#can we just say he retired in a little cottage in the mountains

[reddeaddenial]

Red Dead Redemption 2?

More like Red Dead Redemption uwu

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

i'm so TIRED of people with vivid imaginations trying to convince every1 the things their brains came up with happened in MDZS, just saw some1 say about lan mom "SOMETHING went down between a creepy teacher and their mother. She gets forced into marriage with a man she doesn’t love and IMPRISONED before eventually committing suicide/ falling sick and dying" like WHERE? the only piece of information was LXC saying "i have no idea WTF happened" so he doesn't know, MXTX doesn't know but you do???

Some of this is a shock for my system so early in the morning... alright... I guess we're gonna go step by step with this just cause people are awful at reading, along with my stance on this particular bit of prevalent discourse.

Since this is greatly misinterpreted for whatever reasons, here is the relevant passage and only one in the text we get concerning the Lan parents. I'm going to add that this is alllll relaid by Lan Xichen and to keep that in mind with what is highlighted.

He spoke slowly, “The reason that my father often practiced secluded meditation was my mother. This place, compared to a place of living… was more like a place of detention.”

Wei WuXian was surprised.

The father of ZeWu-Jun and HanGuang-Jun, QingHeng-Jun, used to be a famous cultivator. He made his name at a young age and had many things waiting for him in the future. However, at the age of twenty, he suddenly backed away and announced his marriage. He had also ceased to care for much of the world. Although it was called secluded meditation, it was much more like retirement. People had come up with many possible reasons, but none of them had been verified.

Lan XiChen bent down amid the clusters of gentians. He gently stroked those thin, tender petals, “When my father was young, when he returned from a night-hunt once, he saw my mother outside of Gusu city.” He smiled, “I heard that it was love at first sight.”

Wei WuXian grinned as well, “The young are often sentimental.”

Lan XiChen continued, “But, the woman did not care for him the same way. In addition, she killed one of my father’s teachers.”

This was beyond imagination. Although Wei WuXian knew that asking too many questions would be very rude, however when he remembered that they had been Lan WangJi’s parents, he felt that he just had to ask. “Why?!”

Lan XiChen, “I do not know. But, I assume that it was something along the lines of ‘grievances’.”

Wei WuXian didn’t ask anymore into this and forced down his curiosity, “And… what happened later?”

“And then,” Lan XiChen explained, “When my father heard of this, of course he was in much pain. But, no matter how he struggled, he still took the woman to his sect in secrecy. Ignoring the objections from his clan, he knelt with her for the Heavens and the Earth without making a sound and told everyone in the clan that she would be his wife for the rest of his life, that whoever wanted to harm her would have to pass through him first.”

Wei WuXian widened his eyes.

Lan XiChen continued, “After the ceremony was completed, my father found a house and locked my mother inside. He found another house and locked himself inside. It was called secluded meditation, but it was in truth to repent.”

He paused before speaking again, “Young Master Wei, can you understand why he did such a thing?”

Wei WuXian answered after a moment of silence, “He could neither forgive the one who killed his teacher nor watch the death of the woman who he loved. He could only marry her to protect her life and force himself not to see her.”

Lan XiChen, “Do you think that this was right?”

Wei WuXian, “I don’t know.”

Lan XiChen looked somewhat lost, “Then, what do you think would be right?”

Wei WuXian, “I don’t know.”

A while later, Lan XiChen whispered, “It could be said that my father did this without a care for anything else. All of the seniors of the clan were enraged, but they had all watched him grow up. They could not do anything except guard this secret, hint to the outside world that the wife of the GusuLan Sect’s sect leader had an unspeakable disease and could not see others. After WangJi and I were born, we were immediately taken away to be cared for by other people. When we grew older, we were brought to Uncle to be taught."

“My shufu… has always had a frank personality to begin with. Because of how my mother caused my father to destroy his own life, he began to hate those who behaved improperly even more. Thus, he poured his heart into teaching WangJi and me. He was especially harsh as well. Every month, we could only see Mother once, inside of this cottage.”

They were two young children, who faced everyday only their harsh uncle, strict teachings, and mountains of books. No matter how tired, they had to straighten their soft backs to be the most outstanding disciples of the clan, the model students in others’ eyes. They could rarely see their closest relatives. They couldn’t fool around in their father’s arms, they couldn’t act spoiled in front of their mother.

But they had clearly done nothing wrong.

Lan XiChen, “Everytime WangJi and I went to see her, she would never complain about how tedious it was being locked inside of here, unable to step out once. She had never asked about our studies, either. She especially liked to tease WangJi, but WangJi, the more you tease him the less willing he is to talk, and the worse of an expression he puts on. He has been like this ever since he was young. However,” he chuckled, “even though WangJi never said it, I knew that every month he was looking forward to the day he could see Mother. He was like this, and I was the same.”

Wei WuXian imagined a young Lan WangJi hugged inside of his mother’s arms, his snowy little cheeks flushed pink. He laughed as well. But before his smile had even melted, Lan XiChen continued, “But one day, Uncle suddenly told us that we would have no need to go any longer."

“Mother was gone.”

Wei WuXian’s voice was soft, “How old was Lan Zhan back then?”

Lan XiChen, “Six.”

He continued, “He was still too young to understand what ‘gone’ means. No matter how much others comforted him, or how much Uncle scolded him, he would continue to come back here every single month, sit down in the hallway, and wait for someone to open the door for him. When he grew older, he understood that Mother would not be coming back, that no one would open the door for him, but he kept on coming here.”

Lan XiChen stood up. His dark eyes looked into Wei WuXian’s, “WangJi has been so stubborn ever since he was young.”

The leaves rustled and the gentian flowers swished alongside the wind, their scent lingering. Wei WuXian’s eyes landed on the wooden hallway of the cottage. He could almost see a small child wearing a forehead ribbon sitting with proper posture in front of the house, waiting quietly for the door to open.

He spoke, “Madam Lan must’ve been a very gentle woman.”

Lan XiChen, “In my memories, Mother had indeed been so. I do not know why she did such a thing back then. And, in truth, I…”

He took a deep breath before confessing, “I do not want to know either.”

After a few moments of silence, Lan XiChen closed his eyes. He took out Liebing. A gust of night wind suddenly sent forth a sobbing note of the xiao. The sound was deep, like a sigh.

Wei WuXian had heard Lan XiChen play Liebing before. Its timbre was just like Lan XiChen himself, as warm and graceful as a breeze and the rain of spring. Yet, now, although his technique was as excellent as ever, the tone evoked a strange mixture of feelings.

The night wind swept by. Lan XiChen’s hair and forehead ribbon were already somewhat disheveled. However, the GusuLan Sect’s sect leader, who had always regarded appearance highly, didn’t pay any attention to them. He only put down Liebing after the song had finished, “Music is forbidden at night in the Cloud Recesses. Today I have overstepped far too many times. Excuse me, Wei gongzi.”

Wei WuXian, “How so? ZeWu-Jun, have you forgotten that the person standing in front of you is the person who has broken the most rules…”

Lan XiChen smiled, “The GusuLan Sect has never revealed these facts about Lan Wangji and myself outside of itself. I should not have told you. Tonight was my sudden urge to unburden myself, a spur of the moment.”

Wei WuXian, “I’m not the kind of person who talks too much. Don’t worry, ZeWu-Jun.”

Lan XiChen, “Regardless, I would assume that WangJi would not hide anything from you anyways.”

Wei WuXian, “If he doesn’t wish to talk about something then I won’t ask.”

Lan XiChen, “But, with WangJi’s personality, how could he say anything if you do not ask? There are some things that even if you ask him he would not say.”

Now that we have the context of the Lan parents laid out the only definitive answer for anything concerning their personal motivations for anything is "I DON'T KNOW". Their secrets and thoughts literally died with them.

And this entire story Lan Xichen told in the end, had nothing to do with his parents. He did not tell Wei Wuxian about them, he was speaking everything unsaid about Lan Wangji's motivations and his love of Wei Wuxian. He does not care why his parents did what they did, but he does for the one that is alive. His brother who he had just had a bit of a veiled conversation about Lan Wangji's pure trust in Wei Wuxian. Who, in Lan Xichen's eyes, had already rejected his brother's love and did not feel the same, mirroring the past of their father's apparent unrequited love. He is saying Lan Wangji is sacrificing his all, unvoiced.

His pressing of if his parent "are right" is him asking Wei Wuxian what he feels about those sacrifices, if he can see the sacrifices Lan Wangji had gone through. At this point he along with Lan Wangji have assumed Wei Wuxian knows and remembers what he had said within the cave. He is telling Wei Wuxian his brother has alway been this way for those he loves regardless of what they may be perceived as by outsiders.

"Today I have overstepped far too many times. Excuse me, Wei gongzi.”"

"I should not have told you. Tonight was my sudden urge to unburden myself, a spur of the moment.”

Meaning, it was not his place to tell this about his brother, but there is no one else that would, and Lan Wangji would never say anything about his feelings again. Lan Xichen is first and foremost worried about where his brother has placed his love, as he knows, regardless of what rumors surround those he loves, his brother will still be forever loyal to them without question if he believes them to be in the right.

Lan Xichen is warning Wei Wuxian he needs to take care in his actions as he approaches Lan Wangji as Xichen is well aware already of how Lan Wangji will go through hell for others he adores. From the start it was never about his parents, as Lan Xichen says, "I do not want to know either,". But what he does want to know is where Wei Wuxian stands with his own feelings towards Lan Wangji or if he is still using his brother as he has thought for years. Leaving Lan Xichen to protect him as best as he can while Lan Wangji stays hurt for others with no happiness for himself.

[orsuliya]

Who said that? No, really, who said that? I need to know whom to (non-violently!) slap in the face with the book ending as clearly they do not know what ‘terrible ending’ even means. Although, to be clear, the book ending was sad traumatic, not bad as in badly-written. And yes, book!Awu gets the little house of her dreams in the end... in a way.

Okay, back to happier thoughts the drama! I confess that I remain somewhat dubious of any quaint little houses actually getting built unless it’s as a family retreat of sorts. Not sure why, but Awu’s words in episode 13 seem to be less of a literal wish and more of a quote from a poem about idyllic life. Just take a listen to how she pronounces them. Also, why else would she explicitly mention southern mountains when Ningshuo is in the north...? While a cottagecore fantasy sounds amazing, I think that at this point it’s more about a general yearning for a simple life unfettered by shackles of courtly intrigues, power struggles and plots, unmarred by wars and unrest and lived in such a way as to keep their thoughts clean, hearts pure and hands busy. Mind you, the part about travelling around Cheng and seeing all its wonders seems completely genuine and will probably happen at one point or another.

Why do I think that this cottagecore fantasy was nothing more than just that, a fantasy and in fact could never truly come to pass, at least not long-term or rather not until Awu and Xiao Qi enter their twilight years? It’s not that they’re both designed to operate on a larger scale, although they truly are. And it’s not about neither of them being particularly suited to it; Awu is a princess born and bred and Xiao Qi might be daddy as hell, but he’s no cottagecore daddy. The most he’d be useful for would be lighting the fires (maybe) and sharpening any knives. Okay, I’m joking about that; he should be also good with any animal stock they might acquire.

Seriously, it’s a lovely fantasy... for their retirement. There was never any way either of them would choose to willingly put down the burden of responsibility for their people and their country before they can pass it to the next generation, no matter how tempting it might be in particularly difficult moments. And yet I would say they do get to live out their wish in post-canon. In a way. A happy way, not that traumatic perversion of their dream the book serves us! They get to have fifty kids, live in a not-so little house with a lovely fence made out of spears, toil during the day and rest after sundown. Chrysanthemums are optional, depending on whether they can actually grow in Ningshuo.

Am I still bitter that drama Xiao Qi didn’t get the throne? Not really and isn’t that surprising. But then, I was always a complete sucker for happy endings and the ending we got is a lovely mix of everything we could have ever wanted. Becoming Emperor is all fine and dandy, and a cage in its own right. Peacing out to live in a little cottage in the steppe, never to be burdened by any sort of responsibility again goes against the very nature of our lovely pair. The Ningshuo ending? Perfect compromise with every advantage and no flaws of either solution, eleven out of ten!

[cuculine-nelipot]

guess he needs you

The Vesemir Probelm, or so he had been calling it since last winter, was still playing on Aiden’s mind when summer greens began their turn to autumn ambers, reds, and browns. He brought it  up constantly, and always, it seemed to Lambert, at the most inopportune moments; like while they were the were battling a wyvern, or Lambert was losing at gwent, (or when Aiden was balls deep in Lambert after having won,) or now; when Lambert’s head rested on Aiden’s lap, the Cat carding through his soft, freshly washed hair, silk-like inky black rivers running between his fingers.

“Just tell me ,” he demanded — whined — yet again, and Lambert growled, as he always did, frustrated at having his dream-haze so cruelly dissipated. He didn’t have to ask; why doesn’t he like me? what can I do?  

“Fuck, Aiden . Can you just drop it?” It was Lambert’s own fault, really, for telling him that Vesemir wasn’t usually so… distant, during winter. Not like he had to say anything for Aiden to know. The Cat had caught him staring forlornly after the old Wolf more than once as he left them — after dinner, after training, when they entered the baths. Bear Wolf and Wolf Wolf didn’t seem so put out by it, but Baby Wolf, well… He looked downright blue.

“Just give me something — anything .” Lambert glared up at him. “Please Baby Wolf?” he pleaded, letting his eyes go puppy wide, his pupils dilated to big, round saucers; Aiden was a quick study, apparently.

Lambert clenched and unclenched his jaw repeatedly, eyes fixed on the bare torso in front of him  as the flash of some personal battle raged in his mind. Another time, he would have appreciated the musculature of his Cat’s body, his skin not hairless, but smoother than his own, and softer now than it was last year thanks to the beeswax soap he’d insisted on appropriating from Kaer Morhen’s supply. Lambert wanted to sink his teeth into it, so did. Hard. Aiden yowled and, more than a little smug, he lapped his tongue over the mark he’d made. “He likes white port and ice wine,” He finally offers. “Doesn’t get much of it these days.”

Right. Wine. So it wasn’t exactly the sort of information he was after, but it was a lot more than he’d gotten so far. “We could go to Toussaint. Pick some up.”

“We won’t make it back in time if we go that far south now. Besides, you really want to lug bottles of wine all the way from fucking Toussaint to the Blue Mountains?”

Aiden gently pushed Lambert’s head back to lay on his thigh, resuming his petting absentmindedly as he considered. “I know someone in the area who owes me a favour. We can portal back.” Back — because that’s what it was now, wasn’t it? A going back, a return.

“Fucking mages…” Lambert grumbled, further protestation dissolving on his tongue as Aiden scratched the base of his hairline, ripples of pleasure cresting in his skull.

.o.O.o.

Ultimately the draw of prolonged warmth and good booze proved too strong, and they did make their way to Toussaint. As luck would have it, almost as soon as they hit wine-country, they stumbled across a vintner in the midst of a sort of war with the proprietor of the vineyard next to his. Truly, a lighthearted affair, he promised, but witchers would be so much more adept at enacting the next stage of his battle plan.

Thievery. Is what it was. Specific vintages that his rival held dear to his heart. “I’m not going to do anything untoward with them,” he — Bolius— insisted with an absent wave of his hand. “I just want to see his embarrassment when he goes to show them off at his next party and finds them missing.”

So that’s how they ended up in the cellars of Corvo Bianco. Witcher’s, you see, traditionally don’t get involved in matters of politic, so to even out the playing field they thought it best to relieve Bolius of a few of his own bottles. Never mind that they were some of Vesemir’s favourites. That was pure coincidence. Luck. Destiny.

And, as Destiny would have it, Destiny was right where Aiden said she would be. In her not exactly little cottage at the top of a wooded hill. “Destiny,” he crowed, giving the brunette a kiss on the cheek.

“Long time no see Kitty Cat.” She smiled at him warmly, but there was, perhaps, a glint of fire in her eyes. Much too heated for Lambert’s liking. Transferring all his packs to one arm, the bottles clinking, he threw the other one around Aiden’s neck.

“Going to introduce us?” he asked in his most sultry croon. Aiden smirked.

“Destiny this is Ba-haa-Lambert. This is Lambert. Lambert this is Destiny, an old friend of mine,” he said with a wink in her direction.  

“How old’s old?” Lambert asked, eyeing her derisively.

“I was never at Stygga, if that’s what has you looking like there’s a slug in your mouth. I saved his life, his first year on the Path. Got conked on the head by an ogre.”

A shockingly familiar story. He raised an eyebrow at Aiden, who only shrugged in response; life’s funny that way. “Why’d he say you owe him then?”

“Ah, well you see darling,” Aiden expounded, “a long time ago Destiny had an evil cat —“

“Jad is not—”

“ Evil, vile little shit, who nearly took my eye out.”

“What?” Lambert sputtered, “you got that scar from a cat ?” he asked incredulously, gesturing to the rather roguish dash across Aiden’s left eye.

“A demon cat,” he corrected.

“Oh, you kept the damn eye didn’t you?” Destiny rolled her eyes.

It was too soon for them to go back to Kaer Morhen — show up this early and Vesemir would send them right back down for supplies — so they stayed a couple weeks, Destiny proving to be a more generous host than Lambert would have ever expected. They soaked up the Toussainti sun, enjoying the last good weather they’d get for months. Aiden insisted on visiting the markets, and strolling through the vineyards. Kept going on about how nice it would be to retire there some day, like that’s a thing witchers did. But he looked so cute when he talked about  it — his cheeks flushed a deep, cherry blossom pink, the edges of his old Toussainti purr creeping back into his voice. So Lambert just smiled, and nodded, and held Aiden’s hand as he let himself be dragged around.

By the time they portaled home, Lambert almost half believed in Aiden’s fantasies.

reblogged with the link to the rest

[molluskwritesfic]

Between Rivers: Chapter One

A Mandalorian can't show their face to anyone - with the exception of immediate family. Although they haven't known each other long, there's definitely something growing between them. But is it enough? When an ex-spy must look beneath the helmet to save Din Djarin's life, there's only one option that allows him to continue following his Creed. Marriage.

This story can also be found on fanfiction.net and Ao3.

Next Chapter

Chapter One

Din Djarin’s first encounter with the woman that would eventually become his wife was… a little unusual, as far as jobs went.

Movet was a cold world; not in the frozen wasteland category like Hoth, but vibrant and alive; cold - with some seasonal variance. It was early summer now. The snow in the valleys had melted, but still clung to the stone-faced mountain peaks that loomed over everything like elder gods. The valleys between grew flowers that dusted the landscape with every color, dotting the grass as the stars did the sky. 

There wasn’t much this far north; the nearest town was nearly forty kilometers away. The bounty was clearly self-sufficient; capable of surviving the elements and predators he knew to roam the Movetian mountains.

The bounty puck had called for a woman by the name of Ena Sma, and the fob at his hip was blinking up at her. She was on the roof of her little cottage in the middle of nowhere, replacing shingles and strengthening the supports that had been weakened during the winter snows. 

She was busy, distracted, and not at all impressed by his Mandalorian obscurity and bounty hunter posturing.

To his knowledge, she was an ex-spice runner that had spied for the Empire. He assumed she was wanted by one of the cartels she had delivered information on. In essence, a bounty that would not weigh on his conscience. 

Spies could be tricky, though, especially one that had the gall to deal with the Empire at the expense of spice dealers. To minimize his chances of being detected, the Mandalorian had skirted her territory, careful to program a descent vector that avoided flying directly overhead, and landed about 20 kilometres out, putting him beyond the security field his sensors had detected.

From there, things had gone smoothly. The security field had been easy to disable; the emitters weren’t hard to find and not particularly complex, making him suspect that the fence was for animals. To keep them out or in, Din wasn’t sure. 

Now that he was here, he understood. The fence was to keep the bounty’s animals in. And kriff, what animals they were. Lounging about the rolling field that surrounded the house and barn were massive wolf-like canines with sloping backs and shaggy summer coats. From what he could see, most of them came up to his chest; when one yawned he could see its curved fangs were the length of his thumb. 

Perhaps they were why she was so unconcerned by the presence of a bounty hunter. He could see the sled tucked away by the house and the wolf-sized harnesses adorning the side of the barn on hooks, but it wasn’t hard to imagine that they’d been trained to attack as well as pull. 

The Mandalorian rested a hand on his blaster in its holster, but didn’t draw it.

The bounty stared down at him appraisingly. Her auburn hair pulled back into a messy braid glowed in the sun; individual strands of blonde and red glittering when she moved. She was wrapped in natural furs and leathers, clad in heavy boots with a hammer in hand.

“What’s the name?” She asked finally. Her thick Movetian accent curled elegantly around the words, brusque but with a lilt that was pleasant to the ear. 

Din blanked. “Name?”

“The bounty. Which name?”

He tilted his helmeted head. He was used to his bounties running, fighting, or making bribes. This was new.

She began to get impatient. “On the puck. The name. What is it?”

Uncertain what reaction to expect, he said, “Ena Sma.”

She nodded thoughtfully, her lovely heart shaped face pulled into a frown as she went back to absentmindedly puzzling the shingles together with her hammer.

Din waited for her to work through her thoughts. He knew where she was. She wasn’t going anywhere. There weren’t any weapons or backup for her to be stalling for - at least as far as he could figure. He could afford to wait a few minutes - for curiosity’s sake, if nothing else.

Movet was a beautiful planet; or at least it used to be. It was the fourth planet in the Hibigea system, which played an important role in the Empire’s mining efforts. Worlds like Movet had been stripped away in chunks, layer by layer, until the once pristine and practically untouched mineral deposits had been bled dry and the ecosystems trampled and poisoned beyond recognition. Regarding the fact that the Empire had dissolved only a year prior, it was nice to see places like this had survived. Even if it was buried deep in the planet’s almost uninhabited wilderness, where there had been less Empire activity.

He had to appreciate her choice of location. A small cabin tucked away in a flower-filled valley between snow capped mountains, framed by monolithic evergreen woodland and in sight of the river. It was a lonely existence, but perfect if you didn’t want to be bothered.

Din could think of worse places to retire.

Finally, the bounty looked up. She fixed him with her clear grey stare and said, “10,000 credits.”

He couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. “I don’t take bribes.”

Her glare sharpened. “I didn’t finish.” 

The Mandalorian frowned under his helmet. He tilted his head, inviting her to continue. 

She balanced expertly over to the ladder and hopped down it, light on her feet. Dusting off her hands, she strode over to stand fearlessly before him. Now that they were level, he could see that her height was average, if a little on the short side. Her build was mostly hidden by her clothes, but a bit squat and stocky. Generally unremarkable, but still rather pretty.

The top of her head only just made it to his chin, but the severe look in her eyes leveled him, making him feel as if she were still looking down at him from the roof. 

She laid out the deal. “10,000 credits. Your choice in currency. You still take me in and cash in the bounty like normal.”

Wary, he tipped his visor down. “What do you get out of it?”

She sniffed. “You let me finish my roof. You look the other way at any weapons I take with me. When we part, you say nothing about me or this place to anyone. Ever. Deal?”

It made sense now. She wasn’t going to squabble with hunters for her freedom; she was going to the source. He wasn’t sure if taking her deal went against Guild Code or not. Even if it did, did it matter? As long as it couldn’t get traced back to him, what did the life of a spice lord or two mean to him? A lot less than 10,000 credits. 

“Fine.” He glanced up at the roof. “How long till you’re done?”

She gave a satisfied nod and turned her calculative gaze back to her work. “The rest of the day. We can leave at first light.”

“No,” he bit out, disliking the idea of staying on a quarry’s home terf longer than he had to. Even if they’d struck a deal, he’d be at her mercy. “Tonight.”

She scowled, hands perched on her hips. “You stay here at the house. You die in the forest. Doesn’t mean a damn thing to me. I’ll make the deal with the next hunter to come along.”

She couldn’t see his mouth open to retort, but held up a finger to silence him anyway.

“You’ll stay here tonight. There’s an extra room. I’ll feed you.” Without confirming if he accepted this or not, she turned away and went back up her ladder. Once at the top, she looked over her shoulder to add, “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead. You’re safe here, so long as we’re on the same page.”

No longer interested in him, she went back to tap, tap, tapping at the shingles and didn’t say another word for the rest of the day.

[vesperlionheart]

For haha’s - Darklina

There is blood throughout the halls of the Keramzin orphanage, it stains the stones and clings to the walls and dries on the hands of Alina Starkov. She tastes something bitter deep in her throat but swallows it down as she moves through the orphanage, searching for more of the bodies left inside. She steps over the bloated form of a dirty man in hides, slashed open and killed the old fashioned way. She passes more of his companions but doesn’t care for any of them until she finds her children. 

She buries her babies with reverence and then burns the rest in a pit without a second thought.

 When Mal doesn’t come back she drinks. 

When the new month comes she prays. 

When the season ends without sight or sound of him, she leaves. 

Nikolai Lantsov watched nervously as another dark ritual finished filling out the color in an old monster’s features. Aleksander Morozova was just as handsome and devilishly fit in features as he had been on the day he died, if not better since he was actually, not dead. It was unnerving to watch what felt like for the thousandth time, a dark miracle perverting nature-but weren't Girsha like that to begin with? Who else lived for 500 years and looked like a university chap?

“You’re very pretty,” Nikolai admitted, not ashamed of the truth. 

The darkling was adjusting his gloves, tugging them down over his hands until his knuckles stood out, but he paused to glance up through his lashes and spare the boy king a withering, unimpressed look. “I know.” 

“Don’t let me stroke your ego, I’m properly sloshed so I’m sure it's only the intoxication that’s talking.” 

Nikolai gestured to the glass in his hand before knocking it back for the last dregs of amber colored courage. He hated every damned step to this never ending ritual on account of how annoying and bothersome it was, not how terrifying each peak into the land of death was. But worse than all of that was the demon inside of him that refused to stay down. Nearly a year later and it was getting worse. 

“You’ll need your wits about you for what comes next.”

“You’ve been so helpful,” Nikolai scoffed, “with letting me know the summation of all this planning, you know. It would have been terrible if you only told me one damned step at a time and kept me hanging in blind suspicion for months.”

“Sarcasm does not become you, puppy prince.” 

Nikolai glared with a smile. “Good thing I only speak the truth then.”

“You must now summon someone for me.” 

“Of course I must. Who is it this time?” A painter to capture your likeness in oils? A seamstress to dress you in silks? A palace chef who could-

“Alina Starkov.” 

The name caused a physical pain in Nikolai’s chest as every longing and snuffed out desire snapped back into place, like an overextended rubber band that had been stretched too far. It hurt to hear that name, but he didn’t mind this sort of pain.

“The sun summoner died. She’s not someone I can so easily summon for your royal darkness, even if I did raise your ass from the grave.” He was impressed with himself for how calm he came across. “You’ll have to adapt.” 

The darkling, beautiful and cold, did not respond at first, or give any indication that he had heard and understood the king’s words, but he twisted the leather of his gloves around his wrist, almost like a nervous habit. Eventually, he opened his mouth to speak. “I did not ask for the sun summoner, I asked for Alina Starkov, and nothing less will be sufficient in helping me subjugate the monster within you, little hound.” 

“Sturmhond.”

“I did not stutter,” The Darkling scoffed. “As I do not miss the hint of desperation in your voice, the way it shakes your eyes when you watch my revival though it may sicken you. Your hands are dirty with more than one type of darkness but they must be blackened further if you wish to have control over your own fragment of hell.” 

“I don’t want to control it, I want to kill it and no matter how desperately I want that I can’t bring back the dead for you-ckee!” 

Nikolai’s words were choked out as a leather glove wrapped around his throat and pulled him up off the ground.He grabbed at the wrist and kicked until he was shoved against the wall and left to sag back onto his feet. 

“Do not make the mistake of lying to me,” the darkling hissed. “I know she isn’t dead, I went first into the long night and she did not follow. She lives and she resides in your country, so summon her to your palace, summon her for me.”

Back on his feet again Nikolai rubbed at his neck, suspecting it to bruise for how roughly it had been gripped. “You also know that her powers left her, don’t you? Even if I could, you’d be asking for a farm girl.” 

“I won’t explain myself to you, there is no reason to. I care not for her power or her fame or her status as a saint, I simply request Alina Starkov. Do what you can to find the farm girl with no powers. I know it is within your abilities.” 

Nikolai turned away and reached to pour himself another drink, but found barely enough for a half glass in the decanter. It wasn’t enough for him so it was clearly not enough to share.

“I wasn’t trying to deceive you when I told you she’s dead. To the best of my knowledge that’s the truth. She retired to obscurity with the tracker and together they set up an orphanage. We maintained some limited contact over the years but when my letters went unanswered I sent someone to seek her out.”

The Darkling’s silence was as good as a question so Nikolai continued.

“The orphanage was bloody and empty.” Nikolai sipped his drink and tried to pretend his heart wasn’t bleeding in his chest as he relieved the pain from that day. “Locals explained a band of extremists passed through, upset at their adoption of suspected grisha children. There were graves and a pit discovered on site but nothing else. Sightings of the tracker, Mal, led my spies to conclude she...she was one of the graves.”

“But it was not confirmed,” the Darkling clarified. “You did not dig up her bones to see for yourself if one of the mounds was hers. You only assumed and you assumed wrong. She did not die.”

Nikolai dared to hope and it hurt like thorns in his heart. “How could you say something like that so confidently? Up until a month ago you didn’t have flesh. What do you know?”

“Nothing so humble connects her and I. If she were to be gone from this world I would know it, yet I feel her still. Alina Starkov lives and I need her.”

 The darkling looked down at his hand, at the center of his palm and it was almost as if there was something there he was transfixed by. The harsh edges of his expression softened and emotion made his slate gray eyes a little lighter. The darkling swallowed and the harsh lines to his features returned in time for him to fix the blond with a withering stare.

 “She lives. Find her.”

No one had ever accused Alina Starkov of being a gabler, but playing cards with the Three Babas might have been the riskiest thing she did on an impulse. It would have been less dangerous to play cards with a devil, because at least with a devil you know what you're wagering. 

There was something disconcerting about waking up one morning only to realize there was no vision left for you; no epic battle plans, to cunning exploits, nothing planned out to accommodate the travesty destiny had raised you to rally against. She didn’t even have a villain to set herself up against. The world wasn’t perfect, but the fold was no longer an issue and Alina found herself without purpose. Her children were gone, her would-be husband lost to his whims, and the powers that gave her such grand meaning were only a memory.

And that all mde her wander. 

A little older, a little broader, a little wiser, she traveled on foot or by cart when the neighbors of her country were kind enough to spare her the room. She ended up somewhere in the backwoods, somewhere rural enough to have a single village center like it was some big deal and enough work for a girl with rough hands to apply herself to. 

The town felt safe enough and that made her wonder, so when she asked the neighbors they told her about the three babas who watched over the town and kept it a little separate from the rest of the world with its problems and its wars. 

That question must have been invitation enough because Alina found herself invited to a game of four way trick on the edge of town under the leaning roof of a wood cutter’s cottage.  Three older woman,each dressed in varying colors and patterns, head covering shawls, and wooden shoes, were there when Alina arrived like it was the most natural thing in the world. 

“Take a seat.”

“Sit a while.”

“Play a spell.” 

Sitting down opposite the three felt like being back in front of Baghra, standing in the shadow of a mountain more ancient than memory itself. Yet with Baghra there was never this exact sense of wrongness. Reality never felt off in this way with the Darkling’s mother. 

“You were expecting me?” Alina asked, touching the felt edged cards in front of her without reaching for them. Their texture was so worn and soft she assumed they had been played for decades. When was the last time she played cards? Did she know the rules to this game?

“Saw you coming is more like it,” the baba to Alina’s right croaked. Her head shawl was bright red with swirls of autumn blooms in shades of gold and yellow. Compared to the fabric her skin was withered and pale. 

“Take your hand,” the baba directly across from Alina instructed, sounding crankier than her counterparts. Her eyes were unseeing, sagged over with wrinkled flesh and her babushka was a vivid green with emerald threads stirling through the lighter fabric to illustrate buds and grass fields in full health. The headscarf stayed pinned in place with the help of a white crane pin.

“I’m not sure I know how to play,” Alina admitted before looking at her cards. Her hands were on the table but she was still licking her lips nervously, wishing for something stronger to throw back down her throat. Her head was fuzzy with too much clarity. 

“You will,” the last grandmother calmly corrected, looking up through her silver lashes from underneath a headscarf of brilliant blue, brighter than the sky and deeper than the oceans. Her smile was deceptively sweet, too thin, and too light. She sounded impossibly young for her physical appearance. “Pick up and play with us.” 

“What’s the game called?” Alina asked, picking up her cards. 

They were just as soft on the underside where the painted pictures stared back at her. It looked more like a tapo deck, a truth telling card series where wise women and elders would tell stories out of the pictures and even predict fates. Plenty of people used such a deck for idle games, but the stories were always the things that seemed to hold the most magic.

“Trick,” the grandmother in red said.

“Trap,” the grandmother in green corrected.

“Take,” the grandmother in blue giggled. 

Alina looked over her cards again. “I’m not willing to wager anything on my first game before even learning the rules.”

“Your time is value enough, my dear one,” the baba in blue cooed. “Let us teach you and show you the way.”

“I’ll admit to being a little lost,” Alina said, watching as the first two babas put down cards on the table then drew from the deck. 

The first card had a trio of children running through a field and the scrawling script said it was called: Innocence. The second card was of a woman hanging a curtain over her window, looking back over her shoulder to a bed where a lover waited. The script above said it was called: deception. When inverted it looked like the woman was pulling the curtain down the other name for it was: revelation.

“Being lost is the first step to being found.” The third grandmother hummed before laying down a card with the picture of a son standing in front of his father and grandfather, each holding a sword from a different era. It read: inheritance. 

Alina looked down at her cards and when she inhaled a sensation settled into the back of her throat, like the taste of a thick milk tea with burnt cloves, she swallowed it down before she could realize what it was. Her fingers stilled atop a card before she played it: Turmoil. 

Only with the card down atop the table did she recognize the taste on her tongue: Merzost. It was enough to lift the haze of suggestion she had been operating under and it was like waking up from a dream that didn’t make sense. But Alina didn’t panic. When she looked up again she could tell the grandmother in green knew what had happened. 

“You’re all witches, aren’t you?” 

“What a crude thing to say,” the blue one teased. 

“Was I wrong?” she dared.

“I like her,” the one in red admitted, looking at the one in green. “I told you I would. It only took one round.”

The grandmother in red huffed then called out, “Trick,” before gathering up all the cards played in that round and putting them on Alina’s side; her winnings. 

The next few cards were played in silence. Silence, Infatuation, Betrayal. Alina put down the last card, aware of what this round signified. Her card was of a hunter carrying home a far elk. The title was: Bounty. 

“Trap,” the one in green cheered as another layer of enchantment lifted. It felt so different from her small science, but also not. Alina was in more control of her senses and her thoughts, but that only lead to near panicking. 

“Why do you have me here and what could you want with me when I’m an empty vessel in your eyes?” She asked the old women as each drew a new card from the deck. 

“Then let’s skip a little ahead and show you,” the one in green said before laying down the first card for play. The one in blue gathered the previous set and put them next to Alina’s wrist. 

The cards were dealt: Conflict, Victory, Peace.

Alina swallowed down her disgust and played the last card, the only card she could: Slaughter.

“Take,” the one in red called out, flicking her wrist so the cards were turned over and fell into a neat pile in front of Alina. Atop them all was the picture of a butcher with his gutted lamb. He held  cleaver but Alina saw a hand sickle and felt it between her fingers.

“Why,” she whispered, tasting Merzost again as something heavier settled amongst them. 

“Because,” the first baba said while playing her last card. It was a child crying in between the trees. The title said: Lost.

“But also,” the grandmother in red played her last card: Anointed. 

“And yet,” the last grandmother played her card of a boy looking back over his shoulder at a back littered with scars and wounds: Scarred. Between them the old woman seemed to speak without words. 

Alina glanced down at her last card and sneered at the picture, not believing in it: Tyrant. The painting was of a beautiful woman with long black hair and eyes as green as raw Malachite. Atop her head was a crown of green stones and at her feet were the people, bowed so low they were curled figures in the corners of the card’s picture. 

“I’m not.”

“Not as you are, no,” the one in blue gently corrected before touching the card to push it back towards Alina. “But we’d like to see this now.”

“You’ve had your stab at peace, little lamb,” the one in red chuckled. 

“As you have with the small sciences,” the woman in red said, now no longer a crone but a beautiful woman with a face full of fire. Alina dropped her face to the table, averting her gaze as heat roared across her back. 

“An age of saints has passed, now let us deal with angels,”  the woman in green cooed, her long black hair spilling over the table. She stood but Alina didn’t see it, her eyes were squeezed tight. Her left fist went cold and she felt snow and ice on it. 

“What a fun game,” the beauty in blue cooed, picking up the snow kissed corners of her cape. 

When the world was quiet again Alina dared lift her gaze. 

The table was empty and her hands were bleeding. Into each palm a mark had been cut and colored with black magic. Her veins were thick with dark colors as she swayed in her seat. 

The story isn’t done, let's have our fun. Lets see a new book, a different chapter in this wondrous dream. 

Alina came down with a fever and survived on the good graces of the villagers who turned oddly devoted to the saint with no powers. That didn’t seem to matter to them one bit and she was all the more confused because of it. No one she spoke to had any more information about the three grandmothers, only that Alina was favored and welcomed in all their homes. 

A month later she still had no more answers but plenty of questions when a rider came to visit. He questioned the first villager with a portate, seemingly expecting nothing until Alina walked out of the miller’s hut. 

The rider dropped the portrait and Alina saw her face, colored and youthful with the same delicate features from years ago. 

“I’ll need a horse,” Alina said to whoever was nearest. “It seems this story isn’t done with me yet.”  

[thedevilwearspierce]

headcanon time because I’m feeling very defensive of Kat this evening. 

Despite canon’s complete trash portrayal, Katherine was one of the, if not THE hopeless romantic of the show. Everything that happened to her ultimately was because she loved and invested in her love far too easily. 

I doubt anyone will read this as it’s disgustingly long but if you are interested in a mad woman’s ramblings you will find just that below.

Take Nadia’s father, for example. She loved him so completely that she gave away a part of herself to him during a time when it was absolutely forbidden to do so. This act of loving too easily was what set all of the rest of her traumatic experiences in motion. 

She became pregnant because of it, meaning she could not hide what she had done from her family. Her child was taken away from her, (another love lost) and then exiled by her own family all before she was 18. 

Even after all this loss she STILL believed in love and actively seeked it out. She still believed in true love after all of that, after being cut off from her family who were meant to love her unconditionally she REMAINED in love with love. She was completely naive to Klaus’ obvious red flags and looked for the best in him at some hope of finding companionship with someone. It’s an obvious fact that the banishment by her family set in motion her meeting Klaus, running from him and eventually becoming a vampire. 

But I honestly don’t think that it was those things that set her down the path to the Katherine we eventually meet on the show. As a vampire and while on the run from Klaus she returned home to her FAMILY whom she loved, she only wanted to be with them as any young girl would after something so horrific had happened to them. She returned home to them DESPITE being shamed and shut out by them, because she loved them. 

I believe it was wanting to see the family that she loved again that caused her to turn herself. I don’t think she was desperate to survive for any other reason than hoping to be with people she loved and be loved in return. 

She was then forced to go through the inexplicable traumatic experience of seeing her entire family slaughtered. In that moment she realised she was completely alone in this world. It is /this/ that sets Katherine down her dark path - losing the last people she had left. It is my belief that her motivation of survival was actually driven by her motivation to find love and companionship. 

From this point onwards she went about it horrifically, there is no head canon that can challenge that - she has done truly terrible things that can’t be justified. But so has every other character on the show. Katherine never once switched off her humanity, she had to wake up with her trauma everyday for 500 years and somehow manage to deal with it. 

Then we get to 1864. Katherine has literally been running from Klaus for four centuries by this point, never staying in one place for too long ; until she meets the Salvatore brothers. It is here we see her truly contemplate creating a permanent home despite it making it easier for Klaus to find her and why? Because she loves them, or at least Stefan. Even when suspicions start to arise about vampires in the town she still doesn’t flee. Some might say that it’s just due to blind arrogance but I think it’s because her love for Stefan outweighed the danger she was possibly in. Ultimately it was this love that nearly ended in her capture and death.

Then despite having to flee, she checks on Stefan CONSTANTLY throughout the years ; not to mention literally risking being in chicago at the same time as KLAUS just to see he was okay /particularly/ as he was going through a ripper phrase which really concerned her because SHE LOVES HIM.

She literally repeats this constantly through the show, showing up in mystic falls whilst Klaus is there. Not to mention she has the very real opportunity twice to free herself from Klaus and doesn’t each time because she wants to save the men she loves. The first being in season three when she discovers killing Klaus will kill Damon and in season four when she hands the cure to Elijah, knowing killing Klaus will means she loses him. 

Some quick bonus tidbits in case you’re still not convinced; 

- When she is free from Klaus she literally realises she has no purpose, she literally says it in the letter to Nadia. She no longer has her motivation of survival to cover up the lack of love and companionship she has in her life, and so the woman who spent FIVE HUNDRED YEARS trying to survive literally tries to kill herself?????????? What??? No way in hell could she have truly been motivated by survival 

- CARRYING ON FROM THIS she chooses to try and survive - literally doing a juice cleanse and cardio, I might add - BECAUSE Stefan slept with her and she feels she might finally have a chance to be with him. BECAUSE SHE LOVES HIM !!! AND SHE JUST WANTS TO BE LOVED !!! BUT NO ONE WILL LOVE HER OR GIVE HER A CHANCE SO SHE GOES ON THE DEFENSIVE BECAUSE THE LAST TIME THREE TIMES SHE WAS OPEN AND VULNERABLE TO LOVE SHE WAS NEARLY KILLED BECAUSE OF IT !!!!! I -

- That little jig she does in bed after waking up next to Stefan 

- The look of pure unadulterated joy on her face when she thinks Elijah has come to visit her on her deathbed 

- (This next reason is a shitty action but still driven by love) taking Elena’s body to get to be with Stefan and Nadia 

- The look on her face when she sees baby nadia in her crib on her deathbed 

- Her putting herself at risk just to visit Nadia when she is dying - literally goes against her trying to survive, as it led to her being dragged to hell 

So yeah, Katherine Pierce was NOT motivated by survival, she was motivated by love ain’t no body say a line like “if we cease to believe in love, why would we want to live at all?” and NOT be a hopeless romantic. 

In conclusion: canon is trash, the show did her so dirty as other characters’ did terrible heinous things and STILL got a happy ending without even enduring as much as she did. 

Canon does not exist post season 4 - Katherine trotted off to get reacquainted with the woman she used to be in Bulgaria in order to become the woman worthy Elijah’s love and they retired to a cottage in the mountains where they bickered and slow danced and helped heal each other’s wounds. <3 

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

[jaydcstories]

SAM by John Dee Cooper © 2020

Chapter 13

It wasn’t too bad to begin with. They were just rubbing stuff into his skin, making it shiny and smooth and giving it a light healthy sheen.

All the same Sam didn’t find it easy standing astride with his arms spread out like some great marble statue, while the toad’s clammy little fingers rubbed ointment into his broad back and buttocks, and the little barefoot boy massaged his thighs, and Master Jack smoothed oil into his torso.  It didn’t feel natural — especially as it stirred undesirable and dangerous urges in him. He blushed with shame when a rush of heat to his groin forced his cock to edge outwards and rub up against Master Jack’s leg.

Jack didn’t seem to mind. He was delighted with the result of the body rub. It rendered the slave’s flesh smooth and tactile and added extra bulk to his impressive array of muscles.

They fitted steel bands to his upper arms to emphasise the roundness of his biceps and tried a similar thing with his calf muscles — but that didn’t look half so good so they took them off. Instead they fitted permanent steel cuffs to his wrists and ankles. They were small, neat and heavy, with clips built into them so that they could quickly and easily be connected to rope or chains or whatever was to hand.

Jack was a little more hesitant when they came to discuss body attachments. He wanted to preserve the slave’s naturally rugged physique and didn’t want to spoil it with too many ornaments, but the rep showed him how a few carefully positioned and scarcely visible studs could be inserted into the slave’s flesh enabling rings, chains and other attachments to be added whenever desired.  

“The most popular locations are the ears, nose, tongue, nipples and penis,” he explained “ and I have an interesting gagging device that allows the tongue to be pinned to the floor of the mouth. And of course we must discuss what we’re going to do with the genitalia — ball stretchers, maybe? Or even a chastity cage if that’s what you have in mind.”

Sam tried to pretend they were talking about someone else but the toad’s fat fingers were all over him prodding and squeezing.

“We need to get cracking, if you want the slave ready for this evening” he said, once Jack had made his selection from the catalogue. “We’ll use needles because they cause less damage to the surrounding flesh and healing is quicker, but we need to keep them red hot to avoid infection — we don’t use sanitary or numbing agents on slaves, so we need to hold him steady or it could turn messy.”  

There were three eager volunteers on the sofa who were only too willing to grab hold of the slave while a small flame burner was lit and the needles heated up.

The earlobes came first. They were easy and though the needle stung as it burrowed its way through the soft flesh, it was quite bearable and Sam reckoned he could probably cope if it was all going to be at this level of discomfort, even though he wasn’t sure he really wanted his body messed about with in this way.

He even managed to contain himself when the needle was jabbed through his nasal cartilage, although it made his eyes water and he had to fight back a sneeze which he thought was going to split his nose wide open.

It was when they got to his tongue that the trouble started. The initial piercing was quick and easy enough — though it stung like hell and he had to hold his tongue out so far it choked. But the clever device for screwing his tongue to the inside of his mouth meant his jaw had to be forced open and held in position with a  metal clamp. It was clear to everyone this was going to hurt — especially Sam who flew into a panic. The three volunteers tightened their grip, but Sam had had enough. He’d decided he didn’t want his body ripped apart like this, even if it was just to please his Master.

With one mighty heave of his powerful arms he flung the three startled volunteers across the room, grabbed the toad by the wrists and tried to wrench the instruments of torture out of his hand — and would have succeeded if the little barefoot boy, who’d been trained to deal with just such an event, hadn’t jabbed him in the small of the back with an electric slave prod.

Sam went rigid, dropped to his knees and toppled forward onto the rubber sheet.

It was a simple matter now to pull his wrists and ankles back and bind the shiny new cuffs together with rope.

Securely hogtied and still stunned  from the shockwave, he was lifted onto his knees, his head pushed back and his mouth forced open. There was a sickening taste of metal and blood as the toad worked on him and although Sam couldn’t move he could feel the needle scraping about inside his mouth and fingers squeezing down on his tongue.

By the time it was over,  Sam’s faculties had returned, but he still couldn’t move. Somebody had got an arm round his neck. His jaw ached and he couldn’t loosen his tongue. He wondered for a moment if his tongue hadn’t been cut out altogether but then it began to throb and he realised it was pinned to the bottom of his mouth. He panicked again and nearly choked when he tried to swallow. The clamp was still holding his jaw open and saliva was dribbling down his chin and onto his chest.  No wonder he hardly noticed the toad drilling needles into his nipples and his cock and God knows where else.

Jack suggested they take a break  while they discussed what to do next, so he and the Kerkermann rep retired to one of the sofas where they talked about things to do to Sam’s genitalia while  the house boy served them tea. They’d pushed Sam over onto his side, facing away from them, still bound hand and foot. A mountain of heaving muscle, Jack thought, mute and obedient, a prize catch for him to mould and exploit for his own personal pleasure and fulfilment. He was enjoying this.

Sam on the other hand was fighting off the pain, his body torn and bruised, wild images of disfigurement and contortion infiltrating  his imagination. It felt as if his whole body had been pierced through with needles and studs, all itching and tugging at his flesh — he wasn’t even sure how many or where they all were. They’d taken the jack out of his mouth, but his jaw ached and he couldn’t move his tongue. He moaned and took deep breaths. What were they turning him into? Some kind of monster? The reflection he’d seen in the shower room mirror — he’d looked so proud and magnificent then — it had been too good to be true.

The conference on the sofa over, it was time to get Sam back on to his feet, but when they untied him he simply lay there, curled up like a foetus, too ashamed and fearful to reveal himself. They had to kick him a few times to get him to move, and as he gradually rose, first onto his hands and knees then slowly one foot at a time, his strength and his courage returned.  

Not daring to look down at his body convinced it was all bloody and covered in scars (which it clearly wasn’t judging by the calm look of approval on Master Jack’s face), he stretched to his full height, flexed a few muscles and taking a deep breath drew all the soreness and discomfort out from wherever he could sense it and relaxed wholesome and complete and feeling strangely aware of his own heightened physical presence — an awareness that manifested itself most visibly in the massive erection that was now the focus of everyone’s attention — an erection that was driven and sustained by the weight of a shiny steel ring jutting out of the tip of his bulging cock head. The sight of it alarmed him at first — how did he not feel them do that? But with a few more deep breaths he had that under his control as well — even though Master Jack was dragging his fingers lightly up and down the length of his shaft triggering spasms of such intensity that Sam was fearful his cock was going to explode.

“Now let’s get to work on those gonads,” said the toad, “while they’re still loose and pliable.”

Sam’s legs were kicked apart and he was bent forward, with his hands on his ankles and his arse in the air. The little bare foot boy crawled underneath and grabbed hold of his testicles, pulling them down while the toad clipped a heavy steel collar round the root of his scrotum. When the boy let go, Sam’s balls hung low and heavy under the weight of the steel collar and the little barefoot boy tested them by flicking them several times with his knuckles making them swing from side to side.

“And now while we have him in this position, we can fit this useful little gadget,” said the toad, proudly presenting an oddly shaped rubber plug with a series of tiny buttons worked into its base. “It’s our number one internal control device with adjustable dimensions so that it can fit comfortably inside any slave without fear of slipping out or being removed without the owner’s knowledge or consent. And it’s operated by this neat little owner’s remote device  with switches for stimulation as well as for control. It’s state of the art!”  

Jack was intrigued and told the rep to go ahead and fit it.

Still bending forwards, Sam was told to reach round with his hands and spread his cheeks. He could feel the toad’s fat fingers probing and poking.

“I can tell this arse has been put to good use,” he heard the toad say. “It should slide in quite easily.”

Sam braced himself. He’d grown accustomed to being fucked by cocks of all sizes while he was in the ruined cottage but this was something quite different. It was solid, heavy and lifeless. The toad had to give his buttocks a few hard slaps to get him to open up enough to let it in. It seemed to fill his whole gut and once it was in it just hung there aching to be pushed out again. Then suddenly he felt it shift and tighten inside him as the toad showed Master Jack how to use the remote control to adjust its size.

“You must remember to give the slave a good flush out before fitting it for any length of time,” warned the toad, referring Jack to the device’s manual, “and to keep him off solid food while it’s in there, otherwise,” he whispered, “ there could be unfortunate consequences when you pull it out.”

Sam was told to stand up straight and that’s when the full impact of the intrusive plug took effect, forcing him to grip his arse muscles and tighten his buttocks causing the solid rubber to press against his prostrate, making his cock jut out as stiff as a rod.

“Very impressive,” said Jack approvingly, inviting the lads on the sofa to come and have a feel of it.

“If you like,” said the toad with an obsequious  grin, “we can prolong that magnificent erection with the help of this little angel.”

He held up a phial of green liquid and mischievously waved a hypodermic needle in the space around Sam’s cock.

“It’s extremely effective and can last up to four hours with the correct dosage. It’s been fully tested and is quite harmless.”

He read out from the leaflet before demonstrating how to make the injection, then handed the hypodermic needle to Jack, who was keen to give it a try.

Sam held his breath as Master Jack loaded the needle and plunged it deep into the fleshy root of his penis.  For a moment there was nothing , then Sam felt a dull ache where the needle had bruised him and his stomach began to quiver and his groin to tingle and burn and his rock hard cock to dance about clutching wildly at the air as his balls bulged and shifted and bolts of lightening shot through his thighs making his whole body tremble and his cock head to twitch. He sucked in air, clenched his muscles and tried to control the force that was surging through his veins, setting his nerve ends on fire.

“Magnificent,” murmured Jack with a thrill of satisfaction as he stroked and petted the hard edgy hunk of slave muscle that stood nervously at attention in front of him.

The Kerkermann rep sorted out a few remaining items, including a lotion to rub into the slave’s ball sac to keep it smooth and hairless, lubricants for the butt plug and an assortment of ornaments, clips, chains and trinkets with which to adorn the slave’s body. He gave Jack a payment form to sign and handed over a receipt and that was it. He shook hands while the little barefoot boy rolled up the rubber mat and put it back in the suitcase, and the pair of them left the room..

“We’ve  just got time to test this thing,” said Jack, picking up the remote control, “and then we really must get ready for dinner. The Brigadier won’t appreciate us being late.”

He and the three occupants of the sofa watched with interest as the slave’s body twisted and squirmed while Jack tried each of the controls in turn. He discovered how to induce a gentle vibration that instantly set the slave moaning and his already rampant cock twitching, a short sharp shock that made him straighten up, alert and ready for command and, best of all, a crippling blow at full power that had him on his knees clutching his arse and howling as best as he could with his tongue pinned to the bottom of his mouth.

The three fellows on the sofa were delighted with this and they all wanted to have a go, so they played around with it for about half an hour, until at last Jack said it really was time to get ready for dinner and led the newly adorned slave out by a lead he’d attached to a ring in his nose.

JOHN DEE COOPER’S ALL-MALE SLAVE STORIES OBEDIENT SERVICE GOOGLE GROUP

[anne-lister-adventures]

Monday, 10 March 1840

4 50/’’

11 1/2

All ready at 5 25/’’ then a little breakfast (our own little boiler no pother of Semovar) – Reaumur 7 1/2º on our table – The room coldish – 2 cups of tea and breakfast over in 10 minutes – And from the Kopanowskaia at 6 – A little village - Counted a group of 19 Calmuck tents (Kibitkas) – 

Descend upon the Volga – The wood (vide line 12 last p.[page]) was, as today, large old pollard willows on large sandbanks and islands of the Volga – Looking like a forest in the distance and in fact it is willow-forest the trees being often sufficiently thick on the ground to leave little room for anything else, tho’ we found cattle straying among them – 

At 7 25/’’ turned up from the river to the land-road – Very fine morning – At the Little gorod of J-[Jenotaiewsk] at 8 35/’’ – The servants Kibitka a few minutes en retard – We had arrived so much sooner than I expected thought going another stage before breakfast – But the next Station said to be such a poor little place where we could not breakfast that determined to breakfast here – The good-looking new (wood) house it seemed belonged to a seigneur – Nothing to be had there – 

Set off to another place in the Gorod – Having just walked round the white handsome church at some distance (opposite) our Station – This the Cathedral! Another neat church besides this – This a clocher with 4 style portico – Nave – And the church (all 3 adjoining) a large circle gathered up in 2 retiring steps to the size of the domes, with North and South entrance by 2 style porch and pediment – all the roof metal plates painted green – 

The Jenotaiewsk cathedral c. 1910.

One of the nicest neatest little Gorod churches we have seen – 4 or 5 wind mills close to the town (right) on entering, and (left) on entering in a wide sort of 1/2 formed square the cathedral – And not far from this a neat good building for Town’s business, Court House – Nice little villagy town – 

We had 3 or 4 minutes walk to chez ‘le seigneiur’ the Maître de Poste a German Russian – Arrived 2 months ago – His wife and daughters at St. P-[Petersburg] the Postmaster at Astrakhan going to Kazan (as Postmaster) and our friend anxious to succeed him at A-[Astrakhan] would not stay here at any price – Nobody to speak to – No parti for his daughters – All Calmuck – The ladies could not read or write and on my mentioning the common waste of manure, he said here they did worse than pile it on the riverside to be washed away – They laid it in the Town – and the smell was offensive in summer – 

Emolument 500/- per annum – There might be other revenues but un homme comme il faut could not take them – Better appointments and a good house at Astrakhan for the Postmaster – Trade very bad there now – Nothing but the fishery – Nothing to be had but Moscow things – The Persian trade all goes to Tiflis now – They have a grant of it free of duty for 10 years – Several rich merchants there – And a large new hotel that cost 10000/- 5 storeys High – On the Koura – Kept by an Armenian, Chadinoff – Prince Volkonsky had spoken of it to our host – 

Could not tell what we should pay there – But had before recommended a house (no hotel where one can dine at Astrakhan) at A-[Astrakhan] kept by a French whose wife is a German where we should lodge and board (very good table) for a Silver Ruble a day! Nobody no company there (at the house) now – How will this turn out? This was told at 1st when he asked what affaires we had at A-[Astrakhan] and fancied it might be the wife of a Naval Officer (English) who had been 10 years there in the Russian Marine (ship building) and did not wish to engage for another 10, and was afraid of his wife passing him on the road, as she was to join him there – But he should wait for her at Moscow – 

Our host had been 6 years prisoner in England – Had surrendered to the English par préférance instead of to the French at Lisbon after the Russian Turkish War (in 1808?) – Prisoner at Portsmouth but had visited Chatham, London &c. &c. apparently on parole – Liked England very much – The Russian prisoners very well treated there – Had been at Tiflis – Lost a nephew 2 months in the Circassian War – Nothing but patience will do with these people – 

Must ask at A-[Astrakhan] to have an escort – Dangerous about Kisliar – The couriers never take money that way – Always by Tcherkask and Stavropol – No danger in passing the Kabardas – Always an escort – Recommended us to be there by moonlight – Very fine – As if one was in a hole so surrounded by mountains – The best time for passing is January – The sooner we get there the better or we may be inconvenienced I suppose by the melting the snows – I got no answer I think to my inquire if there were avalanches – 

He said we might be 16 or 18 hours on horseback in getting thro’ from one Station to another – Sure we never saw such a road – A Germany colony a few v.[versts] from Tiflis that we ought to see – We should find Germans French and English there and all sorts of Persian things &c. &c. to be got there – 

Gave the Courier the address of the people at A-[Astrakhan] and gave him an a letter for the Calmuck Prince and for horses to take there tomorrow – Our carriage Kibitka too heavy – Had best take a light Traineau de Poste but said we must have 3 horses and ourselves and the 2 Russians (Courier and George) could go – 

The Prince was in the campaign in France in 1814 – His sister (that Lord Royston saw) married unhappily – Married a Calmuck – The Prince very rich – Would half kill his servants if they took anything – I must not pay anything – He speaks French – Is très comme il faut – 

Cannot sleep at Zamianowskaya, so that if we cannot arrive in time at Libajouskaya had best return and sleep a 2d. night at Soroglazinskaya where we shall sleep tonight, the encampent being on 12 v.[versts] from there across the river – The Prince has a good house – Pity we did not arrive in time for the great religious fête 3 weeks ago when he had 80 people staying in his house – Begged I might give the servant of our host and left with himself a 30 Kopek Silver piece – Probably the master not the maid would take it – And I might have given more – Probably a 1/2 Silver Rouble would have been better – 

Off at 10 3/4 – Descend immediately upon the Volga till 11 50/’’ then seem to leave it and go along the land-road (the summer road) – Had my door open for some while – Drive over ice – And large sandbanks and islands covered with large old pollarded willows – A Deciatine, said our Maître de Poste (who 1st addressed us in English) = 80 x 30 fathoms of 2 English yards = 4800 yards something less than an acre = 4840 yards – A-[Ann] had slept and I had slept and read which beguiled the slowness of our progress – 

2 35/’’ when we reached Kosikinskaya – Little cottage-like log house Station House but we might have had a nice enough little room to ourselves and might have breakfasted as to room quite as comfortably as we did chez ‘le seigneur’ whose Semovar had lost its cheminée (long ∴[therefore] in boiling and we had to get our own cheminée) and there was nobody in the little Gorod to mend it – Our host gets all his provisions from Tamboff 700 v.[versts] off (I think he said 700 v.[versts]) – 

At K-[Kosikinskaya] neat little painted broad church – Needle-pointed clocher – Nave – And church part 8tagon[octagon] as well as the clocher – The village small and shabbyish – 2 or 3 Calmuck tents in the courtyard (farm yard) opposite our Station House – The Post stables merely of wattled (wicker) walls, flat roofed and hay piled stackwise on the top – Royston crows in abundance hopping about – Quite tame and with them several magpies – The guide post marks 115 v.[versts] to A-[Astrakhan] Read a great deal this morning – 

Schnitzler vol.[volume] 2 on the origin of the Calmucks and Tatars, and vol.[volume] 1 from p.[page] 169 to 217 chapter 6 and then on arriving at the Station at 4, Soroglazinskaya, finding the house full of people – Could not be taken in, drove off with one horse to our present quarters – And en route finished the remaining p.[page] or 2 of chapter 6 and alighted here at 4 20/’’ – One nice enough room – Soon made ourselves comfortable – And went out at 4 40/’’ for an hour to the neat church which A-[Ann] sketched – 

Sent off the Courier to the Calmuc Prince with A-‘s[Ann’s] card and mine and compliments and we would be chez lui about 10 tomorrow a.m. – They say here, he has 2 brothers at St. P-[Petersburg] one a Captain in the Grenadier Guard – Has a large village about him, and a school for his people – Some have cottages and some tents (Kibitkas of felt) – The river is close to the village here just below it – And all seems sandy desert around – Bare of snow here and there – But they say there is good pasture land at a little distance – Some Calmuck tents here, one in each of several farm yards – But they say, these people do not stay here, but live in the woods to the westward – Several good wood cottages and houses here – A good, picturesque village in long line above the Volga – All the people very civil in taking off the hats as we pass – Wrote all the above of today till tea at 8 in 1/2 hour – 

The village the property of the people – Cossacks – Free – The farm yard full of sheep a mixed breed between Calmuck and not ∴[therefore] some with the short fat tails and some not and some with the long small tail of English sheep – A good sheep will weigh fit for the butcher 2 poods (40 Russian lbs.[pounds] or 36 English lbs.[pounds]+ = 72 English lbs.[pounds]) and sell for 8/- horses from 40/- to 100/- and cows about 40/- - a fat cow = from 8 to 16 poods and the fat animal worth about 7/- or rather more per pood – 

Had just written so far at 8 40/’’ p.m. very fine day Reaumur -15º dehors at 6 a.m. and +7 1/2º in our room at 5 1/2 a.m. Had the Courier in – To be chez le Prince at 11 a.m. tomorrow – Had Domna – Undressed – A thorough wash –

 1st 1/2+ Volga   6 to 8 35/’’     Kopanowskaya to Jenotaiewsk (Gorod)      30

ditto ditto ditto    10 3/4 to 2 35/’’  J-[Jenotaiewsk] to Kosikinskaya       25 1/2

all on Volga   2 55/’’ to 4    K-[Kosikinskaya] to Soroglazinskaya           24 1/2

                                                                                                               80

Some of Anne’s and Ann’s stops in little towns along the Volga.

[symbols in the margin of the page:]         +          𐐥

[in the margin of the page:]             Reaumur -15º at 6 a.m. dehors

[in the margin of the page:]            Jenotaiewsk

Page References: SH:7/ML/E/24/0038 and SH:7/ML/E/24/0039 and SH:7/ML/E/0040

[tattooednursewrites]

Explosive

Masterlist

Summary:    Tony and Bruce have an experiment go badly, but it gives you a push in the right direction. 

Stephen Strange/Reader

Word Count:   1427

Warnings:   Language

A/N:      This is for Elle’s (@delicatelyherdreams) 1K Writing Challenge - but she’s since hit 2K - many congrats on doubling your milestone! My dialog prompt was  “Well, that could’ve gone better.” / “No shit, Sherlock! You blew up my house!”

Hope y’all enjoy!

 Explosive

            Drying the last mug, you reached to set it on the shelf when the house shook. Fuck. Were you under attack? Who had found you? Touching the knives at your hips, you made sure they were secure, before grabbing your rifle and moving outside. Your jaw dropped when you saw the damage. The sunroom that was attached to the left side of your house was demolished. The sunroom that Tony had been using for his experiments. Shit.

            “Tony?” you rushed over to the smoldering rubble. “Fuck. Tony, are you okay? Bruce?” You looked around for the cause of the explosion, but it didn’t seem you were under attack. “Tony, where are you, you ass! Bruce, please be okay.” You walked around, peering into what was left of the room. You knew Tony and Bruce had been working on something when you had brought them lunch a bit ago. You couldn’t help but be thankful that Stephen wasn’t around. He had left earlier, saying he’d return for dinner.

            You looked out across the field, wondering if Clint had heard the explosion. Your house and the land it stood on abutted the land that made up Clint’s farm. You had known him and his wife for years, having worked with Clint for a while before you decided to retire… at least for the most part. When Clint was looking for a safe place for his family, it just made sense that he should settle them nearby. He knew if he was away, you’d take care of them.

              That was also how you ended up getting mixed up with the Avengers and company. When Tony and Steve had come to you a few years back, looking for a place to lay low, you had welcomed them. Bruce followed not long after. After that you became like an Avengers’ halfway house. None of them ever seemed to stay long, but there always seemed to be a couple of them milling about. Tony and Bruce had even taken over your sunroom for research of some kind. Why they didn’t do said research in one of their many fancy labs, you had no idea. But you didn’t complain, that research was the reason Stephen Strange had come into your life.

 ***

              Stephen had been in your kitchen looking for tea. You came in, and he had stopped and simply looked at you. After a few moments of silence, you had smirked at him. “Is there something I can help you with?”

              He seemed to startle, blinking at you. “I was…” he held up a mug. “Tea?”

              You smiled at him, introducing yourself, before putting on the kettle and pulling your selection down from the cabinet. “You’re welcome to anything here. There is cream and milk in the fridge, and honey and sugar are in the cabinet,” you gestured to where you grabbed the tea from. “The raspberry rose hibiscus is a favorite of mine, but unfortunately doesn’t have caffeine,” you rambled, blushing as you turned your attention back to the kettle.

              “I’m Stephen, Dr. Stephen Strange,” he replied, moving towards the tea you had set out. “Sorry to impose, I’m just helping Tony with… a project of sorts.”

              “It’s really not a problem,” you assured him with another smile, pouring water into the mug he had chosen. “Living alone all these years, I didn’t realize how much I missed the company. It can get a bit chaotic, but it’s nice.” You poured water into a mug for yourself and added a couple bags of tea, startling a bit when his cloak seemed to move on its own.

              “It does that, you get used to it,” Stephen said when he noticed your surprise.

              You giggled a bit as the cloak wrapped around your hand in the imitation of a handshake. “Well, how polite,” you grinned at the gesture before looking at Stephen. “Does it have a name?”

          “It’s a cloak,” Stephen replied, deadpan. “The Cloak of Levitation, to be precise, but still, a cloak.”

            “Cloak of Levitation? That’s a bit formal for every day, is it not?” you smirked, looking back to the cloak in question, that was still holding your hand. “How about Levy?” Stephen looked as if he was about to speak, but the cloak started moving your hand up and down excitedly, so you took that as a ‘yes’. “Well, it’s nice to make your acquaintance, Levy,” you grinned.

              Stephen watched your interaction and you could have sworn you saw his lips twitch. “Yes, well… I guess that’s settled. This tea is quite good, by the way. Thank you.”

              “I’m glad you like it,” you replied, smirking into your mug at his lack of argument about you naming his cloak. You settled at the table and gestured to the seat across from you. “So, what are you helping the science bros with?”

              “Science bros? Please tell me they don’t call themselves that.”

              You chuckled, grinning at him and raising an eyebrow. “Only sometimes. I think it’s cute.”

              His eyes dropped to your lips and you felt your cheeks heat. “So, I hear you’ve retired. What did you do?”

              “I could tell you, but…” you smirked at him. “I worked with SHIELD, like Nat and Clint. I wasn’t so good at following orders… never have been really. This life, helping out with little things here and there, it suits me better.”

              Stephen nodded.  

            “So, Dr. Stephen Strange, what are you a doctor of?” you asked, regretting it immediately when you saw him wince.

              “That’s… well…”

              “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…”

              “No, it’s… I was a neurosurgeon. I was in a car accident. I, well, I couldn’t perform surgery anymore. Now I protect reality.”

              “Wow. So, one super important job to another super important job. I’m glad you’re helping the science bros. They could use someone… well, let’s just say they don’t always think things through.”

 ***

               Clint jogged up, bow in hand, looking between you and the destruction. “We getting attacked?”

              “I don’t think so. I think they would’ve shown themselves. I can’t find Bruce or Tony. Last I saw they were…” you gestured to the wreckage that was your sunroom.

              “Well, shit.”

              “Yeah, that’s one way to put it,” you sighed. You heard a portal opening and turned, expecting Stephen. Your eyes widened as you saw Bruce and Tony with him.

              Stephen strode to you, wrapping you in a tight embrace. “I’m glad you’re alright,” he whispered into your hair before squeezing you and steeping away. The cloak wrapped around your shoulder, pulling you into his side. You smiled up at Stephen when you saw his blush.

              “Yeah, I’m glad you showed up when you did and were able to get us out of there, that could’ve been really bad,” Bruce said, looking at the damage.

              Tony was staring at the house. He turned to you, a sheepish look on his face. “Well, that could’ve gone better…”

              “No shit, Sherlock! You blew up my house!” you growled, stalking toward Tony. You felt Stephen grab your hand, gently tugging you back.

              “And he’ll fix it,” Stephen replied, trying to calm you.

              “I will?”

              “You… we… will,” Bruce confirmed as you pulled against Stephen to get at Tony. “I promise. We’ll fix it. I’m so sorry.”

              “I can help,” Clint volunteered, looking to you. “Or at least supervise, make sure they actually do.”

              “And while they work on that,” Stephen murmured, drawing your attention. “How about you and I get out of here… just us.”

              You felt yourself blush as you nodded. It would be impossible to hide your crush when it was just the two of you, but you didn’t mind the thought of that. “I’d like that. A lot.”

              “Brilliant,” he said, smiling down at you. “You two have work to do. I’ll bring her back… well, we’ll see.” With that parting shot Stephen opened a portal and you were no longer in front of your house. You were on the porch of a little cottage that overlooked a gorgeous mountain range. “You didn’t seem like the beach type.”

              You grinned, taking in your surroundings. “This is… it’s beautiful.”

              “I’m glad you…”

              You cut off his words, pulling him to you and kissing him. You felt the cloak wrap around you as Stephen got over his shock and kissed you back. You giggled against his lips when you felt a squeeze on your ass. “I think Levy is copping a feel.”

              Stephen sighed. You felt the cloak release you and watched as it hid, almost bashfully, behind Stephen. He grinned at you. “Now then, where were we?”

[galadrieljones]

A Funeral: Chapter 1

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption 2 | Pairing: Arthur x Mary Beth | Rating: Mature

Content: Existential Angst, Friendship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Nature, Touch-Starved, Humor, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Angst, Violence

Summary: To help her process Sean’s death, Mary Beth asks Arthur to take her on a hunting trip, somewhere far away. He agrees, and on their little journey together, they find quietude and take comfort in their easy bond. In their desperate search for meaning, they endure a number of small trials, which bring them closer to one another as well as to the unchecked plights of the natural world.

Masterpost | AO3

Thanks @bearlytolerablethethird​ for the banner!! ^_^

Chapter 1: A Proposal

It was morning, and the sun was creeping, and he was on his third cigarette with his hands in the soil, picking thyme flowers. They grew like wild out here. He had removed his gloves and set them back on the saddle where Sarah shuffled against the brush, her big hooves. He took enormous comfort in the sounds of her hooves like they were a mother’s voice or the touch of a woman.

When he returned to camp, it was still quiet. This swamp country stank. He did not take well to it. In ways he wished to return to the mountains where at least the air felt clean of infectious filth. His lungs hardened. In the swamp everything was soft and this made it feel like sinking. Even his internal organs felt soft. His skin, his eyes. Everything but his hands, which were hard leather mitts, but that was an old complaint that only women noticed anymore. The other day, he picked up a bucket of water for Mary Beth, and she commented on them, asking if she could see.

“Your knuckles are cracked to high heaven, Arthur Morgan.” That is what she said as she held one of his big stupid hands in hers. He knew it was not a compliment. Mary Beth was canny. She would read her books and write in their margins with the fountain pen he had brought for her, a thing he’d found in a dark corner of some abandoned cottage near Emerald Station. Sometimes, she got the ink on her hands, which were much softer than his, in the winter regions and in the swamps. He carried that bucket for her that day and he filled it for the wash, which she would later do, and any time she did it, he swore his shirts came out smelling more like lavender than before.

He put all the thyme in a basket, which he carried back to camp, holding Sarah by her reins. He spat and smoked and chewed a little tobacco and then he found a little mint, which he chewed as well and some of which he stored for later. His eyes were tired but his back still felt strong. He did not think of himself as a young man or old. In fact, he did not think of himself much at all.

He gave the thyme to Miss Grimshaw. Tilly said hello to him and showed him some of her knitting. She was good at little things like that, he so often thought. He fed the horses with help from Lenny who then went away to brood quietly beneath a Tupelo. The day was coming alive. He heard Jack’s voice somewhere and the dog. He did not want to go too near the fire for fear that he would be harangued by one of the boys, and he was not in the mood. He did not feel like robbing that day.

He went back to the house to find Mary Beth, a sort of habit. She was out on the porch, doing her reading and her writing in the margins as usual. She had her hair out of her braids and a cup of coffee and a piece of bread on a tin plate. When he came out onto the porch the floorboards creaked, and she looked up as if alarmed. But she kind of smiled a little sly when she saw him, and as usual, he felt a little dumb but it was all right. He lit another cigarette and stood out there, just looking at the unlucky country that was the swamp. He breathed and felt that smoke rattling in his swampy lungs.

“Hey, Arthur,” she said, not looking up from her book.

He had his hands on his hips. He went and sat down on the other side of the sofa. It was a cold and ragged sofa. It barely had any stuffing left at all. “My lady,” he said, absentminded. He rested his elbows on his knees for a minute. He leaned and took his journal out his back pocket. He thought he might maybe sketch a dumb plant or something. Maybe the surface of the water and how it did not hardly move.

They sat like that for a while. No talking. It was only the scratching of their pencils. Out front of the house you could hear Bill getting his bullshit on first thing in the morning, and Karen who seemed to cackle, and more Jack playing round with the dog. Abigail had grown a little sullen since his kidnapping and return. John went to her each night now. Arthur didn’t much know or care what had begun to rekindle between them, if anything at all, but he did notice a change. For the better, of course, when it came to the happiness of the boy.

“Arthur,” said Mary Beth after a little while.

“Yes,” said Arthur. He had sketched a dense stretch of pussy willow. For all of its despair, the swamp did make for nice scenery.

Mary Beth closed her book. She straightened up then as if she were about to say something important. Arthur looked at her. “What’s the matter?” he said.

“Remember when Sean died,” she said, looking at him. She was concerned.

He bit the insides of his cheeks like an old habit. “I do.”

She sighed like she felt stupid. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, Mary Beth. What’s on your mind?”

She turned to him with her knees. Somewhere, there was a big, ugly sound like a gaggle of birds, pitching off into the daylight. “Afterward, you kind of…disappeared.”

“I don’t know that I’d call that disappearing, Mary Beth,” said Arthur. “Disappearing is disappearing. You don’t come back.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “It was almost two weeks before you returned.

“And?”

“Where did you go?” she said. She had begun to examine her fingernails. “We was all wondering. The girls. You know we worry about you.”

“I know.” He waved her off. He fashioned a toothpick from behind his ear and set it between his teeth. “Ain’t no reason to worry.”

“Yeah well, you would say that.”

“I was hunting,” said Arthur. He looked at her. She had a calm disposition but there were storms inside. “I took my old horse, Diana. We rode north of the Grizzlies. We camped the whole way and we hunted a bison.”

“A bison?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mary Beth got quiet in her hands and face. “That is what you did, then? To process his passing.”

Arthur sighed. He wrung his hands a little. “I suppose. It ain’t nothing.”

“It is,” she said. She was getting earnest now. She had red cheeks. “Was it something?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, was it something? Getting away like that. Being up there, just you and Diana.”

“Diana didn’t much like it,” said Arthur. “I retired her shortly thereafter. Her hooves took a beating on those trails.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do,” he said, looking at her, chewing that toothpick. “You holding up okay? I know you and Sean was close.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” said Mary Beth, shrugging. She set the book aside and looked out at the swampy expanse. “He was kind of a fuck-up.”

Arthur laughed. “Ain’t we all.”

“You held him tight though,” she said, looking. “You were good to him, even though he had it coming.”

“He was young,” said Arthur.

“Some of the girls said you felt responsible. But it wasn’t your doing. It wasn’t Arthur. Nobody blames you but you.”

Arthur did not speak.

Flies were buzzing everywhere all around them, like a symphony. It was hot out, and very humid.

“I should say, I would like to go hunting,” said Mary Beth, after a little while.

“You?” he said. “A hunter?”

“After mama died I hunted some.”

Arthur laughed. “Shooting snakes with bb guns ain’t hunting, Mary Beth.”

She shoved him. “It was a rifle,” she said. “And it wasn’t snakes. I shot a squirrel.”

“A squirrel?” He acted impressed. “That would be a sight to see.”

They both smiled. “I would like to go hunting for something big,” she said. “Arthur. I need to process all of this, too. I am so bored, I think the pleats in my skirt have lost their stick.”

“That would be the humidity, I expect,” he said.

“Please?” she said.

“Please what?”

“Next time you go, hunting. For something big, far away. Camping and such. Breathing the air. Let me come with you.”

He gave her a look. “You’re serious?”

“Yes, sir.”

He raised his eyebrows, considering her offer. “It ain’t all romantic in the sights of nature,” he said. “It ain’t comfortable living out there, Mary Beth. The way I do things.”

“I know that,” she said. “You don’t think I understand uncomfortable living, Arthur Morgan?”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” said Arthur. “I know you can hold your own.”

“Then let me come with you.”

“I don’t know the next time I’ll be going, Mary Beth. These ain’t really affairs that take much planning. I pretty much just get on my horse and ride.”

“I am just as good at that as you are, Arthur.”

“Riding horses?”

“No, stupid. Living spontaneously.”

Arthur thought on this. He had never considered his way of life to be spontaneous. He often felt over-encumbered by the knowledge he was forced to use forever when stepping into the dangers of the wilderness. “You may be right,” he said after a little while. “And I suppose you have a point.”

“So you’ll take me with you?”

“That, I will,” said Arthur, sending a smile. “I don’t know when. Could be tomorrow. Could be in two weeks.”

Mary Beth was overtaken with excitement. She grabbed his face. She kissed him on the temple, smelling like apples. “I will be ready,” she said, and she got up to go, like she was going to get ready right now.

“Where you going?” he said, still sitting there. He liked her company.

“Got to prepare,” she said. “Mentally. I got another book I want to read.”

“We ain’t going this instant.”

“I know, Arthur Morgan,” she said, smiling. She left her book. “I know.”

When she was gone, he looked at her book and how it was perfectly sitting there, some shimmery thread in the binding. Out on the swamp he saw one of those gators then, just sitting there like a lump. It was a dumbass but it was a danger to the undiscerning. He got up to go warn the caretakers of the camp, and then to get his rifle off his horse, for he was going to shoot it dead.

[violetsystems]

#personal

The most momentous thing that happened this week was the payment for my health insurance depositing.  I guess you could also include the president catching covid-19 in there too.  In an era where staying safe is the new bling, I’m not too worried about the funding.  I spent the first day of October in a spreadsheet budgeting out everything cash forward for the first time in forever.  Most of the heavy lifting has been taken care of without much advice or counsel from anyone.  I spent the entire summer mostly alone in this struggle when it comes to real life, mental health and taxes.  On the eve of my health insurance benefit running out from my old employer, I ran into someone I used to work with outside of a church in Pilsen.  I was out doing laundry at the time and as I passed quickly they acknowledged me silently.  I nodded and kept walking.  I could only imagine what they wanted to say and the window for that kind of thing went out with the weather.  The next day an old employee finally responded to my message on LinkedIn from the 15th of September.  I had left my number there plain as day in that very same message.  They had said they tried contacting me on Facebook.  I don’t use it and had deleted it over a year ago along with Instagram and Twitter as of recently.  I had told people countless times in the office I had deleted most of my social media and my stance on privacy in IT.  The conversation ended abruptly from there much like my employment.  A fishing expedition gone wrong.  The reality of everything became clearer when I left the bank after rolling over a portion of a lump sum to an IRA.  There are opportunities in everything.  A great side effect of the Heroes act passed by Congress was that my pension benefit was easier to melt down with less penalties.  The simple fact that I even had a pension after working twenty years was a red line on somebody’s balance sheet somewhere.  You just wish it wouldn’t have been in the eyes of those who champion art and fairness.  This is where rich people always fall short.  Beyond the news of our president taking a sixteen year loss on his tax returns, I’ve read even more troubling things.  A billionaire criticizing a billionaire for implementing a fair tax law in Illinois.  I voted for that even after staring at the measly amount of retirement I’ve had to turn into my living expenses as taxable income for this year.  The other right leaning billionaire shuffled his prized Basquiat piece into the museum in a rush to open between donating for Rubio and Cruz’s political campaigns.  I often take breaks between researching tax law to wonder just how much of that is tax deductible.  That billionaire also got rich with the aid of family ties during the market crash of the nineties.  If all this money is tied up in politics and absolved from taxes where can you expect democracy to fit in?  Possibly somewhere nestled in my quiet little cottage overlooked by the public transit system.  Everyone morning I get emails.  Mostly from LinkedIn telling me about more jobs in China I’d be a good fit for.  

All the while getting bullied by recruiters, headhunters, venture capitalists and the fringe tribes in this city that work for them and not taxpayers like myself.  Not much time to enjoy video games or life at all with all this bullshit on my mind.  I do have conversations with people in passing that don’t suck.  I mostly stay in the neighborhood these days though I do shop downtown.  I passed a kid in a bootleg Chanel mask outside of a bodega I never explored.  I asked him where he got it somewhat stilted as he was caught off guard.  An older version of me would have never had the confidence to approach a situation like that.  It took a couple of tries but he mumbled that he got it inside.  I said I’d stop back later and did after a stop at the ATM.  The owner seemed guarded and suspicious.  He told me he was sold out but to come back in the next two days.  I came back on that Tuesday to discover he now only had Nike masks for sale.  I told him about my job search and we joked about loss prevention.  He said he might have more in the future and to stop back.  There was an honest connection that I made by pushing myself and being confident.  Something that was tied to the future and not my past that I cannot seemingly escape.  I’m not really all that comfortable with what’s happened in my past.  The real depressing realization lately has been exactly how hard it is to escape society’s plan for you.  The easiest way is to walk away from it.  That’s hard to do sometimes in America for any amount of reasons.  For myself, I was saddled with a lot of bad decisions that were made out of earnest.  I helped people financially.  I took jobs for passion and not for money.  I got paid less than what I was worth.  Now I look at the Chicago market and people are looking for Senior auditor positions at my old non-profit salary.  Soulless corporate work for the sake of galvanizing and restructuring purchases by capitalists in a crumbling utopia.  Meanwhile Vice Media is the top search for my profile on the job site.  All the while people still pretend that I don’t exist unless I play by their sociopathic rules that reward bullies.  And the game has gotten old and unfair.  The cards up the sleeve are starting to show.  And for myself, the only revolution has been staying alive, fed and happy in the face of absolute failure of leadership and vision.  The irony of bootleg masks and my attention to them is that the pandemic is not over.  There is no vaccine.  People are going back to the office to fill vast properties tied to investments that rich people are losing money rapidly on.  Old money isn’t agile.  It’s wrapped up in fairy tale land hustles that make pyramid schemes look like an endless tesseract of panama papers.  I was listening to a podcast that described the money laundering discovered in the FinCEN files as “old news.”  Old news is the new fake news.  The last twenty years of my life is old news to most people.  And yet three months later, people want to kick me around like a can for gossip and worse.  I don’t really trust anything other than the money in my bank account at this point.  I did vote by mail.  I trust that got counted because I received an email from the city.  I also trust that people trust me.  I hold myself accountable.  I have the taxes set aside for my pension with little or no deductions or losses to prove it.  Who is really fucked at the end of the day?  

Granted my Bohemian lifestyle has an expiration date.  It’s a year past October 1st when my COBRA runs out.  I don’t think anybody would hold it against you if you stayed out of the job market until a vaccine was out there.  The simple fact is could you afford it?  I can by burning my pension benefit to ash.  I didn’t buy a car or anything.  I bought a laptop.  I didn’t treat myself.  Most of that disposable income goes to paying health insurances premiums that cost as much as my rent per month.  I have that rent, utilities, and health insurance set aside liquid past that date.  And it seems like I have all the answers without having to claim I’m unemployed.  And yet everybody is still trying to game and hustle me into something I’m not quite aware of.  Everybody trusts rich old money that sits on a mountain of cash everybody is addicted to.  Nobody speaks to me other than here in my dash.  And it’s a telling sign the only people in life I really trust are phantoms and avatars that I’ve come to know over the years.  I don’t for the record think anything in America is normal right now.  Not after this entire situation with the virus and the president succumbing to it.  So I’ve simply taken to what I know is bankable.  That person is me.  I trust me.  I’ve kept myself alive and healthy.  I feel sexier.  Less bogged down by the opinions of people who never stop to remember what social media platforms I’ve dropped off and why.  I’ve listened to the community I’ve been a part of for years on this site particularly.  Been a responsible and transparent adult to people regardless of their age, orientation, religious or political beliefs.  And I’ve become a more tolerant and fulfilled person because of it.  I make choices that I feel people on here would respect.  I don’t have much to hide other than a voracious appetite for weed on occasion.  I am stressed and lost in all of this.  But strangely I’ve felt more connected to real people out there.  And I explore through that confidence and try to be the hero everyone here expects me to be.  And in that it’s pretty much the same old Tim.  Except I’m not stressed out about working for a goal and a vision that doesn’t respect what I want to be.  I spend a lot of time working on myself and my surroundings.  I ordered new curtains for the living room.  I cook dinner on the stove and make coffee in the sunlight of a cozy kitchen with forced heat and air.  I don’t have any debt anymore to speak of.  I’ve been breathing through that space to see myself independently of everything.  And yet I’m still attached to things I cannot explain even if I tried.  The good news is nobody who knows the truth behind me ever feels the need to ask.  They just show support.  And real support lately throughout this nightmare is out there for me.  It’s pretty hard not to see.  Bright pink as far as the eye can see.  At least I’m no longer in the red.  <3 Tim

[tipsycad147]

The Undines

By shirleytwofeathers

Undines are water elementals, and as such, spirits of the water world. First named in the alchemical writings of Paracelsus. Undines are almost invariably depicted as being female. They are said to protect our water. As a water elemental, the Undines’ domain are the oceans, seas, rivers, lakes, ponds, water and all it encompasses. There are theories that say undines are present in every drop of water. We could say an Undine is a personification of water, that they are the energies of water. Many schools of thought liken Undines to sprites, nymphs and mermaids.

There are many groups of undines. Some inhabit waterfalls, where they can be seen in the spray; others are indigenous to swiftly moving rivers; some have their habitat in dripping, oozing fens or marshes; while other groups dwell in clear mountain lakes. According to the philosophers of antiquity, every fountain had its nymph; every ocean wave its oceanid. The water spirits were known under such names as oreades, nereides, limoniades, naiades, water sprites, sea maids, mermaids, and potamides. Often the water nymphs derived their names from the streams, lakes, or seas in which they dwelt.

In describing them, the ancients agreed on certain salient features. In general, nearly all the undines closely resembled human beings in appearance and size, though the ones inhabiting small streams and fountains were of correspondingly lesser proportions. It was believed that these water spirits were occasionally capable of assuming the appearance of normal human beings and actually associating with men and women.

There are many legends about these spirits and their adoption by the families of fishermen, but in nearly every case the undines heard the call of the waters and returned to the realm of Neptune, the King of the Sea.

Practically nothing is known concerning the male undines. The water spirits did not establish homes in the same way that the gnomes did, but lived in coral caves under the ocean or among the reeds growing on the banks of rivers or the shores of lakes.

Among the Celts there is a legend to the effect that Ireland was peopled, before the coming of its present inhabitants, by a strange race of semi-divine creatures; with the coming of the modem Celts they retired into the marshes and fens, where they remain even to this day. Diminutive undines lived under lily pads and in little houses of moss sprayed by waterfalls.

The undines worked with the vital essences and liquids in plants, animals, and human beings, and were present in everything containing water. When seen, the undines generally resembled the goddesses of Greek statuary. They rose from the water draped in mist and could not exist very long apart from it.

There are many families of undines, each with its peculiar limitations, it is impossible to consider them here in detail. Their ruler, Necksa, they love and honour, and serve untiringly. Their temperament is said to be vital, and to them has been given as their throne the western corner of creation.

They are rather emotional beings, friendly to human life and fond of serving mankind. They are sometimes pictured riding on dolphins or other great fish and seem to have a special love of flowers and plants, which they serve almost as devotedly and intelligently as the gnomes. Ancient poets have said that the songs of the undines were heard in the West Wind and that their lives were consecrated to the beautifying of the material earth.”

In medieval times the conjuration and exorcism of elementary spirits was practised extensively, the crystal being a preferred mean of evoking them. In every instance, a special consecration of the four elements was a principal and essential part of the ceremonial procedures.

Undine origins may be best traced back to ancient Greece wherein mythology cites a clan of nymphs called Oceanides who claimed the waters of the world as their home. These beings were the daughters of Titan and his wife Tethys. Their presence in the oceans was legendary among seafarers. Mostly beneficent, Oceanides would aid water-travellers in navigation and provide safe sea-ways.

A Short Summary:

The term Undine comes from the Latin root unda which means “wave.”

As they are entities united with water, Undines are governed by the Moon.

Undines are also associated with the directional domain of the West.

As water lovers, Undines will speak most freely to water signs (Cancer, Pisces, and Scorpio)

The realm of cups in the Tarot are connected to Undines and study of this Tarot suit may augment our concept of their temperament.

In European lore, Undines are fabled to be the wandering spirits of love-lorn women. I imagine their tears of sorrow composed the salty seas as they wept, having lost at love. Tales indicate these female spirits are enchantingly beautiful. They are reputed to be relatively benign, but like any decent spirit they’ve got a temper when crossed.

Undines, (like their elemental kin: Salamanders, Sylphs and Gnomes) unite within their medium to form a impenetrable energetic bond. Thusly, nature-based belief systems may pay homage to the Undine as the embodiment of water itself. When we hear the term “Guardians of the Watchtowers” Undines would be the guardians of the water, and so communication in this arena would be directed to their kind.

A German Folktale

The undine, or undine-like creatures, are not limited to just one mythology. They are found in Greek, Irish, Scottish, Russian, Norse, and German stories.

Although resembling humans in form, they lack a human soul, so to achieve immortality they must acquire one by marrying a human. Such a union is not without risk for the man, because if he is unfaithful, then he is fated to die.

One German folktale tells the story of a young man who is caught in a storm and seeking shelter. He finds the cottage of a sweet elderly couple who live by the river. They have a beautiful daughter who is wild and tempestuous — and incredibly enticing for this young man. She is an Undine, though the human man does not yet know it, and her elderly father is King of the Watery Realm.

The old man gives the traveller permission to marry his daughter and take her to his kingdom, but on the condition that he treat her well. Should he forget that promise, he would lose his wife forever.

They marry and the Undine gives birth to a son soon thereafter. Now in possession of a human soul, the nymph loses her wildness and becomes a demure, polite housewife — which, in turn, causes her husband to be bored of her. Not even her devastating beauty keeps her husband from straying.

Once her husband betrays her, the Undine returns to her watery kingdom and warns him that if he should ever fall asleep, she would steal his breath. And of course, unable to stay awake, the man ultimately pays for cheating.

There are many different versions of this story, some of which have made their way to operas, novels, and films.

Something To Think About

“We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.” ~Thomas Fuller

I’m of a mind to say these beings intertwine their energy in mass to actually produce the element of water. Just as molecules cling and weave together to form bodies of mass – so too might the Undines unite their energies in a grand matrix that IS water.

Would that mean when we drink a glass of water, we are actually consuming Undines? Would we be more aware and honourable in our use of water if we knew we were interacting with beings possessing real feelings, thoughts and human-like aspects? I don’t know, but it’s something to consider.

Indeed, when these concepts came to me, I became more mindful about water and my consumption of it. This perspective put an actual face on water. Water ceased to be some object at my disposal. Rather, water became a community of personalities and intelligence to which my respect is due.

Give this thought process a try for yourself. Consider your interaction with water as you would interact with a close friend. Doing this really opened up floodgates of tremendous insights and poignant discoveries for me. I wonder if you will have similar experiences of psychic cleansing and breakthrough.

A resource for your consideration as you swim in the energy of the Undine might be Masaru Emoto’s book, The Hidden Messages in Water. Emoto’s research visually captured the structure of water at the moment of freezing, and through high-speed photography he shows the direct consequences of destructive thoughts and the thoughts of love and appreciation of the formation of water crystals. The revelation that our thoughts can influence water has profound implications for our health and the well-being of the planet.

Masaru Emoto contends (and indeed, has evidence) that water responds to external influence such as human suggestion. His research supports the idea of personality and intelligence indwelling water.

Are Undines responding to suggestion?

Are they the ones behind the scenes creating those magnificent crystal formations Mr. Emoto has captured on film? You be the judge.

Sources:

Wikipedia

What’s Your Sign

The Secret Teachings of All Ages

Amino

https://shirleytwofeathers.com/The_Blog/powers-that-be/tag/water/

[clarenecessities]

5/1/17

son i have just had the most delightful day of my got damn life. i know a daily clare post where i’m not just complaining about my life in unnecessary detail is unusual but honestly i just had a swell time

we had language class this morning & admittedly i did ask way too many questions and tell a girl she was pretty bc i have no filter when i’m tired (she is pretty, it was just a weird time to say it)  but i learned a whole bunch! sean has been good with like, maidin mhaith and such but most of it is in one ear and out the other (except conjugation, which is blessedly simple) but we have a new teacher up from teelin & she has us repeat stuff like, excessively. it’s actually pretty reassuring. icr what she was having us chant but at one point we were just going in like gregorian style.

only complaint about anna (the new teacher) is that her accent is different from sean’s so she says ‘dh’ as a [Ghy] instead of a [dJ] so simple shit like “god” and “second” is absolutely fucked. i’m hoping she’ll give us some leeway bc i learned from the Horslips if we’re being quite honest. she’s really adorable though--she taught us how to say we were tired (thank god; a sentence i can use) and she was like miming falling asleep. Ta.. tuirseach oram, i think? she didn’t spell it for us but sean said she’ll teach me on wednesday how to spell everything so i’m flying blind for a while.

we went up the cliffs to look at the napoleon-watch tower--it was pretty chill but the journey nearly killed me. between classes i went up to the store & got some deodorant and a popsicle-thing (it sucked, it was like unsweetened frozen orange juice) and the deodorant here is weird it’s all either spray on or roll-on liquid, so it feels like you’ve just put mosquito repellent on your armpits lmao. anyway yeah it was about four miles but it was a little too steep for a malnourished cripple such as myself to tackle on pepsi & popsicle alone. only fell once though, and saw a load of sheep. the girl who i inadvertently complimented taught me about flowers (i asked the name for harebell because i’d forgotten it, and then i was like “hey what’s this one! what’s this one) which made me feel better bc i’d been a bit worried i’d made her uncomfortable. she was singing a song from the last unicorn at one point & we ended up gushing about that for a bit.

up at the top, when we got to the tower, a small parade of our classmates attempted to scale the side & get up to the door (about ten feet) while our guide was distracted--he hadn’t told us not to do it, he just went back for stragglers and didn’t see. we were all sort of standing around speculating & saying it looked like reasonable holds but nobody really wanted to try after the hike, except, cue hunter, the oft-pseudo-offensive manchild i grow less fond of every day (yesterday he was saying sauron was the good guy & like while it was clearly to ‘troll’ people he was also saying some straight up fascist shit in his too-well-assembled arguments). anyway hunter got up onto the pile of rocks, reached the handholds, and immediately surrendered, saying he’d do it the day he could do two chinups. next up was ben, who was volunteered by a few of us because he’s tall and relatively strong--he also got his hands in the holds, but retired immediately on the basis of being too lazy to actually haul himself up. third was chris, who (if you ask me) saw it as a sort of challenge and just went through the effort to show off, which was what hunter was trying to do but couldn’t back up. frankly i’d have been more impressed if i wasn’t a bit leery of chris--he’s not said anything bad to me, he just has a very condescending vibe that i find Incredibly Irritating.

hmm but then we looked out over the cliffs, and our guide told us a story about a sea stack called “the devil’s dick” and we found our way back down about an hour after it was supposed to have taken. idt he was counting on so many of us being so slow, but he had about five of us lagging for various immutable reasons.

class was supposed to start up again at 7 but we’d only gotten down the mountain at about 6, so i decided to forgo the half hour line for the chipper & grab something from the shop (ultimately some pound cake, bc i’m so healthy). outside the shop, who should turn up, but the black cat i’ve been trying to impress for three days!! she was waiting outside the cafe for food (despite having already been fed) so she didn’t run away, but she wouldn’t let me pet her until ashley--one of the workers i met yesterday--came out to smoke, and sort of.. cat-vouched for me? the cat was wary but she clicked to it, and since she’s the one feeding it i think it trusts her opinion heheh. she advised me not to pet it since it was probably covered in fleas but i was like God Himself cannot stop me from petting this cat.

it was wonderful, she just laid down and rusted in the sun, and she looked so happy and peaceful. i hope this means she’ll let me pet her in the future bc i think i love her

she went off back to the shop after a while, so i headed back down the road for class & ran into kelly and matt waiting for their chipper food, and they were like “hey come hang” which i was thrilled to accept. kelly may be the only one who understands how incredible the cat situation was heheh. we decided to call her heather--kelly had been considering matilda but she’s saving that for her own black cat. chris came out the pub & joined us around then, and he and kelly have this sort of pseudo-aggressive banter going where like they’re both clearly not crazy about each other but neither is offended so much as annoyed, and they play it off like a comedic rivalry. it’s actually an interesting dynamic lmao--it’s like the ways that people cope with each other & the things we’ll do automatically you know? interesting.

ben and adrionna came up around then, i think they’d been in the pub too, and they were sweet as always. adrionna and i talked some more about the last unicorn, but were sidetracked by the arrival of: another cat. This one’s a tuxedo tom with crusty eyes and dandruff but he’s so sweet, he’s so good. he was clearly angling to get some of kelly and matt’s fish and chips, but i didn’t mind. we didn’t name him bc we weren’t sure if he was the one named tinkerbell or if it was the other black and white cat, who lives up by our cottages. 

we had to head back down bc class was supposed to start at seven, only come to find out it was seven thirty now, so we just sat out front and waited. the black and white cat who may or may not be named tinkerbell made a brief appearance, but took off down a sheep field before i could approach her. on the way down kelly and i went over our beeves w people, which is probably the oldest and fastest bonding method known to man--we agree on people for the most part, which isn’t too surprising given our mutual affinities for cats & communism

while we were sitting out front we were blessed by a visit from--get this--a fourth cat. at first i thought it was heather bc it’s also black with green eyes, but as it got nearer it was clearer it wasn’t. he’s a tom, older, bigger than her, with a square jaw and less rust in his coat but much more in his purr. we decided to call him gorse to keep up the theme. there’s some speculation that he’s heather’s father, as she’s still quite young, but i expect we’ll find out. if the crusty-eyed potential-tinkerbell isn’t in fact a tom, they may be the mother, and then heather and smaller-potential-tinkerbell would make good sense as their offspring. a black and white cat and a black cat birthing a black and white kitten and a black kitten? almost poetic, in a way.

evening class was awesome, not the least of which because i’d gotten to pet three cats by that point. we had a professor out from galway who’s co-writing a book with sean about joe heaney, and he’s an o’leary himself (well; an o laoire) so i kept joking he was my grandson (sean was the only one who laughed but it may have been pity). he talked for a long while about folklore and living traditions, and bealoideas and etymology and poetry--he recited the Planter’s Daughter, which i’d never heard before--it’s really good tbh. he also said at one point that folklore was sort of viewed as the domain of “slightly deranged maiden aunts” & i was like finally, a calling for me!

we learned the first few stanzas of a song--it was really nice because he took us through the lyrics talking first, instead of jumping right to singing like sean (yes we learn it faster, but we learn it wrong bc we don’t know what we’re saying). as i was looking over the lyrics i realized ONE of the words looked FAMILIAR--a gconra chlair. i was like hey,,,,, that can’t mean what i think it means can it, so i flipped it over and the translation was “coffin”.

heheh so i asked him about it and i was, in fact, right--it’s a coffin of boards. a wooden coffin, really, a poetic device, but there it is, folks--the etymological origin of my name put to practical use!

my first time seeing it in a sentence and it’s about a coffin. what’s better than that honestly

he also told me there’s a different pronunciation of “gconra” down in Cork (i had mentioned my people were from Cork (he laughed and said mine too--i told him they were the same people but tbqh i don’t think he heard me)), so whereas in Galway they’d say it like “groan-rah” in Cork it’d be “G-cone-ah”

so of course, me being the tremendous nerd i am, i asked him about cnudanai, which i happened o have written on the back of my notebook (see: tremendous nerd) and he taught me the cork pronunciation as a counter to sean’s donegal/connemara blend of “croo-dah-nai”. in Cork it’s “c‘noe-daw-nai” like the word canoe’s been truncated. good shit grandson. good shit.

mm and aftter that i just came on back up to the house! we got off at 9:30 so i’ve been slacking off since then tbh. i got a bit of planning done on the hike for my spooky fic, but i’ve not written it down yet. got weirdly sidetracked by fanart of inuyasha’s parents haha

but now it’s 1 am here so i’m out. pray for my muscles to heal miraculously in the night, please

[andyangus]

Sunday 10th January

Hangover number two of 2010. The old dears from Aunt Moira’s Psychic College can most certainly hold their own. I’ve been woken by my dishevelled mother in a pink, faux-silk housecoat, red and white polka dot cat-eye sunglasses and fluffy flip-flops. Her usual curly locks were matted to one side of her head as a result of passing out on the sofa at 2 a.m. Her voice reverberated like a Dalek with laryngitis as she bid me a half-hearted, ‘Good morning,’ and slid a bacon roll on my old bedside cabinet which is still adorned with Dr Who transfers. It was nice to be looked after. I’m normally the one running around, organising a grown man, a cat and myself, but for now, I’ll be taking it easy. The simplicity of childhood leaves us without a whisper of goodbye, and we never give it a second thought once it’s gone, because being older and wiser is supposedly better.

Mum and Dad say I can stay with them as long as I need, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think I can face living with semi-retired parents whose idea of a fun weekend is wandering around B&Q lusting after new garden furniture. It’s time to head home and face the music. I’ve no idea what’s going to happen. Where the hell do I go from here? Can I pack up my whole life in a 2001 Vauxhall Astra? Can the suspension take almost ten years worth of baggage? Will Thomas even be at home, or is he preoccupied living the life of a swinger?

9.25 p.m. I got back to find the cottage deserted. I knew Thomas would be finishing work soon, so I made a quick job of it after I’d ensured the coast was clear. His Datsun was in the driveway, but his van wasn’t. I’ve climbed the steps to that front door easily thousands of times, but this time it was like a mountain. I turned the lock and crept cautiously into the hall. Our blissful milestones were dotted within frames along the walls, eyeballing and mocking me as I crept through our home. I progressed towards the bedroom, in which I’d been told repeatedly we’d had the ‘best sex ever’. Passing the kitchen, I noticed a pile of dirty dishes overflowing from the sink and sliding slowly, with help from the scum and grease, across the draining board. Used pots were congealed to the hob. A futile attempt at washing clothes had been made, idle in the drum of the machine, probably musty from days before. A pile of dirty laundry was perched on the dining table in need of rescue. I continued along the hall: dirty towels laid on the bathroom floor; dirt from his boots coated the carpet all the way to the bedroom; the bed was a tumultuous sea of used linen; the curtains were still drawn, and drawers were yawning open.

I should’ve been satisfied that he couldn’t cope without me, not even for a few days, but it disgusted me. I’ve been used as a domestic for years, with little payment but for the odd hug and appreciative comment. I was so keen to please. So gullible.

Next to the bed, I found a small pile of clothing, purple in colour, and a killer pair of heels. I could almost admire the wearer for being able to walk in them, but I knew they were rarely used for walking: these were fuck-me-pumps. A female had been here who was comfortable enough to leave her shit lying around. I picked up the clothing by the flimsy straps. It was delicate and smelt of woman; entirely foreign to me. There were stains on the front and back. The pungent smell of sex clung to it like a desperate whore to a new pimp. I began to feel sick. I dropped the offending item and picked up the pace.

Finding my way through the crap, I stuffed a few cases and bin-bags quickly with clothes. I started by folding everything neatly but gave up on neatness as the clock ticked faster. Clothes packed, I filled a small box with sentimental relics from a life now lost. I piled them by the door and quickly carried each item to the car, unaware of the weight I was carrying until it came to my most prized possessions: my full collection of Doctor Who magazines and DVDs. They almost broke my back, but I wasn’t leaving them to be sold by some harpy on eBay.

During my last sweep around, I heard the familiar meow of the Colonel hungrily demanding his dinner in the kitchen, ignorant of the impending loss of a parent. I wondered if he sensed this would be the last time I’d feed him as I placed his bowl in its usual spot and tried to stop myself from crying. Just a quick burst of emotion and then there was the familiar sound of Thomas’ key turning in the lock and his boots scraping laboriously on the mat. He caught sight of me and paused as if in preparation for a battle. There we were, feet away from one another, but miles apart. Teetering on the edge of our past before stepping off into the unknown. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said.

‘Don’t act surprised, Thomas,’ I said, ‘there’s an Astra out there that I can barely shut the doors on.’

‘True,’ he muttered as he slid off his high viz coat and hung it neatly on the hook by the door. Why be so tidy about that? I remember thinking. The rest of the place is in as much turmoil as our lives.

‘I’m not staying, but then even your pea-brain could work that out. But as you’re here, answer me this: did you ever love me?’

He sighed, tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, and said, ‘I did. For a while. Before it all became about the house, and work, and bills, and upsetting perfectly placed coasters.’

‘Fair do’s.’ I went to leave, but before I did, I said, ‘Just for the record, not that it matters much now, but I loved you with all my heart, and I honestly thought we were doing just fine. What a fool, eh?’

‘You’re no fool.’

‘Yeah, well, you could’ve fooled me. And you have.’ I threw my keys towards him. They bounced off his chest and landed at his feet. Before I shut the door behind me, I gave one parting shot, ‘Oh, and Thomas?’

‘Aye?’

‘A man who has such low self-esteem and who asserts his sexual prowess in lay-bys should never fuck with a pair of heels that are twice the length of his cock.’ Low, I know, but it’s all I had.

I was gone.

It saddens me to say it, but he looked relieved. For a relationship that lasted a decade, it ended swiftly. He owns a three-bedroom cottage with extensive gardens, a cat, and my potential happiness locked within. I own a car, two suitcases and four bin-bags of clothes, a pile of Doctor Who magazines and DVDs, a Hornsea pottery collection and a whole lot of emotional baggage. Not to forget a useless engagement ring that is mocking me from inside its box, which I found tucked at the back of Thomas’ sock drawer. He must’ve seen it in my sporran when I passed out at Hogmanay and sabotaged my plan. It seems he was determined that I would never find the perfect moment to propose.

It hasn’t been easy to drive through the dense, relentless snow with glazed eyes while I ponder the past and endeavour to find clues to his deceit within the parameters of our tiny life together, so I’ve pulled over at Thornilee Picnic Park to clear my thoughts. I’ve been here for an hour, scribbling in this diary by the tiny light above the rear-view mirror. I would’ve left ages ago, but my stupid car is stuck in thick snow. I have no mobile signal and have already eaten the emergency Yorkie I keep tucked in the seat pocket. I have no fluids of any sort. The fuel is low, therefore, I can’t leave the engine running, so that means no heater. Bloody fantastic. At this rate, they’ll find my blood-drenched trail in the snow after I’ve been dragged to the woods to be eaten alive by wolves. I have the distinct feeling someone is shitting on me from a great height.

Half a freezing hour later. Through the Dark, by KT Tunstall, was which I’ve listened to a hundred times before, rolled on the CD player and caused uncontrollable tears. Such big sobs. It’s never affected me before. I’ve always liked the song, the melody is well known to me, but the words came through loud and clear tonight and hit me like a baseball bat in the gut. For the first time in ten years, I’m alone. What the hell am I going to do now? The snow is the heaviest I’ve ever seen. I’m literally lost in a blizzard and confusion and despair is at every turn. My mind is blank. A total white-out, you might say.

[olwog]

Wednesday -Viveda to Santillana del Mar

  We’re up and raring to go with un-dried laundry swinging from the sticks attached to my rucksack. It’s a 3 star hotel and looks like it has a clientele that is generated from the senior managers and visitors to the local manufacturing company and it looks big so seeing a couple of peregrinos emerge with their (well my) damp knickers and socks swinging from safety pins might not be the image that they’re trying to project; however, we have no complaints.

  We’re on the road and the first few kilometres are ‘up’ but easy. The sun is casting long shadows across the fields and woods and the Picos mountains stand in very stark relief in the distance. There is mist drifting in the valleys and smoke from a leaf fire in a nearby village. The scenery is sublime and we take turns to stop and admire the views. The sunshine helps and we make reference to it as we follow the track or road into the next valley.

We’re walking down into the village and take in the pastures and meadows. They remind me of childhood when Miss Wise, our junior school teacher would look out of the window and at the drop of a hat take us on a nature walk. There was no necessity for a risk assessment and permission from the hierarchy who would need to cover their own backsides, she’d make the decision based on the weather and time of year. It was inevitably around Castle Hills which was my childhood stamping ground and involved the identification of clovers, buttercups, elderberries and numerous other plant species that she would reference in later lessons when she mentioned their importance in the bigger theme of things. I was ten and loved Miss Wise, she was the epitome of a good teacher but I wouldn’t know that until well into adult life when I became a teacher myself and realised that the odd one of my colleagues was not really cut out for the role.

    I return to present tense and notice some smoke rising from a tiny village nestled in the trees. The smoke turns out to be leaves and we’ll witness this numerous times as we walk over the hills and through the valleys.

The sun is getting a little stronger and we meet an old man in the village and I ask if there is a cafe near. His reply is at 200 miles an hour then he realises that we’re struggling and reverts to what he calls ‘poco inglais’ but is eminently better than my Spanish but I do try. It means a 2 kilometres detour but we’re OK with that.

As it turns out the breakfast is only average but it gives us time to reassess the route and decide on a track that takes us away from the road and back into rolling countryside that’s very much how I would imagine the Alps.

We’ve covered about 10 km (6 miles) when we walk into what looks like a Medieval village with cobbled streets and buildings that are several hundred years old. The whole place has been designated a World Heritage site and deservedly so. It’s called Santillana del Mar and is referred to as the town of three lies since it’s not a saint (Sant), it’s not flat (llana) and it’s certainly not near the sea (Mar). What I can tell you is that it is immaculate.

    We take some time to wander around the old church and cloisters then make our way past a water splash that feeds the sandstone washing area that would traditionally be occupied by women chatting whilst they beat the clothes on the stones as they washed them in running water. There’s none of that now but the facilities are as they would have been over they centuries.

    At the corner is a cafe with a court yard bathed in sun and one of the tables has a seat in the sun for the Pilgrim and a seat in the shade for me, that’ll do nicely!

The next forty minutes is spent drinking clara which is a kind of shandy made with draught beer and cloudy lemonade. We’ve also quietly removed our boots so that our feet can breath and the socks will dry, it may not sound like it but it is heaven and no other peregrinos were hurt or offended by this as they are doing the same.

I mention my delight at being in this wonderful place and the Pilgrim has a look in one of the Camino brochures to discover an albergue in the town and as we walk the cobbled streets we discover it. A quick discussion later and we decide to stay and continue the walk tomorrow so into the albergu we go.

Now this is an interesting place! It’s not the albergue mentioned in the book, it’s a private one and the owner is a portly gentleman who offers us a bed each for 10 euros which we accept. The corridor is like a scene from the Adams Family with old pianos, antique book cases and sideboards with ancient photographs and paintings all covered in dust. The corridor is very long and he leads us towards an open door at the other end. The light from the door is the only light in the corridor so we’re both picking our way along it and avoiding any obvious pieces of priceless art whilst bumping into a standard lamp and breaking into a funny little run as we experience an unexpected downward ramp that is anything but obvious.

    He’s chattering away in a mix of Spanish and English (Spanglish) when he gestures to his left with theatrical and dramatic wave and says, “Dos Los Servicios”, we follow the general direction of his gesture and see two open doors just about distinguishable in the gloom. As I’m a three pees and night sort of person I memorise the geography as I think about the last ensuite and begin to miss it already. We’re still walking towards the open door that’s framed by an orange tree but we need to negotiate our way past two grandfather clocks, a huge dresser and a raft of ornate peg thingies for hanging up your outdoor clothes; Steptoe would have loved this.

I’m just wondering where we turn off for our dorm when he walks outside into the sun filled garden. There’s an enormous semi-circular thing covering, well I’m not sure what it’s covering but it’s definitely there along with a lawn, clothes line (that’ll be handy) and a vine along with three quad bikes covered with tarpaulin and a grass cutter. In the corner is a garden shed, it’s a nice looking garden shed and it’s quite big but I’m thinking I’m not happy having to trot across the lawn and into the main building for a pee, in the middle of the night.

Our proprietor opens the door and we look inside. There are 5 bunk beds scattered around the room so there’s the possibility that we’ll be with eight others but we’ve been in more populous ones last year with the two Dave’s. I’ll not go into detail but one of them involved me flooding the ground floor due to a malfunction with the shower regulator and minor burns to my genitals and the other involved the guy above me relocating his mattress in the kitchen because, apparently, I snored; but they’re both another story!

He switches on the main light and shows us the rest of the unit which has a large bathroom with a serious looking shower, toilet and washbasin so I’m more than happy; my nocturnal peeing can be done without recourse to garden adventures. We’re double lucky too, there are no more peregrinos allocated to our garden shed so, yet again, we’re smiling.

We unpack and hang my smalls on the line in the sun then close the shed door and make our way back down the corridor staggering up the ramp this time (must memorise that) and walk past the reception where our hostaleer is gently snoring with a pair of huge headphones making look like a dog with floppy ears. His upper body is, like his ears, flopped forward and hie head is moving in time to the snores; we leave quietly hoping that the door will still be open when we return as we haven’t been given a key.

The town is astonishing and fully deserves its world heritage status. The streets are cobbled and the cottages built of stone with wonderful doors and shuttered windows. We walk to the Plaza Major and admire the old government buildings whilst we sit in the sun with a beer. People watching is the name of the game and we make up our own stories about the people we see then the Pilgrim giggles an gestures to a man entering the cafe area; he’s the spit of one of our friends and we take a number of surreptitious photos and post them with ribald comments on FaceBook and smile at the response.

In the evening, we return to a restaurant that we spotted in the afternoon where a great meal is had and more new friends made as we pass the time with a couple of guys who’re peregrinos too.

      John and Chris are both retired, from Lancashire and doing a week on the Norte, they’re also full of fun and whilst we don’t know it yet, we’ll meet them again in a bizarre coincidence.

This is a wonderful little town and I would encourage you to call off here whether you’re a peregrino or just on a road trip.

Enjoy the snaps…G..x

Camino – Viveda to Santillana del Mar Wednesday -Viveda to Santillana del Mar We’re up and raring to go with un-dried laundry swinging from the sticks attached to my rucksack.