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starr-fall-knight-rise · 4 years ago

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Humans are Space Orcs, “Humans 101.”

Sorry for not posting yesterday. I have had the WORST motivation the past few weeks, but I thought you might like to see some more of Krill. Hope you all have a great day!

Krill walked up the university hallway turning his head to look out the window at the vast expanse of space before him. It had been a very long time since he had been to University, in the Vrul sense of the word, which was less like University and more like on the job training, but he had recently accepted an assignment at the Intergalactic Institute of Biological Science. Granted, he wasn’t a real professor, not fully, but an adjunct who had signed on to do a series of lectures for the next few months while he waited for Admiral Vir’s return.

Since Simon had become acting Captain of the ship, it seemed that there was less and less reason for him to be there. She wasn’t experienced enough to take on the real dangerous assignments that the Admiral had excelled at, and due to her rule following nature, and the assignments they were sent on, mostly diplomatic and exploratory in nature, Krill had found less and less use for himself on the ship. He didn’t expect to be gone forever, and he doubted he would be able to leave at this point.

He couldn’t return to his home planet, not now there was a standing order for his termination, which he was planning to avoid with great prejudice. Though he found it wildly Ironic that they had asked him to come teach, when many of the professors at the school were, in fact, other Vrul.

It was with this small piece of amusement that he scuttled into the lecture room: Large and circular with seats rising on all sides and a projection hub right in the middle. The room was already packed full despite him being five minutes early. He had been told his lecture series would be popular, but he hadn’t expected there to be standing room only, and even then, there were students sitting on the floor, and a few Vrul floating in the air high above other students' heads.

He moved to the center of the room to set up his projections and, from the corner of his eye watched as a few of the front row students shifted back slightly. The Tesraki, Rundi and Finnari students didn’t seem to notice, but the Vrul students certainly did, sarong at him like he was some sort of freak.

He could hear the whispering, and he reveled in it.

It was nice to be intimidating sometimes.

Overhead the lights flashed once, and then twice, and the entire room went quiet expectantly looking down at him with their wide eyes.

He drew himself up Resting two of his hands together and another two behind his back as he began pacing his way around the projection field. Students Continued to whisper quietly, “Good morning class, My name is Dr. Krill Galaxy renowned trauma surgeon, and the galactic leading expert in xeno-medicine with an emphasis in humanity.”

There was a uiet muttering around the room.

“I have been acting medical officer aboard the UNSC Omen once Harbinger for more than two years, and I have practiced surgery in hospitals From Andromeda and Irus to the milky way and Earth.”

More shifting wide eyes and some nervous muttering.

He looked around the room shrewdly at all the new faces, “How many of you are interested in working with the intergalactic community.”

A slow raise of hands.

“Then I should probably let you know. Humanity has begun to profuse through all the major sectors of space, business, government, shipping, sales, medical. Humans are everywhere, and humans can do anything. If you wish to work in the wider intergalactic community, you will be working with humans, and many of you will work extremely closely with humans.”

Nervous expressions all around.

“I noticed many of you, the Vrul students especially have noticed the strange effect that spending time with humans can have on an individual.”

He looked around and saw some acknowledgement.

“The colloquial term for it is called the humanizing phenomenon and it will happen to you no matter how hard you try. Scientists have said that you will become more aggressive in order to interact with humans, your movements will become more predatory, you will come to focus on facial cues and the pitch of voices to determine emotion, and soon,you will even begin to utilize human body language in order to communicate better with them.” He motioned to himself, “Out of all the alien species,I have spent the most time with humans, and as you can see, I communicate primarily in a way that humans would understand, mostly with nonverbal body cues. I don’t often use my helium sack as I get in the way with keeping up with humans.” he turned to look around at the room, “Human’s no longer scare me. As pack animals, your social influence is often more important than your physical influence. Given the fact that I have built myself up in social influence within a human pack, I no longer worry myself with being round humans. In fact, I Have never been safer in my entire life.”

His antenna vibrated slightlin amusement, “In fact it is well known that I already have a termination order placed on my head by the Vrul council.”

There was a shocked gasp from certain Vrul parts of the room.

He swaggered about the room a little smugly. He didn’t usually get reactions like this from people.

“They actually took me from an assembly meeting with the GA and brought me back for termination, but one of my humans, as I certainly do consider them mine as much as they consider me theirs, came and rescued me single handedly.”

Another murmuring from around the room.

“How did he do it?”

They waited.

“He used his complex human vocal cords and clapping to simulate a beat. In that way he disabled all the guards, and climbed his way up the guiding rope to the council chamber.”

More soft muttering.

“If you make friends with a human, you are probably as safe as you are ever going to be, especially if you happen to become friends with a very audacious human=, in which case there is nothing that they will not do for you.” He spun on the spot, “Enough for introductions, I will please have you open your files to page one of the textbook, and we will go over a brief discussion of human mechanical anatomy.”

There was a shuffling around the room as Data pads were produced.

Krill brought up an anatomical projection of a human. Looking up it amused him to know that this anatomical model, the one used in almost every nonhuman textbook, was modeled on one single human, that being Adam Vir, all accept for the right leg of course, which was modeled on another human of similar height.

“Humans are are omnivorous bipeds with an endoskeletal structure supported by a vascular system. I know a lot of you have been wrongfully told that humans are primarily carnivores, though that is not true, while human can eat a variety of foods, there are humans that choose to live without eating meat, and they can be sustained on a herbivore diet if they wish. As you can see here, the front facing eyes of the human mark them off as a predator species, though this isn’t always the perfect indicator. Vrul eyes are on the front, but, as we know, Vrul also have prismatic vision that is more closely related that of insects on an earth-like planet.” he glanced around the room, “These predator classifications only exist for a class of alien known as the vascular type, which uses a pump to push fluid through the body. As you know Vrul, Burg, Gromm, and Lumins as well as a few others are not represented in this category.”

“Can anyone tell me which species ARE classified as the vascular subtype.”

There was a raised hand and he pointed, “You there.”

“I can provide a short list sir, Tesraki, Rundi, Humans, and Drev to name a few, but the Drev are a notable outlier for this rule because their war-like culture has supported the slow movement of the eyes towards the front of the face despite them being a herbivore species.”

Krill nodded, “Very good. Yes, humans are in fact a REAL predator species, however it is important to note that the greater 80% of human diets are supported by fruits and vegetables. Based on the amount and distribution of consumed foods, humans are actually closer to herbivores in their dietary choices than they are carnivores.”

There was a soft muttering around the room. Either disbelief or interest, he couldn't tell.

“Historically, humans would have evolved from tree dwelling omnivores, though their diets would also have been primarily fruit, and maybe insects as hunting only really came after they moved to land based travel on two legs. As far as earth animals are concerned, humans are not a top tier predator, and years of life in padded habitats using technology have actually dulled their hunting senses and abilities. A human COULD take a chunk out of you with their teeth, but they certainly wouldn’t WANT to. It would definitely be a last resort. Following that, humans only eat cooked meat as they can grow very sick on consuming certain raw products.”

The class shifted and whispered to each other.

“Yes, I know you have been told many strange and odd things about humans, but most of those are heavily exaggerated. However, it is true that humans are more versatile than most of us. Humans can run, walk, climb, throw, jump and swim, and while they don’t do any of those particularly well, their ability to do all of them to some degree makes them the most versatile alien in the GA. Furthermore humans also have a multitude of senses, ones that are common to most of us balance, heat cold, pain, etcetera, but there is one sense that they have which is very uncommon in the galaxy, and that is a sense of smell.”

All around him, students were taking notes, “This is the ability for a human to detect particles in the air and, often, identify their sources. Everything sheds particles, and the human nose can pick up those particles. For instance humans generally like the smell of Iotans because Iotins shed compounds similar to foods that humans like to eat. Once upon a time it might have been used to help humans detect poison or other predators, but like I have said before, a human is a middleman in abilities. All of a human’s senses are relatively dull in comparison to some of their earth counterparts.”

He turned to his projector and flipped it to the anatomical structure of a dog, one that had been oddled off the only dog that many aliens had ever met.

Waffles the admiral’s dog.

“This creature’s sense of smell is powerful enough,they have been known to track a sent trail for miles through densely wooded forests. They can smell a change in hormone and pheromone levels on other creatures, and are even being used to detect certain diseases. The best a human can do is smell a cooking meal.”

He walked in a wide circle looking out at the students, some of them looking excited, others staring on in trepidation.

“Human eyesight is on a similar level to their smell. Humans have binocular vision which makes their depth perception quite good. A human is perfectly capable of snatching a flying object out of the air as their predatory instincts draw them to movement. This also makes humans very adept at navigating through obstacles like they might once have had to do in trees. Furthermore, it allows them to guess distance to prey during hunting.” He switched to a picture of a drev, “However humans do not have the best vision out of all aliens species. While the acuity of a human and a Drev are similar, Drev can detect Ultraviolet wavelengths where humans can only see the visible spectrum.” He looked at some of the Vrul, “Take solace in the knowledge that you can see thermal where humans cannot. They have relatively poor night vision, but better than that of you or I and far better than the Drev who traded the use of multiple cones to very frew light sensing rods.”

He looked up from his lecturing, “Are there any questions so far.”

Every had in the room shot into the air.

He paused to look at them faces lit by the glowing bluish light of the hologram behind him and sighed, he supposed this is what he was here for.

“Let’s star in the back then, shall we.”

One of the hands went down.

“Sir, is it true that humans are capable of surviving cortical tissue damage.”

Krill snorted, a sound he probably shouldnt have been able to make since he didn’t have a nose but one he had learned how to make because it expressed a very important emotion when interacting with humans. The entire class looked at him funny.

He sighed, “Yes, The first surgery I preformed on a human involved removing an eight inch steel rod from an eye socket which had gone into cortical tissue. To this day that human… well hes been doing fine, a bit of a dumbass sometimes, but I think that was a part of his personality before brain damage.”

They stared at him confused until Krill realised that dumbass probably wasn’t in their vocabulary. It probably translated to silent butt or idiot butt which didn’t have the same kind of ring to it.

Krill waved a hand, “In certain cases humans have been known to survive with only one hemisphere of their brain.”

A chorus of disbelief, “It is true, in certain cases where electrical abnormalities n the brain cause convulsions, surgeons intentionally remove half the brain to increase quality of life. There are a couple of downsides to this of course, like the inability to play musical instruments, but most humans still live a productive and fulfilling life after the procedure.”

More hands shot up again.

He turned and chose one at Random.

“Can humans smell fear”

Krill frowned, “No humans can’t smell fear. Whoever told you that was smoking something.”The class stared blankly at him until he picked another hand.

“Are you worried that the humans will ever…. Turn on you?”

Krill raised his hands into the air in exasperation, “They are SENTIENT beings not wild animals Humans have strict social rules like you or anyone else. It would be illegal for them to hurt me , and I doubt they would let it happen at all. Humans aren’t feral. In fact my partner aboard the ship is Doctor Katie Quinn, and she is just as experienced in the field of medicine as I am. SHe can match me in almost any medical procedure and she only has two cortical hemispheres, and less than half the amount of hands.”

He frowned at the room, “I have no idea where ou all got these ideas from. Humans are thinking creatures not animals. The reason they survived on their planet is not because they are the strongest predator, but because they are the smartest, just like you or I. the only difference between us is that the Human planet is so hostile, they have been forced to keep some of their more instinctive tendencies.”

More hands raised.

“Have you seen one of these larger earth animals, sir?”

“Yes on plenty of occasions.” He flipped his diagram back to that of a dog, “This animal here is called a dog, the ancestral evolution of the wolf, which is just a much larger version of this animal here. These animals are higher on the food chain that humans and have the ability to easily outrun, attack and rip the throat out of a human.” He paused as the class pulled back, “Which is why humans often use them in security, protection and law enforcement, because no human wants to fight one of these creatures.” He smiled a bit grimly, “Also humans just love to keep them as pets.”

There was an uproar around the room.

How could anyone want to keep something that could rip their face off as a pet.

Krill raised a hand to quiet down the room, “I know, I know, it all sounds very strange, but you must understand, humans and dogs are both descended from highly social pack groups. At one point a human took wolf cubs and began raising them and breeding them for desirable traits. As wolves are pack animals they slowly would have begun to see humans as members of their own pack family. In this humans molded a creature into being one of their greatest allies. Dogs rely on humans and humans rely on dogs for many jobs. Humans love dogs and dogs love humans. In fact, humans have bred this animal so extensively that dogs are one of the only creatures on their own planet capable of reading human facial expressions.”

He pulled up an image from his personal files, one where Adam sat on the floor, and the dog Waffles sat next to him. He made a face as her long, pink tongue ran up the side of his cheek.

The class gasped.

“She could easily use this opportunity to kill him.” krill said, “But she never would.” He turned to another image of himself standing next to the dog, a hand resting on her back.

More gasping.

Krill was somewhat amused. “Humans, as I said are social in the extreme, and this fact is going to be our best ally when meeting them. Anyone and anything can become part of a human pack. In fact, this instinct in humans is so strong that inanimate objects can easily be accepted into a human’s pack. They routinely name plants and attribute personalities to them. I once conducted an experiment where I placed fake eyes.” Googly eyes to be exact, “On a waste receptacle, and the humans named him Mr. Rubbish and began throwing away their items exclusively in that specific receptacle as ‘Offerings’ to Mr Rubbish….. That is not a joke, that actually happened.” He appraised them with a stern look, “Befriending humans is the most important thing you can do, and probably one of the easiest things as well. If you find yourself incapable of making friends with a human, its probably time to look at yourself personally because you must be horrible.” he pointed to himself, “I will openly admit that my personality isn’t exactly the easiest to be around, and yet I still managed it on accident.”

His lecture continued for some minutes, covering more anatomy, bone structures and some interesting facts about their internal organs.

However he was forced to stop as little lights began blinking overhead, and he went to dismiss the class, “Next week we will be discussing the effects of adrenaline on humans as a special treat to those who decide to return after this first lecture. And for your assignment, I want you to find one news article that perpetuates a myth about humans and write a short essay debunking it. Since this is the first week I am going lenient on assignments but by the end of the term I do expect full essays at publishable quality.”

Everyone in the class stood, and he found himself suddenly swarmed by a mass of figures.

It seemed as if he was going to be here for a while.

Little did Krill know that his lecture series was becoming so popular that the administration was going to have to upgrade his lecture hall two more times in the concurrent weeks.

Everyone wanted to know about humans.

#HUMANS ARE WERID #humans are space orcs #humans are insane #humans are space australians #humans are space oddities #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia

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humanityinahandbag · 6 years ago

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good omens: bagged lunch

This summer I volunteered abroad in Israel, and lost all connection to home, and in that time a certain fandom exploded and I missed the beginnings of it. So here I am now. Sauntering vaguely downward into hell with some ideas of my own.

There’s this little idea for post Good Omens that I just can’t seem to shake, wherein Aziraphale (connoisseur of all things delicious and human that he is) would always feel the need to pack Crowley lunches whenever he was off to meetings in Hell, tutting, “Oh Crowley, I know you don’t feel as if eating is essential, but for my sake, dear, can’t you just try to nibble on a biscuit or two? You’re all sinew and wobble!”

And even if he protests, Aziraphale can usually tempt him with promises to pack boiled eggs and tuna and all sorts of smelly things that would disagree with noses. How ghastly and malicious of him, it would be to bring that into a meeting! The Agreement practically begged for this sort of cooperation, didn’t it?

(And tuna is Crowley’s favorite. Especially when Aziraphale remembers to chop up the little cornichons inside and slice it triangularly.)

So Crowley, to appease his Angel, dutifully takes the paper bags handed to him before the both of them venture to their respective places of meeting.

The thing that I can’t make myself quite get over, though?

Aziraphale and Crowley spent so much time swapping notes quietly over duck ponds or trading secrets in three separate rendezvous locations.

Notes are something the Angel has not only acclimated himself with, but they’re something he enjoys. The dangerous side of him wants to send them in lieu of being a spy. The Angelic side of him wants to be caring. The Best Friend/Something More side wants to pour affections. The human side?

Well.

How very human it is to show affection through food and the little notes that such a gesture would also contain!

He always thought it clever when humans sent little messages in lunchboxes! Food and love? At the same time? His heart bursts just thinking about it.

It’s a custom he’d be quick to adopt. Scribbling little messages on bits of scrap paper and tucking them away next to a small bag of sliced apples.

What I’m saying here is;

Aziraphale would 100% send Crowley to Hell with a paper bag lunch and a written note.

And when Crowley is drooping, bored after hour three of a pointless Demon meeting, he’d reach into the little bag as loudly as he could and peel the sandwich out, trying to play it smooth, until the little piece of paper would flutter out unexpectantly into the center.

Hastur would grab at it while Crowley was mid bite into a wonderfully crunchy cornichon'd tuna on white bread.

“Dearest,” the demon would read out loud, squinting at the paper. Crowley froze mid-chew. “Enjoy lunch. I remembered to pack it the way you like. You’re ever so wonderful. Don’t forget to voice all those smart ideas of yours at the meeting. Pick up the laundry. And take off your glasses once to give your eyes a break. Remember the last time you strained them? Heart Heart Heart.” Hastur stared at the note and held it up to Crowley, whose glasses were slipping down his nose. “He drew some flowers, too. Do you want to see?”

Crowley quickly snatched the note away.

Beelzebub, from down at the head of the long table, blinked languidly. “Right,” they said. “So back to our monthly quotas, then?”

Later he’d beseech his Angel not to do something like that again.

“But it’s a human expression of affection,” the Angel protested. “And I don’t see how it ruins your reputation at all, having notes sent down. People pray to the devil all the time. I’m sure his mailbox is brimming.”

“With evil! No one sends him lots of little hearts and flowers.”

Aziraphale would sniff. “Fine,” he’d say. “No more flowers.”

“Thank you.”

Aziraphale would keep his promise. Next time there was a joke.

It landed in the center of the table when Crowley dragged out a double dark chocolate cookie.

Beelzebub was the one who got to it first, that time.

“Why don’t they play poker in the jungle.” She stood on her chair, reading aloud. Crowley was face first on the table, gently smacking his forehead against a squished bag of deviled eggs.

Ligur piped up, “why, or Lord of Hell!”

Beelzebub turned the paper over, scanning the lilac ink. “Too many cheetazzzz.” It took a moment for collective recognition to kick in. Once it had, they were all doubled over. “I understand! Word play! How drab! Crowley! Tell your Angel to keep zzzending these!” They flipped over the paper again, unfolding a little corner. “Oh. Sorry. Forgot to read; XOXOXOXO - lots of kisses, darling. Eat your vegetables before the cookie.” She looked down to where Crowley was face down on the table, pillowed by squished eggs. “There are pepperzzzzz in that bag,” they glared. “You did not follow the Angelzzz instructions.”

“Got it,” he groaned. “Will do. Next time.”

“I am going to tell him,” said Beelzebub. “Ligur. Write a letter to the Principality Azzzziraphale. Send it through Gabriel. Crowley did not eat his vegetablezzz first.”

“I shall, Lord of Hell.”

Crowley dropped his head to the table.

It only gets worse from there. Because Aziraphale, who often did a lot of people watching from the flat above his shop, began noticing that doting parents would often drew on the paper bags.

And wasn’t that to be a whole other story.

“Look!” A lesser demon held up the bag excitedly. Crowley rubbed his temples. “He drew a picture of them married. Wrote A + C under it and everything!”

“What a gallant gezzzzzture,” said Beelzebub, eyes sparking up new ideas for the Archangel with whom she’d been speaking to for the past few millenium. “Crowley. Pick your head up off the table and gazzzzze upon the mazzzzterpiece your Lover has created for you.”

“No. Thank you. M’good,” Crowley groaned.

“As Lord of the Underworld, I command it! Gaze! And be enthralled!”

The only way the entire situation gets any better, is when Crowley begins to pack lunches for Aziraphale.

Angels, who are attracted to Love like moths to a windshielf wiper, would likely stop an entire meeting just to dote and fawn upon the notes Crowley would send Aziraphale’s way.

“He’s doing this to be spiteful.” True enough. He was. Aziraphale trapped his face between his fingers. “Don’t indulge!”

“Oh, but Principality! He has drawn the most delightful series of hearts upon this paper!” Michael stroked the little bit of torn off notebook paper. “And he has even written you a poem! Shall I read it?”

“No!”

They read it anyway.

Crowley does more than that.

Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly devilish (or Aziraphale cut him off of wine the night before and how fucking dare he do that - he’ll get his revenge) he’ll send more... risque notes.

With illustrations.

Both of which an angel will find when they lunge for the lunch bag emanating love.

“Principality,” Urial with announce, voice like thunder and wind chimes and vengeance and hope all at once, holding the torn paper up like a flaming sword. “It is foretold by this message that your Demon would like to...” she’d squint at the note, nodding. “flip you like a crepe and smash you to next Armageddon.”

Aziraphale was quietly asking God to smite him.

“Principality,” says Michael, sitting primly at the table. “We should reply.”

There was a nod and murmuring appreciation round the table.

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, quietly, clearing his very dry throat. “I think we’d better not.”

“Nonsense! This note radiates affection. Love! He is a demon who yearns for your forgiveness and heavenly warmth. It is your duty to reply, Aziraphale!”

The next half hour is spent crafting a good note back while Aziraphale begs God to please, if he asks really, really nicely, can’t she just smite him a little?

“Sir!” Urial jumps up triumphantly. “I have found a website on my mobile telephone! It is called urban dictionary!”

“Splendid! What’s it do?”

“It apparently helps craft love letters for Demons! It suggests we write back that Principality Aziraphale would find great joy in seeing Dat Ass in some apple bottomed jeans, sir. And that he’d very much like to bang him like a tamborine, sir.”

“Poetry!” Exclaims Gabriel. “Someone get a pen!”

Aziraphale decides that if God won’t smite him, he may have to smite Crowley when he got home.

#good omens #lunch letters #crowley #aziraphale

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marvinswriting · 4 years ago

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tiny swap part three: gretchen and janis part one , part two

Monday, 7:10 am

Janis crossed her arms, blowing a raspberry to Damian.

Her friend, obviously, did not seem to take this as a serious insult as he chuckled, turning is attention elsewhere. "Okay, Jan."

They all shared a first period, one that Janis normally slept through with Damian.

But she was not with Damian and there would definitely be no sleeping since Gretchen sat in the very front row.

Fucking hell.

Damian said goodbye to the group as he made his way to the back and Janis frowned, wanting nothing more than to go with him.

Nothing against Gretchen.

Just-

She trusted Damian more.

A lot more.

Gretchen sat down and Janis allowed herself to be placed on the table, mindful of Damian's warnings earlier.

Just one week.

Tuesday, 7 am

Walking into school on Gretchen's shoulder felt new. Even in middle school, she would be with Karen.

Gretchen's right shoulder was reserved for Regina George and Regina George only.

Yet here she sat.

Janis threw Regina and peace sign for good measures and laughed as the girl returned a middle finger.

No real feelings hurt, Janis knew that.

Even Shane Omen didn't seem to know what to think of it as they passed him in the hall.

That was real power.

Janis didn't care for ruling the school.

But if sitting on Gretchen's shoulder as she and Karen walked the halls was all it took to stop getting harassed, she would have done this long ago.

Gretchen actually wasn't bad at the whole walking with a tiny on her shoulder. She had definitely improved since middle school at least.

The giant stopped at her locker, slipping books in while talking with Karen- something about boys.

Gross.

Janis gave no useful commentary to the conversation. The plastics didn't expect her too.

Maybe this week wouldn't be the most god awful thing.

Wednesday, 8:56 am

Janis frowned at her phone.

Regina was asking if she and Aaron wanted to stay after school just to talk. Call it English help.

Well, the nickname didn't make sense anymore since their giants knew what it entailed but, sure, Janis will humor her.

"Hey, Gretchen?"

The giant looked up from her school work.

"I got after school help today. Can you give me a ride?"

Gretchen sighed knowingly. "I haven't dropped you yet, dude. What could you have to whine about."

"Hey!"

Gretchen laughed, nudging Janis with her pencil. "Yeah, I can drive you."

Wednesday, 4 pm

"Thanks for giving me a ride, Gretchen," Janis said as the plastic stepped into her car.

"Of course, I wasn't just gonna let you stay at school overnight."

Janis smiled. It was only Wednesday but, she had grown to trust Gretchen a lot more this week. Gretchen hadn't dropped her- yet- and she was open and easy to talk too. It was something Janis never really noticed when she was always with Damian.

Huh.

Gretchen turned on the car, a pop song playing softly. She scooped up Janis, pacing her in over in the cup holder and buckled up.

"If something happened to you because you were on my shoulder Damian would never forgive me." She explained when Janis gave her a questioning look.

"I won't fall! I can take care of myself."

"Uh-huh." Gretchen pulled out of the school parking lot. "So, what did you talk about?"

"Oh you know- bitchin'." Janis grinned.

Gretchen knew full well that Janis couldn't tell her.

The specifics at least.

Hey, bitchin' wasn't a total lie.

But that was par for every meeting.

Maybe this week wasn't so different after all.

Thursday, 11:30 pm

"So," Gretchen's voice was a bit robotic as it came through the phone.

Janis sat at her easel, painting. "So."

"How was this week?" Gretchen asked. "I'm no Damian but I'd like to think I wasn't awful."

Janis smiled. "No, you weren't awful. At all. This week was great, actually. Regina is lucky to have you"

"-You think?"

"Yeah! Why wouldn't she?"

There was quiet on the other end. "I dunno. It's stupid but like-" Gretchen sighed.

Janis lowered her paintbrush, turning her full attention to her phone. "Gretchen, you talking to Janis Sarkisian about feelings. I guarantee it's not gonna be stupid. "

Gretchen laughed. "I know Regina hates all things that require feeling and having a heart. But I know she loves me and trusts me anyway I just- wish she'd show it more. I dunno. Is that selfish?"

"I don't think so?"

Gretchen continued. "Just, Cady and Aaron are so open with each other. You and Damian- well sometimes I'm convinced you share the same mind. Regina just won't let me in. Like- I can see something is bothering her, but she won't tell me what. I just wanna help."

Janis sighed sadly. "What you're saying now- it sounds a lot like a talk I had with Damian about a year into our friendship. After that, I worked to be more open. I tried to let him in more. And look at us now. You just gotta talk with Regina. I promise you it's not stupid."

"Thanks, Janis," Gretchen said. Janis could almost hear the smile. "Now I got to get to bed but- please don't stay up late painting."

"Oh, I will. I get Damian's pocket again tomorrow, I plan to pass out at lunch and sleep for a month."

Gretchen laughed. "Alright. Good night then."

"Bye, Gretchen."

Friday, 12 pm

Gretchen pushed her way past crowds in the cafeteria, steadily making her way to the gang's table.

Janis leaned closer to her neck as they passed. No matter who she was with, crowded hallways and cafes would forever be a no no.

Gretchen sat at the table first, nobody else was here.

"You excited to see Regina?" Janis asked as Gretchen lowered her to the table.

"Yeah. You ready to see Damian?"

"I'm ready for a nap."

Gretchen laughed. "I told you you should have gone to bed."

"Oooo! Look what we've got here!" A taunting voice cooed from behind Gretchen.

Janis can't see over Gretchen's head, but its a voice she knows all too well.

"What can we do for you, Shane?" Gretchen sits up straighter.

"I was just wondering how long you think little Space Dyke is gonna last?"

"I'm sorry?" Janis frowned as Gretchen stood up next to Shane.

"She's obviously replaced Regina. You really think she's gonna last long, Gretchen?"

Extreme distance filled Gretchen's features. "Janis didn't replace Regina."

"Then why have you been carrying around Space Dyke?"

"I'm allowed to carry around other friends." Gretchen crosses her arms, standing up straight.

Gretchen was short. There was no denying that.

But when she drew herself to full hight? She was intimidating. You just never saw it because she let Regina do the talking.

Janis blinked in disbelief at the argument going on in front of her.

Gretchen looked-

unnerving.

Shane didn't seem to feel the same uneasiness as he glared down at Gretchen. "What's it matter to you? This is is between Space Dyke and I."

"It's not space dyke. It's Janis. And Janis is my friend."

Shane rolled his eyes. "Why don't you leave caring for the worthless tiny to that gay kid?"

Woah woah woah. Janis frowned, standing up, but Gretchen beat her to the punch.

"Damian? Yeah, he's got a name too. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you didn't know! I mean, I know because I know everything about everybody. I know things about you that can get you expelled. I know things about all your friends that could diminish Northshore's giant football team. I know shit. Maybe you don't! So I'll let you know right now. It's Damian and Janis. And you better leave them the fuck alone."

Shane rolls his eyes. "You wouldn't do shit without Regina George's permission."

Janis was vaguely aware of a crowd starting to form around the table. She didn't like it one bit.

They had done so well this week! No one was dropped nothing went wrong. Of course, the period they are supposed to switch back everything goes to shit.

Janis tried to ignore the crows around them and the way she felt suffocated.

"I don't need Regina's permission to destroy your reputation," Gretchen said, her voice was dangerously low, almost a growl.

Shane swallowed, and momentarily, his bad boy look faltered, revealing a truly threatened Shane Omen. Only momentarily.

"Stay in your own fights." He said, glaring down at Gretchen.

A low 'ooo' admitted from some of Shane's friends in the crowd.

Janis stiffened.

Shane smirked, seeming filled with a newfound confidence now that he was backed up by the crowd. He turned to Janis, the familiar malice in his eyes turning her blood cold.

This was just supposed to be a fun week, a nice experiment if you will.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

Shane reached forward and Janis instinctively stepped backward.

She couldn't back up fast enough, Shane was quicker.

Shit shit shit.

A hand slammed in front of Janis, blocking Shane and shaking the table.

"Fuck off." Gretchen all but snarled.

Janis stared wide-eyed at the hand in front of her.

Holy shit.

She felt nauseous from the spike of adrenaline and her body was shaking involuntarily.

Shane chuckled. "Seriously, Gretchen. Learn your plac-"

Gretchen reached forward, slapping Shane across the face.

There was a gasp as the crowd fell silent.

All Shane's friends who were there to back him up stepped backward into the crowd.

Janis hugged herself slightly, pulling her knees to her chest. There was still a crowd around her and it felt like too much.

Too many people.

Too much noise.

Her breaths felt shallow.

"Did you just- slap me?"

Gretchen nodded, stepping forward as Shane stepped backward. "You leave my friends alone."

"Psycho bitch." Shane spat, turning and disappearing into the crowd.

Gretchen didn't turn around immodestly, she just watched Shane walk away.

Janis wrapped her jacket tighter around her, like that could protect her or anything. The crowd had dispersed but it left the cafeteria buzzing again and everything felt too loud.

She was vaguely aware of two more tinies on the table, people sitting all around, but her brain couldn't comprehend.

All Janis could do was tug her jacket tighter and tighter until it wouldn't go anymore. She stared numbly at her hands, knuckles white from pulling her jacket.

Fingers wrapped around her torso and Janis gasped, her arms shotting out to push at the fingers.

No no no.

"Jan- Janis. It's me."

Damian. Janis relaxed, the last of her adrenaline fueled fight leaving her body. She allowed herself to be gently scooped up as Damian raised her to eye level.

"You okay?"

"I- yeah. I think?"

"You think?" Damian frowned.

"No like- Shane didn't touch me. I'm physically fine. Just shaken up, I guess."

"We were so close to a problem-free week." Regina comments from the table. She walks back over to Gretchen who picks her immediately.

"Yeah." Janis sunk into Damian's hands. "So close."

Damian drew his hands to his chest, wordlessly holding Janis close.

Janis squeezed her eyes shut as she leaned into Damian's shirt, trying to will herself to calm down.

"I hate Shane Omen." Gretchen mumbled.

Janis laughed dryly, turning to look at her friends across the table.

Regina and Aaron had obviously already found way to their giant's shoulders and Gretchen was holding her hand against her cool water bottle.

"You okay?" Janis asked.

Gretchen grinned. "I hit him a bit harder then I meant to."

"Fucking good!" Regina said.

Janis grinned. "He deserved it."

"Agreed." Damian said, his voice rumbling through Janis.

She grinned, leaning into Damian's warmth.

The week itself wasn't bad. Yeah, it was a rough ending but it was in no way Gretchen's fault.

If anything, it would have been worse without her.

Janis grabbed onto the edge of Damian's jacket, pulling herself out of his hands and using folds in the fabric for leverage as she hoisted herself into the familiar pocket.

"Jesus, Janis. Are we back at this again?"

Janis popped her head out of the jacket. "I held back all week just for you. But I'm not with Gretchen anymore."

Damian looked down at her but a small smile played on his lips, betraying his disappointment. "Just be careful."

"Always am!" Janis gave a salute to the table before sinking into the pocket, getting comfy.

At the end of the week, while all the giants were her friends, Damian was her giant. And she never wanted to do this little experiment again.

fuck shane omen, man @realmisspolarbear @musicallygt @smallsoysauce @sourishlemons

#tss #g/t mean girls #tiny janis #giant gretchen #g/t #Giant/tiny #g/t writing

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thelanternlight · 4 years ago

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Witchy Asks!

Hello fellow witches! Here’s 50 Witchy Asks written by the-lunar-vixen. Please follow if you enjoy them. Blessed be!

1 What type of witch are you?

A gay one.

2 What deities do you like to work with, if any?

Angels, faery, guides, Mother God, Father God, Christ, saints, and ancestors. I'll also work with deities from various religions as they pertain to a spell or ritual (e.g. I may work with Hathor for a love spell).

3 Have you ever created your own spell?

Absolutely, most of the spellwork I do is original at least to some extent.

4 What’s your favorite time of year?

All the year is beautiful and wonderful for a myriad of reasons but Springtime is sacred to me.

5 Do you have a witch you look up to?

I think I have teachers that come and go in my life. They can be famous or not famous, witches or not, etc. Currently I'm loving Ember Honeyraven.

6 What makes you feel powerful?

Balance and freedom. Knowing that I'm on the side of what's good and right.

7 Do you have a favorite myth?

I'm an author and storyteller so I have many, many favorite myths. Off the top of my head I love the stories of Medusa, Apollo, the Christian Creation myth, Germanic and Scandinavian folklore, Anansi and his stories, Arthurian legends... the list goes on, but yes I LOVE stories. I think have so much meaning and wisdom to share.

8 Which famous/fantasy witch do you relate to the most?

I've grown up watching witches in movies, television, reading about them, etc so I've related to witches one way or another since day one. The Charmed Ones (all four) were role models for me when there were no role models for little, effeminate weirdos like myself as a child. The Sanderson Sisters were person heroes to me and I tried to emulate them from the very first time I saw the film; in fact those three are perhaps the original witches with whom I related the most. Since then there have been SO many wonderful characters in entertainment and in real life that inspired me so incredibly much that they've become a part of me.

9 Are you a wiccan?

I am not.

10 What’s the most unique item you’ve ever used in a spell?

I guess a dildo? I think 'unique' is a relative term.

11 Do you own any witchy books?

Apart from my personal book of spells I've owned many books on witchcraft but have parted ways with the majority of them. I'm currently trying to downsize the amount I have currently as it happens. Anybody want some free books?

12 Which misconception about witches annoys you the most?

That magic isn't real and this is all nonsense. I think it's especially irritating when people of other faiths criticize my own as if a prayer is anything different from an incantation. In fact I would argue that spells direct energy in a more concentrated way to affect change than simply petitioning a deity.

13 Have you ever created your own sigil?

You bet. Sometimes you just need something original and unique for the rite/spell.

14 What element are you most drawn to?

Water.

15 Do you have a familiar?

Some people use the word "familiar" interchangeably with "pet". I do have a pet but she's not my familiar. Other people define "familiar" as "spirit animal" which I'm not entirely sure is correct either. I'm in a bit of a gray area on this subject, but I see question 17 below touches on it as well.

16 Are you a part of a coven?

No. I've tried working with others to do magic but I think the synergy/chemistry has to REALLY be on point to do effective magic. Very often there's a clash of philosophies or practice that sort of spoils things all too easily whereas working alone allows me to concentrate so much better.

17 What’s your spirit animal?

Again this is a vague term that means different things to different people. I consider my spirit animal to be more or less my "familiar". When I was younger I was walking in the woods one evening praying really hard about something that was weighing very heavily on me. Then suddenly I looked up and there was this gorgeous and perfectly white stag looking back at me. He stood there for quite a while before slowly walking off again and the whole situation had such a profound sense of meaning to it. I saw the stag a few more times until finally, late one night while I was walking through the woods by a lake under the glow of a bright full moon I saw the stag one last time on the far side of the water. Ever since then the white stag has been sacred to me. So that's what I consider my spirit animal/familiar. It's a guide of sorts, a good omen, a sign, a representation of Spirit/Soul/God-energy and Self. I identify with it. So that's my spirit animal.

18 Do you do tarot readings?

I do indeed!

19 What’s your favorite witch movie?

I have several, but Hocus Pocus has been my favorite since I was a wee tot.

20 How many crystal do you have?

I actually don't really know. I don't go out and buy crystals but sometimes they come into my life and then go when they've served their purpose. For example, I had a beautiful large quartz that my grandmother had bought me from the nature store when I was a kid. I loved it so much. But one Halloween night I was doing a ritual with a friend of mine in the woods and ended up losing it. Interestingly, that friend was pursuing me romantically unbeknownst to me while also hooking up with the guy I was hooking up with and also really liked (ugh, gay culture). And during that ritual I was speaking with my grandfather (husband to the grandmother who bought me the quartz that I lost that night). So what does all that mean? I have no idea. But I figured all things considered maybe it was just time to let that thing go, along with other things that night.

21 What’s the most unique item on your altar?

I don't really have the privacy to set up an altar but generally I like my "work area" to be neat. Everything has a purpose and a meaning and a function. If I need to burn something I have the item/items, the cauldron, the lighter, oils, and anything else needed for what I'm doing. So nothing in particular stands out as "unique"... unless... Well I do have a small copper cauldron with a handful of dirt from my grandmother's house that I've kept for almost twenty years now. I guess that's unique?

22 Have you ever enchanted anything?

Oh god, yes, lots of things. I've enchanted things so as to protect them, or so that the item will protect someone else or some place... I've enchanted things for love, or to keep something or someone away. I've enchanted things to help in a greater ritual or spell. And so on.

23 What’s your religion?

I was raised Christian Baptist but following one horrible experience after another I've absolutely left that faith well behind long ago. I don't have a particular religion in the sense of organized religion. I'm spiritual and I cast spells. I also believe in science. I don't call myself a witch but I do everything a witch does.

24 Do you have a favorite crystal?

"I could no sooner choose a favorite star in the heavens".

25 What are some of your favorite spells?

Oooo I'd have to say I'm rather partial to love magic. I'm particularly good at it too.

26 What do you like to do to cleanse your space?

After physically cleaning a space I like to use the Violet Fire to cleanse an area as well as cleansing using a broom and a wand and/or athame.

27 When do you feel the most powerful?

When nature and I have our little moments. When the wind is warm and strong. When I'm out in a storm. When I can "feel" things growing during the Spring. The silence of a frozen winter night in the woods... Also when I'm cooking. I fucking LOVE charging a pot of boiling ingredients with good juju.

28 Do other people know you’re a witch?

A few people close to me know I practice witchcraft. Others think I'm just a little bit daffy.

29 Has one of your spells ever gone wrong?

Definitely. Mostly when I was still learning and practicing. Like this one time in sixth grade I cast a spell so that a popular girl in school would like me and we could start dating. Obviously since I was gay I didn't really want to be with her, I only did it because I wanted to be cool (although I did like her and we ended up being fairly good friends until we went to different high schools). That spell backfired and I ended up 1. not getting the result I intended because I was doing it for the wrong reason and simultaneously trying to force another to do something against her will, and 2. I ended up having one shitty fucking love life for the longest time.

30 What outfit makes you feel the most witchy?

Oh I love me a good cape. Even just walking around with a long blanket around me.

31 Have you ever tried astral projection?

Yes, successfully, several times. I like to use it for meditation. Often I go to the artic sea where there's just ocean, ice, and darkness.

32 Do you have any enchanted jewelry?

Probably.

33 What does your altar look like?

A space on the floor where I cast a circle and set up my stuff.

34 Have you ever seen a spirit?

YES! I've seen fairies, spirits, ghosts, shadows, sparks, heard voices, etc.

35 What’s your favorite spell sachet?

I can't say that I have one.

36 Do you have a favorite sigil?

I'm especially fond of the Sigil of Venus.

37 What’s your astrological sign?

Sun sign Virgo, Rising Pisces, Moon in Sagittarius

38 Have you ever interacted with a deity?

Well, yes, of course... per the previous questions.

39 What color are you most drawn to?

Purple.

40 Do you believe in past lives?

Without a doubt.

41 Where do you like to practice your craft?

Wherever I have privacy and calm.

42 What’s your favorite season?

Springtime, as mentioned previously.

43 Have you ever cursed someone?

That's not what my magic is for. Yes I'm familiar with the how-to, but no I don't partake in that kind of thing. The "worst" I've ever done is cast binding spells to keep someone from harming me and/or even coming into my presence.

44 How long have you been a practicing witch?

I'm telling on myself now but I'd say about 24 years practicing in earnest.

45 What drew you to witchcraft?

A natural inclination.

46 In what moon phase do you feel the most powerful?

The Moon itself does not change with the phases of its shadow. The phases are representational, of course, and its symbology can be evocative and meaningful, but otherwise the Moon is what it is. Therefore I'd have to say I personally feel most connected or at least most aware of the Moon when it's full. Else, I would say when it's waxing as that's when most of my spells are done simply because of the type of spell I usually work.

47 What’s your favorite holiday?

Wisterlimas, and then Halloween. Although I love all the holidays.

48 Do you know anything about your past lives? (if you believe in them!)

Yes, wow, I've done extensive work on discovering my past lives. I've lived in San Francisco at the turn of the century, in Scotland, England, France, Japan, China, as a woman, as a man... It's all very fascinating but you can't delve too deep because it's simply not necessary. You're not really *supposed* to know about your past lives. That defeats the purpose of the great forgetting once you're reincarnated. Yes, you can revisit the major themes and lessons learned, but one shouldn't really fret too much about what happened in the past.

49 Have you ever done an energy reading?

Certainly. I think most people do energy readings even when they don't know they're doing it. There's "reading the room" or "getting a bad vibe". There's also reiki and the like. And healing work. And of course magic is all about directing energy so to achieve a specific goal.

50 What time of day do you like to practice your craft?

Usually at night but it has more to do with the individual spell. Astronomical positioning is also important as well as weather, season, personal mood, day of the week, et al.

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yet-another-greek-myth-gay · 5 years ago

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Since I am currently very deeply invested in Hogwarts Mystery, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time developing my version of Jacob’s Sibling in my mind. I’m kind of proud of the character I created, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to put her out there in the character universe of Hogwarts Mystery OCs.

Now, full disclosure, I’m not an artist. I don’t have any beautiful drawings attached to give you an idea of what I’m visualizing (at least, not any I drew). More or less, this is just going to be a bunch of word vomit about the character I’m crafted, and I’ll probably go back and edit it a bunch of times as I think of more details. If it isn’t too much trouble, I’d love to hear people’s opinions of her! Thank you to anyone who reads, and I hope you like her as much as I do!

BE WARNED THAT THIS CHARACTER SHEET CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR HOGWARTS MYSTERY.

FULL NAME: Helena Winifred Bancroft.

NICKNAME: Most people call her Nellie; only her mum calls her Helena. She also occasionally gets Nel, and Jacob used to call her Pip, short for Pipsqueak. Her and Rowan also had unique nicknames for each other, with Nellie calling Rowan “smart girl” and Rowan calling Nellie “sweet girl.”

DATE OF BIRTH: March 11th. She’s a Pisces.

BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood.

FAMILY: Nellie’s family consists of her mothers, a pureblooded Auror named Juliette and a muggle school teacher named Carolyn, and her half-brother Jacob. (Juliette is mum, Carolyn is mama.) Both her and Jacob’s respective fathers were muggle men that Juliette was involved with in the past, and neither are involved in their lives. The Bancroft bloodline is matrilineal, and while not necessarily famous, prides itself on producing particularly powerful witches.

BACKGROUND: She grew up in a small coastal community, where she was an avid swimmer, frequent visitor of the beach, and overall just a total water baby. Her family was comfortable financially, but chose to live fairly humbly, and Nellie was content with that. While she occasionally played with the local muggle children, most of Nellie’s time was spent either following Jacob around like a little shadow or playing with the fairies that lived in her mama’s garden. (She spent all her time telling them how pretty they were, so they tolerated her.) Unsurprisingly, she was a bit of a loner.

HOUSE: A proud Hufflepuff, just like Jacob.

DREAM: First and foremost, to find Jacob. However, in the long term, she’d really like to own a Hippogriff sanctuary and work as a breeder (with entirely moral methods, don’t worry). They’re by far her favorite creature, and she wants to spend the rest of her life working with them.

DEEPEST SECRET: That she wonders all the time if Jacob is worth saving. Growing up, he was her best friend and her hero, and there was no one she loved more. But watching how he changed in the last year or two prior to his disappearance, and hearing some of the stories at school, she honestly wonders if the loving brother she remembers exists anymore. And if he doesn’t, is the boy he left behind someone she wants to bring back?

She’s also been hiding a growing resentment toward her mum. While Jacob’s disappearance took a toll on them all, she sometimes feels like her mum’s put so much of her emotional energy into missing Jacob that she doesn’t have enough left to love her anymore, and she secretly hates her mum nudging her to find Jacob, even if it’s at the cost of her own happiness and safety.

...sometimes she wishes it had been Ben.

MOST TREASURED OBJECT: For years, it was her seashell locket, a gift she’d gotten from Jacob for her sixth birthday, with the little sculpture Barnaby made her for their Valentines Day date coming in at a close second. Now, it’s a spare pair of Rowan’s glasses, which Nellie had kept on hand since their first year, given how often Rowan misplaced hers.

WAND: Nellie’s first wand is ten and a half inches long, made of pear wood with a unicorn hair core. Her second, which she purchases in her fifth year, is eleven and a quarter inches, with an alder wood base and a phoenix feather core. Lastly, her third, which she gets after she graduates and keeps for the rest of her life, is ten and two thirds inches long, built from beech wood, and possesses a unicorn hair core.

PATRONUS: An African Bush Elephant.

ANIMAGUS: A Kooikerhondje dog.

BOGGART: Jacob’s corpse, shambling towards her like a zombie, sobbing about how she failed to save him.

BEST MEMORY: Jacob trying to teach her spells when he came home for his first break in his first year of Hogwarts. She would’ve only been five—they’re six years apart—so it’s a faint memory and she couldn’t do any of them anyway, but it was still happy enough to stick with her.

WORST MEMORY: The year Jacob disappeared, their mum mandated that he come home for breaks. (He’d been staying at school the past few years, but with everything that was happening, their mothers wanted to keep an eye on him.) He was on edge the entire time, bitter and aloof, and when Nellie tentatively tried to get him to play, he exploded at her about wasting his time. In that moment, his face twisted and red with rage, his tall, lanky body looming over her, Nellie didn’t recognize her brother at all, and that scared her more than anything. For the longest time, that was her worst memory.

Now, her worst memory is being in that forest grove, staring down at Rowan’s unmoving body, her gaping mouth and empty eyes. Even decades later, Nellie has dreams about it. Certainly, no memory will ever be worse than that one.

QUIDDITCH: After being trained by Skye, Nellie played as a Chaser for two seasons and a Beater for one, before retiring to a reserve chaser. There just wasn’t enough time, and she didn’t really have the competitive spirit for it. However, she remained friends with Skye, Orion, McNully, and Erika, and still enjoyed training with them to keep her skills sharp.

GREATEST STRENGTHS: Nellie is an overwhelmingly compassionate person. Her mama likes to joke that Nellie could spend all day waiting for a scoop of her favorite ice cream, and she’d still offer it to the first gloomy person she saw on the street. (Basically, if there’s a little pink heart next to a choice, that’s the one she’s making. Empathy is definitely her highest stat.) She never fails to go out of her way to help people, even if it’s to her own detriment. She just has a very warm energy, which makes it easy for people to feel safe confiding in and depending on her.

GREATEST WEAKNESS: Unfortunately, Nellie’s compassion is a bit of a double edged sword, and she can be guilty of stretching herself too far trying to please everyone and, subsequently, letting herself fall to the wayside. She’s also embarrassingly naive (a negative consequence to her desperate belief in the inherent goodness of people), and has a tendency to get a little too emotionally invested in things. She also stakes a lot of her personal value in her ability to keep others happy—if she isn’t capable of keeping those she loves safe and content, she feels she has no value at all.

APPEARANCE: In short, Nellie is about as far from intimidating as any one person can get. She never surpasses five feet tall, nor does she develop past her scrawny adolescent physique. Her face is round, with a little button nose and big ocean blue eyes. She’s covered from head to toe in freckles, and has a slight case of buck teeth with a tiny tooth gap, though nothing she considered worth getting braces over. She also has a scar on her thumb from the time her mum tried to teach her how to whittle. It didn’t go well.

However, her most defining physical characteristic is her hair. Curly and sandy blonde, she grew it long for the first fifteen years of her life, only cutting off the occasional inch to keep it healthy. It was very carefully maintained, because although Nellie doesn’t consider herself a vain girl, she loved her hair, which grew to reach her thighs at its longest. It was the only feature of hers she considered genuinely and objectively beautiful, and she prided herself on it. In the summer after her fifth year of Hogwarts, she chopped all that treasured hair off into a bob, her only reasoning being that it was more practical. It certainly had nothing to do with the fact that Rakepick had grabbed her by her exceptionally long braid when she’d tried to run to Merula’s aid in the Buried Vault.

STYLE: Nellie dresses exactly how you’d expect a stereotypical Hufflepuff to dress. She favors bright, pleasant colors, likes embroidery and floral print, and values comfort over anything. Her current favorite outfits both involve overalls, with one consisting of denim overalls with embroidered butterflies on the chest pocket and a white t-shirt, and the other being a pair of faded overalls that she personally painted with flowers, despite being an absolutely terrible artist, and a yellow turtleneck. She pretty much always wears a pair of light weight, embroidered boots, and is never seen without her seashell locket.

VOICE: I picture her sounding similar to AnnaPantsu. There’s a reason she was able to make the choir, after all! (Even if she ultimately surrendered her spot to Merula.)

BEST SUBJECT: Unsurprisingly, Care for Magical Creatures. Her kind nature and respect for all magical beings makes her a bit of a natural. She’s also proven herself to have a knack for Divination. She’s no Seer, but she’s pretty good at deciphering omens and swears that she does sometimes see visions in crystal balls. She’s also decent at Transfiguration.

WORST SUBJECT: Anyone would suck at Potions if Snape spent the entire class glowering at them the way he does at Nellie! It’s awfully hard to focus when your professor is breathing down your neck, staring dismissively into your cauldron like you’ve already made a mistake. She also just has a really poor memory, so any class that requires her to follow a sequence of meticulous steps is going to be one she struggles with. She also has difficulty in History of Magic for a similar reason—all of those dates and names just go in one ear and out the other.

BEST FRIEND(s): Rowan. Nellie loves every member of her eclectic group of friends dearly, but Rowan was her first friend, and will always, always be her dearest. For whatever reason, they just clicked perfectly, and completely got each other. Her death changed Nellie irreversibly. For at least a year after Rowan’s death, Nellie wore the spare pair of glasses she’d kept for her everywhere. Even once she stopped, they were almost always in her bag. Nellie was eventually able to manage again, but she never really moved on.

The runner up was undoubtedly Bill. He completely adopted her as (yet another) younger sibling, and they never quite lose that closeness, even when Jacob comes back into the picture. After all, Jacob can’t replicate the experiences Nellie had with Bill. While he was doing his part to protect Nellie as best he could, and that’s admirable, it wasn’t him that was by Nellie’s side throughout every trial she faced at Hogwarts. It was Bill, and Jacob would never be able to imitate the connection that gave Bill and Nellie.

In the wake of Rowan’s death, Nellie also develops a surprisingly close friendship with Erika Rath. They’d already been developing a friendship, but Rowan’s passing was the catalyst for them growing closer. During one of her training sessions with Erika (which Erika had told her she could sit out of, given the circumstances, but Nellie insisted), Rowan’s glasses fell off, and cracked. The damage was minor and entirely fixable, but Nellie had a complete breakdown, allowing herself to cry for the first time since Rowan had died. And Erika sat there with her, holding her tight, the entire time. While the rest of her friends were tiptoeing around her, not sure what she needed and scared of saying the wrong thing, uncomfortable in the face of such overwhelming grief, Erika took everything Nellie threw at her in stride. The fits where all Nellie could do was scream and cry, the anger that had her beating her fists against the ground and snarling threats brutal enough to make her sick, the guilt that left a hollow pit in her stomach and made her wish it had been her instead. Every ugly thought, every wave of emotion, Erika stuck with Nellie through them all, keeping her grounded her during a time where she felt she could completely drift away. It’s impossible to describe the sort of bond that gives people.

WORST ENEMY: For a while, it was Emily Tyler. With Merula, at least she has qualities that Nellie can respect—her ambition, her bravery, her fierce determination—and they’ve had a few moments where it feels like some genuine bonding has occurred. She may not approve of a lot of Merula’s behavior, but at least she can sort of understand her. But Emily Tyler is just so superficial and mean spirited, and Nellie simply can’t stand her. Now, though, it’s easily Patricia Rakepick.

LOVE INTEREST: Barnaby Lee, though not at first. Nellie housed an absolutely fierce crush on Skye Parkin for a while, but it quickly became apparent that Skye didn’t return her feelings. To Skye, Nellie was like the sister she never had, and Nellie didn’t want to jeopardize that. There was also some sort of tension going on between her and Merula in their fifth year, but nothing ever came of it. After the events that transpired in the Vault, Merula decided Nellie wasn’t worth the trouble. It’s one of her biggest regrets.

Barnaby was actually crushing on Nellie long before she had any romantic feelings for him—ever since that first duel, actually, when she completely whooped his ass while apologizing after every blow. (A scene I actually explored here.) It took a little while, but Nellie eventually fell for Barnaby’s good heart and noble nature. He may not be the brightest bulb in the box, but he never fails to make her feel cared for. He can make her laugh when nobody else can, and although she’d loathe herself if he got hurt for her sake, it honestly feels a little nice to have someone trying to protect and take care of her for once, instead of the other way around. They also both love magical creatures, so a lot of their “dates” just consist of them hanging around the Care for Magical Creatures paddock and feeding whatever they find. Random little fun fact, Nellie’s pet name for Barnaby is just to say “Barnaby dear” as though it’s one word, and it never fails to make Barnaby feel super giddy.

PETS: Whoo boy, Nellie’s pets. First and foremost, there’s Astrid, her Lesser Sooty Owl. A remarkably intelligent bird, Astrid is usually found occupying the rafters above Nellie’s head, watching over her like a worrisome mother. She usually sleeps in Nellie’s dorm, rather than the owlery, and has a habit of picking at knots in Nellie’s hair (and, surprisingly, Rowan’s as well) with her beak as though she’s trying to straighten them out.

While she adores Nellie, Astrid is notably less fond of Klepto, her mischievous Niffler. If Astrid is like Nellie’s mother, Klepto is like an obnoxious toddler, always causing trouble and fussing for her attention. He’s remarkably clingy, enough so that Nellie’s taken to hiding him in the dorm rather than keeping him in the grasslands. (She can’t help it! He throws a fit if he can’t sleep pressed against the soles of her feet!)

Then there’s Flora, a particularly slothful fairy who has taken to riding in the pockets of Nellie’s robes, content to spend the rest of her life being carried around and lavished with compliments and sweets. Her and Astrid have a sort of tenuous truce, since they both have a bit of a fierce streak when it comes to defending Nellie.

There’s also a Hippogriff and a Common Welsh Green on the grounds, both of which Nellie is determined to befriend, but that’s still a bit of a work in progress at the moment.

FUN FACTS:

• Nellie ends up going grey—or white, rather—fairly early. Her hair’s almost entirely white by the time she turns thirty. She’s insecure about it for a while, then decides to just embrace it. It looks elegant, and Merlin help the person who tries to tell her otherwise.

• Given how incredibly physically affectionate Nellie is and how much she adored Rowan, it’s no surprise that she almost always kissed Rowan on the top of the head when saying goodbye. Just like she did in the forest grove, chest tight with anguish but eyes painfully dry.

• Barnaby and Nellie are married by the time they’re twenty. Maybe it’s a result of almost dying young on multiple occasions, but Nellie wasn’t keen on waiting. She didn’t want to take the risk of never getting the opportunity.

• Nellie has always wanted a big family. After how fractured hers became when Jacob disappeared, that desperate desire only increased. Fortunately, Barnaby, with his tiny, miserable family, wanted to create a large, happy one just as badly.

• On that note, they end up having five daughters: Ivy (Ravenclaw), Jade (Ravenclaw), Miri (Hufflepuff), Aurora (Slytherin), and Rowan (Hufflepuff). Many were surprised Nellie waited until her last child to name one after Rowan, but the truth was, she just wasn’t ready. She’d always known she wanted to, but it always felt too soon.

• As a frequent visitor to the Burrow, Nellie grew close with all the Weasleys. She actually babysat Ron and Ginny a far bit after she graduated Hogwarts.

• Bill and Jacob never get along. Though Bill can logically understand that Jacob was trying to protect Nellie, he can never really forgive Jacob for the distress he put Nellie through. And while Jacob understands that Nellie needed support and he wasn’t there to provide it, some part of him resents that Bill stepped into his role as Nellie’s brother.

• Although they were once close as sisters, Nellie and Skye’s friendship definitely changed for the worse in their sixth year. The drama surrounding Nellie getting trained and befriended by Erika all occurred in the month leading up to Rowan’s demise. Having Skye—someone Nellie considered a close friend—be so caught up in her own grudges and jealousy that she called off their friendship in a fit of anger not even a week after Rowan had died, while Erika—a friend she had only just started to make—acted as her rock throughout the whole grieving process, really changed Nellie’s perspective on Skye. To be fair, Skye did eventually apologize, and they picked up the pieces as best they could, but things were never the same.

• While Nellie focused more on the changes her friends went through after the events in the Buried Vault, there’s no denying that she changed as well. She hardly slept her entire sixth year. She cut off all her hair, and she jumped with every loud noise. Her naivety, one of her defining traits, withered, and left only wariness behind. She went from trusting everyone, to trusting no one. Then Rowan’s death came, and she crumbled completely. For a long time after it, she couldn’t function at all.

Thank you to @treebels, for the lovely artwork.

#i know she's a little lame but i really love her okay #she's like my baby #my meticulously constructed baby #hogwarts mystery #harry potter #hogwarts #hphm #hphm oc #jacob's sibling #helena bancroft #nellie bancroft #hogwarts mobile game #spoilers #hphm spoilers #hogwarts mystery spoilers

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go-events · 5 years ago

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GO Rom Com Spotlight: @areyougonnabe

The fabulous @areyougonnabe has claimed Music & Lyrics to adapt for Good Omens in the Good Omens Rom Com Event.

For reference, here’s some information about the source material!

Synopsis of Music and Lyrics: Former music superstar Alex Fletcher (Hugh Grant) used to pack them in back in the 1980s, but now he is reduced to playing nostalgia tours and county fairs. He scores a chance at a major comeback when reigning pop diva Cora Corman (Haley Bennett) asks him to write a song for her, but he hasn't written anything in years and cannot compose lyrics anyway. Noticing that Sophie (Drew Barrymore), the plant lady, has a way with words, Alex proposes that he and Sophie make beautiful music together.

We spent some time chatting about how the adaptation is coming so far, as well as future plans for it! Now, get to know @areyougonnabe (also attheborder on Ao3 and llegrarosenberg on Twitter) a little better!

* * *

goromcom: You chose to adapt Music & Lyrics as your rom com. Has this movie been a favorite of yours, or is there some other reason you chose it?

areyougonnabe: Music and Lyrics is one of my favorite movies ever. It's a comfort movie I can watch over and over and never get bored of; I know it pretty much by heart and was thinking about a Good Omens AU as far back as September! I wrote a post-canon non-AU fic where Crowley had a musical past over the summer, and have always wanted to go back to that framing. In the words of Alex Fletcher as played by Hugh Grant, Crowley certainly exudes a certain "happy has-been" energy, and the arc of the movie is the perfect feel-good plot for a human AU with lots of room for our favorite side characters.

(Also, I work in the music industry, so this is my chance to NERD OUT and make it even more accurate to real life than the movie! 🤗)

goromcom: What's your favorite moment of your chosen rom com, and are you looking forward to presenting it in your adaptation? Any loose plans for that scene that you can share?

areyougonnabe: Oh gosh, so many! But, let's see... one of my favorite moments early on is the sequence of Alex convincing Sophie that they have to work together, when he takes her to the piano store and plays her the melody he's set her lyrics to. It's so Crowley-esque, that kind of cajoling and coaxing the love interest out of their shell, in order to join him in a fruitful collaboration. I'm very excited to write Crowley whipping out his guitar in the middle of Madame Tracy's crystal shop in order to serenade Aziraphale with his own poetry...

goromcom: Do you plan to stick very closely to the story beats of the original movie, or make bigger changes?

areyougonnabe: I'm sticking very close to the beats of the original, in terms of how the story's paced and the general plot/order of scenes. I'm changing some of the character-dependent stuff with regards to how the relationship evolves, as well as adding in a fair bit of original material/side plot stuff, but for the most part as I write I'm continually delighted with how well the bones of the original work as-is.

goromcom: What's an interesting decision you've made in your planning so far--a notable casting decision, a changing of venue, or some other plan you have to paint Good Omens all over your rom com?

areyougonnabe: Well, first of all I should probably talk about how I'm planning on writing original songs for this project! So if you've seen the original movie, you know you'll be getting at the very least: one of Crowley's old band's tunes, one of Anathema's big hits, and of course the big song that Crowley and Aziraphale write together.

In terms of the actual story, I'm very excited about the expanded role I've given Anathema, as the pop star character (Cora Corman in the original movie). She's the scion of a musical dynasty started by her grandmother Agnes in the 60s, aka Britain's answer to Joni Mitchell. As the story opens, she's struggling against the artistic constraints placed on her by her Hellish major label deal; but with the help of Crowley, Aziraphale, and Newt, she might just be able to break free...

goromcom: I am blatantly stealing this last question from The Good Place: The Podcast, but here goes: Tell me something "good". It can be something big or small. It can be a charity you think is doing good work, or you can talk about how great your pet is.

areyougonnabe: The first thing that comes to mind is an amazing album I found when digging around for this fic's Britpop-heavy writing playlist:

On by Echobelly

Really incredible UK indie rock from '95, female-led and catchy as hell!

goromcom: Wow, a whole GO AU plus a bunch of songs, and Anathema as a pop star! Sounds like a lot of fun! Coming soon, keep an eye out for it!

#goromcom #good omens #goromcom spotlight #areyougonnabe #music and lyrics

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aha-my-villainous-thoughts · 5 years ago

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Household (Good Omens)

Had a bad couple of days, needed some comfort. Wrote this, made me feel better. I hope someone else enjoys it.

----

The galleries were exactly how he remembered them, which made perfect sense. In reality only six months had passed since the museums had shut and then reopened to a limited number of visitors at any one time, but it felt like a much more significant period of time than he had been expecting.

Less so because of the exact number of months, and more due to the condition of how the time had passed.

Alone.

He moved through the brightly lit gallery of statues, his hands clasped behind him holding the unnecessary guide and his footsteps almost completely silent as he strode. He looked at the beautifully carved statues, but he wasn’t really seeing them. They were as familiar to him as they had been when they were first carved, and in some cases, garishly painted.

Aziraphale had always been alone, even when he was back in Heaven. He wasn’t an angel to seek out much company, he had always found endless ways to fill his time and was very content to be left to his own devices, but that had been before.

Before the apple, before the last 6000 years of history, and before the end of the world which, as it turned out, wasn’t the end of the world.

Before Crowley.

He turned away from the brilliant white of the sculpture gallery and made his way towards one of the wide, highly polished staircases that led to further exhibitions. He moved steadily, choosing to neither rush nor dawdle.

Time seems to behave very strangely when unobserved. When he thought back to the times Crowley and he would spend in his other’s company, it always seemed to simultaneously last forever and be over too soon. It was just like that in the demon’s company. One could have notched it up to the ever present vigilance of being with one’s hereditary enemy, but that excuse was already getting old and tired even before they agreed on Their Side.

Aziraphale glided his way through the Medieval and Renaissance art, just to soak in the colours, before backtracking and making his way onwards up to the 2nd floor. He didn’t check his watch, but his steps did quicken a little as he made his way towards gallery no.83 & 84. He rounded the corner and stopped for a moment, his eyes slipping past the glorious stained glass and looking at the seating in the centre of the gallery.

He was late. Or, perhaps, Crowley was early.

Aziraphale stepped forward and the demon’s head turned towards him instantly, the light from the enormous courtyard windows flashing across his sunglasses. Aziraphale could feel his gaze focus on him, and Aziraphale couldn’t help himself as he smiled back.

“Hello dear,” he said quietly as he came closer. Crowley was sitting on one of the handful of benches still left within the museum, one which Aziraphale questioned if he had summoned just for them as he sank down on the plush velvet upholstery. It was a unique piece, even by the Victoria & Albert’s standards. A Victoria style S-shaped love seat, with glorious midnight blue velvet and fluted golden studs. As Aziraphale leaned back into it, he found himself almost unable to look anywhere but at the demon who had not stopped gazing at his face.

“Angel,” Crowley sighed, and indeed it was a sigh - as if the demon could now finally rest having just seen Aziraphale’s face. Crowley leaned back in his own seat and cast his arms wide across the back of the love seat, a thread of tension released from his limbs. “It’s good to see you,”

Aziraphale’s eyes flickered to Crowley’s eyes behind his glasses, then to his arm resting too close to him, and then back to his face. He noted the demon’s messy hair, the slight rumpling of his jacket.

“Likewise, my dear, it feels like a long time-”

“Too long,”

Aziraphale smiled again, and couldn’t stop himself as his eyelashes fluttered just a touch. He realised, with some horror at his own nature, that a small level of blush was rising across his neck. He knew Crowley would not fail to notice.

“How did your nap go? You said you set the alarm for July, I thought?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” dismissed Crowley, the hand closest to Aziraphale on the curved rim of the love seat tracing at the spiral carving in the wood. “Well, I mean, I could, I did a bit, but it didn’t really work for me,”

The demon was talking quietly, but there was a small huskiness to his voice that suggested he had not had much reason to use it in the past few months.

“You didn’t call me, I thought you were sleeping, otherwise-”

“I know, I wanted to. Believe me, I thought about it a lot, but I didn’t want to interrupt your baking and I… I -” he stumbled over the words, searching for casual but settling on ruffled. “I missed your company,” he said finally, his gaze dropping from Aziraphale’s face to the angel’s coat sleeve, and his fingers cast out from the seat between them as if to reach out and prove Aziraphale was there in corporeal form.

“Oh!” started Aziraphale, pulling away just a fraction before looking around them quickly, “My dear, the rules-”

“Did you miss me? Please tell me,” interrupted Crowley, pulling his hand back but the tension was back in his body, no matter how fluid he attempted to appear within the chair. Aziraphale could feel the demon’s eyes on him through those dark lens.

“Of course I did, my dear, it’s just we have to-”

“No, don’t say that, just because you think you should - please tell me, please,”

Aziraphale stopped and twisted to really look at his friend. Crowley’s body was slumped back into the love seat with his legs wide. He was trying to do everything he knew how to portray an air of unaffected confidence, but his other hand fidgeted against the studs of the love seat, two fingers unable to cease moving in an anxious motion. Aziraphale looked again at the demon’s face, past the glasses.

“Crowley, when you called to meet, I was so happy to hear from you. I missed you so terribly,”

It was the truth, of course. Aziraphale wouldn’t lie to his friend, not now. Crowley nodded slowly, and released a long breath he never needed to hold.

“And when you suggested we meet here, I was surprised, but so happy again. Seeing you, it’s-”

“What, angel? Please tell me,” From under his sunglasses, Aziraphale could see the demon’s eyebrows tilt a little, pleading with him. Aziraphale frowned a bit, focusing in again on his friend and the signs of disquiet.

“Crowley, what is it? What’s happened?” he leaned forward a little, his hand lifting to press Crowley’s arm but pulling back as he remembered. Crowley moved so swiftly, his hand reaching out and grasping Aziraphales’ own.

“Angel, please,”

Crowley’s was always cool to the touch, and so smooth. Aziraphale’s breath drew in with a short gasp as Crowley’s long fingers gripped around the base of his wrist, his thumb slipping into the solid warmth of his palm to trace there.

“Crowley, we shouldn’t-”

But the demon wasn’t listening, as he tipped his body closer to Aziraphale and brought the angel’s hand close to his face. Aziraphale watched without resistance as Crowley squeezed his hand and pressed it to his cheek. The demon’s eyes were closed now and his eyebrows betrayed him as he pressed himself into Aziraphale’s touch, desperate to seek out that shred of contact.

“Don’t speak to me about what we shouldn’t do anymore,” he whispered hoarsely, his fingers slipping from around Aziraphales’ as he pressed the angel’s palm to cup the side of his face. Aziraphale’s fingertips brushed against the demon’s hair, the line of his glasses pressing a hard line back into him. For a moment Aziraphale centred on that cold line of steel and thought about removing his hand, but then Crowley said it again: “Please, angel,”

He did move his hand then, and Crowley gave no resistance as the angel slipped his hand free. There was a brief moment when Aziraphale could feel something inside his friend threaten to crumble, but it froze in place as he felt Aziraphale slid his glasses free. The angel folded them and took them with his other hand before returning his touch to the demon’s face. Crowley’s eyes were shut, twisted just a little in whatever emotion he was feeling, and as Aziraphale’s fingers traced back against his cheekbone, and into his hair, he pressed into him like the contact was an anchor. Crowley’s own hand came to rest along Aziraphale’s and he sighed so heavily, so deeply.

They stayed like that for a moment. Aziraphale turned towards his companion, and Crowley twisted into Aziraphale’s touch like they were another statue of a tragic love story for the sculpture hall. Under his fingertips, Aziraphale could feel Crowley’s heartbeat begin to slow, and watched as the demon’s chest rose and fell steadily. He stroked softly into the demon’s hair, and placing the sunglasses on his knee, brought his other hand to rest on Crowley’s jaw, cupping the demon’s face softly.

“You asked if I missed you,” he said softly. “Of course I do. Every moment. I promise you, every moment,”

Crowley’s eyes flickered open and he focussed on Aziraphale, the slits of his pupils wide and a little unfocused. All of the demon’s senses were centred on the overwhelming warmth of Aziraphale’s touch.

“Can we go home?” he said softly, so softly. Aziraphale smiled, and felt his eyes crinkle with the love of it.

“Of course we can. Let me take you home, let me look after you now,”

Crowley nodded mutely, and sighed again, twisting his face a little further into Aziraphale’s palm and kissing the skin he found there.

“Thank you,”

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kuriboo · 4 years ago

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Crooked Destiny

Omen of the Stars Book 6: The Last Hope

Do you promise to be loyal to your Clan above all other things?

Elders always spoke of the good Crookedstar did for RiverClan, but it was hard to reconcile that image now with Crookedstar himself telling her about a mistake he made. "Is that happening to cats around the lake now?" Willowshine asked.

Crookedstar closed his eyes with a sigh. "Just do not judge them too harshly, if they are. Surely, I've proven that any cat can make a mistake."

Do not become so blinded by the stars that you cannot see the truth.

author’s notes at the end, link to ao3 in the notes

⁂

Wilowshine's tail swished as she looked up at the barn.

At least, she thought it was a barn. She'd never seen one herself before, she had only heard tales involving them from elders passing down stories of past elders who had lived in the old Clan territories before the Great Journey. There was no barn on RiverClan territory now. She must be dreaming.

But why would she be dreaming of someplace she had never been before? Not all her dreams came from StarClan, of course. Some dreams really were just dreams. Yet she couldn't think of another reason why she would be here. Why would StarClan bring her to a barn? Why would a Clan cat be at a barn?

She realized there was a cat sitting nearby, facing away from her and towards the barn. We're they a StarClan warrior? Did StarClan wish to speak to her? Slowly, she walked towards them.

"Do you promise to be loyal to your Clan above all other things?" they asked.

Irritation trickled through Willowshine's fur. "I've already said I would stay away from the other Clans," she muttered. Did StarClan just want to remind her of their warning for the Clans to stand alone? She hadn't forgotten.

If the other cat heard her, she was ignored. "You and your desires are nothing compared to the needs of RiverClan."

As Willowshine drew near, she angled her path so she could sit next to them and see their face. Once she did,she was surprised to see their crooked jaw, a sign it has been broken. She had heard of a RiverClan cat with a face like this before, though... "Are you Crookedstar?"

Crookedstar almost jumped before turning his head to look at her. "I'm sorry, I didn't see you there." He studied her for a moment. "You're our current medicine cat. Wilowshine. You've heard of me before, I see."

"Of course I have! They say you're one of the greatest leaders the Clans have ever seen. " She dipped her head. "It is an honor."

Crookedstar stretched his neck to bathe the fur on his shoulder, clearly uncomfortable, so Willowshine rose her head and quickly changed the subject. "I didn't know there was a barn on StarClan's hunting grounds. I've never seen it before."

"It's not a popular spot. I don't come here often, either, but..." He tucked his tail around his paws. "Not every cat that goes to StarClan is a Clan cat."

"And not every Clan cat believes in StarClan," Willowshine added, thinking of her mentor.

"That's not a bad thing." She blinked surprise at those words, and he went on. "Some cats are too blinded by the stars to see the truth."

A StarClan cat that was fine with cats not believing in StarClan? Willowshine thought again of her mentor; Mothwing had been starting to question Willowshine's insistence of following StarClan's message to all the medicine cats. "Are you talking about me?"

No answer was given. Instead, he looked towards the barn. "You heard what I said before we started talking. I didn't mean to think out loud, but maybe it was for the best. Would you make that promise in exchange for your destiny, in exchange for strength?"

"As a medicine cat, I don't know if I need more strength, but that's an easy for most warriors to make. Of course I'll always be loyal to RiverClan. "

"Right. There are few Clan cats who couldn't make that promise, but I imagine most would give that answer." Crookedstar glanced back at her. "That was the wrong answer to give, but don't worry. Like I said, many cats would give that answer. In fact, while we could still see around the lake, I saw cats from all Clans who did make that promise, or at least, a similar one. I could see it because I could see the same things happening to them that happened to me."

"You weren't asking me to make that promise. You made that promise yourself."

His tail twitched. "It was soon after I broke my jaw, sneaking out of camp as a kit. No one was sure I'd be able to make it to be an apprentice. Then a cat appeared to me in my dream and offered to train me, if I made that promise. I thought she was from StarClan, since she was in my dreams, so I agreed. But I was tricked. I woke up every day with the pain and injuries I got from training in my sleep, and I slowly lost every cat that I was ever close to."

She blinked, looking up at him. Elders always spoke of the good Crookedstar did for RiverClan, but it was hard to reconcile that image now with Crookedstar himself telling her about a mistake he made. "Is that happening to cats around the lake now?"

"None of us can see the Clans now, but I saw signs it could've been happening before." He narrowed his eyes. "Just do not judge them too harshly, if they are. Surely, I've proven that any cat can make a mistake." Sighing, Crookedstar closed his eyes. "I did not come here to discuss what cats do in there dreams."

"You didn't? Then..." Willowshine looked at the barn. "Why did you come here? What did you want to talk to me about?"

Crookedstar stood up and gestured with his tail for Willowshine to follow him. Together, the two of them approached the barn. "Pretend, for a moment, I am not a StarClan cat. Think of me for a moment as just a Clanmate. Pretend StarClan cannot hear you, which should be waste right not, since we can't." He twitched an ear. " What do you think of StarClan's warning for the Clans, even the medicine cats, to stay apart and not trust each other?”

"What do I think? Well, I don't think the medicine cats have done this before. It does feel strange." They were close to the barn now. Willowshine opened her mouth; it was clear mice used to live here, but she could tell by the scent they were gone. "But, I've always trusted StarClan's wisdom before, and I've never been steered wrong. Then again, you said we can be blinded the stars so much we cannot see the truth, so I wonder..."

Crookedstar stopped just inside the barn, his tail falling closer to the ground. "I learned how to eat and hunt with my jaw like this in a barn. I wanted to visit Highstones to talk to StarClan, but I never made it there. And I did not speak with StarClan for moons afterwards. They did not guide me for much of my path before I became a leader, though I did not know that. But I found my destiny anyway, and RiverClan was fine until then." The tip of his tail twitched. "StarClan is dividing itself the same some of us have told you to. I am not saying any of us are wrong, I just want you to think for yourself whether it is a good idea. I came out here to think for myself, too. I never did enough of that for much of my life. I'm not yet sure if I agree with most of my Clanmates."

"Think for myself whether StarClan is right..." she whispered. She had never questioned StarClan before, so this was not going to be an easy task. Her dream began to fade, but Crookedstar said one more thing before she came close to waking up.

"Do not become so blinded by the stars that you cannot see the truth."

⁂

I’ve finally returned to my roots... I started writing fanfiction over a decade ago, in 2009, when I was in middle school. The very first fanfiction I started was Warriors fanfiction. It was fairly typical middle school fanfiction fare for the time I believe— obviously none of it’s on ao3, but it’s your typical lol random XD type humor, very oc-centric, not very well written at all (like, not in a self-depricating way, but in a critical way), and like a lot of it is just... Crimge is dead in 2020 but it makes me cringe, because it’s just obviously how much of a different person I am, and how much I’ve grown up and learned, because I would not write anything like most of it today. But I had this confidence in my writing back then that I wish I still had, and I wish I had even half of that energy still, and I had so much drive to develop and write about ocs that I wish I still had today, too. I only write as a hobby but Warriors was a huge part of that. I’ll always be thankful for that. In a way, by writing this I’m getting back in touch with my roots. Writing Warriors fanfic was always so much fun to me back then, I miss writing Warriors stuff.

I reread The Last Hope and Crookedstar’s Promise back to back recently. With all the cats being trained in the Dark Forest in Omen of the Stars, I was like, hey Crookedstar kind of was like the preview sneak peek of this huh! Brambleberry showed up in Omen of the Stars, and don’t get me wrong, I love Brambleberry. She is great. I am a huge fan. But I was also like hey Crookedstar probably has a really unique perspective of this whole situation that not even Brambleberry has and I kind of miss that not being here! That’s kind of sad! I wish Crookedstar was featured more here! Well good news, that’s what fanfic is for. So I wrote a little bit of Crookedstar being in Omen of the Stars during down time at work; I had him visit Willowshine during a dream, though not entirely intentionally. Willowshine and Mothwing are really cool, I love them both.

I’m very far behind on Warriors. I just recently finished reading Thunder and Shadow, to give some perspective, so please keep any spoilers away from me. (I also recently read Bramblestar’s Storm, and reading the two back to back really has given me some feelings about Rowanstar, and Onestar... I’m getting way too invested again. Maybe I need to write more). Anyway, I hope you enjoy! Thanks for stopping by!!

#warriors #warrior cats #tater writes #tater.txt

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shipaholic · 4 years ago

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Omens Universe, Chapter 3 Part 3

First Sunday update! Aiming for weekly.

Apologies to anyone who had Sir Galahad as their favourite Knight of the Round Table.

Last time: sappy. This time: unhappy.

Link to next part at the end.

(last part)

(chrono)

Chapter 3, cont.

AD 537

It couldn’t last.

Half a century later, Aziraphale stood in a damp field and stared at Crowley in mounting dismay.

“...As long as they get the paperwork, they seem happy enough,” the demon was saying. “As long as you’re being seen to be doing something every now and again.”

Crowley’s face, as far as Aziraphale could tell given that his helm covered most of it, was hopeful. Expectant, even.

The suggestion that they could bunk off work and submit... misleading reports to their managers would be bad enough on its own. Honestly, Crowley had a nerve even saying it.

But… that wasn’t all that this was, was it?

The word Aziraphale refused to think about, ever, snuck up behind him and ‘ahem’ed knowingly in his ear.

Fusion.

His hands curled into fists. [1]

Had this been Crowley’s plan from the start? Get a foot in the door with a few centuries of good behaviour, and once Aziraphale’s defences were down, slither closer and suggest they try - that again?

Aziraphale fumbled for the pouch tied into his cloak. He shook it out into his palm, and out tipped a single coin with a dull metallic plonk.

“What are you doing?” Crowley called.

Aziraphale met his eye.

“Heads.”

Crowley’s surprise was visible even through the distance and fog.

“Bit of an overreaction, wouldn’t you say? I’m sorry, I thought it’d save us both a bit of time. We’re just cancelling each other out at the moment, you know it as well as I do.”

Aziraphale held the coin with difficulty between thumb and forefinger. The centuries had dulled the copper, and a thin layer of corrosion had worked over the face.

“I know what you’re trying to do, Crawly.”

Crowley didn’t correct him, but his voice cooled. “Oh, yeah. What’s that, then?”

“Rope me into some tommyrot scheme, so I’m good and involved and can’t see which way’s up anymore.”

“How insidious of me.” Crowley’s voice was sour. “Does my evil plan have a part two?”

“Yes. When my guard is down. When we’re in an arrangement together. That’s when you’ll saunter up and try to - to -”

“...What, seduce you?”

Aziraphale almost dropped the coin. He glared at the confused sliver of face visible through Crowley’s helm and a quart of swirling fog.

“No, you idiot. I’m talking about -”

He took a deep breath. This was ridiculous. His body was a conscious manifestation of light. It did not have a nervous system. He was fine.

“You know what, it doesn’t matter.” He prepared the flip.

Crowley clunked towards him. “Hold on a minute -”

Aziraphale flicked his fingers. The coin plinked and rose upward.

The clunking sped up. “Angel, stop! You made your point, ok? You were right, back in Rome. I don’t want to leave Earth, you don’t want to leave Earth. Stop being stupid and don’t do this.” [2]

The coin completed its arc. Aziraphale snatched it out of the air and placed it flat on his vambrace. [3]

The silence stretched. Sweat prickled underneath his armour.

It was no good. He couldn’t look at it.

He held out his arm to Crowley with an imploring look.

Crowley’s helmet hid his mouth, but Aziraphale was sure he mouthed ‘oh my God’ before stumping the rest of the way over. [4]

Aziraphale removed his hand. Crowley eyeballed the coin.

The demon straightened up. “Tails.”

Aziraphale became aware that his mouth was ajar. He couldn’t summon the wherewithal to correct it.

Perhaps there was a mistake. He looked down to check the result for himself.

The coin had vanished. He looked at Crowley again. The demon was flexing his fingers.

“What…?” he said in a tiny voice.

“Tails.” Crowley’s face was impassive.

Oh.

Aziraphale’s gaze wandered around the muddy field. Some bored cows stared back at him.

That was it, then.

It hit him in one emotional knife blow. He turned away from Crowley, blinking back tears.

Crowley’s expression immediately crumbled.

“OK, no, hang on. It’s just a bloody coin, not a contract. You don’t have to leave. Just calm down and… let’s find a pub or something, you’ll feel better after a meal and a stiff drink - oh sodding Hell, what now?”

Horses’ hooves tramped through mud. Aziraphale looked around as a squadron of knights crested the hill. He fought back a groan at who was leading the charge.

“Ah! Good Aziraphale, I’ve found you at last!”

Aziraphale mustered a smile, mentally scrolling through every unangelic word he knew.

“Oh. Hello, Galahad. Wasn’t expecting you. I had this under control, as you can see.”

The men Crowley had brought to the fight, who sat down and started chatting among themselves several minutes ago while Crowley and Aziraphale worked out what was clearly, to them, a long-standing lovers’ spat, leapt to their feet and began brandishing weapons and sneering.

Galahad gazed around from atop his horse. He had a beatific expression, which Aziraphale knew he could maintain amid extraordinary amounts of violence.

“Wasn’t sure I’d see you again! Took me ages to find you!” he boomed.

“I did leave a note,” Aziraphale muttered.

“Haven’t been back yet! Just got in today. I found the Ship of Solomon, in case you were interested. Took her for a bit of a jaunt. Found some tat buried on an island. Oh, and met Percival’s sister. Quite something, eh, gentlemen?” He gave a roguish wink.

Aziraphale cringed.

“So, what’s this, hmm?” Galahad fixed Crowley with a beady stare. His mouth pursed beneath a finely groomed moustache. “I do declare this fellow to be the Black Knight, scourge of all the land, thorn in our king’s side and general blaggard.”

Crowley gave a little wave.

“I see your head remains atop your shoulders, vile one. A situation I shall remedy.”

Galahad pulled his sword from its scabbard with a flourish. Aziraphale didn’t recognise it, but it was uncharacteristically plain. Its creator had eschewed embellishment and poured everything into sheer size. The scabbard alone would give the horse envy. It was comically oversized for a man, but Galahad was doing a decent job keeping it aloft.

Crowley turned to Aziraphale. “Why are they here?”

Aziraphale coughed politely. “Yes, why are you all here?”

“Checking up on you, my good man! As leader, I consider it my sworn duty to ride to the rescue when needed. The newer members of our brotherhood can sometimes get in trouble, and then who’s going to get them out of it?”

“I’m not that new, actually,” Aziraphale muttered.

A huge grin spread across Crowley’s face. “Wait. Are you, like, the work experience boy?”

The tip of Galahad’s sword wobbled in Crowley’s direction. “Come, men! I say we dispatch these curs without breaking a sweat.”

“Mm, yeah.” Crowley eyed the perspiration sliding down Galahad’s face. “Sweat. You don’t want that. Not in that armour.” He edged over to Aziraphale. “Can I have a word?”

Aziraphale edged away. “I have nothing further to say. Er. Fiend.”

“You having a conversation with this villain, Sir Aziraphale?” Galahad boomed.

“Certainly not. I’ve never seen him before in my life,” Aziraphale said quickly.

The other knights drew their swords, despite all looking rather tired. Crowley’s eyes flicked between them.

“This is really inconvenient,” he grumbled.

Galahad dug his spurs into his horse. “Heeyah!”

The horse shuffled forward. Galahad thrust his sword into where Crowley’s head had been half a second before.

The other Round Table hangers-on charged the enemy. Galahad’s horse kept going, momentum carrying it past Crowley, who rolled his eyes and side-stepped out of the way. Aziraphale winced as the thunder of horses’ hooves surrounded him, followed by the clatter of swords.

Just like that, they were in the middle of melee combat. With a bone-deep sigh, Aziraphale and Crowley drew their swords, ambled to the edge of the scrum and began, unconvincingly, to swing at each other.

“Right, this exceedingly stupid distraction aside -” Crowley raised his sword at a leisurely pace to block Aziraphale’s gentle prod. “Are you going to come to your senses now?”

Aziraphale prodded back, a little harder. “Don’t make this difficult, Crowley. I lost. That’s the end of it.”

“Yeah, great, except that it was a stupid idea from the start and you’re being an idiot.”

“I recall it being your stupid idea from the start.”

“And you’re still being an idiot. Believe it or not, I wasn’t even thinking about fusion -”

“Keep-your-voice-down-”

Aziraphale’s next swipe came within ten whole feet of Crowley’s body. Crowley waved it away.

“He’s annoyingly good at this,” he remarked, looking past Aziraphale’s shoulder.

Aziraphale could guess. Galahad had a talent for ostentatious swordsmanship that got the job done, after the requisite fifteen minutes of showing off.

“Perhaps we should put a bit of welly into it, just in case someone looks over,” he said.

Crowley shrugged. “Sure. Clang, clang. Parry, parry, thrust.”

They wafted their swords at each other.

“I hope your chaps aren’t getting knocked around too badly.” Aziraphale had met some of them in the local villages in his civilian garb, and they weren’t a bad lot. Like a lot of humans who signed onto dodgy causes, most of them had just wanted to get out of the house.

Crowley looked briefly panicked, then guilty. “Oh yeah, forgot.” He snapped his fingers.

Aziraphale turned. One downed black figure on the ground sat up, confused to find his arm reattached. Others staggered up from pools of blood, woozily surprised to find that they were now bleeding in rather than out.

“Well, I can hardly spread foment if they all die, can I?” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale’s heart did that silly fluttery thing. “Quite,” he got out.

Team Black Knight put their restored vigour to use by running away. Arthur’s knights chased them, shoutily, down the hill. Aziraphale suspected they were in it more for the exercise than to actually kill anyone.

Galahad brought up the rear. Rather than hare after his men, he wheeled his horse around and trotted back towards Aziraphale and Crowley. He held his sword aloft, at exactly decapitation height.

Aziraphale’s heart sank. Of course.

“Your life is forfeit, vile snake!”

Aziraphale glared at Crowley. “I hope you weren’t foolish enough to shape shift in front of the humans,” he whispered.

“It’s an expression, get off my back,” Crowley hissed back.

Galahad circled them. “I can take things from here, Sir Aziraphale. The Black Knight’s reign of wickedness shall end with just three strokes of my blade.”

“Plus half an hour of monologuing,” Crowley muttered.

Galahad lunged and swung at him. Crowley staggered back and narrowly missed being cleaved in half.

“Oi, that’s not on. Can’t you call him off?”

Aziraphale coughed. “I, er, think we’ve won, wouldn’t you say, Galahad old boy?”

Bloodlust gleamed in Galahad’s eye. He stalked towards Crowley. “I say we declare victory when this serpent’s head hangs above the throne of Camelot!”

“Yikes,” Crowley said.

Another swing nearly bisected him.

Aziraphale really hoped he wouldn’t have to use a miracle against his own side. “Oh go on, let’s call it a day, there’s a good chap.”

Galahad roared. He nudged his horse forward and bore down on Crowley, sword raised for the third and final blow.

“Bugger this,” Crowley snapped, and all Hell broke loose.

To be specific:

Where Crowley’s head had sat, suddenly there was a writhing dark mass no human mind could comprehend.

Galahad squeaked, turned white, and fainted.

Before he hit the ground, Crowley shifted back, without his helmet.

The horse reared up, screaming, and kicked him square in the face.

Crowley punted through the air and landed on his back with a noise like a copper bathtub falling down the stairs.

Aziraphale closed his eyes and waited for it all to stop.

He opened them again. Two unconscious knights lay flat on the ground. A horse stamped and whinnied above them. Aziraphale thought about the two lots of health and safety reports he would have to file, and deliberated letting them get trampled.

Crowley gave a thin moan. At least one of them was alive.

Aziraphale ignored him and took the horse first. When he was close enough to lay hands on it, he placed his palm flat on its flank and reached for the light inside himself. The horse went from tossing its head and shrieking to silent and calm.

When he was satisfied, Aziraphale stepped back and headed for Crowley.

He crouched beside the groaning demon. The snappish remark he’d prepared withered on his tongue.

The snaking sigil on Crowley’s face, winding down from his ear in its intricate overlapping pattern, was on the side of his face that the horse had kicked.

His gem was smashed into a hundred tiny shards.

---

[1] With difficulty, inside the gauntlets.

[2] This was a long speech to deliver in a single coin flip. Luckily, this coin’s proximity to years of angelic reality-warping had gifted it the ability to stay in the air for as long as was dramatically necessary.

[3] He put it down with the care of an elderly woman placing her last penny on an empty collection plate. Even with everything else going on, Crowley spared a moment to cringe.

[4] He did. A revolting taste filled his mouth, but he was too drained to register it.

(next part)

#omens universe fic #omens universe #good omens fic #good omens #steven universe #aziraphale #crowley #thus concludes the coin arc #I love this period of the show #it's already ahistorical because Arthurian legends are a mess so I don't need to worry about plausibility #I had a lot of fun with Galahad #my process for choosing which knight to portray as a total knob #was to read their descriptions and figure out who's the biggest Mary Sue #and then write him as much like Sir Bertrand MacGuffingham as possible #I know nothing about the knights of the round table but there's some details from wikipedia in here that sounded fun

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itsclydebitches · 6 years ago

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Car - Even after 6,000 years they still need a bit of a nudge. Maybe the Bentley can help with that.

***

Everything went to shit the morning Crowley parked the Bentley across from the shop, music blaring so loud that it shook the panes of every window a block down and drew him a record number of dirty looks. Crowley grinned at all the little humans, enjoying the feeling of hot metal against his arm and the vibrating base. When Aziraphale stuck his head out the door with a comically offended expression, well. Crowley most certainly enjoyed that too.

“Hello, Aziraphale!” he called. His voice had to rise past the capabilities of normal vocal cords to be heard.

“Turn that down!”

“Sorry?”

“Turn it down, Crowley!” Azirphale’s arms did a funny kind of pressing motion.

“Yeah, no, really didn’t catch that. You’ll have to speak a bit louder!”

Which resulted in Aziraphale puttering across the street to join him because the day his angel raised his voice above a gentlemanly reprimand was the day the world ended.

And as they now both knew, that was permanently on hold.

“Enough,” he growled, reaching across the steering wheel to press uselessly at all the knobs. Crowley shut the music off himself with a secretive snap. “Are you trying to deafen every one of my neighbors? Or summon the cops? Really, Crowley, the last thing we need is them poking about when I still have texts whose placement here I can’t exactly explain in writing. Do you want to tell them why there is a Georgian Bible without a paper trail?”

Crowley just grinned and set himself to the task of enjoying this interaction. It was all a little goldmine: Aziraphale’s arm pressed against his chest in an effort to reach the controls. How his hair lifted slightly at the tips because he tended to unfurl his wings when annoyed and even across dimensions those could produce a breeze. The way he still, after centuries, had no real idea how the police force worked. Yes, Zira. They’re going to respond to a noise complaint and then segue into breaking down your door, terrorizing a pouty bookshop owner purely for the fun of it.

...actually, that sounded like a lot of coppers Crowley knew. Maybe Aziraphale understood more than he gave him credit for.

“Sorry, angel. Just got real into that song.” Crowley wouldn’t have been able to name the song if his immortal life depended on it. He’d just let the Bentley pick whatever on the way here. “Up for a spot of lunch?”

It was their routine. A planned interaction that Crowley knew by heart and was thus safe to indulge in. He’d show up ‘unexpectedly’ outside the shop. Do something to invoke Aziraphale’s ire. He’d then spend a few moments memorizing his reactions like after 6,000 years there was anything left to learn (there was). Then Aziraphale would make his token protests, cave, and off they’d go. In the face of change—of the biblical sort. Of the “We’re on our own side now” sort—Crowley sometimes felt like routine was the only thing holding him together.

So something cracked when Aziraphale ignored his question entirely.

“Zira?” Crowley leaned out the window to get a better look. Aziraphale was now circling the car with a staggeringly guilty expression, hands twisting at the lowest button of his vest. Crowley was a second away from tumbling out and finding whatever had put that look on his angel’s face when he began to speak.

Not to Crowley though.

“I am so very sorry, my dear,” he said, seeming to address the Bentley’s hood. “I was quite cruel to you the other day, wasn’t I? Hardly sparing you a glance when you went up in flames like that. Yelling at Crowley to hurry things along. Oh... it must have hurt. Did it hurt? I’d imagine so. But please know that wasn’t at all an accurate representation of my feelings for you. Those were some rather extreme circumstances and I fear I was a bit out of my depth at the time. You see, I was forced to possess a woman by the name of Madam Tracy—a rather harrowing experience, all things considered—and there was an angry man pointing a gun at us, and the world was just about to end, you see, though I suppose you probably already knew that part—”

Crowley stared. Aziraphale was apologizing to his car.

Aziraphale. Was apologizing. To his car.

By the time he was done (finishing with a kiss to the front left light) Crowley had slithered down into his seat and was desperately trying to remember how to function.

“Crowley?”

“Hngg.”

“Whatever are you doing?”

“Suffering.”

“Suf—? Really. You show up here doing damage to all our eardrums and have the nerve to talk about suffering? Are you taking me to lunch or not?”

He’s perfect, Crowley thought, fumbling with his keys. He’s perfect and he just gave my car a more passionate love confession than I could ever hope to get.

If the Bentley seemed to have more of a purr to its engine that day Crowley chalked it up to his damaged hearing.

***

Scratch that, everything went to shit the day his Bentley realized they’d escaped the end of the world.

“It’s not alive,” a child had once told him, staring as Crowley yelled at the car for daring to stall on him. That was in the early days of their relationship. Winter of 1926, before they’d crossed many thousands of miles together, outrun other demons, discovered a shared love of music, had that wonderful romp across the Thames. Walking on water? Please. Try driving on it. Watch and weep, Jesus Christ.

That was far in the future though. Crowley had grown soft in his old age—really—and 1920s him wasn’t quite as forgiving. He’d figured a good reprimand was better than just magic-ing the problem away. This new Bentley needed to learn who was boss.

And here was this kid saying the stupidest things.

Crowley had looked her over. Wealthy little thing if that coat and frock was any indication. She’d been sucking a lolly and watching him like she’d ditched her shopping-obsessed mother and now had nothing better to do. Which was probably exactly what had occurred.

“How old are you?” he’d asked.

“Twelve.”

“Twelve years old and you’re saying nonsense like that?”

She’d gone so far as to stamp her foot, cheeks bulging from candy and indignation. “It’s not nonsense!”

So Crowley made a faulty approach—damn ice patches—and knelt down in front of her. He pointed upwards at a chaffinch. “That bird alive?”

“Well of course,” she’d said.

“Don’t ‘of course’ me, I’m about to blow your mind. Is the tree it’s in alive?”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah, right, both agreeing on that. Okay, how ‘bout the sun shining through its branches?”

For the first time the girl had hesitated. Crowley jumped on it.

“Ah ha!” he crowed. “Bit tricker, eh? Lots of science folks out there who might try to make that case. Is a river alive? Maybe not, but if it is does that make the rain alive too? All the pretty things it freezes into?” Crowley scooped up a handful of snow, dumping it over the girl’s head. She had jumped and squeaked but didn’t run. “Life’s a messy thing, kid. All those blurry lines for metal and heat and water and light. So if I take those blurry things and change them up until they’re a car—” he waved both arms at the Bentley. “Don’t you think the car’s a bit of a blurry thing too?”

The girl had bit into her lip. It was red with cold and nibbled raw. “...Maybe.”

Crowley nodded. “Last question: am I a man or a snake?”

“A man!”

“And that’s why you don’t go telling strangers their cars aren’t alive.” Crowley stood. He made a sound like a buzzer in the back of his throat. “Wrong answer, kid. But you’re asking questions so I guess you’re not all bad.” He’d miracled up another lolly and shooed her off. “Go find your mum.”

Crowley never had the slightest doubt that his Bentley was alive. Maybe it appreciated that certainty because their relationship got a whole lot better after that. Ninety-three years and no more stalling.

Today, in 2019, Crowley wished dearly that the Bentley was just a hunk of metal.

“Surely this is bebop,” Aziraphale said. Crowley resisted the urge to lay his head on the steering wheel and just give up completely.

Actually, who was he to deny himself anything?

“Please watch the road!”

“You watch the road,” Crowley mocked, swatting Aziraphale’s hand away as he attempted to gain control. During it all Diana Ross crooned from the speakers.

Two hearts, Two hearts that beat as one Our lives have just begun...

He didn’t own any Diana Ross. He hadn’t turned on the radio. The song was just there as soon as they’d started off and Crowley was this close to selling the Bentley for scrap metal.

Because it had been doing this for days now. Anything Crowley wanted to listen to while out and about on his own? Sure. That was just fine. When Aziraphale decided to join them?

Cheesy love songs galore. Crowley’s hands tightened until his knuckles went white. He hoped the Bentley could feel it.

“Angel, do you have any concept of what bebop actually is?”

“Well...” Aziraphale faltered. “I know all the young kids are into it and this woman’s voice is quite risqué.”

“Literally none of that is right. Not a lick of sense. It’s 2019 how do you even function?”

The music increased in volume.

'Cause no one can deny This love I have inside And I'll give it all to you My love, my love, my love My endless love

“I’m setting you on fire again,” Crowley growled and pretended like he couldn’t hear Aziraphale humming along as the song repeated.

***

The next day Crowley opened the Bentley to find a bedazzled BEBOP charm hanging from his rearview mirror. The tacky monstrosity caught all the light as it slowly, spitefully rotated.

With a yell he chucked it into oncoming traffic. It was back again by lunch.

Aziraphale loved it.

(So fine, yeah, he guessed it could stay.)

***

After that more changes started to appear. Things that Crowley had never even thought about, let alone purposefully brought into existence. His Bentley suddenly had a cupholder for Aziraphale’s mugs of tea. There was extra space in the back for transporting books. One minor, throwaway comment about the sun being too bright and suddenly there were tinted windows, for heaven’s sake.

Crowley understood that his Bentley was alive, but it wasn’t supposed to have agency. Theoretically none of this stuff was bad, but who the fuck did the Bentley think it was, coming up with it all first?

By the time Aziraphale was commenting on how soft the seats were Crowley had had enough. He drove the blessed machine out to Tadfield with the express purpose of accosting an eleven-year-old.

“Did you give my car free will?!”

Adam was, objectively, the child most used to dealing with weird shit in his life. (Outmatched only (perhaps) by a young man named Warlock who’d had the dubious honor of growing up with a literal angel and demon over his shoulder. Both of whom were fools.) After coming into unfathomable power, nearly bringing about the end of the world, watching your not-Dad rise from the Earth in a fiery display, and then re-writing said world back to its basics, having a scrawny man yelling about free will while you were trying to eat ice cream didn’t even make the list of Top Ten Things I’m Dealing With Right Now.

So Adam dug more forcefully into his soft-serve. “Hey, Crowley.”

“Yeah. Hey. Nice day I guess.” It had occurred to Crowley right after he’d nearly hit the low wall of the Madisons’ garden and started shrieking at a group of children that this display would, perhaps, not be well received by the locals. And who wanted to deal with locals? So he reigned it in a bit and tried for a cheery wave at Mrs. Madison.

She scowled like a pissed-off peacock.

“Aren’t you going to say hello to us too?” Pepper demanded. She sat on the grass between Adam and Brian, the three of them trading ice creams every few moments. Adam now had the popsicle while Pepper had the soft serve and Crowley was decidedly not imagining him and a certain angel doing the same.

Wensleydale was off collecting ants to do Things with later.

Crowley sighed. “Hey, Piper.”

“Pepper.”

“What was your name again? No wait, never-mind, really don’t care. You. Antichrist—”

“Adam.”

“Adam. Did you mess with my car or not?”

Adam took the cup of cookie dough from Brain and exchanged a Look. The sort of Look that only children could pull off after numerous adventures together, filled with an hour’s worth of conversation boiled down to just a few ticks and movements of the mouth. He then exchanged the same with Pepper. Wensleydale was still too far off to hear the conversation, but he looked back as if hearing an unvoiced call, giving Adam a thumbs up. Throughout it all Crowley stood with hands halfway mashed into his pockets, shifting weight from foot to foot. He could feel Mrs. Madison boring into his back.

The moment was a short one, but what passed within it was given a great deal of consideration and weight. See, the Them hadn’t the slightest clue what Crowley was on about and Crowley, it seemed, was working under a number of assumptions that led to him not explaining himself one bit. Cars? Free will? Adam’s eyes strayed to the Bentley and while he could admit that it was a very nice looking car—if old—that was really all he had to say about the thing. He hadn’t exactly composed an itemized list of everything he’d wanted during the confrontation at the airbase. The only thing he’d been able to articulate within his mind was a Dad, Daddy, my Daddy in a voice that had sounded far younger than he actually was. Everything else had just been a ripple coming off of that. Now Adam experienced the same feeling as when Mr. Fell had called him up to thank him for the new books and Adam had responded with a “Wut?”

What the Them did know was that this was all very important to Crowley. Adam’s potential involvement got him riled.

So Adam gave the only logical answer he could in that moment.

“Yes,” he said.

The result was, to use a phrase, bloody spectacular.

Adam got back his original soft-serve. Pepper had the cookie dough. Brian the strawberry pop. They ate contentedly as Crowley went on a surprisingly creative rant about how kids could not and should not and in the future would not be messing with his car. Off to the side Wensleydale pulled out his phone to record the display, taking time to zoom in on Mrs. Madison’s expression.

Adam was still pretty out of his depth, but after a detailed account of all the Bentley’s new behaviors he felt a niggling suspicion and was compelled to say, “Kinda sounds like it’s trying to tell you something. Maybe you should listen?”

Crowley turned the same shade as his hair and Wensleydale, cackling, started uploading to Youtube.

***

“Dear, Adam tells me there’s a record of you on one of these social media sites. Would you perhaps show me how to—”

“Don’t click that!”

***

One week later the Bentley stalled.

Crowley stared in shock as it inched a couple feet, a couple more, and then stopped completely, out in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Well, not really. After hearing a highly edited version of Crowley’s visit to Adam, Aziraphale had insisted on a proper get-together the weekend following. Now here they were, partway between rural visit and urban home. There’d been food and drinks and piling far too many people into Anathema’s little cottage, all the things that might have interested a demon if Crowely had been able to focus on anything other than the smell of Aziraphale’s skin.

Another new cologne.

“Ah, Crowley...?” He spoke now, light and hesitant. “Did you mean to stop here?”

‘Here’ was a deserted stretch at 9:13pm, the stars their only light for miles.

“No.”

“Can you—?”

“No.”

Crowley knew it with a certainty that set his teeth on edge. He couldn’t just miracle them going again. The Bentley wouldn’t allow it. Maybe it really was the influence of a kid capable of warping reality in ways no angel or demon ever could. Maybe it was just the result of decades spent in the presence of occult and celestial entities, soaking up a bit of power then and there until it had something worthwhile. (And if that was the case Crowley was terrified to think about what Zira’s bookshop might be turning into.) All he knew for sure was that his Bentley was different now.

Acting like a goddamn, meddlesome brat.

Aziraphale had shifted this way in his seat, that way, perhaps finally acknowledging to himself that he knew nothing about cars and therefore could do very little to help. Crowley heard a few more noises on his left and then, “The doors are locked.”

Of course they were.

“Angel—”

“Dear—”

Something about Aziraphale’s tone made Crowley pause. Swallow down the rising excuse and finally look at him.

It was quite the sight. Aziraphale’s cheeks were pink from Anathema’s wine and one of his curls was plastered to his forehead, a victim of the heat. Through the window Crowley could see the play of shadows along the fields, the stars he’d help hang, the moon nearly full. All of it paled in comparison to Aziraphale’s eyes though. Crowley figured 6,000 years, an unknowable amount of time before that... he’d still never seen anything like them. Most days he chalked it up to Aziraphale being all angel-y. On rare occasions he acknowledged that none of the other wank-wings’ eyes looked like that.

Love had a tendency to color the things it touched.

“Are you perhaps trying to tell me something?” Aziraphale whispered, a soft smile playing at his lips. It drew Crowley’s gaze.

He swallowed. “Not me.”

“No?”

“Uh-uh. It’s the Bentley’s doing...”

“Ah, I see. Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint your precious Bentley now would we?”

Aziraphale moved first. Six goddamn millennia and now he crossed the divide, pushing himself into the driver’s seat and half into Crowley’s lap. His hands made a beeline for his hair and cheek—one thumb tracing up towards the tattoo—and Aziraphale only paused for one more moment, six millennia plus one, his expression one of absolute rapture. Then he sighed and closed the gap.

Their first kiss tasted like something ineffable.

The Bentley began slowly making its way back towards London, leaving its occupants free to continue what they’d finally begun.

“I think,” Aziraphale laughed, pulling back as the scenery flashed by. “That this is the perfect speed for us.”

#good omens #ineffable husbands #air conditioning #good omens fic #figured I'd upload the whole thing here too #when I have the energy #in case people prefer reading here instead of AO3

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ren-of-the-arcana · 5 years ago

Text

The Lucio Incident

How Ren recieved his scars and ultimately made a lifelong enemy...

Warnings for blood, child abuse, another long post, and casting Lucio in a very negative light...

It had been a cool, spring evening. There wasn't much for Jazmine and I to do at the shop. Our chores had been finished early, and Ilana had all but kicked us out the door after our lessons. So, true to our nature, we went to the docks. It was a perfect night for stories.

Jazmine had a small group around her fire, dramatically walking about as she told the tale of Elaena Drake, the fierce warrior queen who became a dragon king, and the the figurehead of the Dragons of the West. It was one of her favorite stories, as well as mine. But, there were a lot of children tonight, and I couldn't bring myself to come close to listen.

I was staying back, out of the light, and away from the still bustling docks themselves. I recognized a few friendly faces, Asra's fluffy white hair just visible past the shadow that Muriel cast over them. I knew with Asra and Muriel present, the less savory kids wouldn't go anywhere near Min. I could relax if I could just shake the anxiety that was screaming at me to not let my guard down.

This evening's lessons had been over divination, specifically runes. And with my luck, I drew Thurisaz to carry me through the day. Forces of evil, a warning, threats from people of power, omens of physical harm. A thorn that could protect or cause harm. It had been in the back of my mind for hours. We were at the docks, so I shouldn't worry about anyone in power aside from the Palace guards. As for the forces of evil...They were ever present. But I wasn't worried for myself, and Min had her protection charms. My anxiety just wouldn't let it be.

I found myself at the edge of the sea, my boots discarded and up to my ankles in the cool water. The moon was starting to rise, and I could just hear the sound of Jazmine's voice over the waves. For a moment, my mind wandered. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath of the salty air, trying to find a place of calm. The day was almost over, I didn't have to worry. That rune can also mean luck. Maybe it was just meant to be a good day.

When I opened my eyes again, a figure was standing in front of me, waist deep in the swaying water. When had I walked this far out? How did they get here? The golden eyes of the wolf-headed figure glinted in the moonlight as they regarded me. Their expression gave nothing away, just cold indifference. Their deep violet tunic moved with the sea, making it appear as if they were moving closer. And maybe they were. The distance between us seemed to shorten; the figure was close enough now that I could smell the saltwater in their fur.

Their head tilted to the side, and for a moment, I thought they were going to speak. Instead, they let forth an echoing howl, which melded into Jazmine's scream. I whipped around, my feet already carrying me up the beach, dispelling the Moon's illusion.

In the firelight, I could see Jazmine suspended in the air by her shirt collar. Asra was on the ground, disoriented. Muriel attempted to rush at the man holding Jazmine, who I now recognized as Vesuvia's new count. The Count knocked Muriel to the ground, kicking up sand beside Asra. The other children scattered down the alleys of the docks.

Jazmine was squirming and trying to kick at the Count, but the grip of his alchemical arm was too strong for her to break.

"Who told you those stories? Tell me!"

I jumped over the fire, running at the man. "Leave her alone!"

"Ren!"

"Oh, I see how it is. You need one of your fellow street rats to stick up for you, hmm?" He threw Jazmine hard enough that I could hear her teeth rattle when she hit the ground.

I stood between the three of them and the Count. "I said leave them alone!"

"And I said I want to know who told her those stories, brat!" He tried to move me out of his way to get to Jazmine, who was being pulled away by Asra as Muriel stood guard right behind me.

I ducked under his arm and grabbed his cape, swinging around him to knock him off balance. He started to lose his footing, dragging me down with him.

"Ren, no!" Jazmine tried to come towards us, but Muriel stopped her. She had been trying to reach for my shirt sleeve, but I had already danced out of her way. If this so called Count was willing to hurt children, then he deserved to be wrapped in his bloody cloak and knocked down at the very least.

In my haste to protect Min and the others, I didn't see the clawed gauntlet until it sparked in the firelight. I crashed hard into the sand, Jazmine breaking free from Muriel and coming to my side.

"Who do you think you are? You urchin! Don't you dare touch me! Do you know who I am? I'm your Count!" The man huffed, throwing his cape back over his shoulder and attempting to smooth out his ruffled hair.

If I hadn't been in such a state of shock, I might have laughed at his resemblance to a perturbed cockatiel.

I gingerly touched the bleeding wounds on my face, pulling back to see the red on my fingers. I stared at them for a moment, before clenching them into a fist.

"Oh, no."

I barely heard Jazmine's concerned whisper as I glanced around to see looks of fear, or was it hesitation, on Asra and Muriel's faces. I rose carefully, deliberately meeting eyes with the Count. My vision was going fuzzy in my left eye, but is was nothing that Ilana couldn't fix.

"You're no Count of mine." I spat a mouthful of blood at his feet, the bright scarlet shining in the moonlight. The look of pure disgust on his face was worth it, but I wasn't done yet. "You will leave this place. Leave us, here and now, with no memory of what occurred." I could feel my magic swirling in my clenched hands. "Forget our faces and our words. Go!"

The magic I had gathered flew from my palms and into his chest, physically pushing the Count back. His eyes became glossy and confused.

Jazmine gripped my arm tight. "Run!"

She dragged me over the dunes into a side alley, while Asra and Muriel raced out of our sights. I slumped against the cold wall, suddenly exhausted.

Jazmine grabbed a rag from her pocket, handing it to me as she watched the Count flit up the street, stumbling every few steps like he was drunk. Once he was out of sight, she turned on me.

"What were you thinking?! Are you as insane as you are stupid?" Her hands were on her hips, emerald fire in her eyes. They softened somewhat when she caught me wincing as I dabbed the blood from my face.

"I didn't want you to get hurt...or them. I couldn't care less if he hurt me, but you? Asra and Muriel? I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself." I couldn't meet her eyes. I knew it was stupid. But the fear that had taken a hold of me when the Count had her in the air was not something I wanted to feel ever again.

She sighed heavily, taking the cloth from me to finish cleaning my wounds. "You know these will scar, right? Ilana won't be able to prevent that... And that curse? You know he will remember soon enough. At least your face."

"I know..." I slowly got to my feet. "But at least you guys will be safe for a while. My curses only backfire on me." The excursion was starting to get to me. I shouldn't have risked such a trick when I was already exhausted.

Jazmine slung my arm over her shoulder, supporting most of my frame.

"Come on hero, let's go home. We can come up with a story to tell Ilana on the way." She couldn't suppress a laugh. Coming up with an excuse was her favorite thing to do when we knew we were going to get in trouble.

"As tempting as that sounds, she already knows what happened." I pointed to the mouth of the alley. Fenrir's golden eye was already glaring at us dissapprovingly.

"Well, we're in for it now..."

The shaggy dog huffed, and turned to escort us back to the shop.

Though Ilana healed my wounds, scolding Jazmine and I the entire time, there wasn't much she could do about the magical side-effects. My left eye was now a sharp seafoam green. The trio of scars didn't fade as the days passed either. The vision in that eye was off, but colors seemed more brilliant, and the shadows of auras extended well past what I had once been able to see.

The final unintentional side-effect of our incident with the Count took me much longer to realize. Asra and Muriel weren't the same towards us. It had taken months for them to even begin talking to us, once Jazmine began telling my stories. Now the two stayed as far away as possible, while still in range to hear. Muriel watched me with suspicious eyes, and Asra didn't even look at me.

At first I thought I had scared them with my curse. But, after some time, I realized that wasn't the case. They didn't know who I was, and by extension, Jazmine. It was upsetting, but at the same time, a relief. When my curse finally backfired, like I knew it inevitably would, they wouldn't face the Count's wrath at my expense...

And there it is, the story of Ren's most prominent scars, and his beginnings with bad curse casting...

@asras-wife

#long post #blood #child abuse #count lucio #apprentice ren #fan apprentice

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