#book 8 fading away of the twilight

[leavemebetosleep]

do you have any good fluttercord fic recs?

OH BOY DO I. In no particular order (except of when I thought of them):

1: Non-Entity by Captain Wuzz: An AU in which, instead of being turned to stone, Discord was shot in the head with a magic arrow that takes away his sentience and magic for a 1,000 years. Fluttershy mistakes him for a wounded animal and brings him home. I loved it so much.

2: Chaotic Neutral by C-Puff: The magic is starting to fade from Equestria, and the Main 6 and Discord go on an adventure to find out why, and reverse it. A bit of AU, in the sense it was written before the show was done, so it diverts in some places because of that. Super sweet, and I love the character development here.

3: Time is Taller than Space is Wide by Dott. Can also be read on Ao3 if you prefer. Soulmate AU (?) fic with a Groundhog Day style twist. I rarely see fics play with the idea of what if Fluttershy and Discord's friendship had started when they first met, so this is fun.

4 & 5: Blank and it's sequel Reconnection by @geekcat. Can also be read on fanfic.net. AU in which, before Discord can choose friendship over ruling Equestria, Twilight remembers a "reformation" spell. He is stripped of his free will, and Fluttershy does her best to bring him back. If you don't like the idea of Twilight being a villain, you might not like this one, but I think her villain arc in this is done in a perfect way for her character. It's super heart wrenching in many places, but in a good way.

6: Our Fair Lady of the Chaos Lord, also by GeekCat Can also be read on fanfic.net. Fairy tale inspired AU in which Fluttershy is a princess who's father is pressuring her to marry noble knight Sir Big Mac. Wanting to be sure he's a good person, she makes a deal with the Chaos Lord, letting herself be "kidnapped" so she can test his character. You can guess who she falls for instead. Honestly I've enjoyed all of GeekCat's fics, so they're getting an extra mention. Check out the rest of their fluttercord fics if you like any of these.

7: The Draconequus with the Dragon Tattoo by A M Shark This is a major case of, strange premise, kick ass results. Basically an AU based off Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson, with Discord as Lisbeth, and Fluttershy as an amalgamation of Mikael and several other characters, but focusing more on the murder mystery aspect of that book, and less on the...everything else. If you're familiar with GwtDT, don't worry, there's no rape scenes. Again, it's more about the murder mystery part. If you're not familiar with GwtDT, then don't worry again, because you don't need to know the original to enjoy it. It's just Discord and Fluttershy playing detective and solving a murder together. It has two sequels, but I haven't read them yet, and it didn't feel right to rec something I haven't read.

8: The Corpse Bride by Bad Horse. Dark fic. No relation to the Burton movie. Fluttershy dies in a tragic accident, and Discord brings her back from the dead as his zombie wife. Her friends (sans Pinkie) are horrified. Has a fantastic twist ending. If you like some of the darker stuff, def worth a read.

Bonus: Comic rec: The Last Adventure by Eveeka. Taking place after the final defeat of Tirek, Cozy, and Chrysalis, Discord gets into a depressive funk after shouldering the hatred from Ponyville citizens for his latest actions, but also because his friends seem to never be available anymore. He starts to think maybe Equestria would be better off without him, as he can't seem to exist with out making everyone miserable, and decides to hide away in the Everfree forest. Fluttershy, worried when he doesn't show up for tea, asks her friends for help, only to discover there's a monster running lose there he and the rest of Equestria might be in danger from. This fic has two endings, so keep reading even when it seems like it's over. You've got one more ending left. This one nearly made me cry.

[butterflydm]

wot rewatch (book spoilers edition): 2x5

Not only is this one going to have spoilers for all the aired episodes plus any teasers (including the trailer for episode 6), it will also have book spoilers through book 14: A Memory of Light.

An interesting change from the books is Suroth calling Loial a slave -- in the books, the Ogier of the elite guard are very specifically not enslaved (I wonder if they got as badly jacked up by the Longing as the ones in the Westlands but their 'solution' ended up involving the Empress and the Crystal Throne somehow?). Since this exception is never explained in the books, I don't have any issue with it being changed.

2. I also think we are getting some really good set-up here for a potential fracture in the Seanchan once we get deeper into the series -- a fulfillment of the narrative promise that Jordan set up in books 2-9 but then backed away from once we hit Crossroads of Twilight & Knife of Dreams. I'm hopeful that we're actually going to get the Seanchan civil war that the books never gave us but that they desperately needed in order for Mat's characterization to make any damn sense in CoT & KoD.

3. The idea that Ishamael is being something akin to Suroth's Truthspeaker makes a lot of sense (I think only the Imperial family has Truthspeakers in the books? but it makes sense to expand them outward).

4. That Fain plays the game so well with Turak here can serve as a hint that he's playing the subservience game with Ishamael as well (who killed the Fade? in other words).

5. The saa in Lanfear's eyes! I love that we're getting a super-charged look at the True Power this early on. I definitely approve of the change of the Forsaken getting brought back with the True Power rather than being put in new bodies -- that can work in a book, but in a show, you want to keep your actors. Especially when they're so good!

6. The Elyas scene does feel like Elyas is essentially doing triple-duty this season: he's himself (Wolfbrother lore dump); he's Hurin (sniffer who leads them after Fain); he's Noam (completely detached from his previous human life).

7. I do like how Elyas feels... somewhat amoral (not immoral!) -- he cares about his fellow wolves (including Perrin) and only his fellow wolves. Obviously, part of the reason that's there is so that viewers will wonder if Ishamael (the Father of Lies) was telling the truth about Perrin becoming closer to the Shadow the closer he gets to the wolves but that's... a good thing, I think, for Perrin's narrative arc. It gives him a grounded reason to try to avoid embracing the wolves. The show has done a really good job in giving characters believable motivations for their behavior.

Show: has Elyas diss every human that Perrin cares about because he's trying to tell Perrin that he belongs with the wolves and not the humans.

Some Book Readers: Ah-ha! Laila wasn't his pack? Darkfriend!

It was just so clear to me, in watching the episode, that Elyas mentioning Perrin's wife was the last straw that made Perrin push him away. It was not meant as a Darkfriend hint of any kind! Elyas did not know Laila as a person! He does not care about Laila as a person! It's pretty clear that he only cares about Perrin (because he's a fellow Wolfbrother). That's why he only saved Perrin from the caravan; that's why he led Perrin eastward instead of west. He has zero interest in putting himself in danger to help humans; he does not identity with humans.

8. Ooo, I wonder if we're going to see Perrin's wolf name visualized at some point by the wolves -- Young Bull with his axe that is also his horns, strong and protective. Again, the show has done such a good job in showing us the Perrin that I think Jordan wanted us to see but that he didn't quite manage -- pretty much every show-only reactor sees Perrin as genuinely considerate and empathetic and believes that he has a good heart and wouldn't leave people to suffer.

9. Brilliant choice to have Aviendha introduced here and be part of Perrin's storyline. I do really like how Elayne, Aviendha, and Min have all been part of another main character's plotline before anything implied romantic between them and Rand happens. Hopefully, the show does the same thing with Tuon in the season when she gets introduced. I'm going to guess that (rather than going along with Perrin because of Faile) Bain and Chiad are going to help Aviendha meet her toh towards Perrin once she's told that she needs to become a Wise One apprentice and Bain and Chiad will travel with him to the Two Rivers. I suspect that Gaul will be introduced next season as well.

10. I also really like the way they set up Dain and Perrin's future dynamic here as well -- Dain realizes that Perrin is from the Two Rivers, so that gives him a reason to go there after he (mistakenly?) thinks that Perrin has killed his father. I do wonder whether or not Fain will go to the Two Rivers at all. It's kinda... crowded over there, since we know that Slayer was cast (I think). There isn't, imo, any real need for Fain to corrupt the Whitecloaks in the show -- I feel like they can corrupt themselves just fine. (I kinda feel that way about Elaida too) -- and it might be good to tie Fain back into Rand and/or Mat's plotlines.

11. The Seanchan and the Whitecloaks both have a 'evil but not the evil of the Dark One' situation going on, and we kinda get that here, with the (new) innkeeper being even more unhappy with being occupied by Whitecloaks than by the Seanchan. I actually like that they have the new innkeeper here selfishly being okay with the Seanchan -- the issue that I had with various plotlines in CoT & KoD wasn't "it's unrealistic for anyone to be collaborators with the slavers", of course some/many people are selfish enough that it doesn't matter to them that some people get enslaved as long as it isn't them; it was an issue with specific characters turning collaborator without there being anywhere near enough work in the characterization or narrative to justify it. That was the issue that I had.

Especially since this same conversation does illustrate how selfish this man's PoV is, if you pay attention to the dialogue. The old innkeeper's granddaughter was kidnapped by the Seanchan -- SHE would not agree with him that they're totally chill if you only just swear the oaths.

12. Seeing Lady Suroth like this, 'dressed down', as it were, gave me quite a start. She looks almost naked without the super-long nails and the helmet and with me being able to see that she has no eyebrows. Like, it gives her a big 'pathetic and vulnerable' vibe even though she's been just as awful as she was in her introduction.

And it makes me wonder... are people who are sympathetic to Tuon in Crossroads of Twilight and Knife of Dreams also more likely to be good at visualization when they read? Because, personally, I don't see pictures in my head when I read books. I think it's part of the reason why I can so easily accept adaptations in the first place -- there's no prior image that I need to override. I had no firm mental image of how 'Rand' or 'Nynaeve' or anyone looked in the books, so the actors can easily become that person for me. It's all just... words in my head for me. The most that I ever visualize is something akin to black and white abstract sketches.

How this relates to Tuon: one of the deeply frustrating things about CoT+ Mat to me is how he behaves like Tuon is 'not like the other Seanchan' even though her behavior on the page is just as rancid and terrible as any other Blood. But, in her descriptions in CoT & KoD, she doesn't visually resemble other Seanchan anymore -- her hair is growing out, she's in Westlands clothing instead of Seanchan High Blood clothing. But as someone who doesn't visualize characters and scenes when I'm reading a book, the clothes that a character is wearing has little to no impact on my perception of them as a character.

Is it different if you do/can visualize how differently Tuon looks when she's traveling with Mat vs how she looked when she was embedded in the Seanchan power structure? Because it really does genuinely confuse me when I see people repeat what Mat says about her being different from the other Seanchan because her behavior is just... identical to all the other Seanchan Blood from what I've seen in the books -- intensely political and manipulative; firmly supports and believes in slavery; gets off on torture and abuses her slaves even while believing that she's the bestest and kindest slave owner in the world; thinks of herself as inherently better because she's Of The Blood, etc. I remember when Mat places her in the same 'better than other nobles' category as Talmanes in KoD, my brain just bluescreened because he's consistently been shown on the page that she's still just as awful as the others (the chapter where she literally collars and tortures three of his allies is certainly never anything I'm forgetting, even if Mat 'goldfish' Cauthon forgot about it five minutes after it happened). But, yeah, if you visualize characters and scenes when reading books, do those visuals have an impact on how you think of the characters?

(on a character level, I understand why Mat would lie to himself about Tuon if he genuinely believes himself to be trapped in a marriage with her -- the issue with that is two-fold though: a. with Mat's other lies to himself, we are given outside context with other PoVs and behavior from other characters to see that he's lying while in CoT and KoD, we're pretty firmly locked into Mat's warped perspective, and b. Jordan did a shit job of showing why Mat gave up so quickly and just believed that he's doomed to be married to Tuon without him making ANY attempts at fighting the prophecy)

13. Looking forward to the future... I do suspect that we'll still get Semirhage trying to shape and mold Tuon (unless we don't get enough seasons), but I think in the end (exploring @sixth-light's idea about having a split Seanchan Empire instead of having the Sharans), we may end up with Suroth in charge of one half of the Seanchan (who will fight for the Shadow) and one half led by Tuon (who will fight for the Light) and that we will, hopefully, be getting a Tuon who actually has to confront what being a sul'dam means and that the Seanchan will fracture on the issue of slavery (which would make their American accents even more apt) instead of the Westlands characters becoming friends and lovers with gleefully cruel slavers. Having Tuon's 'stubbornness' and pushback against Semirhage actually lead to her questioning the established order would be so much more powerful than her stubbornness being used as an excuse for her dodging and avoiding any character growth for the entire time that she hangs around.

14. I hope that Aviendha's amusement here over Perrin's protectiveness is perhaps going to be more of the vibe we get with Rand & the Maidens once that relationship gets going. Rand really doesn't have the same reasons (so far) to be as unreasoningly overprotective of them as he is in the books, since the Two Rivers in the show aren't Weird about women in danger the way that the books are. It's very much a Perrin hangup because of his wife and we've seen it develop over time. And if Rand feels some protectiveness, I'd like it to be tied more towards him feeling like he doesn't want to lose any of his newfound family.

15. It feels clear that Moiraine is absolutely still bound by the Three Oaths. She obviously WANTS to lie in the scene where she's introducing Rand to Anvaere and Barthanes, but she isn't able to. It's played very much the same way as when she was caught in the Oath last season (one of the funniest moments in S1 is when she wants to tell the Two Rivers' kids that she trusts them now but she absolutely doesn't trust them and can't say the words).

16. So, who in this scene is a Darkfriend. I suspect that Barthanes is and I suspect that Anvaere is not. Anvaere's information session with Moiraine last episode completely destroyed the Shadow's plans for Rand -- it could be the Shadow tripping over itself but I suspect it's just that Anvaere is what she seems to be -- a very political but non-Shadow-aligned person.

17. I wonder if the end of the next episode is going to timeskip us the few weeks to the wedding (thus making it so that Egwene spends several weeks in 'training') -- or maybe we'll timeskip between episodes 6&7. From the preview, it looks like we're going to spend some serious time showing how horrible and dehumanizing the damane 'training' is. What they might do is show us the initial beginning of it -- and then we jump forward and see how things are after several weeks? The mention of the wedding just feels... potentially significant, since it's not from the books. This would give Perrin time to travel to Falme with Aviendha; Mat and Min would have time to get to Cairhien; Elayne and Nynaeve would have time to bond; and Siuan would also have time to get to Cairhien, since we know she goes there at some point. And it might mean that, along with Egwene getting her 'training' from Renna, we might also get Rand getting some training from Logain and potentially Lan as well.

18. I love Verin kickstarting the Black Ajah Hunt so much. I already talked about this a lot in my earlier post about Darkfriends, so I won't get into it here but: fantastic choice. It does imply to me that we don't really need the Wondergirls to go back to the Tower next season to get their Black Ajah Hunting instructions, since there's already a Hunt started by full Sisters. Which I would be fine with -- they literally spend less than a week in the White Tower in book 3. They dip in for Egwene & Elayne's tests, to get more instructions from Siuan, and then dip out again. I feel like the show could easily have them decide to hunt the Black Ajah of their own accord (Nynaeve in particular has a reason to want to go after Liandrin).

19. I do not think that Sheriam knows that Verin is 'Black Ajah' or that Liandrin is (more genuinely) Black Ajah. She and Liandrin were at odds too much earlier in the season over Nynaeve imo. Joiya, otoh, I think might know that Liandrin is also Black Ajah, because she immediately backed Liandrin up in the big group discussion.

20. "We respect the One Power so much that we don't believe that anyone should wield it by accident of birth". I've seen other people (reactors on youtube) wondering if this conversation means that the Seanchan already know that sul'dam are learners, since they talk about training the sul'dam for years and them earning the right to use the One Power, but this line in particular makes me feel like they don't know. Because sul'dam are only sul'dam because of an 'accident of birth' as well. I'm sure that we'll find out, because the realization of the sul'dam secret was a pretty huge moment with Egwene in the books (even if Min & Nynaeve appeared to have completely forgotten the information when they were spending time with Rand later in the series) so it will definitely stand out if it gets played differently and Renna doesn't get that horror of realizing that she, too, is marath'damane.

21. I've also seen people wonder why the damane & sul'dam didn't catch on that Liandrin was channeling to wake the girls and free Nynaeve, but she was channeling that entire time (to hold open the Waygate) so her tiny weave would have been masked by the larger one.

22. Aviendha's attitude towards obligation and honor is going to be such an interesting contrast to how weighed down Rand is by his obligations. Looking forward to them getting some good scenes together in s3.

23. I hope Egwene gets to hit Renna over the head in this version too. And collar her to the wall. I can already tell that this is going to be painful and intense. I did notice that a lot of show-only reactors have NOT picked up on how terrifying and awful the damane slavery is yet, but I feel like the show is going to make it very clear in the next episode. (I don't know how you can look at Egwene in pain here and not already understand but... next week should make things crystal clear).

The preview did show us how... earnest (ugh) Renna is going to be in her 'training' of Egwene. The way she called the damane kennels "your new home" and the (horrifying) sincerity in her voice.

I'm actually wondering if Egwene is going to be freed in episode 7, before Rand gets to Falme, since Perrin and Aviendha are headed in the direction of Falme and it's Perrin who is attached to the Ingtar and Horn storylines and not Rand (who didn't even find out that the Horn is a thing that exists until 2x3). Because Rand isn't actually involved in her rescue in the books iirc -- that was Elayne and Egwene (with Min tagging along). He spots her and seeing her is why he refuses to leave, but since he's going there for his own purposes unrelated to the Horn in this version (I assume), then he doesn't need that extra push to stay. From the preview for episode 6, it kinda sounds like Loial & co are going to try to help her be freed but I'm not sure if it'll work that soon.

Expecting next episode to be extremely rough, emotionally.

Additional spoilers/speculation based on imdb listings (which may not be entirely accurate):

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The actress who played Maigan in S1 is listed as being in the next three episodes (6, 7, 8). She was planning to go west to investigate the rumors. She has not been seen in the White Tower this season. The actress who is playing Ryma is only listed for episodes 5 & 6. Renna is listed for all the remaining episodes; Seta is listed for the final two episodes. That just all seems like interesting information to me, though again, imdb.

Complete side note, episode 7 is the episode that Hayley Mills is listed for. I wonder if she's the Queen of Cairhien that Barthanes is marrying.

[junkshop-disco]

Just posted a new chapter so what better time for a fic meme. Tagged by @magicalrocketships but idk if I have any better screen grabs than theirs.

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

38, which makes the average word count completely ridiculous.

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

1,048,397. Average word count 27,589. Brevity, I don't know her.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Downton Abbey, Fate the Winx Saga, Good Omens currently.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Honeysuckle Arch

Learning to Speak the Language of Flowers

An Equal and Opposite Reaction

Instalments

The Could in People

Whenever I look at the stats, I'm taken aback at just how skewed my sense of which fics are the most popular is. Because I would not have guessed some of these at all.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to, but I am--at heart--a deeply anxious squirrel masquerading as a person and any sort of interaction with people I don't know well can sometimes be too much for me to handle. When my anxiety is bad, I imagine that every single comment will be about how shit my writing is and what an awful person I am, so I can't read them right away, let alone reply. I have to work up to them and do a couple at a time and I always intend to reply but sometimes, weeks/months/years pass without me feeling up to it and then it feels too awkward. Right now my anxiety is much better thanks to lots of medication and some pretty hefty life changes, so I'm more able to engage with them like a vaguely normal person, but sometimes if I have a bad week, opening the comment box to reply 'thanks! Glad you liked it' makes me feel like James Bond sitting nose to nose with an armed bomb. I do hold onto comments, though. I screen grab ones that really resonated and re-read them when I feel down. They mean a great deal to me, even if I can't always say so in a timely fashion.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

It's definitely a Merlin fic, possibly Doubt Creeps In? That whole thing is pretty angsty and there's no real resolution. I wrote a few angsty endings in Merlin fic.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Idk that I've ever written truly happy ending. I've written cute endings, give-them-a-break endings, but I don't know if I'd describe any of them as happy. I don't tend to go in for them. Nothing winds me up more than an epilogue with a pasted on happy ending. I have been known to hurl a book across the room.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I haven't for a while but I used to when I wrote HP fic. My favourite ever was 'you should be flayed for writing this. I hope you die.' I still laugh when I think about it.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. All kinds? I have written the odd fade to black in my time and also the most unremitting filth in all flavours of vanilla to kinky.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I've written a handful. Back on LJ I wrote a Merlin/Twilight crossover where Edward and Merlin team up to fight evil vampire unicorns who can only be killed by virgins singing at them until they explode.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yep. Tbh I just feel sad for the people who do it. It seems like a very hollow way to do fandom.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yep. And podficced! It's always nice.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I've done a few Big Bangs and other events where I collaborated with someone and it's always one of my favourite things to do. I've also co-written some... stuff on anon, which we're not going to talk about 👀

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Can anyone pick just one? Like Hotel California, I check out but I never leave. I am still here for Mulder and Scully, Mal and Inara, Tara and Willow, Giles and Jenny, Bradley and Colin, Merlin and Gwaine, Nick and Harry and Niall, Isak and Even, Remus, Lily, Sirius and Tonks, Crowley and Aziraphale, Thomas and Richard, Ed and Stede, Farah and Saul. The ships I love never leave me and picking a favourite would make me sad.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

If I'm posting it, it will get finished. I have a couple of things languishing on my hard drive that may never see the light of day, like a Thomas in LA fic post DA2, but I can't not finish things.

16. What are your writing strengths?

A commitment to the bit? An unwavering belief there's never a bad time for banter? An unfailing devotion to poking people's bruises?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

See above.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Would attempt only in a comedy situation where getting it wrong was the point.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Firefly. The first one I posted in was HP though, rip.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Saying I'm fond of all of them would be such a cop out, wouldn't it? In truth, my favourite is usually the one I'm currently writing, so let's say Sum of the In-between Things. It's morphed so far from what I intended it to be and I have literally no idea if I can stick the landing on it, but I've genuinely had a blast writing it, and that's the point, isn't it?

Tagging: @septemberrie @myalchod and @magnolia822!

[alicewritingstories]

Febuwhump Day 8: "Why won't it stop?"

CW: delirium, magical torture

Continued from Day 1

AO3

---

Another day had passed. Even Sky's screams and struggles had faded away to whimpers and twitches. He spent most of the time lying still, his eyelids twitching, his breath coming fast and shallow. Time stayed by his side while the others did their best to come up with something, anything, that might help him.

A soft, hoarse moan made Time look round. Sky's eyes were open, the corners crusted with dried tears. Time gently wiped his face with a damp rag and, slowly, Sky seemed to focus on him.

"Sky?"

"Time?" whispered Sky.

Time prayed desperately that this time Sky had recovered. That this time he wouldn't lapse back into delirium. But there was no time to waste. These moments of lucidity had been getting shorter and he quickly waved to Wild, who grabbed the broth he'd been keeping warm by the fire and ran over. The others watched, wide-eyed, but stayed back, knowing better than to crowd the ailing hero. Time helped Sky to sit up, murmuring comfortingly, and Wild tipped the broth to his brother's dry, cracked lips.

Sky drank it down, sip by sip, his eyes closed and his head tilted against Time's shoulder. When it was gone he looked up again.

"Time…"

"It's OK, Sky," said Time, his heart aching. "We're here. How do you feel?"

"It's not… he's still got me. It won't… why won't it stop?" Sky's words were vague, meandering. "He's still… Help me… please…"

"We're doing our best," said Time. "Can you tell me any more about what's happening?"

"He's got me… he's got me…" Sky whimpered. Time gritted his teeth, blinking back his own tears. Wild sprinted to scoop some of what he'd been cooking into the bowl; anything they could get into Sky while this lasted would be a help.

"Sky," said Time as clearly as he could into the chosen hero's ear. "Who has you?"

Another whimper. "Why won't it stop? Please… Time… make it stop…"

"What do you need me to do?"

Sky didn't answer and when Wild returned and tried to feed him a spoonful of the half-cooked stew he let out a thin wail and spat it out.

"He's gone," said Time and cringed as he heard his own words. Wild threw the bowl and spoon on the ground with a frustrated cry and stalked off into the forest before Time could say anything to him. Twilight shot Time a weary, sympathetic look and went after him.

Time turned back to Sky, but though the Skyloftian was shivering, his eyes staring at nothing, he wasn't screaming or seriously trying to struggle. Time suspected that was a bad sign.

"Time?"

Time startled; Four had managed to sneak up on him. He was still holding the old book, frowning between the pages and Sky's face.

"Yes?" asked Time after a moment.

Four looked at him, then shook his head as if coming back to the present. "This has some information in it that's given me an idea." He sat down beside Time, holding out the book. Time frowned at it; he could read, but not very fast.

Four apparently realized the problem; he caught himself and took it back. "It suggests a way of reaching across space to… this word is difficult to make out, but the short version is that that mage might be using magic to hurt Sky from a distance. Essentially holding him prisoner and torturing him inside his own mind."

Time looked back at Sky as the Skyloftian shuddered under his hand. His expression hadn't changed. Time wondered how much he could hear.

He's still got me.

Was that what Sky had been trying to tell him?

"Does it say how to break the curse? Kill the mage?"

Four frowned. "I can't tell for certain; it could be that will work or it could be that would just… cause other damage."

It would kill Sky as well, Time guessed. Or possibly leave him trapped in this state forever.

"Force them to release him, then."

Four nodded. "That's safer, though it would free the mage to do the same to someone else unless we also killed them. But how?"

Time looked down at Sky's pale, hollow, tear-streaked face.

"I'll think of something," he said firmly.

---

Continued on Day 11

[siilverwiitch]

Chapter 2: Message Delivered Message Received

Fandom: 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs

Character: Nakahara Chuuya & Dazai Osamu

Language: English

Words: 753

AO3 Link

Prev | Next?

The next time I wake up, it’s to the insistent buzzing of my phone. My heart lurches as I remember the messages I sent. Swiping at the screen, I see the name I’d least expected, or maybe most hoped for, flashing on the display.

Mackerel🫧🐟: You hate me, but you love me? You're as complicated as ever, Chuuya. Meet me tonight. 8 PM. Our old spot.

I stare at the message, disbelief coursing through me. What game is he playing now? I can feel the familiar anger rising, mixed with an uninvited thrill. The old spot. A place steeped in memories, both good and bad.

Pushing off the floor, I decide I need a shower. My mind races as the hot water pounds my skin, trying to make sense of everything. Dazai. Alive and well. Did he know what I’d been going through? How could he just waltz back into my life like this?

The hours drag until evening. I find myself pacing, nerves on edge. Finally, it’s time to leave. I grab my coat and head out, the city's twilight casting long shadows.

The old spot is a small, secluded bar, known only to a few. As I push open the door, the familiar scent of aged wood and smoke envelops me. And there he is, sitting at a corner table, his usual smirk in place.

"Chuuya," he greets me, voice smooth as ever. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Funny, considering the circumstances," I reply, trying to keep my tone even. "What do you want, Dazai?"

He gestures to the seat opposite him. "Sit. Let's talk."

Reluctantly, I sit. The bartender brings over a bottle of our usual. Dazai pours two glasses, sliding one to me.

"I got your messages," he starts, raising an eyebrow. "You're still as direct as ever."

I grip the glass, feeling the old frustration boiling over. "You disappeared. Again. And now you just show up and act like nothing happened?"

He takes a sip, eyes never leaving mine. "I had my reasons."

"Your reasons," I scoff. "You always have reasons. Do you have any idea what I've been through? The memories, the nightmares? It’s been two years, Dazai!"

His expression softens slightly, a rare occurrence. "I know, Chuuya. More than you think."

Before I can respond, he reaches into his coat and pulls out a small, leather-bound notebook. He slides it across the table to me. "Read it. It’s easier than me trying to use words…"

I open the book, flipping through the pages. It’s filled with his meticulous handwriting. Notes, thoughts, observations. About me. About us. Each word a dagger, cutting through the walls I’d built around my heart.

By the time I reach the end, my hands are shaking. "Why?" I whisper.

Dazai leans forward, his eyes intense. "Because I needed you to understand. I left to protect you. But I never stopped watching over you. I never stopped... caring."

The weight of his words crashes over me, and for a moment, I can’t breathe. All the anger, the hurt, the confusion, it all melts away, leaving only the raw, undeniable truth.

"I hate you," I say again, voice trembling. "But I also still love you. And I don’t know what to do with that."

Dazai reaches across the table, his hand covering mine. "Then let’s figure it out together."

For the first time in a long while, I feel a glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance for us to rebuild. To find a new path, together.

Silence envelops us, thick with unspoken words. The bar’s ambient noise fades into the background as we sit there, hands intertwined. It’s a fragile moment, a tentative truce in the ongoing battle between us.

"So," Dazai finally says, breaking the silence, "where do we start?"

I take a deep breath, my mind racing with possibilities. "We start by being honest with each other," I say. "No more secrets, no more disappearing acts."

He nods, his gaze unwavering. "Agreed. And I’ll do my best to explain everything. You deserve that much."

I raise my glass, and he follows suit. "To new beginnings," I toast, feeling a strange mixture of fear and exhilaration.

"To new beginnings," he echoes, clinking his glass against mine.

As the night wears on, we talk. Really talk. For the first time in years, we lay everything bare, our words weaving a tentative bridge over the chasm that had formed between us. It’s a start. And maybe, just maybe, it’s enough.

[swapnilua]

How Many Days Is Required For The Bike Trip To Leh Ladakh From Chandigarh

Leh Ladakh is a beautiful paradise on the earth. It is an absolutely thrilling experience to witness the mesmerizing beauty of this place, and for bike tourists, it can be more exciting as they get to explore parts of Indian state that only few have seen. Moreover, what’s better than hitting roads on your own two-wheeler with your close friends or family? Taking into account all these factors and keeping in mind that proper planning along with assuring safety should always come first when you plan any long-distance journey by bike, here are some essential tips regarding bike trip to Leh Ladakh tour from Chandigarh in 2000 words which will help you make your trip memorable one:

The overall distance covered during bike trip to Leh Ladakh from Chandigarh tour if starting from Chandigarh could range anywhere between 1800 km – 2000 Km depending upon the route chosen. Generally speaking 9 days will be enough time for covering such a distance and completing this amazing road trip but it largely depends upon individual preferences like how often travelers want to take halt while traversing or exploring places where they stop etc.

It’s highly suggested before embarking on bike trip to Leh ladakh from chandigarh tour via motorbike especially during peak season i.e May to September; bookings should be done ahead since accommodation scarcity makes prices skyrocket at times due to influx of tourists at certain points! Packing light is another thing advised since overloading causes more fatigue for bikers who ride themselves throughout day without assistance unlike cars/ buses/ SUVs etc . Also try making most of available resources– use GPS tracking system installed inside cellphones nowdays so route mapping & finding locations becomes convenient plus carry printed ones as backup just incase technology fails! Additionally prepare yourself mentally by reading about what lies ahead -especially terrain conditions which range drastically across areas visited plus keep updated weather reports handy so chances getting caught off guard become narrow; lastly satisfy medical requirements beforehand ei consult doctor about precautions if pre existing health ailments present otherwise medications might need refilling halfway through tour…otherwise best advise would remain “Stay hydrated & well rested” while riding continuously no matter how tempting sights appear ;)

Day 1: Begin ride early morning towards Manali located ~550km away—one can either choose highway stopping randomly sightseeing spots (like Pinjore gardens) coming across way OR completely alternate options exist too like travelling through magnificent hill towns surrounding Kangra Valley (places such as Joginder Nagar / Palampur / Baijnath). About 8 hours later reach Manali ideally rest overnight—but do not forget there lots interesting things that one can check out before moving forward – Hadimba Temple was monastery built centuries ago according Hidimba Devi mythological figure ; then there famous Mall Road bustling market life shopping restaurants pubs eateries ! Accommodation cost ranges depending quality amenities being availed but budget hotel could provide decent lodge around INR 500 per person per room basis (just double check availability beforehand).

Day 2 : Start again early next morning leave behind quaint little town heading towards Sarchu located 434 kms away .Road onwards takes shape curves zigzagging passes small cities bunch remote villages offering desolate vistas amidst snow capped peaks -it typical cold desert landscape its beauty composed perfect harmony nature scenic escapades ! On reaching Chamba commonly called ‘land silver valley' settle down camp nearby river banks after setting up tents drink tea witness evening turn orange twilight fades darkness Take rest evening relax body muscles following tiring day ride ...Sarchu considered checkpoint further onward journey occupied mostly military establishments adjoining highway itself paved divided lanes traversed nonstop hum machines….depending hotel availability could stay comfortably warm bed night else same old camping routine applicable tonight too .However it important remember altitude increasing significantly from point leading difficult situation prone travellers hence preventative steps taken part preparation process carefully thought through …

Days 3-5: Post greetings sunrays start trekking heights soaring 18000 feet above sea level reach Passes Rohtang named after Lord Hanuman's son 'Rohith'; months mid June July October timestamps ideal cross because climate harsh slightly other times year Do wear warm protective clothes appropriate footwear bring headlights navigational aids necessary medicine bottles abundance water containers..and lot patience sense adventure course destination Zozilla comes view miles ahead multiple shades blue valley visible flanking sides stretch impossible horizons Next stop Upshi resting base town Keylong Lahaul district situated 12500 ft ground levels enjoy spectacular views afar overlooking lush green treks meandering charming rivers culminate near mighty confluence Bhaga River Chandra River northernmost point Himachal Pradesh After couple kilometers drive arrive Darcha serves endpoint trek continue Tandi junction inhabitant tiny hamlet Solang village land magical skiing adventures paragliding gas balloons bonfire parties occur nights Head straight Tanglang La pass world second highest altitude 16600 ft

[garbagecann24601]

The Lower Chamber

When Valjean comes to visit, he is shown to a dusty room on the bottom floor. Valjean hasn’t eaten or slept in days. When Cosette comes in, she tries to ask for his affection, but he seems frozen. He stops himself from calling her “thou” and calls her “madame” instead, and he tells her to call him “Monsieur Jean.” Cosette begs him to “be good” and come live with them, but he tells her that she no longer needs a father now that she has a husband. 

Then Cosette asks whether he is upset because she is happy. 

“Her happiness was the object of my life. Now God may sign my dismissal. Cosette, thou art happy; my day is over.”

Then Valjean leaves abruptly.

[theotherhufflepuff]

Simon Snow Trilogy Tarot Cards...

Ok so, a little while ago I saw this frankly stunning artwork by @vkelleyart and I started thinking about the Major Arcana archetypes and how characters from my favourite book series could fit into them.

So I made this list. It took a lot of thought and I’m still not 100% sure on some of them but I have explained my thought process for each card.

I don’t know how much crossover there is in the Venn diagram of “Simon Snow fans” and “tarot readers” but I’d love to hear your opinions and/or alternative suggestions (be respectful though, obviously). I’ve left “visual prompts” for most of the cards explaining what they looked like in my imagination and if anyone wants to draw any of these (or their own alternative version!) please tag me; it would make my day! I can’t draw for toffee so I am 1000% never gonna try to illustrate any of them myself.

List under the cut because it is loooong.

Spoilers ahead for the whole series!

0 The Fool - Shepard - Shepard just follows magickal creatures around and says “yes” to everything... he is the pure embodiment of the Fool archetype to me; care-free, innocent... prepared for everything and yet totally clueless. Visual prompt: Shepard about to (attempt to) step into the fog as he follows a fairy into the forest.

1 The Magician - Penelope - “Penelope Bunce is a fierce magician, I don’t mind saying” Baz, at least once in each book. Penny never worries about not having the power or words available to do whatever she wants; she is comfortable in her power and it is always there, ready to be wielded however she sees fit. Visual prompt: Penny wearing her Stevie Nicks cape, standing by a chalkboard in the classic “Magician” pose, ring clearly held aloft.

2 The High Priestess - Dr Mitali Bunce - Dr Bunce is possibly a more formidable magician than her daughter. Highly intelligent, straightforward and, let’s be honest, judgemental. But she does have all the answers. Visual prompt: Dr Bunce carrying around her laptop, phone sandwiched between her ear and her shoulder.

3 The Empress - Lucy Salisbury - Lucy exudes the nurturing, Earth Mother vibes that are central to the Empress archetype. She saw the best in everyone and all she wanted was to love Davy and live with him in their cottage with her chickens and their child. Visual prompt: Lucy, barefoot and pregnant, feeding the chickens outside of their cottage.

4 The Emperor - Lamb - This is one of the ones I’m not totally sure about. I went through a few different ideas but ultimately settled on Lamb as the “Vampire King of Las Vegas”. He is an imposing figure, ruling his city with an iron fist; if you are in his favour, Vegas is your playground, but cross him and you will suffer the consequences. Visual prompt: Lamb sits on an antique chair in his opulent suite at the Katherine, the lights of night time Vegas visible through the window behind him.

5 The Hierophant - The Mage - Again, this one took some thought and I’m sure some people will disagree with this interpretation... I’m not completely sold on it myself. The Mage was all about reforming the old traditions of the World of Mages and he amassed a following by doing so. But he turned out to be somewhat of a false prophet; abusing his power to oppress those he deemed “the enemy”. Visual prompt: The Mage in his Robin Hood costume, sitting at his desk at the top of the Weeping Tower, surrounded by his piles of banned books.

6 The Lovers - Simon and Baz - Obviously. As stated at the top of this post, I love @vkelleyart’s version of this card, but there are a lot of scenes across the series that could be used to illustrate this archetype. I personally always love to see the original “and then he kisses me” scene.

7 The Chariot - Fiona Pitch - I struggled with this one a bit and I don’t really think that this is the ideal version. But the image of Fiona, rolling up to Blackfriars bridge in her vintage sports car to rescue Baz from the Numpties really stuck with me so that’s what I went with, for lack of a better idea.

8 Strength - Ebb - Ebb is often dismissed and underestimated by other magicians but she is wicked powerful. But more than that, the Strength card is about inner strength, self control and the wisdom to know when to fight, and when to rest. Ebb is highly intuitive about the people - and goats - around her and is always careful not to talk about her twin brother, only conceding that she knows of his presence once a year and never giving in to the temptation to talk directly to him. Ebb saw the war coming and knew that she could probably end it all by herself with the power she had; but she also knew that she didn’t want that and she had the strength to say no, to eschew the expectations the rest of the World of Mages placed upon her and live quietly, instead. Visual prompt: Ebb in the hills behind the school with the goats, she wears a flower crown that the Dryad made her.

9 The Hermit - Agatha - the Hermit eschews the outside world in order to take an inner journey of self discovery, knowing that this is the only way to find real answers and achieve real growth. Agatha, jaded by the World of Mages, took herself off to California, leaving her wand at home. She didn’t know what she wanted but she knew it wasn’t magic. Visual prompt: Agatha sits on the beach at twilight by a small campfire, Lucy the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel by her side.

10 The Wheel of Fortune - The Crucible - The Crucible’s decisions, like the Wheel’s, are unpredictable and inevitable. Once it’s happened, you’re stuck with the consequences - sometimes bad (being stuck with a toff vampire who hates you) and sometimes good (getting the best room in Mummers house).

11 Justice - Natasha Grimm-Pitch - Natasha needed justice to find peace; her whole story is about justice. She was swift to act when the vampires attacked Watford, dispatching them without hesitation. When she came through the veil to find Baz and ask him to bring her murderer to justice, she knew that would also provide some closure for him, too, both for her death, and for his. Visual prompt: Natasha Grimm-Pitch appearing from beyond the veil, looking for Baz and finding Simon.

12 The Hanged One - Nicodemus - The Hanged One is about feeling stuck, but also about finding peace where you are when there’s nothing you can do about it. Nicodemus chose to cross over for eternal life, but he was stricken from the book; his (considerable) magic effectively taken from him and his fangs removed. He was stuck in between - not a full vampire, not a magician; he exists on the fringes of both communities. He got himself there and then he had to figure out how to get by, carve out a place for himself in order to survive. Visual prompt: Nicodemus sits in the tree in the garden of his mother’s house in South London, waiting for Ebb to come and sit on the empty bench beneath him.

13 Death - [scene on the Great Lawn] - Ok, so.. this might need some explaining. My immediate thought for this card was that it should be the Humdrum but Death is all about clearing out the old junk in your life that doesn’t serve you in order to make space for the new. And the Humdrum isn’t making space for anything. So I was thinking about times that has happened in the story and I thought about how the death of the Mage made room for real progress and an end to the war with the old families. Visual prompt: Penny and Baz (literally) run into a fleeing Agatha on the Great Lawn; the Weeping Tower looms in the background, the Mage and Simon visible through the blown-out stained glass windows.

14 Temperance - Simon and the Humdrum - Temperance is, as you might expect, about balance and harmony. Simon used so much magic at once that he couldn’t control it and it tore holes in the magickal atmosphere. Simon had to fill the Simon-shaped hole to restore equalibrium and stop the magickal firmament from collapsing altogether. Visual prompt: Simon kneeling in the Weeping Tower, pouring his magic into the Humdrum as he fades away.

15 The Devil - Smith Smith-Richards - The Devil is about feeling trapped by temptations in your life, often because we’re afraid of what we would do with the freedom we’d have if we let them go. Which got me thinking about Smith-Richards (that name never gets any less ridiculous) and all the magicians who were taken in by the temptation of “fixing” their magic. But it was a false promise and those magicians who narrowly escaped taking Smith-Richards’ spell were all freed from the idea of their magic being “broken” in the first place. Visual prompt: Smith-Richards (looking like the guy who would be cast to play Simon in the Netflix series) standing on a stage in the packed-out White Chapel, rapt audience hanging on his every word.

16 The Tower - The Humdrum - Originally I wanted to use the Weeping Tower for this card because the imagery is on point but the meaning doesn’t match. The Tower is about absolute destruction, the crumbling of something you thought core to your being. The Humdrum steals magic and renders magicians homeless because of it. The Tower is about having to start again from the ground up - just as the Grimms did when all the magic was drained from Hampshire. Visual prompt: The Humdrum, wearing Simon’s face, stands in the grounds of Pitch Manor, laughing. (I have always thought of the holes looking like a burn in a piece of paper - sort of glowing and smouldering at the edges as it eats away the atmosphere. I know the holes can’t actually be seen - the Normals would freak out - but that is imagery I would use here)

17 The Star - Lady Ruth’s candles - The Star is about hope and healing after the devastation of the Tower. Lady Ruth’s candles were a symbol of hope that kept her going when she thought she had lost her children. They provided comfort and, at the end when it became clear the Lucy was gone, the healing of knowing that her child had finally found his way home to his family. Visual prompt: Lady Ruth’s candles in front of a window, a bright star can be seen through the window.

18 The Moon - Agatha and Simon - So, the Moon is all about examining blurred lines between illusion and reality - nothing looks totally clear in the moonlight. It reminded me of how Simon never really seemed to have a clear view of his feelings for Agatha and what their relationship was. When he properly examined his feelings, he found that he didn’t love Agatha and was going through the motions because he thought it was what other people expected of him. Agatha was doing the same. It also brought to mind Simon, going out of his mind worrying about Baz when he was missing - as well as basically every other thought Simon ever has about Baz before Christmas Eve 2015 - and somehow mistaking it for hating him?? Simon is not stupid but sometimes he’s real dumb. Visual prompt: Agatha and Simon meet on the ramparts, both looking for Baz, and break up.

19 The Sun - Simon - This card is all about innocence, optimism and joy. Nothing about this series personifies this more than Simon flying above Shepard’s truck in America, feeling free and hopeful about the future for the first time in over a year. Visual prompt: Shepard’s truck drives through the vast empty desert, the sun beating down. Simon flies above the truck, joy on his face.

20 Judgement - Niamh and Agatha - Ok, this one was hard to figure out and this is maybe not the right solution, but I was very stuck. Judgement is about self improvement through self reflection. As a small twist on that theme; Niamh and Agatha challenge each other’s view of themselves and their interactions with the world around them. Visual prompt: Agatha and Niamh, sweating to death in Niamh’s “shitty Ford Fiesta” (I’m very salty about that line; my Ford Fiesta is lovely and it has aircon). Niamh is frowning, obviously.

21 The World - Simon, Baz, Penny and Shepard - The World is about completeness, the ending of a story, fulfilment and belonging. At the end of AWTWB, Simon has finally found his biological family, he is starting to accept that his boyfriend and his found family love him for who he is, magic or no, and he can finally start to imagine a future for himself. Baz has learned new information about his vampirism, Penny has found new confidence and Shepard is finally fully accepted into the group. Visual prompt: Baz, Penny and Shepard sit on Simon’s sofa (possibly still pink from Baz’s spell, possibly he spelled it navy blue again) Simon sits on the floor. They’re all eating leftover sandwiches and cake from Lady Ruth’s.

[loz-and-lu-fan-blog]

Raising a Kokiri part 2

part 1

It was nice….until it wasn’t.

Mask paranoia started to get worse, a feeling was bubbling inside him from the time he was a child. Mask immediately brought his hand to his stomach as pain grabbed him.

“Mask are you ok?” Warrior asked as the little boy shook his head no. The older hero bendt down to help the younger boy who was doubled over in pain. Time turned white at the memory, the pain only flared back up if he ever went close to the kokiri forest or another guardian fairy.

“Warrior, maybe you should take Mask away to feel better, we can stay here” Time offer as Legend made a sound of annoyance. Warrior and Mask began to walk away from the group to give the little boy some space.

Time watched as his younger self left, he could feel his mark on his neck sting while the hairs on the back neck stood up.

There was a growl.

-----

Navi prowled the woods, a mix of angry and excitement filled her chest. The pain of losing Link was slowly fading away meaning that her baby had to be somewhere close. However these woods were dangerous, most of the creatures new better to attack her but she was worry about Link, she knew how small her little baby is and how the creatures of the woods might see him as easy prey.

Finally the pain ended and she looked up through the brush...and her baby wasn’t there. All she could see was 8 men, none were Link’s size.

Could Link have grown up?

Navi walked out of the forest making the men jump and bring out the swords but Navi couldn’t care. She observed the group, none of them were her baby.

Where is her Link? Did they kidnap him? Where is he?!?!

Navi let out a roar and ran to attack the men with sword, they had to know where her little one is.

It was easy to knock down the smaller two using her tail. However a slice on her back but the one in red made her realize it wouldn't be as easy as she hoped.

She unveiled her spikes, not really focusing on killing them but her position should keep them in place for a while to answer her questions.

A man in white with a familiar sword sent down a strike. She jumped up, jumping from branch to branch before tackling the one in black fur. Before she can bring her claws down on the man her claw met a force field and she was shoved off the man. 

She glared at the source of magic, another brown haired man who smelled of Fae.

“Why are you helping them? Why are you helping the ones who stole my baby?” Navi screamed at him. He must be able to understand fae because he froze at the words.

Before Navi had time to blink she found herself surrounded by the men, each pointing a sword at her. She knew what she had to do.

As Navi raised her wing she heard a voice yelled at men to ‘get away’ but it was too late. She let out a powerful gust knocking down all but one of the men.

Navi lunged at the man, tearing some of his clothes as she knocked him to the ground. She used her legs to make sure he couldn’t get back up. She brought up her claw to bring down on the man, but she stopped.

There on the man’s neck was the mark of the kokiri.

Navi ran her fingers over the marking as the thoughts flooded her brain. This was her Link it had to be, he’s why the pain stopped.

But when did he get so big?

Navi didn’t have time to keep diving into her thoughts as the blunt end of a sword dove  into her side. Only for a small one in blue with a big hammer come and swat her off her Kokiri.

She went wildly shot out some of the poison spikes on her tail, some went far before an unseen wall came around her stopping them from flying.

Then she was somewhere new, the men nowhere to be seen, and the pain was back.

------

“It’s gone” Hyrule said in a huff as he fell to his knees, it took alot out of him to try and send that creature far away, more so trying to ignore the words from earlier.

“Is everyone ok?” Twilight yelled out to the group.

“Yeah” Wild yelled in response.

“Speak for yourself” Legend screamed “I think i broke some bones”

“I didn’t know you could do that Four” Sky said as he talked to the tiny hero, well more like heroes now. 

Four had become four heroes, each one wearing one of the four colors on the original Four’s tunic. Adding to the different color they also had different weapons, the one in blue having a big hammer, red had a fire rod, purple had a book of magic and green had a sword. 

However they didn’t get to focus on the new heroes for ever long.

“Time?” The red Four said, causing everyone to look at the elder hero.

Time had a blank expression as he pulled out a spike from the creature that was embedded into his side. Time dropped the spike before his eye rolled back into his head.

“TIME!!!” Was the last thing that Time heard before a darkness consumed the older hero.

----

“I’m feeling better,” Mask stated to his older brother, Warrior had taken him to the open field where they found a freshwater stream. As he drank the water Mask started to feel better and they decided it was better to head back to the group seeing how being on their own wasn’t very safe. 

Warrior nodded and he grabbed Mask's hand and they started to head back to the group. It didn’t take long since they hadn’t wandered very far. 

Than Warrior saw the group surrounding someone on the ground.

“What happened?” War screamed out as he ran up to the group, Mask following close behind him.

They saw the figure on the ground, it was Time. Time was grumbling trying to slowly push the links away from him.

“He got hit by a spike,” Twilight stated.

“I’m fine, it was just the shock of pain” Time simply states as he stood up however he wobbled causing Sky and Warrior to rush over and support his weight. Time looked around before spotting the new heroes.

“Did Four always have brothers?” Time commented before the boys forced him to sit by a tree. The others crowding about him.

“Time you should be careful, that thing could have been poisons” Legend warned the older hero. 

“They aren’t, fairies aren’t poisonous unless they want to be, if she was poisonous I would be dead” Time said, not really notings what he was saying. 

“That thing was a fairy?!” Legend yelled out.

“How do you know it wasn’t poisonous?!!” Wind yelled out causing the older hero to groan.

“Stopppppp” Time said as he held his head in his hands.

“That thing was a fairy” Hyrule said “It spoke Fae”

“Seriously am I seeing things or did Four multiply?” Time asked with heavy eyes.

“Time focus! That thing-” “It’s a fairy asshole” “ tried to kill you” Legend said practically shaking the older hero, Hyrule butted in his comments about it being a fairy.

“But Time’s right fairies don’t kill” Mask said.

“It shot him with a spike!” Wild yelled.

“It would have clawed his face off!” Twilight screamed in response.

“Sooooo Four what are your brothers names?” Time asked the small hero in green completely ignoring the chaos around him. The link began to bicker as Time kept trying to get answers from Four.

“So they are your brothers?” Time asked the four heroes.

“No their cousins” Mask answered.

“Are you sure? They looked so alike” Time asked.

“Yeah I’m sure, what about the fairy?” Mask asked.

“It was a fairy,” Time said.

“What did it look like? Was it Navi?” Mask asked with interest.

“It looked like a fairy?” Time simply said still loopy.

Mask pouted not liking the answers he was given, he wanted answers; if it was a fairy, could it be Navi? Could his mother be coming to get him? Mask wanted to yell at the Deity man who was not giving answers, until he had the man's neck.

He had a Kokiri mark….

Kokiri mark, it’s what is given to a kokiri by their fairy, it symbol left by a fairies sharp teeth. Mask brought his hands up to the man’s mark, it was the deku tree symbol, the same symbol that was on Mark’s neck.

It was Navi’s mark.

Time realized that Mask was staring and touching the mark, Time brought a hand up to cover his mark.

“So we don’t find her?” Mask whimpered out staring at the man. Time said nothing.

“Do we find her? What about Navi? Saria? Please, don’t we find mama?” Mask whimpered through tears “Please”

Time said nothing, but he brought his arms up and wrapped them around Mask. Mask started to cry more. It seems that Mask tears finally stopped all the links arguing.

“I think we need to make camp” Time said.

Time just held Mask in a hug.

‘What do I do now?’

[shipyard98]

“The Cigarette Book” - Chapter 3: K (Jotaro’s Story)

Fandom: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

Pairing: Jotaro Kujo x Reader

Word Count: 

Rating: T for Teen (reference to sex and mild swearing)

Summary: One morning, an odd change dawns over Jotaro Kujo, your housemate and friend with benefits. He was suddenly smoking again, but more importantly, he was treating you with a little more kindness than usual. What could be the problem?

(link to story)

The smell of burning tobacco roused you from sleep.

Your eyes fluttered open to darkness at first. Then, as your eyes adjusted, you could make out the silhouette of your friend with benefits and housemate, who was sitting up and staring at the ceiling with a lit cigarette in his mouth. You could barely make out his features, but you knew his brow was furrowed and his mouth was frowning.

It seemed like he was deep in thought, and you were about to pull him out of it.

“…Jotaro?”

Upon hearing his name, he turned his head. Even though his features were obscured by darkness, you felt his powerful gaze land right on you.

“Oh...” he mumbled. “You’re awake.”

“Mmhm,” you groaned. “I smelled smoke.”

His gaze fell down for a moment before he took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it out in the ashtray by his side of the bed.

“Oh, no you don’t have to worry about it.” You readjusted yourself until you were sitting upright, letting the sheets fall and expose your bare chest. “It doesn’t bother me as much.”

“… As much as what?”

“Well,” you started to say hesitantly. “You said you were trying to quit when we first moved in together, and this is the first time in a while I’ve seen you with a lit cigarette… Is something wrong?”

Jotaro sat there in silence for a long while, which was definitely something you were used to.

College friends of yours who went to his high school warned you about him. According to them, he was a bad boy who was hard to get close to. Even though he did open up just a little more in senior year, people were still lucky if they could get a conversation with him going.

Despite their warnings, you found a strange appeal to him. And he turned out to be a pretty good housemate. There were very few times where you had to prompt him to do his part of the deal, and he seemed to get it done faster than you could. As time went by, he even began to help you with your work. Though he verbally stated that he didn’t enjoy it all that much, something about his demeanor told you otherwise.

That surprised your friends, and it surprised them even more when you revealed that you had coaxed him into a “beneficial friendship” about three months into mutual living. Jotaro didn’t even appear to have actual emotions, let alone a sex drive. But he agreed to it. He said it would help him keep any possible emotions of his from causing any trouble. What that trouble was, he never elaborated.

The sex was great, though, so you weren’t complaining. When you two had a session, it was divine. He knew how to use his hands against your more sensitive areas, and his thrusting felt so delicious. Sometimes, it even felt like the world came to a complete stop, it was that terrific.

Though, there were times you wanted to indulge your unrequited feelings for him.

You wish you didn't have those feelings, but life can be a bitch like that sometimes.

Jotaro finally let out a sigh.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing important.”

He made a move to get out of bed before he stopped himself to look at you again, a rare moment of spontaneity coming over him.

“So… you want to go to the café for breakfast?”

You tilted your head a little in a confused expression. One part of the confusion came from the fact that he only asked to go out with you on special occasions. The other part, you vocalized.

“Is that place even open at this hour? Even more, what time is it right now?”

“5 AM. And it should be.”

“Oh, really?... Well, class isn’t until 8, so alright. Just give me a minute.”

You got out of bed and stumbled over to your closet in the dark. Whatever you got a hold of first was what you decided you were going to wear out. And after tidying yourself up a little more, you were ready to go.

Jotaro, on the other hand, seemed to wear the exact same clothes every day and he was much more awake, so it didn’t take him long at all to get ready compared to you. As soon as he had his white garb and logic-defying hat on, he went out to wait for you in the car.

Soon enough, you found yourself in the passenger seat as he revved up the engine and pulled the vehicle out of the driveway.

The ten-minute drive to the cafe was usually quiet, so you had a moment to observe the scenery in peace.

Out the window, you could see the twilight sky. Shades of purple and blue danced with the soft glow of the few rays of light that came from the rising sun. In the faint light, the dew on the grass glistened like small diamonds. The other houses and buildings faded into the background as a great shadow was casted over them.

Then, you turned your head and observed another beautiful piece of scenery; the man in the driver’s seat himself. The way his silky black hair framed his soft face, the glisten in his turquoise eyes, and the plumpness of his lips… in the bare light of the rising sun, he looked like a living portrait.

His visible eye suddenly shifted from the road ahead to give you a side glance.

The way he looked at you wasn’t like his famous death glare. It was more like he was studying you. Maybe there was even a hint of “checking you out”? You didn’t give yourself the chance to comprehend it, as you had bashfully turned your face away from him. But you could still feel him looking at you.

Then, he suddenly spoke.

“You look really nice today.”

You shot a surprised look at him. Did he, Jotaro “Romance is Dead” Kujo, just compliment you? There was no way you heard him correctly.

“Wait, what did you say?”

He huffed softly in response, letting his concentration go back on the road. In the dim light, you could’ve sworn that some pink had dusted his cheeks.

“Never mind.”

For the rest of the car trip, a silence engulfed you both. And it wasn’t like the usual silence. No, this silence was very awkward and tense. Every now and again, you’d look over at him again, but his gaze was fixed on the road. With the way his face tensed up, he seemed to have a lot going on in his mind.

All of a sudden, the car stopped and the engine died down. You peeked around and out Jotaro’s side window.

There in view was the café. It was a quaint little place, cozily set in a little grass area with the closest building being about ten feet away. The outer walls were of oak wood, and there were potted plants bordering these walls in a certain order. It was a very cozy place, from the outside and the inside.

Jotaro opened his door and stepped outside.

Your hand was just barely touching the door handle on your side when the door just swung open, as though someone else had opened it for you. It was weird, but you blamed yourself for probably not closing the door all the way, so you thought nothing much of it.

As soon as you closed your door all the way, you hurried along by Jotaro, who had been patiently waiting for you to take your place by his side. Together, you both entered the cafe.

The interior gave people a comforting feeling when they stepped inside. Oaken tables and chairs were situated in places here and there. Some were by the wall; some were by the window. And some were in the dead center of the space. A little wall separated the area between the dining area and the cash register area. To top it all off, the entire place had an unspoken theme; oriental lilies. The presence of lilies ranged from traditional paintings featuring lilies to lilies in vases on the tables. Even the air had a faint scent of lilies in it, but it never overpowered the smell of the food coming from the kitchen. It almost felt like home.

A waitress came and led you both to a table for two. She gave you both a menu and asked what kind of beverage you wanted. You ordered coffee while Jotaro went with black tea.

With a smile, she left the two of you succumb to that silence again. At this time of the day, you two were the only ones there, besides the staff. With that said, the only sounds that could be heard were of the overhead fan going in circles and the occasional chatter or movement the staff made.

You kept your eyes focused on the menu, looking over your choices. It wasn’t that you were particularly hungry; it’s just that you were kind of nervous about glancing up. Like mentioned before, you could just feel it when he looked at you, and it was no different here. With how often that sensation came over you, it felt as though he looked more at you than he did his own menu.

If you weren’t suspicious of him before, you certainly were now.

The friendly waitress from earlier broke the silence when she brought you your drinks. You both thanked her, gave your orders, and watched her hurry off into the kitchen.

After giving the top of his cup a gentle blow, Jotaro put the brim to his lips and took a swig.

He looked so content drinking his tea. It was like there was nothing too deep going on under the surface, like nothing in the world was really bothering him.

Maybe it was because of this that you finally decided to speak up.

“Are you going to tell me what’s come over you, yet?”

He stopped and opened his eyes.

“What do you mean?” he muttered as he put the cup down.

“You’ve been acting so much nicer all of a sudden. Your aura has been a lot softer, and it feels like you’ve been staring at me a lot more. That, and I’m still curious as to why you’ve suddenly started smoking again. Please, Jotaro, tell me; is something wrong?”

Jotaro tilted his head down until the brim of his hat covered his eyes. His breathing had suddenly deepened, and his clutch on the cup tightened.

“… If you’re really that curious…”

“Yes?”

“… I had a bad nightmare. It bothered me so much, I had to smoke to calm down.”

You had to take a second to blink.

“A nightmare?”

“Yeah.”

“What was it about?”

He took another quiet swig of the tea, not once raising his eyes to look at you, before continuing.

“I dreamt that I was being held down. Powerless. You were there, and…”

“… And what?”

His hands trembled ever so slightly.

“You were being killed. Right before my eyes.”

You let the silence hang in the air once again as you tried to comprehend this new piece of information. Before you had a chance to say anything in response, he continued.

“I’m such a damn idiot. I said yes to so many of your requests, because I thought that I could avoid feeling anything if I occupied myself with obedience. But every time you smile at me, I feel my heart race a little faster. Every time you speak to me, my attention lingers on you longer. And every time you moan out my name and claw at my back while we’re in bed, I realize that I like it best when it's just you and no one else…”

He hunched himself over a little bit, and he gritted his teeth as a single tear fell into his cup.

“Look,... I’m in love with you, okay?"

Your eyes had widened a little, and a blush surfaced on your cheeks. Tears begun to gloss your own eyes; his sorrowful confession touched you.

"And that worries me. People that I care about always end up in danger. I should never had even said yes to housing with you, because now I love you and I’m so scared of losing you, too. I… I can’t…”

He stopped.

In this rare moment of weakness, Jotaro didn’t notice that you had gotten up out of your chair and went to his side. Now, your arms were wrapped around him in a warm hug and your cheek was nuzzled into his neck.

He had so many thoughts bubbling in his head, yet he couldn’t say a word.

“Jotaro,” you cooed into his ear. “I love you too. I’ve loved you for a while. And I can promise you, nothing’s going to come in between us. Believe me, I will not leave your side. Okay?

If only you knew what he knew. He knew that so many bad things could happen to you if he stayed close to you. He had lost so many loved ones to battle and supernatural elements, that he wasn’t ready to let it happen again. How badly he wanted to tell you these things, but your arms felt so nice around him. You were giving him warmth he very rarely felt. It was like new life was being breathed into him.

Gently, he grabbed your chin and brought you to staring him in the eye.

Then, ever so slowly, he leaned in and pressed his lips against yours in a sweet and tender kiss. Your eyes closed and you tenderly kissed him back. He wasn’t a person who showed affection, but in that moment, he didn’t care. Let the world see how happy you made him.

A few moments later, you pulled away from him and leaned your forehead against his, causing his cap to get tilted back some. He didn’t mind it at the moment. All he could really do was quietly mumble a response to your request.

“O… K.”

[wistfulcynic]

For the end of year asks. You’ve answered 10, 8, and 3, so I want 1, 2, 4-7, and 9... don’t shoot me please... 😘

Of course, if you’ve already answered some of the others, you can skip those too...

😲. I’m... not sure that's how you play the game?? But okay, buckle in. 

1. What’s your personal favourite thing you wrote this year?

I’ve written a lot of things I liked this year. Unlike previous years I don’t think there’s anything I don’t feel good about. I think for favourite I’d have to go with ...and held her in my arms, because it turned out pretty much exactly as I envisioned it and I like the intensity of the pining, and The Bend of the Arc, because it was such a stretch for me and I really like the end result. That and the comments on it were just so lovely. 

2. What’s your least favourite thing you wrote this year?

As I said above I’m happy with everything from this year, but I guess the one I'm least happy with is where none intrudes. I kind of feel like my head wasn’t quite in the right place and I wrote it too quickly. It could have been better if I'd taken more time. Ironically, it is my most popular Tumblr post ever. 

4. Which of your fics this year was most successful?

On Tumblr, it was where none intrudes which still continues to get random notes. On AO3 (and I'm discounting Moonlight here because that started last year) it currently stands at Error 404 by a single kudo over the stars through our souls. 

5. Which of your fics do you wish was more successful?

I guess that depends on what successful means? I wouldn’t have minded more people reading A Uniquely Portable Magic because I think it’s some of the best descriptive writing I've ever done, but the ones who did read it gave such amazing feedback I consider it a success. The Fire of the Frost had the worst reception I’ve ever experienced on Tumblr, which I kind of expected because sequels are always less popular than the original and Moonlight was also a dud on Tumblr. But I’m still disappointed, I had thought it would do a bit better than it did. Like I thought it would flop but maybe not leave behind an actual indent in the ground. 

6. What’s your favourite piece of dialogue you wrote this year?

Oof. I’m sure I'm overlooking something, but one scene I really like is this one from The Bend of the Arc. There are a couple of good exchanges in that fic I think but this one is where we really see the connection between them. Putting it below a cut as it’s long!

Emma popped the last bite of soufflé into her mouth and resisted the urge to lick her fingers. Instead she sipped her champagne and looked around for another tray. One passed by bearing what looked like tiny donuts and she almost dove to grab one. Biting into it, she found that it was savoury and filled with a feather-light truffled chicken mousse. She closed her eyes on a moan of delight, and when she opened them again Killian Jones was standing in front of her, watching her with an expression she found deeply objectionable.

“Well, darling, I do hope you’re not here for me this time,” he said.

Emma sneered. “I’m not.”

“Learnt our lesson, have we?” he replied with a smirk.

She ground her teeth. “I’ve simply got bigger fish to hook,” she said.

“Indeed. Considering that I am an entirely innocent man.”

She snorted.

“That infuriates you, doesn’t it,” he observed, smirk deepening. “That I walked free.”

Nearly a year’s worth of frustration and righteous fury bubbled up inside Emma, bursting forth before she could stop it. “It’s not right!” she exclaimed. “It’s not justice!”

“No, it’s just not perfect justice. Though one certainly could argue that a decade spent under the thumb of a madman is more than enough punishment for whatever crimes I committed.”

Something in his voice troubled her, a pained sincerity that niggled at her conscience. She ignored it. “Rationalise it all you like, if it helps you sleep at night,” she retorted.  

“Oh, I have no trouble sleeping,” he said, stepping closer and leaning into her space, hips first. “Though occasionally I do forgo it voluntarily, in favour of more… enjoyable activities.”

“You’re filthy.”  

“I certainly can be,” he purred. “If that’s what you want.”

“I want nothing from you.”

“Well love, we both know that’s not true.”

“Oh do we?”

“We do. You’re something of an open book, you see.”

She rolled her eyes. “I am the opposite of that.”

“You’d like to be. But for those who know how to look, your tells are obvious.”

“Bullshit.”

He shifted, standing straighter and observing her with blue eyes that went, between one blink and the next, from flirtatious to coolly assessing, sharply analytical. She felt a flare of alarm in her chest, and the worrying suspicion that she may have underestimated him.  

“The relaxed posture,” he said. “That’s one. You’re a woman of action, rarely still. If you stop moving you start thinking, and you, Emma Swan, hate nothing more than being in your own head. You’re tense all the time unless you’re pretending not to be, as you are now. Playing the role of carefree society girl, perfectly at home in these glittering surroundings where you are in actual fact deeply uncomfortable.”

She attempted a laugh. “Maybe I’m just having a good time.”

“You’re holding that glass so tightly you’re in danger of snapping the stem, and you’re digging the heel of your shoe into the floor. It takes a lot of effort to maintain that outward calm, which is why you don’t normally bother. You hate artifice, bullshit as you would call it, and your plan tonight is to get in, get your mark and get out. After you’ve eaten your fill of the food, that is.” The corner of his mouth curled into a half-smile. “Do correct me if any of this is wrong.”

“It’s all wrong,” she snapped.  

“Now, love, don’t you start to bullshit.”

Emma’s fingers clenched tighter on the champagne glass and she deliberately forced them to relax. “Why don’t you just leave me alone,” she hissed.

His eyes softened, and heated with an expression that made her belly clench. “Because you intrigue me,” he murmured.  

“Well you disgust me.”

He laughed. “Liar.”

“How dare you—”

He brushed a lock of hair off her shoulder, his fingers close enough that she could feel the heat of them but not their touch, and when he spoke again his voice was rough. “You’ve a delightful pale pink flush all across your skin, your pupils are dilated, your breathing shallow. And your pulse—” His hand glided down her arm and wrapped around her wrist, fingertips pressing gently onto her pulse point. “It’s racing, love. I don’t require any special skills to pick up on these tells.” He caught her gaze, his own heated and intense. “Would it help if I confessed that the attraction is entirely mutual?”

“No!”  

“Pity.”

She tried to pull her arm from his grip but he held fast, leaning closer still to murmur in her ear. “He’s over by the fountain.”

She wouldn’t look, thought Emma. She wouldn’t. She closed her eyes as Killian released her and the heat and intoxicating scent of him moved away. She didn’t want his help, didn’t need it. Resented it. But she couldn’t stop herself from looking and of course there he was. Her mark, standing in front of the fountain at the centre of the room.

“How the hell did you know—” she spun around but Killian was gone.

7. What’s your favourite piece of description or narration?

Unquestionably the beginning of Portable Magic. 

He’s not sure what draws him through the door. The look of it, perhaps, the twisted grain and the knotholes, polished to a patina by centuries of wind and rain and hands upon it. Some hands much like his own and others very different. He finds comfort in that, as he places his hand on the door. His hand.

His only hand.

On the other side of the door is a bookshop. He knew that of course, from the sign in the window, another thing tempting him inside. It’s far too long since he read a good book, too long since he let himself get lost in stories other than his own. He’s not quite ready for what he sees.

The shelves are made of the same wood as the door. Carved from it, it seems. Hewn might be the word. The knobbly, knothole-y wood that even his limited carpentry knowledge tells him could not form straight shelves. It doesn’t, yet they hold the books. Row upon row of them, dizzying rows. His head spins when he tries to look at them, like a kaleidoscope or a funhouse mirror, too many things, too many angles, too little space.

He blinks, and everything is fine again. It’s just a bookstore.

“It’s just a bookstore,” he tells the cat in the window, a huge grey tabby with long, silky fur and pale blue, unblinking eyes.

“Of course it is,” the cat replies. “What were you expecting?”

“I—what?”

“Meow,” says the cat.

...and this paragraph 

He sits at the table and opens the book at the top of the pile, glances into it, and is absorbed. It’s the tale of a lonely man, a wanderer without a home who finds his place in the hearts of those he meets along his travels. It grips him so entirely that he fails to notice Ruby as she sets a pot of tea before him, with a mismatched cup and saucer and a plate bearing a thick slice of cake, fragrant with lemon and dotted with plump blueberries. Absently he prepares his tea—a splash of milk, no sugar—and sips it as he reads. It has a bright, floral aroma but a rich flavour that reminds him of the Earl Grey his brother favoured, and he has to pause for a moment to allow the ache to pass. It does, faster than it once did, and so he risks another sip and sighs this time in pleasure. It’s delicious. He settles deeper into the chair and the book, sips the tea and nibbles the cake and doesn’t notice either one disappearing or the afternoon sunshine fading into twilight beyond the windows until Ruby comes to clear the table with a clatter of silver on porcelain. 

9. If you could go back and change something about one of the fics you wrote this year, what would it be?

I have a difficult relationship with all the perfect things (that I doubt) because part of me loves it and part thinks maybe I should have made some different choices. I guess it’s just that there are so many options for that scenario and I kind of want to write all of them (but also there is NO TIME, so don't get any ideas, woman!). 

-

um, I would say send me an end of year ask, but Krystal has ASKED THEM ALL

[skeptycats]

Vicky Archives #7

LONG SHADOWS - The power of a single scene

Vicky Holmes, the former editor of the Warriors series, has been doing short extract readings on Facebook since the start of the UK lockdown back in March. There’s some really cool anecdotes hidden within some of these videos, so I decided to begin penning them down for posterity and easy reference.

I won’t be transcribing filler, hedging and false starts but I’m including some amount of preamble just to be comprehensive.

#1 Into the Wild | #2 Forest of Secrets | #3 The Darkest Hour | #4 Code of the Clans | #5 Firestars’ Quest | #6 Twilight | #7 Long Shadows | #8 Leafpool’s Wish

---

[Again, there seems to have been some talking before Vicky went live]

-- but we may be deafened by birdsong today. I hope it doesn’t interfere too much with the sound.

So today I’m going to read from Long Shadows, Power of Three book five. Although this was the fifth book in the Power of Three, it contains a scene that inspired the whole arc. When I was coming to Power of Three, I wanted to have a sense of obviously what I was going to write about, where the six books were going. We already knew at the end of The New Prophecy that there were some kits that were supposedly Squirrelflight’s, but they weren’t, they weren’t Squirrelflight’s. They were her sister’s, Leafpool’s, and she was raising them in secret. I dropped hints throughout The New Prophecy that Leafpool was pregnant, and Squirrelflight noticed she was looking a bit plump! If you read New Prophecy again you’ll notice there are little clues there that Leafpool is expecting. Of course they’re Crowfeather’s kits, from the brief moment that she ran away with him.

So I knew that I wanted to have a big reveal in the next book, in the Power of Three, and before I even started the arc, this scene came to me. The scene of Squirrelflight on a cliff, surrounded by flames, forced to reveal the truth, but in a way that would just cause nothing but pain. The scene is, this chapter was from Hollyleaf’s viewpoint, although the next one is from Jayfeather’s viewpoint. Lightning has struck the forest, and there is a great fire around the hollow where the cats live. The forest is burning, and Squirrelflight has rescued the three cats Holly, Lion and Jay, by showing them a secret way to the top of the cliff. They have no idea that Squirrelflight is not their mother, of course, their mum is rescuing and that’s natural to them. 

And Ashfur appears through the fog and the fire and the smoke, and they’re trapped, and they need Ashfur to hold steady a bridge, a tree, that they can run along. And there’s something in Ashfur’s expression that Hollyleaf doesn’t like.

Desperately she tried to step onto the end of the branch. At once Ashfur rounded on her, fully conscious again, his teeth bared in a snarl.

“Stay there!” Turning to face Squirrelflight but keeping one paw on the branch, he hissed, “I can’t believe you didn’t know how much you hurt me. You are the blind one, not Jayfeather. Who do you think sent Firestar the message to go down to the lake, where the fox trap was? I wanted him to die, to take your father away so you’d know the real meaning of pain.”

Hollyleaf’s shocked gaze met Lionblaze’s. “He tried to kill Firestar?” she gasped. “He’s mad!”

Determination glittered in Lionblaze’s eyes, and he bunched his muscles for a giant leap. “I’m going to fight him.”

“No!” Hollyleaf fastened her teeth in his shoulder fur. “You can’t!” Her words were muffled now. “He’ll just push you into the fire.”

“Brambleclaw saved Firestar then,” Ashfur went on to Squirrelflight. “But he’s not here now. He’s not here—but your kits are.”

Squirrelflight’s eyes blazed. For a heartbeat Hollyleaf thought she was going to pounce on the gray warrior, but she knew that exhausted and in pain, her mother would have no chance. Squirrelflight seemed to realize it, too. She drew herself up, head high; she was trembling, but her voice was clear and brave.

“Enough, Ashfur. Your quarrel is with me. These young cats have done nothing to hurt you. Do what you like with me, but let them out of the fire.”

“You don’t understand.” Ashfur looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time; his voice was puzzled and petulant. “This is the only way to make you feel the same pain that you caused me. You tore my heart out when you chose Brambleclaw over me. Anything I did to you would never hurt as much. But your kits . . .” He looked through the flames at Hollyleaf and her brothers, his eyes narrowing to dark blue slits. “If you watch them die, then you’ll know the pain I felt.”

The flames crackled threateningly closer; Hollyleaf felt as if the heat was about to sear her pelt into ashes. She edged backward, only to feel the edge of the hollow give way under her hind paws. The three of them were pressed tightly together, so close that if one of them lost their balance, all three would be dragged off the cliff. Hollyleaf couldn’t control the trembling that shook her whole body as her glance flickered between the cliff and the fire.

Jayfeather was crouched close to the ground, looking tinier than ever with his pelt slicked f lat by the rain. Lionblaze’s claws were unsheathed, glinting as the lightning flashed out again, but the tension in his haunches didn’t come from preparing to leap at Ashfur; it came from the effort of keeping himself on the top of the cliff.

Squirrelflight raised her head, her gaze locked on Ashfur’s crazed eyes. “Kill them, then,” she meowed. “You won’t hurt me that way.”

Ashfur opened his jaws to reply, but said nothing. Hollyleaf and her brothers stared at their mother. What was Squirrelflight saying?

Squirrelflight took a step away from them, and glanced carelessly over her shoulder. Her green eyes were fiercer than Hollyleaf had ever seen them, with an expression she couldn’t read.

“If you really want to hurt me, you’ll have to find a better way than that,” Squirrelflight snarled. “They are not my kits.”

The noise of the storm and the fire faded and the only sound Jayfeather could hear was the blood roaring in his ears. He shookhis head, straining to hear what Squirrelflight and Ashfur said next, cursing the blindness that hid their expressions from him.

“You’re lying.” Ashfur’s voice was choked with disbelief.

“No, I’m not.” Squirrelflight spoke softly, but her intensity pierced through the crackle of the f lames. “Did you see me give birth? Did I nurse them? Stay in the nursery until they were apprenticed? No.”

“But—I” Ashfur began, then fell silent. Jayfeather could almost hear the paws of memory racing through his mind.

“I fooled all of you, even Brambleclaw,” Squirrelflight went on scornfully. “They are not mine.”

THE WORST TRUTH

[I’m just expecting the belateded going live at this point]

-- to give it a bit of welly. So that’s the scene that shaped the whole arc of the Power of Three - was that Squirrelflight was going to reveal the terrible secret she’d been carrying, in the worst possible way. [the audio breaks up slightly] I’m not sure this started very well, sorry. 

As I said briefly before, this scene came to me before I shaped the whole of the Power of Three. I knew that the truth about the kits would have to come out, but I wanted it to be dramatic, and I wanted it to be the worst possible thing for both Squirrelflight and the kits and Leafpool. And if you remember back in the first arc, I first learned about the challenge of not meeting people’s expectations when someone else - a fellow editor called Matt - suggested to me that Firestar didn’t kill Tigerstar, that in fact it should be Scourge who kills Tigerstar and we would all just feel horrifically upset by it, including Firestar.

So again I wanted to do something that would confound expectations. I wanted to show the length that Squirrelflight would go to to protect these kits. She loves them as much as if she’d given birth to them. She had raised them, after all. That is something very powerful. It is nurture over nature. It’s a cause very close to my heart, the idea of raising a child that is not your own, and I absolutely believe that you do not have to give birth to someone to be willing to give up your heart to them in a moment. 

I wanted to demonstrate that Squirrelflight felt the same way, but ironically the way she can do this, the way she can save their lives when Ashfur is threatening to let them all fall off the cliff or burn to death, is by disowning them. I just had this incredibly powerful vision, an image in my head, of a cat standing on a cliff surrounded by fire, saying ‘kill them now. They mean nothing to me because they are not mine’. And by disassociating herself from them, by telling Ashfur that she didn’t care what happened to them, it would be the only way to save these cats’ lives. She would have to denounce them. Not only in front of Ashfur, revealing this secret knowing that it could destroy everything, but in front of the kits themselves. It must have just been horrific. I know it’s only a book, I know it’s a story, I know these cats aren’t real. But in this moment, Squirrelflight is real to me. 

When I was coming up with storylines, often I would dream that I was a cat in the forest running alongside them. And I’m sure it’s no secret now to know how much of me is in these books, and this scene, this scene does what I wanted it to do. This scene shows Squirrelflight so desperate to save the lives of these kittens, these kits, that she risks losing their love, their respect, their affection, everything, in order to save them. And of course they won’t analyse that, they never realise that. You know, it sows the seeds for an awful lot of drama, and it destroys Hollyleaf - as we know, she goes on to do something really, really dreadful because she cannot cope with the enormity of this moment. But it is essential that Squirrelflight does it. It is the only way she can halt Ashfur and get them off this burning cliff. 

There are a lot of things in Warriors that I am proud of. Lot of things I’m not proud of, as well, because you after all are the best at pointing out my mistakes. But this scene does what I wanted it to do. And I’m very grateful to it, and of course to Cherith for bringing it to life so beautifully. 

It might not have escaped your attention that I seem to have missed out The New Prophecy, I haven’t done a reading from that. However, I’m writing an article for the Warriors Hub at the moment which will be about The New Prophecy so obviously I’ll post a link to that when it’s ready. Don’t feel that I’m missing out. But if there is a scene that you would really like me to read and talk about it, please do post in the comments and I’ll see what I can do. I’m happy to do requests. We seem to be in lockdown for a lot longer. It’ll be an absolute joy perhaps to read and talk about some of your favourites as well. Take care, stay safe, bye!

[zedecksiew]

d100 Adventure Beginnings

Feeling anxious, indoors because of the Covid-19 quarantine, I adapted an idea from Khairani Barokka and asked Twitter to give me emojis.

I’d turn these emoji into oddities, instigations, opening to adventure.

Guess I wanted to travel? In my head, far afield. It took the weekend, but it made me happy. There were many, many typos, but I visited a hundred different microcosms, with a hundred different persons.

Original thread begins HERE; tweets in the thread were tagged / attributed.

+

d100 ADVENTURE BEGINNINGS

1. 🥐 The sandwich comes to you via delivery. You unwrap the foil as the quadrotor buzzes away. There's something in your sandwich, between tempe patties -an oil-stained slip of card. "Come alone," it says. There is a street address. ~

2. [Photograph of a vine tendril] Watering the garden, you see your morning glory stir.

Its tendrils uncoil. Its vines unclench, recede. Knot in on themselves, twine into thin limbs.

They let go of your fence. They have a face. Flower eyes: two purple trumpet blossoms. They offer a hand to shake.

~

3. [Italian flag] Morning ritual: put coffee on, wash face, check phone. Twitter takes a half-hour.

You smell burning. Coffee! Your moka pot is now sooty, long past hissing. A man stands next to it, made of steam.

"Salve," the steam ghost says, tipping his steam cap.

~

4.  🕯️ A warm night. The air is still. The candle flickers in your partner's face. She is checking her wallet. Slips it in her pocket as the candle dies.

"Ah!" she says, in darkness. "So over this power cut."

Time to get more candles.

~

5.  🔧 This is a *great* spot to get a flat: Lonely road, no streetlights, trees knitting their branches overhead. You shiver. You hate that you shiver. You're an adult. You make noise to assert this. The jack clunks on the ground. "Darling?" somebody whispers.

~

6. 🦚 "Make way for Lady Lerna!" cries the page, swinging his censer. Behind him a dozen men bear a gilded litter.

Laughter. Ringed fingers part the curtains. A powdered dowager wearing a cartwheel ruff of peacock eyes peers out. She holds her nose.

You hate her.

~

7. 🐷 Suckling pig. Its split-jaw-ed head faces you. You have never been more aware of an animal corpse.

Goldteeth Liu sips his cognac and asks: "Hey boy, why you not eating? My food not good enough for you is it?

"You feel sweat on your chest, where the wire is.

~

8. 👻 An ordinary corridor. Sconces, faded wallpaper, a painting.

"Behind the painting," a voice says.

A button behind the painting. Press it. The wall goes click. A crack appears.

"Now can I go?"

You unspool your spell, and the spirit leaves for her afterlife.

~

9. 🎲 The dice land. "Nine! Woo!" She moves her token, counting every space with a smack.

"What's with you?" they ask her.

"What you mean?" she giggles. She never did know how to play it cool. But she doesn't have to. Under the table, she puts her feet in your lap.

~

10. 🦷 When you took this assignment, they gave you two false molars:

The one in your right cheek is a transmitter -- a signal for Ops to start the evacuation; The one in your left is a cyanide pill, in case of capture.

Or was it the other way around?

Shit.

~

11. 🐉 From heaven a serpentine form, golden and gleaming. Growling like thunder ground out of the earth.

Descending, approaching --

But getting no bigger? Is it shrinking?

It is in front of you, now. It is as big as your forearm -- no, your finger.

"Bite me," it squeaks.

~

12. 🍞 The curfew has gone on for months. You have survived through food shortages, power cuts, rumours of civil unrest.

But now you are in trouble. Now, you enter your second trimester. Now, you crave.

Gardenia white bread.

You will brave cordons to get it.

~

13. 🧎‍♀️ You are hurrying to your car when somebody calls: "Girl? Girl!"

The voice comes from a red altar under a tree, past the kerb. From a songkok-ed uncle, as tall as your calves.

"Got food ah girl?" the roadside god says. "Two weeks already uncle hasn't eaten."

~ 

14. 👀 Someone has been pasting googly eyes on your stuff:

Your mailbox in the lobby; The telephone pole in front of your parking spot; The flower pot on the balcony.

Creepy. "It's not me!" your housemate says.

This morning, you find googly eyes on your forehead.

~

15. 🔐 The padlock on your front door is broken.

The door swings open onto an empty living room. On the floor: rectangles of dust, where your shelves and cabinets once stood.

As well as a shred of newsprint. "Take this, Mat!" it says.

Your name's not Mat.

~ 

16. 🎟️ Pa played the lottery on his birthday. Always with the same numbers: 1406, 2902. Ma's birthday. Yours.

Pa died last week. Yesterday was his birthday. You bought his numbers from the ticket counter.

Today you check the results: "First jackpot: 1406 2902."

~

17. 🦖 Dusting Dr Khoo's shelves, you accidentally knock over a novelty Tyrannosaurus piggy bank.

It shatters on the parquet floor.

There are ceramic shards, change -- and a passport with Dr Khoo's photo. Under a different name. In Cyrillic script.

Uh oh. 

~

18. 🍳 Eggs in your cast-iron pan -- the last three eggs you have.

Ina: "What are we going to do for protein, now?"

Gan: "We can search the shophouses in town. Or hope to catch a lizard?"

Ina makes a face. You shrug. With your cast-iron pan, you can cook anything.

~

19. 👻 Knock before you enter a hotel room for the first time. Say: "I'm coming in, okay?" Let its other occupants vacate.

But:You bustled in, dropped the card in its holder, threw your suitcase in the closet, dumped yourself on the bed.

So, now:

Don't look up. 

~

20. 🙆‍♀️ From you balcony, you watch your neighbour in the community playground. She is a dancer. She plays music on portable speakers. She practices pirouettes.

You wish you could work up the courage to talk to her.

She looks up, sees you watching, and waves.

~

21. 🗝️ "The key will open any lock," the goblin said.

The key feels heavy in your hand. Plain and iron. But when you bring it near the queen's jewellery box it shifts: turns silver and intricate.

A skeleton key!

"The key only works once," the goblin said.

~

22. 🎥 You don't like the protesters. So naive. And look at how they've spray-painted the street! Anarchists.

The cops charge with riot shields. They are beating protesters --

What are you doing?

You are recording this on your phone.

A cop points his baton at you.

~

23. 🥳 On your birthday you are surprised at the door. Balloons, food, music to dance to. A party! Laughing, you thank you friends.

"Thank Brian!"

"Brian?" you ask.

"Your cousin Brian?" they say. They point. He smiles and waves back. You don't recognise him.

~

24. 🤦‍♀️ Your headache gets worse. On day three your vision blurs; you collapse in your bathroom.

You wake to familiar voice: "Hey."

It is your voice. "Don't panic," your doppelganger says. "You're okay." She dried you off, put you in bed. She will not harm you.

~

25. 🍳 You tried to steal from the Pasha. He is magnanimous, and decided not to behead you. Instead, you will serve him.

You will journey into the wastes. You will brave the fire. You will acquire the Phoenix's egg. The Pasha is a gourmand. He wishes to eat it.

~ 

26. 🐙 "Finding the Perihelion Squid is not a problem," your captain says. "It glows in the water."

Sunset. A ray catches your captain's arm and belly, throwing the sucker-shaped burn marks there into textured relief.

"The problem is fighting it," your captain says.

~

27. 🚦 You stop at the lights. You look at your phone.

Somebody bonks your side-view mirror. "Oi!" you say -- but more people are rushing past. The drivers of the cars in front of you. What are they running from?

Across the intersection, a stampede of water buffalo.

~

28. ™️ "Breath Easy," the billboard says. A beach panorama, with a white family in the foreground: father, mother, daughter -- all three in pastel shirts. Eyes shut, chins up, smiling.

"VitaOX, premium bottled air," the billboard says. "A Sinochem-McDonald's company."

~

29. 🦥 The Colossal Ground Sloth is a geographic enormity.

See that hill, blocking our view of the rising sun? That's not a hill. That's a sloth. It sits, seemingly smiling, covered in trees. When it shudders the birds take flight.

Look: it opens its lake-like eyes.

~

30. 🗽 When the Statue vanishes, America freaks. Who's to blame? Terrorists? SJWs?

Then it turns out the Statue is also missing from all visual media: T-shirts, postcards, patriotic paraphernalia.

The White House settles on its favourite scapegoat -- China.

~

31. 🧩 The map to the Treasure of Sagely Fu is borne on the back of the Divine Tortoise:

Its scutes represent the 38 provinces of the Empire. Its coloration represents the hills and valleys. When Sagely Fu fought the Tortoise, he kicked a chip-mark into its shell.

~

32. 💙 The Heart Of Ice is a crystalline fortress, so high above the sea that the sky is twilight and the air freezes you solid.

There rules the Queen, a goddess of pure and alien elements. If you can make Her shed a tear she will grant you your heart's desire.

~

33. 🌼 The pontianak is a monster -- born when a pregnant woman dies, wronged.

Seeking vengeance, she hunts men. She takes the form of a comely woman. One of her signs is the fragrance of frangipani blossoms.

"Hey," says the bar hostess. She smells of night flowers.

~

34. 🦊 "My foxies," the witch says. "My vulpies."

In her hut are bones, bones, bones. Piled in a bucket. Mounted on display stands. Sniffing your ankle -- fox skeletons, moving as they did in life.

"Can you do cats?" you ask, nodding to the bundle in your arms.

~

35. 🥾 The search parties assemble quietly. A trekker is lost on the mountain. Nobody is happy.

"I told him," one of the guides whisper. "I told him. Don't take anything, I said. You don't know whose things you're taking. But I saw him slip a stone into his pocket."

~ 

36. 🐬 The pool is still. Park management turns this fountain off at 10pm.

You like walking here, at night. You like the granite dolphins, mid-jump, frozen in time. You toss a coin into the fountain for luck. Clink.

There is a splash. A flash of motion. A fin.

~ 

37. 📚 In the book you find a letter, in delicate cursive:

"Dear Emily, Bought this book for your birthday. Which is also Valentine's Day. I will never be able to tell you that I love you. So I will never give this book to you. Sara."

Sara is your mother's name.

~

38. 🌲 A postcard of evergreens. A landscape you've only seen in photos.

You stash it in a notebook, stuff that in your bag.

"Over here," Michelle says. She grins, shimmies out of a space between leaning shelves. A box of double-A batteries. Meaning: jackpot.

~

39. 🥡 You bike to the pick-up.

It's a commissary in the middle of an industrial park. The guy at the counter says nothing. Just looks you up and down. He licks his lips.

"What's in this?" you ask, pointing at the takeaway pack.

"Meat," he says. He licks his lips.

~

40. 🎏 The airships of Vo Langka are fish-shaped.

Carp and arowana are most common -- but advances in aeronautics have made wing-form (ie: stingray-like) aircraft possible.

You are a pilot. Today you will test the first ever flying machine made in imitation of a bird.

~

41. 🐗 The boar charges your golf cart. The caddy veers onto the green.

Gunshots!

Your bodyguards down the beast. It came from the forest behind the golf course -- the one you've earmarked for clearing.

It's not the only forest creature that wants to murder you. 

~

42. ♻️ Your body slides into the furnace.

Your husband will pick through the ash and bones. Tomorrow he'll take a boat, sail a kilometre out, empty your urn in the sea.

The day after, silver pomfrets will school in a person's shape, and you will see the ocean.

~

43. ✨ It's a clear night. "Honey?" you call. "Come see!"

She whines -- you are tearing her from her work, she says. You insist. You point up.

Orion and the Dipper, the soft shine of the sickle moon.

"Wanna go for a walk?" you ask. She slips her arm into yours.

~

44. ✒️ The auto-pen you own is old. Picks up too much background chatter. The newer pens have noise-cancelling wards.

See? You've stopped dictating, but the pen is still writing:

"NO AH NO IT MOTHER PLEASE IT HURTS MAKE IT STOP"

Hell's not a good muse.

~ 

45. ��� The transitcraft trembles as it descends on its pillar of plasma.

"Sorry you didn't make it," the pilot says. "Cosmofleet is not for everyone." He's trying to be kind. This does not help.

He leaves you on the pad. Here you are, with packed bags, back home.

~

46. 🤫 The librarian drags you under the counter, pale with terror.

You hear the tread of the logovore. The meaning-eater. Books impaled on its spines -- leeched of their ink, their substance, going see-through, disappearing.

It does that to humans, too.

~

47. 🍥 You spit the fish cake out. From surprise, really. Because it is candy.

A confection of flour, sugar, pink food colouring, floating next to beef slices, on the oily surface of the noodles you ordered.

The kitchen makes you a new bowl. The chef is baffled.

~

48. 🛰️ Satellites no longer obey us.

Meteorology reverts to fortune-telling. Intelligence becomes earth-bound. Defense satellites play games of laser tag.

Broadcasting ends -- well, not really. When you turn on your TV it tells you: CALL YOUR MOTHER SHE MISSES YOU.

~

49. 🌿 Where you buried your cat, something is already growing:

A fresh stem of basil, putting out its mild scent; its green, convex leaves.You pluck a leaf, put it in your mouth. Your cat jumps into your lap. You feel her scrape your finger with her tongue. 

~

50. 🐸 The Weed Toad sprouts spiky fur filled with chlorophyll. Basically: it's a frog with grass on its back. It can be a pest.

When you step into your garden something squeaks.The toad jumps away, incensed. Its siblings hop off, too. Your whole lawn, leaving you. 

~

51. 👾 Pixel Goblins are voxeloids, walking about in waking life. Refugees from a reality whose servers shut down two years ago.

They eat electricity. They line the sidewalk. "Hungry," the Pixel Goblin says. She looks at your phone, hopeful.

You have 11% battery left. 

~

52. ✴️ "I am chaos!" the boy shrieks. "A conduit of magick!"

You can hear that hard "k" from here. Baldie in an Invisibles tee and factory-distressed jeans, thinks he knows magic? Please.

Then he pisses on your headstone. Which is rude. So you possess him.

~

53. 👣 Footprints, made with oil. They cut across the driveway, onto the grass, leaving rainbow sludge on some clovers. They turn the corner of your house.

You turn the corner, too.

In front of you, the prints have stopped, side by side. Their toes now face you.

~

54. 🐷 In the middle of his emergency pandemic address, during a live broadcast, on national television --

The Prime Minister oinks.

He blinks. Clears his throat, looks at the teleprompter -- and oink-oink-oinks.

The PM's eyes blink tears. Then the broadcast cuts out. 

~

55. 🌙 Can we trust the moon?

See its phases -- the way it goes from a bright circle, wanes into a crescent, shuts completely, then opens again, waxing half into full --

Like a creature blinking: slowly, ever so slowly.

The moon has not looked directly at us. Yet. 

~

56. 🌺 You tuck a hibiscus in her hair. "It's pretty!" you say, before she reacts. "Plus it's patriotic."

She rolls her eyes.

Day after the party she wants to meet you. That makes you happy. She's not happy. The flower's driven a root into flesh, behind her ear.

~

57. 🍜 This bowl of noodles, made from soup powder, desiccated ramen, the last remaining tomato in the fridge, one overcooked egg -- 

It's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted.

This shouldn't be possible. You cry. You'll never have anything this good again.

~

58. 🥦 "This," Mother says. "This needs to be half-size."

You know this moment. The kitchen was never your thing. You made an excuse and left to play videogames in your room. Two days later Mother died. Car accident.

This time you stay. You cut the floret in two. 

~

59. 🌵 The Blood Prickle's blossom is prized by cities that border the Pebble Sea. Dried, smoked, its fume delivers accurate prophecies.

The Blood Prickle only blossoms when watered by the viscera of living creatures. You lead your herd of sheep into the desert.

~

60. 🕸️ The bungalow is covered in gossamer, like a suitcase shrink-wrapped at the airport. Shreds stick to you, glue.

"Go away!" the bungalow's owner says. You see her eight eyes peer at you from a window.

"Babe, please," you say.

"Stop stalking me!" she shouts. 

~

61. 🐼 The ghost bear waddles across the plaza and through a wall.

They felled a forest to build this strip mall. But they did not exorcise its ghost. Ghost vines hang from the ceiling. Ghost trees fill changing rooms. In the car park a ghost brook babbles, incoherently.

~

62. 🕯️ You blow out the candle. "Happy birthday!"

Your friends have grey hair. Others dance to Kelly's playlist. Something in your brain snaps -- you do not know how old you are.

There is only one candle on the cake. It tells you: you are however old you want to be. 

~

63. 🍥 At the bottom of an empty paint bucket in your backyard shed, you discover a giant millipede, dark red, curled into a spiral.

You name her Millie. Obviously.

You boyfriend is disgusted. Slightly jealous of the attention you allot her. He was always insecure.

~

64. 🍡 The city is a shadow. Office towers in shards. Hypermalls with their skybridges broken. Collapsed nightclubs.

In the midst of all this, on an overgrown street, incongruously -- the smell of boiling soup. Fry-oil. Fish balls. A lok lok truck, greasy and pristine.

~

65. ✨ The light in her eyes die when you tell her to leave.

You lose your job at the production house. Once again, you are a freelancer. Interviewers pooh-pooh your portfolio.

You will learn how to draw again. Your muse was a crutch. You must do this on your own.

~

66. 🔮 Everything is as kitschy as you expect. Fake-velvet curtains and tablecloth. A set of tarot cards from Etsy. Even a crystal ball!

But when the fortune-teller looks up and sees you, she says: "No no, out."

What?

"You. No. Get out," she says, afraid. 

~

67. 🥵 Ten laps in the pool. Then you pant to the sauna.

Stones sizzle as you open the door. Somebody is here, already. You take the opposite bench. He has an athlete's thighs. Sweat on his obliques make them look oiled.

He looks you up and down. Smirks. Judges.

~

68. 🗨️ In the kitchen Khan grunts. Khan being Khan, you think.

Sylvia comes in. She makes an oinking sound.

He grunts. She oinks again. Hoot-hoot. He hisses in reply. It appears to be a conversation.

Sylvia sees you staring. Waves a hand in your face, asks: "Moo?" 

~

69. 👹 "They are going to hate me," she says, frowning around her tusks."

They are going to love you," you say.

In her nervousness she walks up to the microphone, no intro, just launches right into it. Her poem is electric. She is electric. And she is yours.

~

70. ⚛️ Guards, gyrocopter patrols -- Coilhaus Atomworks’s compound is well-protected. Which is as you expected.

You didn't expect the hex-wards in the inner compound. When you set foot on the manager's balcony, the teak floor shrieks: INTRUDER INTRUDER INTRUDER HERE! 

~

71. 🌂 The Bum Under The Overpass jumps out. You yelp.

"Flee, peasant!" he growls. He reeks. He has a bin lid for a buckler, a brolly for a sword. "I shall shield ye against yon creature!"

You peer into the dark under the overpass -- and notice the hulking shadow there.

~

72. 💀 The captain wears a cutesy plastic skull on a silver chain. You don't think it fits with her camo grease, her fatigues.

"My daughter made this," she says.

You nod. You miss your son, too. All this -- the pay you earn, burning villages -- you do for your children. 

~

73. 🦧 "Orangutan Kong". Some sort of gangster moniker?

No. Kong is actually an orangutan. He escaped from the Zoo, and started working in Goldtooth Tat's crew. As comic relief. Everybody who laughed at him is dead now.

If you want to work for him you should know. 

~

74. 🧠 The robot ploughs through Market Street. Tiles scatter like confetti; cars are stomped flat. Pressure in your ears -- a thunder clap! The police van up the road explodes.

"There!" your partner shouts, pointing. A brain in a glowing jar, in the robot's belly. 

~

75. 💈 You grew up here.The broom, the hair -- the chairs, Naugahyde over industrial frames. The mirrors, angled slightly, either side leading into infinity. The sink where Uncle Kuppu rinsed his razors and shaving brush.

Uncle Kuppu's gone. This place is yours, now. 

~

76. ⚗️ The alchemist stumbles backwards, knocks over a beaker.

"My formula," he whispers. "You're an assassin from the Bankers’ Guild? You can't have me turning lead to gold."

You shake your head. "No. I work with the Silversmiths' Guild. I'm here to protect you." 

~

77. 🔭 It is the fourth victim he has brought home.

They are always young, with tattoos. He restrains them, strangles them by the neck on the floor of his bathroom.

You watch, through your telescope. You should report him. But you like to watch them struggle. 

~

78. ⛩️ The way to Grand Andropolis is lined with 417 red gates -- each one for a glorious victory the Imperial Legions have won over lesser races.

Gate 412 marks the time they slaughtered your parents. You touch it, and swear quietly: you will burn Grand Andropolis. 

~

79. 🌻 The men at the big table drink beer, munch kuaci, laugh.

A woman with sunglasses arrives. The restaurant people tell her: "Kitchen closed already. Drinks?"

Just kuaci, she says.

She watches the men. When she bites the seeds open, you see long canines.

~

80. 🤖 You've never considered yourself technosexual. You thought robots cold. Then you met MARY-K8.

Her bright crystal optic sensors. Her omni-articulated limbs. Her way with words:

"HEY HUMAN USER," she synthesises. "HEART-UNIT NOT FOUND. PERHAPS YOU HAVE IT?"

~ 

81. 🦖 "The job is a museum," your master sighs. "Museum's are the worst."

You ask him why.

"We are exorcists, dumb-dumb! You know how many things the damn spirit can hide in? Can throw at us?"

When you master sees the T-rex skeleton in the atrium, he sighs again. 

~

82. 🎍 Treaties signed between the Yun Empress and the Princes of Elemental Wood have resulted in the Type-4 Rhizomic Footsoldier --

A stiff, lanky construct; needing only sun and soil; grown in vast groves; with souls of bamboo and therefore without mercy ...

~

83. 🧜‍♀️ Each year, the mer send an emissary to bargain with the dry world.

The tide swells, then withdraws just as quick, leaving a carriage of driftwood and flowering coral --

"Dammit!" a voice says. Rattling, from within. "Door's stuck!" A sigh. "Some help, please?" 

~

84. 🧠 "You're always going on about life hacks. So here," Mark says.

His gift is a book. "Telekinesis In 100 Days", its title says.

Mark smirks. "Enjoy!"

You'll show the bastard! It's just day 13. Already you can toss 50-cent coins with a lift of your eyebrow. 

~

85. 📯 The footmen blow their horns. The herald crows: "The Tyrant and Lady van Sur!"

They descend the stairs. The man frail, tubes stuck up his nose; the woman in silk, her wig so heavy it is held up by grav-suspensors --

One push of your remote, and the suspensors fail.

~

86. 🥶 You jolt awake. Ice is pressed to your ankle -- no, chilled skin. A toenail. Feet.

"Jesus. Your feet."

His apology is a snorted murmur. He curls further, pressing into the heat of your belly. His hair tussled, smelling of lavender.

What's his name? Can you remember?

~

87. 🚪 The heavy door is shut. Padlocked. Your lock sprite shakes her head. "Mechanism's rusted solid."

Your spell-dwarf grumbles. "Lead brackets, see? Shock hex won't work."

"Lemme try," your slip-spirit squeaks. Flattens itself, slips under.

Doesn't came back. 

~

88. 🌵 The Saguaro Sea is a vast tangle of sole-cutting rock, thorny brush, towering cacti broad as hillforts.

Here is found the Weeping Roc -- whose cry is a woman wailing; who steals children to feed its blind, featherless chicks.Children like your six-year-old. 

~

89. 💃 Flamenco star Magritte Tanaka's talent is such that people say it is more than just grace and training.

They say she made a bargain. When she dances a devil helps her; plays her like a puppet on strings.

Truth is he forces her. She never wanted to dance.

~

90. 🎸 You stole the keytar of synth legend Razzak Luminem from the Museum of Sidereal Art last month.

Tonight you host its auction. Many have shown up: demon worshipers; glamrock stars; violist perverts; members of the Critics' Cartel -- troublemakers.

Watch yourself. 

~

91. 🙆‍♀️ To fear the sky falling is silly --

Except in Fading Dassho, whose most dilapidated districts sit twilit under an obsolete stellar shield, its support struts increasingly ancient and tottery. A shutter collapsed, just last week -- shattering six thousand souls. 

~

92. 🤖 We sent unmanned drones through the Hell-portal; we assumed exposure to Ultimate Evil would be bad for the human psyche.

All moot, it turned out. Because drones are robots -- and, you know, that cliche about robots turning bad, turning KILL ALL HUMANS?

Well. 

~

93. 🏚️ A manor-turned-hotel, on a cliff, with a history of homicide? TrueCrimeFest 2018's organisers could not resist.

Three days of signings, panels, cosplay -- and a podcaster found garroted in her room.

Horrible! Horrible. (But, really: Best. TrueCrimeFest. Ever.) 

~

94. 🤪 The Rictus Worm causes paralysis. Distorts the muscles of the face.

Your eyes pop, your tongue hangs lolling. You speak drool and sputters. You try the chirurgeon. He thinks you are fooling. Kicks you out.

The Rictus Worm is rare. You feel it in your nape.

~

95. 🌌 One by one the stars disappear. Without their light -- were they ever there?Constellations vanish, nebulae fade. The moon hangs alone in the night sky.

Only our sun and its huddling planets remain. An isolated, solipsistic, self-obsessed apocalypse. 

~

96. 🤗 She welcomes you with open arms. "Happy you're home, Ah Boy," she says, kissing you, Tears on her cheek transferring to yours.

She is your mother; she calls you Ah Boy. Return appropriate amounts of affection. Your mission depends on how well you fool this woman. 

~

97. 🅱️ The mark is made in red ink. The letter "B". Not so bad, outsiders might think --but yours is an euphemistic society.

This is the Competency Test, through which all citizens are streamed. An "A" means you get to stay above-ground. A "B" sends you Below. 

~

98. 🎡 Anna gets into the pod before you. The ferris wheel begins to turn.

Travelling carnivals! Holdovers from a previous world, now surmounted by app-stores. You don't get the appeal. It's not even ironic --

High up, in the pod, Anna kisses you.

Now you get it. 

~

99. ☄️ You still remember your wonder --

A bright blue star, trailing a bright line, bisecting the sky. Staring at it would spoil your eyes, they said.

In your cockpit, as the countdown begins, you think: now you will be a bright blue star. There will be a young girl on the ground, watching.

~ 

100. 🥑 When you halve the avocado you don't find a seed. You find a tiny baby.

It is curled up foetal. It is the colour of mahogany. It fusses slightly -- then starts into a full-blown caterwaul; big droplets of blood well from where your rough knifework has nicked it.

+++

[stanskzseungmin]

BC ~ Corpse Party

Supernatural! + CorpseParty! AU

Genre: Angst, Horror

Trigger Warnings: Graphic descriptions of gore and death, Chan has a bit of a potty mouth oop-

Word Count: 4834

A/N: I took light inspirations from Corpse Party, but it isn't a direct retelling of the series. Credits to the original owners of Corpse Party for giving me inspiration for this imagining as well as credits for the character, Sachiko, and the Sachiko Ever After charm.

A/N 2: i actually tried to proofread this time (I know, shocking), but I got lazy and really want to get this one up lmao. So we kinda dying like men?

A/N 3: I suggest listening to the soundtrack as you read, but it's fine too if you don't.

~

~

Chan and you had always been close. You both grew up as next door neighbors. The two of you formed a fast friendship when your ball accidentally rolled over to your neighbor’s yard with it stopping by his feet. The dark haired boy with chubby cheeks looked at you with your red cherry ball within his hands. You had asked him if he wanted to play play along with a wide toothy smile that showed the gap in your teeth. You ran over the boundary to grab him by the wrist and the rest was history.

“Hey, short stuff. Are you ready to leave this hell hole?” Chan chuckled landing a light punch on your shoulder.

“You’re not going to be able to leave this hell hole if you don’t study for your final. I didn’t agree to stay after school to tutor you just for you to fool around,” you smiled back tossing a rolled up paper ball at him. The ball bouncing pathetically off his forehead, eliciting a “hey!” from him.

“Nu uh. You’re not tutoring me, I’m tutoring you,” Chan enunciated by pointing at himself then pointing at you.

“Dork,” Chan laughed at your remark. ”Chan, we’re tutoring each other on different subjects.”

“I can’t wait to go home, I’m pooped,” Chan exclaimed dramatically.

“Me too, but we’re stuck here until the storm ends,” you pointed your pen to the window with rain pattering against the glass as the night sky lit up with a loud thunderous boom.

“Ugh!” Chan leaned back in his chair and throwing his head back.

“Might as well to use this time to not procrastinate and squeeze in extra studying,” you suggested.

“But I don’t wanna~” Chan whined.

“What are you? 8?” you chuckled, shaking your head.

“Don’t you have any other ideas?” Chan sighed slumping over the table, sprawling his limbs over both your notes.

“I got one idea.”

“Do tell,” Chan sat up leaning his cheek on his hand.

“Do you have scissors?” you asked pulling out a sheet of paper. 

“Yeah, what’s up?” Chan rummaged through his backpack for the school supply.

“Have you ever heard about the ’Sachiko Ever After’ charm?” you asked grabbing the scissors from his grasp.

“Mmm mmm,” Chan pressed his lips together as he shook his head.

“I read it on a blog online,” you started, cutting the paper into a doll shape. “It’s a charm that blesses people with eternal friendship.”

“Lame,“ Chan snorted.

“Rude,” you pouted.

“Hey, we’ll still be friends forever,” Chan smiled grabbing your hand gently shaking it softly. “So what is it?”

“Legend has it that years ago there was a school that was met with a tragedy. The school nurse died in a tragic accident: she fell down the stairs and her neck was deformed and bent out of shape. Allegedly her daughter, Sachiko, went missing that same night.”

“And this ensures eternal friendship how?” Chan inquired, his eyebrow quirking up. The room lit up as thunder boomed.

You shrugged as you cleaned up the shape of the paper doll. “They say that her spirit still wanders the earth and she has the ability to grant wishes. If you do the ‘Sachiko Ever After’ charm, her spirit will channel through and give her blessings for eternal friendship.”

“Cool,” Chan smiled. “So how do we do it?”

You held up the paper doll. “We need at least two people in order to do the charm.  We both have to firmly grasp parts of this doll, then we chant ‘Sachiko, we beg of you.’ We have to do it in our head, one time for each person in the room. In our case, we have to chant it twice. Afterwards, we have to pull on the doll. Ideally, we keep the paper scrap on our person at all times.”

Thunder struck loudly as the room shook lightly.

Chan laughed. “This could be a sign? Sachiko doesn’t want us to be friends.”

“Very funny, Chan,” you responded sarcastically.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Chan grinned at you grabbing the doll’s legs with you grabbing the head.

“You ready?” you looked at him.

“Yeah,” Chan smiled.

‘Sachiko, we beg of you. Sachiko, we beg of you.’

Chan and you made eye contact and nodded to each other signifying you were done. With a firm grip, you both pulled on the doll, the paper ripping along the waist.

Lightning tore through the night sky as deafeningly loud thunder broke through the silence. The walls shook lightly as the lights flicker. The window shatters as the harsh winds force the tree branch that was tapping on the glass to break through.

“Wack,” Chan frowned, leaning over to his backpack to grab his wallet and slide his piece of paper into it with you doing the same to yours.

“So, now you’re stuck with me for eternity,” you giggled.

“Gasp. The horror!” Chan smiled as he grabbed the fabric of his shirt over where his heart is residing before throwing an arm around you to pull you into a hug.

You and Chan paused as the entire building shook. The tables moving along the vibrations. The lights were flickerings as books were shaken out of the book shelves.

“Earthquake!” Chan called out, reaching out to grab your shoulders to pull you down to the ground.

“Channie!” you called out, with panic laced in your voice.

“I’m here, I got you-”

The ground shook once more, this time the shaking was so much more forceful. You felt the vibrations stopping momentarily as the ground disappeared below you. Your heart skipped a beat and you and Chan stared at the dark abyss that suddenly appeared below you. Soon afterwards, both you and Chan starting falling into the darkness as a scream ripped out of your throat.

“Y/N!” Chan called out to you, reaching out to you. Your hands reach up to grab at his sleeves as he pulled you close to his body. “Don’t let go!”

That was the last thing you’ve heard before you were engulfed by the darkness.

~

~

You awaken (by Stray Kids) in an unfamiliar place. You sat up slightly, feeling the searing pain in your shoulder. You let out a small whine as you rubbed at your aching shoulder with your free hand.

“Chan?” you called out for your friend realizing he wasn’t with you. “CHAN?!”

You stood up on your knees as your frantically looked around the room. Outside the window was the same familiar thundering storm, but the room you were in was unfamiliar. The walls were greying and weak. The paint has chipped off, worn over the years exposing the weak splintering wood underneath. The floor was made of the same wood. There were holes decorating the floor as a few planks were popped up. Surrounding you were many desks, broken and tattered, knocked over haphazardly. Curiously, the desks were all on the smaller side. There were a few posters pasted to the walls, the ink and image faded away due to age. You can barely make out the faded text and image. It looked to be what was one a colorful cartoonish image with various letters on it.

Were you in...an elementary school?

“Channie?” you called out again, standing on your feet.

Thunder rumbled lightly outside as the rain pitter pattered lightly on the window. Lightning cracked through the atmosphere again, illuminating the dark room momentarily. You screamed at what you saw, backing up quickly. Your back roughly collided into the book shelf as you lost balance. Your hands reach out to the shelf to catch yourself.

Opposite of you on the other side of the room, was a sprawled body. An arm was outstretched as the head rested on the limb. Both eyes were void of any contents as it appeared as if a vast emptiness was staring deep into your soul. The mouth was open in a silent scream. The skin was grey with several wrinkles and had a texture similar to leather. The clothes were ripped and tattered as you saw bone peeking through the holes.

“Oh my god,” you breathed out, feeling your legs give out under you. You curled up on the floor, pulling your knees to your chest. Your hands overlap over your erratic heart as your breaths labor. You felt a chill ran down your spine as goosebumps appeared on your arms. You lifted your arm into view as your fingers grazed over the bumps to soothe them.

In your peripherals, a blue light illuminated the corner. In curiosity, you faced the light. Your heart dropping as your eyes widen. In a seated position with her knees pulled to her chest, a girl, red, boring deep into your souls. Her skin looked pure and pale as a sheet, but her red attire, what used to be a pretty red dress was torn and distressed. The fabric was fraying out and dirtied with who knows what -- things you wouldn’t dare to imagine. The figure’s hair was long and dark and in disarray. Strands of hair lingered in front of her face as her glaring wide eyes peeked through, you can feel her gaze burning holes through you.

You made eye contact with a girl as you felt an electric shock running throughout your veins. Cold sweat began forming in various spots in your body as your breathing became increasingly more labored. Fear wracked your body when you realized that your limbs felt as if it wasn’t your own anymore. The girl, without a sudden sound, stood upright in a straight posture and walked menacingly close to you. You wanted to protest, but even your mouth betrayed you. Your mouth was fixed in its clenched position as you were forced to watch the specter inch ever so closer to you. A hand was brought to her chest as the object glinted. Held by the base of the blade, was a squeaky clean unrusted pair of scissors as the lips curled upward in a small innocent smile.

Your blood curdling scream ripped through the air.

Chan had awaken with a jolt as he shot awake. His head was pounding as he rolled onto his back with a pained moan. He brought his fingers up to the throbbing pain, feeling warm liquid and a slight stinging upon contact. Bringing his hand into view revealed to the Aussie his brilliantly red coated fingers.

“Fuck,” Chan let his hand fall limp as he screwed his eyes shut. Chan let out a breathy sigh as he cracked his eyes open a bit. He took a nice long look at the cracked, worn and discolored ceiling not recognizing it.

“What the fuck? Where am I?” Chan wondered out loud shooting up into a sitting position, wincing loudly at the throbbing on his head protesting from the abrupt action.

“Ow ow ow,” Chan pressed his palm firmly onto the head wound as he willed himself off the ground. 

Lightning illuminated the room briefly. It was a small quaint room with faint evidence of childish crayon and marker scribbles on the wall. The floor was littered with various markers and crayons as well as various toys. Chan scanned the room from left to right. He eyed the sprawled out letter blocks, each block was gathering dust and spread out haphazardly. He then analyzed the several balls that were scattered on the floor. Chan’s eyes narrowed at a point of interest as he stepped forward towards an oddly familiar ball.

“What the fuck?” Chan shook his head in disbelief. His hand reached for the ball, his fingers grazing over the worn rubber as he rolled it towards him. 

“No,” Chan said sternly backing away quickly from the ball. Written on the ball scribbled with permanent marker was his and your names from your childhood days. Chan remembered the ball that started his long lasting friendship and vaguely recalled the ball popping and tossed due to the worn rubber from continuous use and play being weak and thin. Chan remembered the ball bouncing into his parent’s rose bush and the beloved toy popping.

“That’s- that’s not possible,” Chan whispered out. Chan turned away to step out of the room only to trip over the stacks of blocks gathered by his feet. “What?”

Chan’s eyes darted to the corner where the blocks were previously rested at only to find it bare. How did it gather at his feet?

"This is getting freaky," Chan grumbled stepping over the blocks.

Chan made his way towards the door of the room only to find a flipped over toy remote car blocking the doorway. Unlike everything else in the room that was greying and gathering dust, the car had a brilliant gloss and sheen over the red paint. Chan bent down to pick up the toy car and examine it closely. It looked to be in pristine condition with a fairly strong smell of fresh plastic.

"Why- aah!" Chan yelped when the car revved to life as the front two wheels began turning left and right frantically dropping the car as it fell and bounced on the ground. Pieces of plastic shattered and fluttered off during impact. The car bounced and rolled until it was on its hood, the battery casing popping off the bottom.

It was empty.

A loud scream shrieked through the atmosphere as Chan jumped up ready.

"Y/N? Y/N!" Chan barreled out of the room into an unfamiliar hallway. 

"Oh shit," Chan cursed as he stopped just in time, swaying back and forth trying to keep his balance. The room Chan was in led to a collapsed floor. The wood was splintering around the edges and the remaining wood creaked and groaned under Chan's weight. Chan peered down the hole, it seemed endless; Chan was unable to see past the darkness.

Chan pressed his back against the wall to shimmy his way to his right down the hallway back to solid ground. Going left wasn't an option do to the lack of structurally sound wood, the ones that were there looked as if they were rotting away and can give way when applied any sort of pressure.

Chan could hear you scream once more.

"Y/N?" Chan looked past  the huge collapsed gap on the floor as he sees you stumbling out of your room, landing directly on your back. Your eyes were wide and glossy, your hair was disheveled with several strands sticking in every direction. Panic wracked through your body, Chan can see all the trembles and could almost hear your labored breathing.

"Y/N? Y/N!" Chan tried to call out to you from his side of the gap.

Your head slowly turned to face his directly as your face paled impossibly whiter as if you've seen a ghost. Whimpers erupted from your lips as you quickly back up and ran away.

"Y/N! Wait!" Chan called out, reaching out an arm, but you were already gone.

You whimpered to yourself as you slowly walked down the stairs, jumping slightly after every creek of the wood holding against your weight. Paranoia wracked your being as your dilating eyes dart back and forth at every single nook and cranny. The air felt heavier the further you walked down as if there were more paranormal activity in the air, but you kept pushing on. You needed to get away from that thing you saw.

"Anything was better than that," you would whisper to yourself in a dire attempt to console your erratically beating heart.  A fleeting feeling rushed through you. The heavy atmosphere felt as if it was pushing against you, the weight of it putting pressure over the entire surface area of your body. Your thighs subconsciously rubbed against each other as your hands absentmindedly trailed down to your pelvis area. You didn't notice it before, but it felt full and overflowing, close to bursting. The heavy atmosphere made the need for relief more dire.

You whined loudly. Why did you need to go now of all times?

You rushed down the hallway, each step creaking loudly in protest as you pushed opened the door. You yelped after being greeted by another deceased form, two actually. One larger than the other as it held the smaller within its arms. Both their eyes were hollow and dark like the one before, but their facial skin had more integrity. It was off colored with hollow cheeks. Their clothes looked clean, almost too clean. What was more off putting was the familiarity of it. You screamed shaking your head vigorously as tears flowed out in streams with your body shaking in fear. 

They were donning what you and Chan were wearing.

"How horrible," Chan grumbled gazing at the sight of two bodies before him. One was was upright against the wall with the other sprawled on the floor. The one sat up right had a dark stain on their dress shirt. The once white shirt now had a large black spot. The skin underneath looked raw and torn, the flesh looked ferociously torn open by a wild animal. The other body lying on the floor had a similar black stain along their jaw. The body had decayed enough where the skin shriveled and exposed the teeth, within the junction between two teeth had evidence of meaty flesh that used to be there.

Chan groaned in disgust as he leaned down to grasp at the discarded piece of parchment. The back was blank and had a dark browning blood smear. Chan turned the piece of parchment over to read the desperate chicken scratch. Most of it was illegible and covered by drying bits of blood and dirt. 

"We… starving.

… food… 

Itchy… scratchy…

Rock, paper, scissors

Loser… eats winner."

"Oh my fucking god," Chan exclaimed tossing aside the scrap note. "This has got to be a sick joke." 

Chan shuddered momentarily as he continued down his hallway trying to make his way to you. Chan wasn’t really the type to believe in the paranormal. Sure, Chan liked to indulge in the superstitions and the good scare of ghost stories (much to your dismay), but that doesn’t necessarily mean he believes in them. The whole building seemed to look in complete disrepair as if not a single soul has been here for years. The entire place was silent, more or less, the only noises that permeated throughout the entire building were the muffled thunderstorm outside, the building settling and himself. Chan’s entire body stiffened as a cold chill ran down his spine. A low moaning came and went like it wasn’t even there. Chan whipped around to check his behind only to see nothing out of the ordinary. Soft gurgling could be heard, similar to someone gurgling their mouth with mouthwash. Chan whipped around once more, each noise came and went but it sounded like it was directly behind him. 

“What is this bullshit?” Chan mumbled under his breath, turning back the way he was originally going. His breath hitched when he noticed a figure of a small child glowing a pale blue at the end of the hallway. Chan’s eyes widen as he blinked repeatedly. 

“No,” Chan spat. “I am not seeing ghosts.”

The same gurgling sound could be heard from the child. Chan gulped once he finally took in the child’s entire appearance. The child was wearing what used to be a white sweater, the white now painted a brilliant red along with a simple pleated skirt, knee high socks and black flats-- standard elementary uniform. While her body seems physically unharmed, her head was an entirely different story. Chan froze in place as he felt as if his feet were nailed to the ground. The girl trudged towards Chan with a slight wobble and limp to her step. A bloodied hand was outreached trying to grasp at Chan as she walked closer. Chan’s jaw went slack staring directly at the girl, everything jaw up was missing. It was a painful sight. The skin looked red and raw, the anatomical evidence of the upper mandible and the upper vertebrates of the spine was gone. Pieces of hair were desperately holding onto the missing skin of the neckline and the skin desperately looked like it was ready to roll back down as if you wore pants with too loose of a waist band. The flatness of it was horrendous, the lower half of her head look as if it was displaying the lower jaw and tongue on a rouge serving platter. 

Another loud scream broke him from his trance. Your scream. 

The headless girl still walked over towards Chan every so slightly with an arm outstretched with gurgling noises coming from the blood bubbling in her esophagus. Even if the danger before had a higher threat, his priority was you. Chan pushed forward sidestepping the girl, her tiny hands barely missed Chan as he rushed for the staircase behind her. Chan barreled down the stairs, his left hand holding on the railing using it as leverage to swing around the staircase. Chan let out a pained yelped as his fingers sliced on something. Chan stopped where he stood to examine his fingers. A huge gash was lined diagonally beginning from his index down to his middle as the blood spewed out in rivers of red as it dripped to the floor. 

“Ah, shit. Shit, shit, shit,” Chan cursed grasping at his fingers trying to stop the blood flow. Upon closer inspection, Chan noticed a singular nail protruding out of the hand rail. A bundle of piano wire was gathered around the metal objects as it stretched out to the wall opposite. A small portion of the wire was dyed red with Chan’s blood as a singular drop fell towards the floor. 

“What the fuck?” Chan breathed out, analyzing the wire. His uninjured hand ghosted over the wire wincing by how sharp it was. It was thin, almost transparent to the naked eye. Only upon close inspection with a critical eye, would one see the metal wire. 

“That’s fucked up,” Chan ducked under that metal wire to continue on.

What you don’t know, can’t hurt anyone right?

You were currently waddling with your thighs being pushed together as you desperately trying to hold it in. You had some pride within you, you wouldn’t be able to live it down if you had to squat in the corner to relieve yourself. Even if Chan never knew about it, you can practically hear Chan clowning you about it for the rest of your life. 

“Oh my god, yes! Thank you!” you sighed as your bolted toward the restroom with a sign that displayed a silhouette in a skirt. Your hand reached for the handle when a familiar voice from within stopped you. It was an old fashioned knob with an old fashioned keyhole. You kneeled down peek through the keyhole. As you expected, the voice was indeed familiar. You could see Chan standing before a stall. His head was hung low slightly. You noticed there was someone in the stall Chan was standing in front of, but you couldn’t see or hear who it was. Only parts of her front were peeking out of the stall, you can faintly see the outline of the figure standing on a bucket with their arms rope bound before her. You could also make out a rope tied to the ceiling.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” you panicked as your heart raced in your chest. You watch Chan without hesitation kick the bucket from under the figure as their bound hands flew to their neck. “Oh god. Channie, why?” you wailed out. You gasped when you see Chan turn his head towards the door, his eyes were hidden behind his fringes that were matte and almost sticking to his forehead. 

Whimpering lightly, you stumbled backwards totally ignoring the need to relieve yourself as adrenaline rushed through your system. Quickly getting up to your feet, you sprinted the other way, ducking into the first hallway you passed. Your eyes were clenched shut as you blindly sprinted the other direction. The sound of your erratic heartbeat was thundering loudly in your ears as you heard heavy footsteps behind you.

You screamed when you collided with a hard chest. The impact sending you falling to the ground with you landing on your butt ungracefully.

“Y/N?” the voice called out to you. You felt his hand gently grasping your arm.

“No! Let me go!” you wailed, kicking at your assailant.

“Y/N? Y/N! It’s me, Chan! It’s ok, I got you!” he tried to calm you down by grasping at both your flailing arms.

Your eyes cracked open to the man before you. How did he end up ahead of you? You didn’t even stop to consider that he actually looks different. Unlike the Chan you saw just moments before, this Chan actually had a head injury-- red, raw, puffy and bleeding and his fringe was still styled up and out of his face exposing his forehead and eyes. 

However, the murder you had witnessed was still fresh in your mind. You screamed and thrashed within Chan’s grip who was desperately trying to ground you in reality. Your breathing was getting ragged and breathy as panic struck. You watched Chan murder someone, what if he was going to murder you too?

“It’s ok. It’s ok, Y/N. Just breathe!” Chan spoke calmly trying not to prod at your panic attack. “Y/-” 

You managed to release your dominant arm from his grip and gave him a firm blow to the jaw with your fist and kicking him off of you, by landing a swift harsh kick to his torso knocking the air out of his lungs and him flying backwards. Chan was coughing roughly from the harsh attack. 

“Y/-” he coughed, interrupting himself mid sentence. You got up, jumping over his downed body and sprinted down the hallway. 

“Wait! Y/N!” Chan called out to you as he stood up to follow.

“Get away from me!”

“Why? Y/N, wait! Talk to me, please!”

“No! No! No! Leave me alone!” you bawled, your voice cracking after every word. You pulled open the door to the stairway and ran up the stairs. The door swinging shut behind you as Chan’s eyes widen in horror remembering what was there.

“Y/N! DUCK!” Chan screamed out desperately.

“What?” you breathed out.

Thump.

Chan’s heart skipped a beat as he stopped before the door. Suddenly he felt as if he was a fly ensnared in a fly trap. His legs were heavy as if gravity had his ankles in a vice grip. 

“Y/N?” Chan whispered out, his voice betrayed him.

“Y/N?” he called out once more weeping.

He willed his legs to move even if they so desperately want to stay rooted to the ground. With trembling hands, he wrapped his fingers around the door handle and slowly pulled the door open. His heart was trembling in his chest as he feared what was going to be revealed behind the door.

“No, no, no,” Chan weeped shaking his head. His face scrunched up as his lips parted to weep and his eyes welled with tears. A strong stench of urine filled his nose. Your body was slumped over the incline of stairs with a leg bent awkwardly in an unnatural direction, a puddle of liquid pooling just below your pelvis. Your eyes were wide staring straight at him as your jaw went slack. Your cheeks were decorated by the recently running tears. From the piano wire suspended in between the wall and the railing, a section was red and dripping as your head rolled, bouncing pathetically down each step like a deflated ball with it stopping by his feet.

“Hey there! Do you want to play ball with me?” you called out with a toothy smile, showing off the gap between your teeth proudly.

Ugly screams ripped through his vocal chords. Chan’s cries of despair, mourning and pure raw emotion kept coming out. His voice reverberated throughout the walls. Chan fell to his knees, his hands grasping at his locks pulling at it as he kept screaming. His eyes were wide as his gaze couldn’t focus on anything other than your lifeless orbs.

Stood atop the stairway as the familiar headless specter in blue. Chan looked at her in horror as tears free fell from his eyes. She outreached her hand again, but this time something was within her small grasp. Chan recognized the faux leather material, the smiling faces of you and Chan was shown from the display pocket of your wallet. In her other hand, the bottomless paper doll that was yours. Chan can feel the weightless paper scrap securely stored in his wallet weighing down his pocket.

“Cool,” Chan smiled. “So how do we do it?”

You held up the paper doll. “We need at least two people in order to do the charm.”

We need at least two people in order to escape.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

It’s been a long decade

This time 10 years ago, I was 14, sneaking onto my brother’s computer, waiting for the new year with @alphahas and a bunch of others on the Roblox forums. 

That doesn’t begin to express how much my life has changed this decade, but for some reason, it’s one of the most memorable parts. 

In 2010 - I gained my first drop of internet fame making DBZ-themed Roblox clothing, dropped out of school for 3 months leading up to the summer holidays, bingeread all the Twilight books, decided that my education was more important than my feelings about getting bullied, went back into school, got my first Xbox and Laptop, and began playing on Xbox Live 6 hours a day. 

In 2011 - I ditched Twilight for Discworld, made some new school friends for the first time in my life, played a LOT of Left 4 Dead 2 with my sister, got my heart broken by Modern Warfare 3, and at the end of the year, I moved in with my dad and his fiance for the first time - moving from a shitty, overcrowded, unclean house into a strict environment  where yes I do have to shower every day, and yes I do eat proper food with actual utensils rather than used paper plates.  

In 2012 - My dad and his fiance split up and kicked me back down to my mother’s house just before my GCSEs began, and I was obviously very unhappy about this, so I decided to bingewatch Adventure Time across the 3 weeks they took place. Fortunately my GCSEs survived the fallout. I became inspired to draw Adventure Time art, massively improved my digital art style within the space of a couple months, and opened my first tumblr blog dedicated to analysing Adventure Time. 

In 2013 - My blog kicked off, I was making plenty of friends during my A-levels, and I was deeply enjoying school for the first time ever. On top of this, my dad finally got a place of his own and invited me to live with him. I’m still living with him now and the quality of life is much better, everything is much cleaner, we have actual heating, I’m actually clean, I had a stable food source, I cannot describe how much the change benefitted my life.  Even if he is an unstable moody bastard. Oh, also, I read Homestuck.  

In 2014 - I got really fit at the start of the year going to gym 3 times a week, then I studied AMERICAN POLITICS in A-level (which 2 years later I’d deeply regret). I did better in my A-levels this year than the previous year, so evened out to B’s all round. It might have been better if my good sociology teacher didn’t get sacked for accidentally sabotaging every health and social care student...  Applied for university and got a placement in the best uni in Wales. Started Uni. Had tons of money for first time. Got fat very quickly, RIP my weight. Got depressed and lonely in Halls. Hated politics classmates. At the end of the year I deleted my Adventure Time blog, and.... started getting really into Homestuck. 

In 2015 - Opened up this blog (hello it’s been 5 fucking years!!!), slouched off in university, became a massive Terezi stan, drew lots of Homestuck comics. I ate a tons of Quiche as well. It was okay. I’m going to be honest, other than this blog taking off not a lot of interesting things happened to me in 2015.  However, Undertale came out this year, so that was cool.  

In 2016 - Found Dad increasingly difficult to live with as he was getting frustrated with... everything about me, for some reason. It sucked. Brexit happened, the US election happened, Homestuck Act 7 happened, Hiveswap went off the map. I don’t remember much about this year and I’m glad for it because I was not happy. I think this is when I joined the Homestuck Reddit though/ 

In 2017 - Graduated University!!!! Volunteered in a charity shop for a few months whilst looking for a job, did 5 weeks of crappy work experience in a job centre. What else happened this year? I’m sure it was a lot of things but really I can’t remember. Got myself a Nintendo Switch. Became a permanent member of the Homestuck Discord. 

In 2018 - I secured myself a job! Hooray!!!! This alleviated the tensions with my dad, because he was happy that I was finally working. We’ve been on good terms since. As irritating as working in customer service for 8 hours a day can be, I liked that I was doing something all the time and the year could be a memorable one for that reason, rather than fading away like the previous 3 years had. The year was capped off by Deltarune, and being given a fuckton of wine by work contractors. 

In 2019 - A lot of terrible videogames came out earlier this year but it was mitigated by the release of DMC5, which must be cherished by all. I was put on short-time in January after the first Reckoning, then I got my full hours back in March when given a new role. Then our main client went into administration, and the OMEGA-Reckoning happened and everybody else in my tier lost their jobs with me as the sole survivor. We had no wine this year either, which is the saddest thing honestly. Later in the year I started taking up driving lessons, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to drive by spring, though my instructor thinks that is too optimistic. I’ve found driving tough because of how my brain works; I can only concentrate on one thing at a time, so when I’m doing something right I’m usually doing something else wrong.   

What am I doing today - Sitting here playing Persona Q2 and humming the new Pokemon OP to myself because it is catchy. I will probably open the champaigne soon. 

From 10 years ago I’ve grown significantly. It’s almost like I experienced my teen years later, because I was so stunted from how I lived. I feel like it’s only now I’m reaching the maturity level, and degree of self respect, to call myself an adult. I’ve always struggled with relating to people offline as well, but... I’m growing okay with that. Who needs other people anyway? They just bring in drama. If I’m comfortable being by myself, there’s nothing wrong with that.  

[garbagecann24601]

Another Step Backwards

Jean Valjean returns every day at the same time. Cosette no longer questions him why he addresses her formally or refuses to come upstairs. Marius avoids Valjean. In time, Cosette becomes more and more detached from Valjean.