#cannot be a proper lion man without lion man claws

[lionfanged]

@solasters​ replied :  his claws are doing things to me hello???

we are ALL about the sharp kitty claws in this house

[ardenssolis]

@assortedsnacks​​ said (inbox):

' mountains are nothing like desert dunes. they can easily reach a hundred times higher than the greatest pile of sand, enough to uphold a vast sea of trees upon their rocky backs, and hard stone does not crumble the way grains might give way beneath your feet. but beyond the great sense of humility it can instill into anyone, a mountain's true grandeur lays within its noble quiet, its powerful echo ... ' and the king of beast's silence, testing the reverberation of the pharaoh's palace as well like it were its own sort of mount, fast results in a satisfied smile.

' my kingdom is fond of music that contains strong emotions. sorrowful longings, bitter separations, happy reunitings, and forms of love that transcend what is both mortal and human. these are powerful melodies that can carry across the land should one sing from the proper place. they are sung strongly from the chest, because it is always the cry of one soul seeking out another, to be heard. and ... because i cannot remain here forever, i still want to try to leave you with as much as i can. ' his gaze, an eager, bright ruby burn, is marked by a particular tenderness when it turns towards and catches the other's. that earnest peer does not waver.

' i ask that you entreat me, my friend. would you listen to my song? should we ever long for one another, i can sing from high upon my mountain, and pray that you hear me upon the wind. ' the pharaoh, whose royal expectations differed from his own, need not sing. ' as for me, i only need feel the beat of your heart in the burning sun to feel at peace. '

     RAMSES HAD NEVER TRAVERSED great mountains before, although he did know of a path through one of them that was known for its freezing weather and ice the higher one went. Such a place was not somewhere he wanted to be considering the cold might as well be a bane to one so used to desert heat with the occasional chilly nights that soaked through the bone. But the way that the other described their home…well, it was DIFFERENT. It was not barren rock, but a unique habitat that flourished with life – the other, its ruler. ❝ The way you speak makes me curious as to what this mountain kingdom of yours looks like. Mountains here are merely rocks; shelter from the sweltering heat for both man and beast, and then during the winter seasons, the cold can create gusts of winds that could freeze water or even create ice from what I am told. Powerful echo… Such a fascinating way to describe things.❞ Oh, but Seung-ho was always good with words, for he could wax poetry in a way that would not have made anyone question his noble heritage as a great king.

     Though this topic intrigued him, what captured his attention the most was what was said afterwards. It was no secret that Ramses loved music – singing most of all. Even without instruments to enhance one’s voice, he could still be just as drawn if that individual had natural skill that could put even the songs of birds to shame. Lyrics filled with longing, lyrics filled with hopes and regrets, of love lost and love gained... How was he not to be smitten with such things when he had a romantic’s heart? There was both tenderness in Seung-ho’s tone and within that ruby gaze, a tenderness that at one time, Ramses would have never thought existed considering the sheer ferocity of the beast known as a ‘tiger’ in comparison to anything else he had ever seen. Even now, he could recall the fire that had been ignited in Seung-ho‘s eyes, claws like knives unsheathed and ready to dig into flesh without hesitation and how the other’s roar could rival even the great lions that wandered about the dunes with their powerful muscles and equally fearsome gaze.

     Right now, he saw beyond this.

     Lips curled into a soft smile, his gaze just as gentle as he gave a nod. ❝ I would like that. I may not understand the words, but that is not what matters. It is the feeling that transcends language itself. In return, I will share one with you as well so that when you sing it, you think of the palace and the Nile itself with its gleaming water amidst golden sand and towering dunes.❞ This was not a gift he gave lightly, and yet, he could tell that for Seung-ho, this too held true. Until his life came to an end, Ramses would never forget this song bestowed upon him. It would remain deeply embedded in his soul itself.

[unblot]

@tsukimyo​​:    the pain’s excruciating & it tears his body in half, metaphorically. he’s never felt an exhaustion like this, never felt the magic wane from his body like this, in his life. it’s a different type of exhaustion, however; it’s the type that comes with the blood loss, the type that comes with using one’s unique magic enough times for a second overblot, the type where one feel like their legs could possibly give out from under them. the savanaclaw dorm head stands his ground, nonetheless, with his faith in diasomnia & savanaclaw coming back to aid them acting as his pillar.

malleus is beside him, bruised & battered just as he, but he has no time to dwell on that as a terrifying yet deafening roar nearly bursts their ear drums. the monster that they had been fighting nonstop since thirty minutes ago pressing a clawed foot down roughly enough to create severe cracks in the floor. it looks like nothing leona has ever seen, fights like nothing he has ever been prepared for. but the prince is prepared to momentarily join forces with his rival, with the person he finds warmth in. so, he protects him. “malleus!” he shouts, growls even, when he uses the last of his waning strength to shove the young lord out of the way. there are claws, razor-sharp & tinged with suspicious red liquid, swiping in their direction — there’s barely any time for panic, for distractions, so he raises his voice & shouts with all his might, despite the stinging & aching pain in his chest / despite the blood that stains & streams down his visage, pools at his sides, streaks down his legs.

“i am hunger! i a—“ but he never finishes for he fails to sidestep the heavy blow from the bright-eyed fury monster. it’s a hard hit to his ribcage, causing him to see black spots & for blood to splutter past his lips as he coughs violently ( they wrack his battered form, breathing becoming heavy for him & at this point, leona wonders still if it’s worth it ) , his entire body folding over in immense pain. leona can barely move at this point, his head throbbing as if someone is driving a sword tinged with fast-acting poison through his chest o’er & o’er again. his vision slips from him fully, pain strangling him in its vice grip, before he completely falls unconscious.

      DESPITE THE INCREDIBLY DIRE SITUATION THEY’RE IN, malleus’s composure never falters. he has no fear of injury, death & he certainly has no fear of the beast before him. there’s an undeniable arrogance in that. & if malleus were a wiser man he would consider the consequences of such dangerous levels of courage. but he’s not a wise man. with all the lord’s notably exceptional qualities, he lacks something as simple as wisdom or fear. that will likely be his downfall in the end. 

      MALLEUS’ DOWNFALL COMES IN THE SHAPE OF A MAN, a handsome man with violently green eyes that rival none but his own. there’s a fierceness in those eyes now, a kind that malleus has never seen before. even in all the antagonism & anger leona has displayed to him, malleus has never seen such savagery, such desperation in the lion’s gaze. despite the fae normally enjoying the wildness of the other man, this particular look leaves him only unsettled & maybe...worried? 

      HOWEVER MALLEUS DOESN’T GET THE CHANCE to linger on whatever odd emotion he’s feeling as leona roughly shoves him out of harms way. the gesture triggers yet another incomprehensible emotion in the fae. his chest feels tight, reptilian eyes widening as leona takes the blow in his stead. malleus cries out, his voice slightly strangled as he nearly falls to the ground. ❛    kingscholar! ---    ❜  in that moment malleus briefly wonders if this is what fear feels like. 

       THE ANSWER COMES AS SWIFTLY & INTENSELY as the question prompting it, coming forth as leona crumples to the ground before him. the next few moments seem to move in slow motion, the air still & silent as malleus’ heart drums loudly in his chest. he moves without thinking, his body practically advancing on its own as he rushes to leona’s side. lithe arms encircle the lion, a fierceness of his own overtaking malleus as he shields leona in his embrace. it’s a brief moment in which his arrogance has shifted into outright foolishness, forgetting the beast, the chaos around them & everything else except for the limp body in his arms.

      ❛    WHY? KING-- LEONA...WHY DID YOU---   ❜  malleus can’t even finish his own question, stricken with anguish, fear &...something else he can’t quite describe. in the end he knows why leona took the blow for him. after all those murmured words have not left the fae’s mind ever since the lion uttered them several months prior. malleus knows & yet...he has never understood the reason behind them. that confusion has never felt stronger than at this moment, holding his unconscious lover in his arms like the hero of an ancient tragedy. why would leona ever love him? what of malleus has ever been lovable? he cannot comprehend it. could someone really sacrifice their own life for him...simply out of love? 

      LEONA HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIFFERENT FROM THE REST. he is not bound by duty or obligation to be at malleus’ side. each moment they’ve spent together has been on their own volition. & while malleus fails to understand when lust became love, he has no doubt in his mind now that leona’s love is true. he also knows that the weight of this truth is more terrifying than the beast before them & anything else malleus has ever faced. 

      MALLEUS HAS NEVER BEEN CERTAIN OF HIS HEART. he never knew how to be. things like love have never really had the opportunity to present themselves in malleus’ life. & even after leona’s love had made itself known, the prince could never find the right descriptor for how he feels in return. therefore he hasn’t brought up leona’s confession & has since pretended he never heard it. it would be cruel to lord over something so intimate over leona’s head without having a proper answer. & malleus may enjoy teasing the other but he is not cruel & never has been. 

      BUT AS HE CLUTCHES THE FALLEN LION in his arms, tears falling from his eyes unbidden, malleus wonders. is this love? is this aching pain in his chest the result of that love? it’s unlike anything he’s ever felt before, more painful & more terrifying than any physical wound the beast could’ve inflicted on him. could this be what it feels like to have loved & lost? it can’t be. not when he hasn’t been able to tell leona, to finally accept that love that had been offered to him in the warmth of leona’s bed. he can’t lose leona yet...he won’t.

      THERE’S A FLASH OF LIGHT, AN ANIMALISTIC CRY & then the moment of grief is gone, the beast lunging forth to deal a final blow to the pair of men. however the hit never comes as malleus hands --- no, his claws reach forth & take hold of the beast in a fierce grip. the fae’s vision is blurry, a sharp pain overtaking him as his body transforms before their very eyes. malleus cannot remember the last time he’d transformed from his humanoid form. he doesn’t care for how he feels as a dragon. he cannot wholly control himself nor can he maintain the raw power of his magic when in this form. & yet it was the lack of control in itself that has him shifting into his own beast. he hasn’t lost his control like this since he was a child. 

       EVEN AS MALLEUS TRANSFORMS, his body rising in the air as his wings sprout from his back, he does not release his hold on leona. in fact his grip only tightens on the lion as they both rise higher into the air. in his beastly state malleus cannot comprehend anything save for the primal need to fight & protect, along with this boiling hot anger unlike anything he’s ever felt before. green flames erupt from the dragon’s nostrils & mouth, flying through the air until it makes its mark across the other beast’s face. 

      STILL KEEPING A TIGHT HOLD ON LEONA, the monster lunges forward with an animalistic ferocity that malleus has so desperately tried to keep a lid on all these years. he can’t speak, he can’t think, he can’t do anything save for fight onward. had malleus been fully sentient at this time he would know he should still hold back. with how powerful his magic is & how unfortunately sensitive the man often can be, malleus is almost constantly at risk of overblotting. it’s only due to decades of training & control that malleus hasn’t lost himself in his own power. & in a way he does know that the path he’s headed down now in this fight will lead him down the dark path he’s dreaded all his life. but he doesn’t care. he won’t stop, can’t stop until the beast before him is vanquished. 

      IT DOESN’T TAKE LONG FOR THE BEAST TO FALL. whether it be due to the unbridled power malleus is using or simply the raw fury in his gate they will never know. what can be known is when the beast falls the fae falls shortly after, his figure shrinking until he is once again the man & not the monster. malleus can feel himself shaking as he keeps his hold on leona steady even now. behind him he can hear the sound of rushing footsteps. no doubt it’s lilia & the others returning with reinforcements. not that it’s needed anymore. the beast has fallen, nothing but a small charcoal colored cat lying unconscious in the grass. 

     ONE PAIR OF FOOTSTEPS DRAWS NEARER. malleus does not have to turn his head to know the identity of the person approaching him. the prince has known the light but purposeful strides of lilia vanrouge for practically as long as he’s been alive. a gentle hand places itself on malleus shoulder & it’s only then does the fae realize that he’s still crying. ❛    l - lilia...he saved me. please, please get him a healer. i don’t think he has much time.    ❜ 

      NOW IN THE PRESENCE OF SOMEONE HE TRUSTS, malleus finally releases his hold on leona, letting lilia take his lover somewhere safe. in the meantime he can hear the hurried footsteps of silver & sebek reaching his side. he can hear his guards’ frantic words but only faintly, as if malleus were somewhere off in the distance & far away from anyone around him. blood & tears streak his face as his vision goes in & out. he’d managed to stop before he’d reached the point of no return...but just barely. even so he had used a great deal more of his strength than he ought to in the last several minutes. this becomes evident as his own exhaustion takes hold of malleus, collapsing into the strong arms of his brother before going completely unconscious. 

when he wakes up in the infirmary, he’s relieved to find leona sleeping soundly beside him. 

[tacitwhisky]

Blood and Sand | AO3 Link | Rome AU where Jon is sold as a gladiator after the Lannisters betray the Starks, and only years later meets Sansa again beneath the shadow of the coliseum.

When Jon meets Sansa again it is in the shadow of the coliseum, below the white marble and red awning and rows of seats, the roar of the crowd that had surged and rolled over the sands ebbed to a low crash in the distance.

Jon had looked for her in the crowd as he stumbled onto the sands beside his fellow gladiators: in the high box reserved for house Lannista he’d looked for the daughter to murdered lord Eddardeus Starki, for the slender and haughty Roman girl whose hair flashed copper in the sun, for the girl he’d been raised beside all his life but who had never seen him as anything more than the barbarian ward of her father’s, the girl who his gaze had been drawn to again and again no matter how he knew it shouldn’t.

But after the dark of the arena underbelly the sun’s gaze was blinding and by the time Jon had blinked it back from his eyes there was a sword in his hand and a man screaming towards him and no time for anything but the clash of steel and spray of blood and roar of the crowd.

That same man’s blood dries and flakes from Jon’s arm as he stands shackled behind the black bars that separate him and the other gladiators that fought on the sands beside him from the milling Romans come to point and gawk and stare at the champions of the arena. Through the crowd a pair of centurions shove their way to the front, hands resting on the pommel of their swords as they eye Jon for a moment before stepping aside.

It is then Jon catches sight of Sansa.

They always said you would be beautiful. The words are silent and sour on Jon’s tongue. Only three years it’s been since he last saw her, but in those three years she’s grown from the girl he remembers into a proper patrician woman: tall and slender and lovely beneath loose silks, a gold choker clasped around her throat and a silver serpent with emerald eyes coiling around one arm, a copper half crown resting in the elegantly piled coils of her red hair. That same red hair that had haunted his childhood, a whisper on the wind that only ever slipped from between his fingers if he reached for it.

He should look down. The stinging lash of the whip has taught Jon as much over the last three year: to never raise his eyes to citizen or centurion or patrician, but he cannot seem to as he watches Sansa approach the black bars, the silk hem of her skirt whispering over the uneven cobbles, cannot stop his eyes from trying to seek out hers.

“I saw you upon the sands.” A breeze lifts a few strays of Sansa’s hair before her face and she combs them back with a hand, eyes tiltings to meet his as she does: the same piercing blue as he remembers, like some hidden mountain pool. “You fought well,” the merest hesitation in her voice; then, soft and precise, “gladiator.”

Gladiator. Something claws at Jon’s throat, throbbing and ugly. Did you think she would greet you like some long lost brother, a voice in him hisses. Stripped to the waist and filthy with sweat and sand, blood drying and flaking from his shackled hands, black hair slicked and dripping, Jon knows well and truly what he looks. The barbarian he’s never been let forget he is all his life, a feral thing that will never be civilized no matter how long it lives among true Romans, a creature of the wilds beyond the light of Rome.

But she always knew that. Always saw you for the animal you were. What made you think it would be different now?

A dull ache throbs through Jon, but if there is one thing he’s learned the last three years it is pain. “You’re generous to say so,” he bites out, hardening his jaw and forcing himself to meet Sansa’s gaze again, “domina.”

Something flickers in Sansa’s eyes, and for a moment she looks as just as young as she once did. Her lips part as though to speak, but her gaze twitches to the pair of centurion behind her, and whatever she was to say dies unspoken. Jon followers her gaze, for the first time noting the bronze cloak pins stamped with the asiatic lion of house Lannista. Guards from her betrothed no doubt.

Sansa bites her lip. “The mob tells a strange tale of you,” she says carefully. “They say you lived among Romans once.”

“You must be mistaken, domina.” Jon shakes his head, a bitterness he thought stripped from him long ago seeping into his words. “What lord would be foolish enough to ward a barbarian like me?”

Sansa blinks. Her tongue traces her lips, and Jon wishes he could look away, hates himself for the way he can’t. Sansa glances at the centurions, both of whose attention has drifted away, then takes a swift step toward him. “You can tell no one who you are,” she says, voice low and urgent. “Do you hear me, Jon? No one must know you were father’s ward.”

Jon. The name is painful somehow, the dull ache of a rotted tooth. How long has it been since he heard it last? A year? More? An animal has no name. And that’s all you’ve ever been to her. “Of course not,” he grinds out. “I wouldn’t want to embarrass you, domina.”

Sansa draws back from the bars as though slapped, eyes searching his face, jaw settling in a hard line. “Is that what you think of me?”

“What else should I think?” Jon tilts his head to the side, a cold, distant fury welling deep in him. “I was there, Sansa. I saw it, saw the Lannista butcher your house. I felt the life leave your father’s body. And now here you stand- betrothed- ”

“I am. Not all cages are iron.”

Jon laughs, a bitter sound. “A cage with cushions and slaves and grapes. I would know nothing of it, simple barbarian that I am.”

“You have no idea the things I’ve endured.” Sansa’s voice is cold enough to cut. “No idea what I’ve given to stand here today. What I’ve had to swallow down and smile through. Whose hands I’ve let on me. Do you think you are the only one that has suffered, Jon?”

Jon looks away, bitter and tired; of this girl from another world, this girl from a world that he’d so desperately wanted but could never have, a world that had been ripped from him all the same. “Why are you here?” He asks without looking at her. “What do you want from me, Sansa?”

The same looks as before flickers over Sansa’s eyes, and she takes another step toward the bars. “Jon-”

“Take care, domina,” calls out one of the slavemasters down the line. “That one is wild as a wolf.”

“You should listen to him. We’re wild all of us.” Jon jerks his chin at where the other gladiators who fought in the arena stand shackled like him, each separated from the next the better to let the Romans gawk at them. Most are barbarians like him, prisoners of the tribes beyond the light of Rome: Tormund the massive red bearded bear of a man the others name Giantsbane; Ygritte the spearmaid who the crowd cheer as Kissed by Fire; Val the Woad-Maid with her honey dark hair and arms inked with strange and twisting blue knots; Varamyr who wore a cloak sewn of animal pelts and called himself Six-Skins; tall and cunning Mance the Raider with his hard smile.

“I thought myself a Roman too,” Mance had told Jon when first they met chained in the heaving belly of a slave ship. “Like you I was raised as a ward among them. But even a house dog is still only a dog, fit only for scraps, fit only to slake their bloodthirst. And a mighty thirst these Romans have.”

Jon had not wanted to believe it. All his life he’d lived with the uneasy shame in the pit of his gut of his barbarian birth, all his life been told that Rome was the light of civilization. Apart he’d held himself from the other gladiators at first, but that had been beaten out of him bruise by bruise and lash by stinging lash. “You’re one of us,” Ygritte had laughed one night when they were both deep in their cups after a hard fought day in the arena, cheap wine a sting on the tongue, “don’t ever think you’re not just because you lived among them once, kneeler.”

It was the night they’d first taken to bed. The night that Ygritte had straddled his lap and reached beneath his tunic to stroke him stiff as she kissed him, hard and bruising and tongue tart with wine. The night he’d surged up against her and fisted his fingers in her hair, that red hair from another life, jerked back her head to bare her throat and nip and bruise the lines of it like he truly was the wolf the Romans said he was.

He’d tried to lose himself there. Tried to lose himself in the heat of Ygritte, be more beast than man as he took her, tried to forget himself as she panted and moaned and taunted him to ride her harder, tried to forget all that had been taken from him and all those he’d failed, to forget all he’d ever wanted or hoped for, to forget the haughty blue eyed girl whose hair flashed copper in the sun who Ygritte both looked everything and nothing like.

But with Sansa standing only a foot away, just as achingly lovely as he remembers, Jon understands dully, in some part of himself he’d tried to bury, just how truly pointless that was. He looks away, suddenly weary beyond words, all the days exhaustion settling over his shoulders: the cut across his side, the sting of sweat in his eyes, the dull burn of his limbs.

“You should listen to him.” Jon repeats with a weary jerk of his chin at the slavemaster. “That barbarian boy who warded with your father is long gone. He wasn’t worth a proper Roman death when the Lannista found him, but he died all the same. All that’s left is a wolf.”

Sansa bites her lip. He eyes drift down from Jon’s face to the map of muscles and scars across his chest and shoulders in a way that makes Jon feel naked as she traces the long knitted slash along his ribs from a Thracian sword, the small and ugly pucker above his hip where the barbed tine of a trident had been ripped out, the scarred patches pockmarking his shoulder from where he’d scraped the flesh clean to the bone throwing himself back against the sandstone of an arena wall to avoid the swing of an axe that would’ve taken his head.

“You’re no wolf, Jon.” Sansa’s eyes rise to meet his again, and Jon feels even more naked than he had a moment before. “You never were.”

Jon swallows back the bitter laugh bubbling in his chest, the irony of her- of all people- of Sansa- he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “What does it matter?” He asks tiredly. “What do you want, Sansa? Why are you here?”

She doesn’t answer at once. Her eyes drift to the other gladiators, then out to the crowd of citizens gawking at them. “You can tell no one who you truly are, Jon. If Joffreus and the other Lannista knew you were still alive they would have you killed at once, favorite of the mob or no.”

“I wasn’t worth killing three years ago, not worth wasting the handful of denari a barbarian could fetch in the arena. Why bother now?”

“Because things are changing and the Lannista are not as favored as they once were. Not by the city, and not by the mob. I’m sorry as children that I- that we never-” Sansa looks away. The breeze plays with the strays of her hair, and she combs them back. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. I know you don’t love me, Jon. That there’s always been little love lost between us. And I’m sorry for that.” The eyes she turns to him are hard. “But what comes next won’t take love.”

I know you don’t love me. Jon wishes it was true. It would be easier if it was. Easier to turn from this girl who has haunted his dreams through years of blood and sand and woe. To become the wolf the Romans say he is, to bury that boy from another life, to be nothing but the ring of a blade and spray of blood and roar of a crowd. It would be easier. But has never been able to turn from her, not when they were children and she would laugh and toss her copper hair and his eyes would follow her despite how they shouldn’t, and not now a woman grown tall and slim and beautiful and cold, and so what he finds himself asking is, “and what comes next?”

“Blood.” The eyes Sansa meets Jon’s with are distant and cold as some windswept peak, voice sharp as the cut of ice. “I’m going to make the Lannista pay, Jon. For what they’ve done. For betraying my family. I’m going to take everything from them they hold dear.” Sansa’s fingers whispers against the iron bars as she steps forward, eyes tilting to meet Jon’s as though there were no bars between them at all. “And when that’s done, when their joy has turned to ash and they see all they love reduced to rubble, then and only then I’ll put a sword in your hand, Jon, and you'll finish our vengeance.”

[jawbone-xylophone]

"I used to do a lot of things" - Sugar (HorrorDream)

squint I think I know who sent this! finger guns Ask and ye shall receive. Gonna do your asks a bit out of order because the muse is going crazy. The prompt is only implied, I have a bad habit of that, but I hope you like!

/////

The world he was currently in was a wreck of fallen stalactites and dirt-churned snow, long scars in the earth slicing through houses and baring the naked rock beneath like some giant claw had descended from on high. The cavern still shuddered, the distant aftershocks of Error’s wild blasting and the roar of a river of paint flash-boiling into steam rushing over Dream like a storm front. There was less pain here now, but only because the remaining casualties trapped under rubble were finally dying. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved about that or not. Dream, to his shame, was just trying to survive right now. The toxic glee in the air, bloodthirst and mania, did little to properly anchor him against the tide of negativity, and without proper healing to bolster his strength he might very well be shunted from this universe against his will. He was needed here, Blue had been separated from the group, Ink rarely thought before acting and fought using the Rule of Cool more than actual tactics. He was needed, he couldn’t afford to be blocked off from his allies, but he was weak with strain and a thousand small fractures that glimmered gold in the dust-strewn gloom.

He stumbled into the front of what used to be a junk store, bricks harsh against his shoulder, the splintered windowsill digging into his hand. Glassy-eyed plastic figurines stared sightlessly out onto the empty street, and he couldn’t help but wonder if they were screaming in their own way. Dream felt like crumpling to the ground and screaming himself, if only to try to relieve the aching pressure of Nightmare’s swollen power. Not that it would really help, in the end, nothing ever helped but distance. His hand dug into the windowsill as if that would prevent his untimely ejection from the world code, trying to ground his spinning head with the pain.

Then- hope. Shaky, hesitant hope, from somewhere deeper into the wreckage of a residential district, that tasted like determination and love and a bit like grief, but there was a light struggling through the darkness, calling Dream like a moth to a flame. That hope could very well be Dream’s last chance, and he wasn’t about to waste it. He started to run, tripping into the snow of the street, but he didn’t have time for that, he had to go, lunging forward from a crawl and catching himself on the corners of buildings with scrabbling fingers. There, there- around this corner, duck through that arch, over the wreck of an old ice house- and there they were.

Dream’s soul sank at the image of a monster dragging themself through the snow towards a pile of glimmering dust, which was still flickering with eddies of magic. He’d just missed the death, clearly. Dream would empathize if he wasn’t in a warzone mentality, but he’d come here looking for the one thing that could heal him and give him a fighting chance, grief wouldn’t help him.

But there was hope thick on the air, and he couldn’t understand where it was coming from, even as the stranger’s skeletal hand reached out with desperate strain and took a fistful of still-glowing monster dust.

He couldn’t understand when that dust was shoved past teeth as thick as tombstones.

He couldn’t understand when red light flickered through the places where the stranger’s bones interlocked, when they took another handful, when they shuddered and groaned and made the sort of sounds normally reserved for high quality steak.

But when their sole eye light managed to focus, red as warning, and their hood slipped back to reveal the sort of massive head trauma no one should survive, he thought he might understand, and that made everything so much worse.

The stranger was burning with hope, with love, with the strength to look a lion in the eye, and Dream couldn’t understand why they answered when Nightmare crawled out of the shadows to call them home.

But his head had finally stopped hurting, bones knitting together as the pressure eased. There was no one around to see him finally crumple to the ground and let the revulsion crawl up his spine like a living thing, horror thick and chalky in his throat. It remained even when he regrouped with the others much later, Ink nuzzling into his aura and Blue shoving concern and cinnamon bunnies at him in equal measure, and he had to swallow down the burn of bile the next time they faced Nightmare’s men on the battlefield.

That skeleton never looked away from him, calm and steady, even as yet another apocalypse crashed down around them.

—

Dream finally extracted himself from the thick of the party with a long sigh, desperate for cooler air and possibly something to drink. As fun as this little New Years’ party was, it was getting to be a bit overwhelming, and he wasn’t used to such high concentrations of positivity. A little punch-drunk, he stumbled into the wall, catching himself on a picture frame and knocking it crooked. Water would be a good idea. Water and fresh air, away from the zing of romance and the roiling waves of crowded excitement in Blue’s living room.

He made his way to the kitchen, hand dragging along the wall, careful to put one foot in front of the other. Definitely no alcohol for him tonight, not when the clusters of cheerful drunk people in his general area were too much to handle. Tottering through the doorway and blinking in the bright lights, he adjusted for a few long moments. He saw the drink cooler, but only on approach did he notice a hand waving a water bottle under his nose, and he startled blearily.

One ruined red eye watched him steadily.

Caught off-balance, Dream accepted the drink with a slow hand, blinking widely at the man. “Thanks.”

“Welcome.” The other leaned back a bit to rest against the counter, lidless stare never straying from Dream’s face. “You look like you got mauled. Here with anyone?”

Dream only realized he was shaking a bit when he had trouble lifting the bottle to his mouth, and he flushed a little. “Uh, nope. I mean, sort of? I’m friends with Blue.”

“I know.”

Right. Uh. Several years of seeing him cover Blue’s blind spots with a bow and arrow might have been a decent hint. He was determined not to make this awkward, but partying under a truce with old enemies made this very bizarre anyway. Dream managed to take a drink, and capped the bottle before he could spill it all over the floor. “...I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced, actually. Circumstances notwithstanding.” What a wonderful way to gloss over the whole your-friends-tried-to-stab-mine issue.

In response, the other skeleton’s brow lifted, and he grinned in a thin, vaguely alarming sort of way. Or maybe the massive hole in his head just caused every expression to look scarier no matter what the intention. “Small talk? Alright, I’ll bite.” He extended a bony hand, the other buried firmly in a pocket. “Sans the skeleton, like half of the idiots here. Nickname’s Horror.”

Dream passed his water into his left hand and copied Horror, smiling. “Dream. Just Dream.”

Horror huffed a small, amused noise, and let go of the handshake. “Well, just Dream, don’ fake anythin’ on my account. Saw you eyeing me when you came in,” he quipped, gesturing briefly at his own face and shattered skull. This close Dream could see the built up scarring around the lower rim of his empty socket. “Seen you eyeing me for a while, really. ‘F I didn’t know better I’d think you actually like lookin’ at this ugly mug.”

“Well- I- you see-“ Oh hell, Dream hasn’t thought he was that obvious. And it wasn’t like that at all, truth be told, he just... even now, he was confused by Horror. He was always calm, and while there was a hungry echo of desperation staining his psyche, for the most part he was startlingly full of love. Of all things to find orbiting Nightmare’s inner circle! Dream had no idea how this man could exist, brutally efficient and not above the worst taboo yet motivated by such level-headed gentleness. “It’s not that, you’re just very interesting. I’m curious.”

“Interesting, he says,” Horror drawls, crossing his arms and leaning back against the counter. “Lotta people find me ‘interesting’. Lotta curious folks like to poke and point and ask stuff they’ve no business askin’. What’s your itch, then?” It would sound accusing if he wasn’t so composed, tone almost light.

Dream winces. He could backtrack, fall to something safer. While he wasn’t above a strategic retreat, he really couldn’t let that stand. “I’m sorry to hear that people insist on disrespecting you. I don’t really have a question, per se, at least nothing in dire need of asking.” That’s a lie, but Dream possesses enough manners to know what you can and cannot ask the familiar stranger who watched you watch him across the battlefield. “I just find it fascinating that in the middle of Nightmare’s forces there’s so much love kept in one person. Love is one of the strangest motivators, so I won’t pretend to know why you go about with that wood axe and yet still feel so gentle to my empathy. You’re a very unusual skeleton, Horror, and a very pleasant surprise. That’s what I mean by interesting.”

Horror goes very still, eye wide, and there’s something thoughtful there beneath the intensity. He’s startled, but it’s only visible in the smallest ways, the relaxing of his jaw and the way his spine straightens a touch beneath his ratty hoodie. He rolls a few words around in his head almost visibly before he speaks. “That’s... a first. ‘Specially from a guy like you.” The laugh is mostly humorless, though there’s a wondering tilt to his head. “Ya waltz in here lookin’ white girl wasted, all prettied up in gold, got me thinkin’ I’m in for a headache, but you’re actually that sweet? Color me charmed.”

“I’ll have you know I’m not just sweet,” Dream replies flatly. “Don’t make that mistake, it’s tiresome.” He’s not in any way prepared to acknowledge anything else Horror just said, though something stupid in his subconscious is focused on the fact that Horror called him pretty.

“Wouldn’t dare.” Horror replies, grin warming. “Multidimensional folks are more interestin’ any day.” And if he’s starting to be sweet on the way Dream meets his gaze unflinchingly, perceptive and headstrong, well. That’s something he can think about later, when he has a proper moment to sit down and recognize what this fascination could easily become, if he lets it. For now he just gestures out onto the porch and invites Dream to talk a while, while moths flutter curiously about the lanterns there.

[sky-scribbles]

Party Banter with Inquisitor Jowan

(Brief explanation: this is an AU in which the Hero of Ferelden tells Jowan to run in Redcliffe. He adopts the alias ‘Levyn,’ and later adds ‘Trevelyan’ when he joins the mage rebellion and starts masquerading a former resident of the Ostwick Circle. And then he ends up at the Conclave.)

~

Vivienne: I wrote to an old friend at the Ostwick Circle, Inquisitor. I’m afraid to say she didn’t remember a Levyn Trevelyan.

Jowan: Oh. Well, I… kept to myself a lot, and… and I wasn’t very... accomplished. So she probably wouldn’t remember me.

Vivienne: I find that surprising, having seen your abilities on the battlefield. You have some difficulties with controlling your magic, certainly – nothing that further instruction would have fixed had this ridiculous rebellion not sprung up – but you clearly have a great deal of potential.

Jowan: My Circle didn’t agree. They nearly made me Tranquil. 

Vivienne: Indeed? I’m sorry to hear it, my dear. It would have been a great loss for the Inquisition had they done so, and to the Circles. But they saw something in you, and decided you were strong enough to face the Harrowing. Be proud of that.

Jowan: … Right.

~

Jowan: So, how long have you been a Warden?

Blackwall: I prefer not to count the years. Reminds me of how much silver’s growing into my beard.

Jowan: I don’t suppose you ever met the Hero of Ferelden? Or... did you ever speak to someone who’d met him?

Blackwall: I never had that honour. I travelled on my own, recruiting, never stopped by the Warden outposts. As far as I can tell, even the Wardens don’t know where the Fereldan Commander is now. Why do you ask? 

Jowan: Oh, I, um... It’s just that I always looked up to him. From - from when he became famous after the Blight, I mean.

Blackwall: Hardly surprising. A Circle Mage gains his freedom by joining a great cause, then saves the world? You must see something of yourself in him.

Jowan: No. But I’d like to.

~

Varric: So, Disaster -

Jowan: What?

Varric: That’s you. Disaster. Look, after that incident with the druffalo -

Jowan: I – I didn’t mean for it to happen! I thought I had it under control -

Varric: Exactly! That’s why you’re Disaster.

Jowan: [Sigh] I deserve that.

~

Cassandra: Trevelyan, may I ask where you stand on the rebellion?

Jowan: Behind it.

Cassandra: Hence your presence at the Conclave. You don’t support the Circles, then, or the Templars, or -

Jowan: The Templars who keep the Harrowing secret, so you dread it for years and you’re so scared that you'd do anything to avoid facing it?

Cassandra: I didn’t -

Jowan: The Templars who throw innocent people into Aeonar? The Templars who hunt those who escape as if they’re animals? The Templars who just won’t stop staring? The Templars who make you afraid to even have friends, because they could be taken away from you tomorrow and – and then you’ll have lost the only person who was ever on your side -

Cassandra: This sounds personal. I didn’t mean to reawaken bad memories.

Jowan: It doesn’t matter. I need to remember those things. I don’t know what kind of person I’d be if I let myself forget.

~

Varric: You all right, Disaster? You’ve seemed a bit on edge ever since Redcliffe.

Jowan: What? Oh. It… it was just hard seeing… 

Varric: Seeing the rebellion let itself down like that? Yeah, they messed up, but it all worked out. There’s no need for you to beat yourself up over their mistakes, ‘specially after everything you went through to fix them. What happened in Redcliffe wasn’t your fault.

Jowan: [sighs]

~

Dorian: That young man we saw in that other future, the... the one who killed himself before the demon could take him. I know you’re thinking about him.

Jowan: I’m trying not to. 

Dorian: Look, I don’t know the full story. About who he was, I mean. But I do remember what you said there. About -

Jowan: Dorian!

Blackwall: What’s he on about?

Jowan: Something I said in that dark future in Recliffe. You heard it - the you in the future, I mean - but when we went back, you forgot, and  -

Dorian: Actually, when we returned to our proper timestream, he and Varric never heard your little outburst at all. 

Jowan: Please, don’t ask what it was about. I only said it at all because I was upset, and afraid. And now I can’t share it with anyone else.

Blackwall: You’ll get no argument from me. Everyone has their secrets.

Dorian: Anyway, if you need to talk about... about the contents of the outburst which shall not be discussed in earshot of our illustrious comrades, I’d be happy to buy you a drink in the Herald’s Rest later and let you rant to your heart’s content.

Jowan: Thank you.

~

Sera: I saaaw you.

Jowan: Saw me… when?

Sera: Out for a stroll. You. You and the lady Josie.

Jowan: What? I – but – we were – just talking –

Sera: Talking leads to more than talking. You too shy to get on to the more-than-talking part? ‘Cause I can drop some hints for you –

Jowan: No! No no no no no! No! [coughs] Please, Sera, I… I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know if it’s even going anywhere. Or if it should.

~

Vivienne: Inquisitor, dear, might I have a word?

Dorian: Why do I get the feeling that you actually want to have the word with me?

Vivienne: I’ve already received a few letters from acquaintances, asking whether it’s true that a Tevinter magister is secretly instructing the Inquisitor in necromancy.

Dorian: Firstly, it’s far from secret. Secondly, I’m teaching him entropy magic. If he wishes to refine it into necromancy – which, lamentably, he does not – that will be his choice. Thirdly, I am an altus.

Vivienne: I’m sure the maleficar-fearing nobility will greatly appreciate those distinctions.

~

Cole: I picked the lily because it was so beautiful, but then it withered and died. Blood on the stones, bare, breaking, everything burning as she turns away.

Jowan: ... What did you say?

Cole: It wasn’t your fault. You wanted to protect. First you wanted to save yourself, and then you wanted to save her. Good intentions shattered, scattered like blood on the Circle floor.

Jowan: It doesn’t change anything. If you meant to do something good, but all you ever do is hurt people... Cole, none of those people would have had suffered if I’d just never existed.

Cole: Flowers for Falon’Din on a stranger’s grave, rifts sealed and safe, warm wool given to waiting hands. A barrier raised, travellers shielded from blighted claws by a mage without a chain.

Cole: They’re glad you exist.

~

Solas: Why entropy magic, if I may ask?

Jowan: Well… back in the Circle, I kept trying to learn primal magic. My best friend was studying it, so I thought if I focused on it too, I’d have someone to help me when I got it wrong.

Solas: If you took your failure for granted, it is hardly surprising that you struggled. So, you have discovered a talent for a different school of magic?

Jowan: It was Dorian’s idea. I’m... actually not bad at it. I never thought I’d be any good at entropy. It just didn’t seem much like me.

Varric: Disaster, if you want to meet someone who really doesn’t match the kind of magic they’re best at, I need to introduce you to Daisy.

~

Cassandra: The most important thing to remember is that you must not obsess over landing hits. In a duel, it’s less important to slice your opponent than it is to make sure your opponent cannot slice you.

Jowan: Right. Avoid being sliced. How do I do that, exactly?

Blackwall: Keep your body angled – never show your front if you can help it. Give this bastard a smaller target to hit at.

Cassandra: Remember, you may actually have the advantage in strength, if not in experience. You are used to wielding a mage’s staff – far heavier than a rapier. You may be able to use that to your advantage.

Blackwall: But don’t treat the foil like a staff. Those swishing things you do with a staff will leave you completely exposed.

Jowan: [low moan] I’m going to die.

Cassandra: Nonsense. We will train you from dawn until dusk if necessary.

Blackwall: And you know you won’t be able to live with yourself if you don’t do everything you can.

Jowan: You’re right. I… I’ll fight to stay with her. To deserve her. I won’t just let her go. Not this time.

~

Iron Bull: All right, boss, I need to make a list. The Chargers are begging me to tell them about all the weird crap you’ve gotten into.

Jowan: Can we all just never talk about… any of it… again?

Iron Bull: So in the fallow mire, you walked right into some mud pit and sank up to your eyebrows –

Jowan: I was trying not to be killed by undead. I… really don’t like undead.

Iron Bull: In the Exalted Plains, you spent half an hour stuck inside the ramparts, looking for the way out –

Jowan: That place was like a maze!

Iron Bull: In Emprise du Lion, you got knocked into a pit by a darkspawn in Valeska’s Watch. Four times!

Jowan: I’m still not great at targeting my Fade-stepping. [pause] No mention of the bear incident?

Iron Bull: Nah. Even I don’t ever want to talk about the bear incident again.

~

Blackwall: Inquisitor, I... need to thank you. What you did - standing up in front of the entire Inquisition and telling them who you really are -

Jowan: It was no braver than what you did in Val Royeaux.

Blackwall: My crimes are a thousand times worse than yours. I didn’t know those children were in the carriage, but I knew I was killing innocent people. You thought you were doing some good.

Jowan: I knew I was poisoning a man. A man with a wife and a son. And I knew how wrong blood magic was. But I did it all anyway. Still… that’s not the point. This isn’t about which of us is worse or which of us is braver. It’s about the fact that we’ve both got a second chance now.

Blackwall: And I intend to make the most of it. Thank you.

Jowan: Thank you. If I hadn’t watched you own up to what you’d done, I might never have done the same myself. When they brought you before me, I knew I couldn’t judge a man for the same crimes I’d committed myself. I knew… I had to tell the truth.

~

Varric: Josephine knew, right? You told her the truth before your dramatic revelation to the rest of us?

Jowan: Of course! I think Leliana might have killed me if I hadn’t. She recognised me as soon as we met, and when she realised I had feelings for Josephine, she was, um, rather insistent that - 

Varric: Wait, wait, back up, Disaster. You’d met Sister Nightingale before?

Jowan: Sort of. In Redcliffe, when I was imprisoned, she was there with Firion - I mean, with the Hero of Ferelden -

Varric: Firion? As in, Firion Surana? 

Jowan: I was never in the Ostwick Circle, Varric. I was in Kinloch Hold. Firion was... he was my best friend. He was like a brother to me. And I betrayed him, but… somehow, he never hated me.

Varric: Later, we’re sitting down and talking through the details. There’s a story here and I don’t know it. That never sits well with me.

~

Cassandra: So, Dorian - you knew?

Dorian: Absolutely. Why, are we still bitter about being left in the dark? Still determined not to speak to him? Still letting out exclamations of disgust every time he enters your presence?

Cassandra: It would have been bad enough had it been only Blackwall who was lying to us. But for the Inquisitor - the face of the Inquisition, the man all southern Thedas looks up to, the Herald of Andraste - to be a maleficar, the man responsible for the horrors in Redcliffe during the Blight -

Dorian: Did you see him in the dark future, Seeker?

Cassandra: I don’t see what -

Dorian: You didn’t. Neither, technically, did Varric, Leliana and Blackwall. But I did. I saw him fall to his knees as that young man, Connor, burned himself alive. I saw the look in his eyes as he told us who he was and what he’d done, why we shouldn’t trust him to lead us, how he could never save Redcliffe, seeing as he’d almost destroyed it. If you’d seen that too, I doubt you’d be so quick to condemn him.

~

Iron Bull: Hey, boss, back me up on this one. That witch’s kid. There’s something off about him.

Jowan: Off how?

Iron Bull: [grunts] Just a gut feeling. He doesn’t act like someone his age should. You see it too, right? I’ve seen you staring at him.

Jowan: He’s a bit strange, but that’s not why I’ve been watching him. Something about him… he looks a bit like…

Iron Bull: Like one of those creepy kids from a ghost story?

Jowan: No. He just reminds me a bit of an old friend, that’s all. And I know his mother knew –

Iron Bull: Knew who?

Jowan: It, um, doesn’t matter. Forget I said anything.

~

Solas: Inquisitor.

Jowan: … Solas?

Solas: There’s no need to look at me the way a startled nug looks at a fox.

Jowan: You’ve not been talking to me much recently. I thought you were angry.

Solas: I was, when I thought of how you ran from your blunders. Your ignorance and negligence caused unimaginable suffering. But was the result of years of being taught to fear yourself. You have accepted your guilt and acknowledged the harm you caused. Now you have learned to face it, and you have done what you could to repair the harm you caused.

Jowan: I hurt Lily. I can’t fix that.

Solas: You have become a man who would not hurt the one he loved in such a way again. That is a brave thing to be.

~

Cole: You tried to help. You didn’t understand, and you got it wrong. Like I got it wrong when I killed the mages. I thought it was right and it wasn’t.

Jowan: That doesn’t make it better.

Cole: No. You hurt people. But you know that, so you don’t hurt them anymore. You help them. Like I do.

Forgiven, free, forging a new life in his own name, Rainier, feeling real as he faces it. Because you let him move forward.

In the library, sharing the silence, soothed by the sound of you turning pages. A southern mage, of all things – and he laughs at the thought, laughs properly inside, because having you as a friend makes laughing easy.

Quiet before the fireplace, warm and right in your arms. She thinks of the steel flashing in the city square and nearly shivers, but she doesn’t, because when you hold her the world is bright and soft and nothing bad can happen.

You came into their lives, and you made them better. You want to look at what you’ve done and smile, because you know you’ve helped. And you should. You think you don’t deserve to smile, but you do.

Jowan: Maybe I do.

~

Varric: Word around the Keep is that you’re planning an expedition, Disaster.

Jowan: Yes. Dorian and Blackwall and Cole are definitely coming, and if anyone else wants to… well. No one has to. It’s a personal thing, not an Inquisition thing.

Varric: Let me guess – the standard ‘person reveals their true identity, then sets out to right the wrongs of their past’ mission?

Jowan: Um… yes. I’m going to Aeonar. They say it’s abandoned now, no one knows what happened to the people who were there. If I can, I’m going to find Lily. Avenge her, and everyone else, if the worst has happened. And if she’s alive, do what I can to make amends to her. 

Varric: You’re really getting the hang of this ‘new life’ thing.

Jowan: I think I might be. I finally found the courage to talk to Connor. Leliana helped me get in touch with Firion, and he still fusses over me like a mother hen. I’m never going to use blood magic again, and the Circles don’t exist any more. They never will again if I can help it. No more Tranquillity, no more stupid young mages scared of their Harrowings and scared of themselves. And… I have all of you. I have the Inquisition. I… have Josephine. Somehow. Don’t ask me what I did to deserve that.

Varric: Saving the world? Maybe even making it a little better than it was before? Giving us all a good laugh? I think you’ve earned yourself a happy ending, Disaster.

[youmightfindyourself]

“There was this article by this biochemist that I read not long ago, and he was talking about how when a member of our species is born, it has a billion years of memory to draw on. And this is where we inherit our instincts.” -Waking Life

INSTINCT is usually defined as the faculty of acting in such away as to produce certain ends, without foresight of the ends, and without previous education in the performance . That instincts, as thus defined, exist on an enormous scale in the animal kingdom needs no proof. They are the functional correlatives of structure. With the presence of a certain organ goes, one may say, almost always a native aptitude for its use.

"Has the bird a gland for the secretion of oil? She knows instinctively how to press the oil from the gland, and apply it to the feather. Has the rattlesnake the grooved tooth and gland of poison? He knows without instruction how to make both structure and function most effective against his enemies. Has the silk-worm the function of secreting the fluid silk? At the proper time she winds the cocoon such as she has never seen, as thousands before have done; and thus without instruction, pattern, or experience, forms a safe abode for herself in the period of transformation. Has the hawk talons? She knows by instinct how to wield them effectively against the helpless quarry."

A very common way of talking about these admirably definite tendencies to act is by naming abstractly the purpose they subserve, such as self-preservation, or defense, or care for eggs and young -- and saying the animal has an instinctive fear of death or love of life, or that she has an instinct of self-preservation, or an instinct of maternity and the like. But this represents the animal as obeying abstractions which not once in a million cases is it possible it can have framed. The strict physiological way of interpret- [p. 384] ing the facts leads to far clearer results. The actions we call instinctive all conform to the general reflex type ; they are called forth by determinate sensory stimuli in contact with the animal's body, or at a distance in his environment. The cat runs after the mouse, runs or shows fight before the dog, avoids falling from walls and trees, shuns fire and water, etc., not because he has any notion either of life or of death, or of self, or of preservation. He has probably attained to no one of these conceptions in such a way as to react definitely upon it. He acts in each case separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he must pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appear there he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if clove by; that he must withdraw his feet from water and his face from flame, etc. His nervous system is to a great extent a pre organized bundle of such reactions -- they are as fatal as sneezing, and as exactly correlated to their special excitants as it is to its own. Although the naturalist may, for his own convenience, class these reactions under general heads, he must not forget that in the animal it is a particular sensation or perception or image which calls them forth.

At first this view astounds us by the enormous number of special adjustments it supposes animals to possess ready-made in anticipation of the outer things among which they are to dwell. Can mutual dependence be so intricate and go so far? Is each thing born fitted to particular other things, and to them exclusively, as locks are fitted to their keys? Undoubtedly this must be believed to be so. Each nook and cranny of creation, down to our very skin and entrails, has its living inhabitants, with organs suited to the place, to devour and digest the food it harbors and to meet the dangers it conceals; and the minuteness of adaptation thus shown in the way of structure knows no hounds. Even so are there no bounds to the minuteness of adaptation in the way of conduct which the several inhabitants display.

The older writings on instinct are ineffectual wastes of words, because their authors never came down to this defi- [p. 385] nite and simple point of view, but smothered everything in vague wonder at the clairvoyant and prophetic power of the animals -- so superior to anything in man -- and at the beneficence of God in endowing them with such a gift. But God's beneficence endows them, first of all, with a nervous system; and, turning our attention to this, makes instinct immediately appear neither more nor less wonderful than all the other facts of life.

Every instinct is an impulse . Whether we shall call such impulses as blushing, sneezing, coughing, smiling, or dodging, or keeping time to music, instincts or not, is a mere matter of terminology. The process is the same through-out. In his delightfully fresh and interesting work, Der Thierische Wille, Herr G. H. Schneider subdivides impulses (Triebe) into sensation-impulses, perception-impulses, and idea-impulses. To crouch from cold is a sensation-impulse; to turn and follow, if we see people running one way, is a perception-impulse; to cast about for cover, if it begins to blow and rain, is an imagination-impulse. A single complex instinctive action may involve successively the awakening of impulses of all three classes. Thus a hungry lion starts to seek prey by the awakening in him of imagination coupled with desire; he begins to stalk it when, on eye, ear, or nostril, he gets an impression of its presence at a certain distance; he springs upon it, either when the booty takes alarm and sees, or when the distance is sufficiently reduced; he proceeds to tear and devour it the moment he gets a sensation of its contact with his claws and fangs. Seeking, stalking, springing, and devouring are just so many different kinds of muscular contraction, and neither kind is called forth by the stimulus appropriate to the other.

Schneider says of the hamster, which stores corn in its hole:

"If we analyze the propensity of storing, we find that it consists of three impulses: First, an impulse to pick up the nutritious object, due to perception; second, an impulse to carry it off into the dwelling-place due to the idea of this latter; and third, an impulse to lay it down there , due to the sight of the place. It lies in the nature of the hamster that it should never see a full ear of corn without feeling a desire [p. 386] to strip it; it lieu in its nature to feel, as soon as its cheek-pouches are filled, an irresistible desire to hurry to its home; and finally, it lies in its nature that the sight of the storehouse should awaken the impulse to empty the cheeks" (p. 208).

In certain animals of a low order the feeling of having executed one impulsive step is such an indispensable part of the stimulus of the next one, that the animal cannot make any variation in the order of its performance.

Now, why do the various animals do what seem to us such strange things , in the presence of such outlandish stimuli? Why does the hen, for example, submit herself to the tedium of incubating such a fearfully uninteresting set of objects as a nestful of eggs, unless she have some sort of a prophetic inkling of the result? The only answer is ad hominem. We can only interpret the instincts of brutes by what we know of instincts in ourselves. Why do men always lie down, when they can, on soft beds rather than on hard floors? Why do they sit round the stove on a cold day? 'Why, in a, room, do they place themselves, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, with their faces towards its middle rather than to the wall ? Why do they prefer saddle of mutton and champagne to hard-tack and ditch-water? Why does the maiden interest the youth so that everything about her seems more important and significant than anything else in the world? Nothing more can be said than that these are human ways, and that every creature likes its own ways, and takes to the following them as a, matter of course. Science may come and consider these ways, and find that most of them are useful. But it is not for the sake of their utility that they are followed, but because at the moment of following them we feel that that is the only appropriate and natural thing to do. Not one man in a billion, when taking his dinner, ever thinks of utility. He eats because the food tastes good and makes him want more. If you ask him why he should want to eat more of what tastes like that, instead of revering you as a philosopher he will probably laugh at you for a fool. The connection between the savory sensation and the act it awakens is for him absolute and selbstverständlich, an ' a priori syn- [p. 387] thesis' of the most perfect sort, needing no proof but its own evidence. It takes, in short, what Berkeley calls a mind debauched by learning to carry the process of making the natural seem strange, so far as to ask for the why of any instinctive human act. To the metaphysician alone can such questions occur as: Why do we smile, when pleased, and not scowl? Why are we unable to talk to a crowd as we talk to a single friend? Why does a particular maiden turn our wits so upside-down? The common man can only say, " Of course we smile, of course our heart palpitates at the sight of the crowd, of course we love the maiden, that beautiful soul clad in that perfect form, so palpably and flagrantly made from all eternity to be loved !"

And so, probably, does each animal feel about the particular things it tends to do in presence of particular objects. They, too, are a priori syntheses. To the lion it is the lioness which is made to be loved; to the bear, the she-bear. To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not the utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.

Thus we may be sure that, however mysterious some animals' instincts may appear to us, our instincts will appear no less mysterious to them. And we may conclude that, to the animal which obeys it, every impulse and every step of every instinct shines with its own sufficient light, end seems at the moment the only eternally right and proper thing to do. It is done for its own sake exclusively. What volup- [p. 388] tuous thrill may not shake a fly, when she at last discovers the one particular leaf, or carrion, or bit of dung, that out of all the world can stimulate her ovipositor to its discharge? Does not the discharge then seem to her the only fitting thing? And need she care or know anything about the future maggot and its food?

Since the egg-laying instincts are simple examples to consider, a few quotations about them from Schneider may be serviceable:

"The phenomenon so often talked about, so variously interpreted, so surrounded with mystification, that an insect should always lay her eggs in a spot appropriate to the nourishment of her young, is no more marvellous than the phenomenon that every animal pairs with a mate capable of bearing posterity, or feeds on material capable of affording him nourishment. . . . Not only the choice of a place for laying the eggs, but all the various acts for depositing and protecting them, are occasioned by the perception of the proper object, and the relation of this perception to the various stages of maternal impulse. When the burying beetle perceives a carrion, she is not only impelled to approach it and lodge her eggs in it, but also to go through the movements requisite for burying it; just as a bird who sees his hen-bird is impelled to caress her, to strut around her, dance before her, or in some other way to woo her; just as a tiger, when he sees an antelope, is impelled to stalk it, to pounce upon it, and to strangle it. When the tailor-bee cuts out pieces of rose-leaf, bends them, carries them into a caterpillar-or mouse-hole in trees or in the earth, covers their seams again with other pieces, and so makes a thimble-shaped case -- when she fills this with honey and lays an egg in it, all these various appropriate expressions of her will are to be explained by supposing that at the time when the eggs are ripe within her, the appearance of a suitable caterpillar- or mouse-hole and the perception of rose-leaves are so correlated in the insect with the several impulses in question, that the performances follow as a matter of course when the perceptions take place. ..."

The perception of the empty nest, or of a single egg, seems in birds to stand in such a close relation to the physiological functions of oviparation, that it serves as a direct stimulus to these functions, while the perception of a sufficient. number of eggs has just the opposite effect. It is well known that hens and ducks lay more eggs if we keep removing them than if we leave them in the nest. The impulse to sit arises, as a rule, when a bird sees a certain number of eggs in her nest. If this number is not yet to be seen there, the ducks continue to lay, although they perhaps have laid twice as many eggs as they are accustomed to sit upon. ... That sitting, also, is independent of any idea of purpose and is a pure perception-impulse is evident, among other things, [p. 389] from the fact that many birds, e.g. wild ducks, steal eggs from each other....The bodily disposition to sit is, it is true, one condition [since broody hens will sit where there are no eggs], but the perception of the eggs is the other condition of the activity of the incubating impulse. The propensity of the cuckoo and of the cow-bird to lay their eggs in the nests of other species must also be interpreted as a pure perception-impulse. These birds have no bodily disposition to become broody, and there is therefore in them no connection between the perception of an egg and the impulse to sat upon it. Eggs ripen, however, in their oviducts, and the body tends to get rid of them. And since the two birds just named do not drop their eggs any-where on the ground, but in nests, which are the only places where they may preserve the species, it might easily appear that such preservation of the species was what they had in view, and that they acted with full consciousness of the purpose. But this is not so. ... The cuckoo is simply excited by the perception of quite determinate sorts of nest, which already contain eggs, to drop her own into them, and throw the others out, because this perception is a direct stimulus to these acts. It is impossible that she should have any notion of the other bird com-ing and sitting on her egg."

INSTINCTS NOT ALWAYS BLIND OR INVARIABLE.

Remember that nothing is said yet of the origin of instincts, but only of the constitution of those that exist fully formed. How stands it with the instincts of mankind?

Nothing is commoner than the remark that Man differs from lower creatures by the almost total absence of instincts, and the assumption of their work in him by 'reason.' A fruitless discussion might be waged on this point by two theorizers who were careful not to define their terms. 'Reason' might be used, as it often has been, since Kant, not as the mere power of 'inferring,' but also as a name for the tendency to obey impulses of a certain lofty sort, such as duty, or universal ends. And 'instinct ' might have its significance so broadened as to cover all impulses whatever, even the impulse to act from the idea of a distant fact, as well as the impulse to act from a present sensation. Were the word instinct used in this broad way, it would of course be impossible to restrict it, as we began by doing, to actions done with no prevision of an end. We must of course avoid a quarrel about words, and the facts of the case are [p. 390] really tolerably plain. Man has a far greater variety of impulses than any lower animal; and any one of these impulses, taken in itself, is as 'blind' as the lowest instinct can be; but, owing to man's memory, power of reflection, and power of inference, they come each one to be felt by him, after he has once yielded to them and experienced their results, in connection with a foresight of those results. In this condition an impulse acted out may be said to be acted out, in pert at least, for the sake of its results. It is obvious that every instinctive act, in an animal with memory, must cease to be 'blind' after being once repeated , and must be accompanied with foresight of its 'end' just so far as that end may have fallen under the animal's cognizance. An insect that lays her eggs in a place where she never sees them hatched must always do so 'blindly;' but a hen who has already hatched a brood can hardly be assumed to sit with perfect 'blindness' on her second nest. Some expectation of consequences must in every case like this be aroused; and this expectation, according as it is that of something desired or of something disliked, must necessarily either reinforce or inhibit the mere impulse. The hen's idea of the chickens would probably encourage her to sit; a rat's memory, on, the other hand, of a former escape from a trap would neutralize his impulse to take bait from anything that reminded him of that trap. If a boy sees a fat hopping-toad, he probably has incontinently an impulse (especially if with other boys) to smash the creature with a stone, which impulse we may suppose him blindly to obey. But something in the expression of the dying toad's clasped hands suggests the meanness of the act, or reminds him of sayings he has heard about the sufferings of animals being like his own; so that, when next he is tempted by a toad, an idea arises which, far from spurring him again to the torment, prompts kindly actions, and may even make him the toad's champion against less reflecting boys.

It is plain, then, that, no matter how well endowed an animal may originally be in the way of instincts, his resultant actions will be much modified if the instincts combine with experience, if in addition to impulses he have memories, associations, inferences, and expectations, on any considerable scale. An [p. 391] object O, on which he has an instinctive impulse to react in the manner A, would directly provoke him to that reaction. But O has meantime become for him a sign of the nearness of P, on which he has an equally strong impulse to react in the manner B, quite unlike A. So that when he meets O the immediate impulse A and the remote impulse B struggle in his breast for the mastery. The fatality and uniformity said to be characteristic of instinctive actions will be so little manifest that one might be tempted to deny to him altogether the possession of any instinct about the object O. Yet how false this judgment would be! The instinct about O is there; only by the complication of the associative machinery it has come into conflict with another instinct about P.

Here we immediately reap the good fruits of our simple physiological conception of what an instinct is. If it be a mere excite-motor impulse, due to the pre-existence of a certain 'reflex arc' in the nerve-centres of the creature, of course it must follow the law of all such reflex area. One liability of such area is to have their activity 'inhibited,' by other processes going on at the same time. It makes no difference whether the are be organized at birth, or ripen spontaneously later, or be due to acquired habit, it must take its chances with all the other area, and sometimes succeed, and sometimes fail, in drafting off the currents through itself. The mystical view of an instinct would make it invariable. The physiological view would require it to show occasional irregularities in any animal in whom the number of separate instincts, and the possible entrance of the same stimulus into several of them, were great. And such irregularities are what every superior animal's instincts do show in abundance."

Wherever the mind is elevated enough to discriminate; wherever several distinct sensory elements must combine to discharge the reflex-arc; wherever, instead of plumping into action instantly at the first rough intimation of what sort of a thing is there, the agent waits to see which one of its kind it is and what the circumstances are of its appearance; wherever different individuals and different circumstances can impel him in different ways; wherever these are the conditions -- we have a masking of the elementary constitution of the instinctive life. The whole story of our dealings with the lower wild animals is the history of our taking advantage of the way in which they judge of everything by its mere label, as it were, so as to ensnare or kill them. Nature, in them, has left matters in this rough way, and made them act always in the manner which would be oftenest right. There are more worms unattached to hooks than impaled upon them; therefore, on the whole, says Nature to her fishy children, bite at every worm and take your chances. But as her children get higher, and their lives more precious, she reduces the risks. Since what seems to be the same object may be now a genuine food and now a bait; since in gregarious species each individual may prove to be either the friend or the rival, according to the circumstances, of another; since any entirely unknown object may be fraught with weal or woe, Nature implants contrary impulses to act on many classes of things , and leaves it to slight alterations in the conditions of the individual case to decide which impulse shall carry the day. Thus, greediness and suspicion, curiosity and timidity, coyness and desire, bashfulness and vanity, sociability and pugnacity, seem to shoot over into each other as quickly, and to remain in as unstable equilibrium, in the higher birds and mammals as in man. They are all impulses, congenital, blind at first, and productive of motor reactions of a rigorously determinate sort. Each one of them, then, is an instinct , as instincts are commonly defined. But they contradict each other -- 'experience' in each particular oppor- [p. 393] tunity of application usually deciding the issue. The animal that exhibits them loses the > instinctive' demeanor and appears to lead a life of hesitation and choice, an intellectual life; not, however, because he has no instincts -- rather because he has so many that they block each other's path .

Thus, then, without troubling ourselves about the words instinct and reason, we may confidently say that however uncertain man's reactions upon his environment may some-times seem in comparison with those of lower creatures, the uncertainty is probably not due to their possession of any principles of action which he lacks . On the contrary, man possesses all the impulses that they have, and a great many more besides . In other words, there is no material antagonism between instinct and reason. Reason, per se , can inhibit no impulses; the only thing that can neutralize an impulse is an impulse the other way. Reason may, however, make an inference which will excite the imagination so as to set loose the impulse the other way; and thus, though the animal richest in reason might be also the animal richest in instinctive impulses too, he would never seem the fatal automaton which a, merely instinctive animal would be.

It will be observed that no other mammal, not even the monkey, shows so large an array . In a perfectly-rounded development, every one of these instincts would start a habit toward certain objects and inhibit a habit toward certain others. Usually this is the case; but, in the one-sided development of civilized life, it happens that the timely age goes by in a sort of starvation of objects, and the individual then grows up with gaps in his psychic constitution which future experiences can never fill. Compare the accomplished gentleman with the poor artisan or tradesman of a city: during the adolescence of the former, objects appropriate to his growing interests, bodily and mental, were offered as fast as the interests awoke, and, as a consequence, he is armed and equipped at every angle to meet the world. Sport came to the rescue and completed his education where real things were lacking. He has tasted of the essence of every side of human life, being sailor, hunter, athlete, scholar, fighter, talker, dandy, man of affairs, etc., all in one. Over the city poor boy's youth no such golden opportunities were hung, and in his man-hood no desires for most of them exist. Fortunate it is for him if gaps are the only anomalies his instinctive life presents; perversions are too often the fruit of his unnatural bringing up.

[daebakinc]

We Make the Kingdom - Pt. 9 (M)

Image by silverdagger865

Pairing: Yongguk x OC Genre: Fantasy, with Angst and Smut this chapter! Summary:  After a vampire attack leaves you almost dead, you are rescued by a group of werelions, powers long thought to be extinct. Upon discovering the same magic flows in your blood, you join their fight against encroaching vampires and another, very human monster, to save the kingdom. Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ,  8, 9(M), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16(M), 17, 18 ,  Final   

The room stills. Although the words themselves are ambiguous, Yongguk’s tone is not. You must have heard wrong. Yongguk cannot be regretting finally including you in the hunt.

           You set your mug on the floor and unfold your legs. He will get a chance to explain himself. Icily, you say, “I beg your pardon. What did you say?”

           “I was wrong,” Yongguk repeats.

           “Regarding what exactly?”

           “I was wrong to allow you on the hunt tonight.” Yongguk’s face is closed, his voice subdued. He straightens his shoulders, wincing at the pull on his chest. “We cannot afford to leave one of us behind with you anymore given the increase in vampires, but you will not hunt. You will stand watch with the horses.”

           You cannot believe what you are hearing. He cannot be dismissing all you’ve worked for these long months. Not when this has been what kept you alive.

           “Why?”

           “You are not ready. You were careless. How could you drop your sword and lose your stakes? That almost got you killed but what if next time one of the others gets hurt because of your mistake? Because their worry for your safety distracts them in a critical moment? It is better we know you are out of harm’s reach.”

           “Yongguk, that is not fair-” Junhong starts to protest, but Youngjae puts a hand on his chest to stop him as if keeping him from stepping between two giants.

           You are minutely grateful. You can fight your own battles.

           Focusing on Yongguk, you instill your voice with a deliberate calm. Giving into the indignation you feel brewing in your chest would be unwise. “Firstly, I have been in harm’s reach since vampires reappeared. There is no way to turn back to time I was not. Secondly, do you forget I too am a lion? My teeth and claws are my sword. I am not some helpless kitten.”

           “And I am not calling you one. But-”

           “Do not dare to patronize me,” you growl.

           “But you are inexperienced.”

           “How am I to gain experience unless I fight? I cannot practice forever.”

           “Not forever, just awhile longer.”

           “How much longer?” You stand before you explode. “Until the vampires are all vanquished and you all ride back through the gate in triumph? You need me. This time it was thirteen vampires. Next time it could be more. I-”

           “You-”

           “No. You do not get to interrupt me. You, Bang Yongguk, are an enormous hypocrite. All you speak of is equality and allowing all voices to speak, but when it comes to mine? I am to be silenced because you know better. Is this all because I am a woman? Or because you think you are my on-high superior?”

           Yongguk stands but stays on the other side of the room. You can feel him retreating behind his walls. Not in defeat, but preparation for a siege. “It is not.”

           “I proved myself tonight, did I not? I killed a newborn, not some half-starved vagrant. I would have killed the second without your help if you had given me a chance.”

           “A chance to get yourself killed?”

           “Of all the- You-” You bite your tongue before you spit out words tainted with the bitter anger that will burn slow healing wounds.

           Throwing up your hands, you stalk out of the room. The other men, who had retreated towards the door at some point, scatter in front of you. It gives you a perverse pleasure. At least they recognize you are dangerous in your own right. The sling for your arm flutters to the floor of the great hall as you strip it off.

           There is no proper place to storm alone here. You must to leave.

           Rose whickers in greeting when you enter the stable. Despite only returning a few hours ago, he stamps his feet eagerly when you lead him out of his stall and put the saddle on. The girth and other trappings of the saddle are infuriatingly complicated for your shaking hands.

           You want to just dump it on the floor, but you make yourself place it back on its rack. Jongup would feel obligated to pick it up and clean it and your quarrel is not with him.

           You slip on Rose’s bridle and leap on. Your body’s complaints are lost to the ringing in your ears. The drum of his hooves drowns even that out as you thunder past confining walls and into open air and field.

           A creature of habit, Rose curves his path to follow the mountains. You let him lead and lose yourself in the springing strength of his muscles beneath you. Imagining it is your four legs devouring the distance, flying over the waving grass. There is only earth and sky and your lungs pulling clean air into your body.

           Time passes unmarked until you feel Rose’s pace falter and his sides contracting harshly. Feeling guilty for pushing him so hard, you pull him back into a canter, then a trot.

           The landscape around you is vaguely familiar. It takes you a few minutes to realize it was the way you went with Yongguk to your village. An unhappy accident. No matter though. You can easily change directions.

           A deep inhale brings the scent of fresh water. Reason overrules wanting to ride on. You and Rose could do with a drink, so you turn him towards it. His head hangs low as he slows to a grateful walk. A few paces around the foot of a hill, a shallow stream flows out from the forest.

           “Such a good boy,” you murmur, patting Rose’s neck as he shoves his nose into the water. “I’m sorry, love. You’ve worked hard.”

           You slide off, almost slipping because of the sweat slicking his side. Squatting down beside him, you cup your hands to lift water to your lips, your cheeks, your neck. Cold carried from the depths of the mountains trickles down your heated skin. Your own anger has cooled a little. Not much, but some.

           As with training, you will not be told no. You do not doubt the others will side with you again. If Yongguk persists in his pigheadedness, you will just follow them on their hunts. He will have to toss you into a tower and brick the entrance to stop you. Even that may just slow you down.

           Irritation at having to stand up for yourself yet again bubbles in your chest. Clearly, you need to ride some more so your argument does not devolve into a shouting match when you face Yongguk again. You only have so much tolerance for stupidity and he spent so much you must build it up again.

           You climb onto Rose’s back and guide him back into the flat plains at an easy walk. “Come on, Rose. We’ll go a little further. I’ll give you a good rub-down when we get back, I promise.”

           You smell him before you hear or see him. Cursing under your breath, you wonder how Yongguk found you. And why he bothered.

           Noir blocks Rose’s way before you can bolt away. You glare at his master. Blood paints tiny blossoms on the bandage around Yongguk’s chest where it shows beneath his shirt. You look away before you give in to your concern.

           “Get out of my way.”

           “Where are you going?”

           “Home,” you reply impulsively.

           “Your home is the keep. Come back with me.” Yongguk reaches for your reins but you jerk them out of reach.

           “Not until you admit you were mistaken to forbid me from hunting.”

           He sighs through his nose. “You may not have noticed, but it is going to rain soon.” A glance upward does show clouds turning stormy purple swiftly rolling in. “Come back before we both become drenched.”

           “The forest will suit me well enough.” Defiantly, you nudge Rose towards the trees. Yongguk blocks you again. The insufferable man.

           “Do you truly have a death wish, Ness? Every child knows standing under a tree is inviting lightening to strike.”

           Rather than verbally admit he is right, you say, “Then what exactly do you propose, almighty alpha? We cannot outrun the storm back to the keep.”

           He jerks his head back the way you had come. “There is a half-way point in case we or the wolves need to rest while delivering messages. It is not much better than a hut, but it will be dry and there is a lean-to for the horses to take shelter as well.”

           “Fine. Lead the way.”

           Yongguk was right. The shelter is dug into the side of a hill with a vine covered lean-to patched on the side. Just as you squeeze Rose and Noir in, their sides touching, the sky opens in a thick downpour and the loud crack of nearby thunder. Yongguk hurriedly drags aside the thorn bushes hiding the shelter’s roughly cut wood door. He lets you in first so he can conceal the entry again, but your head and shoulders are still sopping wet.

           Your eyes quickly adjust in the sudden complete darkness. The single room is circular, scarcely tall enough to stand in, and almost empty. A few boxes, a ratty mattress covered with a thick blanket, and a stacked pile of wood take up most of the space. There is little room to occupy unless you sit on the bed or boxes.

           Yongguk’s heat comes close behind you. You stiffen, but he only pulls your shoulder so he can move around you. He reaches up and tugs down a cloth so pinpoints of gray light give a small amount of illumination.

           You watch him kneel to pile some of the wood in a small stone circle. Opting for the bed, you sit down and start wringing out your hair. “We don’t really need a fire. We can both see without a problem.”

           “We are both wet,” he replies without looking up. “The storm should pass quickly, but there is no reason to be wet and chilled while we wait.”

           “For someone who is so reasonable, you can be quite thick-headed about other subjects.”

           “Himchan said something very similar after you left.” A twinkle of wry humor sparks and dies in Yongguk’s tone.

           “Then they agree with me.”

           “Yes.”

           “So you did come to apologize. Good. I might be persuaded to accept it.”

           The fire snaps to life, throwing Yongguk’s face into shadows and planes. His eyes are still dark when he rocks back to his heels to look at you. “I spoke rashly, I am sorry for that. You deserve an explanation for the feelings that caused such action.”

           “And what feelings are those?” Your temper rises again. “Arrogance? Paranoia? Mistrust? Yongguk, I can fight. Not as well as any of you, but enough to hold my own. I love this family we have and would die for it. The others trust me to defend myself and them too if the situation calls for it. Why can’t you?”

           “You misunderstand me,” Yongguk mumbles. He rubs his forehead with his thumbs. “I respect you but-”

           “If you respect me, what in the Goddess’ name did you mean back at the keep? I may not have your experience and you may be the alpha, but I am not a child you put back in the nursery when they go for their first walk and scrape their knee!” You’re grateful there is nothing nearby to throw at him as the child within demands. It is tempting to find something though. “I have not trained for months to spend every night alone waiting for the ‘men-folk’ to come home so I can wipe your boots! I have done nothing but demonstrate I am worthy of trust and my own place when the pride hunts!”

           “I know.”

           “Then why-”

           “It is because you could have died and I would not be able to bear it if you did,” he says quietly.

           Your throat closes even as your mouth falls open. Your heart thuds once, then twice, loud as the thunder outside. All your fury evaporates into shock.

Yongguk sighs and comes to sit beside you. He drops his head into his hands as if the confession exhausted him. His thigh radiates an unnatural warmth beside yours. You can only stare for a few minutes before you are able to find any words at all.  

           “You-” you lick your lips, “you mean you would feel guilty and blame yourself.”

           “Do you think I kissed you because I felt guilty?”

           You are unwilling to say another reason. The only other explanation would be too exhilarating and terrifying. “I thought we agreed to forget it ever happened.”

           “Did you?” Yongguk looks up. “Because I could not.”

           “Why?”

           “Why did I kiss you or why did I not forget? It is the same reason. The same reason I did not want you to return to the hunt.”

            Yongguk sits up straight even though you see his defenses crumbling at last. You meet his eyes, hardly daring to breathe. Your hands, wet from your hair, feel clammy.

           “You are independent, determined, compassionate, wise,” Yongguk blushes, looking down at his hands again, and finishes softly, “and beautiful. How could I not love you?”

           “Love me,” you repeat.

           “When you first came to us, I did not want you to train because I did not want another innocent to become a killer. But you refused to let me to shield you from the world you were thrust into. I watched you grow into your powers, becoming stronger. Becoming more special to me than I could have ever imagined.”

           He pauses, the hand on his knee twitching as if it wants to take yours. Shyly, you turn over your hand to offer it. His fingers reach across the small distance, tracing the lines of your palm so lightly you shiver.

           “When I saw the vampire dangling you, I froze. I could not think. I was scared I would not reach you in time. That another precious person would be snatched from me. After, I was angry. I was angry at myself for being distracted, for allowing you to be danger, for almost failing you. Who and what I love, I will do anything to protect.”

           You curl your fingers so they brush his. “It is not always in your power to protect me, Yongguk. Nor do I let you ‘allow’ me to do anything.”

           “Yes. I should have learned that a long time ago,” Yongguk chuckles. His fingers still so his hand can engulf yours. Lifting his eyes to yours, he vows, “But I will never stop trying to protect you.”

           “Even from yourself?” The way his head jerks confirms what you had suspected. Your other hand cups his cheek. “No one is a saint, but you are far from the fallen man you seem to think you are. You are a good man, a very good one, forced into circumstances that demand harsh decisions. Everything you do is for the good of our people. You are not killing other humans; we are all killing monsters.”

           “I still have blood on my hands.” Yongguk tries to take his hand from yours but you hold on tight. You raise it to your lips to kiss it.

           “Do not say that. I love these hands. Do not disparage something I love.” You kiss the back of his hand again. The way his eyes focus on yours tells you he is completely captured. “I too am protective of those I love.”

           Your joined hands fall to your lap as you lean forward and kiss Yongguk. His lips are wet and taste of rain. He responds slowly, his fingers tightening around yours. Somehow it still makes your head dizzy like you’ve tumbled down a hill. Yongguk lets you guide the kiss, as if he is afraid you will end it at any moment. You need more.

Shifting to more fully face him, you wrap an arm around his neck. You bite down on his lower lip and tug. “Kiss me, Yongguk.”

Those softly spoken words demolish the remaining dams of his feelings. He drops your hand and wraps you in his arms, surging forward to do kiss you more thoroughly with a moan. A hand pushes you closer to him. Light-headedness turns into total giddiness so intoxicating you must cling to his shoulders. Your heart soars into your throat, beating too quickly to stay in your chest.

In comparison, that first kiss was only dipping a toe in the water. This kiss is jumping headfirst into the rapids.

           You try to shift more fully against him. His embrace is too tight to permit the movement, drawing a whimper from you. Yongguk moans again and adjusts his arms. He falls backwards, bringing you with him so you are half sprawled against him.

           His soft noises rumbling into your mouth make you hungrier. Your mouth slips from his. Your lips are everywhere on his face. The corner of his lips, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks. When your tongue rasps against the bottom of his jaw, Yongguk gasps.

           You lick your way down to his neck, one side to the other. Nuzzling aside the collar of his shirt, you inhale deeply. The scent of his desire makes you tremble almost as much as him. You only make him wait a few moments before your teeth graze his shoulder. Another pass of your tongue precedes your bite.

           With a moan that dies down into a purr, his fingers dig into your back. He arches his neck back into the mattress to grant you more skin. But you take your time to taste every single stretch of skin with more swipes of your tongue and worrying of your teeth.

           When you nip at the base of his neck, he says, “Ness, wait.”

           You immediately lift your head, glancing at his chest for new blood on the bandage there. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

           “No.” Yongguk slides a hand along your jaw into your hair and back.

           “Then…?”

           “I just- I want to be sure you do not think you have some obligation to do this or that said what I did with the expectation you-”

           “Have you ever known me to do something I do not want to?”

           Yongguk chuckles and twines a lock of hair around his fingers. He shakes his head. “No.”

           “Then trust me. I want you. All of you.”

           Within seconds, your clothes are lying in a messy heap on the floor. The way he slowly drags his tongue along his bottom lip makes you more eager for him to be bare before you. Yongguk’s adoring hands slide from your hips. They slow when they reach for his own shirt. The shyness that creeps into his eyes is so endearing you decide to help him.

Glancing up at his face, you lay a kiss just above the bandage on his chest. He shivers, but you are too busy kissing your way along his tattoos to grin. Your nails delicately rake up and down his sides, stoking the building want you smell coming off him like a perfume.

Each upward stroke pushes his shirt higher and higher until Yongguk lifts himself up to take it off. You ease yourself down onto your side so he can dispose of his pants. When he shifts to his side and lifts his face to yours, you smile.

Though he called you beautiful, you think he is more resplendent. Light from the fire behind you paints his skin in warmth and gold. You graze your finger along his eyebrows, then down to trace his eyes, nose, lingering on his lips. When your hand smooths away some hair that’s fallen over his eye, Yongguk turns his head to kiss your wrist.

His hand covers yours, sliding down your arm to your waist. He tugs you across the small distance between you to slant his mouth over yours. Yongguk’s kiss is more ardent, more confident, his tongue darting into your mouth for taste after taste. Your bodies press together in that exquisite meeting of hard and soft, heat against heat. Your mind is immediately lost in your nerves that tingle head to toe, the simmering of your blood. Only your fingers buried in his silky hair anchors you.

The first rock of his hips against yours shoots a scorching spike of pleasure through you. The second has you crying out, the sound muffled against Yongguk’s lips. You throw your leg around his hips to urge him closer. To take the final step to make you one.

Yongguk pulls away from your lips and you open your eyes. Your heart flutters as he looks at you, his impassioned eyes lazily drifting over your face. A hand slides up your back to clasp the back of your neck. His fingers rub tiny circles into your skin so you melt further into his arms.

You can tell he is giving you one last chance to stop. You could push him away, put all your clothes back on, and ride home to the keep and he would not blame you for it. As if you could ever release him now that you have him. Stretching your neck, you smile and brush your lips over his in a silent invitation.

Yongguk smiles back and angles your head to kiss you again as he enters you.

Bliss steals your breath. From the way Yongguk’s stutters in his chest, the experience is just as euphoric for him. He holds you nearer so the sinuous muscles of his torso tease your stomach and chest with each heavy buck of his hips. You have no choice but to submit to waves of pleasure winding tighter and tighter.

Passion, made more powerful by its long denial, sweeps you both up in its tumultuous spiral. Yongguk’s even rocking within you becomes labored, halting. He buries his face in your shoulder, deep moans reverberating in your ear and down your spine. You too can feel yourself rushing closer to the final moment your world will shatter. Without warning, it explodes.

As you tremble in languorous ecstasy, you feel Yongguk pull out of you. A growl that sounds more lion than man booms from his mouth as he releases into his hand. Caressing his back and neck, as he quivers, you press a light kiss against his forehead.

After regaining his strength, he sits up. He wrinkles his nose at the mess in his palm and reaches over you to wipe it away with the cloth from the roof.

Yongguk tosses it in the fire and glances at the smoke hole. “It looks like the storm has almost passed.”

You grab the blanket from the bottom of the mattress to your waists. Placing a hand on his arm, you reply, “We should stay a little longer. We have much to talk about.”

For once, Yongguk does not argue.

Previous Chapter, Next Chapter

Kingdom Map, The Keep Map, Weres scale, Were Guide

[archergwenwrites]

Turn the Page

(A/N: For this post. Also, blame this on three glasses of wine, and then the two the second night of writing as to why it’s so long.)

Kane goes into the woods because he has to. He’s a self-sacrificing bastard - at least that’s what Abby says when he leaves with goods to sell should he find another bastion of civilization through the forest. Supposedly they have a lord, a protector, but no one has seen him - just those who tend to a flawless administration - and wolves run rampant.

He finds safety in a castle’s gardens, and as his cart horse bends its neck to graze, he reaches out to an overgrown rose bush.

My mother would love these, he thinks.

There’s a roar, rage he does not understand, and then Kane is staring at the walls of a dungeon, unsure of what he saw.

He stops questioning the animate objects after the first five visits. They are wary, at first, but he tells stories of life in the village until the teapot - who should be dressed in silks and every inch his lady - shares the horror that took them all from happy and carefree to imprisioned, her and her brother the lord orphaned that same night.

“Our mother loved the roses best,” she explains weakly.

“As does mine,” he replies.

Somehow he is moved into a wing of the castle with actual rooms, still without having met the lord. He starts to make himself useful.

“Excuse you,” says the time piece. “I’m the chamberlain.”

“’cept you don’t have real thumbs, do you?” retorts the candelabra, and they fight while Lady Octavia approves the timetable Kane had drawn up.

He’s arranging an airing out of the East Wing, his wing, when a presence looms behind him.

Kane says nothing, keeps himself to a very careful non-reaction as he pencils in carefully scheduled time blocks with the various animate featherdusters and mops. There are a few lively lamps who have figure out how to fluff pillows and blankets, so Kane has them on every room but his. He can do his own laundry, being the only one capable after all.

The presence finally speaks in a gruff, but almost shy voice. “Finn can’t sweep your room.”

Kane paused, then quietly switches the duster with another. “May I ask why, my lord?”

The voice hesitated, “Trysts between staff is technically allowed but discouraged, particularly when one party is trapped in a room and unable to see for herself that the other party was briefly involved with a mop.”

“Ah. Shouldn’t be a problem to keep him away from Raven, then.”

“Do you have any plans for the West Wing?”

Kane does start when his lord quickly speaks. “I- no, no I don’t. I didn’t even think to make one yet-”

“Good. That wing is mine, and mine alone. No one else steps foot in there.”

“Surely to keep it in order-”

“No one.”

Kane inclines his head. “Of course, my lord.” A careful pause as feet start to shuffle away. “When would you like dinner served?”

He hears the smallest sound of surprise and grins. This time his lord is startled. The young man recovers quickly. “My sister usually brings my dinner to the study off the library at half-past seven. Since you have proper limbs, I imagine you can manage to bring it at seven.”

“Did the magic include never-ending food stores?” he asks the teapot, balancing the tray while holding the library door open for her.

“No, but there was a vegetable garden used to supplement the servants’ dinners, so my brother tends to that now that no one else needs to eat but you two. He hunts for himself, but I’ll be sure to have Lincoln set aside some meat for you at least once a week. We obviously can’t go to the market, and you can’t without bringing inquiries we can’t answer. It’s honestly a miracle the king hasn’t come searching for the errant Lord Blake.”

He doesn’t know how to respond to that frustrated confession, so he just adds, “My thanks.”

Kane doesn’t see the young lord anywhere as he sets the tray down. The Lady Octavia motions for him. “Well come on. He’s not going to eat with you. Bellamy’s self-concious about his fine-motor skills now.”

“What are you doing?”

Kane looks up from the vegetable bed and manages not to laugh.

It’s the first time he’s seeing Lord Blake, and he is outfitted in gardening gear. There’s a wide brimmed hat pulled over his horns and something of a mane. Claws poke out of gloves just a hair too big for him, and he has a trowel in one hand, a bucket in the other. An apron is haphazardly tied over his clothes, but at least the rubber boots seem alright. His awkward gait as he steps closer to Kane suggests that his toes aren’t quite what they used to be.

Lord Blake should look terrifying, and had he revealed himself that first night Kane would be afraid. But now, a smile curls around his lips as he opens his slightly dirty hands. “I’m tending to the garden, my lord.”

“I am perfectly capable.”

“Of that I had no doubt. Since I need them, too, I thought I might help. And if you don’t mind me saying so, my lord, some of these plants need to be re-arranged.”

“What do you mean?”

Kane carefully turns back to the vegetable bed next to him. “Beans don’t like to be near practically anything, but carrots can be a good buffer. I’m clearing out this bed to move the berries over since they should move well. Tomatoes and brocolli are also not friends, so I want to open up a third bed, but that can wait since the tomato plants are still small.”

The bucket and trowel roughly drop to the ground. “I have claws and am doing my best. What more do you want from me?”

There is hurt and pain radiating in the statement, and Kane’s fingers curl around the dirt. He wants to scream that he didn’t ask for this, didn’t ask to be hunted and lost, imprisoned and then hired. He didn’t ask for an animate wardobe who watches him while he sleeps because she can’t do anything else, though they’ve agreed to Not Talk about all he’s screamed into his pillow. He didn’t ask to discover that his lord got orphaned and turned into a bear-wolf-lion on the same night.

But he is Marcus Kane, and he’s made enough mistakes before ignoring other’s emotions. He is old - or feels it in this house of youths. His pain will keep.

Carefully, he straightens out the strawberries as if they are all he’s thinking of, that the words rolling off his tongue weren’t carefully aligned as he tries to steer this young man through his storm.

“Well, you are an older brother, and some would say that makes Octavia your responsibility, especially with your parents gone. Despite the fact that she’s a teapot, she is hale and healthy. She’s got a brilliant mind - we’ve debated The Art of War against your more recent military textbooks. Perhaps her education in dancing and needlework have suffered, but she can run a household. She is a perfectly accomplished young lady.

“You are also lord of these lands, steward of the villages. The wolf population is a bit overgrown - you could see to that - yet the your people have not suffered these past ten years. You’ve kept the machine running, somehow.”

Kane shifts, moving to the new garden bed. As he continues, he untangles weeds and pulls them from the dirt, laying their roots and leaves in one sad pile. “I cannot judge you as a man - I barely know you and even then only as my lord. I can assure you that practiced habits become easier, but that does not make life easier. If you were to interact in a community you would find that the more good you do, the more good is expected of you. Your peers will always want for more, and if you do not give it they will find you lacking.”

Here, Kane brushes the dirt from his hands and meets Lord Blake’s eyes. “If you falter, it does not mean you are lacking. Humans make mistakes. And when you do, you have two choices. You can be consumed by it - let it take over your every thought as you drown in guilt. Do not do this.”

If Lord Blake is offended by his steel tone, he does not show it.

“You turn the page. You don’t look back. You do better today than you did yesterday. Only then do you become a better man.”

He lets the silence sit for a moment; he turns back to weeding and waits. Slowly, Lord Blake kneels down, trowl in hand, and begins to wrestle with another garden bed overcome with weeds. Kane waits for the silence to grow companionable, for Lord Blake to be at ease, and then-

“Your gardening needs work though.”

Several of the servants come flying out the doors, certain the two are being attacked only to find them both collapsed in fits of laughter. Worries assagued and sides calmed, Lord Blake looks at his only human servant with a deep smile. “Thank you, ah- um-”

“Kane, my lord. Marcus Kane.”

“Thank you, Kane.”

“I don’t care what your tutor thought! Satan gnawing on Brutus and Cassius as well as Judas is elevating Julius Caesar next to Christ! Even though Judas does have it slightly worse with his head in Satan’s mouth, these are two killers of a mortal man punished as severely as the killer of Christ.”

“Think for a precious second, if you will, chamberlain, but Satan - the biggest Traitor of a Benefactor that ever was - is gnawing on the three most well-known examples of his ilk! There have been other such sinners, of course; they’re immobile in the ice. Yet Caesar’s traitors are also traitors to man and society, disrupting secular government instead of divine. Caesar was not as great as God, no. But have not we been told to offer hospitality to all for what we do the least we do to Christ?”

Kane squeaks.

Outside the library, Octavia smiles.

“Kane, are you married?”

The new copy of Lettres persanes snaps shut as the man in question jumps in his chair. He thinks of a sharp-eyed widow with an even sharper mind before shaking his head. “No, never have been. Why do you ask?”

Lord Blake sets aside De l'esprit des lois and clearly tries not to look nervous. “I was just wondering how you make someone fall in love with you.”

“Seeking to run off with Montesquieu?” 

He wishes that fur would show a blush. “But in all honestly, Lord Blake, you can’t. You can’t make someone give you their love. Sure, you can play the role they want, but they won’t be loving the real you, will they?” Kane sighs. “It’s not easy to accept, I know. Some people never manage it.

“I haven’t read Montesquieu’s new musings. What word are you translating as love? Agape? Eros? Philio?”

“It wasn’t a question on the reading, just one I’ve had for a while. Thank you. I’d also forgotten there was more than just romantic love.”

Kane nods knowingly as Lord Blake reaches for his cup. “Well if the time comes I’d be more than happy to arrange a marriage for you. Come now! A proper lord does not spit out his tea!”

The garden is their refuge. There are no sisters or talking clocks, just the quiet business of nature and soil under their fingers.

Kane is turning over the dirt in another garden bed, prepping it to take the tomato plants, when Lord Blake suddenly leaps forward. “Wait!” Deftly, as his fine-motor skills with claws are much improved, he plucks from the earth a four-leaf clover - along with several of its three-leaf brethren.

He tries to flatten out the crinkled leaves, which is when Kane speaks. “I don’t know if they’re supposed to lie flat. After all, you shouldn’t iron them.”

Lord Blake looks at him in disbelief when Kane adds, “Shouldn’t press your luck.”

He rolls his eyes and groans, “really, Dad?”

They freeze: Lord Blake locking his eyes on the clover, Kane staring at the hoe until he offers, “I’m sorry-” a pause “-was that joke too corny?”

“I give up,” the younger man says, tucking the clover in his apron pocket and standing. He brushes his hands off then throws them in the air. “Puns are the lowest form of humor. I’m out.”

“Don’t you carrot all?”

The garden door slams shut as Kane laughs.

All good things end.

The garden flourishes, Octavia joins their dissection of literature and philosophy, everything but the West Wing is brought back to the pre-curse standards, and Lord Blake offers Kane a look in a magic mirror.

He packs a small bag - “I am coming back, my lord, once she’s well.” - and rides back to the village, haunted by his mother’s sick face and the lost look on Lord Blake’s.

He tries to say nothing about where he’s been - he has a moderate sum of funds to bolster the village and help his mother. He should have known Abby would not be content to let things lie like the others. 

Kane did not expect anyone to be eavesdropping, much less spread rumors of a monster.

He did not expect a mob to form, led by Jaha, immune to reason.

That Abby is the one to lock him in his home should have been a little more surpising.

That Clarke breaks him out, that is a surprise and a most welcome one. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, what his plan is, only that his horse can’t move fast enough, can’t outrun a mob.

He darts through the mess - snatching up teacups before they smash and even catching Finn before he lands in the fireplace - trying to give them an edge when he realizes the absolute worst place they could be.

Kane steps onto the library balcony as Jaha almost topples off it.

“Bellamy.”

There’s blood on his claws, and Kane briefly wonders if its his lord’s or his old friend’s. Or maybe it’s Pike’s, who has his sword drawn, not that it’s doing him any good as he lies motionless on the ground.

“That’s enough,” he says, fearlessly meeting those brown eyes.

“Kane, he’s a beast,” his former friend begins. “Grab the-”

“Stop it. You began this mad war, and I’m finishing it.” Kane looks again at the one erroneously called ‘beast.’ “Turn the page.”

Slowly, the claws unfurl from their grip on Jaha’s shirt and the man can stand on his own. Bellamy takes one step back, then another, then he turns away from the villager and starts for Kane.

He roars suddenly, spinning wildly, and Kane ducks under first his arm then the sword in his back.

Jaha is not so lucky.

The blow sends him stumbling back until he tumbles over the edge of the parapet and falls.

He falls unnoticed, for Kane is easing Bellamy to the ground, onto his side.

“I’m sorry-”

“Quiet, no need.” Kane tears at his flimsy coat, hoping the strips will be long enough to wind around a midsection.

“No, no. I’m sorry. They’re my people- he was your friend. I didn’t want to ki- I didn’t want-” He cuts off with a roar as Kane pulls the blade free. “You must hate me.”

Kane gets one piece to stay, but blood is pooling quicker than he can tear so he just starts pressing, kneeling there desperate, hoping Abby will have another one of her moments of impeccable timing.

“You must hate me.”

His voice is so broken.

“I am sad that they are dead,” Kane begins. “A life snuffed out cannot be returned. I am angry they rushed in without thinking, without listening. No one would have been hurt had they asked me about the rumors instead of taking those to be truth. I feel guilty, for I couldn’t resist the pleas for truth from the one person I trusted and now look where we are. I am so, so worried about you. But I do not feel hatred, do you hear me?”

Bellamy slowly nods.

“Son, I could never hate you.”

Bellamy releases a shuddering, wet breath and goes still.

Kane sinks back onto his heels. “I could never hate you. Argue illogically, let weeds overtake the tomatoes, iron your luck, I don’t care.” His breath shakes as it leaves him. “I don’t care,” he repeats softly, eyes falling closed-

Eyes closed, against pain, don’t see a wind stirring, stars descending to stick to Bellamy’s still form like fireflies to a lantern.

Eyes open at a gasp.

A young man is standing, leaning against a parapet with one arm while the other presses to his back, reddened strips of coat hanging between his fingers. His human fingers are bloody; his dark hair is a curled mop on his head. There is a smattering of freckles across his nose. He looks at Kane with familiar brown eyes and breathes, wincing a bit as he does.

“If it was that easy I should’ve had O say she loved me years ago.”

He tries to take a step forward and falls, but Kane is there to catch him, to pick him up and carrying him through the library and out into the hall. He stands beneath a painting of the late Lord Blake and looks over the chaos of newly humanized servants throughly celebrating while bound villagers watch confused.

“Ahem,” he begins, voice cutting through the chatter. The servants instantly snap to attention, Octavia pressing through once she recongizes what’s wrong. “Is there a Griffin available?”

Kane always liked Clarke, so when she appears, a shock of blonde hair and her mother’s medical bag under one arm, he decides to give her a job whether or not Lord Blake agrees.

From the way Bellamy watches her as she bandages him up, Kane doesn’t think there will be an argument.

“You wanted to see me, Lord Blake?”

The young man looks much better after a week of bedrest with Clarke paid to fuss over him. (He did quickly learn that she would broker no arguments over his care, and expected to be obeyed - the lord in the sickroom.) (Octavia immediately began taking notes.)

“I did.” He hauls himself to a sitting position and pulls some papers closer. “First of all, enough will all this ‘Lord Blake’ business. You’ve cared for me like a father, and saved my life as well as the existences of all those directly under my care in this castle. Bellamy will suffice.

“Second of all, while I cannot elevate you to a position above mine, I can petition the king to recognize you for efforts above the call of duty, and at least grant you a cottage near the gardens for your use, as you please, no strings attached.”

“Bellamy-”

He raises a hand to cut him off. “I will tolerate no argument. You treated and loved me like a son when to the rest of the world I was a monster, a fantastical creature from magical nightmares. Let me honor you as a son should.”

Kane bows, heart swelling. “As you wish.”

“Of course, I hope you will still oversee the management of the household and argue with me about Montesquieu?”

The tone of his voice creeps upwards at the end, and Kane relaxes, smiling. “I thought we might next read some Virgil, build more foundations of thought and art before we tackle another contemporary.”

“But we’ll order anything new Montesquieu writes?”

“Bellamy, I’m not actually your father; you don’t have to ask permission just because I broke your curse with agape love.”

“Agape? Reaching a bit much are you? If it’s familial love wouldn’t it be storge?”

Kane pulls up a chair. “I would’ve gone with philia as the alternative to agape. Someone needs to re-read their Aristotles. Nicomachean Ethics clearly uses the former to refer to-”

                                                                                                            Fin.

[normansollors]

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[readbookywooks]

The Children Are Carried Off

The pirate attack had been a complete surprise: a sure proof that the unscrupulous Hook had conducted it improperly, for to surprise redskins fairly is beyond the wit of the white man.

 By all the unwritten laws of savage warfare it is always the redskin who attacks, and with the wiliness of his race he does it just before the dawn, at which time he knows the courage of the whites to be at its lowest ebb. The white men have in the meantime made a rude stockade on the summit of yonder undulating ground, at the foot of which a stream runs, for it is destruction to be too far from water. There they await the onslaught, the inexperienced ones clutching their revolvers and treading on twigs, but the old hands sleeping tranquilly until just before the dawn. Through the long black night the savage scouts wriggle, snake-like, among the grass without stirring a blade. The brushwood closes behind them, as silently as sand into which a mole has dived. Not a sound is to be heard, save when they give vent to a wonderful imitation of the lonely call of the coyote. The cry is answered by other braves; and some of them do it even better than the coyotes, who are not very good at it. So the chill hours wear on, and the long suspense is horribly trying to the paleface who has to live through it for the first time; but to the trained hand those ghastly calls and still ghastlier silences are but an intimation of how the night is marching.

 That this was the usual procedure was so well known to Hook that in disregarding it he cannot be excused on the plea of ignorance.

 The Piccaninnies, on their part, trusted implicitly to his honour, and their whole action of the night stands out in marked contrast to his. They left nothing undone that was consistent with the reputation of their tribe. With that alertness of the senses which is at once the marvel and despair of civilised peoples, they knew that the pirates were on the island from the moment one of them trod on a dry stick; and in an incredibly short space of time the coyote cries began. Every foot of ground between the spot where Hook had landed his forces and the home under the trees was stealthily examined by braves wearing their mocassins with the heels in front. They found only one hillock with a stream at its base, so that Hook had no choice; here he must establish himself and wait for just before the dawn. Everything being thus mapped out with almost diabolical cunning, the main body of the redskins folded their blankets around them, and in the phlegmatic manner that is to them, the pearl of manhood squatted above the children's home, awaiting the cold moment when they should deal pale death.

 Here dreaming, though wide-awake, of the exquisite tortures to which they were to put him at break of day, those confiding savages were found by the treacherous Hook. From the accounts afterwards supplied by such of the scouts as escaped the carnage, he does not seem even to have paused at the rising ground, though it is certain that in that grey light he must have seen it: no thought of waiting to be attacked appears from first to last to have visited his subtle mind; he would not even hold off till the night was nearly spent; on he pounded with no policy but to fall to [get into combat]. What could the bewildered scouts do, masters as they were of every war-like artifice save this one, but trot helplessly after him, exposing themselves fatally to view, while they gave pathetic utterance to the coyote cry.

 Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors, and they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them. Fell from their eyes then the film through which they had looked at victory. No more would they torture at the stake. For them the happy hunting-grounds was now. They knew it; but as their father's sons they acquitted themselves. Even then they had time to gather in a phalanx [dense formation] that would have been hard to break had they risen quickly, but this they were forbidden to do by the traditions of their race. It is written that the noble savage must never express surprise in the presence of the white. Thus terrible as the sudden appearance of the pirates must have been to them, they remained stationary for a moment, not a muscle moving; as if the foe had come by invitation. Then, indeed, the tradition gallantly upheld, they seized their weapons, and the air was torn with the war-cry; but it was now too late.

 It is no part of ours to describe what was a massacre rather than a fight. Thus perished many of the flower of the Piccaninny tribe. Not all unavenged did they die, for with Lean Wolf fell Alf Mason, to disturb the Spanish Main no more, and among others who bit the dust were Geo. Scourie, Chas. Turley, and the Alsatian Foggerty. Turley fell to the tomahawk of the terrible Panther, who ultimately cut a way through the pirates with Tiger Lily and a small remnant of the tribe.

 To what extent Hook is to blame for his tactics on this occasion is for the historian to decide. Had he waited on the rising ground till the proper hour he and his men would probably have been butchered; and in judging him it is only fair to take this into account. What he should perhaps have done was to acquaint his opponents that he proposed to follow a new method. On the other hand, this, as destroying the element of surprise, would have made his strategy of no avail, so that the whole question is beset with difficulties. One cannot at least withhold a reluctant admiration for the wit that had conceived so bold a scheme, and the fell [deadly] genius with which it was carried out.

 What were his own feelings about himself at that triumphant moment? Fain [gladly] would his dogs have known, as breathing heavily and wiping their cutlasses, they gathered at a discreet distance from his hook, and squinted through their ferret eyes at this extraordinary man. Elation must have been in his heart, but his face did not reflect it: ever a dark and solitary enigma, he stood aloof from his followers in spirit as in substance.

 The night's work was not yet over, for it was not the redskins he had come out to destroy; they were but the bees to be smoked, so that he should get at the honey. It was Pan he wanted, Pan and Wendy and their band, but chiefly Pan.

 Peter was such a small boy that one tends to wonder at the man's hatred of him. True he had flung Hook's arm to the crocodile, but even this and the increased insecurity of life to which it led, owing to the crocodile's pertinacity [persistance], hardly account for a vindictiveness so relentless and malignant. The truth is that there was a something about Peter which goaded the pirate captain to frenzy. It was not his courage, it was not his engaging appearance, it was not --. There is no beating about the bush, for we know quite well what it was, and have got to tell. It was Peter's cockiness.

 This had got on Hook's nerves; it made his iron claw twitch, and at night it disturbed him like an insect. While Peter lived, the tortured man felt that he was a lion in a cage into which a sparrow had come.

 The question now was how to get down the trees, or how to get his dogs down? He ran his greedy eyes over them, searching for the thinnest ones. They wriggled uncomfortably, for they knew he would not scruple [hesitate] to ram them down with poles.

 In the meantime, what of the boys? We have seen them at the first clang of the weapons, turned as it were into stone figures, open-mouthed, all appealing with outstretched arms to Peter; and we return to them as their mouths close, and their arms fall to their sides. The pandemonium above has ceased almost as suddenly as it arose, passed like a fierce gust of wind; but they know that in the passing it has determined their fate.

 Which side had won?

 The pirates, listening avidly at the mouths of the trees, heard the question put by every boy, and alas, they also heard Peter's answer.

 "If the redskins have won," he said, "they will beat the tom- tom; it is always their sign of victory."

 Now Smee had found the tom-tom, and was at that moment sitting on it. "You will never hear the tom-tom again," he muttered, but inaudibly of course, for strict silence had been enjoined [urged]. To his amazement Hook signed him to beat the tom-tom, and slowly there came to Smee an understanding of the dreadful wickedness of the order. Never, probably, had this simple man admired Hook so much.

 Twice Smee beat upon the instrument, and then stopped to listen gleefully.

 "The tom-tom," the miscreants heard Peter cry; "an Indian victory!"

 The doomed children answered with a cheer that was music to the black hearts above, and almost immediately they repeated their good-byes to Peter. This puzzled the pirates, but all their other feelings were swallowed by a base delight that the enemy were about to come up the trees. They smirked at each other and rubbed their hands. Rapidly and silently Hook gave his orders: one man to each tree, and the others to arrange themselves in a line two yards apart.