#but also enjoy!

[bookwyrminspiration]

Prompt: “Jeez, I don’t even wanna know how you got that battle wound there; sit down and let me fix it up, won’t you?“ for Sophie and Tam! (this one is platonic)

for the lovely @xanadaus, the first of the several dialogue prompts I'm working on :)

-word count: 3.2k

-warnings: injury, blood, as expected of the prompt

“As my charge, your safety is my utmost responsibility, and that cut should take priority over all else right now. I thought we agreed we would take you to see Elwin--not here.” Sandor’s squeaky voice growled out a few goblinese curses as he looked around, eyeing the grasses swaying in the night breeze as though they, personally, contained all the evil in the world and needed slaying.

Sophie’s focus was elsewhere. Namely, the infinite expanse of stone stairs before her, the absolute absurdity of a workout that stood between her and Solreef’s only entrance. She would’ve teleported to the top of the steps if she’d had any sense of reasoning, but her mind fogged and lagged, the pounding in her head unbearable. At least the moonlight wasn’t bright enough to make her headache any worse.

“Elwin can be next,” she assured him, already exhausted as she started up the first steps. “This is just…important. And they probably have first aid supplies inside, so you can stop your bodyguard whining and do…whatever it is you do when you set up security.”

It dawned on her that she had no clue what “security” entailed, but it was the least of her concerns at the moment. Sandor could bitch and moan all he wanted, but he’d still have to follow after her. He couldn’t leave without her, and right now, she needed to be here.

Solreef.

Her mind reeled, thoughts wandering through fog and hazes as she climbed, adrenaline from mere minutes ago still pushing her through the worst of it, through the stinging pain.

Sandor had given her a bit of cloth to hold to the wound, and she pressed it tight to the seeping cut in her bicep, ignoring how every step jolted it as they climbed. Heat spread from the area, hot blood rushing to escape the confines of her skin.

It could’ve been worse, she reminded herself. Could’ve been her leg, could’ve been a bullet, could’ve been a stab.

Just a neat slash across the bicep, that’s all. Not enough to send her running to Elwin just yet, not until she’d gotten to see Tiergan.

She just hoped he’d forgive her for waking him up in the middle of the night.

It’s not like she got to plan when she was attacked and the Neverseen let slip a new, vital piece of information. It’s not like she planned for it to concern Prentice.

“Would you like me to carry you the rest of the way? You’re getting paler--another excellent reason we should save this for later and go to Elwin.” Sandor’s hands couldn’t be tighter on the hilt of his sword, and if she hadn’t been there herself she wouldn’t have even known they’d just been involved in an impromptu attack except for his own leaking cuts. He didn’t react to them at all, stupid goblins with their stupid high pain tolerance.

Sophie sighed, refusing to admit how nice painkillers sounded right then. “We’re basically there already, so there’s no point.”

Just a dozen more steps and they crested the top, her knees wobbling as her head spun, the oxygen in the air failing to ease the woozy pounding in her head as it filled her lungs. Had the air gotten thinner up here?

   “I can think of several points still, and if you grow any paler I will be hailing Elwin on my own to come see you right this instant,” he argued back, glaring at her. Even with the exasperation, she knew he meant well. Knew he wanted what was best for her--though sometimes they disagreed on what that was.

   Because right now she wouldn’t be able to rest easy until she’d relayed what she’d learned, until she’d gotten Tiergan right in front of her and talked him through everything. And then he could decide what to do next, how it would affect Prentice.

   “It’s fine!” Her voice rang louder than she meant, and she cleared her throat.

   Sweat beaded on her face, her skin sticky to the touch as her hair caught in it, fingers pallid and shaky as she raised her hand, releasing the pressure on her cut for a moment as she reached for the door.

   Before she could rap her knuckles against it or press the doorbell, it swung open and she blinked, putting her hand back on her injury.

   Tam blinked back, looking between her and Sandor. “...Hi.”

   His eyes narrowed as he took in her face, and she didn’t want to know what she looked like at the moment, only wanted to not be standing anymore, to sit down and take a nap until the world ended and then keep on napping.

   But she had something to do first.

   “Hi,” she echoed, and they all ignored that it took her a few times to get through the word, tongue dry as it sucked to the roof of her mouth, the chill air only exacerbating the problem. “I need to…to talk to Tiergan?”

   Sandor sniffed at the air, suspicion crawling along his features as he scowled. Something nearby had caught his attention, and he drew a small dagger as he turned away from the door. “I expect you to make this quick, Sophie. I’ll be scouting the perimeter to ensure nothing is out of place before I come to get you--and then we are heading directly to Elwin.”

   He waited until she said Sure, sure, before he stalked off, Tam stepping out of the way so she could enter, the sweeping doors of Solreef shutting with a muffled click as he locked them behind them.

   It took her mind a moment to figure out what to do next, eyes traveling along the walls as she tried to remember if she even knew where Tiergan’s room was. She’d seen his office, but doubted he’d be there after midnight.

   Her grip had loosened on her cut, and she winced as she readjusted, keeping the pressure firm as she could with her shaky hands.

   “Where…?” she started, trailing off as she turned to look at Tam, who had a bowl of some mysterious late night snack in his hand he was trying to figure out where to set before he gave up, resolving to hold it.

   He frowned. “You don’t look so good.”

   “I had no idea,” she mumbled.

   “Do you need to like…sit down…or something? He asked, looking around the foyer, which was notably lacking when it came to chairs. Unless you wanted to sit on a rather spikey plant Tiergan had placed in the corner, but she’d pass.

   “Nah, I’m so good,” Sophie told him. “Just need Tiergan. Do you…where is he?” She started to take a few steps into the house, peering through doorways and into an adjacent living room, a book left open on a table before it, but wobbled hard enough she had to stop to catch her breath.

   “Woah, okay,” Tam said, catching her good arm. “Seriously, Sophie. You’re going to fall over--can whatever it is wait? How important is…whatever you’re here for?”

   “Very important,” she managed, but her eyelids were fluttering shut, and not even several deep breaths could clear her mind. “Neverseen. I need to talk to him.”

   Tam made a noise of surprise as she--against the orders she was giving her body--leaned against him as her legs started to give out, fingers holding on for dear life to keep the pressure on that wound, the cut ripped through her skin as it spilled her life onto the floor.

   Holding her up more than she was holding herself up, something shifted in him. Any hint of that surprised, awkward Tam who’d opened the door turned into resolute command as his expression hardened.

His eyes scanned her over quickly and he shook his head, huffed out a breath. “Jeez, I don’t even wanna know how you got that battle wound there; sit down and let me fix it up, won’t you?“

   She only hummed in response as he led her into the adjacent living room she’d been peering into, scanning it as though Tiergan’s sleeping form would, for some reason, be sprawled out on the couch when he was in his own home with his own bedroom.

   He half-set, half-threw his bowl onto the table beside the book so he could put Sophie down on the couch beside it, the curtains across drawn in just the right way that moonlight spilled in a perfect section over her body, no more, no less, a spotlight on her as she tried to focus on her breathing.

   Seriously, it was just a stupid little cut--why was her body being so whiney about it? Especially when she needed to talk to Tiergan, especially when she was only rooms away from passing along the crucial thing she’d learned when the Neverseen had decided to pop into her life in the middle of the night.

   “Alright, stay right here. I promise I won’t be more than a minute, the emergency kit is upstairs. Keep the pressure on that.”

   “You got it,” she said, but the words dragged and dragged from her mouth, tongue thick and starchy.

   With each pulse of her heart thumping laboriously in her chest, she could feel it prickling at the hot edges of the cut, more of her life soaking that cloth practically glued to her skin with blood.

   She counted them, the double noises of the muscle contractions that kept her alive, reaching seventy-eight before Tam’s hurried footsteps skidded outside the room and he rounded the corner, a fabric box of a bag in hand.

   “Oh, good. You’re not dead.” He unzipped the bag, the clink of vials greeting her as he took a seat next to her, on the side with her injury.

   Sophie snorted. “You wish.”

   She could practically hear his brows grinding together, though she wasn’t looking. There was a particular scuff on the otherwise perfect floor she’d found, and staring at it was way better than trying to move. When she moved, so did the room.

   “Give me your arm,” was all he said, and she dropped the cloth and held it out closer to him.

   “If I sit still and be good, will you get Tiergan?”

   He scrunched up his nose. “You’re clearly out of it, so I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. But sure. What do I care? I’ll get him--if you wait for me to clean this up.”

   Sophie debated arguing with him further, but he could be more stubborn than even she was at times, and resisting would’ve taken precious energy she needed to save to actually explain everything to Tiergan.

   “Fine. Deal,” she ended up saying, letting her eyes fall closed and her head thump against the wall behind her.

   Tam pressed something into her good hand. “That should help with the pain.”

   The cool glass of the vial had her near weeping from the feeling against her hot, somehow still clammy fingers as she opened her eyes just enough to pull the cork out with her teeth, downing the contents all at once.

   Thick syrup coated her tongue, and she sent a thanks to whichever elf had discovered how to make painkillers instantaneous--seriously, how did that work--as the throbbing heat in her arm faded to a buzz, then a whisper, then to complete emptiness where her bicep should’ve been.

   She couldn’t even feel a sliver of discomfort as Tam peeled away the soaked cloth, which had started to dry and cling to her skin. Nor could she tell when he cleaned the area, could only feel the icy shiver of it as it raised goosebumps on her arm, not even the sting of an antiseptic seeking through.

   Some of the fog drifted from her mind, and she could look around without her insides trying to escape her body, but the dizziness hadn’t faded.

   Tam saw her moving though, and dug around in the bag at his feet before placing another vial into her hand. The temperature wasn’t as shocking as the first time round, and she had enough sense of herself to actually process what was happening.

   “Should I be worried about whatever's in these?�� she asked, holding the vial up and watching the moonlight reflect off the crisp edges of the shape. “You could be poisoning me and I’m just drinking them, completely oblivious.”

   Tam snorted, but paused. “It’s for blood-regeneration. Because you’ve clearly lost track of yours.”

   “I know exactly where all my blood is,” she told him, but pulled the cork out anyway, hoping this one would get rid of the rest of the haze. It went down smoother, more watery, and she couldn’t help comparing it to the very fluid it was supposed to regenerate as she set that vial down next to the first one.

   “Maybe,” he conceded. “But it’s not supposed to be on the couch.”

   “I’m bleeding on your couch?”

   She jerked forward, messing up whatever wrapping Tam was putting on her bicep, a startled noise escaping him.

   Sure enough, right between her and Tam was a pool of blood soaked into the couch cushion, wet, warm, and definitely looking like it was going to stain.

   “Aw, shit. I didn’t mean to--”

   “Will you sit still?” he grumbled, pulling her back so he could readjust the wrapping. “No one will care about the blood. We’ll wash it out. Now can I finish this so you’ll stop bleeding out and can talk to Tiergan? Wasn’t that the whole reason you’re here?”

   He rolled his eyes as hers widened, mollified.

   The seconds ticked by as she came up empty with a retort, so she stuck out her tongue at him instead.

   He made a face back, but otherwise didn’t respond as he carefully and securely tied off his work. Neat and clean, enough so she could’ve fooled anyone into thinking it was Elwin’s handiwork.

   “There. Now you just need to be gentle with yourself--not that you know how to, but if you did, that’s what you’d need to do,” he told her, wiping her blood from his hands with a clean cloth.

   “You need to be gentle,” she responded on instinct, years of listening to her little sister’s petty insults and retorts spurring her tongue forward.

   She held up her arm, twisting to look at the bandage, fingering the edges and poking at the layers, smiling slightly when it didn’t budge. Her smile deepened when she realized her mind was present enough to actually make those kinds of observations, noting the texture of the cloth, the warmth of her skin, assessing its tightness and how it felt to move her arm around.

   Clearly, he hadn’t poisoned her, because those elixirs had blown the fog blearying her mind straight out of it; she could think again. She hadn’t realized how fatigued and slow her thoughts had become until they started racing again, which would be a huge help for why she was here.

   “Thank you,” she finally said, letting her hands fall into her lap. “I, um, clearly needed that. Where’d you even learn how to do this? I was just going to call Elwin.”

   Tam had been about to get up, presumably to go find Tiergan, since she’d been oh so compliant and good and had let him patch her up.

   He paused instead, and shrugged, looking off somewhere she couldn’t follow. “In the Neutral Territories, you either learned or you didn’t get better. You saw the medical tent,” he added, and she nodded.

   Horribly understocked and underfunded, worn away well past its years, the Boobrie Dude--she’d have to remember to ask for his real name someday--had only been able to use what he could make from his spoils found in the forest. He’d found various natural materials he could identify and put to use. But they weren’t exactly up to elven standards, and definitely not good if anything serious ever happened.

   “Well…thank you. I’m sorry you had to learn that way.”

   “It’s useful, sometimes. Like when people show up bleeding on your doorstep from mysterious injuries at one in the morning.”

   A laugh escaped before she could help herself as she rubbed at her eyes, wishing she was a normal teenager who could be asleep at an hour like this without worrying for her life. Or for everyone else’s. Like Prentice’s.

   But she wasn’t, and that’s why she’d come.

   “Got it. I will not show up bleeding from mysterious injuries on your doorstep at one in the morning again.”

   Tam made a face.

   “I will show up at two in the morning instead.”

   “You have to sleep at some point, Sophie,” he chastised, shaking his head at her, but it didn’t hide how the corners of his lips turned up for a moment.

   Sophie snorted. “Says the guy who was awake at one in the morning…reading?” she hazarded, sticking out her chin to point at the novel still open on the table. She’d spotted it when looking around, but had been too woozy to look at it any further as he’d patched her up.

   Now, however, she could see it had been left open to page 273--a number she could, to her surprise, actually read. Upon closer inspection, the words appeared to be written in gnomish, though it didn’t look like some of the other gnomish works she’d seen, journals kept in colored ink, bound and decorated with petals, pages stained different muted hues of whatever flora had gone into making it.

   Tam scratched at the back of his neck, looking tempted to close it. “Tiergan thought I’d like it, so…why not? Oh, right, Tiergan.” He interrupted himself, pushing to his feet with a start as he moved towards the doorway.

   On his way, he grabbed a handful of whatever was in the snack bowl he’d left beside the book. Given how long she’d been there, you’d think she’d recognize more of the food, but the elves were always pulling out new, random snacks with the most ridiculous names possible.

   Ripplefluffs. Fluffcreams. Indigoobers.

   She shook her head, listening to Tam’s fading footsteps as he went to find Tiergan for her as she scooted closer to the table to take a closer peek at whatever the book was about.

   She got the vague sense it was some sort of mythology, but she didn’t want to turn the page to confirm her suspicions and lose his spot.

   Instead, she grabbed a piece of whatever wafer-shaped thing he was munching on and popped it in her mouth as she waited.

   Books and snacks in the middle of the night? That was definitely something she could get behind.

   Maybe one day, one day when they had the time and peace, she and Tam could read together in the middle of the night, moonlight their only company as the time ticked past, bowls of snacks and treats--hopefully something recognizable--between them in the silence.

   She’d like that, she thought. It’d been all too long since she’d last read for fun.

   Yeah, once this was over, once she’d talked to Tiergan, once she’d seen Elwin, she’d ask him.  

   One day.

[hansoeii]

butch wolverine, anyone?

[mythtakens]

“these characters should be mentally healthy before they get together 😌” ummm no I actually think we should smash their mental illnesses together like clumps of play-doh and see what colors it makes

[the-nefarious-vampire]

as an aroace, im particularly dangerous, because i wont fuck or marry. i only know how to kill.

[seagiri]

when did this happen???

[druid-for-hire]

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled "immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

[imperatoralicia]

Just having some drinks at the local saloon.

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[adaki]

Sry I’m late, I was being held in a maximum security prison on a secluded island and they had no wifi.

[incredubious]

MODERN AU ACESAN !!!! first impressions with a guy who barely passes the No Shoes No Shirt No Service rule

[soyochii]

Satosugu redraw

[izzenithal]

Percy “Has Been Waiting to Use This Meme as an Excuse” Jackson, and Annabeth “Never Seen a Meme” Chase

[thethoriumreactor]

Have a meme because I have no self control

Lucifer just seems like the kinda guy who’d lose his mind over ppl being too hot (our bi short king)

I spent way too much effort on this pls like it ily 🙏

Bonus (radioapple) doodles as always (edit: I. I just realised I forgot Al’s monocle in both doodles. I am dying inside. Why did no one tell me.):

[benisasoftboi]

Best thing about Doctor Who, and I mean this so genuinely, is the way it goes from ‘haunting Celtic folk mystery about death and penitence’ to ‘what if your group chat banter was so dire that your phone developed sentience and tried to kill you’

[pineapple-frenzy]

Book 2 au with Zuko and Katara Lee and Huamei

Katara is separated from her friends, and so she's left to travel the earth kingdom on her own. She stumbles across Zuko, who is similarly travelling on his own. They decide that pairing up and travelling together would be best