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pinknipszz · 1 year ago

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adagio for strings 1/4

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"you know where to find me, and i know where to look."

(a/n: gift for my baby @mania-sama)

sellers of the market shout at you for standing idly on the edge of the street, their sun-kissed faces pulled taut from age and ire. they kept a keen eye on you as they mutter to themselves over what trouble the illegitimate daughter of a whore and a local businessman would stir.

but you, so bony and brittle, find their fears irrational. how could you possibly be capable of anything else, other than swatting away the mosquitoes that threaten to drink all that you had left?

you thought that the day was too pleasant to waste away, so you had crawled out of the woven walls that keep you cool from the summer haze. it is more like a pile of scraps than a house, but it feels like home. it doesn’t look down on you with hate and pity and everything in between. when nights grow too cold, you pull the walls closer and hug your body. when the sun smiles at you relentlessly, as if it was laughing at your predicament, you push back further into the shade.

home is the only thing you could control, and for that, it is your prized possession. your stomach twists into tight knots at the idea of leaving, but you want to stretch your legs. the calluses on your feet are softening. if you don’t get up and move now, your feet won’t be ready for a sprint down the gravel streets if a mob finally decides to chase you out. so you visit the market, silently greeting their looks of apprehension like an old friend.

you grip the hatchet that you stole, remembering how the old farmer had chased after you, throwing rocks and curses laced with venom, when he realized that the village vagrant had snatched his favorite tool. that was many years ago. you don’t know how he’s doing now. maybe he found a better one, something sharper to hack bamboo stalks with, and has long forgotten about you. or maybe he hammered a headsman’s block near his front porch, where he sits sharpening his sword, waiting for you to come back.

mindlessly tracing the grooves in the weathered wood, you limp from stall to stall. the closest seller eyes you warily. her gaze flits between your haggard appearance and the dull weapon at your side, her lips tight and nose turned upwards, most likely upset over your proximity to her precious baskets of fresh pomelos and persimmons. it leaves a bad impression on her more than you. she is an esteemed seller with the finest fruits, and you are people repellent. bad for business.

she watches you with ferocious intensity, half-expecting you to reach for a fruit to quell the gnawing hunger in your gut. she knows how you feel. she could see it in your eyes, in the bones that peek under the dirty robes that you stole from a dead man you had found on the side of the road. she knows about your hunger, but she doesn’t offer a single fruit, even when she has baskets upon baskets to spare, like you are nothing more than a thief or a pauper. if selfishness was a monster, you wondered if it would look like her.

but miraculously, she doesn’t say anything. the feeling never gets old. you don’t know if it is the dull hatchet or the rest of your unsightly figure that frightens her just enough, but it leaves you with sick gratitude for whatever gods are up there. if you could only have a handful of good things in this lifetime, let this moment be one of them. you flee deeper into the market before the seller could reach for something to hit you with.

it is busier than usual today, you realize, limping past a group of giggling kids drawing figures in the dirt. the shouts are louder here. those wise enough to not waste their attention on you continue their hollering, eager to reel in unsuspecting customers with a net spun from deceptive words. you don’t know a lick of business. what it meant or how it worked. based on what you’ve seen, however, is that the loudest caught the most fish. you don’t think twice about the quiet sellers you had seen during your last visit that are no longer here.

sometimes you think it is just the laws of nature. the strongest survive and forget the weak, who are branded for death the second they leave the womb. it’s a promising thought. the sellers who had been too meek to adapt with their competition had been overturned by the changing tides of an uncertain economy. they were weak, unfit to survive. you don’t know if your assumption is correct, but you find that things in nature can easily be applied in real life. you scratch the itch under your jaw.

further along the path, you see a stranger standing by a stall that sold fowl meat. the stark white of their hair, reminiscent of winter nights, ceases your limping. their robes are clean, and they wear socks with sandals. they aren’t local. you have never seen something so close to snow standing in the heat of summer. briefly, you wonder if thirst and hunger finally caught up with you, until the stranger turns. their muddy eyes rake over your form, picking apart your robes and hatchet and matted hair. they hold a small bag of pomelos.

quite a sight for sore eyes, you think bitterly. while they don’t entirely look like a pompous bastard, anyone with clean clothes and warm food in their belly is sure to look down on you in one way or another. so you continue to watch the interaction in silence, even when the stranger looks away in favor of the butcher, handing him a heavy satchel of gems you never knew existed. then they leave, with a bag of raw meat, for the other side of the market, the opposite of where you are standing.

you pull yourself to where they stood, dropping your hatchet to hold out your hands. you wait expectantly for your fill. “the hell d’you think yer’ looking at,” the butcher spits, eyes narrowing at you. fury rolls off of him in waves at your audacity. “got a lot of nerve to show up here.” you don’t know why he’s so upset. well, everyone is upset with you, but you don’t know what unsettles him today. perhaps the white-haired stranger was someone important, and you shouldn’t be standing in the footprints they left in the dirt.

“trimmings,” you rasp, your voice curling around each syllable harshly. it is the first word you utter in weeks. it is also the only word you said during your last visit, and the one before that. seriously, you would think that the butcher had it down to routine by now. he scoffs but reaches for the bloodied basket anyway, throwing it in your chest. your weak arms catch it quickly before you peer inside. it is mostly fat, but food is food. you can’t wait to savor it back home.

“t’s the last time yer’ getting anything from me,” the butcher breathes and leans in to jab a roughened finger into your shoulder. “better get out of here before i hang you on a jointed hook.” the cruel threat falls on deaf ears. you know the butcher wouldn’t do that. not because he is kind, no. far from it. your dead body simply has nothing to offer. there’s no way to make money off of you, unless someone decides to throw your bones to a dog. nonetheless, you retrieve your hatchet and scurry off without saying a thank-you or a goodbye.

there’s no point in wasting a breath on a man who looks at you with equal hatred. with one arm, you hold the bucket close to your chest protectively, while your other hand holds the hatchet. you follow the path from whence you came. the dirty robes cling to your skin uncomfortably, and your raw feet ache, but you can’t afford to let your guard down, not when you finally have proper food again. the sun dips into the horizon, and sellers are dismantling their stalls. soon, they will reach home, and so will you.

the hatchet continues to work its miracles, warding off evil like a talisman. however, you know deep down that you shouldn’t overdo it. it won't be long until someone calls you out on your bluff. when they realize that you can’t even lift it past your waist, they’ll come rushing towards you with bags over their heads and poison on their pitchforks. you let your mind wander. perhaps you could pay another visit to the butcher and weasel through a hole in his house, tiptoeing around for his favorite cleaver. you quite like the thought.

you hardly hear passing gossip over the pulse in your ears. however, one frantic conversation bleeds through your excitement. you pay no mind to it at first, thinking you are the subject that leaves them so tense, which is nothing out of the ordinary, but the words “white” and “monk” and “curse” stop you in your tracks. you nearly forgot about the uncanny stranger who stood out like a sore thumb, much like you for reasons entirely different.

the hairs behind your neck stand pin-straight, and you tilt your head towards them. it is two ladies who frequent the market often, you realize. their houmongi kimonos juxtapose with the plain wear of village folk. their wealth couldn’t be any more obvious. kamo. the name tastes like metal in your mouth. great. more pompous bastards. you want to resume the walk home, but something in you feels inclined to listen, to eavesdrop on what leaves their pretty little heads spinning.

so you listen and you eavesdrop, keeping yourself a safe distance away to ensure they don’t see you.

“this is the third time this week,” one who wears a sparkling pin says first. she leans closer to her friend’s side. “you know about the rumors. nothing good comes out of seeing him.” him. for a moment, you think that she’s referring to the white-haired stranger, until you hear what she says next. “the monk-child is just a bad omen. it’s the cursed object we have to worry about.” it comes out of her mouth like a slur. you think it’s a euphemism for something else.

but you don’t have time to dwell. you must return home, so you do.

you like to think that things would have turned out differently if you had stayed at the market a little longer. maybe then, you would have heard them talk more about the supposed monster among men, and how the villagers suspect you having something to do with it. how your sudden appearance somehow aligned with the monk-child, another bad omen second only to you. you would have heard them chortle over the troops they had sent to your home while you had been away.

maybe then, you would have lifted your hatchet over your waist for the first time in your life, and hack down on their shoulders, through the thick material of their beautiful kimonos, and into unmarred flesh. but no amount of dreaming could save you from the anguish, as the grip around your bucket and hatchet slacken. they fall to the ground, and the fatty meat spills all over. your finger twitches, as well as the edge of your lips, the corner of your eyes, and the base of your spine. the sun is long gone, replaced by moonlight.

you find it sick how you wouldn't have known who destroyed your humble home if it weren't for the insignia left behind. you recognize the colors. kamo. kamo. kamo. the torn fabric lies above the ashes and taunts you.

your legs give up under you, and you fall to your knees. the sound that leaves you is nothing short of primal. animalistic. closer to grief more than anything, when you grab handfuls of dirt and ash and squeeze hard. you think about the village. about the stranger you are wrongly accused of associating with. about the butcher and the kamo women. the butcher. you wouldn’t be surprised if he had been the one to ask for military intervention, like the goddamn coward he is. you claw at the ground until your nails bleed.

you are too angry to weep. you don’t care about the blood collecting at your knees, seeping into the robes that you had stolen, or around the precious hatchet. is this penance? your soiled hands find purchase in your hair, and they tug at the roots. how could the gods be so cruel? it still smells like smoke. the residual warmth taunts you, as if reminding you what a real fire is like. nothing that a couple of makeshift walls of a home could emulate. you shakily reach for the wooden handle.

you push yourself up, ignoring the protests of your aching body, and bite the inside of your cheek. you are staring hard at the remains when you feel a heavy weight bump into your foot. with the last bits of your patience, you look down. a pomelo. it sways side-to-side before coming to a complete stop, as if someone rolled it towards you. someone did. when you look back up, you find the same muddy eyes that studied you at the market.

they didn’t say a word then, and they don’t now. they simply watch, hidden between trees in the distance. you reach down for the ripe pomelo and tear it open. when you bite, you realize you don’t like pomelos, but you finish anyways. you're still starving. you throw the tart flesh into the ashes with no intention of returning, before tightening your grip on the hatchet and turning towards the village. you miss the ghost of a smile on the stranger’s face.

“are you pleased with her actions?” they ask the darkness beside them. their words are met with silence.

(masterlist) | listen to adagio for strings!

#jujutsu kaisen #ryomen sukuna #sukuna ryomen x reader #jjk sukuna #sukuna ryomen x you #heian period #true form sukuna #uraume #jjk x reader #jjk #jujutsu kaisen sukuna #sukuna x reader #jjk imagines #ryomen x reader

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sunandsstars · 2 years ago

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YAWNETU

CHAPTER 7

Tonowari x Ronal x Na’vi!Reader

Summary: With her arrival in Awa’atlu, reader seeks to find a sanctuary for her family, one that she may find in two particular individuals Warnings: N/A Word count: 2.2k A/N: Sorry for any wait guys! I’ve not been feeling myself lately, but doing good now! 🙈🫶🏼 Enjoy baes

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The reflection of the sun casted a nice warm glow onto the already lukewarm waters of Awa’atlu, the day was just starting and the Na’vi of the reef headed out to do their chores.

Ronal decided to oversee ___, become her teacher and show her the way of water. Of course anyone else could have done it but as a strange Omaticaya stranger who has had no real experience with the ocean, the Tsahìk decided to pay her extra close attention. Or so she told herself.

“Are you sure they will be ok?” ___ glanced back to where the elderly situated themselves with her babies, cooing and tickling their feet. She did not doubt the older Metkayina’s at all, but they were strangers to her. Ronal watched her from the deeper ends of the shore, the waters just touching her upper waist.

“They will be fine. Za’u” she beckoned the anxious woman over to her and took her tiny wrist, noting the lack of fins and feeling the bony edges of her arm. ‘I must remember to give her extras for lunch, she is too skinny’ her mind turmoiled with the thought of this sweet girl going hungry on her long journey, just to feed her boys, it took her back to the question on why she was really here. ‘In due time Ronal, in due time’

___ nervously waded in and fought against the soft currents, yellow eyes glancing across the expanse of ocean. She was not at all used to this, coming from the forest it was just rivers she swam in, avoiding the harsh rapids and only choosing to glide in calm, flowing streams. The Tsahìk looked back at her and smiled, it was barely noticeable but it was there, bringing the blue woman comfort. Then, they dived in, taking deep breaths to fuel their journey.

Ronal swam ahead, letting go of ___’s wrist and using her own arms and tail to propel herself foreword, hips shaking softly from side to side from the momentum. She turned back to sign “Come, just a little further” and watched with confusion when ___ only stared on with a blank look “do you not understand?”. Taking the lack of signing as an answer she shrugged and continued on, slowing down just a little and checking back once in a while. For a forest Na’vi she is breathing quite well.

The corals of the reef were beautiful and vibrant, colours ranging from greens to bright pinks. Fish big and small swam around her, eyes blinking in curiosity at the newcomer in their home. ___ stopped her movement, turning around to admire the sights she has never seen before and watched as the creatures of the reef circled her feet. Her grin was large and pure, heart beating just a little bit faster from nervous excitement. Unbeknownst to the Omaticaya, soft blue eyes watched her every move and observed how curious ___ was in her home.

Suddenly the mother of two felt her lungs constrict and knew it was time for air, she pushed against rocks to go up to the surface, breaking the barrier and gasping for air. Ronal’s head popped out of the water, second eyelids blinking back the excess salt from her blue spheres. “You have done well for a forest girl, but you must learn to hold your breath for longer…and to learn our language”

“Is that what it was?” ___ panted, “the movement with your hands?”

“Srane” Ronal nodded “We cannot speak underwater, and making noises like we do for calling ilu takes up too much air, so my people adapted, created sign language”

“Your people are amazing for doing that. The only thing we have done in the forest is create different calls and noises for communicating when we are on our ikran”

“And that takes skill on itself” Ronal nodded, admiring how their cultures are so similar, yet so far. It reminds her that at the end of the day, they are both Na’vi and Eywa deems them the same in spirit and soul. “Let us dive again, I want to see how far you can go. Then, I will teach you to breathe”

Time flew by so fast, the lessons Ronal gave her on ‘breathing’ took a long time to get right, posture was important, breathing from the stomach was important, calm mind, no racing heart. It was a lot, but ___ felt confident in her abilities to go under the waters for longer than she had. But in due time.

For now she rests in her marui with her boys, whom the elders say were a delight to take care of. Apparently Sylwaì and Syatxì both loved eating the fruit which was gathered deep within the forests of the mangrove trees, they were mushed and paired with various bits of soft fish which was chowed down in an instant. ___ observed the soft flesh of Syatxì’s belly and giggled, noting the large rolls and the slow rise and fall of his chest. ‘Sleeping so heavily, he has eaten his fill for the rest of the day’ she mused.

The padding of footsteps made her ears twitched, hearing the bounce of the netting outside and in front of her home, she turned and saw Tonowari looking in, holding various items in his strong arms. “I have came to drop these off for you, it is your first night here and we want to make it as comfortable as possible for you” he proceeded to step in and place some woven blankets on the floor, along with a basket of fruits in case she got hungry during the night.

“Irayo, Tonowari” ___ nodded in thanks, smiling at him. Sylwaì cooed at the man, taking note of him in the room and reaching out to grab him by his akula teeth necklace.

The Olo’eyktan grinned and held out his large hand, watching as only his finger was grabbed with the babies four fingers, he shook it gently and watched as the boy gave him a gummy little grin which matched his own toothy one. “He is strong for his age. A mighty warrior in the making. Him and my son, Ao’nung will do just fine together”

___ chuckled “maybe the old ladies were right about him being a warrior, a fierce hunter is what Eywa wills for his future” she turned her head slightly and noted how close hers was to Tonowari’s, blue eyes clashing with bright yellow. ___ turned her head back and coughed a little, ears twitching, not getting the chance to see the slight purple on the clan leaders face.

“Srane” he nodded slightly, Ronal was not lying when she told him the Omaticaya woman’s eyes were the nicest shade of amber on the whole of Pandora, rivalling even the most brightest of fish in the bioluminescent night. “Well, I will leave you and your sons to rest. If you need anything, please, we will be happy to help you” ___ thanked him as he left, sighing in slight embarrassment.

Oh Eywa, what was she going to do.

“Good morning ___!” One of the older ladies, Naola, called out to her as she walked down the beach towards them. “How are you and your little ones?”

___ stopped right in front of the group, adjusting her grip on her twins and smiled “We are good, Syatxì is hungry though, even if i fed him a couple of minutes ago” the mother sent a playful glare to him, the baby looking at her with wide eyes in return. ‘too cute’

She handed the two to Naola who cooed and wiggled her fingers at them, Sylwaì giggling. “Well, you best on head out to Tsahìk, she does not take kindly to late comers” ___ nodded, kissing the heads of her sons as goodbye and headed off towards Ronal’s home, as instructed last night after her lessons.

The Metkayina women was inside, grinding herbs and powders into a mortar. Her head snapped up at the cough ___ let out to indicate she was there, “Ah, you are just in time. Come, sit. I have decided to spend our morning today doing my duties, you will join me”

The blue lady blinked in surprise “Ronal, I am not Tsakarem, I do not need to learn”

The said Tsahìk shook her head, frowning. “No you are not, but Eywa sees potential in you” she then smiled slightly, blue eyes twinkling in the morning sun. “During my prayers, she has willed me to teach you, to help you learn. You were a skilled healer back with the Omaticaya. You will do well here”

___ smiled back “irayo…what are you doing now?” she squatted and observed the clay bowl and noted that the ingredients were different to that she was used to at home. Or her old home.

“This is to treat scrapes and cuts, one of our hunters came back earlier with wounds from the coral outside the reef. Luckily it was not life threatening. But it must be treated soon” Ronal turned back to her task and continued grinding the paste, adding more water and herbs when necessary. She glanced at ___ from the corner of her large eyes and watched the way her thin tail moved about in genuine curiosity.

It made her heart flutter just a bit.

“Za’u” the Tsahìk snapped herself out of her daze and stood up, walking out of the marui and towards another a few ways down where the hunter laid, talking to his mate. “Txatì. Your husband lives, he will be fine”

Txatì looked to her clan leader with glistening eyes, “Sorry, Ronal. I am just worried about him” she then turned to ___ who stood behind the healer. “What business does she bring?”

“___ will learn my work. As is willed by Eywa” Ronal saw the look Txatì gave the Omaticaya and decided to shut her down. Who would deny Eywa’s will? She understood the girl wanted the best for her mate and may have not agreed for an outsider to be in the hut with them, but that was no reason to be rude.

Fortunately ___ did not notice the harsh glance that was directed to her and immediately focused in on the grazes that adorned the man’s skin. “Does it hurt?” she knelt down and observed it, not too deep, not too large. It should scab within a week if he was lucky.

“Kehe. I will be fine, thank you Tsakarem” he nodded to her in gratitude for her kindness and hissed when his Tsahìk applied the cool paste into his wound.

Ronal gave him a look “you are a warrior and yet you cower under mere herbs” her ears twitched when the soft giggles of ___ echoed through the marui, pupils dilating. She did not dare look in her direction, afraid she would make her budding infatuation more obvious.

But it was noticeable to the hunter, who turned to his wife and winked slightly, speaking with his eyes. He remembered when he was the same with Txatì, giving her admiring looks but trying to act calm and cool whenever she was around.

Once Ronal finished with her job, guiding ___ on the pastes and the dangers of the coral that can come in and outside the reef and healing other hunters that came and went, she stood and nodded to her last patient and swiftly turned around and lead ___ outside. “You learn fast I have noticed” she turned her head back to watch her “let us go see your boys, I am sure they miss their mother”

They traveled along the ropes above the waters, bouncing slightly with each step. Eventually they jumped down to the beach, the sands getting in every crevice of their feet and leaving footprints when they padded along, searching for the group of elders who held ___’s children.

“Hey! Over here!” A man waved at them from afar, holding a laughing Ao’nung in his strong arms. Ronal grinned at the boy who made grabby hands at her, thanking Lìtxan who passed him over.

The mother brushed the little hair he had over his head and bounced him in her arms, watching ___ pick up her own sons. “Have they been behaving?” she heard her softly ask.

“Oh! No they have been terrible! Always demanding teylu every minute of the morning! Any more and they will sink to the bottom of the ocean!” Naola cried out in jest.

___ let out a loud laugh, blowing into Sylwaì’s little tummy “is that right ‘itan?” the boy squealed in happiness, feeling the love his mother holds for him.

The Tsahìk watched on with admiration in her eyes. Heart thumping in her chest. She understood what these feelings mean, she has the same feelings with Tonowari, she likes ___, really likes her. But she does not know her, not really. She still does not know why she came to Awa’atlu, to live among the Metkayina.

One strong thought plagues her mind though, one that would stop her from ever pursuing the Omaticaya.

Her mates, what happened to them?

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#*ੈ✩‧₊˚ yawnetu #avatar the way of water #atwow #x reader #avatar x reader #atwow x reader #avatar the way of water x reader #neytiri #jake sully #aonung #OC #ronal and tonowari

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bethanythebogwitch · 1 year ago

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Easily my most popular post was about paddlefish, so this Wet Beast Wednesday it's time to give them their moment in the sun. Paddlefish are members of the family Polyodontidae and one of only two surviving members of the order Acipenseriformes, the other being sturgeons. The Acipenseriformes are one of the oldest lineages of ray-finned fish and diverged from the ancestors of all other modern ray-finned fish around 300 millions years ago. While paddlefish have been around since the Cretaceous period, there is only one living species, the American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula). Another modern species is the Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius), but the last sighting of one was in 2003 and they were officially declared extinct in 2022. In this post, unless I specify otherwise everything I say will be referring to the American paddlefish.

(image: either an American paddlefish or a basking shark that got its nose caught in a hydraulic press)

Paddlefish are named for their very long rostrums which are packed full of electrorecepting organs called the ampullae of Lorenzini used to sense electric fiends in the water. The ampullae are not only on the rostrum, but also on the head and large skin flaps that extend from the operculum (gill cover). They are so sensitive that paddlefish are able to sense the movement of individual body parts of zooplankton. Paddlefish use their rostrums to detect their prey, which consists almost entirely of zooplankton. They are ream suspension feeders, swimming toward swarms of zooplankton with their mouths open. As the water passes through the gills, gill rakers filter out the zooplankton, which is then swallowed. Other fish that use this feeding method include basking sharks. While the rostrum is the primary method of prey detection, other ampullae on the head and operculum flap allow the fish to still effectively find food even if the rostrum is damaged or destroyed. When working fish fish on the Mississippi I caught multiple paddlefish who lost their rostrums to propeller strikes and were still doing fine. Electroreception is their main sense, with their eyesight being extremely poor.

(image: the skeletal structure of the rostrum)

As chordates, paddlefish have a notochord that runs from the head down the body. In most modern chordates, the notochord is only present in the embryo and is lost during development. This is not the case for paddlefish, who retain their notochord into adulthood, where is acts as a soft spine. While paddlefish (and their sturgeon cousins) are bony fish, they have lost most of the bone and now have skeletons composed almost entirely of cartilage. It is for this reason that early taxonomists initially miscategorized paddlefish as freshwater sharks. To be fair, they do look a lot like miniature basking sharks. Who crossbred with spoons. They also lost their scales and have smooth, easily damaged skin instead. Their skin is so easily damaged that just being caught in nets can leave scars. Paddlefish are large and long-lived. The American species reaches an average of 1.5 m (5 ft) in length, with the rostrum making up a third of that, and a weight of 27 kg (60 lbs). The largest recorded specimen was 2.16 m (7 ft 1 in) and an estimated 90 kg (198 lbs). Despite being one of the largest American freshwater fish, they paled in comparison to the Chinese species, which could reach 3 m (9.8 ft) and 500 kg (1,100 lbs). The largest Chinese paddlefish on record was 7 m (23 ft) long and was estimated to weigh "a few thousand pounds". The Chinese paddlefish also preferred larger prey, feeding largely on small fish and crustaceans. American paddlefish live an average of 5 to 8 years, but in the right circumstances can live up to 60 years, with females generally living longer. The Chinese paddlefish had an estimated average lifespan of 29-38 years. In both species, it is believed that human activity drastically reduced their average lifespans.

(image: an absolute unit of an American paddlefish)

(image: a reconstruction of a Chinese paddlefish from the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum)

Paddlefish travel upriver to spawn in spring. They prefer to span on shallow gravel bars that would be exposed to air if not for spring rainfall and snow melt. Because they require very specific conditions to spawn, spawning rarely occurs every year. Every 4-5 years is more common. Paddlefish are broadcast spawners, with both males and females releasing gametes into the water column. Fertilized eggs are negatively buoyant and sticky. They will sink to the bottom and stick to the gravel. Once hatched, larvae will be swept down river to develop in deep pools. They are born without rostrums, which start to grow almost immediately. Paddlefish mature late, with females becoming sexually mature between 7 and 10 years of age, with a few not maturing until as late as 16-18 years. Human activity is resulting in many individuals dying before becoming sexually mature. American paddlefish are cross-fertile with the Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), producing a hybrid offspring known as the sturddlefish despite being separated by the Atlantic ocean and 184 million years of evolution. This was discovered by accident when scientists introduced paddlefish sperm too sturgeon eggs as a control group for an experiment. I made a post on the sturddlefish which you can read here.

(image: three larval paddlefish of different ages)

American paddlefish are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN. They are native to the Mississippi river basin that encompasses much of the midwest and south of the United States, but their range used to be larger, reaching into Lake Huron, the Northeastern U.S. and parts of Canada. This reduction of native range is due largely to human activity, mostly overfishing and habitat loss. Zebra mussels, an invasive species, are a major competition for paddlefish as theybith feed on zooplankton. Reintroduction programs have begun in some of the states they were extirpated from, and they have been introduced to China, Cuba, and multiple countries in Europe for use in fishing and caviar production. 13 states allow for sport fishing of paddlefish, some of them relying on restocking to maintain a population for anglers. Paddlefish meat is edible and their eggs can be used for caviar. Paddlefish can be raised in captivity, but must will not spawn in captivity and so establishing captive populations requires gonad extraction and artificial insemination. Poaching of wild paddlefish for their eggs is an ongoing problem. The extinction of the Chinese paddlefish is believed to be the result of overexploitation and habitat loss.

(image: a paddlefish with its mouth open)

#wet beast wednesday #biology #zoology #fish #ecology #fishblr #freshwater biology #freshwater fish #aquatic biology #paddlefish #american paddlefish #chinese paddlefish #animal facts

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morgana-ren · 15 days ago

Text

Come down to the Black Sea VII

Merry Honda-Days and Toyotathon everyone, here's the latest chapter of that story that everyone has forgotten existed lmao

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Mentions of violence, blood, attempted assault, slight sexual content, one very pissy, overgrown fish and bad writing. It's getting worse folks, much much worse. Soon there will be plenty of uh debauchery for all. I swear.

Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI

Who is the first to burn?

What an absolute hell-day.

The café had been swarming with customers to the point of overflow, and you'd barely gotten a chance to rest your throbbing, aching feet— or even take a damned breath without someone practically breathing down your neck for you.

With the entire island abuzz with the news of the gruesome beachside slayings, anyone with free time and not much else to do had congregated in social forums and restaurants to speak in hushed tones and exchange gossip.

Small communities don't have much going on in the way of excitement, so they swarm like bees to honey to any sort of scandal, and it seems that a potential murderer walking among the population is the best form of news to get people in all up in a bluster. Sure, the police had said it was likely an animal attack in their press conference, but people love to talk, and it turns out that a murder is much more titillating than a displaced predator.

Oh yes, the tips had been great, but you could barely feel your legs, and exhaustion was rapidly taking hold. You’d had another date scheduled for tonight, but in the wake of things, you weren't sure if you could even keep your eyes open long enough to cancel it. A quick apologetic text and a promise to make up for it later is the best you can muster before the dreaded drive home.

Thoughts of crawling into bed and sleeping through the next afternoon occupy your head, mind on autopilot as you navigate your way back to your apartment. The winding road takes you by the shore, and you can't help but stare longingly for a brief moment before the light turns green. Twilight turns the sky a velvet purple, ocean lapping gently against the sands, and once more, your thoughts turn towards the sea. On nights like this, you’d used to visit the beach, basking in the silence and peace of nature. Truth be told, you miss it terribly; it feels as if a piece of yourself is missing as you deny yourself the opportunity to visit your once special place.

The vicious sea creature lurking beneath the waves has robbed you of that.

Vindictive, but more so, utterly drop-dead exhausted, you take the turn the opposite way towards your home– and duvet cover tantalizingly waiting on your bed– instead.

It’s a rink-dink pop-up apartment that costs more to live in than it likely cost to build the entire thing. It’s not much, but it’s home, and it’s yours– and right now, there’s nothing in the world you want more than to be inside, curled up under the covers layered on your cheap, shitty mattress.

You’re almost home-free, pulling into your designated parking spot when you spot her : A sun-tanned, leather-skinned older woman that you'd rarely seen without a bent cigarette between her bony fingers is smoking just outside the stairwell.

Lisa. The resident nosy neighbor. Clearly, news about the beach had reached her as well, as she’s perched in the stairwell like a vulture waiting to pounce on the rest of the unsuspecting tenants and entrap them into a lengthy conversation about her thoughts on it.

Eyes almost rolling out of your head, you can’t help the audible sigh. You don't have the energy to converse with her, but you steel yourself, knowing it's entirely unavoidable. She's clearly hooking for conversation, several butts lying scattered around her ancient brown sandals. The best you can do is try to cut it short– as short as you can with a woman like Lisa.

You almost feel bad, being so catty and dismissive of her. She's a very nice lady; she's just exceptionally chatty– and nearly deaf to social cues— and you aren't feeling up to it right now. The only thing you give a good goddamn about is the sink of a pillow.

“Hey Lisa,” You stifle the sigh that threatens to escape, pulling your bag from the passenger seat and slamming the car door shut with a tired swing of your hip.

“Howdy kiddo!” She smiles at you, light from the setting sun spotting through the patterned holes in her wide brim straw hat as she nods at you in acknowledgement, clearly gearing up for the whole conversation with barely contained eagerness. “You hear the news?”

“Yep,” You fumble through your bag for your keys, trying to give a clear hint that you aren't in the mood for a chat today, even knowing it's pointless. “Been at work all day. Hard not to. You know how people here talk.”

“Well, I'm glad they let you outta there before it got too dark. It's not safe out there anymore. Not like it was when I was young. You know, used to be you could sleep on the beach and not worry about a thing.”

That was never the case. Lisa sees things through nostalgia glasses, as is evidenced by her attire, which might have been considered hip at one point before you were even born.

“Yeah, it's a real shame.”

“It’s a shame alright,” She inhales another drag from her cigarette, ashing onto the concrete beneath her as she shakes her head. “They were probably good kids. Hurts my heart to see folks so young gone before their time.” “Who?”

“The kids that were killed— Well, kids to me ,” She purses her wrinkled lips. “About your age, if I had to wager. Nothin’ but youngins. They were having some kind of party on the beach when the tragedy occurred. Such a pity their life was cut short like that, especially in that way. What a travesty.” “Yeah, it’s awful,” You yawn, half intentionally, half unable to help it. “I’ve been warning the city council for years that they’re infringing on mother nature, and she’s going to bite back one day. Looks like she has now. She can be brutal, when she wants to be. You know, I told them about that new harbor. You seen that thing? Like we don’t have enough around here. Pokes right at the boundary line.” You nod, not really sure what else to say. It’s clear she wants to spark a discussion, but your head is a mass of fog and exhaustion, and you’re drawing a blank. Thankfully, she seems to get the hint, frowning slightly as she moves to let you pass up onto the stairwell.

“Right, well, you must be tired– you take care now, girlie. Don’t be staying out too late. Something is stirring on this island. Been here long enough to know something ain’t right.”

“I won’t, Lisa. I’m going straight up to bed. I’m wasted.”

“Good,” She flicks the butt onto the floor, stamping it beneath her shoes before reaching into a half-empty pack for another, apparently still set on fishing for conversation from another unaware person just trying to get home for the day. “Heart can’t take losing anyone else. Old lady can only take so much heartbreak.”

You offer her a sincere smile before continuing on your way. She’s a genuinely sweet woman– lonely, if you had to guess. She doesn’t seem to have any children or family of her own, thinking of herself as some kind of den-mother to the apartment instead. Normally, you’d be more sympathetic to her, but right now, all you can think about is crawling into bed and curling into a ball.

“Take it easy, Lis. Don’t stay out too late either.”

You drag yourself up the metal stairs, footsteps heavy and echoing off the metal steps and against the concrete walls. With one last look at the sunset, you flip through your keyring, more than ready to fall into the sheets. You insert the key and–

The door handle turns without you needing it.

That’s odd. You’re damned sure you locked the door today. Pretty sure, anyways. It’s possible you didn’t. You were a bit preoccupied, after all. It might’ve been one of those little mental slipups. Either way, you’re too tired to worry about it. With a shrug, you kick open the door with a nudge of your boot, hurtling your body through the archway like a stone.

Your apartment is dark, and left with a pounding headache from overwork and undernutrition, you don’t even bother with the lights. Instead, you fling your bag onto the sofa, where you resolve to deal with it tomorrow. Right now, you want something to calm your churning stomach. Lunch breaks are a fantasy when things get so busy, and you’d only been able to shovel a few bites into your mouth between rushes.

Poking your head in the fridge, you note over the half-eaten leftovers strewn about the shelves, something foul-smelling clearly hiding amongst them. Whatever it is, it’s permeating what little good food you do have, pulling out a few things of tupperwear only to throw them back in disgust, shaking your hand off as if it could wave away the stench.

No dinner tonight, it seems. Even if the lack of food wasn’t enough to turn you off, the smell certainly is, and waiting for takeout sounds like the worst idea you’ve ever had. Tea for dinner it is.

The stove hums to life, the burner transforming into a bright, scalding red as you fish the teapot from one of your cabinets. It’ll take a few moments for the water to reach boiling point, and it should be just long enough for you to slip out of your day clothes and into something far more comfortable. Nothing in your life has ever sounded better than getting out of these pants and into something light and airy and comfortable.

The hallway is dark, and you nearly trip over a pair of shoes you must’ve left there earlier. The last few days have left you scatterbrained and in disarray, and clearly you’d been letting yourself lose sight of your mental faculties. Forgetting to lock the door, kicking off shoes in the hallway, and who knows what else you’d been neglecting. Tomorrow will have to be an organizational day– but you’ll deal with that tomorrow when you have the ability to process it.

Fumbling through the dark, you manage to find the closet, shucking off your shirt and kicking your pants off your legs as you reach for a clean tank top and a pair of sleep shorts on the shelf. You hear your phone vibrate in the pocket of your work pants, but you can’t be assed with it right now. You don’t even bother fishing it out as you kick your pants to the side. There is no one in the world you feel like talking to right now. Not even your scorned date who is probably bummed you decided to cancel. You are too, to be fair, but you wager you wouldn’t be much fun right now.

As you unclasp your bra and slide the straps off your shoulders, you could swear you hear some kind of thump behind you. Creaky, miserable old apartment has you scoffing under your breath. Probably the damned AC unit thunking out again. Yet another chore to add to the list of shit to do tomorrow– not that the superintendent will do anything. As far as he is concerned, you pay to sleep here, and that’s that.

The teakettle starts to whistle from the other room, and you shuffle your dirty clothes to the side, shutting the door to the closet and stepping back into your bedroom. Your eyes haven’t quite adjusted to the darkness, but you swear you see movement .

It’s far too dark to truly observe anything in the shadows, but it leaves you with the lingering feeling that something is wrong . Something that sends your hackles raising and a shiver down your spine. Nothing seems out of place, but something feels off .

You try to shake it clean, ignoring the strange bristling that has the small hairs on the back of your neck rising, opting for the kitchen instead. Everything that has happened lately must have your brain fried and your nerves on end. Or you might just be exhausted.

Yeah, that seems right.

The kettle steams and pops as you pull it from the burner, filling an old mug with the water and stirring in a teabag. It smells adequate, and you're halfway through inhaling when you swear again that something moves out of the corner of your eye. You haven’t slept properly in days, and the dull light of the setting sun must be playing tricks. Shadows dancing on the walls. The awful news playing on the edge of your mind, making you paranoid. Whatever it is, it can wait.

It's nap time, and not even the God of the sea himself could stop you from it. Nor can that edging fear that grips at the fringes of your mind and won’t relinquish its grip.

From the hallway, you can see the finishing line. The pale outline of your bed in the darkness, soft and waiting, inviting and utterly perfect. You don't bother flicking on the lights to settle in first. It's so close now, you can practically feel the pillow. The tea goes onto the nightstand, and you're not sure that you'll be awake by the time it's cool enough to drink. You fall into the feathery mattress, so ready for sleep that you swear you're already practically half way there. Your eyes close, not even bothering to worm under the covers.

Finally .

Your body sinks into the feather bed, limbs falling limp and relieved exhale inevitable. It’s unbelievably comfortable in a way you could swear it never has been before, and it feels like you’re wallowing in a cloud. It’s so close now, the sweet, lovely embrace of rest–

But that strange, terrible feeling stays sharp on your mind, ever insistent and refusing to quiet despite your whinging mental protests.

Something has you on edge. Some subtle thing that doesn't feel quite right. Something uncanny and off that has you shifting restlessly. Your body is so exhausted that you can barely think straight, but something raw and primal and cold has lodged itself in your gut, refusing to let go.

You try to ignore it. Try to shrug it off as typical weird day strangeness. You flip onto your back, trying desperately to will yourself into the sleep you'd been so desperate for. Your stomach churns, anxiety and adrenaline racing through your veins for no real discernible reason, and even as you grasp for rest, it slips through your fingers.

The short hairs of your body stand on end, that dreadful feeling of being observed without your knowledge edging into your mind. What was once a persistent tired warps into a cold dread, your heart pounding, something urging you to run–

Your eyes open of their own volition, scanning around for something . Something abnormal, something wrong. You're greeted by nothing but blackness, but you swear, you could swear —

“You humans are so dull. No wonder you’re all half dead already.”

You did not imagine that. Your eyes dart in the direction of the noise, blood like ice and hands beginning to shake. Body paralyzed in fear, refusing to move. That voice, it sounds like—

“It's a– how you say– modern fucking marvel you haven't been killed off already.”

Sparking to life like an old motor, your body shoots up off the mattress, heart thrumming in your ears and legs quaking but ready to bolt. Your feet hit the cheap carpet, knees bent and poised to flee. How is it possible, how is it possible?

A heinous cackle resounds through the room, echoing off the thin walls of your apartment. That hideous laugh that haunted your dreams the first time you'd heard it.

“T-Tomura?”

This has to be a nightmare. It has to.

A frantic look around greets you with two horrible red eyes in the shadows, glowing faintly in the dark. Somewhere in the dim light, you can make out the shine of ivory teeth, beset by twin sets of fangs, bared in a snarl. Your hand slaps the nightstand, determined to prove to yourself you must be losing it. A flick of the light on your table only proves true your worst fear.

He’s here.

Like a horrid shadow, a monster clad in black, a figure stands in the corner of your room bearing down on you. Tall and imposing, menacing as he glares you down with horrible red eyes.Whatever reason he’s here, it cannot be good. Your mind swims through memories of your last encounter: The ferocity, the viciousness, the vindictive and sincere way he’d lunged at you. He’d wanted you dead– and now he’s here to finish the job.

A desperate rabbit cornered by a fox and left with no other options and, frankly, nothing to say to him, you bolt .

Like a newborn fawn on stilted legs, you tear towards the door of your bedroom, almost tripping over a pair of wayward pants. You barely manage to catch yourself on the wall, scrambling to right your balance. There's heavy football behind you like the beat of a drum, approaching inhumanly fast. You claw at the door frame, desperate for the extra momentum. Another cruel laugh, this time immediately behind you.

He's on you before you can even manage a scream, large hand encircling your neck, sharp nails dimpling painfully into the soft skin. Squealing and dizzy, he rips you to your feet with a fluid and disconcerting ease, tossing you back on the mattress with a shove of his arm.

You try to scramble backwards on the bed, efforts squandered as his frigid, clawed fingers wrap themselves around your ankle, yanking you forward once more. Fear and horror mix a caustic cocktail in your gut, kicking fruitlessly at your assailant. His soft chuckle is almost somehow more dastardly than his shrill bark of laughter, sending a riptide of terror through you as he approaches, your leg held in his unrelenting iron grip.

“How is this possible?” The words force themselves from your throat, your hands clutching the sheets as if they could protect you somehow. “You can't— it's not possible!”

“You arrogant little idiot,” he spits, a guttural growl overtaking the ends of his sentence. “You don't know what I'm capable of. But you'll find out.”

“But you're— your tail and— But –”

His other hand curls into the neckline of your tank top, the fabric audibly stretching between his fingers. “ Disgusting , isn't it?”

He pushes forward, your head pulling instinctively backward as he leans closer. An overly large hoodie envelops his upper body, with an ill-fitting pair of black jeans riding low on his hips. The hood is pulled over his head, pasting a smattering of frazzled silver hair to his forehead and over his face, leaving only his chapped, snarling mouth visible to you.

“ How ?”

Another derisive laugh, mouth curling into a twisted grin. “I'm capable of all sorts of things you can't even fathom.”

The metallic, acrid scent of copper becomes palpable and assails your nostrils as he leers over you, and even in your terror, you begin to notice suspicious, dark stains spattered over the fabric of his ill-fitting clothing. Sand stubbornly layers in the creases, rubbed obstinately to the cheap cotton, and you notice strange rips and tears far too clean to be organic and ‘hip’ all over his attire.

Still, it’s not until you see the barely visible logo for a local college, bloody and half-torn from where it had been ironed on, that it hits you.

The clothes aren't his. They can’t be.

He took them. From his victims.

“Jesus— it was you !”

“You'll need to be more specific,” he grins.

“The beach! Those college kids— the massacre— you killed them!”

He rolls his slitted eyes, an obstinate sense of pride still shining through his dismissive expression. “Don't act surprised . You thought someone else had finally had enough of your kind to do something about it? Don't be stupid.”

“God— how could you? They were innocent—”

Snorting air through his nostrils, he scoffs. “Innocent? There's no such thing for one of you ,” He pushes your back further onto the mattress, torso leaning down and head pushing closer until he's so near that you can feel his breath puff on your collar bones as he scents you. “Besides, it's your fault.”

“I didn't kill them!”

“But you made me do it. Didn't you?”

“What are you talking about?” You try to shove at him, feeling his chest against yours. The burn in the back of your thigh from how he’s stretching your leg wails and whines, but it’s a dull roar compared to the cacophony of fear that blares in your brain like a siren as you hear him snap his teeth.

“I couldn't even eat them all. I wasn't even hungry ,” he giggles maliciously, driving the point of cruelty home. “They died because of you, you know. Because you had to be a stubborn little brat.”

“You're a fucking monster,” you hiss, anger starting to bleed through the fear. “Don't you dare blame me.”

“If you'd have let me do what I wanted, they'd still be alive,” Softly, he huffs onto your neck, raspy voice laced with faux-sympathy. His hand releases your newly-maimed shirt to trace his thumb over the hollow of your throat, fingers eventually settling to rest on the precipice between your shoulder and neck. You can feel the tip of his claw prick at your skin, threatening to sink deeper. “So it's your own fault.”

“ Fuck you!”

“Offer still stands,” He mockingly grins, tongue lashing out against your pulse point as you recoil. “I'm sure I could figure it out in your clunky human form. The outcome will be the same either way. I wasn't hungry then, but I am now. Starved , even.”

His fangs graze your flesh, finally removing his hand from your ankle only to anchor you down by the hip instead. His grip is steel, claws sharp as razors resting threateningly against your skin. You whimper as he chuckles, tongue lapping more insistently this time.

“Where's all that fight now? All that brattiness you had? Not so brave now that I can touch you, are we?” His fingers tighten on the rounds of your hip, nails divoting just enough to punish and leave you twitching. “It doesn't matter now.”

Hate sparks your survival instincts, your arm slowly moving to the side and praying the movement doesn’t catch his attention, your hand desperately searching for something— anything— you can use against him. It reaches the cool wood of the nightstand, fingers fumbling about for a grip on something weighty.

“It doesn't have to hurt,” He pants, fingers beginning to wander beneath the hem of your shirt. “I can be merciful— if you beg me.”

“Like hell ,” you spit, longing to tear those terrible eyes from his head as they scan over you.

“There's a girl,” He exhales in a ragged way that leaves your gut shooting through the floor, hand slinking to squeeze at the rounds of your waist. His tongue slips through his teeth one last time, lapping at the tender spot on the crook of your neck until you’re certain it’s gone raw. “I'll almost miss you when you're gone.”

Faster than you can register, his lips latch, fangs driving into your yielding throat without pity or remorse. Your mouth opens in a wordless cry, scream caught like a flightless bird in your chest. He wiggles above you, worming his way further onto you and clutching for leverage as he gnashes. His teeth are like knives, your blood warm and feeling horrifically uncanny as he tears into you almost teasingly with every whimper and whine, clearly testing the limits of his restraint. You can practically feel his every synapse longing to rip into you, quaking with ravenous need. A true predator, held back only by the leash of his own urges.

It will only satiate him for long. He's supping on your fear— your terror— reveling in his own victory.

You won't let him have it.

It's now or never.

Your voice strains with pain and adrenaline, your shaking fingers curling around the handle of the mug of tea, still almost warm against your flesh.

“The feeling isn't mutual!”

Driven by pure survival, it’s over in a flash. With as much momentum as you can muster, you bring the ceramic down on the top of his head. There's an audible thunk hidden somewhere underneath his animalistic howl, and your body slams into overdrive, kicking him off of you with every ounce of hidden strength you have as his fangs release their hold. Faster than you knew yourself capable of, you're off the bed, hand still cradling the sodden mug, body hunched in a defensive position, unsure of whether to fight or fly.

He turns to face you, mouth still wet with your blood and eyes ablaze with fury. His hands brandish those dastardly claws, so eager to tear you apart. Abject terror nearly nails you to the spot, a deer in wretched, red headlights, but some hidden strength drives you to throw the heavy mug square at his head and make a break for it. He narrowly dodges it with inhuman reflex, lip curling into a vicious snarl as it smashes against the wall instead, shattering into fractured pieces that scatter across the floor of your bedroom.

You don't stick around to hear what he says next. Feet pounding the carpet, you take off down the hallway, desperate to reach the front door. So close, if you can just get outside, you can call for help. You can almost feel the air from outside, hand reaching forward towards the handle—

“ Get back here! ”

Fingers snag in your hair, nails grazing your scalp and ripping you backwards, a high-pitched cry erupting from you as agony sears through your spine. Your back hits the wall of the hallway hard enough to bruise, a cold hand curling around your neck once again and squeezing hard enough that it leaves you gasping.

“You little bitch .”

The back of his hand meets your cheek with uncanny strength, and now it's your turn to taste blood– your own – as one of your teeth juts into the tender, soft flesh of your inner lip. You see double for a moment before your eyes manage to focus in on his face. His expression is twisted into one of hateful rage, teeth bared and dyed a watery crimson. Another yank forward only to slam you against the wooden wall once more, your head making a hideous crack as it makes contact. Pain explodes through your skull, tears forming on your eyes against your own will.

“You could have made this easy,” He tightens his grip on your throat until you struggle for breath, hiccuping air pathetically where you can. “But now? I'm going to take my time with you. I'm going to make it hurt .”

“Go to hell— you overgrown clownfish—”

“Talk tough while you can,” Five sharp pains where his fingers dig into your skin. “Soon you won't even be able to beg me to stop.”

You slam your bare foot into his bony shins, trying to kick him off. You swear you hear him chortle, tongue flicking out over his lips. A stray picture frame clatters to the ground at your struggling, glass shattering as it makes contact with the floor.

“You humans are so weak. It's pathetic. ” he loosens his grip only a modicum, just enough to watch you flounder in his grasp. You grab at his wrist, raking your nails across his pale skin, tearing at his sleeve and leaving red welts in your wake. If he even notices your weak attempt to pry him off, he shows no indication.

“Let me go!”

“I don't think so, you sniveling little brat. I gave you a chance, and you spit it back in my face.”

“What are you even talking about! You're the one who threw a fit and attacked me again out of nowhere! I didn't even do anything to you!”

“You're just like the rest of your kind,” he growls, spitting the final word like an insult. “You understand nothing .”

“You don't even try to explain! You just— you just get all pissed off and start throwing tantrums!”

His face contorts, and then evens out. “Do you really think mocking me is the wisest idea?”

“What does it matter? You're going to kill me either way!”

“True,” he shrugs, lips curling upwards into a sinister smile. “You might as well just let it happen. Let this all be over.”

You wince as he leans in again, legs kicking wildly, ankles pounding the wall of the hallway.

“Yes, soon, it'll all be over, and things can go back to the way they should be. You'll be gone , and I can forget all about this and you —”

Something pings in your brain. As you scratch and claw at his skin, something nags at you. Something he’s said. It doesn’t add up. Even your fear-shackled brain recognizes that something is off . He can hate you, sure, but all of this? Forgoing the sea, dragging himself through a city he loathes filled with people he wants dead? Risking life and limb and his prized freedom simply to teach you a lesson? He could have waited and watched, but he didn’t . He was willing to bet it all to see the light leave your eyes and suffocate the lingering flames of your influence on him. Behind the terror of the situation, the logic cracks apart and begins to break.

Through some effort, you manage to drag your gaze away from his hate-filled one, eyes flickering to the pale of his bony wrist, your fingertips brushing against a bit of fabric tied around it.

Clothing. Your clothing. The scrap he’d ripped from you in his last monstrous fit of rage.

Something clicks.

“S-sounds like you’re the one with the problem–” You try to force a snigger, laughing in the face of death. “You think killing me will make it all go away, huh?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” He sneers.

“Don’t I?” You heave air into your lungs where you can beneath his steely fingertips, body panicking at the looming suffocation.

“No, you don’t!”

“It’s almost romantic. You made yourself human just to get little old me– ”

“Shut up .”

“N-nah,” You offer him a cruel smile, equal parts spite and amusement. “Got you really twisted up, doesn’t it? Never been told no?” “You’ll be quiet if you know what’s good for you–”

“Don’t think– Don’t think I will. And I don’t t-think that’s what you want either, if you think about it.” “You will ,” He tightens his grip.

“Did it make you that j- jealous ?”

Another slam before you can even finish the word. Your head is spinning, pain splitting your skull in two. Your head lulls, eyelids fluttering.

“Y-you can’t take it– being told– n-no,” Your head swivels loosely. “And that’s why you’re here. I mean, that—” You inhale raggedly, regaining your strength to glare up at him with unrelenting accusation. “—Or you’re that lonely .”

“You have an awfully big mouth for an idiot about to die!” “Admit it,” You swallow, cringing at the taste of pennies in your throat and tinging the taste buds on your tongue. It’s thick and sickening, but you power through. “You were bored . I’m the closest thing to entertainment you’ve had. The closest thing to a friend. You missed me–”

“You’re a pathetic human whore . I came here to end you like you deserve .” “Did you?” You grin up at him, your own teeth slick with blood. “How’d you find me, Tomura? ”

He says nothing, but his lips twitch ever so slightly. There’s that murderous glint to his eyes, a fire feeding into an inferno, but you can’t help pushing. It feels like he’s accidentally revealed some sacred part of himself against his will. Some baleful, forsaken, deep place he keeps hidden even from himself.

“And now you’re in my apartment, t-trying to kill me. Or is it your own misery you want to snuff out? You think if you kill me, it’ll all go away–”

“I’d kill you and every other filthy human if I could,” He says, eyes flashing and voice full of conviction.

“But you can’t ,” You cough, still trying to breathe through his steely grip. “So now you’re here.”

“Not yet. But I can sure as hell kill you .”

It’s a gamble. A huge one. But the way you see it, the bad end will come either way.

“And let me guess, you think if you kill me, everything will go back to the way it used to be? That the crippling loneliness will subside, and you can go back to sustaining on pure fucking hatred alone? ‘Kill your friends and you can miss them’ type of deal? That you can pretend that you never cared at all? Fool even yourself?”

Looking back at your ‘friendship’ with him, it seems more antagonistic than anything, but for him, that’s probably the only contact he’s had in ages. There may be others of his kind, but you have an inkling that they are either gone, or he hasn’t seen them– or isn’t welcome among them. Despite his best efforts to appear otherwise, he has the quiet desperation of a man who hasn’t been heard and allowed his sadness to fester and harden into molten rage, oozing and destructive and directionless.

“We are not friends !”

“Fine line between care and hatred. You just seem like you can’t tell the difference anymore. You’re here trying to murder me and that doesn’t happen when you’re as apathetic as you claim to be.”

“You’re a fool.” “And you’re lying to yourself! You think killing me will make it go away? You think that ache will stop? Stop and think for a fucking minute, Tomura! You have no plan, no prospects, and the entire island on high alert. You risked your life to be here and do this. You think that’s normal?”

“It’s your fault!” He hisses, spitting words between his teeth. “I hate you!” “Well at least you can admit you feel something! ”

He growls, a low rumble in his chest, but again, he says nothing.

“Look, if I disappear, people will come looking. I have a job, family , people that will know something is wrong. They’ll find you here, and you’ll be carted off to be a glorified science experiment for the remainder of your life. You’ll never see the ocean again. Is that what you want? Is this really worth it?”

Silence. The wheels in his head are turning, and while he will never admit it, there’s the tiniest flicker of dubious doubt there. “Your only hope of ever making it home again is to let me live– unless you’re willing to die for me. For this . I could take you back, and we can just– just forget about this. But that’s your only chance. If you kill me, it’s game over. For both of us.”

A stand-off between the both of you. His white-hot stare, eyes like malignant rubies boring into yours, steeling himself against your invasive words. There is no part of him ready to admit anything close to what you've accused, but the pressure on your body doesn't increase. Frozen, a violent moment in time suspended for what feels like eternity in amber.

You're certain he could have waited like that for an age. A never ending nightmare he's more than happy to keep you held hostage in.

At least, he would have.

Something catches your attention. A noise that isn’t your wild thrashing or his whispered threats. A thumping noise, a bit too rhythmic and controlled to be from your struggle.

Just down the hall, someone is knocking on the front door.

It only takes him a moment to realize as well. He looks at you, and you look at him, both of you in a stasis. His hand on your neck, your nails dragging against his wrist. An endless moment with the both of you frozen in a tableau of violence.

“Darlin’, you in there?”

Lisa . It’s Lisa. Oh, you could kiss her.

He shoots you an accusing glare, as if you had planned this from the start. A large hand slaps over your mouth, fingers still flexing on the rounds of your throat. His body bullies you further into the wall to stay your struggling, doing everything in his power to keep you quiet.

“Not a single word,” He hisses. “If you even try to scream, I’ll break your neck.”

It’s difficult to breathe through his large hand cupped on the latter half of your face, leave alone through the pressure on your windpipe, but you obey, nodding to his command. If nothing else, it might buy you a bit of time to think.

“I heard some commotion from downstairs, so I thought I’d come check on you. Are you in there?”

Neither of you move a muscle, entirely frozen in place. Moments pass, but you know Lisa. She’s persistent. She won’t be leaving.

“Sweetheart?” she's pounding on the door insistently. “You’re worrying me. I know you’re in there. Is everything okay?”

“Don't fucking move,” He reminds you. “I'll kill you both .”

Lisa, nosy as she is, is a good woman. You don't want her hurt. You keep your mouth shut, even as you could scream. She keeps knocking, even as you pray for her to leave. Think, think, think–

Tomura’s entire body is tensed and coiled like a cobra, each muscle pulled taut and poised to strike. He seems caught between fight and flight; his instincts screaming that he turn tail, but his hatred demanding he stay. More humans is the last thing he wants, but he refuses to allow this to have been for nothing. He won’t get the chance again.

“Well, that does it. I'm calling the cops!” She croaks from outside the door, panic rising in her throaty voice.

His eyes widen the tiniest bit, and for the first time, you see it. Fear. He can't take on an entire department. Guns drawn and ready and eager to brutalize. At best, it cuts his plans short and kills him. At worst? They take him alive.

That. You can work with that.

His smothering grip on your face muffles what you try to say. His eyes flick to you, and against his better judgement, he eases it the tiniest amount. Just enough that you manage to squeak out a sentence, but ready to clamp down again if you’re foolish enough to try to yell.

“She's not going to leave, and she will call.”

“Then perhaps she needs to die –” “People will notice her missing. Two missing people in the same apartment? There’s no way in hell you’ll make it back to the ocean. You won’t make it anywhere! They’ll cordon off this entire block. We’ll be dead, but so will you. Or worse .”

He seems to panic for a moment, eyes flitting about, and gripping tightly. He clearly didn’t plan for nosy neighbors– if he planned at all. “And how do I know you won't run anyway? You humans are stupid like that–”

“I don't want you to hurt anyone else! If I run, you'll just kill us both, like you said! I’m not in any grand hurry to die!”

He seems to deliberate for a moment, fingers flexing and eyes narrowed as he realizes his time to decide is running short. Even as he tries to hide it, there’s the tiniest hint of panic hidden behind the wrath of his expression.

“Look, the longer you wait, the more likely it is she’s calling the police. Then we’ll both have a lot of explaining to do that I know you aren’t keen on. I can make her go away, but you need to trust me.”

He flinches at the word trust , mouth pulling into a snarl.

“You don’t have a choice!” You remind him sharply. “Go ahead and answer the door yourself if you want, but her seeing a strange man in my apartment isn’t going to ease her suspicion!”

He huffs, hand pulling from your mouth to ball at his side. The other still tenses threateningly on your neck, even as he realizes he’s been bested by unforeseen circumstance.

“ Fine ,” He releases you slowly, questioning his decision even as he does it. “But I'm listening. And if you so much as hint— ”

“I won't!” You rub at your sore throat, voice croaking. “ Now give me that robe! Inside the bathroom door.”

He seems perplexed, but does so, throwing it carelessly over and watching intently as you pull it over your shoulders and cover your freshly bruising neck and bubbling bloodwork smeared over your chest.

“Just– Just stay here! Don’t move! And don’t let her see you!”

You unlock the padlock to the door, just noticing the damage now from where Tomura must have forced his way in earlier. Great. No way in hell you’re getting your security deposit back now. A flustered Lisa stands outside the doorway, cellphone in hand, smelling of stale and acrid cigarette smoke.

“Hey! Hey— sorry,” You offer her your best ‘ I swear nothing is wrong’ smile. “I was a bit tied up.”

“I— Jesus, girl. Are you okay? There's been one hell of a ruckus coming from up here. You're bleeding—” Her eyes settle on your temple where you’re certain a dribble of blood is matting in your hair.

“C— Closet shelf fell on me when I was changing out of my work clothes,” you smile, wiping your hair out of your face. “I knew I shouldn't have put it up myself. Came crashing right down on me. Broke all my stuff right on my head.”

“My God, that’s horrible! I knew I should have told the superintendent to do his damn job and come up and help. Do you need an ambulance? Here, I'll call—”

“No!” You almost snatch at her phone, panic rising as you can practically hear Tomura gearing up. “No! Really, I'm okay. Just a bit of ice and a few bandages and I'll be fine. It looks worse than it is.”

She gives you a skeptical look, trying to peek into your apartment in a less-than-inconspicuous manner.

“Honest. I'm fine! Just a bit of a shock, is all. Scared the hell out of me, but I'm fine. I’ll fix it later. I’m just exhausted, is all. I want a nice bath and some sleep.”

“I—”

“If it's bad, I'll get it looked at,” You insist, unsure if you’re more desperate for her to stay or to leave. With the threat of the malevolent creature perched in your hallway, ready to pounce at a moment’s notice, you decide it’s the latter.

“I don't have insurance, Lis. The café can’t afford it. You know I can't go to a hospital. It'll put me in the poor house. I can barely afford anything as it is, leave alone medical bills.”

It's a dirty card to play, but it's honest, and more importantly, it works. She pauses, shoulders falling in defeat after a moment as shakes her head, slipping her phone back into her pocket. “Damn shame, the state of things. Ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” you force a rough laugh, trying to appear calm and composed even through your rabbiting heart. “I'll take it easy. I'm going to lie down. It’s not that bad. It just looks that way.”

“Alright, honey. You know to call if you need anything, right?”

“I do. Thank you, Lisa. Really.”

You mean it sincerely. Her interference probably saved your life… for now.

“Do you want me to stop by tomorrow? Help you clean up?”

“I’ll let you know. I’ll give you a call either way and let you know everything is alright.”

“You better,” She pokes at your chest with an orange acrylic. “Don’t go scarin’ me like that.”

“Sorry again. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Reluctantly, she turns, offering you one last look. This won’t be the last you hear of this, but you’ll have to deal with that later. You have a bigger issue to deal with now.

But you think you have just the idea how to.

#Come down to the Black Sea #Part VII #Tomura Shigaraki x Reader #Tomura Shigaraki x you #Siren!Tomura #Yeeeeeah sorry it's been uhh years lmao #Idk why I posted this on a bloody holiday when no one is going to see it lmao

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fishenjoyer1 · 3 months ago

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Fish of the Day

Today's fish of the day is the hornyhead chub!

The hornyhead chub, named for their pronounced tuberacles (bony projections) in spawning males, scientific name Nocomis biguttatus. This fish is a kind of minnow found exclusively in North American freshwater. Living in a range from Wyoming to New York, and as far north as North Dakota to Southern Arkansas, although they can occasionally be found outside of their normal range in the Colorado river and as far South as Georgia. This fish lives primarily along the Ohio, Kentucky, and Mississippi rivers, branching off into smaller creeks. Within these creeks the fish prefers to live along rock beds preferring calm clear waters, with a tolerance for darker waters only if there is a lack of turbidity. Young live exclusively near vegetation, using it as a hiding place from predators, but adult populations are entirely unaffected by its presence or lack thereof.

Despite being a minnow, a family often thought to be some of the lower rungs of the aquatic food-web, this fish has no major predators outside of local large omnivore or carnivore fish in certain areas. Yet, despite this they are reducing from their natural ranges and are practically endangered in Wyoming, Pennsylvania, and Kansas for reasons we aren't fully sure of. These fish are essential in these food webs due to their nesting sites sticking around years after the inhabitants have passed, being used by numerous other animals after them. Conservation efforts have taken place in affected areas, preventing excessive human harvesting for bait. On a global scale however, they are of least concern.

The hornyhead chub's diet is wide, as an opportunistic omnivore. Found foraging in both day and night, they are far more active when the sun is up, as they rely almost entirely on sight, possibly the same reason for their prevalence in clear stiller waters.. The juvenile fish forage for smaller fish, insect larvae, small crustaceans, and freshwater plankton, while the adult hornyhead chub's prey on larger fish, insect larvae, snails, worms, clams, and larger crustaceans. This diet allows them to reach a size of as large as 12 inches, with an average of 8.5 inches, rather large for a minnow species.

The life cycle of the hornyhead chub is similar to that of many others. After hatching from their eggs, these fish will live 6 months as fry, before being a juvenile for the next year. Then, at 2-3 years of age these fish sexually mature. This is when the male will build a large mound of pebbles into a nest, which they will spend the entire breeding season and after guarding. These males guard the nest from other male hornyhead chubs, but do not guard from other fish, leading to several cases of hybridization of species, as these nests are a safe area to lay other species eggs in. Even within their own species, females will lay eggs across multiple nests, ensuring diversity. These fish live only 3-4 years, and so they can live for only 1 or 2 breeding season, but are almost certain assured their legacy will live on, as the predation of hornyhead chubs is small, and fertilized eggs are covered by gravel before guarding, such the predators can not find them before hatching either.

That's the hornyhead chub, everybody! Have a wonderful day and a good week ahead!

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icybreaths · 3 months ago

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In the depths of the mystical forest, where the murmurs of the trees intertwined with the gentle caress of the breeze, a being of extraordinary elegance stepped forth from the twilight. Her fur shimmered like freshly fallen snow under the moon's embrace, radiating a soft, silvery luminescence that illuminated the verdant carpet beneath her. Her mane glowed with an otherworldly light, each strand resembling delicate threads woven from the very essence of moonbeams. Above her, the leafy canopy arched like a grand cathedral, sunlight filtering through in a whimsical ballet, casting intricate patterns of light and shadow upon her form.

Once, she had been a powerful witch, wise and revered, moving with a grace that echoed her lost humanity. Her eyes, now reflecting the depth of a nocturnal creature, carried a quiet sorrow, a poignant reminder of the life she had once known. They sparkled with ancient knowledge, hinting at the stories of countless nights and the whispered mysteries hidden within the forest's embrace.

Her hooves danced through the muck and mire of the earth, each step resonating with the pulse of the land. The woodland creatures sensed her arrival, for she was a guardian, a quiet watcher who safeguarded the realm with an unwavering gaze. They could feel her strength, even if they couldn’t perceive the delicate spells she spun to protect the innocent and lead wandering souls back to the familiar trails.

As the sun sank beneath the horizon, the forest fell into a hushed stillness, as if it were pausing to catch its breath. The air was rich with the aroma of pine and the allure of a night brimming with murmurs and mysteries. The transformation had exacted a toll on her, yet it had also bestowed upon her a deep bond with the spirits of the land. They communicated with her through the whispering leaves and the far-off call of an owl, steering her through the maze of ancient trees. Her mission was clear, though the journey was laden with danger. She sought the hero foretold by fate, a companion of great significance to join her in this endeavor. Until that moment arrived, she remained tethered to the forest, a quiet guardian of enchantment and wonder in a world that had long forgotten her essence.

|| Asks || @fallesto ||

The forest’s breath came with a chill the deeper one wandered. Like the leaves, it started as a whisper, nearly indiscernible from the wild nightlife.

Further ahead was a hum, low and sinister. Had survival instincts not kicked in, there might have been more bodies.

Few birds scatter the forest floor, a huddle of rabbits, a fox… schools of fish frozen still in the river.

Snow was brought in by a gale of numbing winds. The trees shivered under the hiss in the air.

An iced over wolf stood frozen mid step, head down and peering into the fogged brush. Cautious.

Blood painted the snow on the other side in a disastrous slop. From the ground to being frozen mid drip from the tree leaves above; it was everywhere.

It should have smelled worse but it was tempered by the cold.

Parts of a dark claw, a chewed open leg, and greasy black hair scattered the scene. Teeth— part of bony mask… crimson streaks that led to the dead hollow body, and the woman perched atop it.

She looked on, tonguing meat out of the dips in her talons. The approaching creature was a laughable juxtaposition to the horror here, but Jewel merely stared and studied it.

“What do you want?” she graveled out of her mangled mouth. “I’m busy.”

#fallesto #[ asks ]#v: harbinger of the ice age

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violetflowers55 · 3 days ago

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Hot & Cold - Chapter 1

(Dr. Phosphorus x fem!reader)

Synopsis: Since there’s not enough alien criminals, you got stuck in the monster section of Belle Reve. And of course Waller put you on Task Force M. To make matters even worse, the guy who landed you in prison in the first place is right there, never leaving you alone. But maybe, he can compensate you in more way than one…

No content warnings needed for this chapter (that I can think of). No Y/N usage

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Being imprisoned sucked. Being imprisoned in Belle Reve sucked more. Being imprisoned in the monster section sucked the most.

You’d had a good five years to figure out how to, well, not thrive, but do a bit more than just survive. Fight when someone else instigates - not enough to get you thrown into isolation, but enough to scare off everyone else for awhile. Don’t piss of the guards, but also don’t be a suck up, they hate that even more. Don’t make friends because they’ll either die, get transferred, or turn on you. There was only one thing you hadn’t figured out yet. Well, two if you count figuring out how to escape. When Waller pulled you for a super secret special mission, your first thought was that maybe you could figure out at least one of your two remaining problems.

The sun bore down on the six of you as Waller and Flag carted you into a military ship. The feeling of its warmth was one you hadn’t felt in a long time, and it was gone too soon. As you got wedged between two other freaks, you finally looked to see who else was pulled for the super special top secret mission. On you left was Weasel, some freaky rodent you didn’t really know. On the other side was The Bride; you’d never met her before but you figured she was The Bride since she looked like she would be Frankenstein’s bride. Across from her was a robot and across from Weasel was some fish girl. The only person you knew was sitting right across from you. As much as you tried not to, his green glowing skeleton was hard not to look at, and the two of you locked eyes. Or, at least, it felt like you did.

“Wow. After all these years, and we’re finally reunited on a mission to save a princess. Who would’ve thought?” Dr. Phosphorus said, in a tone that you knew meant he was grinning. You scoffed. “I would’ve thought we’d be reunited by you breaking me out of that hellhole.”

“You two… know each other?” the fish girl asked.

“No.” you said firmly, hoping to put an end to the conversation.

Truthfully, you had met before, back in Gotham. You ran into each other while trying to rob the same bank. He threatened to burn your “pretty little face” off, you threatened to break all his bones and leave him an immovable fire. Not exactly love at first sight.

“She just doesn’t want to admit she’s totally in love with me,” he whispered to the girl.

“Don’t think my threat to break your bony ass doesn’t still stand.” Despite your threat, you could still feel him grinning at you. You couldn’t tell if it was his gaze or his literal flames that were heating you up.

When you finally arrived at the castle, breaking free from being squished up against your fellow monsters felt almost as good as being let out of isolation. The castle looming in front of you was shockingly beautiful. You silently cursed yourself for not trying to take it over while you were free.

As the seven of you were escorted inside, Phosphorus slowly drifted over to walk next to you. It took every fiber of your being not to look at him. But being so close to him, you had to admit his warmth felt nice.

Then at dinner, he of course was quick to make sure he sat next to you. When you and the Bride rolled your eyes and his obviousness, he tried to casually explain it away by saying “Us Gotham guys gotta stick together, right?”, but his nervous chuckle gave him away. Soon enough, dinner was served, distracting everyone. It’d been far too long since you’d had real, good food, and just like the others, you scarfed it down. When you finally paused and looked up, you noticed the princess staring at you.

“Forgive me, I do not mean to stare. I was just… I mean no offense, but I thought America had forbidden human criminals from missions such as this one?” Princess Illana asked.

The table went silent, except for Weasel’s aggressive eating noises.

You tried to smile. “I know I look like one, but I’m not human.” It was hard to hold her gaze; you just didn’t have it in you to explain further. She muttered a simple “Oh”, and the previous chatter and eating resumed shortly. Except for you, your appetite was gone.

“You ok?” Phosphorus whispered, noticing you pushing your food around with your fork.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” You still couldn’t look at him, but this time it wasn’t because you didn’t want to.

“I know you’re fine,” he teased.

“Shut it,” you snapped before he could ask if you were ok again.

For most of your life, no one knew you weren’t human. You were great at hiding your powers. The only reason the whole world knew you were an alien was because your stupid defense attorney thought that being an alien somehow made you exempt from the law and used it at trial. As you sat there, all you could hear was the gasps of the courtroom when he revealed your secret, and all you could feel was rage spreading throughout your body. Then you remembered how pitifully he cried when you killed him, and that calmed you down enough.

After dinner, everyone poured out into the courtyard, and you reveled in the bright warm sun. The feeling of its heat on your skin was practically euphoric. You laid down on the soft grass, shamelessly sunbathing.

“Trying to get a tan on?”

Opening one eye, you saw Phosphorus standing over you.

Ugh, why can’t he just leave me alone?

“You’re blocking my sunlight.”

Carefully, he laid down next to you, his fingertips dangerously close to yours.

“I get it, you wanna have something to show off to the loser inmates who didn’t get picked when we get back.”

You groaned. “You know nothing.”

“Mmm, maybe. But I want to know everything,” the teasing tone in his voice was gone, replaced with a low, almost seductive tone.

You thanked God you could blame your blushing cheeks on the sun.

“Oh, can it, skelly.”

He chuckled, but let it drop. The two of you laid there together in silence until the sun started to go down. At least your bedroom was sure to be warmer than your prison cell.

#dr. phosphorus #creature commandos #dr. phosphorus x reader #x reader creature commandos #dr. phosphorus fanfic

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bromcommie · 9 months ago

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the beloved name, exiled free verse poem (?) for @catws-anniversary, day 8 | april 2nd theme: bucky barnes | prompts: ghost story, memories, revenge | on ao3 here

Listen: this is a ghost story. Are you listening?

Good. Let me set the scene: here we are at the beginning of our path, here we are at the mouth of the river, still cool and smelling of salt and rotten fish and not gasoline. And here we have our protagonist who is like all other protagonists, which is to say he is handsome, maybe, or he used to be and he is young, maybe, or he used to be and he is unimportant and mundane and utterly human, maybe, or he used to be.

What about a name? This can get confusing, so let's call him Yuri or Yevgeny or Yakub, let's call him Joe or Jack or Jimmy— overplayed, overused, there's too many of those just running around all over the place, trust me. Let's just call him the universal name of all history, meaning let's not call him anything at all. Most of the real protagonists are nameless, and all history ever does is pile them atop each other, dead faceless weight on neat numbered lists, pour them out into shallow unmarked graves, send them home as bits of hammered metal and pairs of over-mended socks, meaning: 31 GOVT=WUX WASHINGTON DC 845PM 3-8-45

THE SECRETARY OF WAR WISHES ME TO EXPRESS— Hello? Everybody home? Are you sitting down? Sorry for your loss, ma'am. Sorry about the caked blood on his boots, about all the ugly, festering parts that nestled in the chest and grew outwards, stretching towards the sun. You should probably make it a closed-casket funeral, you should probably make it a nice picture on the mantle, a gilded frame for grief, because you won't like the thing the search party digs up from the snow. Sorry for your loss, ma'am, truly, but know this: никто не забыт и ничто не забыто, meaning vechnaya pamyat, memory eternal, meaning we will forever honor your unnamed hero of a son on neat numbered lists and in the worn, earmarked pages of history. And don't that just beat all. Except for the ones that make it. Except for the rare ones deserving of a title, the ones left to carry history's weight, left to tell the story; left to be immortalized as the writing on the wall. They get to keep their names. You saw it, too. Not really, not the fleshy, messy parts between the syllables, not in a way that counts, and we're not here to talk about him, anyway. I'm the one calling the shots, I'm the one telling this story, so listen. If you say so. So we have our protagonist— tell me about the monster, then. Every good story needs a monster. Except I didn't say monster, did I, I said ghost: something caught in the doorway but never fully in either room, something that has a body which is never whole but always wants to be. The body which knows without knowing, which occupies the space between awareness and understanding; the nuclear shadow of longing.

But you don't want that, do you. You want something with clean-cut lines, something with teeth and a mean streak that adds up to more than just the disjointed sum of its parts. I don't blame you for that. So here: have your handsome young unnamed hero while he was still handsome and young and without the weight of a title for a name breaking over his back, sweating in summer heat. Have a scene drawn by a boy on a fire escape with a red-bellied bird over blue water that hasn't caught on fire yet; have a scene in which all the lights add up, in which there are no creeping shadows and the scenery makes sense.

Here is your kindhearted hero who walks tall and straight and shares his chocolate with the children sheltering in the basement of the shattered house, the thousands of children on whose bony backs the mythos of Leningrad was built— which is a thing our protagonist doesn't know then but will learn in time, with practice and repetition beaten raw into the skin: pain, the mother and father and inheritor of all earthly knowledge. And here is the monster which is, of course, a house with one too many locked doors, one too many broken windows and not enough light getting in to see his face clearly, to map into memory the places where the glittering armor's cracked, where the boy's expression bleeds into the bird on the page. The edges all crooked. The spine tilting to the side. The bird's not flying.

How can it, the boy who is not a boy but a man says, when its wing's broken? And our protagonist says: you're the artist here. Can't you make up a better story, for a change?

I'm sorry. I tried to keep it simple. Let me start over.

There's something about the house you're keeping out of the picture. How did they get in if all the doors are locked? Where did they come from? Where did the overlap come from? The other side of the river Lethe, maybe, except that's just another myth our protagonist doesn't remember learning but knows anyway. Head stuffed full of stories, passed on in hope and bread and blood head stuffed full of cotton, gasoline-soaked waiting decades for something to spark, except someone's cut the connecting strings, you see. Someone's hacked off the fuse. A lighter's useless if you can't even light a candle with it. A tool loses its value when it stops doing its job well, when it becomes nothing but the disjointed, disloyal sum of its parts and bites the hand wielding it, which is usually when the hand tends to get pissed. You know. I don't need to tell you this. The voltage wasn't high enough to burn out the fear of failure. If someone's cut the fuse, where's the flame coming from, then? Shut up, I'm getting there. We were talking about the scenery, about the roses next to the blown out window, pink on red on tablecloth white; we were talking about the dark-eyed girl in the basement with the one-sided dimple, the one-sided shyness, the handful of picked wildflowers when he walked back through the door, wanting to go back to a time when his body was a gentler sum of its parts.

What color were the wildflowers? Now you're getting somewhere. Pink, white, yellow; blue, maybe, the color of kindness. That is what they were fighting for, you understand, one and all: a kinder world, a world where little girls never end up hungry in basements again. That's what they were told over and over again by the same men in different suits.

I know what you're about to ask. No, the children never got out of the basement, and yes, the girl's eyes were blue back then, not brown a mirror of belonging, and in another version of events her hair was red, but that's a story for a different time. And the world? Well. Depends on who you ask. Anyway, we were talking about the boy on the fire escape and the boy in the shattered house drawing the same bird. Mythology carries weight even without proof of it ever happening, but this is different. Is it? What makes you say that? Well the birds looked alike, and the two boys didn't look alike at all except for all the ways in which they did, the lip caught between teeth and the line cutting between brows and the soft scritch-scritch-scritch of stubby pencil on cheap paper, a faint looping sound that should've driven our protagonist mad but didn't. Echo of a life repeated, of a sound as familiar as his own heart, which is the closest thing to proof of existence you can get. I beat, therefore I exist. I am beaten, therefore: there's still something permanent about this body that can't be taken away.

The boy's body wasn't permanent, or at least it turned out malleable despite its innate unbreakability, despite the hard-earned slouch of the shoulders and the same old broken nose and the twist to the mouth; not smiling, but close. The eyes; not looking at, but not looking away.

Maybe it's not the boy that changed, but the looking. Maybe that's the part the protagonist made up after: the looking back. Explain the flame then, explain the devil in the details, explain the hunger cutting through the ribs, spilling the contents out into the world to be pecked at. If none of it was real, explain how all this light is getting in. Oy vey iz mir, I'll never get to the end if you keep this up. You sure ask a lot of questions, don't you? I don't like when you do that, just repeat words you heard once or twice— or a thousand times. Isn't that all storytelling is? Do you even know what they mean? Do you? They mean, enough already They mean, didn't I tell you to buzz off? They mean you've been at the wheel too long but I've been here longer, so let me talk for once, let me set some roots down in this shifting landscape you're running from and be more than just a collection of wild old hungers. I thought you said this is a ghost story. That's all ghosts ever are.

I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about our hero and I'm just trying to prove a point here, anyway. I'm trying to say maybe the birds weren't the same bird, maybe the bird wasn't even a bird and maybe the boy was something he made up, too, clinging onto hope like a thing with too many feathers, like a rope that could very well hang him. Maybe it's still enough on its own, anyway, the feeling that flutters through at the not-story, a robin's broken wing against the windowsill, the aftermath of a struggle; tender and violent and utterly unkillable. Sounds like a nice story. So why are you so angry?

Am I? Well, fear can sometimes cause an irrational reaction. Fear can make people dangerous, make them behave unpredictably. This is all empty rhetoric, of course, but you should understand. You're not people, either. Your lethality is not irrational. It's been hammered into a precise shape, like all things born out of a binary are— I know this story, too. It goes: Yes or no. Success or failure. Dot or dash. You finger's on the trigger: you pull it or you don't. What's your choice? Report. Never mind, I don't want to talk about this.

Report status. Dot or dash? The choice of a small, bloody animal backed into a corner, which is to say no choice at all. The choice of go fuck yourself with the constant interruptions, I was telling a story here.

That's not one of the options. Your finger is still on the trigger. The house is still on fire. What do you save? What are you trying to pull? You know how this story goes so why rehash it why poke at infected tissue, why— Because you won't talk to me plainly, you won't look at the thing head on, because I'm trying to be helpful, like I've always tried to be helpful, because the story goes: We want to help you, you have to let us help you, you have to let us, so: report. I was getting there, why did you have to— Report. Answer the question. You know, sometimes I think you liked it when they— Sometimes I think you like getting— Answer. Sometimes I think you— .-. . .--. --- .-. - two GSWs one to the stomach one to the thigh critical condition - .... -.-- / .-- .. .-.. .-.. / -... . / -.. --- -. . broken ribs shattered cheekbone pneumo thorax 32557038 you’ve known me your whole life exfil at 38° 46' 57.50" -77° 00' 54.22" you hear that assholes home by christmas and lying dead asleep on the couch lying dead sinking in the water lying strapped to a table when война закончена, слава героям Красной армии subject uncooperative try it again 32557038 sergeant 191 pts in most recent drill recommendation for additional training 3255 --- -. / . .- .-. - .... / I said .- ... / .. - / .. ... try it again / .. -. / .... . .- ...- . -. he’s still talking 7038 initial report stated the body pulled from the Potomac was nonresponsive stated subject’s cardiac arrest lasted 176.83 seconds so try it again stated edelweiss, ein kleines edelweiss stated I give thanks before you for you have mercifully returned my soul within me stated 32557—

.-. . .--. --- .-. - Record skip. There's fuzz on the damn needle again. Where's it keep coming from? What was I talking about, again? You were about to tell me where the light keeps coming from. The light is irrelevant, the light casts shadows that don't make any sense, I told you, the light's just there for dramatic effect. Our protagonist is not an artist, he's not thinking about the light.

You're lying. You're leaving the important parts out again. You're ignoring what's happening in the house, you're ignoring the red string that's supposed to be leading the way, time-adherent. Of course. That's because all strings can be cut, all strings can wind up dead ends, all things can be taken away, including time. The string's not red because of the poetry of it all, bub. It's red because someone's bled all over it. We both know this, so what's the point in reopening old wounds? That's how people hemorrhage. That's how the needle starts to skip. That's not how stories work. Why won't you tell me what he's thinking about? Fine. Fine then: he's thinking about the damn light, how it makes him look all translucent and tired and too human this man that used to be a boy that used to be a David long before they turned him into a Samson, and he tries not to think about how that story ends. He thinks about the light and he wants to say, keep your temples standing—the world's had more than its fair share of heroes and legends, and look where that got us. Nothing good ever came from making a fallible man a myth. He wants to say: if there's someone who could knock them down blind it'd be this boy, but he'd rather look at him in this ghost light until the day he bites it than read his name in history books and over the tombstone of a hero's grave.

He wants, but that's not something fit to send back with the socks and the hammered metal, that's about as useless as crying over spilt milk, about as useless as the thoughts that lead nowhere but deeper into the pit our hero keeps crawling out of. And so he goes back to the numbers and the angles, to the sounds right outside the door, to the piece of metal in his hands because he was always so much better at that kind of thing, anyway. Things that can be taken apart and put back together, new from the old; things that can be forced into a form or a binary are so much easier to control. You know this, too. You're living, breathing proof of it.

Anyway, that's what he's thinking about at that time: speed, math, probability. Gravity, maybe. He drifted— wandered— walked purposefully so close to the edges of this man that he ended up wanting inside him, close enough to know him like his blood knows him, close enough to get warm and to shield from the draft through the broken windows snuffing the light out of them both. He'd ended up afraid of pushing too hard and ending up on the other side of him, afraid of falling off one hell of a cliff. And the boy who hasn't been a boy in a while looked at him and said, Are you— and our man with no face said: Let's not do this again. And they both carried on dealing with things easier to handle, like smart numbers and smart maps and smart hands that did things they were good at but tried not to think about too hard at night.

He still ended up falling, of course. And then, well— a shot bird can't fly if its wings've been broken, a shot bird can't fly if its been fucking shot.

Someone lied to our protagonist, you see. It was a long time ago, but it still stuck.

But what about the light?

Why the rush? Look, whichever end I tell the story from, we'll end up at the foot of the same cliff, the same river. I just don't know what more you want from me.

I want you to stop dropping the thread, I want you to stop playing dead already— that shattered house is on fire, and you keep trying to put it out with buckets full of bullet holes while I'm not looking and the water's all gone before you can even see it evaporate. The house is still on fire, the house is caught in a thunderstorm too many charged particles too close to the eye socket and the smell of crackling ozone and burning flesh and you need to get out— That's enough. Change the topic, I'm not doing this again. Please. Look, I'm being nice about it. Fine. Do you remember who first told our unnamed hero that old Lie? No, but it starts like this: dulce et decorum est, except there's nothing decorous about flies on too-thin bodies, about the taste of fear like iron at the scraped roof of the mouth, about the things you saw your hands do; there's nothing about our hero that makes him a hero. Blood under the fingernails. White little petals high up in the pale mountains, white little petals on lapels, crushed to bits. You still remember how brown his eyes were, how young how quick the light behind them was snuffed out when all your muscles locked up, animal instinct. Mind you, it wasn't unwarranted— the motherfucker's knife was in your stomach. The pretty pale mountains were a screen for a world set on raging fire. Mind you, this was before the invention of a gun out of living flesh, before they gave you a title instead of a name. You were bleeding then, too.

I thought we were talking about the story.

We are, pay attention: Do you remember when you first realized the awful Truth? I know you don't, but it goes like this: you don't remember giving your life and you don't remember believing in something bigger than yourself, but your trigger finger does. Picturebook blue and gold over the river's surface, stretching yourself too thin towards the sun. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori. (Only one part of this sentence is a lie.)

You still haven’t told me where the light is coming from. And you still haven't told me why you want the answer so bad. I don't know. Is that what you've been wanting to hear? I don't know. You don't want to know. There's a difference. You're scared shitless is what you are, you sorry old thing. Falling back on old habits. I want to know how our protagonist ends up.

I’m working on it, alright. The road is long and potholed and roundabout and the story’s not much better, you see: the pictures are all there but the colors are too bright, the linework's all off, I still can't get the shadows to make any goddamn sense. Too many different mythologies, I think; too much static on the channel to pick the thread of the drama up clearly, and someone keeps cutting the transmission lines, anyway. It's downright sabotage, is what it is. Friendly fire. But our protagonist is getting weary, he needs a moment to lay his head down, so let me wrap up, will you, let me get a word in edgewise and put it in a way you will understand. Stop asking questions and let yourself sit in the house with one too many doors that you didn't notice before, one too many rooms and not enough hallways to connect them all. Make a place for yourself by the warmth of the fire in the burning house, and pay attention:

The doors are there for a reason. Did you hear what I said? Have you been listening? Someone's cut all the strings. Someone's left them to smolder in the ash, someone's bitten the hand that used to hold them raw, and now the monster's asking questions. Now the monster's off its leash, and it wants what all angry, abused abandoned things want, which is someone to be afraid of it for once, which is a way out of the maze, a clear path into the sunlight. It wants its due. I thought you said it was a ghost. Gimme a break— there's no place for semantics in this discussion, there's no place for a discussion at all. I'm telling you now: ghost, monster they're all just different words to say— something that's other, something on the outside looking in, something with no belonging. All different words to say: something that used to be something else once.

That's why our hero is no hero, you see: no Samson, no Oisín, no Theseus; at best, he's the minotaur. At worst, he's the ship. Something new from something old, over and over until it's unrecognizable. A gilded frame for grief masquerading as an honor. That's where the light is coming from, you understand. That's where all the strange old hunger is coming from: the blue of the wildflowers carved into bone; the beloved name exiled to the other side of the river Lethe. That's what the monster wants. A way back home. Monsters don't get to make demands. Only heroes do. You think? You still haven't figured it out yet, have you? You're still thinking in binaries. Who do you think I've been flapping my gums at all this time, who do you think our tired nameless protagonist with all that blood on his boots is? And who's the one out of the two of us here asking all the goddamned questions? Open your eyes. Put your ear to the ground. Listen: I lied. This isn't a story. This is a warning. Someone's cut all your red strings and that someone was you, pushed out of a century of quiet by the wrong dead body in the wrong burning river and a feeling you didn't understand in the shape of a name cutting your ribcage open to the sun; which is why you're so angry, which is why you're scared shitless, which is why you've got more questions than answers. The needle's still skipping, so we’re flipping the whole thing over to B-side. Can you hear it? Can you mouth along to the crackling words? It seems to me you've heard that song before, so: wipe the record and start over. Maybe this time the melody'll actually stick.

And then? And then, you get your due. No gods, no mythologies, no more fucking stories, just this: you, blowing up the burning house and clawing your way out into the sunlight.

#catws10 #catws anniversary #bucky barnes #poetry #if you define poetry very very loosely #my fic #bucky barnes fic #stevebucky

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loganlermanstanaccount · 1 year ago

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sand beyond the sea (I know you're waiting there for me)

(AO3 Mirror) (Main Masterlist) (Event Masterlist) (Event Info)

Tape 1 // Side A Track 08: Seaforth - King Krule Finnick Odair x childhood lost love

warnings: mild angst, fluff, happy ending.

a/n: first drabble for my 6k followers event! i had fun writing this one :)

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Our love dissolves this universe (Our love dissolves the universe)

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Finnick can't sleep.

He won't, actually; out of principle. There was a time in his life where he was terrified of the dark, a fear that seeped well into adulthood. He'd ask for the light of gas lamps, keep his window open to let moonlight spill in, or crawl into his mother's bed for comfort. It wasn't the dark, per se, but the nightmares: creatures creeping in the dark, shadows with a bony hand around his neck. And when those nightmares turned into pseudo-memories: of heads hacked off and the sharp prongs of a trident in his chest – well, those ones still keep him up at night.

This time, though, it's nothing like that. It's all the more surprising when he drifts off into sleep, and instead of nightmares; he dreams. Hazy, wispy ones of sand and salt in the air: of laughter, of love, of you.

So he doesn't sleep, for a while. Instead, he lies awake in a crisp white room, a thousand miles away from wherever you really are. District 4, probably; still living by a half-hearted cliff's edge, a stone's throw from his parent's house. That's what he sees, sometimes: feels the sand underfoot as you run ragged around rock pools and fall asleep in the sun. Dreams, governed by feeling; touch, taste, smell; of your hands tying loose braids into his hair, and fried fish by the water's edge. He doesn' t need to see you, dreaming or otherwise, to know how much he loves you.

And so, it doesn't matter how hard he fights it - Finnick always wakes up in the morning with the feeling of your hand on his cheek, warmth rising to the surface of his chest. You'd swirl a stick into sand and explain what you'd learnt at school, that day, a class above him.

Cold air sinks, Finn; warm air rises.

And he'd give you a gap-toothed smile, grinning like an idiot even then.

So you'd float to heaven, he'd say, head spinning as you laugh. And Snow would kick rocks in hell.

Oh my God… what does that even mean, Finnick?

He'd clarify. Just think you're warm. Somethin' about you.

Your smile is something etched onto his heart like the carvings you'd make into driftwood, all the way back then. Scratchy hearts, and the both of your initials in bark.

You're full of hot air, Finn.

It makes him smile, curled up against the sheets like you're pressed against him. Sometimes, he thinks you were made for one another; spines slotting together like puzzle pieces, two halves of one whole.

It's stupid, probably, to think of a childhood love like that. To hold onto something he let die, after the Games. His knuckles are white from holding on too long, he thinks. Too tight.

So he can't sleep, barely does; counting down the days, seconds, hours, until he's back home. Dreams of a beach where you're still there, where your footsteps dance around one another; and aren't washed away by the sea.

"Finn?" You still live in that old house, grown into your features, and he's grown into gangly limbs.

He's worn his best trousers, tried to smooth that rogue curl at the crown of his head. He'd brought flowers that remind him of you, sweet and crisp and fresh. You're pretty. So, so pretty; it makes his chest heave and creak. And your hands are cradling his face, his hands are on your waist: they fit, just right.

Watery laughter, but it sounds exactly how he remembers. Everything else falls away. He sleeps with his head on your chest, that night. It's warm.

Somethin' about you, he thinks.

Finnick taglist: @amonett, @neithriddle

#finnick x reader #finnick odair #finnick odair x reader #thg #the hunger games #thg x reader #the hunger games fic #finnick odair fanfic #angst #fluff #angst with a happy ending #Spotify

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mudandmire · 7 months ago

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Familiars

Azris Week - Day Two: Familiars

~~~ Welcome to day two of @azriweek! It is so early right now and I'm rushing this note because I need to go to work, but I'm literally so excited. This community is truly so talented and wonderfully kind it inspires me more and more. Fair warning this follows none of canon, like literally none. I went a little rouge with the lore but I couldn't care less because it was fun. Anyywaayyy, hope you enjoy! :D ~~~

~~///~~///~~///~~

Made for

Azriel keeps his hands wrapped in cotton gauze the first week he’s in Zebedee’s fields. Every now and then, listening to the tall grass rustle, the canyon gale skipping across the steppes plains and buffeting against him, he’ll grasp his hands together and itch. It’s a bad habit, but the feeling, the weight, of his hands together brings him more comfort than he could ever voice.

The moon rises early, the summer season slowly cresting into autumn, and with it the midnight sun begins to disappear behind the fish-toothed ridge of the Illyrian mountains—every moment cut shorter and shorter. So Azriel sits in the flickering firelight of the hearth in the clay burrow, Zebedee humming a soft, low tune that makes his little, withered wings shudder. His mother is somewhere, sitting in a corner darning the holes in pant legs and socks, her narrow shoulders hunched—much like his.

It’s a quiet Azriel isn’t used to. A noisy quiet. Darkness, those familair shapes and figures takes their place along the walls and outside the glass pane windows—yet Azriel is not alone in it. For now, his shadows have settled comfortably along his shoulders and the frayed edge of Zebedee’s colorful patterned rugs. They had their time to stretch and play when the sun began to set, and now laze like fattened cats on the high beams of barns. The shadows are familiar; the light, the noise, is not.

Breathing, steady and deep—Zebedee keeps his eyes closed as he hums, swaying gently from side to side on the cushion he claims his own. The deep impression he has left on it from a lifetime of use evidence enough. Every now and then Azriel will pick up the softest snick of a needle through fabric, the pre-meditated rip of a seam, and he’ll picture his mother’s face, trace her name but won’t dare to turn around.

Azriel’s hands reach for each other, clasping fingers to fingers, like a lock latched. He soothes himself with the steady scrape of his bandages over skin, back and forth. He hardly thinks further about it, so lost in the dancing flames that he startles with a jolt when Zebedee’s large, calloused hand folds over his own.

His eyes jump to his, wide in his sockets. Zebedee’s gaze is open—it’s the only word Azriel knows for it. His eyebrows are lax, not pinched or furrowed, and his mouth isn’t pursed or twisted into a sneer like he’d so often see on his father, his step-mother. The dark, wet shine of his eyes looks into Azriel and it feels like his words come from there, not his lips.

“You must not agitate your scars, Azriel.”

Zebedee is a conflicting male. His gait is long, his feet so big Azriels can fit twice in his shoes. His hair is dark, wild and wiry with tight curls that match the thick of his beard around his mouth down his neck. There’s a sternness to his stance, his face, that comes from a lifetime of experience in the wilds of the Illyrian Steppes. Yet his eyes have retained their kindness; his hands their gentility.

A contradiction. Males who loom are cruel, Azriel had learned that and now he wore the bandages to prove it.

The room has gone completely silent, a blanket shrouding a candlelight. He can’t even hear the faint tug of a needle through fabric anymore.

Azriel tenses, his narrow, bony shoulders drawing up to his heated ears. “Sorry.”

Zebedee shakes his head, leans closer with his palm eclipsing Azriel’s hands entirely. “No apology needed, b’nee. I know from experience how umcomfortable scars can be, yet I also have the wisdom to know that itching and picking makes everything a whole lot worse.”

Azriel keeps his gaze pinned to Zebedee’s hand. The deep ingrained lines around his knuckles, the faint barrier between the dark skin of the top and the lighter, if not more calloused, skin of his palm. What he would give to have hands like Zebedee’s; strong and unbroken, crooked but powerful, large but kind.

His bottom lip juts out, knee boucing as he glares. “But your hands are fine.”

A laugh rumbles through Zebedee’s chest. “They may look it now, yes, but that is only because Oya and the Ko-kaw’eloi gave me time to make it so.”

“Ko-ka’eelohi?”

“Ah,” Zebedee says. Simple, his eyes glimmering with the shine of a secret and Azriel wonders if he’s going to tell him a story.

“I forget, sometimes, that you are unaware of our divine watchers.” He says, though he leans closer he still remains sitting straight, keeping his beetle black eyes trained on Azriel.

Azriel’s face twists, wings shuddering gently. “I know Oya, but I thought the Mother was the—the,” he loses his words slightly, fumbles for a meaning he doesn’t know how to place.

“The only divine one? That is what you were taught, yes?” There’s no judgement in his voice, only a curiousity as warm as the heat of his hands.

Azriel nods. “I thought Oya and Ena—Enalius were a myth.” He stumbles on the pronunciation slightly, but Zebedee takes it all in stride.

“Some think so, many in the moutain camps believe both to be a fairytale. But there are others, like us in the village, who believe otherwise.”

“That they’re real?” Childish wonder, the kind he had been denied his whole life, shamelessly fills his face. He’s too caught up in Zebedee’s simple story to think aout the incessant itch of his bandaged hands.

“That they were real, alive, and that even now they watch over us. They send us rain from the mountains, give us the wind we need beneath our wings. They watch over us under the midnight sun and the eternal moon—but always under the Ko-kaw’eloi: the stars divine.”

It paints a picture. Azriel had spent more than one night sleeping under the skylight in the stable—memories of dark, endlessly dark, cells and iron bars chasing him from his bed time and again. There’s a special pleasure in looking up, seeing the stars, watching the migration they track through their sky.

It makes Azriel feel less alone, some nights. There are not only shadows to comfort him, to clothe and keep him. But a night sky bursting with life and light that has been denied to him until now.

He wonders, though. “Can they only watch?” His little voice balances on the edge of something, a realization, or a confirmation of what he already knows.

Zebedee sighs deeply. “They have their places,” he says, face softened with understanding, “and we have ours.” His hands fall away from Azriel’s, and then spread like two great wings to his sides. “We are Illyrian, Azriel. We are made of this very stubborn, difficult land we build our farms and houses on. But, we are also gifted our freedom, our honor from the Ko-kaw’eloi—our wings are not just for decoration, to determine us different from others. They are a part of our history, in what we are made of. Made for.”

As if hearing the words, impassioned and earnest, Azriel’s wings twitch. They don’t often move, cramped as they had been the first eleven years, their growth had been severely stunted. Now in one great pull, pantomiming the spread of Zebedee’s arms, they fold out behind Azriel with a great shudder.

There’s a lance of dull pain, a discomfort like a pulled muscle, but even that cannot keep the wide smile from blooming across Azriel’s lips. “Ko-kaw’eloi made me my wings?”

Zebedee’s face is alight from the inside with pride. He’s kept his body still, but his own wings quiver as if longing to join in. “Made your wings—your soul, Azriel. That is something that cannot, will not be broken because it is not of this world’s to break.”

“I am made of stronger things.” He whispers to himself.

“Our guidance, our compass, our birthright. Remember them, b'nee. Even when there is discomfort, even when there is pain they are watching, and they know each and every piece of you because we are a part of them.”

The night wanes on, a slow march of stars—Ko-kaw’eloi, Azriel calls them fondly in his head—across the blanket of heavens and Zebedee sends him to bed. His mother had disappeared from her chair in the corner, he doesn’t know when and doesn’t care to search her out right now.

Instead he says goodnight to Zebedee, a respectful bow of his head, and when Zebedee nods back he scampers off to his little room. He’s held tonights revelations in his hands like cupped water, and he’s trying hard not to spill. When he gets to his room, he closes the curtain that cuts him off from the main room and clambers up onto the piled furs that make his bed. His wings fluttering behind him like they’ve had life breathed into them. His face presses against the cold glass pane of his window; eager, bright eyes looking up at the spread of stars and feeling Zebedee’s story, his sincerity sink into his skin.

He falls asleep that way. Cheek pressed to glass, his breaths fogging the window, and his scarred, bandaged hand clutching the fabric of his tunic over his chest.

The stars never waver.

~///~

It’s years later, Azriel hardly remembers what it was like to be tweleve because he’s eighteen—there is only eighteen and everything that comes after.

There was, however, time between the two and change that swept in like a particularly vengeful wind. A comet with bright, auburn hair, golden eyes the spitting embers of a fire, and a trickster mouth crashed into his life one chilled winter’s day.

Eris had swept into his life, little and careful though it was, with such ease Azriel can’t remember a time he wasn’t there.

They’ve intertwinted their lives now; to the point where removing one would rip apart the other. Their connection runs deep, straight into secrecy and with every word and look dipping into the waters of something more.

Azriel wonders about it, keeping his hand over his eyes to shade them from the beaming afternoon sun as he sits on the crest of a golden hill. Eris lays beside him on his front, back bare as the contours and dips of bone and muscle glint with a thin sheen of sweat. Azriel swallows hard, his mouth dry. His eyes are drawn to the spread of bare skin, even if he keeps pulling his gaze away it strays right back to the little spot at the base of Eris’s spine—two dimples right above the hem of his trousers.

“I thought Illyrian summers were more temperate than this. I’m being baked like a particularly pale potato.” Eris grumbles where his head his pressed to his folded arms. His mouth is pinched, eyes squinted up at Azriel.

Azriel laughs, and without a word unfolds his wing like a sheet and adjusts it to shadow Eris. “Better?” He asks. “I don’t know how I ever thought you were from the Summer Court, your heat tolerace is worse than mine.”

“It’s not my fault the sun has a vendetta against me—I’m too pale for it’s attention, Azriel, it’ll cook me alive.”

“And here I thought you were getting used to it so I wouldn’t have to hear your complaining every summer.”

“Oh hush, you love my whining, it brings joy and substance to your life. Where would you be if I wasn’t here to verbally protest how hot it was? You would never know without my complaints and then you’d be roasted like a duck on a spit and everyone would throw a sad funeral for you because I wasn’t there to tell you how hot it was.”

Azriel smiles down at him, crooked, his teeth biting into his lower lip to keep the laugh he feels bubbling up from bursting out. Eris talks like no one he’s ever met, ever known. He’s blustering and proud, sharply witty and yet he can have these spells of absolute nonsense that makes Azriel want to fold up next to him with a stick and keep prodding to see how ridiculous he can become.

“Roasted duck sounds good right now.” Azriel says, his gaze trained on Eris.

His cheeks are pink, freckles stark in contrast against his pale skin. The heat, as much as Eris hates it, loves him. He’s a blush color, like the tall stemmed, small five-petal flowers that hug the steppe floor. It rises in paint strokes along the tops of his shoulders, the bridge of his nose to his cheeks, and, strangely, the very tips of his ears. Maybe in some places the sun has kissed him a little too hard, he’s sure he’s burned at least slightly—yet still Azriel can’t help but think he wears the color well.

Eris snorts. “With some lemon and herbs—”

“Rice and spices, I think you mean.”

“Do you wish for me to perish from burning? Is that what your grand plan is?”

Azriel leans back on his palms, smirking. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Heathen.” Eris grumbles. One of his arms comes out from under his head and he swats at Azriel’s exposed flank.

“Ah,” he tuts, wagging a finger, “I wouldn’t abuse your only shade from the sun.” Threateningly, his extended wing shudders as if he’s about to fold it to his back.

Eris scrambles closer to Azriel, eyes wide. “Wait—no, no need for that. I will eat your fire food, no problem. Do not move your wing, I beg.”

“And your tongue will fall out of your mouth, it will be so hot, and I will be forever spared from your whining.” He deadpans, keeping his wing extended.

Eris grins up at him, boyish and charming, his chin resting on his folded hands. “Only for you, dear bat.”

“Lucky me.” Azriel says, quieter than intended.

A pause falls on them, comfortable and warm. The slight breeze rustles through the grass, a lock of Eris’s rich red copper hair falls into his eyes—he crosses them looking at it.

Azriel huffs a laugh, hardly thinking about it when his hand comes up and his fingers gently tuck the stray strand behind the point of his ear. Eris’s eyes snap to his, his body frozen for a moment before he melts under the attention, the touch.

Azriel doesn’t move his hand.

It’s his feet dipping into those shores of something more, this time, and Eris seems to be egging him on from a couple feet away, eyes bright and mischief in the curve of his pink lips.

His breath shudders out of him, trapped in his lungs, as his fingers curl gently around his ear. It’s so strange, the difference; round and simple, pointed and elegant. It’s even stranger how such a small difference denotes a much larger one between the two of them.

Eris doesn’t push him away, just keeps his sunlit eyes trained on him like the barn cats that wait on the beams or in the corners. So Azriel decides to indulge.

His hand sweeps over the curve, down his ear where the scarred pads of his fingertips meet the tender, warm skin of his neck. They land on his pulse, and Azriel has to inhale deeply at the quick tempo, the hard pound of it against his. Eris hasn’t moved, but he softens slightly, drawing in a quick breath as Azriel continues on. Mapping, tracing, wandering.

“You have freckles.” It slips out—low and hoarse, a secret dragged out blinking in the harsh light of day. He feels the heat of a flush against his cheeks, down his neck and chest. “I mean—of course you do, I just didn’t know if they…” He snaps his mouth shut.

Eris grins into the bare skin of his forearm, eyes glinting. “If they…are everywhere?”

“Yes.” Azriel grits out. His eyes have wandered past where his hand stopped and now rest on the curve of his spine, the jut of his hips and—lower.

“Hm.” Eris hums, and leaves it at that.

Azriel’s gaze flicks to his, pinned with a look in his hazel eyes shadowing a much deeper want that remains unspoken.

“Are they?” He asks bluntly. Eris shouldn’t be so surprised anymore, after all the very beginning of their aquaintence turned friendship started mostly because Azriel was blunt and cut through all of Eris’s frilly, verbal avoidance.

Eris sucks in a sharp breath, a shiver trickling down his spine. “Yes.”

Azriel’s eyes darken. Suddenly, looking is not enough.

He asks, “may I?” as his fingers brush against Eris’s thundering pulse, pinky twitching where it rests lower, near his collar bone—foretelling the journey his hand wants to take. Eris nods, lips parted. “Yes.” He says again, and Azriel can’t help the swoop in his stomach like being buffeted by a strong wind on a cliff when it comes out breathy—needy.

He needs nothing more than that, so trains his entire focus on the expanse of porcelain, freckled skin and the path his hand takes down the warm skin of his neck, to the dip of his collar bone he swirls around, and then to the plane of his shoulders, the corded muscles of his back.

Every inch of him is speckled with little marks and tan dots. Clustered together and spread apart, darker and lighter; every one Azriel wants to map and trace and keep.

His hand lays flat against the dip in Eris’s spine, skin to skin, and it’s unbearably warm—more than the sun. “It looks like the stars imprinted on you.”

Eris hums, comfortable and molten beneath him. It’s not a hum of derision, but one that gently nudges, ‘tell me more.’

“There’s this thing we have in our culture—I guess you could call it a religion, but it’s much simpler than that.” His fingers caress the knobs of Eris’s spine, up and down, following a pre-ordained trail he feels was made solely for him.

“We, Illyrian’s, are made of the stars. We call them Ko-kaw’eloi, the ‘stars divine’. We are part of them, and they have gifted us our wings—they watch over us. Our struggles and our joy, our sorrows and laughter. There’s some who really only worship the stars because they feel cast aside by the whole idea of the Mother, but most worship because they know what they were made of. Made for.”

As if in a trance, Azriel traces circles around clusters of freckles, like he would knots of stars in the sky.

“Ko-kah-ehlohi?” Eris tries out, the Illyrian prounciation missed slightly with his sharp tongue. Azriel’s stomach jolts hearing his mother tongue come from Eris’s lips—swallowing hard.

“Koh-kaw-elo-i.” He corrects softly.

Eris’s brows furrow, and Azriels hand comes down to smooth it out with his thumb before returning to it’s place on his back. “Ko-kaw’eloi.”

“Mhm.”

“Can I say that’s beautiful? I don’t particularly enjoy religion, or really anything to do with the orgin of Fae and what mastermind, resentful, immortal beings had to puppet my miserable life. But that, that is beautiful.” Eris says softly.

Azriel smiles, a gentle breeze ruffling the feathery, raven locks of his hair. “Thank you, Eris.”

Eris nods, then falls quiet. It’s a pensive sort of silence, one where Eris falls still because his mind has done the opposite. Azriel waits patiently, keeping his hand brushing up and down, swirling and stroking the bare skin of his back. He knows Eris will say whatever he’s figuring out right now, it takes a minute sometimes, especially for personal things. Azriel doesn’t mind. Right now he’s just basking in a glow of companionship and warmth, he’s wholly content, time itself could stop and Azriel would thank it.

Eventually, Eris takes a sharp breath—like he’s pushing himself to say whatever he needs to before he closes back up. Azriel keeps his eyes on Eris, who meets them with hesitation. His fingers dig into the grass below him.

“The night before I met you for the first time, I prayed to the stars. I wanted—I needed freedom, and I asked for it.” He says.

Azriel goes still, balanced on the razor edge of the intensity burning in Eris’s golden eyes.

He doesn’t look away. “And the very next day, like some great cosmic prank, I met you. You showed me this,” he waves a hand around, gesturing to the endless, rolling hills and plains of the Illyrian steppes. “And I have since been afraid that at any moment all of it would be taken from me.”

“What changed?” The words rips out of him.

Eris looks up at him, swallowing hard. “Ko-kaw’eloi gave you your freedom,” Azriel’s wings flutter as if they know he’s talking about them. “Perhaps they could let me keep mine.”

“Eris,” Azriel’s plea is raw, wanting, and his hand jumps to his chin, lifting it gently so Eris has no choice but to meet his eyes.

“I am part of them, they are part of me. I swear on both that you can keep me, if I can keep you.”

Eris’s eyes turn molten, his mouth twitches and his bottom lip brushes Azriel’s thumb. “Is that even a question?” He breathes.

Azriel supposes not. The certainty of knowing the sun will set and rise, the moon will wane and wax, the fields with grow and die sets into his bones like steel. No, it’s not a question, it’s a promise and Azriel doesn’t intend to ever break it—not if the Ko-kaw’eloi keep watch.

~~///~~///~~///~~

B'nee - 'My boy/son'

Ko-kaw'eloi - 'Stars divine'

Alrighty cool second day is posted! Had this idea bouncing around in my head of Illyrian lore, and thought it would be cool to tie in "familiars". Not just the form of a divine being looking out for their charge but also in the more common form "familiar", being known and having a close association to. Anyway, lol this one was a little longer than planned but eh who cares <3.

#azris #azriel x eris #azrisweek2024 #babys second azris day fic lets gooooo #this one is one of my favorites so far #which is wild bc when i first looked at the prompt i was b l a n k.

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typhlonectes · 1 year ago

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Meet the Bonnethead, the First Known Omnivorous Shark

LATE-DAY SUMMER SUN streams through crystalline waters as a bonnethead shark glides past a seagrass meadow in the Florida Keys. One of nine species of hammerhead sharks, bonnetheads abound in shallow waters, where they feed on crab, shrimp, snails, bony fish and—remarkably—seagrass...

Meet the Bonnethead, the First Known Omnivorous Shark (nwf.org)

#shark #elasmobranch #fish #bonnethead shark #animals #nature #marine biology #science #ocean #ichthyology #florida #north america

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oshawottarchive · 1 year ago

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What are the Hermits?

Hermit species list! Might expand on this in the future

I also made up species cause I have no idea what “Voidwalker” or “Blazeborn” mean

Bdubs: Human / Dreamer / Shade

Technically human but has inhuman properties and is pretty uncanny valley! Was a sun god that one time

Cub: Vex

Has illusion magic that allows him to disguise himself as human, and occasionally as other players. Was infected by Skulk for a bit

Doc: Creeper / Goat / Robot

Exactly what it says on the tin! Also grows tomato vines around his horns sometimes

Etho: Phantom / Glitch

Most obviously a Phantom, and has bony wings. He’s also a glitch in the game and will warp himself and his surroundings a little bit. The part of his face covered by his mask is skeletal. Might also be a failed clone?

False: Eagle

Gem: Not-deer

Seems like a normal deer player at first glance, but there’s something a bit uncanny about her

Scar: Human / Vex

A Vex, although he’s not a full one like Cub. He usually stores his magic in crystals

Grian: Magpie / Watcher

A pesky bird to his core. He’s also pretty eldritch and very powerful when he wants to be

Hypno: Beetle / Hypnotist

Normally keeps his wings hidden, and most of the time he looks human enough. Has strong magic and is another resident of the uncanny valley

Jevin: Slime

Impulse: Imp

Has magic, although it’s not very strong

Skizz: Angel

Can switch from humanoid to biblically accurate, and likes to use that ability to mess with his friends. Quite a bit more powerful than Impulse

Iskall: Cyborg

Joe: Poltergeist / Eldritch

Not really undead or technically a spirit, since he was never alive or had a spirit in the first place. Can basically do whatever he wants, he is Joe Hills after all

Keralis: Puppet / Eldritch / Body-snatcher

Puppet possessed by an eldritch entity. He’s capable of taking over bodies and effectively banishing the host into the nothingness, although he hasn’t done so in a long while

Mumbo: Human / Vampiric

Despite being a vampire, he doesn’t drink blood, he just gets really bad sunburns sometimes

Pearl: Moth / Lunar

Has a strong connection to the moon and the markings on her wings change with its cycle. She was also a Glare while she was the cleaning lady

Ren: Werewolf

Stress: Butterfly / Fae

Very powerful, although she doesn’t use her magic for much more than helping plants grow, although those plants usually turn out pretty weird

Tango: Fire being / Lunar

A being originating from fire itself, and was connected to Decked Out 2 for a while, which was some sort of eldritch parasite. After Season 8, he became a Lunar, although he’s not very happy about it, and most of the others don’t know about it. Has four arms sometimes, but no one knows how the extra arms get there or where they go afterwards

Beef: Minotaur

xB: Sarcastic fringehead

A type of fish! He might also have a few soul stealing properties

Xisuma: Undead / Robot

Spirit inside of a robotic suit. He’s had multiple forms, including being a bee, an axolotl, and a dragon

Zedaph: Satyr / Moth

He can summon himself some cool rosy maple moth wings

Cleo: Undead

As her name suggests, she’s specifically a zombie

Wels: Possessed knight

A possessed suit of armor covering a mannequin

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sweetlikesunflowersandhoney · 5 months ago

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Maps

Read on ao3

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The woman scurried down the dark alleyways, her harried steps echoed by the stone walls and the heavier footsteps chasing after her. Her long skirt weaved between her legs until it got caught in a wooden barricade she had to jump, so she tugged on it harshly until it ripped and she was free. She made quick turns, hoping to lose her would-be-captors, and when she found a pile of crates and waste behind the butcherman’s shop, she hunkered down under it and made herself small.

With her knife in her hand and her heart in her throat, Sasha waited.

Loud yelling from the leader, someone else’s mumbling, then the dull crunch of a fist on a bony torso. Sasha took slow, measured breaths that dragged the smell of old blood and rot into her lungs.

She waited, and prayed, until the three sets of steps left her behind.

When she felt safe, Sasha unfurled herself from under the garbage, feeling her heartbeat in every vessel. She untraced her steps and headed back to the tavern where she had been spotted, and where her crew hopefully still waited for her.

Unfriendly, unfamiliar faces stared at her as she walked. She longed for the wide brim of the hat she’d lost in the chase, to hide from the scrutiny and the scorching sun. Under the cover of her hand, she looked up to find the wooden hanging sign of the tavern.

As she passed an alleyway, however, a familiar whistle called her from the darkness, and Sasha followed.

From the shadows emerged a tall figure, a sword glinting on their hip and Sasha’s hat in their hands.

“Welcome back, captain,” Anetra said, handing Sasha her hat.

“Miss Reyes,” Sasha greeted her second-hand, trying to keep her tone steady as she took in the new red stains on Anetra’s white blouse. “Good to see you’re still in one piece.”

“Nothing but a few nicks and flesh wounds for the lot of us, captain. Once you left, they lost all interest in us.” Anetra sighed melodramatically. “A bit disheartening, to tell the truth. What’s a woman have to do to get some enemies of her own?”

“Here’s hoping that the next pack of criminals we find are after you instead of me.”

“Hear, hear,” Anetra said, toasting her imaginary cup in the air.

“Did everyone make it out alright?”

Anetra nodded and started the way to the docks, guiding her captain down the narrow, empty alleys.

“Everyone should be back on the ship and ready to sail. We were just waiting for you, captain.”

“How noble of you not to ditch me and steal my ship.”

“It did cross my mind. But what good is a ship without a treasure map?”

“There are other treasures to pursue in this world, Miss Reyes. Certainly easier ones. You have tied your cart to a particularly unreliable horse. Wouldn’t you rather go back to plundering English ships?”

“Hm,” Anetra hummed, scratching her chin in thought. “Nah. Where is the fun in that?”

Anetra turned her face to Sasha and gave her that shark-like smile of hers, the one that made Sasha feel reckless enough to chase any mythical treasure to the edge of the world.

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The seashells, the feather, the candle, the dirt. Sasha gathered her skirts to kneel down on the floor of her room, chanting the old songs under her breath.

Her ship creaked and groaned around her, the strong wood engaged in its intricate dance with the sea.

“We thank the wind in our sails, for its power when it lets us sail through the ocean, for its wisdom when it makes us be still and wait.”

She let the feather fall into a porcelain plate, chanting as she watched it fall on the sea water in it.

“We thank Mother Sea for holding us in her embrace, for feeding us.”

With a handful of crushed seashells and fish bones, she drew a circle around the plate, letting them slip through her fist like salt. She opened the jar of dirt and inhaled its scent, closing her eyes and letting herself be ten years old again, running barefoot on the soft soil through the wilderness that sprawled behind her home. Sasha dipped her fingers in the dirt and painted a dark line over each of her wrists.

“May we always come back to shore. May we remember the way.”

Sasha closed the jar and lit up the candle. She bent down her head and prayed for safety, for strength, for every person in her crew.

Let us return. Let us return.

Her chants had reached their natural conclusion and left her in a meditative state by the time she heard a knock on the door. She knew who it was from the cadence alone, so she said come in without clearing up the things for the ritual.

“Hey,” Anetra said quietly, going down the few steps into Sasha’s quarters. “Were you praying?”

“Just finished,” Sasha said, blinking owlishly at the light that broke through the dim room before Anetra closed the door behind her. “I was praying that we survive this voyage.” She snuffed out the candle and fished the feather out of the water so it could get dry.

“Please,” Anetra huffed, “you should’ve asked that we find the treasure.”

“I believe that is your task, Miss Reyes,” Sasha smiled, “or are you telling me you lost your touch? Do I need to find another navigator?”

“You offend me,” Anetra said with faux outrage, clenching her shirt over her heart like she’d been wounded. “I am merely suggesting that, since the sea favors you so much, you could ask it to make things a tad easier for us.”

“The Sea already gives us everything we need. The rest is up to us.”

Sasha put the shells and the dirt back in their drawer and left the plate under her dresser to be dealt with later. When she turned around, Anetra was right in front of her. Even in her boots, Sasha had to look up at her.

Anetra was still young, though life at sea had given her coarser skin. She was young in her airs, in her wild, windswept hair, and in the imprudent way she eyed her captain up and down.

“Still,” Anetra said, dragging her eyes up to Sasha’s. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of mystical guidance. Especially since we don’t actually know where we’re going, and you seem to be collecting enemies at every port.”

It was rare that Anetra let any doubts show. For her sake, Sasha put on a playful smile.

“Is your tireless spirit of adventure already waning, Miss Reyes? For shame. You are not yet one-and-twenty.”

“Tsk, worry about your own spirit, captain,” Anetra said, back to her usual cockiness. “I am in my prime.” She took a half step forward and rested her hand on the dresser behind Sasha. With her free hand, she lifted Sasha’s wrist to her eyes and examined the streak of soil staining her skin. She lifted an eyebrow. “Dirty business, these prayers of yours.”

“I know you don’t believe in this, Miss Reyes,” Sasha said with a level voice, even as she felt her own heartbeat held in Anetra’s hand, “but I have done this same ritual for every voyage since I could talk, like my mother before me, and we have always returned to shore.”

“So have I, and I couldn’t pray a Hail Mary if Satan was stabbing my ass with his pitchfork.”

Laughter bubbled up in Sasha’s stomach, and it died in her throat when Anetra leaned in so close that Sasha could see the precious gold in her eyes.

“Do you know why we’ve come back every time?” Anetra said, every word felt on Sasha’s skin. “Sheer. Dumb. Luck.” She shrugged. “The sea doesn’t care if it chews us up and spits us back out as chum for the sharks.”

Sasha sighed with fond exasperation. Years and years of debate, all in vain. She knew that Anetra could not understand. She hadn’t been marked by the Sea.

In the beginning, Sasha’s hackles would rise at Anetra’s blatant disrespect for the Deities. She even worried they would get offended, and make Sasha’s ship pay for it. But time went by with nothing more severe than a storm to get through, and since Anetra’s skills far outweighed her blasphemous ways, she quickly became Sasha’s second. Sasha even learned to find the humor in her tirades against faith, and by now the debate was nothing more than a mental exercise for them both.

Sometimes, when she felt particularly melancholic and missed her mother, Sasha would have liked to have someone who understood. Someone who could look out to the Sea, infinite in its power and in its generosity, and see the benevolent Deity she saw. Someone who would kneel by her side in the middle of a storm, and pray.

Anetra did not pray to any gods. But she could read and draw maps like no one else, and make Sasha laugh like no one else, and that was more than enough.

“Have you come here to question my faith, or to do your job?”

“I can do both, ma’am. It’s why I am an exceptional quartermaster,” Anetra replied with that damn smile of hers. She gestured towards the desk in the corner. “After you.”

Sasha moved the thick captain’s log to the side and put out a pen and an ink well for Anetra, who sat at the desk. Anetra then got a square of paper out of a drawer, and carefully unfolded it to reveal an unfinished map.

Clearing her throat, Sasha turned her back to Anetra. It had been happening for weeks, but this part still made her stomach tighten.

Sasha unbuttoned her shirt, willing her hands to be firm and not tremble. She dropped the shirt on a corner of the desk, then crossed her arms over her chest. The room was cold, but beyond that, it felt wrong to be uncovered like that. She knew that, in reality, it did not matter. Even the women in her crew left their chests bare on hot days, and nobody looked at them twice. But Sasha could not join them.

“I’ll be quick, ma’am,” Anetra said with the gentle tone that her voice rarely donned, followed by the scratch of pen on paper.

Sasha simply nodded and tried to distract herself from Anetra’s eyes burning her skin. She focused on the sounds of the crew that floated down to her chambers. The first day back at sea was always hectic. Everyone was busy and happy to be so; soon they would have a spell of windless days, and that would make things impossibly dull. She wished they could have spent another day on shore, but the news about her seemed to be traveling quite fast. The people that had chased her earlier were not the same ones who had been asking about her back in Tortuga.

“All done.”

Sasha reached for her shirt blindly and cleared her throat. She dressed quickly, speeding through the buttons until she was covered again.

She turned around, and caught Anetra trying to hide her obvious stare. The knot in Sasha’s stomach got tighter.

“Anything new today?”

Instead of replying, Anetra showed her the new tracings of ink she had copied from the mark on Sasha’s back.

“Not much, ma’am. Likely because you stayed on land for some days, and we haven’t traveled far since the last time. But these,” she pointed at the irregular beginnings of some small scattered shapes, careful not to smudge the ink. “look like islands. We should reach them within the next three days.”

Sasha nodded and frowned at the ever growing map. These were unfamiliar waters. It made her uneasy, even if she trusted her Deities to guide them. She couldn’t imagine embarking on this journey like Anetra did, with nothing to put her faith into.

“I need to compare this with the maps we have. Do you mind if I take them to my quarters?”

“Stay here. You don’t have a desk, you should use mine.”

“My, the quartermaster shut up with the captain in her very own bedchamber?” Anetra said teasingly, raising her eyebrow. “What will the crew think?”

“That you are doing the job you get paid for, Miss Reyes,” Sasha retorted, trying to regain some semblance of authority. “I need to go up anyway, and you can work in peace down here. I’ll be gone in a moment.”

Anetra nodded, but then she looked at the map and she was gone from the world. She searched with familiarity through the drawers of the desk and pulled out papers and tools. The map she was making got laid out next to a complete one for comparison, so she could add to it the names of cities and some details of the land that were not visible in Sasha’s mark.

Sasha watched the ink trace new lines for a moment before her eyes moved up the blue lines of Anetra’s veins, tensed up as she worked. The woman always got a small frown when she focused, and when she wasn’t muttering to herself, her lips formed a pout. Sasha tore her eyes from them, and picked up the plate under her dresser to throw the water out the window.

“I’m going up. Breakfast will be ready in under an hour. Should I tell the cook to send you some?”

“Huh? No, that won’t be necessary,” Anetra said, her eyes glancing up momentarily from the map. “I will join you as soon as I’m done.”

Sasha nodded, but Anetra was engrossed in her drawings again. Sasha left the room, closing the door quietly, and made a note to herself to send someone down with breakfast for her.

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Predictably, Anetra did not resurface until well after breakfast was over. She squinted her eyes at the sun, too bright after hours spent in the dim light of the bedchamber.

Sasha watched her roam the deck from her vantage point, up in the rafters. It wasn’t so high up that she would crack her skull if the wind changed suddenly and she fell, but it was high enough that no one would need anything from her for a minute.

As always, she could make an exception for Anetra.

Sasha whistled and Anetra looked up, finding her quickly and grinning before taking to the web of ropes and masts like a jungle cat. In a moment, she let herself plop down by Sasha’s side, her hair blowing gently in the sea breeze.

They shared in the relative silence of wind and waves. The relentless demands of the ship under their charge could not reach them up there. They had only themselves and the wide blue sea, stretching endlessly beyond them with infinite promise. It made Sasha feel young again. There wasn’t a place on earth where she felt more at home than right there.

“I did not mean to mock you, earlier,” Anetra broke the silence after some moments. Sasha looked at her, curious. “I know the ritual is important to you. I do not…” she paused, seeming to search for the words. She shook her head, making the string of coins that adorned her hair clink together. “At any rate, if the sea or… something, has marked you from birth, if there is something drawing a God-honest treasure map on your skin every day, then something or someone wants you to live.” Anetra finally met her eye. She shrugged. “I am just not used to any Gods watching over me.”

Sasha took in the words, the sad resignation.

“They do.”

Instead of the usual eye roll, Anetra kept her eyes firmly on the skyline.

“They do, Anetra,” Sasha pushed a little more, her hand inching closer to Anetra’s on the mast that held them. “I know they care for you.”

That seemed to shake Anetra out of her uncharacteristic abstraction, and a forced smile broke through her stoic expression.

“As long as they care for my captain, I should be fine, right?”

But her voice lacked the usual mirth. Filling her lungs with sea air, Sasha dared to take Anetra’s hand.

“I don’t know how you do it.”

Anetra raised her eyebrow.

“How you can put yourself in the hands of something so powerful, and believe it uncaring.” The hand under Sasha’s stiffened up, but she kept going. “We risk so much out here. Our lives depend on this crew of mostly strangers, we barely have enough to eat and drink. We bear disease and pirate attacks and our shelter can be snapped into splinters by a single storm. Don’t you want something to believe in? To put your faith in?”

The wind whistled around them, tangling their tendrils of hair together. Anetra turned her hand around to hold Sasha’s.

“I put my faith in you.”

It stole the air from Sasha’s lungs. She stared into the gold flecked eyes and sank to the bottom of their depths.

The yelling of the crew below reminded them that they were on borrowed time, and there would be much to do before they could sneak away together again.

“We should get down,” Anetra said, taking back her hand.

“After you.”

Anetra stood up and wrapped her hands in rope to swing down, reckless in her youth. Before she could jump off the mast, her captain called her:

“Miss Reyes?”

Anetra turned her head.

“Thank you. I do not take what you said lightly.”

Anetra gave her a nod.

“Of course, captain.”

And with that, she was gone, leaving Sasha in her nest of wood and wind. She took one last moment to breathe, and then she climbed down the ropes.

#sashnetra #my beloveds <3 #captain sasha means everything to me #my fics #d #m #tattoo au

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