#bertie even speaks latin

[just-an-enby-lemon]

There's a genuine high change that not only Bertie family started as actual kind and good heros and slowly by power and ritches and fucked up social structures (hello capitalism) became the McGuffingans we know but that their first member was Bertus aka one of Sasha's roman childrem.

And that would mean that Sasha not only is central to Bertie existing she is likely even created the small paradox where Bertie is called Bertrand because of Bertus who is called Bertus because of Bertie (or because he was a loud baby).

[sebastianswallows]

Dangerous and Delightful — Chapter 21 — At home

— PAIRING: Sebastian Sallow x F!Reader

— SYNOPSIS: Sebastian is a purveyor of forbidden artefacts, a dark arts researcher, and a curse-breaker for hire. Ominis, desperate to save him from himself, hires Reader in secret to persuade him, by any means necessary, to leave his illegal activities behind.

— WARNINGS: None

— WORDCOUNT: 2.5k

— TAGLIST: @bloofinntoona @sarcasticpluviophile @estrotica

She woke up to the distant sound of Sebastian’s voice. It came through the walls of her bedroom, so faint she thought she was still dreaming. When her eyes opened, just peeking through her lashes and her messy hair, she couldn’t see him anywhere, but she still heard him. He was speaking to someone in the garden. She fell asleep again and woke up sometime later, couldn’t even tell how long afterwards…

The day went by as usual — breakfast together, a few light chores, a little walk outside — until just before lunchtime. They were preparing it together — Sebastian with magic, and she the hard way — when he brought up something new.

“How would you like to go away for a while?”

She didn’t answer for a few moments, something deep in her mind freezing in fear.

“Not for long,” he added, half-turning to look at her.

She couldn’t even tell if he was being honest or just saying it to placate her. “Go where?” she asked as she started to cut tomatoes again.

“To my home,” he said, “in London.”

“Why?”

“I might have some business there.”

Her nose curled. Dark magic again… “You know I disapprove of that sort of thing.”

“Yes well, you disapprove of a great many things but you still do them, don’t you?”

She threw the knife in his general direction and ran into the drawing room.

After a session of forced embraces and swinging and swaying and a few thrown fists and insults, he brought her to an exhausted peace and detailed his plan for the two of them, through which he slipped several reassurances that they wouldn’t stay in London long.

Somewhere in the middle of his speech, she realised what she’d heard that morning — he’d been speaking to Bertie, asking her to tend to the chickens for the next few days.

She had to agree to come with him, of course, because clearly he’d made all the arrangements already.

An old and disused fireplace in a ruin served as their Floo point, off the road just between the village and the Cloke house. She dragged her suitcase behind half-heartedly, having left in the middle of the night so as not to be asked any awkward questions by the neighbours.

They arrived in a basement somewhere, a grey and filthy place filled with old furniture and bits of disused machinery. She didn’t have time to ask where they were before Sebastian, more cheerful than she’d ever seen him, dragged her up the stairs. It was a block of flats.

“Home sweet home,” whispered Sebastian as he stepped through his door — after undoing the tens of wards he’d put on the place. He drank it in, sight and scent, and eagerly undid the charm on his trunk that turned it from a suitcase back to its normal size. “Put yours down anywhere, my love.”

She dropped it on the floor and started to undo her cloak as Sebastian turned on a couple of the lamps.

It was a fairly small place, made smaller by the clutter that covered every surface. Magical items sat next to innocuous muggle ones, boxes were strewn everywhere, and a few stray bottles of amber alcohol, all in various states of consumption, were on this or that table. Several clocks each showing different times hung on the northern wall next to a great map of Europe. On another wall, pinned to a board that hung askew, were myriad papers in runes and hieroglyphs with Latin scrawled on the sides, crude drawings of objects she could not recognise, and graphs of things she half-remembered from Astronomy class.

And books, piles and piles of books were shoved on every available space: on the desk, on the commode to her left, on the chairs and tables, on the floor, in the bookcase and on top of it all the way up to the ceiling. A few peeked out from beneath his bed.

Sebastian, pleased as can be, was shaking off his jacket while she still looked for a place to sit.

“Would you like some tea?” he offered smilingly as he sat down on the bed to take his boots off. “I have a little kitchen just through there.”

She looked to where he nodded, to the right, and saw a door covered by a grey curtain that nearly camouflaged it into the neighbouring wall.

“No thank you,” she said.

“How about brandy?” he grinned. “I have some bottles you’d love, all sweet, just like you.”

“I’m tired enough already,” she said, hugging her cloak to her chest. “How long will I have to be here?”

Sebastian shoved his boots beneath the chair and went to her, gripping her by the shoulders with his big, warm hands. “Just a day or two. I need to speak to my associate about something, and then we’ll leave. If… if you don’t like it here,” he stuttered.

“Who is this associate?”

“Don’t worry,” he smiled, gently prying the cloak from her fingers and undoing her bonnet to take it off. “You won’t have to meet him.”

She almost wanted to protest that, but she had a feeling he kept her away from this other man for her benefit as much as for his own. She knew enough about the dark arts to know most dabblers were rarely as charming as Sebastian.

She looked to the small bed, left in an untidy mess since probably the day he’d ran away from there. It was difficult enough to sleep beside him in her bed, which was big and spacious, but this was asking too much…

She turned again to Sebastian, but he had his back turned, busy opening the windows. Slowly, she stepped further inside the flat, took off her jacket and her boots, and uncoiled her hair. The night air came in like a deep inhale and seemed to open every surface. The old wood furniture crackled and the curtains flapped.

Sebastian disappeared inside the kitchen and made tea anyway while she took out her nightgown and folded her clothes away. She’d packed more than two days’ worth of clothes, on his insistence, and although he seemed determined that they wouldn’t stay there longer than that, she wondered what he was thinking to make her pack for more.

The ritual of going to bed was well rehearsed by both of them, but he didn’t do anything to her that night. Just laid her head over his shoulder and hugged her with one arm to cushion her against the wall that was behind her and the thin mattress below.

She could feel him nuzzling the top of her head, his fingers brushing up and down her spine, and through his chest she heard the tremble of his heart, so heavy and restless. She didn’t like being so close to him, and at her core she was afraid he’d touch her in a way she’d disapprove again, but he didn’t. It was distracting… He was distracting, so warm and citrus scented and just the right amount of hard and soft.

“Perhaps we’ll take a walk on Diagon Alley tomorrow, after I’m done,” he whispered. “We can have lunch at the Cauldron, and even go to the Museum again,” he smiled.

She didn’t answer, although her thoughts also began to drift. It had a charm, perhaps, to be in London, to have a small little home to come back to and for the rest of the day to be out, enjoy the sights and visit new places… And it was less daunting to do with someone by her side.

Her knees curled up defensively at the very thought that that someone could be Sebastian.

“And in the evening we could walk through St James’s Park, and see the Thames nearby. Maybe even go to Highgate cemetery,” he teased. “I think you’d enjoy that… I know I enjoy it, but I’ve always been a bit twisted in that way. Then again, I heard you have some of the same inclinations…”

She froze, if it were possible, even more stiffly. Her eyes were closed, her breath was even, but she was smouldering inside.

“I didn’t mean to gossip about you with the Clokes, but they insisted. They asked a number of things, and… in the end, they told me more than I knew. I was upset at the time, but I don’t think I am anymore. I think it’s rather charming, really, that you were skilled with dark magic when young. I suppose now, since you left it behind, that it wounded you in some way…” he said, his hand gently squeezing her waist, as if to make sure that she was still there, in one piece. “I can’t fault your aversion to it, I can merely disagree.”

Her fingers clawed into his shirt, holding back several retorts that, in the end, wouldn’t have made any difference. In spite of herself, she understood Sebastian very well. She would have been as implacable as he when she was around fifteen. It just seemed he never grew out of it…

“Anyway,” he sighed, “rest now. It’s been a long enough day.”

He brushed his cheek over the crown of her head and pulled the covers up to her chin, surrounding her with the feel and scent of him. She fell asleep faster than she thought she would.

By the time she woke up, he was gone. A note on the bedside cabinet told her he’d left to see that associate of his and that he should be back by noon, with a few tender embellishments at the end. She scoffed and turned around, determined to sleep a little more.

But now awake, she couldn’t ignore the way the springs of the bed dug into her sides, the way the pillow wasn’t soft enough, the way the blankets hardly kept her warm, and she only tossed and turned with a frown until she decided to get up.

Her pocket watch told 7:30. She didn’t even know what she was going to do with herself the rest of the morning, too afraid to start wandering around lest she get lost, and too far from Ominis to seek him out. She was just thinking back to that Floo fireplace in the basement as she tied her hair when the door opened loudly and closed with a bang.

“Sebastian?” she turned, her hands still up fixing the last pin.

“You’re ready,” he breathed, “good, we should leave.”

“So soon? But I haven’t even eaten.”

“Yes, well, we’ll eat when we get there?”

She frowned. “Get where?”

Sebastian paused. “Somewhere. Is your suitcase all made?”

He spotted her nightgown on the bed and grabbed it, stuffing it inside her open suitcase before closing it just as it was. With a wave of his wand, he charmed it to a pocket-sized box and did the same with his trunk, and before she had time to ask anything else he grabbed her wrist and dragged her.

After looking left and right, he took enough time to reapply his wards, locking the place as securely as they’d found it, and then without a word of explanation he pulled her after him down the stairs.

“What’s happened?” she asked calmly.

“Later.”

“Where are we going?”

They went down another flight of stairs.

“Do you still not know?”

“I’m thinking,” he said, and after a few more steps, he muttered, “We… could go to Ominis.”

She thought her heart might have stopped. Yes, yes! she thought. Please say yes!

“That would be a —”

“No,” he said almost right away, “too close to London.”

He stopped right where he stood, with her just behind him, her spirits crushed. It no longer mattered where he chose to go. He took a few deep breaths, his shoulder squared, his head bowed, and even from behind she could tell he reached an uncertain conclusion.

His hand tightened around hers and, as they stood in the middle of the stairs, he looked back to her and said, “Hold fast for a moment.”

Then, in a blink, they were elsewhere.

He’d apparated them to somewhere far more cold and windy, somewhere outside in the middle of a country lane with tall mountains in the distance and birds singing in the trees. She could hear roosters crowing and wondered whether they were back in Upper Flagley, but as she let him go and turned around, eyes squinting at the sunlight, she found she couldn’t recognise the place.

But no, she could… She’d been here once before. And that was Hogwarts in the distance.

“Feldcroft,” said Sebastian with an apologetic smile. “Perhaps not the wisest choice, but… It might win us some time.”

“Sebastian, what’s happened?” she asked, more insistently this time. “Why all this fuss? Why run away?”

“Why do you think?!” he shouted, then sighed and tempered himself, covering his eyes contritely with his hand. “Let’s go inside, we can speak there.”

“Inside where?” she asked, then looked at the house behind him. It seemed abandoned, its garden a wild thicket, roof falling apart… “There?!”

“It will be alright,” he smiled, “you’ll see.”

And then she remembered: she’d seen that house before as well. It was exactly where he’d apparated to the first time, when he took her to The Three Broomsticks.

Small and round and made of stone with a sturdy wooden door, it seemed apart from the rest of the village which, although distant and spread apart, was far more habitable. Sebastian walked inside as if he owned it, which she now realised he probably did. The door opened at his touch, and he lit up the little chamber with a swish of his wand. She stood in the doorway and covered her mouth, coughing at the cloud of dust that rose just from him walking through.

There was a small round table with three wooden chairs overturned around it and a big armchair to the side, and shelves and cabinets, and in another part of the house two beds, or what was left of them. She stepped inside, trying to imagine what it used to look like… It became more alive as Sebastian parted the curtains, cleaned the dust away, and repaired the drapes that split what seemed to be the drawing room from the bedroom.

She set straight the fallen chairs and the tipped-over vase on the table, turning then to the little cabinet behind. It still held a collection of plates and teacups neatly.

“It should be safe for the night,” said Sebastian, wiping his hands dry on his trousers. “I’ll make sure of it.”

She leaned against the table and regarded him calmly. “Well, clearly something’s gone terribly wrong for you to come here of all places. Why don’t you tell me what it is?”

Sebastian’s freckled nose curled angrily for a moment, and he minced his words in his mind for a while.

“Burke’s double-crossed me,” he sighed. “I thought he summoned me to tell me the Aurors stopped following us, but he just tried to hand me over to them like some consolation prize.”

She bit her lip and nodded.

“At least, that seemed to be what he was trying to do…”

“It seems to me like this is not a very rewarding profession,” she said.

“Don’t start.”

[kimabutch]

The One Who Will Remember Everything

The sun has set, risen, and set again by the time that Cicero stops, points to a fancy-looking house on a hill, and says something she can vaguely understand. Sasha barely nods back. Her legs have long since stopped hurting and are now simply numb, and her entire being is working to keep herself upright.

She doesn’t remember collapsing halfway up the hill, nor Cicero running for help to carry her the rest of the way.

--

Sasha’s gotten used to waking up with a start, ready to fight, but this time, she wakes slowly, becoming gradually conscious of the warm blankets wrapped around her and the sunlight behind her eyelids. It’s only when she starts vaguely listening for the familiar sounds of Hamid’s soft snores and hears birdsong instead that her eyes snap open. She’s lying on a colourful, soft bed in a large room, lit by several windows. Her clothes and shoes are still all on.

Instinctually, Sasha checks for all her daggers, counting them quickly. All there but the ice dagger, which — she looks down at her hand and the blue scars that jolt like lightning across her skin, and suddenly it all comes back like a punch to the stomach. Letting go of Azu. Grizzop’s limp body in her arms. Corpses, burned alive.

She closes her eyes and swallows dryly, unsure if she’s holding back puke or sobs, and unwilling to find out. She crawls out of the bed and feels every muscle in her body protest with soreness as she silently walks to the window. By the light of day, no longer wracked by exhaustion, Sasha sees clearly, for the first time, the endless green, rolling fields stretching into the horizon. There’s a weight on Sasha’s chest as she imagines herself standing in them, falling into their infinity, searching desperately for something to hold onto. She tears herself away from the window, her breath short, and leans against the wall, comforted somehow by its solidness.

Calming her breath and avoiding looking out the windows, Sasha makes her way along the wall to the doorway. Muffled voices come from the lower level, so she creeps down the stairs, instinctually stealthy, and wanders until she finds their source: a garden. From the doorway, she can see Cicero in a new toga, talking boisterously to an elderly man, who’s surprisingly calm in the face of Cicero’s forceful personality. Maybe it’s the effect of several successive potions of tongues that she took yesterday, or maybe it’s whatever allowed Bertie to speak French in Paris, but Sasha finds that she can understand their Latin near-perfectly.

“For now, you don’t need to worry,” the old man is saying. “The cow and chickens they left and my garden will be perfectly serviceable until Atticus returns.”

“But you’ve seen her — she’s all skin and bones! She carried me half the way here! She needs something substantial!” Cicero says.

“I assure you, I can take care of her. When she wakes up, I’ll make her a large dinner —”

“Cheers, mate,” Sasha says, coming up behind Cicero, “but I’ve lived on less before. I don’t need anything fancy.”

Cicero turns around in surprise. “Ah, excellent, you’re awake! Let me introduce you to Aulus, the delightful servant of my good friend, Atticus, in whose villa we are currently residing! Unfortunately, Atticus, his family, and his scribes were traveling in Rome when the destruction occurred, but Aulus will provide for us. I’m sure they will find their way back. They’re not as quick as us!”

“The news of Rome came to us a day before you arrived,” Aulus explains. “The rest of Atticus’s servants fled with most of the animals, but I chose to stay. We have large stores of food here, and many fields. We’ll be comfortable until Atticus returns, at which point we’ll make a decision about where to go.

“Yeah… when he returns… from Rome,” Sasha says, unsure whether it’s morally right to support their naive optimism. She doesn’t know that it’ll be four weeks until Aulus and Cicero give up hope. “How long was I asleep?”

“Two and a half days — you must be hungry,” Aulus says, heading towards the door. “What food do you prefer?”

“You, uh… you got any eels?”

Cicero beams. “A delicate palate — delightful!”

--

That evening, Aulus ushers her into the same second-floor bedroom, and Sasha finds herself lying awake on her back. Whenever she closes her eyes, she sees Hamid, Grizzop, and Azu, swears she can hear them calling her name — but whenever she opens them, she feels her gaze drawn to the window overlooking the fields. At the thought of the open space, her chest tightens. She sees herself walking through them, feels her vulnerability from all sides, knows that she’s being watched.

She slips out of bed and makes her way to Aulus’s bedroom, awkwardly knocking.

“Is there, like… a basement? A cellar? Just in case we, uh… if someone comes?”

--

On the fourth day, she wakes up to Cicero calling down to her from the top of the cellar.

“Aulus heard something in the stables! You’re very strong! I hope you can check!” His voice is as booming as always. Sasha unclenches her hand’s white-knuckled grip on her dagger and pulls herself up from the blankets that Aulus insisted she bring down to sleep on. She climbs up the ladder, Cicero chatting constantly.

The stables are a hundred metres or so away from the back entrance to the villa, and the path is thankfully shaded by a handful of trees. She sneaks from tree to tree towards the barn. It’s probably bandits, taking advantage of the chaos, like always. Barretts, the lot of them. She isn’t worried. Still, she stays quiet as she eases the door open and slips into a shadow. Listening for a moment, she can hear faint crying from… the ceiling? Fifteen years in Other London allow her eyes to adjust quickly to the dark, and it only takes a moment for her to spot, curled up with what looks to be riding equipment in the loft, a young boy.

He can’t be more than eight or nine years old. His dark black hair is grey with ash, and his tunic is torn and covered in dark patches — probably blood. Tears are leaving streaks down his dirty face.

Sasha freezes, stilling her breath. It’s the classic set up, which Barrett had occasionally used her for when he couldn’t find chubbier-faced kids. The crying child, poorly hidden, surrounded by a well-hidden gang, ready to take out their victim the moment they let their guard down. Works well on Upper London idiots, but not her.

Glancing around the room in the barn, Sasha takes stock of the places that the fuckers might hide, listening closely for any movement. In only a moment, she finds what she's been looking for: several large amphorae in a shadowy area of the room, behind which two or three small people might hide. She sneaks around to them, sure that she's kept herself well-hidden, and in one swift movement, launches an attack on — nothing. Air. Her knife, perfectly aimed to hit a bandit, loudly cracks an amphora, spilling grain out over the floor. Sasha braces for a second, waiting for the bandits that must be hidden somewhere else to start their attack, but all she hears is the sound of a young child who's trying his very best to stay quiet.

Maybe she was wrong.

Sasha climbs up the ladder to the loft, cringing with every creak of old wood. By the time that she peeks her head to the upper level, the boy is staring right at the ladder, holding with both hands a small knife, like you might use to cut tough meat. He points it towards her shakily, and suddenly she's sure that this isn't a set-up — you'd have to be a stupid gang leader to get someone like this as bait.

"Hey mate," she says in Latin. "Don't think you actually want to fight me. Nice knife, though." The boy tries to press even more of his body into the riding equipment, away from her. Without getting closer to him, Sasha swings on the end of the loft, pulling herself up to the ledge and sitting down, legs hanging off the edge. She sits in silence for a moment, suddenly very aware that she has no idea how to interact with small children, even those wielding weapons. What had she liked at that age?

"You wanna see some of mine? Sasha says. "Knives, I mean." Reaching into her studded leather coat, she pulls out a dagger. From the corner of her eye, she sees the boy flinch. "Hey, nah, it's okay, I won't hurt you, see?" she says, and offers it to him, holding it by the blade. He looks at her with confusion, but doesn't take the blade, so she lays it down carefully on the floor of the loft in front of him.

"Now this one," she says, pulling out her adamantine dagger and admiring its intricate patterns, "this one's my favourite. Well... one of my favourites." She lets him look at it from his place among the riding equipment and then, when she's sure he has his eyes on her, weaves it through her fingers so fast that it looks like water. She throws the dagger in the air, making an arch over her head, then a figure eight, then catching it on one finger, where it spins for a moment. When she looks back at the boy, he's transfixed. Sasha can't stop a small smile from coming to her face as she brings out a third and fourth dagger and continues on with her tricks.

Five minutes later, the boy has pulled up right to her side for a closer look at her fire dagger and the way its flames shift as she runs it over her arms, behind her back, through her fingers. He's holding his meat-knife in one hand and her old dagger in his other, but absent-mindedly, no longer on edge.

Putting out the dagger in one final flourish, she turns to the boy. "Do you wanna stay with me here? Just as long as you want, though," she says quickly. "I won't keep you here if you want to leave. But... we've got food, and a couple of... friends."

At "food," the boy perks up immediately. As if suddenly remembering that he's supposed to be cautious, he gives a shy nod.

"'Name's Sasha... Whosaskinus" Sasha says, and it occurs to her that this might be the first time she's given her name unprompted in her life.

The boy hesitates for a moment. "Maximus," he says. "Cause of my little brothers."

Fourteen years later, when Maximus helps a traveling pregnant woman give birth to a child, the boy will be called 'Little Maximus' in honour of him.

--

It’s Aulus who insists that Sasha take a bath and wash her clothes. They’ve been there ten days by that point, and Sasha’s yet to venture beyond the stables or the garden. She’s more help to Aulus inside, she says, trading her off-the-cuff Other London recipes for Aulus’s high-brow cooking, learning the names of the plants in the garden, and, at one point, climbing into the barn’s rafters to patch a leak. Aulus isn’t so bad: quick with a joke, less pompous than Cicero, and kind to her in a way that still feels a little foreign.

He lets her know, gently at first, that they do have heated baths that are quite pleasant, and wouldn’t she like to change from her leather coat into something more comfortable? And Sasha does like baths (despite her grumbling the first time Eldarion made her take one), and she doesn’t like picking bits of Rome dust in her belt or seeing the stain of black blood on her pants — but it feels so final, doesn’t it, taking her stuff off? As if she’s saying that she’s not leaving. And it’s not like Sasha actually has plans to leave or believes that she could really ever find her way back, but every time she takes off her studded leather jacket, she feels herself telling Hamid and Azu and Bi Ming that she’s not coming back for them.

Eventually, Aulus and Sasha come to complex negotiations, and Sasha agrees to let him wash her other clothes if she can keep the jacket nearby while she’s in the bath, and put it on again right after. She lays out her knives one by one right near the edge of the water, counting them before slipping in. The water is warm, as Aulus promised, and she feels all her muscles relaxing, despite herself. With an ache of nostalgia, she remembers Hamid’s apartment in London, and the bath she took there. It feels like years ago.

She’s dried off, dressed, and is figuring out how to arrange the daggers in her leather-over-tunic outfit when she sees Maximus’s head poking out from the doorway. He’s lightened up considerably in the past few days, and tends to stick around Sasha like glue.

“Oi, privacy!” she says, and Maximus’s face falls as he realizes she’s seen him.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to look, I was just going past and —” Maximus comes running up to her and motions for her to lean down. “You’ve got a bird on your back!” he whispers excitedly in her ear.

“Oh. That’s a scar. This… guy fell on me once and he had lots of bird statues on him.”

“What? That’s awesome!”

“Yeah, I… guess so,” Sasha says, confused by his enthusiasm. Gesturing to the burn on her neck, she explains, “This one’s from when I set off a lot of bombs by accident. Bombs are like… they make big explosions. You’d like them.” Maximus looks impressed, so Sasha continues, showing him her cold hand, “This is from when my dagger exploded. It was an ice dagger, like my fire dagger but ice, and I was trying to stab a thing but it went wrong.” She pulls down the collar of her tunic slightly to reveal the autopsy scar on her chest. “And this is from when I died and this evil thing took all my bits out but Zolf put them back…”

“Who’s Zolf?” Maximus asks.

“Oh, he’s, uh… I guess he was a… friend, but he…” Sasha trails off, feeling suddenly untethered. When she sees Maximus staring at her in confusion, she rouses herself. “Go check if Cicero needs help with the cooking, okay? He’s learning, but he’s not good.”

As Maximus scampers off and Sasha finishes placing her daggers, she thinks about how she’s never been good at stories. She can’t make the words come out in the right order and the right time, not like Hamid can. She’s never needed to, not really, when she has her daggers. Can’t hide well if you’re talking all the time.

Now, though — she’s the only one who knows these stories, for the next thousands of years, maybe ever, Azu and Hamid don’t — no. But no one else can talk about the gargoyles in Paris and Cairo, or the time that they killed that snake-hair woman, or the time that Hamid made her eat at a million restaurants in Prague. It feels wrong for her to be the only one who knows about those things, as if they never happened.

But it feels wrong, too, for Sasha to talk about her friends. She doesn’t think she could ever find the words for how she felt that day in the pub that Zolf said he was leaving. Or when Azu had told Eldarion to back off, or the sound of Brock laughing wildly at a joke that she knew wasn’t funny, or Grizzop’s face when he saw her again in Rome, or how Bi Ming’s hands moved so expertly over the clocks he repaired, or the shake in Hamid’s voice whenever he was trying not to cry. They’re important, too, but they’re so important that she doesn’t think she could ever tell them right.

So she won’t, she thinks, as she buttons up her leather jacket.

--

“I’m sorry, you know. About what I said about your friend,” Cicero says as he and Sasha are weeding the garden one day about five weeks after they arrived at the villa. It’s taken almost this long for Cicero and Aulus to admit that Atticus won’t be coming back, and in the meantime, social classes have broken down and Cicero is trying his best to help out around the villa.

“What?” Sasha says.

Cicero continues, his voice unusually subdued. “Your goblin friend, in Rome. I said that it was his fault. It wasn’t. He was trying to do what’s right, and he protected both of us.”

Sasha pauses, fighting off the urge to run away from this awkward conversation. “It’s well, it’s… alright. He was… yeah, he was good. Yeah.”

“Still, I understand if you don’t want to stay because of me. I had always meant for us to stay here until Atticus came back and then reevaluate our options. But he hasn’t, and you’re under no obligation to remain.”

“Cheers, mate, glad to know that you’re okay with me being gone,” Sasha says. Cicero starts to protest, but she interrupts him. “Sorry, that was unfair. It means a lot that… it’s okay if I go. But I don’t really have anywhere to go, do I? And… I couldn’t do that to Maximus. I think… I want to be there for people… who need protection.”

“Oh. That’s good of you,” Cicero says.

“Yeah, I guess. ‘Swhat people did for me.” Sasha says, and continues pulling weeds.

--

Maximus is a smart kid, it turns out. Pretty observant.

Maximus knows that Sasha doesn’t much like being hugged. Knows that if you hug her from behind, she’ll reach for a knife but will stop when she realizes who it is, and if you hug her from the front, she’ll hug you back, but it’ll be all stiff, and sometimes she’ll look like she’s remembering something she won’t say.

But Vibia and Paulla, four- and seven-year-old sisters who arrived two months after Sasha and Cicero, don’t know that. When Paulla, mid-fight, shouts at Vibia about their parents’ deaths, Vibia runs to Sasha and clings to her tight before Sasha can realize what’s happening. Sasha finds herself awkwardly rubbing Vibia’s back, wondering what she’s supposed to do. She tries to remember a time in her life when it was okay to cry or when she might expect anyone to hold her if she did. She pulls the girl in closer as her eyes start to sting.

Maximus knows that Sasha doesn’t like going in the fields. She’ll go in the garden and she’ll teach him how to climb the biggest and best trees, swinging from their highest branches with a huge smile on her face, but she’ll never look out from the top at the rolling hills, which are now yellow with the winter. And she’ll almost never walk in the fields, except for that one time that Cicero accidentally let the cow go and Sasha was the quickest to go run after it. She came back from that looking annoyed and mildly sick, and locked herself in the cellar for hours.

But Vibia and Paulla don’t know about Sasha’s fear. Paulla loves playing in the fields and in the clearings, where she’s drawn the circles in the dirt for a game of ball. She explains that you need at least three people to play the game right, and Vibia is too small and Aulus is too old and Cicero is too stuffy, so she needs Sasha to play with her and Maximus. After weeks of Paulla’s begging and Maximus promising that they can go back inside after just one round, Sasha finally relents, trying to calm her breathing and not look around too much as she lets Paulla drag her by the hand to a clearing right beside a clump of trees. By the time that they’ve been playing for ten minutes, Sasha’s competitiveness has distracted her from the wide fields around them.

Maximus knows that Sasha will tell stories if he asks, but that she won’t talk much about the other people in the stories and goes quiet when he asks about them. He’s heard about the time that she crossed a great big sea in a little boat during a storm, but never about that guy who pulled her out of the water or why they were on the boat in the first place. He loves the one about the time she snuck into a bunch of buildings with giant monsters guarding them, but he always wants to know more about the person who blew up the main building with magic. Sasha always says she’ll tell him about that guy some other time. Eventually, he stops asking. 

But Vibia and Paulla don’t know about the people Sasha won’t mention. A month after they came to the villa, they’re sitting with Sasha on a couch. Paulla’s at her feet and Vibia’s running her fingers through Sasha’s hair, which she’d allowed Aulus to crop short using one of her knives. Vibia has always been fascinated by the shock of white in Sasha’s hair.

“You’re a girl, right?” Vibia says. Her sister shoots her a reproachful look, but says nothing.

“Uh… sure,” Sasha says. “Why?”

“‘Cause of your hair. And cause Max calls you Sasha Whosaskin-US. But if you’re a girl, it should be Whosaskin-A,” Vibia says proudly. From the room next door, Sasha hears Cicero laugh.

“I dunno what to tell you, mate,” Sasha says. “I just made it up one day.”

“You can make up your name?” Vibia says in shock, spinning herself down so she’s sitting on Sasha’s lap. “Did you have a different name before?”

“I had… yes. It was someone else’s name, but it wasn’t important. He wasn’t important. My other name is… I guess it’s important.”

“Who was the person who wasn’t —” Vibia starts, but Paulla cuts her off, recognizing the distance in Sasha’s voice.

“Who’s the most important person you know?” Paulla asks, in an attempt to redirect the conversation.

For a moment, Sasha considers talking about Apophis, but while she’s never asked the kids directly about how they ended up at the villa, she suspects dragons are a sore subject. “I knew this guy. He was a bit of a dick but he wasn’t a bad person, I guess. He sort of… paid me. And watched over me and my… friends. And this one time when I was… very sick, he went up to the most powerful person around and he told him to give over this thing to make me better and he said some… really nice things about me. And the powerful person did give us the thing and I got better. Though the guy, the important guy, he did say some awful things about me being sick, but I think he was mostly just really tired…”

Sasha looks up from her rambling and is surprised to see that Vibia and Paulla are wide-eyed, waiting on her every word. A flush of embarrassment runs through her — as does a feeling of deep relief, as if she’d be waiting for forever to talk about Wilde, to admit how much it meant that he’d cared about her, to bring his memory to this distant place. She hopes that wherever he is, he’s managed to get some rest.

“Also,” Sasha continues, “one time my friend punched him in the balls.”

--

One morning at breakfast, Aulus announces that they need to start preparing the fields for seeding. Sasha is surprised, because it’s as cold as it’s been for the past several months, but Tertia and Fausta nod sagely at Aulus’s decision. They’re a young couple who recently moved into the villa after their home was raided by some of the bandits. The robbers have increased in numbers in the area, but have left the villa alone since a couple of them met the end of Sasha’s knives. Aulus is relieved that Tertia and Fausta are here and can help with the farm, and even though he insists Sasha can stay in the villa, she knows that she should help, too. 

So that’s how Sasha finds herself surrounded on all sides by open fields, dizzied as she stares at the distance between her and the nearest clump of trees, leaning on the rake she’s been using to till. She doesn’t hear Maximus running up behind her and barely registers him asking if she’s okay, or his yells for someone to help. She’s trying to say that she’s alright by the time that Fausta has come to her side. 

“You need to get inside,” Fausta says over Sasha’s protests. “You’re no help like this.” 

“It’s the sun, I’m hot, I don’t need —” Sasha mutters, but Fausta cuts her off.

“Sasha Whosaskinus, it’s incredibly cold out here. You’re not overheating.” Fausta sees Sasha’s expression, and her voice softens, “It’s okay. There will be other days. You can do a bit every day.”

And that’s what she does, at first working to the fields closest to the villa and the trees and gradually going further and further into the farm. She suspects that Aulus is responsible for getting the kids to swarm around her, keeping her distracted, but she’ll never complain. 

A month later, when they’re watering the fields, Tertia nudges Sasha and directs her gaze towards Cicero, who’s working twenty feet away. He has, for some reason, decided to wear a nice toga even while doing manual labour, and it’s getting helplessly muddied. Cicero is now attempting to stealthily wash off his toga using the water intented for the plants, but, as he keeps dropping the toga, he's just making things much worse. As Sasha doubles over with laughter alongside Tertia, she barely notices the open space between them. 

--

It’s a warm day in late spring when Hostus goes missing. He’s a tall, skinny preteen boy whom Sasha found had been stealing their food and sleeping in an unused servant’s room for several days before anyone noticed. In the weeks since Sasha told him that he could stay without sneaking around everywhere, he’s still not quite learned to trust the other residents of the villa: he jumps at the smallest noise, and she once saw him pull a knife on Fausta when she got too close. Sasha feels like a bit of a hypocrite for chiding him.

After the boy misses both breakfast and lunch and it’s almost time for supper, Sasha searches for Hostus. He’s not in that clump of trees next to the clearing, where Hostus likes to climb and watch them play ball. He’s not in the old servant’s room, where he’d insisted on sleeping even after Aulus invited him to stay closer to everyone else. He’s not trying to scare the chickens in the barn. Sasha is almost ready to admit that Hostus has simply left in the way that she’s told all of the children they can when Sasha hears faint movement from the roof. She kicks herself for forgetting her old favourite place to hide from Eldarion.

Climbing through the window in the bedroom she’d stayed her first night, Sasha pulls herself up towards the roof a little less quickly than she might have six months ago: the manual labour has made her stronger and she still throws her knives every day, but she’s out of practice scaling buildings. When she reaches the top, it only takes a moment to spot Hostus curled up in a nook of the roof, knees tucked into his chest, looking down at the courtyard below. Neither Sasha nor Hostus speak as she approaches, but when he turns his head towards her, she can see his eyes are puffy and red, but his face is locked in an expression of anger. Sasha silently takes a seat a few feet away from him. Together, they watch the courtyard, where Cicero is unsuccessfully trying to repair a couch whose leg has fallen off.

A thought strikes Sasha as she remembers another rooftop in a far-away place and time, and she roots around on the roof for a pebble. She shows the stone to a confused Hostus before sending it flying at Cicero — it bounces off the top of the head with a satisfying sound. Cicero grabs his head, looking around wildly, not noticing the pair on the roof. Hostus smiles despite himself and accepts the next pebble that Sasha offers him. He’s not so good a shot as her, but together they manage to get five or six good hits in before Cicero starts carefully searching the skyline while making bombastic threats against his attackers, and Sasha and Hostus collapse with giggles on the other side of the roof.

For a while, they lie there, staring up at the sky. The late-afternoon skies are clear and the air is warm enough for Sasha to have her leather jacket open loosely over her toga.

“There was this one time I ran away,” Sasha says, surprising herself with the words coming out of her mouth, “and my friends came looking for me.”

“Must be nice, having friends like that,” Hostus says, and Sasha recognizes from herself the prickly tone, halfway between sarcasm and longing.

“Yeah, it was. Really was,” she says.

Hostus, thrown by her sincere response, falls quiet. After a moment, he sighs and sits up. “What were your friends like?” he asks. “Max says you’re good at stories.”

Sasha pulls herself up beside Hostus. From her position on the roof, she can see the endless rolling fields, budding with new growth under a slowly redenning sky. It strikes her that no part of her finds fear in this view anymore.

“There was Grizzop,” Sasha says, “and he was a goblin, but they weren’t bad like everyone says. He was brave and fast and funny, even when he was trying to be serious. He wanted to use every moment of his life to help people, and he did. I don’t think I got it back then, but… I think I do now.

“There was Azu. She was so big and she had this magical camel and one time, the time they came looking for me ‘cause I ran away, she got on the camel and put Grizzop on her shoulders and they went around town getting drunk and starting a fight.” Sasha laughs at the memory. “But she was kind. She didn’t always… understand things, she didn’t always know how to help, but she always tried so hard, even when you felt like you didn’t deserve it.

“There was Hamid. He was small, smaller than Grizzop even, and very posh, and he wanted so much to be a hero. He’d done things that hurt others and he wanted to make it better and… sometimes that meant that he was an idiot and hurt himself. He cared so much about things that he’d cry, but… it wasn’t a bad thing. He cared.”

Sasha pauses, trying to find the words. “And there was Zolf. He… he saved me for no reason, when I was running away from people who wanted to hurt me. He always just wanted to protect us. For us to… save ourselves while he died, but we never wanted to leave him. And he said he’d heal me when I got… sick, but then he left and he didn’t. And… I think I was mad at him for a while, ‘cause it hurt? But I reckon… I reckon he was hurting, too, and he needed to find something to heal him. Tell him he could protect himself, too.”

Hostus, who’s been staring at his feet, looks up at Sasha. “Did he ever find it?”

“The thing to heal him? I dunno. I never saw him again after he left. I hope he did.”

“Me too,” Hostus says quietly.

In the silence between them, Sasha can hear the sounds of the villa’s family below: Tertia and Fausta gently teasing Cicero about the mysterious pebbles on his head; Vibia helping Aulus prepare dinner; Paulla and Maximus playing knucklebones.

Sasha smiles and watches the sun set over her home.

[shy-magpie]

RQG 72

Newt-ralized is Hamid's sister in danger? The lay lines are converging near the opera house Hamid just say you want everyone to see your sister in the opera Oh if Hamid won't talk, does Bertie know why Hamid is ducking Gideon? Bull why is Gideon lying? Why did the check turn up only his name? Good Grizzop, don't let people sniff around the team who lie about their motives Damn was Gideon startled because who expects people hiding in windows or is he alarmed by Hamid specifically? Alex if you knock him out by falling down the stairs before I get backstory I will scream! Grizzop has caught on quick that it's generally safe to assume Bertie is being horrible. Thank you Ben for not having Grizzop spit Why are they disgusted at the idea they are exes? Gideon seems really scared. Memory magic is bad enough but what are they covering for? Quite a sigh,  does Bertie really abuse pomp and pageantry more than Hamid does prestidigitation? Not fooling anyone, Hamid. No breaking my heart, Hamid As someone who likes Hamid, I'm happy they are going to lay off questioning Hamid, having decided they're exes. As a listener I want that backstory. Saying things like "suck it GM" is not keeping the team safe Bryn Quirk of human nature, I thought that Gideon might be Hamid's ex right up until Sasha proposed the theory and I'm not sure why I am now convinced it isn't the explanation. Their show of disgust at the idea isn't why, plenty of people are disgusted by their exes especially when they're trying to hide their connection. As a fan I want them to go to the Opera; as a sensible person I support Grizzop: let's try to stop the evil plan before its far enough along to spring at the climax of the opera. Hamid why aren't you just saying "I want to surprise my sister by being in the front row(box whatever) of her opera with my team" spin it right and Bertie will take it as flattering you want to use your friendship with him to impress her even if he doesn't get wanting to see family. Sasha will probably get wanting to support her (even if you and Alex frustrate me again by ducking out without speaking to her).  As to Grizzop, I got nothing but have you even signed him formally on to the team yet? This informal working together is beginning to make me twitchy even if seeing how you work together then making it official makes sense   5 minutes in Prague and Mr. “Heart on his sleeves” is getting worse about using his words than Sasha "who's asking" Racket.  I am almost as frustrated with him as I am worried he was traumatized. Don't think I forgot that he had a panic attack when Mr Ceiling made him think his parents were going to visit; or that they cut him off; or that the letter with the sleeves that said they were proud was never sent and iirc made him cry! Bertie and Grizzop are arguing whether or not opera is the proper heir to Greek/Roman theater You can't talk Latin around magic, Bertie! Asking for a vote is not discreet team! The Sword possessed Bertie? Also does the sword have a name? Bertie:This is a dangerous sword! Hamid: Most swords are! Thank you for siding with the sword! We don't torture sentient beings! Bertie:It's really annoying! Hamid: So are you but we put up with that The sword's backstory is not the one I wanted to get this easily. Bertie try talking to people if you want information not just trying to bend them to your will. All the sword puns I knew the sword was an enabler "make McGuffingham and heirs look really brilliant" Thank you Hamid, you can do both. How long does it take to get ready for the opera? You can hunt plague pits then hit the opera The team is holding Bertie back!?! Hamid just tell her you'd like her to join you because you like the opera and she's your friend I love how Alex uses smash cuts to skip boring bits and herd the team How much did James bribe Alex for those souvenirs? Flying Bertie sounds like a sea gull.  Loud, annoying, swoops in to do what he wants. Wanna be a bat? What is Lydia planning? See this is what happens when you don't use your words, Hamid. Now Sasha is suspicious Ooh Alex is making Bertie's fear of falling property value  work. It's almost making me sympathize with Bertie. You're in the spooky district

[isempiterna]

🙌🙌

𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 ∬ accepting!

𝑺𝒂𝒃𝒊𝒂𝒏 𝑨𝒓𝒂𝒚𝒂

full name: Sabian Danicio Arayanickname/alias(es): Danicio (artist name)date/age: 08/19/1993, 25gender & orientation: male & panromantic, bisexualappearance: Sabian is 5′10″ with a slender athletic built, tanned skin, and startling sea green eyes. His natural hair is nearly black, but after turning 19 he has kept it dyed a dark, rich auburn. He takes good care of his appearance, carries himself well, and exudes an attention-grabbing aura with the ease of breathing, all of which can make him seem somehow larger-than-life.personality: Confident, stylish, vivacious, and tempered with enough mysterious hints of darkness to keep him just this side of flamboyant, the term “daring” seems to have been tailored-made for him. A growing artist of many talents, Sabian is still experimenting and testing all limits that he finds.+  charismatic, sociable, generous, good leadership skills, supportive, flexible– escapist, petty, whimsical, defensive shallowness, secret sadistic streakother: In line with staying fit, Sabian enjoys dancing—for the most part all kinds of Latin, as well as Kizomba (both classic and urban), though he dabbles in many genres. Throughout middle and high school he tried his hand at many an instrument but never found one he wanted to stick with. Sabian enjoys rich flavors in both food and drink and almost never has the same thing twice at any given restaurant. to Lark: Sabian first met Lark at a swing dance class when he was 22. They hit it off quite well, and he was one of the Comfort’s first customers when it opened. Eventually they began dating, but it was short-lived as Sabian holds a strange disposition towards Sparrow. They’ve remained casual friends, though mostly thanks to Sabian’s efforts, and he visits the cafe once or twice a week to catch up with Lark. While she doesn’t mind his company, her protectiveness and bias over Sparrow keeps her a bit reserved.to Sparrow: A couple weeks after Sabian and Lark started going out, all three of them went to dinner together. It was the first time the two officially met, although Sabian already knew practically everything about her thanks to Lark—and yet, after meeting her in-person, he felt an intense conflict of opinion. While he remained gentlemanly on the surface of the encounter, an underlying snideness couldn’t escape Lark’s attention. Still, Sparrow holds an inescapable fascination for him, and often Sabian will encounter her more often than he does Lark, though never for very long.

𝑳𝒖𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝑩𝒆𝒓𝒕𝒊

full name: Lupine Clarice Bertinickname/alias(es): Lulu (PARENTS ONLY), Birdie (Lark only)date/age: 06/02/1996, 21gender & orientation: female & homoromantic, homosexualappearance: Lupine has complete heterochromia; a sky blue iris on the left and warm brown on the right. Her hair is ash blonde but seems to be permanently sun-bleached from hours spent outside, and she retains a natural golden tan complexion even during winter months. With a wiry build and unremarkable 5′5″ height, she hides surprising strength and stamina.personality: When relaxed she’s mellow and affable, though quick to speak up in the face of things she dislikes, as well as headstrong and stubborn. Frank and vocal about her opinions, a loud voice makes her seem more boisterous than she really is.+  hard worker, determined, decisive, loyal, reliable, passionate–  can be manipulative, a bit of a jealous lover, short-tempered, contraryother: Lupine loves to travel and ideally would like to work as a flight attendant or, one day, even a pilot. Currently, however, she’s a bartender at Scarletta, a club not far from the Comfort. She enjoys things like rock climbing and general outdoor activities but has never been interesting in joining a sports team.to Sparrow: Lupine and Sparrow met in high school as a senior and junior partnered for a class project. By the end of it, Lupine had adopted her. She remains Sparrow’s oldest, closest friend, and the two talk daily despite not seeing each other very often (Lupine took a year off after graduation to explore Europe and now attends a different college from Sparrow’s).to Lark: Thanks to Lark’s sister complex, Lupine has had the pleasure of enduring the Older Sibling scrutiny. She passed, and Lark even gave her the nickname Birdie as a pun on her last name so that she could “officially be part of the bird club.” The two get along perfectly well but for some reason never hang out unless Sparrow is present. Admittedly Lupine had a bit of a crush on Lark for a while, though it’s mostly faded now—still, when swiping through Tinder she’ll often compare people to Lark as a test of her interest level.

[pamphletstoinspire]

Pope Saint Stephen I - Feast Day: August 2nd - Latin Calendar

ST. STEPHEN was by birth a Roman, and being promoted to holy orders, was made archdeacon of that church under the holy popes and martyrs St. Cornelius and St. Lucius. The latter going to martyrdom recommended him to his clergy for his successor. He was accordingly chosen pope on the 3d of May, 253, and sat four years, two months, and twenty-one days. Soon after his election, he was called to put a stop to the havoc which certain wolves, under the name and habit of pastors, threatened to make in the churches of Gaul and Spain. Marcian, bishop of Arles (in which see he seems to have succeeded St. Regulus, immediate successor of St. Trophimus), embraced the error of Novatian, and, upon the inhuman maxim of that murderer of souls, refused the communion, that is, absolution, to many penitents even in the article of death. Faustinus, bishop of Lyons, and other Gaulish prelates, sent informations and complaints against him to St. Stephen and St. Cyprian: to the first, on account of the superior authority and jurisdiction of his see; to the other, on account of the great reputation of his sanctity, eloquence, and remarkable zeal against the Novatians. St. Cyprian having no jurisdiction over Arles, could do no more than join the Gaulish Catholics in stirring up the zeal of St. Stephen to exert his authority, and not suffer an obstinate heretic to disturb the peace of those churches to the destruction of souls. This he did by a letter to St. Stephen, in which he says, 1 “It is necessary that you despatch away ample letters to our fellow-bishops in Gaul, that they no longer suffer the obstinate Marcian to insult our college. Write to that province, and to the people of Arles, that Marcian being excommunicated, a successor may be provided for his see. Acquaint us, if you please, who is made bishop of Arles in the room of Marcian, that we may know to whom we are to send letters of communion, and to direct our brethren.” Though the letters of St. Stephen on this head have not reached us, we cannot doubt but by his order every thing here mentioned was carried into execution; for, in the ancient list of the bishops of Arles published by Mabillon, the name of Marcian does not occur.

An affair of no less consequence happened in Spain. Basilides, bishop of Merida, and Martialis, bishop of Leon and Astorga, had fallen into the crime of the Libellatici, that is, to save their lives in the persecution had purchased for money libels of safety from the persecutors as if they had sacrificed to idols. For this and other notorious crimes Martialis was deposed in a synod, and Basilides was so intimidated that he voluntarily resigned his see. Sabinus was placed in that of Basilides, and Felix in that of Martialis. Basilides soon after repented of what he had done, went to Rome, and imposing upon St. Stephen, was admitted by him to communion as a colleague in the episcopal Order; which was the more easy as no sentence of deposition had passed in his case. Returning into Spain with letters of the pope in his favour, he was received in the same rank by some of the bishops; and Martialis, encouraged by his example, presumed to claim the same privilege. The Spanish bishops consulted St. Cyprian what they ought to do with regard to the two delinquents, and that learned prelate answered: that persons notoriously guilty of such crimes were, by the canons, utterly disqualified for presiding in the Church of Christ, and offering sacrifices to God; that the election and ordination of their two successors having been regular and valid, they could not be rescinded or made null; and lastly, that the pope’s letters were obreptitious, and obtained by fraud and a suppression of the truth, consequently were null. “Basilides,” says he, “going to Rome, there imposed upon our colleague Stephen, living at a distance, and ignorant of the truth that was concealed from him. All this only tends to accumulate the crimes of Basilides, rather than to abolish the remembrance of them; since, to his former account, hereby is added the guilt of endeavouring to circumvent the pastors of the Church. 2 He lays the blame not on him who had been imposed upon, but Basilides, who fraudulently gained “access to him.” We know no more of this affair; but cannot doubt that the pope (whose jurisdiction none of the parties disclaimed) was better informed, and the proceedings of the Spanish bishops confirmed.

The controversy concerning the rebaptization of heretics gave St. Stephen much more trouble. It was the constant doctrine of the Catholic Church, that baptism given in the evangelical words, that is, in the name of the three persons of the Holy Trinity, is valid, though it be conferred by a heretic. This was the practice even of the African Church till Agrippinus, bishop of Carthage, in the close of the second century, changed it, fifty years before St. Cyprian, as St. Austin and Vincent of Lerins testify; and St. Cyprian himself only appeals to a council held by Agrippinus for the origin of his pretended tradition. 3 St. Cyprian, in three African councils, decreed, according to this principle, that baptism given by a heretic is always null and invalid; which decision he founds in this false principle, that no one can receive the Holy Ghost by the hands of one who does not himself possess him in his soul. Which false reasoning would equally prove that no one in mortal sin can validly administer any sacrament; but Christ is the principal, though invisible minister in the administration of the sacraments; and though both faith and the state of grace be required in him who confers any sacrament, not to incur the guilt of sacrilege; yet neither is required for the validity. St. Cyprian sums up all the arguments which he thought might serve his purpose in his letter to Jubaianus, written in 256. Many bishops of Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, having at their head Firmilian, the learned bishop of Cæsarea, and Helenus of Tarsus, fell in with the Africans, and maintained the same error. All the partisans of this practice falsely imagined it to be a point, not of faith, which is every where invariable, but of mere discipline, in which every church might be allowed to follow its own rule or law. 4 St. Cyprian and Firmilian carried on the dispute with too great warmth, the latter especially, who spoke of St. Stephen in an unbecoming manner. If such great and holy men could be betrayed into anger, and biassed by prepossession, how much ought we sinners to watch over our hearts against passion, and mistrust our own judgment! The respect which is due to their name and virtue obliges us to draw a veil over this fault, as St. Austin often puts us in mind, who, speaking of Firmilian, says: “I will not touch upon what he let fall in his anger against Stephen.” 5 The pope, who saw the danger which threatened the Church under the colour of zeal for its purity and unity, and an aversion from heresy, opposed himself as a rampart for the house of God, declaring that no innovation is to be allowed, but that the tradition of the Church, derived from the apostles, is to be inviolably maintained. He even threatened to cut off the patrons of the novelty from the communion of the Church. But St. Dionysius of Alexandria interceded by letters, and procured a respite, as Eusebius mentions.

St. Stephen suffered himself patiently to be traduced as a favourer of heresy in approving heretical baptism, being insensible to all personal injuries, not doubting but those great men, who, by a mistaken zeal, were led astray, would, when the heat of disputing should have subsided, calmly open their eyes to the truth. Thus by his zeal he preserved the integrity of faith, and by his toleration and forbearance saved many souls from the danger of shipwreck. “Stephen,” says St. Austin, 7 “thought of excommunicating them; but being endued with the bowels of holy charity, he judged it better to abide in union. The peace of Christ overcame in their hearts.” 8 Of this contest, the judicious Vincent of Lerins 9 gives the following account: “When all cried out against the novelty, and the priests every where opposed it in proportion to every one’s zeal, then Pope Stephen, of blessed memory, bishop of the apostolic see, stood up, with his other colleagues against it, but he in a signal manner above the rest, thinking it fitting, I believe, that he should go beyond them as much by the ardour of his faith as he was raised above them by the authority of his see. In his letter to the church of Africa he thus decrees: ‘Let no innovation be introduced; but let that be observed which is handed down to us by tradition.’ The prudent and holy man understood that the rule of piety admits nothing new, but that all things are to be delivered down to our posterity with the same fidelity with which they were received; and that it is our duty to follow religion, and not make religion follow us; for the proper characteristic of a modest and sober Christian is, not to impose his own conceits upon posterity, but to make his own imaginations bend to the wisdom of those that went before him. What then was the issue of this grand affair, but that which is usual?—antiquity kept possession, and novelty was exploded.”

St. Stephen died on the 2nd of August, 257, and was buried in the cemetery of Calixtus. He is styled a martyr in the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great, and in the ancient Martyrologies which bear the name of St. Jerom. The persecution of Valerian was raised in the year 257, and in it St. Stephen could not fail to be sought out as the principal victim. The acts of his martyrdom deserve some regard, as Tillemont observes. They are esteemed genuine by Baronius and Berti. 10 This latter shows the exceptions made to their authority by Basnage, to be altogether founded in mistakes. These acts relate that the saint was beheaded by the pursuivants whilst he was sitting in his pontifical chair, which was buried with his body, and is still shown as stained with his blood. The relics were translated to Pisa in 1682, and are there venerated in the great church which bears his name. But his head is kept with great respect at Cologne.

Not only bishops, but all superiors, are Christ’s vicegerents, and are bound to be mindful of their charge, for which they will be demanded a rigorous account. How many such live as if they had only their own souls to take care of; yet think themselves good Christians? Few have the light, the courage, the charity, and the zeal necessary for such a charge; and many through sloth, self-love, or a passion for pleasure, company, vanity, and the world, neglect various obligations of their state. It will be a false plea for such to allege at the last day, that they have kept well their own vineyard, whilst they have suffered others under their care to be overgrown with briars and weeds. 

[ivelostmyspectacles]

Hey I haven’t stopped reading I just am really inconsistent and I run out of spoons and don’t do things when I should :D Chapter Eight!

Instantly annoyed: Drawlight and Lascelles standing there talking about Emma, like, have some respect. At least Drawlight is saying nice things about her, I guess?

“Mr Lascelles leant against a wall and crossed his arms (an attitude he often adopted in the theatre).” ... *dramatic sigh*

Drawlight being crushed at being kicked out the room and Lascelles being similarly crushed but only because he wanted to watch Mr Norrell fail and laugh at him

The room smells like woods and fields when the Gentleman appears! This is very fitting! :D

Oh, and the spell and the Gentleman speak in Latin. This is also more fitting than we saw on the show, but, also understandable that everything was in English

... Oh, Gentleman’s a bit full of himself. And he seems a little more... excitable, than in the show? I loved him in the show, though. I might have trouble getting used to this x’D

HE PICKED UP MR NORRELL’S WIG TO LOOK AT HIS HEAD HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I’M SCREAMING (edit: I was reminded that this happened in the series too, but because my memory is horrible, I forgot :’D it was hilarious all over again roflmao)

“‘The fire is going out too,” [Drawlight] remarked. “Then put some more coals on,” suggested Lascelles. “What! And make myself all dirty?” oooooh, the hoooooorrroooorrr

The whole conversation about how things in horror novels happen at half past one and then Mr Norrell coming down and Drawlight grabs the poker just in case

“Lascelles blinked two or three times and opened his mouth as if in surprize, but then, recovering himself, he shut his mouth again and assumed a supercilious expression; this he wore for the remainder of the night, as if he regularly attended houses where young ladies were raised from the dead and considered this particular example to have been, upon the whole, a rather dull affair. Drawlight, In the meantime, had a thousand things to say and I daresay he said all of them, but unfortunately no one had attention to spare just then to discover what they were.” I’m totally here for Lascelles getting showed up and no one listening to Drawlight talk

And that’s the chapter! Lots of little things I liked, although some I wonder about, is the Gentleman going to act this way the whole time? and another: he said Norrell’s best friend in the whole wide world/the other magician had red hair so is he talking about Jonathan? Is Jonathan supposed to have red hair? Was I cheated out of a red-haired Jonathan Strange? Don’t get me wrong I love Bertie’s hair in the show like you don’t even know oh my dear sweet Lord, but red hair. Red hair. I like red hair. God now I can’t stop thinking about it. (PS: please don’t mention anything about this. I’d say no spoilers but since I’ve seen the show that seems ludicrous but if things are different in the book, as sometimes I know they will be, please avoid commenting about those things. I’m sure he’s probably talking about Jonathan because who else could it be, but for the future, let me hypothosise and be ridiculous without confirmation or denial. Then you can laugh at my stupidity. Good for all! :D)

(Also if I seem to be unnecessarily picking on Lascelles more than usual it’s just I’ve been watching Ripper Street for the first time and John is playing a shitface and I hate him and I’m like boyyyyy plz. But that’s a different liveblog :p)