pleading for the resurrection of a sick son or sick daughter. Felt fists pound the trees in frustration for the souls he collected and ate. 

Even still, they worshiped him. Thinking they would be allowed into a paradise, ignorant that the old door death opened was a door made of teeth and tongues. Even with the false promise of paradise, thanatophobia reigned supreme and trumped all other fears in humans. In all humans except you. 

You. How strange you are, altering the rules of humanity, since your tenth birthday. 

You focus on nature; he focuses on you. 

As you two sing together, he feels that familiar retreat of inhibition. All of it dissolves into the color and shape of nature like a technicolor sea, blending together. Everything he thought he knew about humans changes with a tiny paint splosh, ruining the masterpiece he made.

“Oh, look at you. All alone,” a voice breaks the song. 

Rounding around, you glare at the intruder as God falls silent. You look at Jade as if you two were hunters and he had just scared off a deer you had been tracking. God galloping away off on hooves. Vexation like a gleam in your eyes. 

“What do you want, Jade?”

Jade Leech is perhaps the most annoying villager in your town, sticking to you like his surname suggests. He had shown up with his mother and father about three years ago when you were twelve. Usually, outsiders did not join the congregation, but the Reverend spoke positively of them. You trusted your Father’s judgment until the boy proved to hold great interest in you and all the things you did. 

“I was just checking up on my dear friend, (Name).”

He is not even respectable about your status. The village calls you ‘One’ for Chosen One. At ten years old, you lose your name like one loses a sock. Not Jade; he likes to call you by the name your mother picked.

“How kind of you,” sarcasm drips from your throat, sore with singing.

“You’re most welcome. You’ve taken to changing the spot where you wash your clothes.”

“Yes, I was hoping someone wouldn’t find me here.”

“It is very nicely secluded so I am sure that they won’t be able to locate it.” 

I thought so too, your inner thoughts mourn.

“Though it might be a bit dangerous. So far off from the ocean and village. Why, who knows what kind of coyotes or animals could be wandering around in the thicket.”

“I assure you, I’m quite alright in the wilderness.” 

It is a true statement. You were particularly blessed when it came down to manners of the environment and the animals which it housed. Call it divine intervention, call it confidence. Whatever it is named, you are spared a lot of trouble that could potentially come from inhuman footprints. 

“Who knows? That unwanted company might seize the opportunity and attack.” Jade’s olive-brown eyes watch your back. Your shoulders move with the pattern of your scrubbing. Sweat latches tight to the curvatures of your visible skin. “Like right now, going for your jugular.”

“Try it, Jade,” you challenge, smiling – not in a friendly way.

Accepting the challenge, Jade stands back and watches your shoulder fall still. The smile on his face is not shark-toothed but it beams with the animosity of such a creature. You have other teeth to worry over. Fangs full of venom, a water snake has wrapped itself around your arm, sneaking up from its hiding spot under the dress and soap.

A copperhead snake twines itself up your forearm like an orange-brown vine. Immediate, your hand falls comatose, not waiting to disturb it. Here. Here is where the human pattern of thanatophobia should come into play. Jade waits eagerly for a shriek; copperheads are venomous, he is certain you know this.

You do not tremble with your actions. You do not tremble with your voice. Irking Jade further, you reach a finger from your opposing arm over the copperhead’s head. The snake does not acknowledge your stroke, continuing to squeeze, as you move down and grasp the tail.

“Jade.”

“Hm?”

“You should step back. This is dangerous.”

A fire of anger ignities on Jade’s shoulders. Cheek twitching, he glares at the back of you. You were concerned for his safety? There is a venomous snake acting friendly with the veins in your arm, yet you told him to stand back. So caught up in disbelief, he misses you successfully unwrapping the copperhead from yourself.

Which you proceed to throw in a bush, just a foot or two away from Jade is standing. “Bravo,” Jade says, unflinching. He stalks towards you. 

“Told you to move.” You pull your clean dress out of the water, wringing it out.

“I do not see how you can be so composed in the grip of death. It is perplexing.”

“Death is always at our sides.” In the water, Jade’s shadow oscillates like a match’s sparkling flame. A quarter of it folds over your shoulder. “Why would I have any reason to be afraid of it?”

“You are the sacrifice of this village.” Jade puts a hand to his heart, leering expression painting itself on his face. Waits patiently for you to get frustrated with him. “I think it is natural that you would think about it more often.”

You look up at Jade, trying to decipher why the thought causes him qualms. Into your wicker basket, you lay the slightly damp dress. Task finished, you bring the basket to your hip as you stand up from the stream.  

“I have no qualms over it.” Then the conversation dies as you walk off, nobody’s buttercup.

The stream babbles as you walk alongside it. Like a puppy barking at your heels, you two move in sync. Somewhere in the bush, you think you can hear the sound of the copperhead rustling. A person disinclined towards the very thought of death, that is who you are. Embracing it, you jump upon the fallen, precarious log that hovers over the stream. 

You glance at Jade who watches you. Then, wicker basket in hand, you step with a note on your tongue. Walking down the log to the other side, you say with each footfall, “do re mi fa sol la ti do.” Your voice goes higher as your steps evolve into stomps. 

You crash onto the other side, leaves crunching, as Jade asks, “What was that?”

“Something I’ve been orchestrating.” You challenge him with a look, separated by running water. “You should try it. You never sing at any of the entheogens.” 

Before the village drinks the holy wine mixed with the holy mushroom of God, the entheogens ceremonies call for everyone to sing. You have never seen Jade’s mouth so much as twitch. Though, surprisingly, no one ever makes a fuss about it. The village turns it back on any of the blasphemous actions of Jade Leech. 

“Unless you sing like a croaking toad … ah, then I suppose it all makes sense. It would be a disgrace to your parents if you sang. Unfortunate.”

Jade’s brows furrow. Got him. As he walks down the log, forgoing the stomping you did, he sings the rising scale, “do re mi fa sol la ti do.” He lands by your side, hopping off the behemoth log. There is a golden firecracker of satisfaction in his olive-brown eyes. 

“I did not know you could sing like that.” 

The firecracker sizzles out as Jade’s brows shoot up. He feels a light pink start to tiptoe up to his cheeks.

Your voice is soft like honey, full of awe. Your reticent inhibition around Jade melts at that moment. Like snow on spring ground, you warm up eternally – just a bit! – to the invading pest that is Jade Leech. Someone who has been like a mite in your otherwise well kept paradise. You take him in a different light: cropped black hair, slim face, and olive-brown eyes just a bit less obnoxious. You had only heard such a singing voice from –

“Come. Let us go unless that someone you want to avoid finds this spot.”

The thought disappears. Blinking, you watch Jade stalk off. When you regain yourself, basket in hand, you walk just a bit behind him. Like the stubborn child you are, you bite the inside of your cheek, thinking:

Jade sounds good when he sings. 

You two continue silently back to the village, Jade leading. It is a content walk, not even many rocks or lifted ground to trouble the path. Nature sings around the two in a musique concrete of twigs, leaves, and dirt. It is only when you feel a small tug that you wander off.

Jade watches with knowing, incorrectly colored eyes. 

Your eyes sparkle upon a holy sight. More than a dozen light brown and ivory white jellyfish caps stand up straight in grass off the path. Like toads in mud, they break through the dehydrated grass in poor camouflage. Psilocybin mushrooms. The mushrooms that your congregation holds in high regard; a mushroom on piety par with a cross or a clerical collar. 

Like the winner of an Easter egg hunt, you go to collect the mushrooms. Prizes God had hidden from you so you could search and prove yourself. Carefully, you start to put them in your wicker basket, sprinkles of dirt landing on the top dress. 

Shadow folding over you, Jade inquires, breaking the silent retreat, “How many more days until you die, (Name)?”

No one should ever smile at such an inquiry. Yet, here you do, proud of the psilocybin mushrooms in hand, you answer with a big grin, “1,746 days.”

“Jade Leech, you little thief! Get back here right now!”

You look up upon hearing those words. Four buildings away, you watch as a towel crack on the back of Jade’s spine as he walks out of the bakery. The head chef seems to be the one caterwauling at him, twisted towel weaponized like a claymore. A sly smile is plastered on Jade’s face despite the hit.

Idiot; no one steals from her and leaves without a tussle. She, the head chef, is caterwauling like a soaked cat. A smile still emerges on your face despite your previous trouble. Speaking of those troubles – 

You turn back to your work. There are not many jobs for you to take in the village. As the ritual’s sacrifice, labor is something you do not need to concern yourself with as the Reverend says. Attending prayer services, purifying yourself, and connecting with nature are your top priorities. You stretched out the limitations on the last priority and managed to convince that soft-hearted Reverend to let you start beekeeping with two village elders. 

If our God is in every mushroom, every flower, every faucet of nature, it must be alright for me to care for His holy insects too? : that pathos and ethos argument won you the rights to take up beekeeping. 

Right now, you are troubled by your job. Hairy white sections are on the lower burr comb and cells. It festers on a block of the hive where the queen is. A sign of another pest within the hive. However, none of the other signs were present upon last inspection. Of course, the sign of incursion would be near the queen – the most sensitive and paramount part of the hive.

The queen bee eludes your gaze right now, worker bees swarming around. You go to see if you can get a few to walk on your hand when something breaks your line of sight. Your hand stills. Held out to you is a half-ripped piece of bread. 

Not taking it, you look up at the smiling face of Jade. Far away, surprisingly not giving chase, the head chef shouts: “Little devil child! You pest!” The grin on Jade’s face widens, teeth flashing at you. 

“If only she knew the half of it. Here.” Jade holds up the bread, trying to appear generous in his motives. “Freshly baked.”

“Freshly stolen,” you correct. You take it either way. Stealing is frowned upon by the congregation but you have no fear left to worry about consequences. A tiny bite leaves you pleasantly surprised. Sourdough. You go back in for a bigger bite.

Jade sits down beside you, eating his own share and looking into the broods. Glancing up from your piece, you say, “You did that on purpose.” 

“Stealing is often a motivated task.”

“No. You got caught on purpose; you’re slippery enough to steal and not get noticed.”

“I assure you that I was trying my hardest to not get caught.”

“Ah I see,” you say, wholly unconvinced. 

“Your mind is not at ease. Usually you smile more when attending to your bees.” 

Like a chipmunk, you stuff your cheeks with sourdough to avoid answering. “It is unlike a person of your standing,” Jade continues. Your standing: your life’s merit as a sacrifice. The reason that everyone calls you One instead of (Name). The Chosen One connected to the Odd One through nature and, thus, nature’s creatures.

“Sumtin’ s ‘rong wit the quee.”

“Pardon?”

You swallow, “Something’s wrong with the queen.” You spear a crescent into the bread’s crust with your nail. Despondent, you explain, “There are signs of an infestation near her section. I also noticed the capped cells were full of holes and overall seemed frail. That’s a sign of Varroa but I haven’t seen a single mite or deformed wings.” 

“Always the queen isn’t it?”

“I don’t understand why I can never raise a healthy queen. The cell caps of hers always appear healthy, but halfway through, she suffers from signs of unknown invasion.” Quarantining your bees is the most viable option but you would rather solve this matter before taking a drastic measure. If only you could locate her –

You jump when Jade presses his hand close to the honeycomb structures. “Hey, be careful! You need gloves!”

“You do not wear gloves.”

“That’s different!”

“Hush.”

At that word, you happily wait for him to get strung. With his inexperience, it should only take a short amount of time. Sourdough in hand, you sit back to watch the show. Bees crawl like pouring vinegar over his pallid hand, curious, and you huff at his gentleness. Any moment now. Any moment comes but it comes with Jade pulling hand away with the queen bee on his forefinger.

“How did you –”

“What, like it’s hard?”

“I hate you.”

Jade smiles wide at that. The queen on his finger flicks her wings as he moves his hand to hover between you two. She seems fairly healthy despite all the disturbance around her. “Trying to steal my job, Jade,” you ask when he passes her to you. 

“Do not even entertain the thought. I do not particularly enjoy insects. They may be entertaining for an hour or so, but I am content with the thought of their entire colony going up in flames one day.”

“Monster.”

Jade smiles in his you-don’t-know-the-half-of-it way. 

Jade stares up at the statue of himself, contemplative. 

For five out of thousands of years, Jade has passed time wearing fake human skin. Fake pallid hands find themselves stroking his neck for gills no longer there. Those hands hesitate over touching his ears, feeling thick muscle and bone instead of a thin membrane of skin. His trepidation around looking-glasses has eroded over the half decade. But, Jade still finds himself not entirely accepting parts of the body he puppets.

Walking around in the wrong skin is like wearing clothes too small. It squeezes over him like latex, tightening when he moves a certain way and constricting when he looks at it too long. 

His hands especially are wrong, lacking webbed structure and the correct hues. How his fingernails flush purple and his fingers red when it is cold … it disgusts him. How his veins are blue under sand toned skin … it is a sickening sight. The human body wrapped around his working brain and working heart, it is the most grotesque part of this trail. Sometimes, he wants nothing more to shed it off an amphibian. 

Jade takes his vexed gaze off his hands and returns to staring at the monument. Cleaners are put on rotation to polish and scrub down the entirety of him, forbidding moss or dirt to lay upon him. They are quite meticulous about it too. Meticulous like how a mother bathes her child. They scrub behind his ears, over the ridges of his dorsal fin, under the extended points of his claws. He has seen real, palpable joy on the faces of those given the job.

The sculptor … died about 2,050 years ago if Jade’s memory is right. 

Withstanding the test of time, here the effigy of his true form lies, propped up on a block of marble chiseled to look like a sweeping wave. His face is sculpted in a polite mien with the slightest hint of malice. Smiling with teeth yet not with all his teeth. Just the top row. In stone, his tail dips in backwards J and is hooked upward like the frozen neck of a screaming horse on a carousel. 

If asked, Jade thinks he misses his tail most right alongside his hands. The only change that he does not mind is his hair. Living on a warm island with long hair would have been bothersome, especially on his neck. The cropped style is nice; his real hair would have made him sweat. 

Then, staring down the effigy of himself, Jade realizes he made a mistake earlier. He knows he misses swimming the most. His tails and hands: they are mere tools to propel him when in the sea, so deep in his plunge that it feels like he is moving universe to universe with each wide stroke. 

Only less than three years remain until your death. 819 days if his memory serves correct. And this time it does; he is as certain as stone is hard. But such a long time in fake skin feels like the lifespan of a human, dragging day by day. Each inhale of the sun and exhale of the moon feeds the bugs crawling on his skin, uncomfortable in this fake skin.

Jade wonders, scratching his forearm, if he should speed this sacrificial ritual as he watches you race across the field towards him. He glances down at your nude human feet. Quadriceps, sinew tendons, and bone propelling you forward until you skid to a stop in front of him – with a jar in your hands? 

“Look what I have!” There is a big, prideful grin on your face. With a flourish, you raise up said jar. And Jade responses –

“Wow. A jar. How marvelous.”

Your expression flattens at that. As if retreating, you pull the jar to your ribcage, protective arms around it. “It’s not just any jar. It’s my – Itchy? I think we have some medicine in –” 

Jade pauses his scratching to interrupt. “No, I’m quite alright.” The marks running up his skin are angry and red, yet miraculously not bleeding. “So,” leaning in, he grins with all his teeth and says, “what’s in the jar? Must be revolutionary with how fast you ran over here.”

“It is!” Pride relights your body. You unscrew the jar with flying fingers. Then, you hold out the open mouth of the jar towards Jade, waiting for praise.

“Ah, honey.”

“Not just any honey; it is the last flow of honey.”

“I see. There is no more honey after that. So we will eat pancakes without honey soon, correct?”

“You’re not getting it, are you?”

“Afraid not.”

“Hmph.” You bring the jar back to your chest as Jade ponders on why humans are so sensitive. “The best months to harvest honey are from July to mid-September, right? And it is mid-September, right?” Jade nods at both your inane questions. Still not getting it. “Honey is the sweetest and best when you collect the last honey flow. The nectar flow from this is the one they make in the summer! It is going to taste Godly!” 

“Careful what words you use, (Name).”

You two glance up at the company you keep. Though his gray left eye and yellow right eye are the same hue of stone, they seem to shine. Something fierce and glowing breaking through inert expression. You smile mischievously. “I’ll make it up to him when I’m dead. Now. Taste this.”

With a roll of olive-brown eyes, Jade leans in to observe the jar which you are once more offering him. Inside, the yellow honey tilts like a slow avalanche with the degree you hold it at. Gold gleams like the surface of the ocean under sunlight, almost sparkling. I almost miss home, Jade thinks as he dips his index finger in. 

Oh.

Finger in mouth, Jade does not want to admit it but you are right. This is perhaps the best honey he has sampled before. The nectar slides down his tongue, touches his throat, and slugs down to his stomach. It is almost an addictive taste. 

It is an uncleaned sweetness that melts down his throat. Like blasphemous scripture. 

Jade really should not show you his enthusiasm for it; your pride will only increase knowing he enjoys it and you will grow more annoying. Yet, as if pulled by strings, he sticks his finger back into the jar. Before tasting, he asks, “What did you say the difference with this flow is?”

“It is the last flow of the season. With the bees hibernating soon, you can maximize the honey you are collecting by being patient. But there’s really an entire system to it, making sure you don’t strike too early or late.”

“Would it not be the sweetest during summer when the bees are most active?”

“Nope. Patience is the key; beekeeping is a waiting game.” 

A waiting game? He watches you stick your own finger in, feasting on the rewards of your patience. The later harvest yields a richer taste. How splendid of his sacrifice to say just the words he needs to hear to understand himself and motives. 

Eventually, almost telepathically as if both of you know what your companion is thinking, you and Jade stare up at the statue. Your saliva-coated finger and dry fingers place the cap back on the jar, leaving it unscrewed yet lidded. Jade waits until you are enraptured with the sculpture before he turns his attention to you. 

You stare, contemplative. The sun is three hours off from its peak. Thus piscine shadows of the statue fall onto awaiting blades of grass. The silhouette of his dorsal fin like a knife and the silhouette of his hunched shoulders, leaning in like he is going to burst to life any moment. He has this hardly contained enmity is his expression, upturned eyes too sharp and smile too tiny. 

“Can’t you just see me and him, together in paradise?”

“You two will make a lovely couple.”

“Heh, that’s what they all say.”

Jade studies your profile. There is just a tiny droplet of animosity in your worshiping eyes that he is desperate to uncover the truth about. You are bitter about something. However, whenever Jade tries to peek into that hate circuit rivering itself through your cortex, he gets nothing. 

He supposed he could ask; if he is going to bid his time in other realms, he has more time to analyze the ecosystem of your brain. You startle when he speaks. “(Name). If you were not the chosen one, what would you do with the rest of your life?”

The expression you give Jade is easy to read: confusion. “If I wasn’t the – why, I couldn’t imagine my life any other way.”

“But try to. Try to imagine your twenty-first birthday.”

“Stop being ridiculous, Jade.”

“I am as serious as death.”

You shake your head furiously. “There is no other choice to make, but I am using my choice and have chosen to be there. As the chosen one.”

Jade, with all his immortal life wisdom goes huh? at your verbal affirmation. 

“Such a boy,” you mourn, frowning up at his statue. You shuffle your bare toes on the ground, feeling the dirt cling onto them and tune into the radio of nature for a bit. After a contemplative moment, you say, “I am nobody’s buttercup. But I must do something so I will do that.”

“I see.” 

Taking your words as a challenge, Jade leans in. Your nose scrunches, thinking he is going to do something odious and ruin this perfect, honey-coated day. If you were built in the image of your God, you would want his teeth so you could snap at Jade’s nose. The sentiment grows when Jade flicks the lid off the jar — it frisbees through the air — and scoops up a handful of honey. Some of it doesn’t even make it into his mouth!

“Hey! No stealing from the chosen one!”

“You never said there was a time limit on the honey you offered.”

“Well, there is one now! We have to make this last until next September! I have only two Septembers left!”

Jade laughs, licking the honey off his wrist. He makes another grab at the jar as you rush away from him, trying to retrieve the lid. “Back! Back, you heathen!” And the smile Jade makes as he chases you around the field is a perfect copy of the expression that is carved into stone. 

Time passes like it always does. Life is a constant stream that connects in the ocean of death, making itself the estuary of mortality. 

Those two Septembers pass and twice more you successfully harvest the perfect honey flow. Even when Jade jokes all sinister that you should enjoy these last moments of good food, dipping sourdough into honey, you never even shake. At the apiary, all the jars are empty, trails of gold stubbornly clinging onto the glassware. You and Jade make the effort to scrub all the ones you used clean until they shine. 

“You’re not afraid at all,” Jade asks, watching you scrub the remains of your presence from the world. All you are: congealing honey on a rag which you will dip into the nearby stream, which will carry you away to a water funeral. 

“Not at all.” It must be true. Because under the winter’s sun, your hands are steady and determined. Because when Jade asks how many days are left, you respond with an unshakable voice. Because Jade thinks with some sort of thrill unlike any he has known, you have been waiting as patiently as he has. 

It is only when the number of days decrease and shrink down to the number seven does Jade’s patience break. 

There is no sunshine shining down on you but you are still as bright as ever. Under the silver moonlight, you twirl and run and even cartwheel in the open field. You have been forgoing any sort of sleep, utilizing all the hours in a twenty-four hour day until you pass out from exhaustion, nature as your mattress. No one in the village disapproves of it, seeing it as you embracing your God. Jade wishes someone would though. He has unfortunately been dragged out for the past seven nights by you, wanting his company.

And I still have seven more to go, Jade thinks, leaning against his statue. He never thought he would grow tired but even a human body has limits. Sleep addles Jade’s brain as his neck bends as if he is caught in prayer. 

He snaps back up when you shout. “Jade! Jade look!”

Seeing that you have his attention, you launch right into it. You take a running start, hands up in the air. Cartwheel, cartwheel, cartwheel, ending with a front flip. Supernaturally energetic, you raise your arms up in your success, dress billowing around you, ready to accept the claps. 

Jade manages a few light ones and says, “Well done, (Name).”

You smile happily. “Praise me more; this is the last week I’ll be alive to hear any sort of praise.” You twirl and watch the white of your summer dress puff up in a jellyfish shell. “Make sure they do not neglect to make mention of how good I was at cartwheels in the legends and stories.”

“I won’t, (Name).”

You fall back into it. Among the tall grass, you do a wide variety of different exercises and a variety of different dances. You move with the ease of an autumn leaf, trusting the wind. To the unheard and unsung song of nature and God, you gyrate around. Like God’s personal instrument, you bend yourself to the symphony that no one in your village has ever heard. 

I’ll miss dirt, you think just as you blindly twirl into a patch of fireflies. 

Fireflies explode around you like a firework. Wide-eyed and gasping, you pause with your hands raised up. Buzzing and rapid, the tiny comets of gold lift up from the flora and paint the night with tinier stars. Gripping the train of your dress, you rotate yourself to make room for the fireflies launching up to the west, laughing all the while. 

Eventually, they dissolve into the sky, leaving your eyes chasing after them. They dissolve in dying breaths and dying heartbeats. You watch the last of them flicker out, finding a new patch to lie on or traveling too far for you to see them. 

Oddly, an invisible bruise on your chest starts to ache. 

Dirt encrusted feet carry your body before you comprehend what you are doing. Wildly, like something monstrous is at your heels, you run into the nearby thicket of trees, determined to reach the deepest part of the forest which surrounds the village.

“(Name)?” Jade squints at your fast-retreating form. “(Name)!” He picks himself off the statue as you rush into the forest, almost like you are in a panic. 

“Catch me!” 

The chase prematurely begins. 

Jade dives into the forest after you. Pushing branches out of his way and jumping over protruding vegetation. Hundred elements of nature flicker across his vision as he runs and runs. Shadows elongate and distort under the occluding moon. He elbows his weight on a tree so it pushes him faster. Blanketed under nebulous black, the world beats with a thousand different songs. 

All the while you are hollering and screaming. Screams evolve into frantic giggles and hollering matures into singing. Do Re Me Fa Sol La Ti Do, your feet race down the cliff slide in the pattern of the musical scale. 

Your body is an instrument, Jade. Listen to it and you will be closer to God. Narcotic words you once said, deranged out of your mind. Narcotic words that you said while certain that patches of grass were growing from the planes of your skin. Narcotic words he had not paid much mind to. Closer to God, hm?

The crunch of leaves as you two run are like lyrics, right? Yet, the soles of his feet are like the percussion too? Guitar strings tendons pull with different frets and notes. Piano key fingers reach out and crush the branches in his way. His most powerful instrument is acting strangely though. His voice. That particular instrument is doing something it has never done before: laughing. 

Is this what being human is, always running? He thinks this might be the faintest sniff of what it means to be a human: always running away from time. The epiphany is not about being human through sweet acceptance or love. His first taste of humanity is in the sweat of running and running while chasing. 

Closer to God. Closer to humans. 

At times, your aptitude is unreadable to Jade … that aptitude that guides you to never fear death. He wonders why there is such a wide gap between you and others when it comes to the terms of death. Closing in, he thinks: This Is The One. His fingers reach out, A0 from C8 scale running across phalanges. He could push you. With the momentum doubled with the rocks –

Still running, you turn to laugh at Jade. The pure joy on your face is blinding, hands up your shoulders and dress swaying. Your smiling face brightens at the sight of him (one close-eyed, titanic grin directed at him) before it winks away, flickering behind a tree. Jade watches as he loses you as you gather speed and sprint harder. Miraculously, you disappear from his sight, breaking the distance Jade had attempted to close.

God and human, you two run frantically through the forest. You throw out insults about his speed and he throws out his laughter in your duet. When the ground starts to decline, Jade finally figures out where you are heading to. He pumps his legs faster as the thickness of nature decreases gradually. 

He breaks into the clearing by the stream, hoping to beat you, only to be confronted with the sight of you crouched by the water, twirling something between your fingers. 

“Th-The forest is teething. I can feel it.” You pant like a dog. Jade watches the process of deflate and inflate; with each behemoth breath you take, exhausted and spent, your shoulder and ribs move with the hard work of your lungs. “It –” You choke around the salvia in your mouth, breathless. “It is the start of something here.”

“Teething?”

“Yes. Like babies do.”

I’m teething, Jade contemplates, unsure of what that word really entails. He knows little of human babies. It is only until you show Jade what is in your hand that he thinks he gets it. 

“Look at this.” 

From your hand, you present a black dahlia flower with a bright sunny center to him. The sunny center squeezes into a tiny circle then widens out in the average size. It is like a nostril, flickering and changing shape with each inhale and exhale. It is trying to breathe but as a flower it does not understand how to do that with a lineage of photosynthesis written in its body.

That flickering feeling of the beginning is so thick in the air. The start of something is here. It permeates in your bones. All through your skin, it permeates.

“It is certainly …” Jade trails off, not really used to seeing this side of himself. 

“Beautiful,” you supply. There is a warmth in the space as Jade sits down besides you. The space between you is bright despite the midnight. “Can I tell you something? And you must keep it a secret.”

“Go ahead. I am as quiet as a church mouse.”

“I had this vision during the last entheogen.” 

You still remember it. Swallowing the wine and, from within, bringing out the divine. Psilocybin on your tongue, you laid in a technicolor sea, holding up the receiver of your brain and waiting for that connection with God. You had a vision about the sacrament that is less than a week away. You look up to the sky as you speak. The moon is past the peak of midnight noon.

“I was at the ceremony. The sky was completely cloudless so you could feel the warmth of the sun. I was walking down to the slab bed. Dressed and ready.

“But when the Reverend told me to say my final prayers, I couldn’t.”

The black dahlia gives a sneezing breath at that. “Why couldn’t you?”

“My mouth was full of bees. I opened my mouth.” You look at Jade and decide to demonstrate. A fist moves up to your face before stretching fingers out like you are cupping a ball. “And blaaah, a hundred or so bees flew from my mouth.”

“The singer’s last ballad.”

“Odd, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps it is your mind rationalizing with the fear of your impending death.” 

“Do not make me laugh.” 

You are smiling, secondary to laughter. Returning attention to the black dahlia, you see the breaths have dwindled down to delicate stutters. It only stops breathing when you set it into the stream, watching it float and spin once. A dance in water, the revelation makes you grin softer. Your little theater show is only interrupted by Jade. 

“What are your opinions on the ceremony? Now that it is so close, realer almost.”

You contemplate for a moment on the navel of the world, or as others call it ceremony. “I’m quite content with it.”

A picture paints itself: the stone rock, the slab bed, the omphalos alone in a field of psilocybin mushrooms, devoid of life beyond yourself. It is a bed you will eventually rest down upon and let the Father of your religion cut out the heart in your chest. 

“I’m not going to die,” you whisper. Rejuvenate with that fact, you shuffle your body until your knees are tilted towards Jade. You lean in with flame eyes, a whirlpool of heat in them. Your next words cause the black dahlia in the stream to go breathless in surprise. “I’m going to find out if I’m really alive.” 

“Th –” Jades breathes out a tiny laugh. “That is quite contradictory, (Name). Such an event would not inspire such a thought.”

“Well, it’s true so you have to deal with it.”

“I will burden myself with knowing it and trying to understand it.” He puts a hand to his heart in promise.

“Good. Agonize over it.”

You take to putting your feet in the stream as you reposition yourself. Spreading out your legs, you draw up your dress to your thighs. Dirt floats up and follows the path the black dahlia is being pushed away to as water cleanses your soles. The percussion of your heart beats through your toes as you wiggle them, trying to gather warmth under cold water. 

You look like a high renaissance painting: ideal and perfect in Jade’s eyes. You blink your own eyes when your body is slowly moved. “I waited.” Before you question Jade’s harsh words, his hand on your chin, the start of something new blossoms and the forest sings. 

You pull away from the kiss first. Eyelashes butterflying open, you gaze upon Jade with a fondness he has never seen. “How do I taste?”

If Jade will be your only kiss, he thinks it makes sense that you want to know what you taste like. He will not allow you to kiss another in the next six days. Considering it, his focus narrows to his mouth. Your bacterial corpse rests on his taste-buds, measuring and remembering the taste of you. Floral notes are encrusted with a sort of raw grime. 

“Earthy and sweet.”

Giggling, you dive back in for another kiss. 

You think this has been a long time coming which is why you can fall into it so easily. Your amygdala – once a ripe grape – is dried up like a sun-kissed raisin. 

Cupping Jade’s face, you feel no indication that is the wrong course of action. Grass and dirt tickles your flesh, teasingly happy. Nature reaches slippery hands into your brain, infecting you with dopamine. This all feels so unnaturally right. 

It takes about seven kisses in total before Jade’s hand starts to run itself up and down your thigh. Across a field of goosebumps, he draws his hand from the ankle freckled with water to the midpoint of your upper thigh. It is only when he moves up to the barricade of where you placed your dress that you grab his wrist. Partially in his lap, you squeeze the bones of his wrist. 

“You’re not here for too long so what could go wrong,” Jade, eyes closed, asks the question towards your hesitation. 

“Only two things are required of me in six days,” you kiss Jade to appease and because you want to. “That I die in six days on my twentieth birthday and that I remain a virgin.” 

“Surely we can negate one of these constricting restrictions. I say that God is being a bit selfish.” Jade seethers inside, hiding it well with his returning saccharine kiss. Hoping to persuade and because he wants to. There is no possible way that his own rules are going to leave him with a painful stiff, is there? 

“I think the man can handle one lapse of judgment from His prized singer. He knows you well. Say ‘oh dear God’” He vocalizes a facade of your frightful feminine voice, nipping at your ear. You giggle at the foreign sensation. “‘There is this awful, stealing, odious man down there and I. Fell. From. Grace.” Jade punctuates each word with a kiss. He moves down the musician’s scale of your throat, returning to his own deep timbre. 

You shiver and, against better judgment, relax the hold on his wrist. “I do not fear the wrath of any man or God.”

The tune of acceptance, Jade thinks as he kisses down to your breasts. When he cultivated from the ceremony, it was only the human hearts he ate. This meal will be a new experience for both you and him. “Good. If you started being frightened, I would find you weak.”

“Is that so? I thought you were always veering for me to be more,” you gasp, toes frozen in the stream, as Jade cups over your sex. He lies his hand over it but does nothing more. “-- Veering for me to fear death?”

“Is this your death?”

“It could certainly be close to that.”

“Well, let this be the sweetest death you could ever know.”

With skillful fingers, he unties the back of your dress with only one hand. Though it comes undone quite quickly as if he has taken scissors to it. Strange. You do not focus on it long as tiny knives fall over your shoulder, removing the sleeves of your summer dress. Treading a hair through short black hair, you keen under his gentle, attentive touch. Jade sucks hard on your right breast. 

The sensation sends a ripple of goosebumps along your arms. It feels sweetly blasphemous, all the attentive kisses pepper to your breasts. A taste of something new and at its peak. You twitch when you feel Jade’s blunt nails move from cupping your sex to trailing a finger over the space where hip and thigh meet. 

“Wait,” you stop Jade. His mouth falls away, teeth sharpening a bit with annoyance. He looks up at you, big olive- brown eyes gleaming. “I’m – Well –” You glance down at his hand that is swallowed under your dress. “It’s not a pretty scar,” you whisper. 

“I’m sure it’s beautiful like the rest of you.” Before you can protest, the rest of your dress is pulled over your head. He leaves you in only your panties, sitting in the dirt by the stream. Your eyes widen.

“Don’t,” Jade grabs the hand that goes to block his sigil. It has never looked so appetizing on a sacrifice until you. He licks his lips. “It’s gorgeous.”

“It’s still a scar.”

“Not to me,” Jade says, pressing his body against you so you lay down. 

Delirious, like you are floating off a substance, you go to unbutton his long sleeve, wrestling your hand from him. Your skull is cushioned by your dress, bundled into a ball. The sharp point of sticks hit your skin. Wet sediment, a mixture of sand and dirt, clings onto you. 

Under the ground, a foreign heartbeat drums. It hammers in a rhythm over your spine, bottom, shoulders, and soles. It is a mimic of the heart resting in your chest, syncing with nature in some incomprehensible way just like black dahlia managed to breathe. Chary thoughts dissolve from your head when Jade moves down to press a kiss to the sigil. 

You manage to wrestle the shirt off Jade, using it as a rope to pull him, meeting in a kiss of tongue and teeth. Let go of your inhibitions, the forest beckons. Treading a hair through short black hair, you keen under his gentle, attentive touch. You float with the floating pine-cones as Jade presses himself against you. 

“God,” you moan, breaking away from the kiss.

“Come now, you know my name.” Jade teases. He works himself out of his pants, patient in his motions. “Can’t you say it?” The head of his penis kisses the wet spot of your panties. His grin is so familiar like you've seen it somewhere else before .

“Jade.”

That is all it takes, panties torn by claws. A dozen frenzied thoughts crash into your mind when he pushes himself into you. You cling feebly to him like a caterpillar to a leaf. He thrusts in, starting slow and then fortissimo-ing the act. The sound increases, skin on skin, along with the speed, inch by deeper inch. It feels like your insides are being ripped out of you. I think I’m dying is your most prominent thought. Then, you cum, singing in moans. 

It is, in all senses of sensations, la petite mort. 

“Aaah — mmmmph my God aah!”

You push your hands against the trunk of a tree. On trembling, fawn legs, you stand with arms outstretched in a tight caress of the pine. Behind you, down the long arch of your spine, Jade presses kiss to each golf-ball indent of bone. Heat spreads like a virus to your shoulders, smoldering, as you feel his length lightly trace down the curvature of your bottom. 

Butterflying eyelashes glance up at pine. Your head feels heavy like a whirlpool heat courses through it, scarlet and yellow. Salvia holds itself heavy in your mouth; stimulation – if pushed any further – will have you drooling from your blissed out state. Even disoriented, you recognize nature and the creatures it keeps. 

Jade stills when he sees you moving your right hand off the tree. There is something on the tip of your finger. “Keep your hands there. You will need to keep yourself balanced.” He kisses your last vertebrae, eyes glowing, as you ignore his words. 

“Cen-Centipede,” you manage to say, breathing heavily. 

You hold out your finger to him. On your index, the orange legs of the arthropod flow like oil down your knuckles. With deep fondness, you watch it move. The same fondness is found in Jade’s eyes. He stills you look strangely beautiful: two leaves threaded in your hair, the streaks of dirt that birthed themselves on you when Jade plowed into you, and admiring a centipede in the middle of your third sex position change. 

“Yes. I see.” 

Jade says, resting his chin on your shoulder. Leaning over you, his length makes a pointed reminder of existing when the warmed blood of it hits and throbs on the center of your ass. “Pretty thing, isn’t it?” You nod before moving your arm down, letting it crawl off into the ground. Over your shoulder, you drag Jade back into another kiss. “Earthy and sweet,” he says, feasting on a taste he will have the pleasure of knowing for eternity. 

Around you, the forest sings happily. Surrendering to that wonderful melody of nature, you put your hands back to the pine, using them to keep yourself upright. A slug of drool falls off your bottom lip as a soundless gasp exits you. You and Jade met; he presses himself into your cunt, two harvests of cum soaping and sucking him in easily.

The taste of you is entirely sweet like a honeycomb. The sensation of him is hallucinogenic like psilocybin. Earthy and sweet. 

“S-Ssso deep.”

Your left leg twitches when Jade starts to move, experimenting with his speed. He was insatiable the first two rounds; he thinks he will test that beekeeping patience of yours. Yet, at only the first thrusts, Jade finds it a futile effort. 

Your hand twitches on the pine at a foreign sensation. Where Jade’s hands rest on your hips, there is a difference in texture. There is silk between his fingers like some type of webbing. You startle at the odd sensation. Going to look behind you, you ask breathless, “Jade?”

“Cl – ugh – Close your eyes. Listen to … fuck … Listen to the forest.”

The thought of that strange texture of his hands is punched out when he finds a finger to your clit, rubbing in circles.

Fucked dumbed and drolling, you manage a “Fuck Jade!” before all your vocabulary burns itself from your brain.

“You have kept me up for the past week … (Na-Name) – uuk! –” Skin slaps in a thundering clap. Subconsciously, you tighten and moan. Summoning his breath, Jade leans in towards your ears, “I hope you can judge my next words fairly: I won’t stop until dawn. It will be a sleepless night for us.” 

The night fills itself with the song of your moans. 

“Men only think about the past right before their death as if they were searching frantically for proof they were alive.”

Like a bisque doll, you are washed by the village nuns. Two flank you on each side, one designated for your arm and the other for your leg. Assiduous, they move soapy towels down the length of your spidery limbs. Bisque dolls are beings without autonomy. You certainly do feel quite similar, disjointly watching a foreign hand lift your arm, twisting and rubbing soap on each finger with care. 

Joints and skin do not belong to you anymore. A sterile hand lifts your left leg higher. Heart, not your possession. 

Split into fourths like a filet, you try to remember who said those words: “Men only think about the past right before their death as if they were searching frantically for proof they were alive.” As you are being stewed and cooked into a gallimaufry, you find that the past is not what you think about.

You are thinking about the cloudless skies outside. You are thinking about what it will be like under real warmth, not the warmth of bath water. You are thinking about whether tomorrow it will rain or remain sunny. 

“Is something wrong, One?”

The image of skies dissolves in your mind. You blink in surprise. Head off in the cloud, you do not know which of the four nuns spoke. Between all the pallid moon faces cloaked in black, you choose to look at the one cleansing your left arm. You two met curious eyes.

“Your face was scrunching up. I was wondering if you were feeling any discomfort, One.” Your right arm talks to you. 

“I’m quite alright. Thank you.”

Your left leg chimes in, soapy brine slathered on it. “If you feel any sort of stress, please let us know.”

Now that silence has been broken, your right leg says, “I cannot imagine being stressed on such a wonderful day. Ah, I’m so terribly envious.”

“I am quite at peace on this holy day,” you smile as to appease the fear all your limbs display. Moon faces hum their agreement, tranquility only broken when you say softly, “but –”.  You gaze at the bathhouse’s windows, glass blocking off where nature carols. “How much longer? I long to be outside.”

You glare at the shoes on your feet. 

Flanking both your sides, the congregation sits in the village’s woodsmith-made chairs. Beyond you, the stone slab lies; behind you, the statue of your God. Yet, what is most vexingly is in front of you: the sight of shoes on your feet.

Each birthday, you were dressed in the ceremony clothes and made to practice. Each birthday, you gave no fuss over the attire. Letting them dress the bisque doll, you resigned to putting on the empire dress with the square cut to display your iron branding on your stomach. Down to the fiber of your being, now, you wish you could take off the blasted shoes. 

Your pointless glaring only stops when a voice approaches, asking, “Did I ever tell you about your grandfather?” You turn to the Reverend with a smile. The ceremony is commencing. 

With a soft voice, you answer. “Not often enough.”

The Reverend always walks the sacrifice down the aisle. You suppose this might be a bit more sentimental, considering who you are to him, which is why he talks to you. Gently, you two find yourself joined at the bend of your elbow. 

“He was a religious man. Devoted in a way the others around him were not.

“He would go out in forests people were too scared to venture into. The villagers would find him, sketching things they could not see in nature. It frightened and delighted them too, his sketches. He would polish that very statue like each day it would bring him luck. Each day before he went out in the forests, that was his routine. 

“When he died … he died saying it was all for vain.” Your lips press together tightly. “A man so devoted and so close to God, shaming it. It was perhaps the worst day of his sons and daughters lives. On his deathbed, he brought upon such … shame to his family. Men only think about the past right before their death as if they were searching frantically for proof they were alive.” 

Ah, that is where you heard it. You remember finally, you had heard it in the future which is now the present. That was why you could not remember the speaker because he had not spoken those words yet. You did not think you would find the future in the entheogens; how curious. 

You two start towards the stone slab. As nobody's buttercup, you keep your eyes straight and refuse to yield towards distractions. Devote unlike your grandfather. Devote unlike your unsourced father who knocked up your mother exactly twenty years and nine months ago.

“I tell you this because I am incredibly proud of you. I have witnessed such growth from you. Piety flows in your bones as if God has smiled upon you Himself. My child –”

You look towards the Reverend, curious. 

“You have been good.”

Nature stirs. At least, this time, the queen bee in my honeycombs is healthy. I leave behind something good.

When you reach the sacrificial table, you part like droplets rolling off a leaf in opposite directions. You press your hands on the omphalos, kneeling down and bowing your head. Eyes closed, you listen to the words you have heard since your tenth birthday. 

You cannot help it – your mind wanders back to the past. Not searching for the merit of life, simply remembering how you became the Chosen One. A decade ago … such a long yet short time, such a juxtaposition. 

The ritual involves the ocean. The ocean in which that faithful stream bleeds into. Every twenty or so years, just after the sacrifice predating them dies, everyone below the age of ten is made to stay underwater. The one who remains the longest is regarded as the Chosen One. Time slipped from your fingers like sand, underwater. A minute is an hour, an hour is a minute. 

When you walked out of the ocean, your mother ran to embrace and to collapse to the ground crying. You had been underwater for a full twenty-four. The villagers thought you got swept up a riptide and died like some three year olds and two year olds of the past. Blue-lipped and shivering, you told them you thought you were the first one out. 

There is no way you should have survived and felt as fine as you did. 

Since then, nature talks to you like a baby conversing with an adult. You can make some syllables, understand the babbles that make up baba mean dada, and read the unconcealed emotions clearly. Now, it sings along with the Reverend, soft and gentle … somniferous almost.

You know you shouldn’t but –

You glance, barely moving your head, at Jade. He is staring right at you. His eyes are different, tiger eyes of flaming black and flaming gold. Somniferous eyes stare at your soul. Promptly, you pass out.

You wake up. 

Your feet are encrusted with dirt. A multitude of trees enter your eyesight and the sound of a running stream worms into your ears. You are standing by the river where you washed clothes as a young teenager; the place where you and Jade had sex seven days ago; the place where you broke God’s trust. 

Yet, no fear is present. Chest unusually light, you stare at the familiar pattern of trees dotted across the opposing side of the river. To your limited knowledge, this is you facing divine judgment. Retribution must be collected for your only sin. 

You can accept that. 

Curious eyes fall across the wilderness as your vision clears. You can not really tell what song nature is singing; there is a disconnect between you and the world. Blocked from the majority besides a single instrument: buzzing. You hear the harmony of humble bees buzzing, which you search for the source of. When you find it, a gasp breaks apart your lips.

Spread across the planes of your two arms are a thousand octagonal holes. Skin drenched in a mixture of golden honey and scarlet blood, the only breakage is pitch black, tiny honeycomb structures dug in your flesh. The concave pits freckle the entirety of both arms. 

From the inner elbow and wrist of your left arm, two bees emerge from two separate holes. From the radius of your right arm, another bee. The rest of the colony is inside your skin, tickling your nausea. 

That is not all that summons that high-pitched gasp. Clenched in the Swiss cheese flesh of your hands is a knife covered in blood. 

You watch as the once cement knife starts to vibrate back and forth the longer you stare at it. Whole body shivers rape your bones and the shining red knife trembles with the movement.

For reasons unknown, your parted lips spill out one last rhythmic note, “J-Jade?” The world goes black.

You wake up. 

Black, directionless water swallows you. There is no end or no beginning, so you float in the abdomen of the universal ocean, body tilted and head heavy. No calamity stirs your buoyant bones. Quite peaceful, you exist like a free-roaming satellite, untethered and left to bounce alone in directionless galaxies. No light, pitch black.

This is what you have always wanted from death. No God paradise, just a nebulous space to drift. This is the ideal death. Body propelled and caressed by unsourced waves that rock you peacefully to infinite sleep. No stars, pitch black.

It stops being peaceful when you need to take a breath. Water instead of air travels in. You have no mouth or nose. Body manipulated, water goes in the waiting nostrils of the seven pairs of holes in your abdomen and the three pairs of holes in your thorax. And, suddenly, that tranquil black gains a blinding hue of pain. 

Depressing, the water does not float around you but pushes onto you. It clings like you are a magnet. The tiny caves in your thorax and abdomen flicker with agony, gathering more water. It clings to you like spandex. You throw an arm and leg into the atmosphere, and the absence of everything (beginning and end) is no longer a comfort. It clings like a leech, suctioning itself to you and filling the spiracles. 

Mouthless, your heart throws out an unheard scream. The world goes blinding gold. 

You wake up. 

The first texture you feel is the cold granite on your cheek. It is a welcome balm until the granite grinds painfully on your pelvic bone and the skin of your breasts. Disorientate, you push yourself away from the surface. The granite rumbles under your hands … no, the granite is soundless but there is a rumbling. Still sitting on the ceremony’s sacrificial slab, you open your eyes. 

The village is on fire. There is no building left intact. Flames rumble and tremble, fueling their physical form with all that a house has to offer. Red and gold climb upon the outer walls and black climbs out from the pumpkin innards of each house. 

Snip-snap-woosh-woosh. The conflagration’s volume drowns out any and all sounds of nature. Beyond the roar of fire, you hear absolutely nothing. 

Irrational, you turn your head in the direction of where you know the bee colonies are. You cannot see them through the thick plumes of smoke, separated from you by several burning buildings. You knew you would not be able to see them; why even look in their direction? Regardless, you squint even more to try to catch a glimpse. 

If the queen moves, they would too. Survival instinct would make them take flight, right?

On the verge of tears, you start to squirm on the slab, taking your hand behind yourself and moving it by your thighs, angling your body so you can lean closer and squint at the flaming barricade, one of your legs slides off the slab, perhaps there is time –

“(Name).”

You look behind and down at Jade Leech. He rests with his arms folded on the slab, knees in the dirt. On his index is the queen bee, walking around and around in circles on his nail. 

Your heart falls in despair. “She’s sick … She has a parasite.” Even when vocalizing the issue, you do not want to accept your own words.

“She does; she has had it for a while.”

“Is there anything I can do for her?”

“I’m afraid not. Soon the egg in her stomach will hatch. And the pupae will break out of her throat and head. It is truly odd. Usually, when bees have parasites like these, the bees throw them out of the hive. They kept her though. Even when there was something glaringly wrong with her.”

“Because she’s the queen.”

“Precisely.”

You and Jade watch on in a moment of silence. The queen rotates on twitching legs. Zombie-like, her tiny legs will give out momentarily and she tilts on the perch of Jade’s finger before getting back up again relentlessly. Circle turning into an octagon as she stutters in her steps. 

Your hand drags across your face, flustered. The single, heavy as an anvil tear spreads thinly on your cheek. You blink the rest away.

Jade glances up from the parasite-raped bee. “Are you afraid?”

“No … I’m sad.”

Jade considers that. Mourning is a human process when death happens; mourning is like kintsugi to the heart, repairing it layer by layer. In the face of death, one sheds a predictable tear. The queen bee twitches, losing her strength. Jade mourns that he might never see true fright on your face, like missing a piece in a chocolate heart-shaped box. 

He falls out of his pondering when you gently press your finger to him. Under the light of dozens of suns, gold and red flickering over, you are ethereal. His eyes fall helplessly to his sigil. He allows you to move him at your heavenly will. 

“What happened to the ceremony,” you ask, taking the queen from him. You cup her like she is the tiniest pearl or the fragilest shard of sea glass. “Do we still have time to complete it?”

You do not receive a verbal answer. Instead, Jade gently pinches your chin in his hand, pulling your focus away from the insect. A warm smile settles on his face, olive-brown eyes soft with admiration. Then, grip steady on your mandible, he turns your focus to the open field, on the opposing side of the burning buildings. 

When his hand falls away, your mouth falls open with the loss of stability. 

The attending nuns and villagers are dead. A deep cavern is cut like a mouth across their throats, blooming a million liquid roses that stain their white garments. In their chairs, their heads are tilted back to display the rings of muscles in their body. Dead eyes face up the heavens, ignorant of their God who is venturing on land and swimming in the oceans of Earth. 

The Reverend though – he lies in the middle of the walkway. He is headless, body supine and incomplete at the shoulders. All that remains of an indication he had a head is red splattered upon the grass. This butchery is inevitable. A priest of your religion is not allowed to impregnate women, under your God’s vow of celibacy. 

“Oh.”

Is this punishment? Life snuffed out from your devoted village, leaving you and Jade who had broken the rules. You look down at your dying companion; she is halfway through a rotation, legs trembling on a trembling hand. Nature feels disconnected from you and yet, simultaneously, you feel like nature nestles herself in you. 

“Oh, look at you. All alone.” Jade purrs, almost singing. 

“I – I’m assuming you did this. Or God did this.”

“You are correct on both parts.”

“Do not toy with your words, Jade.”

“I'm as serious as death. Here, let me show you.”

Raising his hands, Jade presses palms to mouth. As he tilts his head back as far as possible, he follows along with his hands, running them up and over. Upturned olive-brown eyes quell with the pressure. Cropped black hair trembles with the motion. And when his hands finally return to the granite slab, Jade stares at you with a new right eye that shines a honey gold. His hair is considerably different.

Different, not unfamiliar. Far from unfamiliar. You have seen that style of teal hair with a single black strand since birth. In paintings on your mother’s nightstand, in books shelved away in the school, and carved into a towering stone effigy.

You think you have always known, looking so intently into nature thus looking so intently into Jade as well.

The queen bee on your finger grinds to a halt and dies. Crushing down in enclosing fists, the ceremony narrows; all the world is lost to you besides God’s/Jade’s voice. Nature beckons. He beckons. The fists you make are a comforting caress. 

“Are you afraid of me?”

“Never.”

“Prove it to me.”

“How?”

“Sing for me.”

Swallowing thick saliva, your chest puffs with air peppered with ash. You two stare at each other. Then … you sing. 

Tongue volatile, you sing. It is not a melody that follows along with the rhythm of a river or the instrumental of an insect. You sing out your heart, sending it out on delicate honey bee wings. 

[artzychic27]

I was bored a while back and made the MLB characters using the Black OC maker on Picrew

Marinette: Proud to be Blasian, still tense when she gets weird looks/Dyed her hair because she wanted to be Coraline for Halloween, now she just likes the color

Adrien: Black mom, white dad, identity crisis/Gabriel’s still a dick and wants Adrien to be a “Good Black.”/Usually always on the receiving end of light skin jokes

Alya: The same, just with bigger hair/The Queen of Hoop Earrings/One TikTok account for general stuff, the other just to post videos of her and her friends dancing and stepping

Nino: Undoing Gabriel’s influence on his bro and helping him embrace his blackness/You did NOT hear him listening to Robin Thicke/Starts every Shabooya Roll Call

Chloé: Bad and bougie/Identity crisis on a count of she was adopted as a baby to make her white parents look good/Will only let Marc and Juleka style her hair

Sabrina: Only knows English because she listens to Megan Thee Stallion religiously/Scarily good at break dancing

Juleka: So goth, she was born black/Favorite movies in order: Get Out, Candyman, The Blackening, Us, Karen, and Ma/A pro at doing hair

Rose: Will punt you if you make a “Not Black enough” comment/Not fond of how hospitals treat black patients. She’s had first-hand experience, and it wasn’t great/Excited for the Tiana series

Luka: Doesn’t say much, but when he does, it’s insightful as hell/He can’t see, but it adds to the mystery, so he keeps his hair like that/Imagine Johan from Black-ish

Nathaniel: Black Panther, Storm, Spider Man, Cyborg, Vixen, Bumble Bee, and Static Shock comics lining his shelves/The definition of Blerd/Surprisingly good at stepping

Alix: “Scar twins!” “But your scar is-“ “Shut up! Scar twins!”/Classroom solidarity by shielding her from others when her hijab slips off/She and Nath tag the city by putting stickers with images of historical women of color everywhere

Marc: He’s the one braiding his classmates’ hair/Hates how black people are written in most shows and movies/Scarily good at rapping. Do NOT try to challenge him to a rap battle, you will be humiliated

Kim: Always swimming, so he constantly has his hair braided or in twists/“Yes, I’m black and I can swim.”/Worships Beyoncé in his spare time

Max: The same, but with vitiligo and a fancy tie/Not selling the patents for any of his inventions. He’s not risking any companies purposely leaving out that he’s the brilliant mind behind any of them

Lila: She will never lie about Oprah. That’s where she crosses the line/Competing for Alya's title as Queen of Hoop Earrings

Ivan: You know those videos where the white baby leans over to see what the black guy is watching on his phone and then holds his hand? He’s the black guy/Worried about looking too "threatening"

Myléne: Constantly promoting black-owned businesses on her socials/Most likely to lead a protest/HATES Rachel Dolezal… Actually, they all hate her

[serceleste]

andor

So I FINALLY watched Andor and damn it was good, I can't believe I waited so long to watch it, it honestly reminded me that yes, I still love Star Wars, actually, and just... it was SO GOOD.

Here's some random thoughts! Many spoilers!

love that the main villains were mostly ISB agents because I've always thought the ISB is terrifying so I think it's amazing Andor made use of that

Bee!!! Thank you for giving me another droid I would die for. He was sad about Maarva! He didn't want to leave!!! 😭😭😭😭

The writing was so good, especially for Star Wars, so many banger lines. Cassian's "I would rather die trying to take them down than live giving them what they want" now lives rent free in my mind.

I wanted Andy Serkis (sorry, Kino Loy) to live SO BAD, his "I can't swim" wrecked me.

More Mon Mothma! Wonderful getting so much depth to her as a politician, a Rebel, and as a woman.

I LOVED how much it delved into the grit of the Rebellion, of what it actually would have been like trying to fight that war, of the sacrifices and choices made. The fact that there was someone like Luthen deciding what assets were the most valuable and what lives could be lost in order to protect them, that fifty deaths were acceptable if it would protect an asset in the ISB, that there were people like Cinta who would do ANYTHING for the Rebellion and sacrifice anyone because the Rebellion had to come first, who wouldn't blink twice at murdering Cassian if Luthen said it had to happen.

They brought Saw back!

I adore that random guy in the tower, banging away <3

Everything about the funeral sequence was brilliant

Luthen and his ISB asset, that speech he made about what he had sacrificed, A++++

Bix was so fucking beautiful and the way she was tortured fucked me up.

Goddamn but Syril is a fucking weirdo

I also loved that because it was very much a show about being on the ground in the days of the Empire that it showed what life was like, that Cassian could be in the wrong place at the wrong time and wind up with a ridiculous prison sentence for not really doing much of anything. Watching him and the other prisoners stuck in that mindless factory and always threatened with torture and death was so rough, and how conditioned they had become to just do it, just get by, because they'll get out eventually, and then to realize that no one was actually getting out!

And of course that they were building for the Death Star because OF COURSE they were. And it being Cassian just made that so much more of a gut punch.

I really liked Vel, like, a lot.

Finally, Cassian is just so beautiful and so sad and so determined and I want him to have everything and I want him to have people love him to happiness 🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭

[every-moment-a-different-sound]

Hi Robin! Hope you're doing well <3 For the year in review asks: 13, 16, and 20?

Hi Olly 💜

Ooh thank you, these are interesting ones!!

13. What gifset was the most satisfying to finish?

That would definitley have to be this edit I made for the wonderful @dont-offend-the-bees' fic Though We're Strangers 'Til Now.

It was, and probably still is, the most ambitious edit I'd ever attempted. It took a lot of time and effort to make, and I had to learn so many new skills for it. I'd made a few edits previously, but I feel like I really did something of my own for that one. There's a lot I'd do different now having learned a lot of lessons from it (I def made life harder for myself in places lol), but I'm really proud of how it turned out. And I got to meet Newt through doing the Payneland week collab, which is brilliant because not only is Newt just such an incredibly talented writer, he's also the loveliest person ever and I adore him.

(If anyone hasn't read Though We're Strangers 'Til Now btw, go read it- it's fantastic!!!)

16. Do you have a favorite gifset you made this year?

Oooh tough one! There's a few that I considered- there's several edits I made for fics, and of course all of the gifs I made of charles chained up in Esther's kitchen definitley came to mind 🤣

But I think the one that I have to go with is the first gifs for AO3 comments post I made. I got to know @nix-nihili because of it, who very kindly let me use one of her fics to test the HTML on, and she's just the most amazing person ever! Plus I was later invited to a wonderful discord server because of that post, where I made so many wonderful friends who I can't imagine life without these days, including where I got to know you more, which has just been fantastic💜 I also had loads of fun making it, and I like the idea of doing something for our fandom community and making something that hopefully helps people like me that sometimes find it difficult or intimidating to comment on fics.

(Btw everyone please also read Nix's fic bright and burning!! It's wonderful!!)

20. What’s something you are expecting to gif in the upcoming year?

I still have only ever made gifs for Dead Boy Detectives, so probably more DBDA gifs 😂 I don't tend to watch very many films or shows, but there's a couple of films being released next year that I'm looking forward to, like The Old Guard 2, so we'll see if I might try my hand at making gifs for that.

Mainly though, I'm looking forward to finally finishing decorating and moving house so I have more time to make loads and loads of DBDA gifs. I have so many half-finished edits for fics that I'm excited to get on with. There's so many wonderfully talented people in this fandom, so I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with next year and be inspired by it all!

Gifmakers year in review post 💜

[moonlight-tmd]

The god-sparkling AU

So, how would Primus and Unicorn react to the fact that Wasp tried to kill Bumblebee a lotta times. Just a bit curious on how that will play out, would really be interesting with Wasptinor or however you spell his name, (p.s. Blitzbee is the OP ship of TFA)

Well tbh, he's pissed. More so when the little squish comes to his planet just to torment his bitty more.

Back on Cybertron's orbit in boot camp Primus knew exactly what was happening with Bee and helped him get thru stuff. That however didn't stop Wasp from butting in. As a way to discourage him from bullying Primus came up with a brilliant idea or merciless karma; whenever Wasp bullied Bee, he would immediately after receive an inconvenience. Like stuff being dropped on him by a mech walking by or an embarrassing fall when they were out doing fieldwork. Even if he took a test beforehand, if he bullied Bee in the meantime he would fail it.

At first it seemed to do the trick but then Wasp started blaming everything on Bee even harder. So the karma punishments became more severe. Primus thought that after Bee went away with his crew and Wasp was stuck in jail it would all fall into the past... but nah, Wasp broke out and set out on a hunt for Bee before Primus could stop him.

When Wasp got to work on Earth, Unicron knew every single thing about him, Bee's been telling him a lot of stuff Primus was too spiteful to share with him. He let him do his thing, watched all his moves and plans and when he finally decided to kidnap Bee to replace him, that's when he struck.

The moment Wasp and Bee switched bodies, Wasp was overwhelmed by a divine sensation in his mind. He couldn't understand anything and the voices were only getting louder with each second. He couldn't handle it as the feeling of being bound down by shackles settled in and left him feeling helpless.

Bee was fine, just watching the show in Wasp's body and wondering whether he looks like this whenever he speaks to one of his parents. It was a short while before Bee grabbed the device and swapped back with Wasp and called backup. Wasp was so mentally worn out he couldn't do anything but to curl up and try to silence the raging memory of what happened barely few minutes ago.

He was taken back to Cybertron and held captive once more, this time however he ended up in one of the mental hospitals. He spend the following years thinking about what happened and reflecting on everything.

Maybe someday he'll come to peace that he's horrible and done a lot of wrong, maybe not. Only Primus will know.

Also hell yeah, we love BlitzBee. But other ships are also valid and should not be hated! Love yall! <3

[appleinyoureye]

JJBA p.2 │ The Tongue of My Love Takes Many Forms

Summary: love language headcanons! what they have to offer and how to make their knees weak!

Fandom: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

Characters: Giorno Giovanna, Mista Guido, Narancia Ghirga, Trish Una

Word Count: 787

Type: headcanons

part one

Giorno

Giving: words of affirmation, gift giving

Giorno is a master with words. He knows what, when and in which way should he tell you to make your day brighter. With a soft smile and reassuring glance, he tells you a compliment or two when you need it the most, and it makes you feel like the most special person on the whole freakin’ planet. Very often you don't hear these sentences directly from him – Giorno usually sends you a butterfly with a message spreaded on its wings, or a puppy that has your favorite snack tied to its collar. He is not afraid to use his stand to make the one he loves feel even more adored.

Receiving: physical touch, words of affirmation

Gio often drifts away with his thoughts, his mind busy with developing new plans and ideas. It may be tiring for his smart brain, and nothing helps him in these moments like your soft touch, grounding him to reality again. Your fingers brushing his cheek and catching his jaw, sweet words leaving your mouth are always enough. Whenever you see him struggling with anything, catch his hand in yours and watch the sparkles dance in his precious eyes.

Mista

Giving: words of affirmation, physical touch

My favorite boy, baby boo, the love of my life is all about adoring his loved one. He makes sure that you know your worth, and that your insecurities poof! go away. Mista is always, always telling you how good you look, how smart you are, how amazing you do things, and, uhh, how perfect you are! And be ready for a lot of hugs and kisses! He has to maintain physical contact with you almost all of the time. Brushing your hair every morning, tracing small circles with his thumb on your skin in public places, and hugging and spinning you after a long time apart. That’s how Mista shows he’s in love with you.

Receiving: physical touch, acts of service

Okay, I think we can all agree that this boy way too often gets his cute ass into trouble. Always somehow surviving, he comes to you vulnerable with scratches, cuts and all sorts of wounds. And your duty is to help him. Gently caress his body with a cotton swab, wrap the damaged skin in bandages, put cute band-aids on his face, massage sore spots. Just pamper him like a baby! He knows he can do it all by himself, but your hands just do the magic, you know?

Narancia

Giving: acts of service, gift giving

Sometimes you think that your boo has two left hands, but it’s the thought that counts, right? Narancia makes you breakfast, but always burns one side of a pancake or makes the scrambled eggs way too dry. He cleans your desk, but accidentally throws away an important document (don’t worry, later he’ll duck in the trash can so he can find it!). He wants to make it up for his clumsiness by giving you all sorts of trinkets! He’s like a magpie. Anything that looks like something you may like (or is sparkly) he gets for you because I can’t say that he buys everything…

Receiving: words of affirmation, gift giving

He’s your good boy, your cutie-patootie, your boo-boo-bae-bee. Tell him that. Praise him. Narancia needs it, and you know it! Remind him how much he means to you. How brilliant his ideas are, even though sometimes they make no sense! Just appreciate his efforts, and I can promise you, that you will see his imaginary tail wagging. And if you tell him how much he means to you, and then give you something to eat? Sheesh! The boy may even cry from happiness.  

Trish

Giving: quality time, words of affirmation

She’s not the best at showing it, but Trish cares for you. She surely does. That is why she suggests that you should take her more on dates! Like, c’mon, how could you not think that Trish wants to spend more time with you you to take her on yet another date this weekend? That she deserves it? Pfft! You can still make it up to her by watching a movie marathon with her. And if you notice her hints, she may even praise you! 

Receiving: gift giving

Okay, now, I sure hope you know what to do with her. Give her gifts that she deserves! Trish feels the most loved when she’s appreciated. She may give the vibes of a gold digger, but it’s totally not that. Trish is reassured of your feelings when you put an effort when choosing a gift she may like, when she gets something she’s told you once and you still remembered! It’s the thought behind the gift that counts the most, plus, who doesn’t like pretty things?

[lorei-writes]

Certainty

Yves x OC (Beatrice; @bicayaya's OC) Fluff ~600 words

Happy Birthday, love! >:) I hope this year treats you well, as any that will follow <3

Content Warnings: none

There is one thing, one thing only in the entire universe that Yves is absolutely certain of: he loves Beatrice and he’d do anything for that love.

Dazzling light skips off the surface of the waves, molten gold pooling over the water. Seagulls cry as they lift above the rocking plains, white wings batting away at the gentle breeze, perhaps willing themselves to leave the comfort of its embrace. The shore hums in its entirety, from the white sand to the seashells, the finely polished glass… Boats sway somewhere towards the horizon line. They too do not realise how irrelevant they’ve become in a blink of an eye.

Beatrice has crouched down, gusts pulling at her long floral skirt and threatening to undo the ribbons in her hair. However, she hardly seems to mind; the pumps slip off her feet, warmth seeping into her body from the ground. Her back straightens. Off she walks. Sea foam encased in human form, Beatrice herself seems to float, an aquatic fairy about to return home. Sunlight combs its fingers through her honey hair, rouses the embers in her eyes.

“I’ve never seen the ocean before,” Beatrice laughs, hand hoovering above her lips to conceal her smile. The ocean washes over her ankles in reply… And so, it is made right, for Yves has forgotten his words, his sentences, or plainly put, how to talk.

There is only one thing he knows: Beatrice is lovelier than the whole ocean and all its marvels combined.

***

Stars shimmer over the endless darkness of the night sky, little different from gemstones scattered within an appropriately padded jewellery casket. Alluring, they seem to temp the human eye, testing the limits of greed one may reach… Yet Yves is both the greediest and one fully devoid of greed. A pout twisting his lips, he marches out onto the veranda, shoulders squared as he clutches onto a shawl. The heels of his shoes clack against the wooden boards. Crystallised salt crunches as he shakes away any of his awkwardness and indecision.

“Bea?” Yves inquires, in a voice softer than the finest silk.

“What is it?”

“You’re dressed too lightly. You can’t stay here like this, you’ll catch a cold,” he murmurs, just barely containing the pout attempting to bloom over his lips yet also fully unable to erase it from his tone. Beatrice’s eyes widen at his words. She mouths a silent “oh”, and the shawl wraps itself around her shoulders, the fibres still holding onto his residual warmth. It is only now that it becomes apparent she’s been cold all along.

“Thank you,” Beatrice says, sowing blush over his cheeks. Yves averts his gaze.

“O-of course! Silly… What man would let his lover get ill…” A smile curls his lips, his brilliant blue eyes lighting up. “I’ll always look out for you, you know. That’s a promise.”

His arm resting around her waist, they lean against the railing, cocooned safely in this private fragment of their universe. Beatrice hums, reminding him of a little bee… Yet there is only one thing Yves is absolutely certain of: the stars, the stars could perish and he’d be none the wiser for as long as Beatrice is with him.

***

First rays of sun sneak inside, as brash as to dare disturb the shallows of sleep… or at the very least, such is their intention. Little do they know that Yves is no longer asleep. Propped on his elbow, he watches Beatrice, her chest raising rhythmically, deeply, peacefully. Not a frown crosses her brow, a slight smile tugging at the corners of her lips as he combs his fingers through her hair.

There is one thing, one thing only in the entire universe that Yves is absolutely certain of: he loves Beatrice and he’d do anything for that love.

You’ve seen a typo? Let me know!

Tag List: @lancelotscloak @starlitmanor-network @solacedeer @keithsandwich @bicayaya

@faustianfascination @sh0jun @m-mmiy @violettduchess @pathogenic

@fang-and-feather @tele86 @rinaririr @cheese-ception @bis-enti

@claviscollections @queengiuliettafirstlady @lucyw260

Tell me if you’d like to be added to my tag list :)

[mairitess]

form ba-7180, notarized // to be known, ch. 1

summary: Nya realizes her and Jordana have more in common than one might think.

a/n: idk this is just how I imagine what their relationship could be like ;-; i wish it were longer and paced slower but i'm not good at that! + also on ao3 and no longer just a one-shot! ch. 2 here on ao3

words: 1.7k

tags: angst, jaya mentioned, jordana characterization if it were up to me, and now it is up to me, nya pov, dr s2 spoilers, no beta bc idc

warnings: n/a

preview:

Nya would give anything – and gave up everything – to have her name remembered. She imagined Jordana was willing to do the same, evidently far more, for the same respect.

She imagined her face plastered over billboards across all the realms, grinning over a world wholly enlightened by her genius. She’d construct a high-rise to arch above Imperium to collect her novel works. Jordana would work her way down the floors each day, greeting her associates and meeting tours of aspiring young minds. And she’d remember each of their names – she swore she would.

Jordana was called every name under the sun but her own. She was bright and capable, cruel and jealous. So in the spirit of destiny and changing your fate, Jordana took control. She was spiteful. Who could blame her? For each project Jordana developed, Sora did one better. Unforgettable, brilliant, perfect Sora. Jordana became another body in the room, rifling through papers and screwing nuts and bolts, a nameless worker bee when Sora was there.

When Sora left, Jordana practically threw a party. Even if all she was getting was everything Sora left, Jordana crossed her fingers despite being a girl of science and hoped it would all soon become her own. No more Sora. Just Jordana, finally left to her own devices. Yet Sora kept haunting her, easily destroying the one thing Jordana crafted with pride for Imperium.

As “evil” as Jordana had become, Nya couldn’t help but feel, frankly, bad for the girl, the more she learned about her. Nya loved Sora so much, seeing so much similarity between them. But where Nya saw Sora like a little sister outgunning what she did at her age, Nya saw Jordana like an inverted reflection of her younger self. All three of them were so ambitious, so smart, so resilient. But what Nya felt unfortunately was shared just between her and Jordana was in what stood in their way. Sora, in all her early skill, was embraced and centered in Imperium’s ever-advancing development, even if it was in ways she hated and left. Jordana, even if she could keep up with Sora, would never compare.

When Kai and his friends first became ninjas, Nya went to unabashed depths to prove she was just as good, if not better. Her first proof of her excellence, though, was not attributed to her name – she was Kai’s sister. Then she was Samurai X. Then Jay’s girlfriend.

What’s in a name? For Nya, everything. Everything that mattered. She could conquer the world, defeat every Ninjago villain singlehandedly, and still get underestimated and go largely uncredited if merely referred to as Kai’s sister, or Samurai X, or Jay’s girlfriend, or the Water Ninja. That’s not to say Nya wasn’t incredibly proud to be those things – though she was most proud to be Samurai X, as she’d built the mech and its reputation with her own blood and sweat. But when the Fire Ninja was seen running through the streets, little kids would wait for him to finish whatever he was doing, then pull him aside: “Kai! You’re my favorite ninja!” The Ice Ninja would be out getting groceries, and fans would high-five him with the same corny saying: “Zane, you’re the coolest!” Everyone easily called out to the other ninjas by name. Not Nya. Rarely Nya. Maybe never, Nya.

The closest she’d ever gotten to profuse and total recognition and gratitude, she had to entirely give up her body and form. Why did it take losing her for the world to realize how much she mattered?

But Jordana… Every time Nya watched back fight footage between Sora and Jordana, she’d hear Sora say, “Who are you again?” Jordana would scream in frustration, her fighting reinvigorated. Nya understood Sora wasn’t saying that to egg on her foe, that Sora truly could not remember. But that seemed far worse than if it were part of encounter banter.

Nya would give anything – and gave up everything – to have her name remembered. She imagined Jordana was willing to do the same, evidently far more, for the same respect. How much worse it seemed to be forgotten rather than dismissed, to be fighting your own erasure to the point where you realize no one would remember you for your good works. Of course Jordana saw it fit that, if you wanted to truly be known, the only option would be to turn sides.

So Nya made it a point not just to remember Jordana’s name, but to remind her teammates of Jordana’s name, too. She saw it as an act of respect, even if Jordana wouldn’t ever know. Besides, underestimating your opponent was practically a cardinal sin in Wu’s teachings. Part of ensuring her team, her mentees, wouldn’t underestimate Jordana counted on them remembering her, and respecting what she was capable of. Maybe if Nya had felt more outcast by her brother and his friends, she would have had a far more similar path to Jordana’s thus far.

------

The ninja had found their way to one of the islands between Imperium and the Wyldness, chasing a lead in their hunt for Lord Ras, Jordana, Nokt, and Cinder. Though their stealth mission didn’t go as quietly as Lloyd had hoped – Lord Ras and Cinder ran off in opposite directions, splitting the team apart. Lloyd and Arin sprinted after Lord Ras; while Wyldfyre, Zane, and Cole went after Cinder. They’d seen Nokt for a moment, but he’d quickly disappeared, leaving Sora and Nya with Jordana.

“This will be fun,” Jordana laughed, adjusting her grip on her sword, keeping a steady eye on Sora. “Let’s kill the powers, shall we? Make it fair. I don’t want to make it too easy.”

Sora glared. “Easy for whom?” She retorted, only for Jordana to roll her eyes. “You’ll find out,” Jordana said. With that, she lunged at Sora, the tip of her blade easily missing Sora’s cheek as she dodged. “Maybe,” Sora snorted. “Or maybe not.” Sora spun the katana in her hand for show before slicing towards Jordana, catching the other girl’s sleeve with the sword’s edge. Nya watched on carefully as she surveyed their immediate surrounding area, making sure Nokt wasn’t still hidden somewhere among the foliage.

“You might have beaten me in class combat before, Sora, but I won’t let you do it again,” Jordana snarled, blocking Sora’s blows. “Again?” Sora asked, confusion spreading across her face. Her guard weakened slightly.

Jordana’s eyes suddenly glowed a bright red, as she brought her dao down briefly. “You know my name,” she said, low. “You know.” Sora shrugged, concerned. “Sorry. Really, I don’t.”

“Just remember me!” Jordana shouted brazenly, angling the hilt of her blade down toward Sora as she leapt at her. For a moment, Sora stood frozen, caught off by Jordana’s choice of words in combat, and was struck painfully to the head with a dense clunk. Sora cried out and Nya ran for her, blocking Jordana’s second swing as Sora managed to twist away, holding her head in her hands.

Then it was the famed mentor and her mentee’s nemesis, and Nya felt the weight of her wisdom acquired with age. It was the first time the two had truly faced off, and as sour as Jordana’s expression was, Nya didn’t want to fight.

“Please, Jordana,” Nya tried, deflecting each of Jordana’s bladed attempts at her chest. As practiced as Jordana may have been, Nya was far stronger and more comfortable with her golden spear. “You won’t win this. You can’t.”

Jordana was quiet, focused on finding a weak spot in Nya’s guard she could catch. So Nya kept talking.

“I know what it’s like.” “No, you don’t–” “I do, I swear. You are strong in your own right, Jordana, whether Sora is next to you or not. You don’t have to prove anything.” “Yes, I do! Nobody cares if you can do the job. They only care if you can do the job well,” she spat out. “That’s not true!” Nya pleaded. “It’s not true because it’s not about the job.”

Jordana’s swings slowed, and Nya took the opportunity. “You’re not what you do, Jordana. Who you are isn’t based on what you do.”

Both their swords lowered. Sora had managed to crawl over to a nearby tree and lean against its trunk, catching her breath, but her eyes were closed.

“Then… Then who am I?” Jordana whispered, her voice breaking. “Who am I if I have nothing to give to Imperium?”

Nya reached for the girl, instinct to comfort. She didn’t know what to say. Whatever propaganda Imperium citizens were receiving, its messaging was more ingrained than perhaps fixable in a night. Nya’s gaze drifted over to Sora, and her extended hand to Jordana came to a slow stop.

Why… Why didn’t she hit you with her blade?

“Oh, Jordana,” a familiar voice echoed all around Nya, and she felt her chest clench. “It’s not that deep. Truly. Besides,” he laughed, “you’ve done more than enough.”

Nya’s back felt like it was on fire as she was shot along the spine with a stun gun. She fell to the ground, all her limbs locked in place. “You follow through, Jordana. That’s all the Administration could ask for.” Nya was scared to look as the figure hoisted her up from behind, pulling her hands into handcuffs. “I’ll take her from here.”

His hands were warm despite the metal clinking against her wrists. She wanted to hold his hand.

“Sorry. Administrator’s orders,” he huffed, coming to her side to walk her towards the portal he’d come through. In Nya’s periphery, Sora was still breathing, but looked like she was passed out against the tree. Nya nearly yelled at her when she finally got a good look at the man dragging her.

“… Jay? Jay, it’s me –” “I know who you are. Jordana, let’s go.”

His grip was rough as Nya was pulled away, so much about him familiar yet everything wrong.

Jay’s voice was growing distant and fuzzy, but she heard him say, “Nice control there, Jordana. I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to handle it, but you did well. Good job.” He sounded as kind and proud as ever. It was almost soothing.

Sora forced herself awake again for a brief moment and tried to scream as she watched Nya disappear, but nothing came out, and her head was too heavy, and she had just enough sense to hit the emergency signal on her suit.

[wistfulwanderingone]

The Fated Macaron

Fandom: Ikemen Prince

Characters: Yves Kloss, Licht Klein, Cassandra (OC); (Clavis X OC story AU)

Summary: After embarrassing herself in the palace ballroom, Cassandra meets two young men

Timeline: 2 years after Bloodstained Rose Day, 8 years before the "Belle" year.

Thank you @dododrawsstuff for the art piece of Cassandra with her friends. Be sure to check out her page if you haven't! She's amazing!

@aide-falls @candiedcoffeedrops You will hopefully enjoy this!

The Fated Macaron

Standing in the entryway to the palace ballroom, Cassandra Bellerose smoothed the pale pink fabric of her gown for the umpteenth time. This room alone was more regal and elaborate than even her family’s own ballroom. Crystal sconces lined the wall, casting a warm glow over the room and reflecting off the polished marble floors and gilded mirrors. The air was thick with the scent of fresh flowers and expensive perfume, and the hum of conversation buzzed like a hive of bees from behind the immense double doors before her.

She glanced at her reflection in one of the mirrors and frowned. Her emerald eyes, framed by long dark lashes, stared back at her, wide and anxious. They reminded her of a doe caught off guard in the woods. Freckles, a rare and despised trait among nobles, dotted the bridge of her nose despite her mother’s attempts to cover them with face powder. Her rosy cheeks, flushed from the nerves and heat of the room, seemed to expose her every nervous thought. She wore the family colors of pastel pink and gold, her gown a delicate confection of silk and lace that shimmered with every step. The dress was beautiful, but it felt like a stiff costume, a mask used to distract from her own flawed true personality. She noticed a stray strand of brown hair escaping her meticulously crafted updo, stubbornly refusing to stay in place despite her best efforts. Tucking it back with a sigh, she couldn't help but feel the familiar sting of insecurity. Was she pretty enough? Graceful enough? Worthy of the attention that would fall upon her and her family tonight? Would she embarrass them? Disappoint them? Fail them? Would the perfectly crafted mask slip and reveal her true self and ruin her family?

As she followed her family toward the broad doors, each step felt like she was walking a tightrope. The doors opened, and she watched as her sister and her husband stepped into the light and the herald announced them. “Presenting Comtess Evangeline Bellarose-Toussaint and her husband, Comte Tristan Toussaint.” Beautiful Evangeline glowed like the confident, radiant rose she was, and her handsome, aristocratic husband smiled as all eyes turned to look at them.

Cassandra knew she couldn’t even begin to compare to the beauty and perfect grace her sister personified. Still, she took a deep breath and stepped forward beside her parents. It was all she could do not to jump as the herald’s loud voice boomed beside them. "Presenting Marquess and Marchioness Bellerose and their daughter, Lady Cassandra Bellerose."

Her parents led the way, their posture perfect, their expressions serene. Cassandra, bringing up the rear, felt every gaze in the room turn towards them. The walls seemed to close in on her, but she kept her head high, the lessons drilled into her by her parents echoing in her mind. Be graceful, be poised, be perfect. Do not frown. And absolutely do not trip on your dress. The weight of their expectations pressed down on her, making her shoulders stiffen, but she forced herself to smile, her emerald eyes scanning the crowd. The room was filled with nobility; each face more resplendent than the last, adorned in jewels and silks that shimmered under the chandeliers. But all she wanted was to find a quiet corner where she could disappear, avoiding any chance of causing ignominy for her family.

As they made their way deeper into the ballroom, Cassandra's gaze drifted upward, taking in the grandeur of the space. Brilliant crystal chandeliers, each of their facets catching the light, cast a warm, heavenly glow over the entire room. They hung from a high ceiling adorned with intricate frescoes, each depicting scenes of Rhodolitian myth and legend. The polished marble floors gleamed underfoot, reflecting the light in a way that made the entire room sparkle. The centerpiece of the floor was an elaborate mosaic of a rose, its petals unfurling in exquisite detail. Tall, arched, gilded windows, each framed in ornate gold, allowed the moonlight to stream in, adding a cool, silvery touch to the warm glow of the chandeliers and the myriad candles.

Everywhere she looked, there were fresh, fragrant roses adorning every surface, from the tables laden with fine china and crystal to the mantels and window ledges. The air was thick with their sweet scent, mingling with the more subtle notes of expensive perfumes the guests wore. It was a room designed and decorated to impress and awe, every detail meticulously crafted to create an atmosphere of elegance and splendor. Cassandra was in awe of the sheer beauty and opulence surrounding her. It was a scene straight out of a fairy tale, but her anxiety overshadowed her ability to appreciate it like she would have liked.

Her parents glided through the crowd with practiced ease, exchanging pleasantries and nodding at acquaintances. Evangeline and Tristan followed suit, basking in the adoration and admiration of the other guests. Cassandra, however, felt like an imposter. Her fingers brushed the delicate emerald necklace at her throat, a gift from her parents meant to enhance her beauty and status. But all it did was remind her of the expectations she could never quite meet. The necklace, though beautiful, felt like a chain binding her to a role she had never wanted, a constant reminder of her family's relentless ambition and expectations—things that she couldn’t even begin to desire.

Her eyes scanned the crowd again, looking for any familiar face, any friend who might offer her a moment of genuine connection in this sea of superficiality. The room was a blur of pastel gowns and dark suits, each person more resplendent than the last, yet all blending into a tapestry of indifference.

She knew it was hopeless—it always was. Everyone who spoke to her did so because of her family’s status or to secure a good deal on gems from their mine. Since her debut earlier in the year, men had begun to shower her with attention, but it was all for her family’s wealth and title, not out of any real interest in her. The polite smiles and flattering compliments felt hollow, their words thinly veiled attempts to curry favor with her influential parents. And why wouldn’t they use her in such ways? The only ranks higher than her parents in the kingdom were the royal family and the dukes. With her sister married into a count’s family, her family's wealth and title would eventually fall to her and whichever man married her.

Cassandra's heart ached from it all. She longed for true, heartfelt affection, someone to see beyond the glittering facade and see her soul—a soul that burned with passion and fire. She wanted to be free to be herself, chase her dreams, and be with someone whom she could love deeply and thoroughly and who would love her just as much in return. She hated this world of calculated alliances and strategic marriage. She wanted not part of it. But what other choice did she have? Such dreams seemed naive and unattainable. The reality of her circumstances was suffocating, where her every move was scrutinized and her every word measured and where no part of who she truly was could ever be permitted or welcomed.

As the evening wore on, her thoughts became unbearable. Cassandra's pulse quickened, and she desperately sought an escape from the overwhelming crowd. She needed a quiet corner to collect herself. Her steps became more hurried, and her breath came in short, anxious bursts.

Just as she spied a quieter corner, she collided with a waiter carrying a tray of champagne flutes. The tray tipped, and the delicate glasses tumbled to the floor, shattering with a loud crash at her feet. A collective gasp rippled through the crowd, and suddenly, all eyes were on her. The room seemed to hold its breath, the silence deafening.

Cassandra's cheeks flushed with embarrassment, her heart pounding in her chest. She could feel the weight of their stares, the judgment in their eyes. She dared to glance at her parents, whose faces were masks of polite disapproval, their perfect composure a stark contrast to her own flustered state.

Whispers of her clumsiness spread like wildfire through the room. She could hear the hushed words, the snide comments disguised as concern.

"Poor thing, always so awkward."

"Such a shame, considering her family's status."

"Perhaps she shouldn't have come out so soon."

Cassandra's vision blurred with unshed tears as she bent down to help the waiter pick up the shattered pieces. Her hands trembled, the sharp edges of the glass pricking her fingers. She forced herself to breathe and calm the storm of emotions within her.

A hand grabbed hers, squeezing gently. "My lady, I can take care of this. Are you alright?" the waiter asked, his voice filled with concern.

She nodded, unable to trust her voice, and managed a weak smile. "Yes, thank you. I'm so sorry."

As she stood, her gaze once again met the disapproving eyes of her parents. She could see the disappointment etched on their faces, a silent reprimand before they turned their noses up and walked away. Their scrutiny and judgment made it even harder to breathe.

Desperate to escape, Cassandra made a quick curtsy to the crowd before heading to the small alcove at the edge of the ballroom she had spotted before her collision with the waiter. The whispers followed her, but she forced herself to keep moving, however unsteadily, with her head held high, longing for a moment of solitude where she could gather what little remained of her composure.

At last, she pressed herself into the corner behind a large potted plant, desperately trying to keep her tears at bay. She took deep, shaky breaths, her fingers trembling as they traced the delicate emerald necklace at her throat. The fronds provided a fragile barrier between her and the bustling ballroom. Leaning back against the wall, she gazed up at the ornate ceiling, the intricate patterns blurring as she fought to keep her emotions in check. She felt like a fragile vase, carefully displayed and polished, yet always on the verge of shattering. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, shimmering like raindrops on the brink of falling.

The incident with the waiter replayed in her mind; the sound of splintering glass mingling with the murmurs of the guests, her parents’ dismay. Each one of their disapproving glances and words felt like a sharp dagger piercing her heart. 

Why do I care so much? She clenched her fists as her internal voice became harsh and unforgiving. Why does it matter what they think? Why do I try so hard to please everyone? But then, the reasons came flooding back, each one a tether that bound her to this life. The innate desire for her parents’ love and approval, the importance of the family name and it’s historical significance, and the fact that she was a seventeen year-old woman with no other prospects or ability to provide for herself. What other choice do I have? If she ran away, she'd be destitute, wandering the streets with no means to provide for herself. 

Over and over again, she reminded herself that this was her duty, her role to play, her only option, even if it felt like a prison. The thought of escaping, of living a life free from these constraints, was a tantalizing fantasy. But it was just that—a fantasy. She was trapped in this gilded cage, her wings clipped by obligation and reality, the bars forged from the iron of familial duty and societal pressure.

Finally, she began to feel a little bit calmer. Taking a deep breath she peered through the fronds of the potted plant, her eyes landing on a young man standing by the dessert table. He was the picture of flawlessness in his elegant pink attire, exuding an aura of nobility and refinement. His outfit was impeccable, every detail meticulously arranged. The tailored pink coat, adorned with intricate gold embroidery, complemented his delicate and beautiful face. His honey-blonde hair framed his delicate, porcelain features, and his sparkling blue eyes held an air of aloofness. Despite his haughty demeanor, a subtle unease flickered in those eyes. He stood there, a delicate statue of perfection, yet there was a fragility in his stance, a hidden vulnerability that resonated with her own feelings.

Cassandra recognized the look in his eyes; it was the same unease she felt in social gatherings. Her heart went out to him. The urge to comfort him, to offer some semblance of understanding, welled up inside her. Maybe no one would help her out of her own situation, but helping others had always been her refuge, a way to distract herself from her own struggles and to make someone else’s day better.

Then she noticed something else about him. No one approached him, no one spoke to him. They glanced at him with a strange mix of judgment and unease. Once they had receded a few steps, they whispered. He remained aloof; the only sign he noticed was the faint movement of his Adam’s apple each time it happened. And suddenly, she felt even more akin to him.

As she watched, another figure joined him. Clad in blue and gold, his military-style outfit was simpler yet equally commanding. His silvery hair, tousled and slightly unruly, framed his pale, porcelain-like complexion and highlighted his sharp jawline and piercing red eyes. She couldn’t hear the words they spoke to each other, but he stood close to the blonde man, his eyes scanning the room with a protective intensity as he spoke. Despite his solemn, almost detached expression, there was a warmth in the way he stayed close to the first man as if giving him a sense of assurance.

Gathering her courage, Cassandra stepped out from behind the plant, her movements tentative. She reminded herself that helping others always made her feel better, and perhaps offering a kind word to these strangers would do the same. She made her way across the room, her eyes never leaving the blonde man. As she approached, she noticed the faint lines of tension around his mouth and the way his fingers fidgeted with the cuff of his sleeve. 

"These desserts look amazing, don't they?" she said, her voice soft, attempting to break the ice.

Both men turned their gaze to her. The blond one’s crystal blue eyes were wide and childlike before he narrowed them suspiciously. "If you’re going to compliment the desserts, at least have the decency not to spill anything on them," he replied, his tone brusque but not entirely unkind, as he turned back to the other man.

Cassandra felt a momentary sting at his words, but as she looked closer, she sensed something beneath his haughty exterior—almost like he was trying to hide his vulnerability. His eyes, despite their sharpness, held a flicker of uncertainty, a guardedness that intrigued her.

“I’ll be careful," she promised. “You seem to be guarding these sweets. If I didn’t know better…I’d think you had made them yourself.” She offered a gentle smile, hoping to break through his defensive facade.

Wide child-like eyes again, then a frown and rosy-red cheeks. “What did you say?”

The silvery-haired man beside him regarded her with a wary gaze. His striking red eyes seemed to bore into her as if he were assessing her intentions. Despite his guarded demeanor, Cassandra sensed a deep sadness and a fierce protectiveness in him, like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Who are you?" the silvery-haired man asked, his voice low and guarded, as though bracing for a threat.

"Cassandra Bellerose," she replied, striving to keep her tone light and non-threatening, yet she felt a twinge of anxiety under his intense gaze. "I didn't mean to intrude. I couldn’t resist these desserts. It's not often I get to enjoy such fine sweets."

As she appraised the table, her eyes landed on a perfectly pink macaron sitting on a plate like a tiny, edible jewel. The delicate confection was too tempting to resist. Just as her fingers brushed its surface, the blond man nearly jumped at her.

"How dare you!" he squeaked, his voice a pitch higher than she expected. The blond man’s eyes were wide with shock and indignation, his perfect features contorted in a way that was both intimidating and oddly endearing. 

Cassandra froze, the macaron poised precariously between her fingers near her mouth, her heart pounding in her chest.  She could feel the tension crackling in the air, and for a brief moment, she was sure he was going to grab a cake knife and end her life.  The vibrant ballroom seemed to fade around her, the chatter and music muffled as if submerged underwater.

"I’m sorry," she managed to stammer, her voice barely audible over the roaring in her ears. "I didn't realize...I just thought...it looked so delicious." Her cheeks burned with embarrassment, and she wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole. Maybe coming over here wasn’t her brightest idea. No wonder her parents were always so nervous when they brought her to social events. The vibrant ballroom seemed to close in around her, its opulence and grandeur becoming suffocating as she stood there, the weight of her social faux pas pressing heavily on her shoulders.

"Yves," the silver-haired man said, laying a hand on his companion’s shoulder with a calm, steadying presence. “She didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?” Cassandra asked, her hand trembling slightly as she tried to decide what to do with the macaron. The delicate treat now felt like a burden, her fingers itching to put it back.

Yves didn’t seem capable of speech, his face a fiery red, eyes wide with indignation. He looked utterly scandalized, and Cassandra could see his lips moving wordlessly, struggling to form a coherent sentence.

The silver-haired man’s crimson eyes landed on her. Despite his stoicism, she felt an unexpected kindness radiating from him. "Yves made that for me. He said it would be my reward for attending this ball," he explained, his voice low and measured yet carrying a warmth that put her somewhat at ease.

Cassandra felt her cheeks warm even more as guilt filled her chest. She looked at the macaron, its vibrant pink mocking her, and then back at Yves, whose mortified expression tugged at her heart. “I am so so sorry,” she said earnestly, her voice quivering. She extended her hand to return the macaron to the silver-haired man, her movements tentative and apologetic.

"It’s alright," he said gently, taking the macaron from her hand. "Yves puts a lot of effort into his baking, and it means a great deal to him. Thank you for understanding."

Cassandra nodded, feeling relief and lingering embarrassment. "I do understand. And for what it’s worth, it looks absolutely exquisite. You have a real talent," she said, offering Yves a smile, hoping to convey her admiration and regret for the misunderstanding.

Yves's cheeks remained flushed, the fiery red slowly fading as he finally found his voice. He took a deep breath, his eyes flickering between the macaron in the silver-haired man's hand and Cassandra's apologetic expression.

“It’s...fine,” Yves managed to say, his voice still edged with irritation but noticeably softer. He ran a hand through his blond hair, a gesture that seemed to steady him as he smoothed it. “Just...be more self-aware next time.”

Cassandra nodded fervently, her own cheeks still burning with embarrassment. “I promise. I didn’t mean to offend you. I truly admire the effort and skill it takes to create something like this.” She glanced at the pink macaron with a newfound appreciation for the care and precision behind its creation.

The silver-haired man gave Cassandra a reassuring nod, his crimson eyes conveying a silent message of understanding. “I’m Licht, by the way,” he said. “And this is my brother, Yves.”

Cassandra smiled, feeling the tension in her shoulders ease slightly. “It's a pleasure to meet you both.” She gave a small curtsy, hoping to convey her sincerity through the graceful gesture. “Again, I’m truly sorry.” 

Licht cleared his throat and reached out to take her hand in his. “We can share this.” He placed the macaron gently into her hand, his crimson eyes looking so soft and sincere, if she didn’t know better, she’d think he was smiling.

Cassandra’s heart fluttered at the unexpected kindness. She met Licht’s gaze, feeling a strange connection form in the silent exchange. “I’d like that,” she said softly, breaking the macaron in half and offering one part to Licht. The delicate treat crumbled slightly in her hand, releasing a subtle fragrance of rose.

Licht took his half with a nod of thanks. Yves watched the exchange, his expression softening further as he saw kindness between them. 

As they each took a bite, the rich, floral flavors mingled on Cassandra’s tongue, and the macaron fairly melted in her mouth. “Mmm!” She couldn’t help the moan that escaped her lips. Yves truly was talented! “Rose and lemon…and is that a hint of lavender? I love lavender!”

Yves eyes widened, and his perfectly pink lips dropped open. “Yes it is. I can’t believe you could tell after one bite.”

Licht’s expression softened ever so slightly. “Everything Yves makes is really good.”

As he spoke, Cassandra noticed a flicker of something in his eyes—a longing, perhaps, for simplicity or joy. A sudden urge to understand him better and offer comfort or companionship welled up inside her.

"I believe it!" she exclaimed sincerely, her voice warm with appreciation as she turned back to Yves. "Baking requires a lot of skill and patience. You have quite the talent; this is the most delicious macaron I’ve ever tasted. And it’s so light and airy. I’ve never had success with making macarons, but I can make a mean mille-feuille.”

Yves’ cheeks turned an even deeper shade of red, making him look utterly embarrassed and, to her, even more endearing. He sighed and reached into his pocket, pulling out a handkerchief and handing it to her. "Here," he said gruffly. "You’ve got a bit of...something on your dress, Lady Cassandra."

Cassandra took the handkerchief, a bit startled by the unexpected kindness. "Thank you," she said, dabbing at the small spot she hadn’t even noticed. "You can just call me Cassandra, by the way."

"Don’t think this means you can just take whatever you want,” he stated, though his tone was much softer, almost teasing. “I’m very particular about who gets to eat my desserts and you’ve yet to pass the test."

She couldn’t help but smile at his haughty tone, sensing the warmth beneath his stern exterior. "I wouldn’t dream of it without your permission," she teased lightly, hoping to see more of his softer side.

His blush crept even higher up his cheeks, and he looked away. "Well, you’ve got my permission for now. Just don’t make a mess," he said turning back to her, his tone softer than before.

Cassandra took the last bite of the macaron, savoring the exquisite balance of flavors. The delicate shell gave way to a burst of rose and lavender, making her close her eyes and hummed to herself briefly in appreciation. 

She wanted to prolong the conversation and delve deeper into the lives of these intriguing strangers. But the crowded ballroom was stifling, and the weight of curious eyes felt like a tangible pressure on her shoulders. She glanced toward the tall windows, their glass panes reflecting the warm light of the chandeliers, and saw the garden beyond, bathed in the soft glow of moonlight. The thought of escaping to the tranquility of the garden, away from the prying eyes, was too tempting to resist.

"This room is getting rather stuffy," Cassandra said, her gaze shifting back to Yves and Licht. "Would you two like to join me for a stroll in the garden? It's much cooler out there, and we could continue our conversation..."

Yves looked hesitant, glancing at Licht for confirmation. Licht gave a barely perceptible nod, his expression unreadable. "Alright," Yves agreed, his tone begrudging but not unfriendly. "I suppose some fresh air wouldn't hurt."

What began as an attempt to make someone else feel good, to distract herself from her insecurities, had quickly blossomed into curiosity. She sensed that beneath their facades, these two young men harbored great depths of character. From Yves, she sensed a profound loneliness and vulnerability, carefully masked with his sharp tongue and haughty demeanor. Licht, on the other hand, exuded a subtle melancholy that intrigued her, hinting at a past filled with grief and unspeakable burdens. His silence and reserved manner suggested a heart that had endured far too much.

The cool night air was a welcome change from the oppressive heat of the ballroom, and the gentle rustling of leaves provided a soothing backdrop to their conversation. Cassandra found her heart opening up to them. She wanted to break through the walls they had built around themselves and offer something more genuine—friendship, perhaps, or understanding, whatever it was they needed. Her own struggles and her family’s expectations faded into the background. In that moment, she sensed a familiar yearning in them, one that mirrored her own desire for something deeper than the hollow exchanges of the ballroom.

Yves led the way to a secluded corner of the garden and a stone bench nestled under a flowering arbor. The scent of roses filled the air, mingling with the earthy aroma of the garden. 

"It's so peaceful out here," Cassandra said, looking up at the stars twinkling above and inhaling deeply. "I feel like I can breathe properly for the first time all evening." She settled onto the bench, gesturing for Yves and Licht to join her. 

Licht remained standing, his posture relaxed but alert, while Yves took a seat beside her, his expression softening slightly. The moonlight bathed his features, making the tension lines around his eyes less severe. "It is less insufferable out here," Yves remarked, his voice quieter. "I can't stand these grand events."

Cassandra nodded in understanding. "Neither can I. It's all so...overwhelming at times. But it's nice to meet new people, especially when they're as interesting as you two."

"You have very peculiar taste," Yves remarked, his voice carrying a touch of dismissiveness.

Cassandra laughed softly, feeling more at ease. "Well, I mean it. You both seem so...genuine. It's rare to find that in these circles."

Licht, who had been silent until now, finally spoke. "You're not like the others," he said, his tone contemplative. "You're different."

Cassandra looked up at him, surprised by the observation. "Different how?"

Licht's red gaze was steady, piercing. "You actually care. Most people here are only interested in appearances and status. But you...you're sincere."

Cassandra felt a blush rise to her cheeks and a mixture of embarrassment and gratitude swell within her. "Thank you," she said softly. "That means a lot. I don’t want to be like them.” She gestured towards the glass doors where they could see the nobles dancing. “Honestly, I feel out of place. I don’t want to lose who I am or what I feel…” but she trailed off and bit her lip. She was starting to talk too much, revealing too much of her inner emotions.

"It's exhausting, pretending to be something you're not,” Yves stated softly, a faint smile tugging at his lips. 

Licht nodded solemnly. 

“With us, you can just be yourself," Yves assured her, his voice softening with warmth.

Cassandra smiled, feeling a warmth spread through her. "Thank you." As the words left her lips, she felt a rush of vulnerability, almost embarrassed by how quickly she had opened up to them. The sincerity in their eyes reassured her, but the sudden rawness of her emotions left her feeling exposed.

As if sensing her discomfort, Yves cleared his throat. "So, Cassandra," he began, his tone taking on a conversational lilt, "what's your favorite dessert? I assume someone who enjoys sweets as much as you must have a preference."

Cassandra blinked at the unexpected question. The tension in her shoulders eased, and she was grateful for the diversion. "Oh, that's a tough one," she replied,  a smile forming on her lips. "I think I'd have to say lavender shortbread cookies. There's something about the delicate floral flavor combined with buttery sweetness that I just love."

Yves's eyes lit up with interest. "Lavender shortbread cookies, huh? A unique choice. Maybe... maybe you'd like to join us for afternoon tea next week? I could make some for you then." His cheeks turned an adorable shade of pink once again and he glanced away as if regretting the hasty invite.

"I'd love that." Cassandra's smile widened, feeling overjoyed at the invitation to spend more time with them. "And what about you, Yves? What's your favorite dessert to make?"

Yves leaned back, a thoughtful expression on his face as he gazed up at the night sky. "I enjoy making all sorts of desserts, but if I had to choose, I'd say éclairs. There's something satisfying about getting the choux pastry just right and filling them with rich, creamy custard."

"Yves's darioles are my favorite," Licht, who had been listening quietly, finally spoke up. 

The conversation flowed more easily after that. They shared stories, laughter, and even moments of comfortable silence. Yves’s sharp wit and Licht’s quiet strength became increasingly apparent, and Cassandra found herself drawn to their authenticity. The garden, with its fragrant roses and whispering trees, became a haven for them, a place where they could be themselves without the pressures of the ballroom. Cassandra felt an even stronger connection forming, a friendship that seemed to blossom under the stars.

It was only later, however, when a passing servant bowed deeply and addressed Yves and Licht as "Your Highnesses," that the realization dawned on her. Her eyes widened in shock, and she turned to them, her voice barely above a whisper. "You're...you're princes?"

Yves gave her a rueful smile, a hint of mischief in his eyes. "I suppose we forgot to mention that part."

"Does it matter?" Licht's expression remained unreadable as he watched her with his crimson eyes, the moonlight casting a soft glow on his silver hair. 

Cassandra shook her head quickly, a smile spreading across her face. "No," she said softly. "It doesn't matter at all."

As they continued their walk through the moonlit garden, Cassandra felt a warmth spread through her, grateful for the unexpected camaraderie and the genuine interest they had shown in her. The night seemed to wrap around them like a comforting blanket, making her feel, for the first time in a long while, truly at ease. Under the starlit sky, she had found kindred spirits in the most unexpected of places, and for the first time in a long while, she felt hope for what the future might bring.

[slightlyobsessedwitheverything]

NO NO NO NO

oh i saw it coming but FUCK

[ughmerlin]

✨ fave creators art challenge ✨

starting with the one and only @nataliescatorccio

becca, you have been my inspiration and my idol for years and years now. i don’t even know where to start because you’re just on a whole other level. seriously, you are the definition of talent and hard work, and every time i think i’ve seen your best, you go and make something even more breathtaking. you’re constantly setting new trends in the gifmaking community, inspiring the rest of us to think outside the box. i mean, how do you do it? it’s like you have a never-ending well of creativity and magic, and i’m honestly just lucky to witness it.

you have such a distinct style that always feels so effortless—but i know better than to think it’s really that easy. the way you color and blend is pure magic. more than that, you always seem to pull these brilliant concepts out of nowhere, and i have no idea how you manage to bring them to life with so much precision and detail. i can never get over the way you make every single gif feel like a piece of art—and i'm not just talking about coloring and blending, but the emotion you infuse in each set. it’s always so personal, so heartfelt, and it resonates in a way i can’t even describe.

so, without further ado, here are some of my favorite sets of yours from this year! (i had to limit myself to this year only otherwise we would be here til next year at the very least.)

alicent appreciation week: this one is fresh in my mind, as i've just made a set inspired by it! and for a good reason. it's seriously one of my all-time favorites from you. the way you wove these scenes together is just magic. you matched the young and old alicent scenes so well, i can only imagine how long it took. the soft green tone you used gives the whole thing such a calming yet melancholic feeling, and i think that perfectly captures the heartache of the scenes. it’s so beautifully painful to watch, but in the best way possible.

jackieshauna + good luck, babe: fun fact, this set sent me down the chappell spiral! even tho i was already loving the song, i simply couldn't stop thinking about it after i've seen your set and started to make connections to jackieshauna in my head. then i ended up fixating on chappell's music for weeks and that's all on you <3 i’m absolutely in love with the pink and mint combo, it feels so fresh and vibrant! and the lyric arrangement is so simple yet totally unique. love, love, love!

annabeth chase + nikita gill: from the moment i first saw it, i knew this was going to be one of my favourite sets from this year. and i wasn't wrong! the way you combined so many amazing effects and techniques without it ever feeling overwhelming is beyond impressive. the use of shapes, especially the little heart and dagger doodles, is brilliant, and the way the text warps around them is so creative. the geometric b&w elements? my mind was blown. then, there's the sick glitch effect in the middle and the last gif where the squares appear one by one—i can’t even imagine how much time and effort went into this. this set seriously belongs in a national history of gifs museum.

yennefer + all-american bitch: i feel like this set captures your artistry like none other. just one very simple font and yet you made it look like a masterclass in typography?? i bow down to thee. and all the scenes and coloring are so well balanced and just incredibly pleasing to the eye. the rich red coloring feels so deep and powerful, and you really brought out the intensity of the character with it. truly, the whole vibe of the set matches yen’s sass perfectly!

yellowjackets as yellowjackets species: i am obsessed with this concept! it just feels like one of these things that simply HAD to be made. the colors you chose for the set were absolute perfection, and that little bee detail? too cute for words. but honestly, what really had me blown away was how each gif really embodied the essence of the characters. this set felt so thoughtful, and i love that it doesn’t just look good but also tells a really cohesive story.

the crows as species of the crow family: you know i'm a sucker for a gif series! after falling in love with the yellowjackets set, i was so excited to see this one, and you absolutely nailed it! the blending, the coloring, it's all there in a perfect becca fashion. i will never get over how you chose the hooded crow for inej—such a perfect fit. also don't think i forgot this little series was supposed to have a third installment… just saying!

rhaenicent + say don't go: becca, this one is on a whole other level. i'm pretty sure i screamed when i first saw it. you managed to incorporate so many scenes from the show that it feels like a beautiful, exhaustive tribute to rhaenicent. i was blown away by how you combined all those effects and overlays so seamlessly. the shattered mirror in the first gif? genius. and the way you used the ripped pages with those perfect fonts? perfection. and the taylor swift lyrics just sealed the deal for me. i’m honestly in awe of how much heart and soul you put into this one.

jaskier in daffodils: this one was another showstopper for me. i love how “j” stands for both jaskier and joker—it’s such a clever little detail that you just nailed. the shades of yellow you used here? pure magic. you really turned these similar tones into something that feels dynamic and mesmerizing, and the way you played with color is honestly next-level.

jackieshauna + you can't catch me now: i can't get over how haunting this set feels. it's truly as if jackie's ghost is tied to it, ready to remind anyone who sees it of the lesbian high school drama of the century. i love how the first forest gif feels so ethereal, and the footsteps vector is another incredible detail. the black and white gif adds a whole other layer of mystery, and it feels like the perfect visual for shauna seeing jackie everywhere!

rhaenicent parallels: i don’t think i’ll ever get over this one. the merlin quote? chef’s kiss. i didn’t expect it, but it fits so perfectly with rhaenicent, i’m in complete awe. the coin motif was brilliant—it felt like such a personal touch to show the duality of the characters. the way you worked the paper ripping effect in and connected it to their younger and older selves was genius. the whole thing feels like a powerful emotional punch, and i can’t even put into words how much i love it.

becca, to say that you’re one of my absolute favorite creators is an understatement. i’m constantly in awe of your work, and i feel so lucky to witness it all! i'm sorry to see you struggling with inspiration and/or motivation these days, but hopefully this little love-rant of mine will remind you that everything you make inspires and resonates with so many of us here on tumblr.com/hellsite. love you loads <3

[seekerwingzcg]

𝕂𝕚𝕟𝕜𝕥𝕠𝕓𝕖𝕣 #16: 𝕊𝕡𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕎𝕠𝕣𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕡 (𝕋𝔽 𝕆𝕟𝕖 𝔼𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕒/𝕆𝕡𝕥𝕚𝕞𝕦𝕤)

Just Elita admiring the spike of a Prime.

In the start of the war, life was complicated. Elita, Bumblebee, and Optimus we're still trying to figure everything out.

One day, Elita headed to Optimus’ apartment. Optimus seemed to find a place to stay far faster than a lot of the miners in Iacon once they received their cogs.

She knocked on his door and he answered almost immediately, the door opening to her, “Ah, hello Elita. Come in.” He motioned her inside and she smirked, walking in.

She looked around, seeing that the place was a bit empty and yet still pretty nice, “Wow, your place is nice. I'm still looking for a place to stay. I'm still sleeping in the old barracks.”

Optimus’ optic ridges furrowed and he looked down at her, “Really?” He rubbed the back of his helm and shut the door behind him, moving to a couch in the middle of the room. He sat down and pat it, looking into her optics.

“Yeah, I guess I just don't know where I belong, yet.” She sat down beside him and felt his servo on her shoulder.

“I have an idea. Why don't you stay with me? Without Dee around, I'm feeling lonely. You are the closest friend I have left other than Bee. He already has a place to stay here in Iacon.” Optimus sighed and kept looking at her. His expression gave off a sad aura and lacked their brilliant blue glow.

“You are lonely, aren't you…?” She moved her servo up to his and held it. “I was at a loss of words when we lost Dee. I can't believe he did what he did and-” Elita felt him grip her servo in response.

“He was afraid. He was hurt and I can't allow him to do what Sentinel did. He is confused and misled. If only I had been easier on him. I could have stopped him. I was so blind. He needed me and still needs me. He'll never be the same again.”

Elita's servo went to his face and she moved closer, “Shh, no one knew. C'mon, Optimus, he's crazy. Focus on the future, not the past. You've still got Bee and I.”

Deep in emotions, Optimus moved closer to her and gently pressed his lips to hers. He blushed and moved away quickly, covering his mouth.

Elita's optics widened and she moved both servos to his face, deepening the kiss after continuing.

Before they knew it, Elita pulled him down onto her, wrapping her legs around his waist. “Since that day, I knew we were connected. I can't seem to get you out of my mind and… I would love to live with you, and oh so much more.”

Optimus caressed her and straddled her hips before their crotch panels touched. They both opened their optics and looked down. Elita bit into the kiss and smiled, “Do you want to try out your new body, Optimus Prime?”

Optimus blushed and bit his lip before opening his panel, allowing his spike out for the first time since he had received his upgrades.

He gasped, noticing that it was so large that it was laying on her torso, the tip touching her.

“Ooh, wow. Sweet Primus, look at you.” She slid down and held it in both servos, “Let me look at it for a bit. It is gorgeous.” She slid her digits from the shaft up to its tip, taking in how it twitched.

It was ridged and studded, bright blue bio lights trailing up to a notch in its tip which was red and rougher than the slick textures of it's shaft.

Optimus watched her stare it down and simply enjoyed the gentle touches and gasps until he felt her tongue trail up from mid shaft to the slit. It ripped a shaky moan from his lips.

“I never thought I would be making love to a Prime's spike. It's the most beautiful spike I have ever seen-” she gave it another long lick before taking the tip in her mouth, causing him to begin moaning.

“Ooh, Elita, that feels so good!” His hips thrusted up and she took it halfway in her mouth, making sure to be able to give it proper stimulation, licking at it with the back of her tongue before pulling off a bit.

“Optimus, you are so big. Such a perfect size. I can't wait to make you overload. I want to see it happen, too.” Elita took it back in her mouth, stimulating the tip again, making sure to tug it as she allowed his hips to move against her helm.

Optimus moaned and shut his optics. He wasn't used to this type of pleasure. He never took the time to interface or self-service, but that made it a thousand times better. “Oh, Elita, I'm not used to this. I'm not going to last very long. You are treating my spike so well.”

Elita let go and looked up at him, “It's okay. I don't want you to wait. Overload when you feel it. I just want to see it when it does.”

Optimus moaned with a nod. He felt her begin sucking again, his hilt being traced with her digit as she held it and gave it a squeeze. It had felt so good that he could feel the tingle of his overload beginning to build.

With time, Elita began touching her panel, her valve opening as she played with her exterior node, still sucking and squeezing Prime's spike.

Her digits deepened and slid into her valve, pleasuring herself simply to the thought of his gorgeous spike.

Prime started to twitch and pant as his spike hardened even more, “Elita, I am about to overload!” His hips jerked and she lapped at his tip, still enveloping it and as she overloaded, he did the same into her mouth.

Her valve pulsed over her digits as she let his spike slide from her mouth and stripe her chest. She watched it pulse and shoot the last bits of fluid onto her.

Optimus looked down and she had removed her digits from her valve and used it to wipe it off of her, licking some of it from her fingers. She kissed his spike and looked him in the optics, “Aah, Optimus, you are beautiful.”

Prime leaned back and pet her helm, “You are too…”

[221beloved]

System collapse

When Mrs Hudson entered the sitting room of 221b Bakerstreet, a smile appeared on her face. John had brought his daughter to Bakerstreet this morning, mumbled something about striking daycare and a sick babysitter and left in a hurry. And since then, Sherlock was apparently enjoying his time with the little girl. He was lying on his back on the floor and Rosie was sitting on his chest, playing with the stuffed bee Sherlock had given to her in the early days, and giggling vigorously. Sherlock was smiling up at her, watching his beloved girl with a warm and fond gaze.

“Juhu,” Mrs Hudson announced herself while entering the flat. “I've brought some tea and biscuits, thought you could need some, after all this playing around.” She saw Rosies eyes widen in delight, nod excitedly and jump a little on Sherlocks chest, what forced a huffing sound from the man. “All right little bee,” he said and wrapped his large hands around her body. He lifted her abruptedly and held her in the air with outstretched arms, hovering over his own body. She burst into laugher, the sound light and clear and she was wriggling and squirming in Sherlocks grasp. When he was about to lower her to her feet she screamed 'noo' and Sherlock lifted her up again, mirroring Rosie's grin.

Mrs Hudson smiled while setting the table and followed the scenery from the corners of her eyes. If only John could see how lovely Sherlock was with the little girl. But he was always so reserved when John was around. Finally Sherlock put Rosie down on the floor. “Well, I think this is enough,” he smiled at her and wanted to stand up himself, but as he put weight on his left foot, he winced slightly. He'd had a sprained ankle some weeks ago, but apparently it still ached when he put weight on it after sitting for a long time. Rosie must have noticed as well, because she stopped on her way to the kitchen and turned towards him. “Papa?” She asked concerned.

Mrs Hudson froze at the exclamation and just stared for a moment. Eventually a warm feeling exploded in her chest and she gasped and put her hands over her mouth to cover the delighted sound that wanted to escape her. This was so adorable, Rosie and Sherlock really had a special-

But as she turned her gaze to Sherlock, Mrs Hudson's smile faded and the warm feeling turned to ice, apparently boring holes into her chest and knotting her stomach. The man was displaying an expression of utter shock, he was pale, even more so than usual, his breathing was strained and ragged, it was as if he was paralysed, except his violently shaking hands and rapid blinking. Mrs Hudson felt like she could watch his mind work, the wheels turning and turning, but not coming up with anything. And she could see this brilliant mind collapse, just... shutting down. Completely. Sherlock was staring at the girl with wide eyes, not moving for a very long time, and he looked so scared, nearly horrified, that Mrs Hudson couldn't move either. She could see that Sherlock was taking deep breaths, trying to regain control, but she could still see the utter panic in his eyes when he crouched down in front of Rosie.

“Rosie,” he said, his voice trembling and a bit hoarse, but urgent. “Don't... Please, don't say that in front of your Daddy, or mention it at all.” Mrs Hudson's mouth was hanging open. No, he couldn't mean that, could he? What was he saying? Rosie seemed confused as well. “But,” she said, “But you play with me, I have my own bed here, and I've read that some children have two Mothers or two Dads. Why can't you be my Dad? Daddy likes you too.” Sherlock shook his had. “Please, little bee, I don't think your father would like this idea, he doesn't like me like this, like-” He paused, swallowed. “I'm just a friend. You belong with him. Please, don't mention it to him, yeah?” And just with that, Mrs Hudson could feel her heart crack. Did Sherlock really think- Well, what did John make him think? She wasn't able to find words for the misery she saw right in front of her, for the pained expression on Sherlock's features, his obvious hurt when he told Rosie not to call him her father, even though he clearly wished she would. He was so deeply, deeply in love with the Watsons, with John, as with the little girl, but he was afraid of John's reaction. Because he didn't dare to show his feelings. Because he thought John wasn't reciprocating. Well, Mrs Hudson wasn't sure herself. Sometimes she thought, there must be something, clearly, but sometimes the doctor was denying it so profoundly. And wasn't that terrible in itself? Rosie was nodding slowly and said hesitantly: “Okay...?” It sounded more like a question. “Thanks,” Sherlock said, but he was still looking so incredible sad. Oh God, Mrs Hudson thought, oh dear Lord. It was as if the ache in her chest was caused by a real dagger made of ice. “Oh Sherlock...” she said, and the man lifted his gaze to hers, his eyes wide, and he was looking so young, so unbelievable young and vulnerable.

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[dansnaturepictures]

Eight of my favourite photos I took in August 2024 and month summary: Baby steps into the shift of the seasons

The photos are of; view with a moody sky at Lakeside Country Park, young Mute Swans at Keyhaven, Jersey Tiger moth at Lakeside, Chalkhill Blue at Stockbridge Down, Common Darter at Lakeside, Roe Deer at Acres Down, harebells at Shipton Bellinger and King Alfred's cake at Fishlake Meadows.

August is a time to enjoy high summer sights including butterfly filled meadows and darting dragonflies but also a time to prepare for change into an equally exciting wild season, as subtle signs like the drawing in of the nights and emergence of berries hint at the imminent baton exchange of summer and autumn. I have really enjoyed this August to the full for wildlife, walking and photos.

In the early days as the Big Butterfly Count drew to a close I ended triumphantly observing a big increase in species such as Meadow Brown, Common Blue and Speckled Wood being around. There were some stellar additions to my butterfly year this month with Essex Skipper, Silver-spotted Skipper, Chalkhill Blue and Brown Hairstreak seen. Other standout species of a fantastic butterfly month included Brown Argus, Wall Brown, Small Heath, Small White, Brimstone, Comma, Peacock and Red Admiral. I had a marvellous month of moths centring on a phenomenon over a week or so seeing a fair few Jersey Tiger moths at different locations a species I’d only ever seen three times prior to that, a really exciting influx of this resplendent moth. I was captivated by a splendid Swallow-tailed moth at home at the month’s start, with Double-striped Pug, Wavy-barred Sable, my first ever Purple Bar, Grass-veneer, Silver Y, Small Dusty Waves and Six-spot Burnet also enjoyed. As the month went on butterflies rather made way for dragonflies to take centre stage a little, with mesmerising times watching Migrant Hawker, Southern Hawker, evocative of late summer for me Common Darter and Black-tailed Skimmer, with Beautiful Demoiselle and Blue-tailed Damselfly good to see too.

Shift in the year was evident in my birdwatching month too which was another brilliant one with some migration movement. I loved seeing Whinchats at Hook-with-Warsash, Little Stint and Curlew Sandpiper at Pennington and Osprey at Fishlake Meadows. I got some splendid views of the Peregrines at Winchester Cathedral this month, very much enjoyed the new Great Crested Grebe chicks and young Moorhens on regular walks at Lakeside Country Park and was thrilled to see adorable Mute Swan cygnets well a few times at Winnall Moors and Keyhaven in a strong year I’ve had for seeing young birds. Other highlights this month included Ravens, Jay, Red Kite, Buzzard, Marsh Harrier, Kestrel, Sparrowhawk, the last Swifts, Swallow, House Martin, Sand Martin, Stock Doves, Stonechat, Bullfinches, Great Spotted Woodpecker at Lakeside and Green Woodpecker there and heard elsewhere, Chiffchaff, Long-tailed Tit, Blue Tit and Goldfinches including young at home, a few Kingfishers, Cormorants including notably at Lakeside and Winnall Moors, Grey Heron including notably at Lakeside and in Winchester, Little Egret, Great White Egret, Spoonbills, Knot, Grey Plover, Ringed Plover, Avocet, Common Sandpiper, Dunlin, Snipe, Whimbrel, Curlew, Eiders and some Tufted Ducks including ducklings.

Other nice sightings this month included of Roe and Fallow Deers on wonderful afternoon of deers at Acres Down in the New Forest, Grey Squirrel, Common Red Soldier beetle, my first ever Tawny Longhorn beetle at Shipton Bellinger, ladybirds, pondskater with especially lots at one point at Lakeside sticking in my mind, sawflies, charming Hornet mimic hoverfly at Stockbridge Down, Yellow-haired Sunfly, other hoverflies and bees, Ichneumon wasps, Fox and Cinnabar moth caterpillars, crickets/grasshoppers including Roesel’s bush cricket, Long-winged Conehead and Common Field Grasshopper, snails at home on wet nights and gorgeous Ambersnail at Winnall Moors, Common Lizards at Magdalen Hill and Grey Silverfish and spiders at home.

Onto plants and I saw some more thrilling wildflowers this month including fairy flax, water speedwell and another speedwell, St. John’s-worts, fleabane, ragwort, bird’s-foot trefoil, forget-me-not, scarlet pimpernel, water mint, sundew, bog asphodel, hemp agrimony, purple loosestrife, great willowherb, rosebay willowherb, small-flower hairy willowherb, marjoram, wild basil, tufted vetch, vetch, viper’s-bugloss, scabiouses including fine devil’s-bit scabious, wild carrot, upright hedge-parsley, sea aster, scentless mayweed, pineappleweed, dock, self-heal, sainfoin, creeping thistle, spear thistle, woolly thistle, horseweed, common mallow, musk mallow, marsh mallow, golden samphire, nightshade, broad-leaved enchanter’s nightshade and some of my favourites centaury, restharrow, common toadflax, eyebright and endearing nodding harebells. It was amazing to see sunflowers at home in the garden a stalwart of August with the fuchsias and black-eyed Susans coming on nicely too. The aforementioned berries I really enjoyed seeing this month included loads of blackberries and hawthorn, blackthorn sloes, rowan, guelder rose berries, nightshade berries, cuckoo-pint berries, elderberries, wild service tree berries and wayfaring tree berries with apple, acorn and chestnut seen too. There were some nice mushrooms seen this month as well including King Alfred’s cake and panthercap and I took in some stunning views at various locations and habitats with epic sky scenes including moody scenes, the moon and sunsets observed. Have a great September all.

[the-ultimate-muses]

@despairs-memorial local dorklord about to be taken out by one (1) cute ass mechanic more at 11 (X)

Getting hearing aids hadn't been on Kazuichi's list of priorities for quite some time, with no point being seen in having them. His ears were only getting worse with each day, it seemed (partly because he didn't wear ear protection and partly from his father's frequent beatings), so how long would they really be of use to him? Besides, that cost money, something he and his father didn't have. (Of course, they'd have more should his father stop spending it on beer to drink himself into a stupor every damn night).

Hope's Peak had changed many things for him; it gave him friends, people who actually understood what he was saying when talking shop, or at the very least liked listening to him no matter how lost they were. He'd changed much in the time he's been there, and he's happy to say it was for the better. His hearing hadn't improved, however, nor had his home life, money troubles, being forced to go hungry some nights... He never even expected it to, choosing to ignore the inevitable progression to complete deafness.

The thing about a place where brilliant minds gathered, however, meant there was no shortage of breakthroughs being made, and things needing to be tested. Miu had been the one to design the hearing aids, with them even custom made to match Kaz's usual blinding attire. She would never admitt she did it for him specifically, but Kaz had worked with her long enough to know when to call her bluff.

He'd spent his morning in Miu's workshop, tapping and banging and making any noise he could while she wrote down notes on how well he could hear certain things. They only stopped because Kazuichi...had a bit of an emotional breakdown, but a good one. He'd given up on his ears a long time ago, but now here he was listening to the ting of the ventilation system, the beat of Miu's heart as he clung to her, hell he could hear his crying in its entirety instead of just feeling it and the echos of the vibrations it sent through his bones. There were so many things he wanted to do, so many songs and movie to watch, and birds! He could hear birds now! Bees buzzing, and cats-

He'd been up and out the door without any other explanation than needing to find Gundham, leaving one very preplexed, and very curious Miu in their workshop.

Finding the breeder was easy, with him seeming to only ever be in a handful of places, the most visited being his animal sanctuary. Normally Kaz would knock before entering someone's space, but he was too buzzed on adrenaline and excitment, the mechnic near bursting through the door and bouncing right up to Gundham with an almost manic grin, his body shaking where his hands gripped at the man's shirt. "I need a cat! Gimmie a cat!! Cat!!!"