#ch: Leah

[hannahssimblr]

Night descends upon us and yet, as usual, the stars don’t shine brightly the way that they did last summer when our bonfire roared under clear, sparkling skies. I think of that night now as I sit on a patch of cool earth in the dunes above Dollymount Strand surrounded by rusting cans and the sun-bleached wrappers of discontinued chocolate bars.

I remember the balmy air of late July, how I didn't even heed it until now when the night is still too cold to sit out in yet we all pretend it isn't. Anyway, it’s too late to point it out to the crowd that's already gathered here, drinking and playing music from a speaker that crackles every time the bass gets too loud, so I sit as close as I can to the flames without climbing into the pit with them, and let their heat lick over my skin. 

I share a few beers with a big, severe looking boy next to me for a while. He's got silver spikes protruding from his lip, and high cheek bones that make his face look kind of gaunt and hollow like a Tim Burtonesque character. We called him Lurch at school, because he’s also about six foot five and rake thin, but tonight I learn that Lurch’s real name is Rob, and actually, Rob is a very nice person.

He talks to me about music for ages, about his drum kit and how the neighbours keep complaining to his parents about the noise. I tell him that I’ve always wished I was musical but I have absolutely no sense of rhythm. I’m kind of a loser like that, despite my dreams of being that guy with the guitar who impresses all the girls, but I have long since accepted that I will settle to be a humble music-recommender instead. Jen still keeps all of the silly mix tape CDs I made for her in primary school in her room, and it gives me an inexplicable sense of worthiness whenever I spot them.

Never once during my conversation with Rob do I tell him about the Lurch thing, though it crosses my mind several times. What seemed so funny once in the confines of my little group seems kind of obviously mean now, but I suppose I never took the time to think about it before.

Katie is nice too, the girl with a stammer who snorts when she laughs, which is often once she joins in our conversation, because she seems to think my stories are very funny, as does Rob, and I have to tell them not to laugh so hard because it only encourages me to put myself in more situations that might be entertaining to retell later on. They think that's funny too, but actually, I am being serious.

Still, I know they’ll love that one about the time I was using the desert as a toilet and a military helicopter flew overhead, convincing me that my great aunt’s busybody neighbour had called the FBI to report me for public urination, so I make sure to tell it in the most energetic way I can. It’s easier and way more fun to reveal embarrassing things about myself when I’m drinking, and by the time I have finished telling it, I toss my empty bottle to my feet where four others already lie. I hadn’t even realised I had drunk that much, but who cares when I feel this good.

“Jesus, you’re so funny,” Katie says once her giggles have subsided, “I can’t believe we all thought you were an arsehole.”

“You thought that?”

“Not really,” Rob assures me, “We just thought you were… like, a bit…”

“...of an arsehole,” I finish, and he’s clearly being polite so he denies it, but he shouldn’t bother, really, because I already know how I am. I'm aware of the things I’ve said and done to other kids for the sake of relieving my crushing, constant boredom, never really thinking about the consequences beyond ‘it will be funny’. Maybe I should say I’m sorry. 

“Nah you’re right, I’m kind of a horrible bastard,” and I laugh at myself, which gives them permission to do so too, albeit awkwardly.

“You’re not, you’re not,” Rob assures me, “You definitely weren’t the worst of the guys in our year…”

I want to ask him who is the worst, purely for the satisfaction of hearing him say that it’s Fitzy, or Murphy or Breener or any of those other awful, rugby wanks, but I don’t because someone coming through the grass has derailed my train of thought. 

“What’s she doing here?” 

I have interrupted Rob and now he’s blinking in surprise as he turns to where Leah, fucking Leah, is approaching us. 

“Uh, she comes to talk to Evan sometimes,” he explains, “just for like, a few minutes usually and then she heads off. Do you know her?”

“Yeah.”

I watch with a clenched jaw as she and Evan disappear into the darkness for a few minutes, and pop open a brand new beer bottle as Rob and Katie chat as I sit between them having lost all of my sense of fun in an instant. I’m also drunk, if not very much getting there judging by the slightly blurry flames that dance exotically in front of my eyes. I have a dim thought that it’s probably a good idea to stop drinking if I plan on seeing Jen later. I doubt Michelle’s parents will be too pleased if I show up steaming drunk at their door…

“Oh my God, Jude, I didn’t expect to see you here!” Leah is back and standing right over me. I don’t even bother to look up at her face, and instead just stare at her ratty Vans that I’m almost certain are the same pair she wore when we used to hang out two years ago, and they were ratty back then.

“Yep,” I say. She sits down so closely to me in the sand that I can smell her distinct, Leah smell. She doesn’t smell bad, just like an unpleasant sensory memory. 

“How are you?”

I clear my throat, “Are you buying drugs from teenagers now? Is that what it’s come to?”

“Oh, I thought you already knew how Evan and I knew each other.”

“No.”

“Well, mister policeman, it’s just weed,” she pulls the baggie I saw earlier out of her jacket pocket, “We can even smoke some together now if you like.”

“Weed makes me sick.”

“I remember that! Ha!” She offers it to Rob and Katie who both decline and exchange alarmed looks over our heads.

“Are you going to sit here all night?” I ask her, and even to my own ears it’s unbelievable how rude I am to her, but I don’t care, she deserves it, and it’s not like she even seems to register my tone anyway, she’s always been completely oblivious to what people think about her. She’s that person who hangs around at the party for way too long and keeps bringing up conversations that everyone stopped talking about ages ago. 

“Jude and I go way back,” Leah explains to Katie beside her, “I met him when he was, what,” a nudge to my arm, “thirteen?”

“Twelve.”

“We used to be friends, back when he was fun.”

I scowl and she drapes herself over my shoulder with an effortless laugh as though she somehow believes this is our usual banter, “I’m joking, he’s still so fun! And cute!” She tries to grab my face and I shake her off insistently so she settles for fisting a hand in the front of my sweatshirt to hold me hostage instead, “Isn’t he, though?” she presses poor, sheepish Katie who explodes in a ferocious blush. “Would you say he’s the cutest boy at school?”

“I- I don’t know,” Katie stutters. 

“Well guess what! I got to be the lucky girl who took his virginity!”

I rip her off me but she comes back at me with more grabbing hands and tickling fingers, “Ooh! It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it Judie? Oh, isn’t it?”

I wrench her off me with finality and clamber to my feet, my heart beating, my stomach queasy, “Leave me alone, okay?” I bend down to swipe my beer bottle out of the hollow I made for it in the sand and even then she tries to touch my hair. It infuriates me. “I’m serious! Piss off!” I spit.

“Oh God, mister grumpy!” She says as I stagger around the bonfire to get away from her and everything that she represents. I’m definitely drunk now, it's in my sluggish movements, the way my eyes drift unfocussed from person to person, but being drunk is preferable to remembering Leah as vividly as I would if I were perfectly sober. Right now, it is just snippets of an evening three years ago that play through my mind. The week I turned fourteen, and the hard, frozen November ground by a swing set. The things I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do but thought knew I should by then, and Leah, and the heat of her skin, the smell of her sweat, the hyper fixation I had on that piece of bark mulch I felt tangled in her hair which somehow became the strongest memory of all, something that I still associate with her when I feel the sharp dig of something in my palm.

When I don't see her I don't think of these things, so I circle the bonfire until she is invisible, obscured by the roaring flames and swallowed by the darkness.

Beginning // Prev // Next

[kichedatabase]

[oscarisaacss-wp]

PLOTS IN PROGRESS — Hurricane Drunk, a Twisters Story. (Feat. Leah Berman)

“I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I am not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the Earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.

excerpt / ANONYMOUS

i. pinterest ii. spotify iii. wattpad

[wyatthaliwells]

"Am I a troubled kid? Yeah. You could say that."

Percy Jackson and the Olympians (2023), 🔱created by Rick Riordan

[roguestorm]

The THING about Betsy is that none of the racism body-swap stuff is Betsy’s fault. It was done to her without her consent and it makes sense that she would have weird and conflicted feelings about it.

The OTHER THING about Betsy is that she is NOT REAL. And there was quite a lot of real-world racism surrounding her and her storylines. At the time the initial body swap happened, it was more Claremontian weird race bending, viewing Asianness as a cool aesthetic rather than an identity that belongs to actual people. And then someone invented Kwannon and that made the whole thing worse in some ways with the stealing of a Japanese character’s body, and it was a big mess! And the reverse body swap was intended to rectify that but, from what I remember, it mostly served to make a lot of Asian fans mad that a character that had been Asian for as long as they’d been reading comics was going to be whitewashed.

So to come into ALL OF THAT real-world editorial/authorial context and start talking about how Betsy has body image issues because she’s no longer a sexy ninja is like. A BAD CHOICE. While it might make sense for the character to feel that way, it is a writing decision that fails to take into account the real-world context in which the character exists and the many different ways in which the character has been used in racist storylines. And I understand wanting to write the character accurately and empathize with her unusual predicament, but it just felt so out of touch with what was happening with the character and the reactions from the fans.

[twilghts]

nyctophobia - noun, ( extreme or irrational fear of the night or darkness. )

for the wonderful @teamjacobthot

[pinkfey]

STARDEW VALLEY -> ALL ABOUT LUCY 🍒

"All the big bugs will be in town! Are you coming?"

i saw @littlebirdofprey do an adorable template for their farmer and just had to do one myself!! lucy's portrait was made using this picrew ♡

less yellow coloring bc i’m indecisive :]

[godscobhhq]

Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland

Name: Francesca 'Chessy' Shire Age: 26+ Profession: UTP Pronouns: She/They or They/Them FC suggestions: Emma Corrin, Leah Harvey, Dominique Provost-Chalkley Availability: Open

Biography UTP

Notable character information: Chessy is a bit of a loner and people watcher.

[silencedrage]

LEAH MIKAELSON (@troubleah) said "i'm the devil. now kindly undo these straps."

She gives no other response other than to tighten the leather straps that bind the other to the chair in the center of the room. It's a block of concrete, with little else in the way of decorations (or weapons). Her chainmail mask remains covering her face, and she checks the bonds one more time before looking at the demon that she had come across. Her eyes are normal now, without the pulsing black veins that had startled her, and something tells Bea that catching her off guard again will not be so easy. Without her fellow sister warriors, she knows she is at a disadvantage, but Ava's smile flashes across her vision, reminding her why she is here in the first place. "Answer a few questions, and I'll make this quick," she replies. "You can run away to take over some other unsuspecting soul, and I won't even give chase."

[finalsurvivorgrp]

@bluejeanbaby​

“Fuck, fuck,” Leah said, running as fast as her legs would take her through the woods and away from the lake. She could at least rely on the fact that Jason didn’t move that fast, she doubted that he was going to spice things up now. There weren’t many people at the camp, and she knew that they had a pretty good chance at surviving this.

But she was still scared.

“Get inside, now!” She yelled, seeing the only person not in their cabin at the moment.

[unbeleveable-archive]

Reminder that I don't jive with the canon that Baghra had like a million kids that she just abandoned. In this house we accept Aleksander and Ulla only.

[hannahssimblr]

“Jude,” minutes before the bell rings for the end of lunch, Evan calls me over to him as I pass him, lurking by his locker as he so often is. 

“Yeah?”

“You know Alison Littler, right?”

I saunter over to him, intrigued, and lean against the locker next to his, “Yeah? Why?”

“Do you know where she is?”

“No. Is there a reason I should know?”

“Are you not, like, fucking each other or something?”

I laugh awkwardly, because he doesn’t have to say it like that, and so loudly that at least three passers by heard him. “I dunno, I haven’t seen her since this morning, but we have maths together in an hour. Why?”

“She was supposed to meet me here, that's all, I’ve been waiting for the whole break for her.”

I find this amusing, “How do you know Alison Littler, Evan?”

“Oh, well, you know… everyone knows her.”

“Yeah but I didn’t realise you were on hanging out terms with her. Since when?”

“We’re not,” he says, “and if we were, so what? Would you be jealous?”

“No, I’m just a bit curious about what’s happening here.”

“Is Alison’s business your business?”

I grin, “No, but I’m nosy.”

He gives in reluctantly, “I have something for her. I said I’d give it to her, and she hasn’t turned up. That’s all.”

I shrug, “Okay well, I don’t know what happened, sorry. Can I pass on a message?”

He chews on his lip, “I’d text her again but maybe her phone is dead. If you see her later will you tell her you saw me? Let her know I’ll be here after school until about a quarter past four.”

“Yeah, sure,” I pull back to lightly punch his arm but it makes him flinch and then I feel like I should apologise for frightening him. He’s a bit skittish, and these typical, aggressive boy things I’ve become accustomed to doing likely won't to go over well. “Uh, sorry about-” I say, and my words are clipped short by the abrupt wail of the bell through the narrow hallway. I turn to head toward German class, “Um, so Alison, yeah, I’ll tell her. Quarter past four.”

“Thanks,” He says, and slings his bag over his shoulder as he walks the other way. 

Later, Alison is missing from maths, and now I am distracted by her absence. My eyes keep drifting toward her empty desk, where she is usually perched right in front me, hair draped over the back of her chair and wafting vanilla scented shampoo my way. From where she sits she is right within range for my flirtatious torment, for me to kick the legs of her chair while she tries to draw straight lines with her ruler or poke her with a pen when she’s trying to ask a question, but not today. She’s gone, and I have this strange, niggling feeling that something isn’t quite right. 

I smuggle my phone out of my pocket and text her under the desk. 

You go home sick today? 

“Jude, phone please,” The teacher says, because she’s the type that watches me all class long for even a hint of wrongdoing. She barely lets me away with anything, so usually I have to act out when her back is turned or when she’s gone to the toilet or something. She stands in front of me now and snaps her fingers at me like I’m some kind of unruly feral dog, so I hand my phone over without protest and let her store it in her drawer until we’ve completed our calculus lesson. 

I spend the rest of the class wondering if Alison has texted back. 

“Hey,” before the last class of the day I block Tara Neary’s access to her locker with my body and note the look of utter delight on her face. It is because I am giving her attention, and I’m not blind to the effect I seem to have on these girls. It’s because I’m tall, I think, but so often they shrink back timidly like Tara and gaze up at me through lashes, trembling nervously at their own imaginings of the things they want me to do to them. Her expression quickly turns to crushing disappointment the moment I start quizzing her about Alison. 

“She’s in some of your classes, right?”

“Um, yeah but I don’t know her that well or anything.”

“Really? I thought you hung out.”

“Sometimes,” Tara says reluctantly as she nudges me out of the way to swap the books in her bag with those in her locker, “But I don’t know where she is. She was in chemistry this morning, and she wasn’t in Irish this afternoon,” A shrug, “sorry, I don’t know anything else. She probably had her period and went home or something.” Tara glances at me with some measure of optimism, as though this revelation that Alison does in fact, get a period may have frightened and disgusted me enough to put me off her, but she can try that one with lesser boys. I’ve been so inundated by girls and women my whole life, platonically, familially and romantically that periods of all things do not shock me. There are far scarier things about women. 

“Okay, thanks, well, if you see her tell her I was asking for her.”

“I will.”

She won’t.

Evan is standing forlornly by his locker at the end of the day, and as I pass him I give him the nod. “No sign?” 

“No, I suppose she went home sick.”

“Yeah, I’d say so. See you tomorrow, Evan.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Out by the gates in the hazy light that girl I used to know is there again. She sees me and waves, and this time I cannot pretend that I haven’t seen her back, so I wave too, and there is nowhere to go but past her, so I approach her. 

“What are you doing here?” I say, and I had hoped that my words would come out sounding a bit less accusatory but it’s difficult. 

Leah smiles and wraps her arms around herself to shield from the cold. She’s wearing a coat, but it isn’t thick enough to protect her from this cold snap. “I’m just waiting for someone.”

“A sibling?”

“No.”

I peer at her, wishing I didn’t feel so guarded and suspicious, but my body reacts to her long before I do. Always. “Do you ever think it’s weird that you’re nineteen and you’re still hanging around your old secondary school?”

She scoffs, and I shrug, “Just wondering, like.” 

She fixes her face so that it is soft despite my offensive remarks, nostalgic, affectionate, even, the one she always makes when she looks at me and it annoys me. “Just an acquaintance is all, I said I’d be here at the gates.”

“Right.”

“How’s your friend Jen?”

“She’s doing fine.”

“Oh, that’s good. She was such a nice girl.”

“Yeah, she is,” I almost turn to go before I spin back to her “She’s actually doing really well. She’s sorting everything out and she’s happy.” I’m not sure where this sudden burst of childish venom came from, or whether it’s really true that Jen is sorting things out or if she’s expressly happy, but I say it anyway in defence so that I can prove that she hasn’t turned out the way that many people expected her to.

“Did you hear Pete was put in a psych unit?”

I falter, “Pete Lee?” 

She nods, “He went crazy, apparently, and his dad had to wrestle a knife out of his hand.” 

I remember Pete Lee. He was a quiet, but nice guy. A little weird, sure, but relatively harmless. He liked dance music and always wore these really bright, neon coloured runners. I used to talk to him about games we both played on the playstation and he taught me how to huff deodorant fumes until I felt like I was floating through time and space above the little dingy park where we used to hang out. We were thirteen. Now we are seventeen and Pete Lee is in a psychiatric facility, which makes him the second boy from that small group of peers to have a psychotic break. 

I want to say that Pete didn’t deserve this, that if we’d all been more careful back then with the things we used and the things we developed a taste for then all this wouldn’t have had to happen. But we were barely teenagers, we didn’t really know what we were getting into, someone else should have known better, like Leah, maybe. She was there. She should have warned us that solvent abuse turns to substance abuse so easily that you don’t really see it happening, but I know that it is too much to expect from her, so I don’t say this.

Or anything else aside from, “Oh, that’s really sad.” 

She sighs unhappily, “Yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes.”

“I suppose,” I reply, and begin walking away from her. 

“Will you tell Jen I was asking about her?” She calls after me, and I don’t turn around. 

“Yeah,” I say, though she probably already knows I'm lying.

Beginning // Prev // Next

[kichedatabase]

[oscarisaacss-wp]

12 DAYS OF GIFMAS… DAY 9, your oc + their character profile: LEAH BERMAN in Hurricane Drunk, A Twisters Fanfiction.

i. pinterest ii. spotify iii. wattpad

[wyatthaliwells]

New stills from "Percy Jackson and the Olympians", featuring Walker Scobell, Leah Jeffries, and Aryan Simhadri as Percy Jackson, Annabeth Chase, and Grover Underwood respectively.

via Entertainment Weekly

[lordgodjehovahsway]

Genesis 46: God Tells Jacob to Go Into Egypt

1 So Israel set out with all that was his, and when he reached Beersheba, he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.

2 And God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said, “Jacob! Jacob!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

3 “I am God, the God of your father,” he said. “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. 

4 I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph’s own hand will close your eyes.”

5 Then Jacob left Beersheba, and Israel’s sons took their father Jacob and their children and their wives in the carts that Pharaoh had sent to transport him. 

6 So Jacob and all his offspring went to Egypt, taking with them their livestock and the possessions they had acquired in Canaan. 

7 Jacob brought with him to Egypt his sons and grandsons and his daughters and granddaughters—all his offspring.

8 These are the names of the sons of Israel (Jacob and his descendants) who went to Egypt:

Reuben the firstborn of Jacob.

9 The sons of Reuben:

Hanok, Pallu, Hezron and Karmi.

10 The sons of Simeon:

Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jakin, Zohar and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman.

11 The sons of Levi:

Gershon, Kohath and Merari.

12 The sons of Judah:

Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez and Zerah (but Er and Onan had died in the land of Canaan).

The sons of Perez:

Hezron and Hamul.

13 The sons of Issachar:

Tola, Puah, Jashub and Shimron.

14 The sons of Zebulun:

Sered, Elon and Jahleel.

15 These were the sons Leah bore to Jacob in Paddan Aram, besides his daughter Dinah. These sons and daughters of his were thirty-three in all.

16 The sons of Gad:

Zephon, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi and Areli.

17 The sons of Asher:

Imnah, Ishvah, Ishvi and Beriah.

Their sister was Serah.

The sons of Beriah:

Heber and Malkiel.

18 These were the children born to Jacob by Zilpah, whom Laban had given to his daughter Leah—sixteen in all.

19 The sons of Jacob’s wife Rachel:

Joseph and Benjamin. 

20 In Egypt, Manasseh and Ephraim were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On.

21 The sons of Benjamin:

Bela, Beker, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Ehi, Rosh, Muppim, Huppim and Ard.

22 These were the sons of Rachel who were born to Jacob—fourteen in all.

23 The son of Dan:

Hushim.

24 The sons of Naphtali:

Jahziel, Guni, Jezer and Shillem.

25 These were the sons born to Jacob by Bilhah, whom Laban had given to his daughter Rachel—seven in all.

26 All those who went to Egypt with Jacob—those who were his direct descendants, not counting his sons’ wives—numbered sixty-six persons. 

27 With the two sons who had been born to Joseph in Egypt, the members of Jacob’s family, which went to Egypt, were seventy in all.

28 Now Jacob sent Judah ahead of him to Joseph to get directions to Goshen. When they arrived in the region of Goshen, 

29 Joseph had his chariot made ready and went to Goshen to meet his father Israel. As soon as Joseph appeared before him, he threw his arms around his father and wept for a long time.

30 Israel said to Joseph, “Now I am ready to die, since I have seen for myself that you are still alive.”

31 Then Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and speak to Pharaoh and will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were living in the land of Canaan, have come to me. 

32 The men are shepherds; they tend livestock, and they have brought along their flocks and herds and everything they own.’ 

33 When Pharaoh calls you in and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ 

34 you should answer, ‘Your servants have tended livestock from our boyhood on, just as our fathers did.’ Then you will be allowed to settle in the region of Goshen, for all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians.”