#david moss imagine

[everythingelseisextra]

David and Goliath

Part Sixteen: Cain (Tommy's POV)

Description: Tommy fucks up. :) Warnings: references to rape, references to suicide, language, minor self harm Word Count: 3490 Tag List: @theshelbyslimited  @ttaechi  @weaponizedvirtue  @Majesticcmey  @Optimisticsandwichgladiator  @zablife  @princesssterek  @mm0thie  @callsignvenus @ay0nha  @mgdixon  @fairytale07 @dreamy-caramel  @ce1iat  @algae-tm @dragonsondragons @trentknd @nothingofsimplicity @babayaga67 @shelbydelrey @globetrotter28 @look-at-the-soul @notalxx @chaengist

Arrow House sits in silence, only half sane. The ghosts of the Shelby family haunt the entrance, their shouts echoing in your ears. The commotion in the entryway reached you, even as you sat in the master bedroom, and Polly’s cries and Arthur’s yells and John’s indignant roars fill the quiet room. You close your eyes, and you can imagine the police, Moss in their midst, forcing them into the darkened, freezing cells that you yourself sat in only a few days ago. And Tommy at the edge of it, watching his family taken from him as a consequence of his own actions, an unforgivable choice he made. 

You expect him to join you when he’s ready. It tugs on you, the sense that you need to protect him from himself, but you have to trust that his ability to fight his own mind will hold out. You trust that your presence in the house is reason enough for him to keep the gun in its drawer.

You think that this will be another thing he buries so deep that he forgets there’s anything underground. This will be too painful for him to keep in his hands, and it will trickle out between the cracks of his fingers until there is nothing to hold. His family is his core, the glowing ember of warmth that lives next to the heart he likes to pretend is stone. Now, he’s lost them. Now, all he has is you.

It’s some time before he enters the room. He doesn’t look at you, just sweeps past, heading into the bathroom. He closes the door behind him and water runs softly from behind it. You wait in silence, leaning back in your chair and closing your eyes, listening to the impure silence. The water stops, the door creaks open, and his footsteps slowly walk across the room. You open your eyes to find him heading towards the door, eyes set on the wooden floor in front of him. Your eyes narrow. There’s a hesitation to each step he takes, a slight pause, a tilt of his head. You’re waiting for him. He’s waiting for you. 

“Tommy.” You stand and walk over to him, your bare feet cold on the wood. Part of you wants to inject some playfulness into your words, but the rest of you knows that, after something like this, that might be his breaking point. “Hey, come sit. Take a second to talk to me.” 

His gaze stays on the floor, but, almost imperceptibly, he nods. You step back and lead him over to the chair you’d been sitting in, in front of a small desk that you’d claimed as yours the past few days. You sit on the bed, facing him, hands on either side of you. Soft light flows from the window next to you, and the sunrays seem to gentle your gazes on each other, creating a sort of barrier. It’s warm on your face and reflects in his eyes, which refuse to look at you.

“I would give you a pep-talk,” you start, nervousness slowing your words. “I would tell you that you’ve had high highs and low lows, and that the pendulum will swing back up again, but I won’t. I respect you too much for that. You and I both know that life tends to kick you while you’re down. We know that there’s no such thing as rock bottom, it’s always possible to go lower. So, all I’ll say is this; I’m here. I’m not leaving. As complicated as I’m learning your life is, I’d like to try to be simple together. If you want to be alone, that’s okay. If you don’t, I can be with you.”

He leans back in his chair, sighing. Exhaustion tightens his skin over his bones, his face drawn, his eyes a little glassy. “You’re not leaving.”

“No.” You furrow your brow, confused. “Why would I?”

“My family is gone. My boy is back. I’m a new man.” He slides a small metal container from his pocket, opens it, and pulls out a cigarette. “I have no room in my life for a woman who sets no store for a man’s needs.”

You nod slowly, almost incredulous. “You’re telling me that, after all this, you want me to leave because I won’t fuck you.”

He inclines his head, reaching out to offer you a cigarette. Your jaw clenches and you ignore his hand. Your next words are clipped. “My horses are literally in your stables. I’m not sure what kind of crisis move you’re making here, but it feels like one that’ll be… how should I say this in a way you’ll understand? Bad for business.” 

He lights his cigarette and takes a long drag. He speaks on the exhale. “Bad for business is a woman I can’t explain living in my house. You’re not a whore, you’re not my wife, you’re not the mother of my son.” 

You chuckle. “So you’re telling me I either become your whore, marry you, or become a nanny for Charles.” 

“I’m telling you to leave.” 

“And then, months later, hear that you’ve blown your brains out, because no one, including me, would pick up the phone.” 

“Curly will start moving your horses in the morning. I’ve covered the cost of transportation.”

“How kind of you.” 

“In the meantime, you’ll pack. You’ll prepare yourself to leave.” He wiggles his cigarette at you, eyes dull. 

“And what if I say no?” You lean forward, almost mocking. 

“If you say no, then, unfortunately, I may have to get the authorities involved.” 

“‘Yes, hello, I’d like to report that a woman who I said I’d protect and invited to live with me is living in my house. Has she committed a crime? Yes, she won’t fuck me when I want, because I’m a teenaged boy who needs to get off every thirty minutes.” You let anger slide into your voice, let it bite. “Jesus Christ, listen to yourself.” 

He blinks blankly at you, then rises with a soft groan. “There’s work to be done. Please collect your things.”

“Thomas.” You stand, hands curling into fists, then relaxing. “You send me away now, you’re sending me back to the life I used to live. If you understand that, you’re as bad as the men who sold and raped me.” 

His eyebrows raise in an infuriatingly bewildered expression, then he shakes his head. “I am. I apologize if that wasn’t clear from the start.” 

—

Night falls. Fog fills the air around you, rises from the warm bodies of the horses. Unlike your own barn, Tommy’s is lit, and you can see the confused, wide, liquid eyes staring at you from within the stalls. Draco nickers quietly, throwing his head. He’s been your rock, your shoulder to cry on, the only comfort to you on nights where your body felt as battered and broken and abused as it had during those awful years of horror. 

It’s not him you stand with, though. It’s not his mane you bury your tears in, not his warm body you lean against to carry your shivering weight. Iris had one more month of recovery before he would be able to be ridden again, and now, you have to apologize to him. You have to apologize to all of them, in time, for being unable to care for them. For forfeiting the safety you thought you had. For failing. 

You would be brought back to your own property in an hour. Your horses would trickle in after you. You’d feed them, slip back into the routine of caring for them, and the timer on your life would start to count down. You could fight. You would fight. You’d fight tooth and nail, use every bit of strength built up over years of manual labor, shoot straight and fast and confident, and still, you know you’ll lose. 

Iris turns his head to blink at you as you stand by his side, leaning your weight on his shoulder. You wipe your face of tears and draw yourself up, pulling your shoulders back and squaring your legs to your hips like a soldier. You stand strong. Right now, you’re a survivor. Your quiet claim to life is that you fought for it. Like David with Goliath, you stood against a gargantuan opponent and managed to live to tell the tale. And, here you are, with your bags packed, ready to walk yourself back to that Goliath and allow him to smash your skull. You have no slingshot. You have no rock. There is no God on your side. 

Your fingers gently pull through the knots in Iris’ mane. You should be angry. There should be a burning anger in you that threatens to overwhelm. You should feel it in your bones, in your heart and veins, and you should act in some sort of way on it. You should set fire to his garden, release his horses to the wild. 

Truth is, you don’t know how to be angry with someone. All your life, you’ve been taught to stand down, to take whatever comes without question, and to continue despite it all. You’ve been trained to cower, to take each hit without protest. A cornered animal will always bite, but an abused pet will flinch away, fearful, all the teeth beaten out of it. You weren’t meant to fight as hard as you do. 

You close your eyes, and like Tommy said for you to do, you prepare to leave. 

Your body has a master and it is not you, and it is not God. Caged by a twisted form of humanity, you will be an animal at a zoo. You will gawked and stared at, poked and prodded, and, behind the scenes, you will be used for all your worth. This body you were born in ripples with scars from the years of prostitution and mental torture, and it’s a cold sort of hell. So much touch and so little care. You are only worth so much. You know the literal price of your life. You know how much this body of yours sells for. 

When you open your eyes, the world is in black and white. You will not see the blood they rip from your veins. You will not see the color of their bare skin. Your hand moves from Iris’ mane to your upper arm, and you press down on it, your fingernails biting into your skin. There’s an echo of pain somewhere in you, but your skin is so thick that it’s separate, a step away from your consciousness. You will not feel the penetration. You will not feel the hands grabbing at your flesh, you will not feel their bodies pressed against you. A horse calls and the sound bounces away from you, not quite touching you, and you take a deep breath. You will not hear their moans or the heated lies they tell you in the dark. 

This body that is all you have will no longer be yours. It is only a matter of time. 

The rest of the night crawls past you as a blur. You know you are steady. You know that you step with purpose, your head held high, with no connection with what you feel or how you will survive this. You lift your suitcase and walk down the elegant, well-lit stairs, the portraits of Tommy’s late wife staring down at you with a gaze that tells you that you are lesser. You haven’t seen him since he left the master bedroom. There’s a murmur of emotion in you when you think of him, but you brush past it in your mind. There is no room for you in his life. 

A car waits out front for you. You take a deep breath and look up at the stars. When you were younger, before the world turned against you, you thought you would reach out and touch them even if it burned. Now, you know you could, and the fire would eat away at you, and you would feel nothing. You thought you’d been as close to death as you could be without dying, but this emptiness in you, this blurred vision, this hollow chest is proof that you can stand hand in hand and not die. Maybe, you think, maybe you would rather die than become a commodity once again. There is a gun in the kitchen drawer. 

You slip into the back seat of the car, and, at least, it is warm. The driver glances back at you in the mirror. He says something that washes over you and away, and you turn to look out the window, then twist to look back at Arrow House. A single light shines from the drawing room, the curtain pulled back, and you know he is watching. Despicable and traitorous, he watches you crawl back to a life you said you would never live again. 

You turn back as the car begins to move out of the driveway. You close your eyes and a tear rolls out. You sit in the darkness and shrink into your mind, sitting in the back of it, watching through as your body breathes and shifts and lives apart from you, without you. You wipe the tear and, eyes still closed, you melt into the atmosphere and become nothing. 

The car jerks to a stop and you open your eyes. The driver lets out a slow breath and glances back at you, then looks back through the windshield. 

Lit by the headlights in sharp relief, Tommy stands, breathing hard as if he’d run to stop you. You watch him, expectation in his eyes, and you see a spoiled little boy who enjoys playing games. 

“Keep driving,” you say, voice hoarse.

“Ma’am, I can’t. He’s—”

“Go around.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Hesitantly, the driver inches the car forward, turning to move around Tommy, who’s eyes widen slightly. 

He reaches underneath his coat and pulls out his gun, pointing it at the driver. 

“Ma’am, I—” Panic fills the driver’s voice. “I’m sorry, this isn’t—”

“It’s okay. Stop the car.” 

He does as you say, and, slowly, you open the door and step out into the night. 

You stay where you are in the darkness, letting Tommy stay in the light. You wait for him to speak first. 

“You forgot something.” His voice carries over the sound of the engine. 

You cross your arms, trying to warm yourself from the cold. “Oh, did I? Please, enlighten me.” 

“Come into the light, and I’ll show you.” 

“No.” 

He looks up at the black sky, then steps out into the darkness, coming within a few feet of you. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small square box, rounded corners, velvet wrapped. Your heart goes cold. He opens it and holds it out. A sleek, silver ring glints in the light from the headlights, golden highlights sparking. You shiver and look up at him. 

“Not a whore, not a mother.” He smiles faintly. “Yet.”

You slap him. Not hard, but enough to make your point. Then, without a word, you turn and walk down the long driveway back to the house. In your periphery, you watch him reach up and touch his cheek where you hit him, then slowly close the box and place it back in his pocket. 

—

He waits an hour before he seeks you out. You’re curled in the fetal position, lying in one of the spare bedrooms. You stare blankly at the wall across from you. There’s no color to your vision. The pillow has long since dried from your tears. 

He knocks on the door, waits a full minute for a response. When he doesn’t get one, he quietly lets himself in. His footsteps are bare and light. He sits on the opposite side of the bed, sighing, and you close your eyes again. You’re not sure you want to hear what he has to say. 

“I’m not a good man.” His voice is quiet, almost shameful, and he speaks to the ground, faint to you. “I’ve made that clear tonight. You never heard about me cause you were never in Birmingham. If you had, you’d know, I’m not a good man.”

You clench your jaw and stay quiet, wait for him to say what he thinks will make up for the pain and terror he’s caused. 

He clicks his tongue, almost wincing. “Lost my family today. Decided that meant I needed a fresh start. Needed to move away from all this— this Peaky Blinders shit and focus on more gentlemanly matters. I felt possessed to get away from it all. From any reminder of it. That included you.” He takes a slow breath, sighing it out. “You reminded me, as you should have, that a better man would never send you away. I would be sending you and your horses to death or worse. It took me far too long to remember that, and for that, I am sorry.” 

You open your eyes, blinking hard, trying to stop tears from rolling out once more. 

“You saved my life. I can’t return the favor, not in the same way, but I can preserve yours. That I will do. I won’t try to send you away again. I understand now how misguided that was.” You feel his gaze on your back and you try to smooth out your breathing, steady yourself so he can’t see that you’re human, that you’re affected by him. 

He’s quiet for a moment, then, voice weak and childish, he manages two words you never truly expected him to say. “I’m sorry.” 

You sniffle and croak out a short, shaky sentence. “Am I worth anything to you?” 

“Yes.” His response comes immediately. “You are.”

“Then why don’t you act like it?” 

“I told you that first night. Something in me has been broken since the war. Maybe since my mum. I don’t have the words for it. You’ve seen it, now. You’ve seen it.” 

You nod shakily. “You were ready to watch me drive off to my death.” 

“I would never have let you leave the driveway.” 

“But you let me think you would.” A tear leaks out and you angrily wipe it away. “You let me think that you cared so little about me that you would watch me go back to a life I couldn’t survive.”

“You know what I think?” He shifts towards you, turning his body so he faces your back.. “I think that you’re the first person to see the fucking rotten part of me and still stay in this house.”

“I have nowhere else to go, Tom.” Your voice breaks. “You realize that. I have nowhere else to go, and you can’t decide whether you want me or not, and I’m worthless unless I sleep with you or marry you.” 

His voice drops to a mere murmur. “I want you.” 

“You didn’t an hour ago.” 

“I told you I was sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t enough!” You sit up, fully crying now, and face him. “You fucked up, and I don’t know where there is to go from here.” 

“I do. I know where to go.” He reaches back into his pocket and pulls out the ring box. “I—”

“Stop! Stop with the fucking ring! I don’t want to belong to you, I don’t want—”

“Listen. You can say no. Just fucking listen.” His hand shakes slightly as he holds it in his lap. “I’m not a good man. I try to be, but I’m not. But you— you make me think I can be if I try. That’s a rare fucking thing. You will never belong to me. You will never belong to anyone. It’s a shot in the fucking dark, and things like this come and go as they please, but if I can, if I could, I’d like to be that shot in the dark. If it’s up to me, it’ll be us in the end. I’m not a good man, but I promise, I will be good to you and for you. Love is far, far away, but it gets closer when I’m with you. So, I’m asking you, because I need you with me, to look past the way I hurt you and see that I do care for you. I do think you’re worth something.” He reaches out and gently wipes a tear from your cheek, hand trembling. “I’m asking for a selfish thing. I’m asking for you to see the blood on my hands and love me anyway. I’m asking you to marry me.” 

He is broken promises and shaking fists, and you know, he did not mean to be cruel, but that doesn’t mean he was kind to you. So, you take a breath, trying to stay steady, and you open your mouth to reply.

[phantmheart]

THE CLIFFS were Athena’s favourite place to be, other than at home with her family and with her plants. Up here, with the wind in her hair, the smell of the salty sea getting up her nose, and with the incredible view of the water stretching for miles, it was hard not to love it. She felt untethered to society here, free as the gulls that soared above her, but it made her aware that the was world incredibly large.

Athena traversed the path along the Cliffs, knowing she could do this with her eyes closed and not be feared of taking a misstep, and observed the scatterings of clover, yellow wild indigo, and other wild flowers. She loved the variety of flora up here and remembered it being the spot she would come to when she wanted to make little bouquets for Lillian.

She knew these cliffs like the back of her hand, so when she saw a large box beside a moss-covered boulder she froze. This was weird, even for someone like Athena. Especially when she saw the initials A.V.L. monogrammed on the lid.

The box was like a treasure chest, made of dark wood with scuffed gold hinges and trim along the edges, and standing on wide gold feet that were slightly wedged into the earth. Ivy had creeped around the box like a chain protecting its contents and almost covered the chunky padlock that hung on the front.

Athena recognised it immediately. It was the box she kept in the shadows of her wardrobe, a container for the memories of a period of time she longed to return to. She approached and kneeled down, reaching for the padlock. It took some effort to shimmy it from the latch, but when the lid was opened a wave of nostalgia and nausea came over Athena when she saw what was inside.

All of the letters she had received from David had been neatly stacked and wrapped in a royal blue ribbon. On the top letter she could see her name written in his immaculate hand and traced it with the tip of her finger, imagining him smiling as he drew the pen across the envelope. But he couldn’t have been the happy if he stopped writing with no warning. Nothing would ever convince Athena to open the letters and reread what was there. It was all too romantic, too pure, and felt too much like one big lie.

There were also half-ripped tickets from several cinema and theatre showings, pressed buttercups and daisies weaved into a flower crown, a small collection of white and pale pink shells, pebbles of various shapes, and stuffed right at the bottom were several photographs printed on quality glossy card. Each of them with dates on the back accompanied by doodles of hearts, all in Athena’s meticulous handwriting.

The first photograph was of Athena by herself, donning her most beautiful summer dress- white, knee length, with tiny cherry blossoms dashed across the skirt- with the glittering ocean in the background. A wide smile was spread across her face, her golden hair windswept, and in her hand was a single red rose. She felt sick to her stomach when she saw it, painfully reminded that this photo was taken on what she considered to be the happiest day of her life.

The second photograph was taken on the same day when a kind elderly lady offered to snap a picture of Athena and David together. His arm was around her shoulder, hers around his waist, both smiling softly as they stood against the backdrop of the beach. Staring at the photo, she could imagine the warmth of his touch and how safe, how joyous, she was in that moment.

She felt her hands and lip tremble, a lump rise in her throat, and tears beginning to blur her vision. Athena had never been happier than when she was with David, but he had broke the heart that she had kept protected for so long out of fear that something would go wrong. Of course it would go wrong. Athena should have expected it. She was weird, quiet, stubborn, sensitive, and talked to her plants like it was no big deal. Why, or how, could anybody really love her?

The tidal wave of emotion eventually began to calm and after a moment Athena stared, puzzled, at the box. Everything in it, except the letters, had been burned. She had put the items on a fire in the Landry home’s back garden and watched them turn to ashes. She was sure of this. So how could those items be in tact? How?

Well, if fire couldn’t destroy them, then they could could be locked away again, tossed into the ocean below, and find a new home in the dark depths of the water with nothing but seaweed and jagged rocks for company. She wanted to forget everything that had been crammed inside the box; she never wanted to return to that life. It was too painful and she was a completely different person- a fragment of what she was now.

Athena Landry was not allowed to be happy. She was not allowed love. She was destined to be alone, alone as this godforsaken box would be when it found itself lost to the ocean and lost to time.

But she never remembered throwing it over the cliff. She never remembered retreating home and locking herself in her room. But those dredges of faded memories sure as hell felt real. That was a feeling Athena never would forget, whether in reality or in dreams. It was a scar too big and too stark on her soul.

[bodybeyondstories]

Just ignore it - 5

The gang takes a field trip to the Marshlands to study the artifact that Blake brought in. As they get closer, David loses even more control over his reality warping imagination, and things get weird. Then they get weirder.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Previous) | 6 (Next)

MaleTF // Ass Growth // Dick Growth // Growth // Macro // Suggestion // nsfw

Author note: I was reflecting on how this series was originally supposed to end with part 2, but then @alias-miniature shared some words of encouragement and here we are. I think I wrote the climax of this chapter while I was still playing around with part 3, I've just been spending months finding excuses to wax poetic about some wobbly spacetime nonsense lol.

---

“Ooo are we taking the Mystery Machine?” I asked, voice echoing off the concrete pillars of the parking garage.

“We really don’t need to call it that,” said Armand. He pushed a utility cart laden with equipment as he led our group towards a row of old vehicles that the Center for Supernatural Sciences had acquired used, offhand, or through some nefarious means over the years, the most recent of which being a blue and green SUV well suited for group field trips off the beaten path. The obvious nickname being to me–and most everyone else in my opinion–the Mystery Machine.

“But we are taking it,” Lee confirmed.

Armand opened the hatchback, revealing a spacious interior already pre-prepped for our little adventure. The entire second row had been removed, as well as all but one seat in the back. Packs of what looked like hiking supplies, snacks, and a cooler were arranged on the floor toward the front, leaving an open space just large enough for our pallet full of magical gizmos. Without thinking, I squatted down and picked it up, sliding it neatly into place.

“What?” I asked, noticing Armand’s stare. “Does it not go there?” I quickly remembered that lifting the entire pallet of whimsical yet heavy duty tools and gadgets like a sack of potatoes was not a normal thing that someone was supposed to be able to do. Even someone with my physique. I’d been having some hiccups in getting used to my new strength, evidenced by the similarly incredulous stares that morning as I was casually outpacing rush hour traffic on my bike to work.

“We’ll fill you in,” said Lee, patting Armand on the shoulder as he strolled past us to lounge in the lone third row seat, elegantly stretching his legs across the extra space. 

Armand sighed in resignation, hopping into the driver's seat as I plopped down into the passenger. “We’re meeting Blake at the site in the Marshlands, I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”

—

The Mystery Machine headed east along the interstate through the dignified gray hinterlands patiently awaiting a snow fall. Handing Lee the aux cord wasn’t the best idea, but at least he was trying to match the mood of the early winter landscape in between bubble gum pop hits, a welcome respite from Armand’s request for a locally produced, surprisingly dull, occult news podcast that he kept up with for “research.” I fell into the flow of rolling hills and stands of denuded trees, unable to fully drift off due to the magnetic tug coming from the back of the car.

I hadn’t gotten solid details about the artifact that Blake had brought in, and that we were now transporting back to where it came from. Admittedly, I had still been in a haze of post-coital bliss when Lee filled me in on the situation, more interested in the sight of him maneuvering his girthy snake back into his pants than the words that had been coming out of his mouth. But I got the gist.

The artifact had come from the Marshlands, but not from the Marshlands, so to speak. According to Blake, it had been sitting in a perfectly circular clearing on a patch of higher ground, waiting there long enough to become half buried in humus and partially coated in a fuzzy moss.

“Waiting is the important word here,” said Lee. “That’s how Blake mentioned it multiple times. Like it was waiting to be found.”

“But it hadn’t been there long?” I asked, pulling a backup pair of leggings out of a desk drawer after having torn my original pair like tissue paper trying to get them to cooperate with my glutes.

“Relatively speaking, no. We can’t quite pinpoint when it appeared there, but we don’t think it was placed by human hands. The physical and metaphysical signatures point to somewhere other than the Marshlands. Somewhere else. It was causing disturbances in the cleanroom that we hadn’t seen before.”

“Like how the sigils changed color?”

“Yeah. They turned into a lightshow after you left, you should’ve seen it.”

The actual artifact appeared to be some sort of device. A copper colored sphere about the size of a soccer ball, that felt like unglazed clay to the touch and was much heavier than it had any right to be. Patterns of some inscrutable design were inlaid across its surface in flowing lines of gold, teal and lavender that seemed to glow with their own passive light. 

“We took a 3D scan and sent it over to archives to see if they had any reference to decode it,” said Lee. “But Logan said every time he opens the file it looks slightly different on his monitor. His tech can only figure it out partially, but never enough to crack the code. You remember Logan, right?”

“How could I forget,” I said with obvious sarcasm, looking forward to catching up with the archivist who inadvertently started all this mess. 

“He thinks the only way to figure it out is to conduct experiments with it on site. He’s supposed to be out there with Blake, preparing the area. ”

That can’t be good, I thought, but reminded myself that it wasn’t all Logan’s fault. It’s not like he was planning on becoming the conduit for some ancient horny trickster deity, or was even trained to effectively deal with that scenario. This sort of thing was part of my job and even I was slowly crumbling under the pressure of Synt’s unrelenting power. It’s a miracle Logan lasted as long as he did. Sometimes it felt like the boundaries of my corporeal form were becoming thinner and thinner, my perception of mundane reality slowly beginning to fade into Synt’s casually multidimensional experience.

—

As we approached the Marshlands, the barriers between worlds began to blur even further. My senses kept expanding in weird directions in physical space and other space, the passing landscape enlivened with echoes and resonances of nearby timelines bumping up against our own. I could feel the artifact in the back of the Mystery Machine more strongly, but the blunt magnetic tug was slowly resolving into something more nuanced. Like a complex rhythm underneath Lee’s playlist, overlapping patterns of subsonic vibes that manifested in my head as the shifting glow of the lines across the sphere. As the mental image came together in increasing sharpness, the ball opened–not mechanically, but through some sort of phase change, its solid surface shifting into–

The van shuddered to a halt, bringing me back to reality as Armand turned the engine off. We had come off the interstate onto some county road and stopped at a nondescript gas station with no other vehicles in sight. Without the flow of the rolling highway landscape to distract me, I could almost taste how fuzzy reality was out here. There were whorls and eddies of chaotic possibility that were almost as iridescent as the puddles on the ground. Maybe it was something about the geography, maybe I was spending too much time in close proximity to the artifact, maybe the outlines of my form that identified me as a discrete being in this world were being erased from the inside out. Maybe all of the above. Regardless, I tried to tamp down the flutter of worry that sprung up in my stomach, shifting into the conspicuous ‘just act normal’ affect of someone who’s just realized they’ve misjudged an edible.

Armand chatted briefly with the station attendant, who seemed unable to decide if it was less rude to gawk at the anaconda running around Armand’s left hip or the sight of Lee stretching his arms up and towering over the SUV. He relented, keeping his attention pointedly directed at the task of filling up the tank. Armand headed inside to scope out snacks, a slight wobble in his gait as he maneuvered his dick into a more comfortable position, while Lee wandered off a little to admire the scenery and stretch his legs.

Without the distraction of my companions, and unwilling to try and settle back into a nap, I twisted around to rummage through the snack cooler, tossing the dried fruit and trail mix aside to snatch up the family size bag of some obscure brand of cheese puffs. The complex notes coming from the artifact (that seemingly no one else could hear) had settled into background noise, piquing my attention as they became slightly discordant, building in what felt like anticipation. As I angled myself back up, I paused, catching the gaze of the station attendant through the open rear window. He looked awestruck, and with one leg splayed across the driver's seat and my amazonian ass perched in the air, I could figure out why.

“I, uh, sorry,” he said, looking distraught as he forced himself to tear his eyes away from the sight of my supernaturally round butt cheeks. He was adorable as he blushed, still biting into his lower lip.

“It’s cool,” I chuckled. “Cheese puffs?” I opened the bag of bright orange corn products, offering them in his direction.

“I’m good,” he said. “I’m trying to stop eating those. Pretty sure they’re going straight to my hips.”

He had this look on his face like he was surprised he even said that, which just added to how cute his visible embarrassment was. But as the words left his lips, the notes from the artifact began to crescendo ever so slightly, harmonizing with that all too familiar feeling of Synt’s power emerging into this realm, the anticipation building.

Oh, I thought. I see. It almost felt as if this scenario had been written for us, and with the wobbliness of my current perception of linear time, it was a little more clear that it kind of had. The notes had been laid out and all we had to do was hit them. So I already knew what to expect as I said my next line, “Then you must eat these all the time.”

And there it was. His stance shifted slightly as we settled into a timeline in which he had already had a bubble butt juicy enough to see from the front.

“Yeah, it’s kind of a problem,” he said with a nervous laugh, one hand resting on the shelf of his ass while the other moved the gas pump back into place. “Honestly, I was about to ask you for advice. Hard to find pants that fit my…shape, out here in the boonies.”

And it was obvious why. His khakis looked painted on, straining against the melons that ballooned from his lower back. I could practically hear the stitches screaming in terror from the dreaded cheese puffs that had been the downfall of so many of their predecessors, as if sheer proximity to the artificially flavored snack dust in the air risked pushing his bubble butt to a level of catastrophic stress, until–

I caught a glimpse of his cakes seeming to expand, not through the usual flipbook of timelines, but physically in ‘real’ time, growing bigger and rounder before my very eyes. He took notice too, turning his torso just in time to see the seat of his pants completely give way, falling apart as his ass cheeks expanded into open air, clad in only a pair of pink and white striped bikini briefs that barely covered the top of his shelf.

“Ah shit!” he exclaimed, trying and failing to pull the fabric back together over an ass that actually was bigger than it had been thirty seconds ago. “I think I’ve got some backups in my locker. Have a good one!”

“Oh, no problem,” I offered, watching the globes of his butt cheeks swish back and forth as he power walked back inside, mildly apologetic in the knowledge that whatever replacement pants he already had would bear the exact same fate.

That time, it had felt so familiar, yet slightly different. The nuances of Synt’s power were so much clearer out here, like I could taste the full complexity of the flavor profile, but with that, the barriers between their world and this one were much more porous. Or maybe I was just better at reading the cracks, tunnels, and pathways. Out here, it was more apparent that the mental, physical, and metaphysical coordination of vocal speech was just a way to channel short bursts of magic from one side of the divide to the other. And without the usual solidity of the barriers between worlds, maybe the unchecked power of imagination could slip through just as easily.

“That you?” asked Lee, who had apparently strolled back to the van just in time to see the attendant’s comically large ass split his pants wide open, letting his hand grab a handful of cheese puffs as he also indulged in the sight of the attendant’s purposeful stride back to the convenience store.

“Yup,” I muttered. “Be careful with those, I heard they go straight to your hips.” I had been joking, but was also genuinely concerned that I may have inadvertently cast a spell on this exact brand of junk food that was now creating bubble butted men across its distribution range. I made a mental note to look into that right after all the other magical calamities spawning off around me.

—

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful, encouraged by the fact that Armand had somehow gained control of the aux cord and was dragging us through an audiobook about spectral informatics that he was already half way into. I was still crammed up front, dutifully pretending to be asleep but actually fighting every urge not to phase accidentally out of the car. I shuddered with metaphysical tension, the weight of my cosmic companion eroding away any solid grasp on reality.

Lee, with his boundless patience and grace, humored his lab partner, asking lazy yet helpful questions while he lounged in the back, dinner plate size hands still dwarfed by the firehose bulge that he stroked absentmindedly. He looked like he could stretch to fill the entire length of the Mystery Machine if we wanted to, like he could indulgently take up more space as easily as yawning. The harmonics of the artifact sitting resolutely next to him seemed to resonate with his lithe form, and in my partial consciousness I couldn’t help but imagine his body slipping into semi-liquidity with the notes, stretching slightly with the rhythm but each time not quite returning all the way to where it began. He could really become the embodiment of grace if he wanted. If I wanted. As county roads turned to back roads and we passed the vine covered “Marshlands State Park” sign, the trees in the landscape seemed to stretch up with similar ease, yawning in the breeze. I imagined Lee strolling through the forest, towering over us as he stretched with them.

I could no longer keep up a convincing facade of unconsciousness as the van turned off the small forest road onto a poorly maintained gravel path that led to a patch of dirt currently occupied by a shiny new park ranger truck. Armand pulled up next to it as Lee and I scanned the area for our collaborators, seeing only a path through the trees that led down to an expanse of shallow water.

As I stepped out of the van, the satisfying crack of my back and shoulders preceded an indulgent yawn, breath sparkling in the crisp air as I took in our surroundings. My moment of idyll was interrupted by a surprised grunt as Lee whacked his head against the top of the passenger door, stumbling with a brief moment of uncharacteristic clumsiness. I quickly realized why as he rose to his full height, which was itself a full foot taller than it had been just a few hours before. He looked down at himself in mild confusion, which transitioned to a painful wince as, with a staccato of popping sounds, the threads of his shoes failed and his feet burst through, toes and heels spilling out from both ends.

“C’mon man,” Lee said, realization dawning in my direction. “Those were size nineteen.” His look of annoyance melted into one of mild worry. “You sure you’re holding it together?” he asked, coming in to pat my shoulder but jerking back at a sharp bolt of static shock.

“Just barely,” I said.

“Looks like someone had a growth spurt!” exclaimed Blake, who seemed to emerge out of nowhere as he walked up toward us. 

“Speak for yourself,” Lee muttered, gazing down at him suspiciously. 

Blake, once again, looked noticeably bigger than we had last seen him. His ranger uniform was pushed to the limit, inflated biceps and quads straining his sleeves and shorts. I got the sense that having his shirt unbuttoned down to his nipples wasn’t just an aesthetic choice, but the result of a struggle lost against his massive pecs. His muscle butt ballooned behind him, cheeks bouncing back and forth as he unloaded gear from the truck bed.

“He is getting bigger,” came a voice way too suddenly in our vicinity.

Lee reared back with an overdramatic flourish before finally noticing Logan standing several feet away, practically swimming in a pair of oversized waders.

“How?” I asked. “Because it’s definitely not me,” and shot a defensive glance at Lee.

“I, well–” said Logan.

“Maybe he met super dick,” quipped Armand, looking overly busy organizing equipment, as if to emphasize the fact that the rest of us were just standing around.

“No, I don’t think so, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about–”

“Do you think they’re each other’s type?” Lee asked with a look of genuine interest.

“There have been some developments with–”

“Let’s not get lost in the imaginary meet cute,” I said. “We’re here on magical nonsense business. We’re in the field. We’re setting up equipment. We’re wearing field gear. Logan’s wearing…waders for some reason.”

“...with the…well they’re–”

“The only thing that fits?” offered Armand with uncharacteristic sincerity. I guess as the two local monster dick twinks, they’ve exchanged fashion tips here and there. They looked extremely roomy, yet somehow still distended from the pressure of his prodigious wang, which looked like it had gone through some aftershocks of growth after his fateful visit to my office.

“Well it’s just that we’re taking the–”

“Airboat!” I exclaimed, suddenly noticing the watercraft parked off a short pier just down the hill. “We’re taking an airboat? You drive an airboat?” I asked, with no hint of even trying to cover my surprise.

“I pilot an airboat,” Blake corrected with an upbeat smile, his tree trunk quads swelling with muscle as he walked up toward us. “The wet season keeps lasting longer and longer, so unless you wanna wade over there…”

“That why Logan’s dressed to catch a catfish by hand?” asked Lee.

“Well these are the only gear that fit,” said Logan, as if suddenly remembering he was there.

Ah ha, I thought. “So you’re driving us to that…island.”

“I’m piloting you to the island,” said Blake, not so much to me as to the stand of cypress trees in the distance, his gaze lingering for a few seconds as the rest of us relented and shifted to the task of hauling the gear down to the airboat.

As I unloaded the apparatus from the van, prepared to repeat my feat of strength from that morning, I noticed it was significantly lighter. Still heavy, I imagined, by normal human standards, but easy enough to lug down to the boat with minimal strain, earning me an appreciative whoop and generous slap on the butt from Blake. Did I somehow get stronger or was the artifact behaving in some new, strange way?

The airboat looked like one of the big tourist-carrying models that had apparently been repurposed for the parks service. The residue of the old logo of some defunct swamp tour company still visible around the parks logo and info placed on top. The name, Swamp Hag, remained the same, still legible amid the wear and rust. Most of the rows of seating along the flat bottom hull had been removed in favor of storage space, now filled with all of our stuff, leaving us cozied up in the two rows at the back.

The whine of the engine was quickly outmatched by the roar of the propeller, overbearing even through earplugs, as Blake started us up and began ferrying us to the island in the distance. We cruised over golden brown fields of late season wetland grasses, passing clumps of cattails bursting with fluffy seed heads. I glanced up to see Blake behind and above us in the pilot seat, eyes locked intently ahead towards our destination, left hand nimbly controlling the rudder stick. 

Seated in the middle, I was directly below him and positioned between his meaty quads. He always seemed to be on the verge of bursting out of his pants these days, which wasn’t helped by the massive pipe creeping slowly down his right leg, leaving dark spots of precum and even pulsing with an occasional lurch further and increase in girth. I couldn’t tell if that was just my imagination, but I wasn’t in any position to let my imagination wander, exemplified by the fact that the moon, visible in the daytime sky, seemed to keep switching between stationary object and figure-eight analemma. But with the neverending drone of the propeller, I needed a distraction, and couldn’t help but let Synt’s power slip out just a little, envisioning what might happen if that prodigious bulge–

A piercing, subsonic feedback ran through my skull as I had the distinct feeling of two of the same magnetic poles brought too close together. As the pain subsided, I glanced up again to see Blake smile down, give me a conspiratorial wink, and return to the task at hand. 

I decided to deal with that later as we pulled up to the island and began carrying things through the wall of cypress trees towards the interior. Vegetation was dense, but a winding footpath had been carved in previous visits, aided by the fact that much of the underbrush had died back. The trees seemed to whisper among themselves in some conversation that we weren’t a part of but were fine to listen in on, the low lying sounds of the forest becoming more complex until we stepped into the relative silence of a moss-covered clearing in the middle.

“This is where you found it?” asked Armand, eyes scanning the ground for any clues or disturbances. “It looks…untouched.”

“It’s where it found us,” Blake joked in a tone that wasn’t especially humorous. “And yeah, it just sort of appeared. Right there in the middle.”

Armand and Lee set to work setting up a makeshift cleanroom, moving around the perimeter of the circular clearing to lay down plexiglass panels featuring the familiar protective sigils from the lab. I opened the apparatus to remove the artifact, which practically sang in recognition, complex linework of lavender and gold forming and reforming across its surface. It felt as light as styrofoam as I lifted it and carried it across the space. As we reached the center, it simply stopped moving. In fact, as I let my hands slip away, it simply remained stationary. Just hovered in the air, rotating slowly.

“Now that’s cool,” said Blake, walking up to the artifact. “It wasn’t doing that before.” He lifted a finger and brought it up to the surface, hovering a few centimeters away. The curls, diagrams, and fractals covering the sphere seemed to converge around Blake’s fingertip in a multicolored spiral before sending a visible jolt of electricity across the short distance.

“Are you okay?” asked Logan, walking up behind him, responding to Blake’s quiet yelp.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “It felt…great, actually.” His eyes seemed lost in the patterns of the artifact as it seemed to dematerialize into a loose amalgamation of strings, a facsimile of a solid sphere, singing in complex harmonies, rising in a slow crescendo.

“Are y’all picking this up?” I asked Lee and Armand, who were just getting the monitoring equipment online.

“Picking what up?” asked Lee. 

Before we could answer, a pulse of iridescent energy shot out from the artifact, passing through us and stopping a few feet before the perimeter, forming a dome that resembled a giant soap bubble.

“Oh wow, it worked,” whispered Blake.

“What worked?” I asked, squinting my eyes at him. “What’s happening?”

“It’s a force field, they made a force field,” called Lee, motioning to the layer of shimmering air directly in front of him.

“I did not think that would work,” said Blake.

“Didn’t think what would work?” I asked with increasing suspicion.

“You gotta trust me,” said Blake, hands splayed apologetically yet his eyes showing a touch of overexcitement. “We’ve been talking about your situation and–”

“Situation? Who? You and Logan?”

“And…our cosmic deity mutual friend.”

“You’ve been talking to Synt,” I snapped. How? I thought. “Through Logan?”

“Well, they’re still connected in certain ways. I guess they were always connected or whatever?”

“Of course. Of course,” I drummed against the nook between my eyebrows.

“Synt didn’t tell you?” Blake asked.

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“About completing the ritual. We need to complete the ritual,” he said with growing intensity.

“What ritual?” My tone annoyed and mildly incredulous.

“The one we started with the artifact in your office,” offered Logan, as if explaining an email I ignored. “We opened the portal but we need to let it close behind them.”

“Oh is their presence weakening the fabric of spacetime in a localized area?” asked Armand, tapping nonchalantly on the force field like a thick pane of glass. “I guess that makes sense.”

“A little more concern would be nice. Blake’s getting pretty antsy in here,” I said.

“We’re getting you out, bud! We’re on it,” said Lee, turning to dig around in one of the totes full of equipment while Armand continued to inspect the perimeter.

“I don’t know what sweet nothings Synt has been whispering in your ears,” I said to Blake, “but I promise you they’re just fucking with all of us.”

“No, no, I think it’s about resonance,” said Blake. “We’ve only heard one chord in a cosmic symphony! We just have to let them finish.”

“Finish what–”

I was cut off as everything seemed to shift into some sort of non-space, Blake, Lee, Armand, and Logan no longer visible but the forcefield now hyperreal as a solid structure of what looked like glowing golden wires in hexagonal patterns. There was no longer the soft solidity of the mossy clearing, and the forcefield was revealed as not a dome but a sphere, surrounding me on all sides. I hovered stationary in space, rotating slowly around the smaller sphere of the artifact, which pulsed with harmonics and rhythms within and without the color spectrum, seeming to flow in tandem with the structure surrounding us. 

It absorbed my attention and I had the sinking sensation of falling perpetually towards it, plummeting through strata of timelines, tangling and untangling through interwoven threads of possibilities and fractal perception, catching small glimpses here and there of moments in space time, some that I could recall from memory and some that were wildly unfamiliar. I saw Synt talking with me at the bar and simultaneously with Logan in my class weeks before. I realized that for them, there was no linear time, and the best approximation for someone in my three-dimensional existence was cosmic terror and confusion as I fell through the complex dimensional framework of strings that they were delicately pulling. They had been building to something, I realized. Were always building to something. Are currently building to something that in this thread of spacetime is finally coming together.

I had the sensation of breathing in and zooming out, seeing a birds eye view in unnatural clarity of the wetland clearing, the artifact in the exact center spinning wildly and sending multicolored pulses of light, the surrounding trees murmuring amongst themselves, and beyond that the unseasonal expanse of placid water in a symmetrical ovoid shape that came to a point at both ends. It looked unmistakably like an eye.

With a resounding thud in my mind, I came back to this place in this timeline��or more accurately I had never left and was never there–and noticed Blake standing there wide eyed. I could taste the lust and excitement pouring off of him like a snake flicking the air. He had only gotten tastes here and there of what he could become and he was starving, unapologetically dreaming about ridiculous, indulgent size. Who was I to deny the full extent of what he could be? Why would I have ever held back this power?

I fell to my knees as another wave of Synt’s untapped chaos magic took over my being, reverberating through the space. I was dimly aware of rings of multicolored, iridescent mushrooms rising and falling in concentric waves around us. For a second I lost my physical senses, overwhelmed by Synt’s ability to see seamlessly across planes of existence and temporal strata. As my body struggled to make sense of this metaphysical tsunami, I could see the perspective of every cell ringing out simultaneously. I could see every possibility in every timeline. It was beautiful and terrible, threads waving, trailing, breaking, weaving into each other with chaos and grace. In this other sense, I felt the cleansing surge of a deluge following a dam break as my guard finally went down and Synt stepped fully into my being in this world. I had been holding them back for so long, letting go was a welcome relief.

I heard the strangely familiar sound of a string being plucked. 

Blake, ever the gentleman, snapped out of his enraptured fascination to try and help me up, jumping back as a visible bolt of electricity shot into his hand from my left bicep. I was an energetic livewire, and Blake’s eyes widened further in glee as he watched the muscles throughout his arm flex with a sickening pump, settling down as a wave of subtle growth spread throughout the rest of his body. Maybe this was due to my supercharged supernatural senses, but I noticed that his musculature was incredibly, unnaturally dense. He must’ve been somehow stronger than even the veritable wall of shredded muscle implied.

Still feeling his juicier pecs, he mused to the others, “that was just one touch. Imagine what you could do,” he added, turning to me.

“Yes,” I grunted through gritted teeth. “Imagine.” I grabbed his arm with lightning fast quickness. In fact, I don’t even remember moving my body at all. My hand was simply wrapped around his bicep because I willed it with a thought.

His head lolled back in euphoria as I poured into him. He was a willing participant, an enthusiastic receptacle of possibility powered by a vivid imagination of what his body could be and do. A deep, hungry wish that I happily granted. And then some. As he came back to his senses, his eyes took in a seemingly smaller space, his head inching farther from the ground as his massive feet took up more and more surface area. A look of worry replaced one of triumph as he realized how much he dwarfed even Lee’s eight and a half feet on the other side of the dome, with no signs of stopping. 

“Wait,” he groaned through waves of orgasmic pleasure. “Slow down. It’s…too much.” My hands had drifted to the slabs of his pecs, trailing onto his cobblestone abs as he continued to stretch and grow in all directions. He grabbed my hands with his massive paws, but the additional contact only sent a pulse of growth through his already gargantuan body, several feet of cock tearing through whatever fabric his quads and glutes hadn’t already shredded and thwacking onto the ground. 

“What’s…happening…won’t…stop,” he eked out, falling to all fours and breathing heavily as his mega dick spurted globs of precum that puddled below him. He was a larger than life behemoth of glistening, shredded muscle, except of course for the huge globes of his impossibly fat ass, which seemed to keep widening and ballooning as the rest of his growth slowed down.

I couldn’t keep my eyes off the overinflated glutes in front of me, caressing each, my otherwise huge hands dwarfed by the sheer size of them, falling into the heft of each pillowy cheek. Blake’s pride and joy, the unmissable bubble booty that could stop traffic and pull anyone at the bar, had blown up beyond comical proportions, each cheek large enough to crush the truck he drove here in. I felt my hands growing to monstrous proportions just to handle the boulders of blubber whose expansion was finally slowing to a stop as he panted in exhaustion, arching his back in insatiable need.

It all felt oddly reminiscent of the dream I had had of being eaten out by Synt while growing impossibly huge in the archives. Having just gotten a glimpse of Synt’s perception out of the bounds of linear time, I realized Of course. It was--for lack of a better concept, and from my meager three dimensional perspective--prophetic.

And we were hungry.

[littlequeenies]

‘I’ve been called a witch, slut, murderer’: the ultra-creative women dismissed as rock star girlfriends

Despite their artistic skill, Anita Pallenberg, Suzi Ronson and Yoko Ono were cast as mere lovers or muses. They're now being allowed to tell their own stories – even if it's after death-Annie ZaleskiTue 21 May 2024 11.46 CEST

In a 2008 interview, Anita Pallenberg swore she would never write her autobiography. The artist, model and actor was weary of publishers who only wanted to read about her intimate dealings with the Rolling Stones – she dated both Brian Jones and Keith Richards, and had an affair with Mick Jagger. “They all wanted salacious,” she said then. “And everybody is writing autobiographies and that’s one reason why I’m not going to do it.”

Yet when Pallenberg died in 2017, she left behind pages of a neatly typed manuscript, titled Black Magic, that contained her life story. True to form, she characterised these memoirs as “memory images, a traveller’s tale through a landscape of dreams and shadows” rather than an autobiography. But she held little back while chronicling her spirited and frequently tumultuous life, quipping: “I don’t think the lawyers will like it very much.”Read in a narration by Scarlett Johansson, her unpublished words are the backbone of a compelling new documentary, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg. Kate Moss celebrates her as “the original bohemian rock chick that people still aspire to today” but more valuable is Pallenberg reframing her legacy on her own terms from beyond the grave. “I’ve been called a witch, a slut, a murderer. I’ve been hounded by the police and slandered in the press,” she wrote, before adding, “But I don’t need to settle scores. I’m reclaiming my soul.”Given how much ink has been spilt on the Stones over the years, it’s refreshing to hear Pallenberg share her own perspective on her experiences. She’s not the only high-profile rock girlfriend now getting a chance to tell their own story, asserting their place in, and influence on, male-dominated music culture.

Suzi Ronson, who was married to the guitarist Mick Ronson, just released a candid memoir, Me and Mr Jones: My Life with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars, that’s a clear-eyed look at rock star mythology. Pattie Boyd, married to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton, was interviewed in 2018 by Taylor Swift for Harper’s Bazaar (“George and Eric had an inability to communicate their feelings through normal conversation,” Boyd said, “I became a reflection for them”) and this year she eloquently reminisced as she auctioned her memorabilia, including love letters from Clapton and handwritten Harrison lyrics, for a staggering £2,818,184. “The letters from Eric – they’re so desperate and passionate, a passion that blooms once in a lifetime,” she said. “They’re too painful in their beauty.”

Tate Modern, in London, is meanwhile celebrating Yoko Ono with a career-spanning exhibition, Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind – a pointed reminder that Ono’s artistic collaboration with John Lennon was only a relatively brief part of her career. It shows how her artistry spans theatre, writing and music, but also how it makes space for her story to change over time – for example, the various performances of Cut Piece across the decades – and for others’ perspectives. Take Ono’s 1964 artist’s book Grapefruit, which uses short, abstract action items (“Imagine the clouds dripping. Dig a hole in your garden to put it in”) to generate a huge potential variety of creative responses.

Among those was Lennon’s Imagine. In a 1980 BBC interview, Lennon said Grapefruit provided “the lyric and the concept” of the song, but Ono didn’t receive a songwriting credit until 2017 even though Lennon was aware of the oversight in his lifetime. “But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho,” he told the BBC, “and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution.”

Pallenberg, too, served as inspiration for Rolling Stones songs such as Gimme Shelter. But Catching Fire reinforces the idea that even if sexism meant she was underestimated by the public, she wasn’t a passive presence or muse. “Neither Anita nor I wanted to be with them because we wanted some of their power,” Marianne Faithfull says in voiceover – she was in the band’s orbit alongside Pallenberg owing to a relationship with Jagger. “We had our own power.”

Faithfull’s power was her own music career; Pallenberg, who spoke several languages and worked as a model, influenced the Stones’ look. (“I started to become a fashion icon for wearing my old lady’s clothes,” Richards quipped in his bookLife.) And she refused to rearrange her life for the Stones. “No girls were allowed in the studio when they were recording,” she said. “You weren’t allowed even to ring. I did other things; I didn’t sit at home.” She maintained an acting career, notably in 1968’s movie Barbarella and 1970’s Performance – though her voice was dubbed out in the former: you wonder whether her “muse” tag meant casting directors underestimated her.

Suzi Ronson, a colour-loving hair wizard who brought David Bowie’s tomato-red Ziggy Stardust coif to life, also took a different path from other women of her time. She left a steady job and went on the road, steering the Ziggy Stardust tour aesthetic by handling hair, makeup, and other tasks.

Me and Mr Jones illuminates her part in helping Bowie crystallise his vision – and shows how fame and rock stardom corrupt. On a Mott the Hoople tour, she seethes while Mick, cozying up to a baroness, orders Suzi to find his hairbrush, treating her like an assistant rather than a girlfriend. It wasn’t the only time she was underestimated. “I’m now the pathetic girlfriend, clinging on to my man, a position I never thought I’d find myself in,” she writes after joining Mick on tour with Bob Dylan for a few days, after not being invited. “I try to be understanding, but truthfully I’m infuriated at being left out.”

These new works also highlight how each woman, at a time when women struggled to “have it all”, cultivated agency through one of the only paths open to them: motherhood. Rather than being something limiting, becoming mothers allowed them to reinvent their lives. Suzi Ronson, long out of Bowie’s orbit and living in England with her parents after giving birth, reflects that “the life I created for myself has disappeared, and my career with it,” she writes, but her daughter brings joy and solace – and encourages her to stay optimistic and keep striving for a unique path. “As I push her around the same streets my mother used to push me, I swear to her: this isn’t going to be it, and I pray I’m right.” Ronson closes the loop by noting that she and Mick return to the US, living in the singer Maria Muldaur’s house and finding equilibrium.

Ono confronted motherhood’s messiness. Her installation My Mommy Was Beautiful used photos of breasts and vaginas to demystify birth and celebrate the strength of the body, and the 1969 song Don’t Worry Kyoko (Mummy’s Only Looking for a Hand in the Snow) – which Yoko wrote for her young daughter Kyoko – conveys primal agony and frustration. “Society’s myth is that all women are supposed to love having children,” Ono said in 1981. “But that was a myth. So there was Kyoko, and I did become attached to her and had great love for her, but at the same time, I was still struggling to get my own space in the world. I felt that if l didn’t have room for myself, how could I give room to another human being?”

Pallenberg also navigates this conundrum. Jake Weber, the actor son of notorious Stones associate Tommy Weber, becomes visibly emotional when talking about how “generous and funny” Pallenberg was to him after his mother died in 1971, during the Stones’ debauched French summer. “She filled a vacuum of a surrogate parent,” he said. “She was lovely like that. Her thing was trying to give us joy.” Catching Fire also visits the agonising fallout of the sudden June 1976 death of Pallenberg’s 10-week-old son Tara.

Pallenberg has the last word in Catching Fire, and her conclusion illustrates the importance of women directing their own narratives. “Writing this has helped me emerge in my own eyes,” she noted. “Reading over what I’ve written, I get a lump in my throat. But it doesn’t need to be a doom and gloom kind of story.” The film makes it clear that Pallenberg’s chief power was, ultimately, resilience, which she needed during an often-challenging life (she lived with various addictions, including to heroin and alcohol) and several tragic events, such as when a 17-year-old shot and killed himself in Richards’ bed.

“I felt like some nasty person who caused death and destruction around her,” Pallenberg said after the 1979 incident, but Catching Fire refuses to let Pallenberg become a tragic figure or cautionary tale. The film ends noting that she got sober, graduated from college, and aged with iconoclastic gusto. The lessons are clear – redemption is possible and we are not our worst moments – while also reinforcing what we miss when women’s voices are silenced or ignored. Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, directed by Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill is in UK and Irish cinemas now

[the-song-of-the-day]

March wrap up

Sorry that this has taken so long.

Out of 31 the top three most voted songs this month were

Bang! by AJR it had a total of 33 votes. It was chosen by Mod Secret

Natural by Imagine Dragons it had 29 votes and It was chosen by Mod Secret

The Moss by Cosmo Sheldrake it had 27 votes and was also chosen by Mod Secret

The Three least voted were

First place both having 7 votes is Mr Crowley by Ozzy Osbourne chosen by Mod Gremlin and Finally Find You by Derivakat & Netrum chosen by Mod Secret

Everything At Once by Lenka it had 8 votes and was chosen by Mod Secret

There’s a three way tie all of them having 10 votes is How Far We’ve Come by Matchbox Twenty chosen by Mod Secret and Boulevard Of Broken Dreams by Hanoi Rocks and Fear Of The Dark by Iron Maiden both chosen by Mod Gremlin

The top three most liked songs were

(the ones with the most amount of yes)

A tie for first place with both having 100% yes is 5 Years by David Bowie with 14 votes and Fear Of The Dark by Iron Maiden having 10 votes

Then having 96.2% yes and 26 votes it’s Vampire Money by My Chemical Romance

Then finally with 93.8% and 16 votes it’s Living After Midnight by Judas Priest

The bottom three were

(the ones that had the least amount of yes)

Life is Fun by TheOdd1sOut and Boyinaband with only 27.3% of likes out of 11 votes

Natural by Imagine Dragons only had 51.7% out of 29 votes

Finally Cycles by Derivakat & Netrum only had 53.9% out of 13

Average amount of Votes

The average amount of votes this month was 15

Thank you guys for all your support - Mods secret and gremlin

[dhoranbolt]

Cost of Power Playlist

Heavy In Your Arms... Florence + The Machine

Drift Away Omnichord... Trillian

The Night We Met... Lord Huron

A Monster Like Me... Morland, Debrah Scarlett

I Found... Amber Run

Slip... Elliot Moss

die first... Nessa Barrett

My Love Mine All Mine... Mitski

Only Love Can Hurt Like This (slowed)... Paloma Faith

What Part of Forever... CeeLo Green

Daylight... David Kushner

Where's My Love (slowed)... SYML

Ghost... Justin Bieber

Cold... Aqualung, Lucy Schwartz

Who Is She?... I Monster

Six Feet Under... Billie Eilish

Wolves... Selena Gomez, Marshmello

Until I Found You (piano)... Stephen Sanchez

a thousand years... Christina Perri

Past Lives... sapientdream, Slushii

Take My Breath Away... EZI

Is 20 songs overkill??? Probably. Sukuna's pov, your pov, some in-between. Kind of in order for the ideas I have, but these are the vibes. Also if you do/don't wanna be tagged just lmk and I'll fix it accordingly! I plan on getting part one out in the next week hopefully, still trying to figure out what I actually want to come up first

Tags: @saiki-enthusiast @tang3r1n @bratsudon @better-imagination-9

[aecholapis]

Songs I put on loop while thinking about or drawing my OCs - Part 1

Helios: Icarus - Deus Ex: Human Revolution Collapsing Sun - Brandon Lau Angel On Fire - Halsey Imposter Syndrome - London Music Works Epilogue - Everest Your Majesty - The Crown If You Should Fall - Craig Armstrong Hey - Andreas Bourani Imádlak - Katona Ernesztina Divenire - Ludovico Einaudi This is Our Planet - Our Planet Hope for Tomorrow - Daemon X Machina Fragments of Hope - Astral Chain Aegis Research Institute - Astral Chain - Combat Mix by Baron Von Lag Natural Light - Portal Stories: Mel The Luminoth - Metroid Prime 2 Torvus Bog - Metroid Prime 2 Skytown - Metroid Prime 3 Lost in the Sky - Metroid Prime 3 - Skytown Remix by myr Azeleza - Red_OWLdeer Adiemus - Adiemus The Final Attack - Astral Chain The IXION OST The Interstellar OST Too many Fire Emblem Three Houses tracks to list them all

And the legendary God Shattering Star cover by Joe Zieja and Jules Conroy because I headcanon his voice to be similar to Claude's from FE3H for some reason and since Joe is his VA I can vividly imagine Helios singing this cover. It would be so funny. Let the small copter go ham with his vocal cords.

Ironwing and Altitude (partially): Speechless - Aladdin - cover by Peyton Parrish My Mother Told Me - Assassin's Creed: Valhalla - cover by Peyton Parrish Edge Of Night - The Lord of the Rings - cover by Peyton Parrish Helgafjell - Peyton Parrish ft. David Michael Frank Drengr of Ragnarök - Peyton Parrish ft. Jonathan Young Svarteboka - Gåte ft. Djerv Skarvane - Gåte The Rise of Vikingr album

Nightjet: Silent Guardians - Hyrule Warriors Bryyo Cliffside - Metroid Prime 3 Lower Norfair Mashup - Metroid - mashup by Axell The Swampert Chasing Daybreak (Thunder) - Fire Emblem Three Houses Victor's Hollow - Octopath Traveler - cover by Jules Conroy Oniro Mou - Yianna Terzi Palästinalied - Estampie Небо - Слободан Тркуља Brothers in Arms - Daemon X Machina Title Theme - Metroid Prime 3

Railjet: Runaway Train - Self Deception ;-) Asturias (Leyenda) - Isaac Albéniz - cover by Ana Vidović Gerudo Valley - Ocarina of Time - cover by Matt Sellick Victor's Hollow - Octopath Traveler Highlands Theme - Octopath Traveler Among Stately Peaks - Octopath Traveler Homunculus Delta - Astral Chain Grand War - Daemon X Machina Title Theme - Metroid Prime Trilogy - cover by Wingus Dingus

Firecry and his siblings: Kiss from a Rose - Seal - cover by Jonathan Young, Caleb Hyles, RichaadEB Idolize - Caleb Hyles Smooth Criminal - Michael Jackson (Glee version) - cover by Anna Pantsu ft. Caleb Hyles Fight Fire With Gasoline - Self Deception Weight of the World - Self Deception State of Elysium - Self Deception Legends - Self Deception Starlight Brigade - TWRP ft. Dan Avidan (please watch the music video, it's so good) The Starship Velociraptor album (same as Anvil)

Anvil and his former mining team: Kiss from a Rose - Seal - cover by Jonathan Young, Caleb Hyles, RichaadEB Storm the Castle - Jonathan Young Divided - Jonathan Young Damage Done - Jonathan Young ft. RichaadEB Land of Broken Dreams - Jonathan Young ft. Caleb Hyles Land of the Living - Jonathan Young Unholy - cover by Jonathan Young ft. Lauren Babic (¬‿¬) The Starship Velociraptor album All of Jonathan Young's sea shanty covers

Cryoslope and his former underwater mining team: Chemical Worker's Song - Ron Angel - cover by Colm McGuinness Here's a Health to the Company - Assassin's Creed IV - cover by Colm McGuinness Scarborough Fair - cover by Colm McGuinness The Foggy Dew - cover by Colm McGuinness Islander - Bruce Moss- cover by Derina Harvey Band Lost On You - LP Song of the Sea - Mirella Díez Morán Into the Unknown - Subnautica Abandon Ship - Subnautica Torvus Hydrodynamo - Metroid Prime 2 Troubled Water - Portal Stories: Mel Transitional Period (funnel) - Portal Stories: Mel Live Fire Exercise - Portal Stories: Mel

Dataduct and the Throttlecons: Smooth Criminal - Michael Jackson (Glee version) - cover by Anna Pantsu ft. Caleb Hyles Magnum Bullets - Night Runner ft. Dan Avidan (another great music video) Promise - Voyager Loco - Manian Tonight - Yüksek

Carbonlight: Children of the Omnissiah - Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus Noosphere - Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus Millennial Rage - Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus Tenebre Rosso Sangue - Ultrakill Title Theme - Metroid Prime - cover by Amie Waters Menu Theme - Metroid Prime 2 VS. Emperor Ing (Phase 1) - Metroid Prime 2 VS. Emperor Ing (Phase 2) - Metroid Prime 2 System Corruption - Portal Stories: Mel (Harry Callaghan) Track 10 - Asphalt 6 VS. Jena Anderson (all phases) - Astral Chain The Creation of Noah - Astral Chain Inside Noah - Astral Chain VS. Noah (all phases) - Astral Chain Symphony No. 9 (New World Symphony) - Dvořák Ecstasy of Gold - Ennio Morricone Arms of Immortal - Daemon X Machina The entire Mechanicus OST

[caxycreations]

Tylvinian Tales: The Wolf's Den

Chapter Nine: Sweet Tooth

Ferusian Law, Third Sequence, Article 3: Law of Trespass

Ferusian citizens are entitled passage and habitation of any residency or public space as recognized by the Department of Home and Business.

Citizens are strictly forbidden from passing through, entering, or inhabiting any residency or public space owned privately through individual or business contract, such as homes, apartments, or private contractors.

Citizens are also forbidden from entering any space designated as Hazard Level C or higher by the Department of Risk Assessment, such as some condemned buildings, glassed towns/cities, or storm-wrecked districts.

Citizens caught in forbidden areas are fined no less than $10,000 and given a minimum of two months community service, up to a maximum of six months imprisonment.

I woke up to the sound of a claw tapping on glass, and for a minute I worried I'd been out here so long security flagged me as a risk. A glance out the window brought a smile to my face instead of a scowl, seeing I was wrong. A pale blueish gray caxy was standing at the window, dark markings in the shape of a cats eyes framing their forest green eyes. Ears pierced ten times each, and sharing Davina's signature studs above the eyebrow.

A lip ring adorned the thick, black bottom lip they shared with their mother. Brown hair, fluffy and thick, messy but swept to part on the left side. They were wearing a dark green bomber jacket, one that matched with David's, and Davina's, in style if not in color. A hand-drawn, stylized S was on the left side of the chest. Trace's logo.

Moss.

I chuckled, unlocking the doors and stepping out, pulling the young hybrid into a hug. "Howdy, pup. How's life?" I asked, smiling. I could guess easily how life had been. Life with Davina was always interesting, given her habits. But I was still curious to hear how they'd been, and what they'd been up to, apart from that. Moss shifted in their seat, trying to get comfortable before giving me an answer.

"It's been good! Mom's been stressing over my weekend trips like usual, but she did mention something about taking my driver's test next year, so soon I'll be able to start practicing!" They said, half excited. Moss smiled, buckling into their seat and looking at me expectantly.

"Hell yeah! You gonna practice with 'Vina or Trace?" I asked, starting up the truck and pulling out of the lot, heading for the nearest Mac Patty's.

"I think I'd like to practice with Trace. Mom's great, most of the time, but I don't think she'd be very good at teaching me while she's busy fussing over every little thing I do behind the wheel." They said, letting out a chuckle. It was wild imagining Davina of all people fussing and fretting over little things, but I understood. Moss was special to her like that. We pulled in and got out, heading in and placing our orders before settling down at a table.

"How's it been here? Been good or...?" Moss trailed off, smiling curiously. I chuckled, shaking my head.

"Well, David's avoidin' home for a while. Tired of th' empty space, I reckon. Can't say I blame'im, he's got next t' nothin' unpacked there an' it's a damn depressin' little apartment." I responded with a dismissive wave. "Other'n th' houseguest I've been entertainin', it's been same as usual. Got a job offer though, security at th' club David had his 21st at."

Moss suddenly lit up, smiling wide at me and setting their burger down. "Oh yeah! I wanted to ask you, do you think you can get me in some time? I'm here every weekend, can't you get me in?" They asked, excited and almost pleading. They made wide, hopeful eyes, the smile on their face warm and eager. A hope, warmth, and eagerness I had to crush, unfortunately.

"No can do, pup. Ain't old enough an' they card ya at every turn in there. Davey almost gets thrown out ten times a night when he's in there, they have such a hard time trustin' his ID." I answered, half-sad at having to deny them. "Y'wouldn't be able t' get on th' dance floor, wouldn't be able t' get t' th' bar t' order water, an' ya wouldn't be able t' get in th' front door. Even if'n I helped ya by, they'd card ya inside an' we'd both be in trouble." I said with a sigh.

I watched them deflate, shoulders sagging and smile fading to a frown, eyes shifting to look at their food again. "Oh…Okay, sorry Uncle Rye." They apologized, low and quiet. I hated being the bearer of bad news. I glanced at the menu and chuckled, seeing a few pies, cakes, and ice cream options. I tapped one I knew they liked, a personal sized mulberry pie, and raised an eyebrow, smirking. They looked at the menu where I'd tapped and laughed a little, then looked at me.

"Are you sure, Uncle Ryder? I don't wanna cost you too much…" they said hesitantly. They glanced back to the menu, and I heard a soft, quiet mewl from them. I nodded, laughing a little and waving over a waiter, ordering two of the pies and a third to-go. Moss smiled, still not as energetic as they had been, but noticeably better than they had been a minute ago. We finished our food in silence, and when the pies came out, we ate them quickly and left.

Moss smiled as they sat their take-home pie in the floorboard, buckling in. "So guess what Trace said he would buy me today!" they said excitedly. I chuckled, shaking my head. Gifts from Trace were always bad news in the best way. I couldn't help but wonder what the fox had planned.

"What's that, pup?" I asked, smiling at them.

"Running shoes! There's a new shop that opened a few blocks from the mall, and he said when we leave there he'll buy me a pair!" the little caxy exclaimed. I smiled, nodding.

"Hell yeah! Well let's get ya back there so y'can get'em then." I said with a grin, putting the key into the ignition.

Starting the engine, I pulled out from the lot and headed back for the mall, settling into a space near the doors. Moss and I headed inside and, with a little searching, found David and Trace in Sugar Shack, a candy store David seemed incapable of skipping over when he came here.

"Trace! They have them this time!!" He exclaimed, bouncing giddily as he pulled a bar from the shelf. Double-stuffed king-sized cream bar, one of his favorites. Chocolate coating, Kanorian egg cream inside, and almonds throughout. He put several of the bars into his basket and skipped off to one of the scoop carts, grabbing a bag and filling it with various treats.

"Yep, I see that, did you leave any for anyone else?" the fox said with a smirk, walking over to keep up with David. Moss and I walked in and I grabbed a basket of our own, smiling.

"Go on, pup. Grab whatever y' want, I'll pay." I said, nodding to the candy. Moss shook their head and took the basket from me, quickly rushing off to fill it with their own selection of treats. I followed behind, tallying up the cost as they went. I knew better than to think they'd let me pay for it, and the only way I'd get the chance is if I was up there before they were and had the money ready to go.

"Oh my gods!!!" The exclamation turned every head in the shop, all eyes on the little grey caxy that had shouted. David was standing there holding a large box, a logo stamped on the back. He still hadn't noticed me, or Moss. I smirked, resigning myself to overpaying and just getting change back when Moss was done. Heading over to David, seeing Moss do the same out of the corner of my eye, I settled into place behind him, crossing my arms and looking over his find.

It was a gummy wolf, blue raspberry flavor. Industrial sized, the ones as big as a teddy bear. The eyes were peppermints, orange and white swirls meeting in a single point in the center. Trace had noticed me, but hadn't said a word, merely offering an acknowledging glance before focusing on David's presentation, the caxy now turning the box to face Trace.

"IT'S RYDER!!!" He yelled through his giggles, smiling wide. Moss, now approaching from behind Trace, nodded at David. The youngster nudged Trace, who nudged back with a grin, casually grabbing a couple of things from Moss' basket and slipping them into the inner pocket of his jacket.

"Sure is, Dee. I can definitely see Ryder." Trace said with a smirk, glancing at me again as he spoke. My smirk turned to a grin and I reached forward, grabbing the box from David's hands and heading for the front counter, carrying it under my arm and pulling my wallet out.

"Hey, that's-!" I heard David cut his words short, most likely realizing I had been the one to take it. I heard footsteps following, and as I set the gummy wolf down on the counter, David smacked my shoulder.

"That was rude, you know!" He scolded. I let out a chuckle and pulled a couple of hundreds from my wallet, looking around the store for a minute before nodding to myself and looking at the clerk.

"Here, $200, paying for everything these guys plan on getting. Whatever's left over you can pocket." I offered, holding the money out. The cashier, a black and brown husky, looked at the money and nodded, smiling.

"Understood, Sir! Take your time and stock up, we're closing for a few weeks for renovations in a few days so we won't be available much longer!" They responded, setting the money into a space beside the register to use when we checked out. David gave a mrow of disappointment and smacked my shoulder again.

"I was gonna pay for our candy…You need to save up-" I cut him off with a look, sternly locking eyes with him.

"Jus' cause ya got more'n we'll ever have in our lifetimes don't mean ya gotta pay for all our shit. Sometimes we wanna do somethin' nice for ya an' that's that." I said, relaxing into a smile. "Besides, I planned on payin' for the candy Moss grabbed an' figured I may as well cover all th' stuff if'n I'm gonna cover any of it."

David gave another indignant mrow before shaking his head, smiling wide and taking off to continue filling his basket. Moss gave me a playful glare before running off to stock up their own basket. Trace just stood beside me, rocking on his pads and watching the two boys collecting candy.

"Not gonna get any for yourself?" I asked him, looking over curiously. Trace simply smirked, making a show of shaking his head while his hand shifted in his pocket. I knew that signal perfectly. His coat was stuffed with snacks, tucked away in his 'special pockets' he'd had put in. Connections in the underground paid for themselves, I guess. "Understood." I said with a chuckle, shaking my head.

Had it been anyone else, I might have tried to stop them. Paid for their goods myself, at best, convinced them to pay themselves at worst, but Trace was a special case. We'd never seen eye to eye on this sort of thing, and learned early on in our relationship it was best not to ask where Trace got anything, and even better for us not to question the methods if we did find out. I watched David and Moss, giddy over the snacks they were finding, sharing excitement across the store.

Moss was athletic, healthy, they didn't indulge in sweets much, but a candy store like this had plenty they could enjoy. David was even helping, pointing out anything he found that wasn't some sugar-filled monstrosity of cavity-inducing sweetness. I leaned back, watching them, from David's tail, long and freely swaying in his joy, to his hair, flying every which way as he turned sharp corners, excitedly darting from shelf to shelf. It was too cute not to laugh a little under my breath, smiling wide.

Trace nudged my side, raising an eyebrow at me. "You ever gonna ask the lil guy out? Come on, man. You've been making puppy eyes at him for the last ten minutes." He asked, causing me to look at him with wide eyes, my brow furrowed.

"Jus' so y'know, I ain't got any intention'a askin' David out. We ain't like that, ya oughta know that by now. Jus' cause y'like fuckin' your friends don't mean everyone with a best friend is pinin' t' pound'em." I scoffed, shaking my head. Trace smirked a little more, flashing his teeth at me.

"You're just jealous it's so easy for me, but face it, anyone with eyes can tell you want a little more than just a night of caxy magic, you want the caxy himself." He accused, turning to face me properly. I frowned, shaking my head. The odd feeling here and there didn't mean anything, it was natural for folks as close to each other as David and I were to wonder once in a while, but that didn't mean we had to pursue it. I knew better than that.

"Might wonder now an' then, but I learned pretty well that friends don't make good mates. Learned that from you." I said pointedly, hoping the jab might make him drop the subject.

His own smile faded into a frown, and he sighed. "I'm different. I liked you. You loved me. Doesn't work if it's not a real back and forth, dumbass. Gotta be mutual." He said, leaning back against the counter and pulling his hands out of his pockets, crossing his arms. I nodded, looking at David and Moss again. Moss hardly had anything in their basket, focusing on the healthy treats, the sugar-free stuff. Comparing that to David's was an anthill to a mountain, David now carrying a second basket, the first piled high. I hoped I'd paid enough for all of it.

Moss ran up and set their basket on the counter, smiling. "I got all I wanted, Uncle Rye!" they said with a wide grin. The cashier scanned the items, a few bars, a couple bags of chips, some gum, and used a bit of the money I'd given to pay it out. Moss smiled, taking the bag of candy and settling in between Trace and I. Trace nudged Moss, the young caxy looking at him curiously. "What was that for?"

Trace nodded towards David idly. "Y'think Ryder and Davey would make a good couple, kiddo?" he asked casually, leaving me glaring at him. The last thing I needed was Moss thinking about that sort of thing.

"Aren't they already?" They asked the fox, genuine curiosity in their voice.

"No, pup, we ain't. Jus' friends." I answered before Trace could corrupt the situation any further. Moss looked at me, confused.

"But he lives with you, y'all sleep together most of the time, too. And you're always watching out for him, buying him gifts like today. Are…you two not dating?" they asked, and I began to wonder what sort of things Davina had told them, or neglected to tell them, about David and I. I shook my head, sighing. This subject was starting to wear on me.

"No. Davey's my best friend, ain't nobody like'im, but that's all. Gotta be mutual. An' it ain't." I said, looking over at the little grey caxy across the store, grabbing a few more candy bars and bounding towards one last display. "Th'feelin's ain't there, pup." I said plainly.

"Oh." The younger caxy said, idly pulling one of their snack bars from the bag and starting to eat it quietly. Trace looked at me, shaking his head and letting out a sound that was half a sigh, half a growl. I looked over just in time to notice him grabbing my shirt hard, pulling me with all his strength out of the store. I could have resisted, but if he wanted to talk, better hear him out than have him make a scene in the store.

"Moss, stay there and make sure David uses what Ryder paid before he tries paying himself. I've gotta talk to your Uncle." he said, scowling. We made our way out of the store, settling in a few stores down with Trace glaring up at me, arms crossed.

"Do you have any clue how dense you are? Any idea at all?" He asked angrily, scowl only strengthening. "David looks up to you, admires you, adores you, trusts you more than he does any of us, even his own damn sister. We see you two together every time we see one of you, can't get an hour alone with either one. Even when you took off with Moss, you were back in forty minutes. Just can not stay away. But the feelings aren't mutual?"

I started to answer, but he cut me off. "Nuh-uh, quiet, not done. I've watched you rush in like a bat out of hell for the kid, but I've never seen you hurry like you have for David. Nobody else gets that privilege." His expression softened, and he looked at me with sadness in his eyes, though he tried hard to hide it. "Not even me, back then."

I was taken aback. Trace was always the blunt one, having this explosion was rare. He always spoke his mind in the moment, and I wondered why he had bottled this up. But I wasn't about to ask and risk getting hushed again.

Trace returned to his scowl, shaking his head. "The feelings weren't mutual on your end, Ryder. Not then. But now? Now anybody on Relan can take one look and see that you'd take on Gaius himself if he were a danger to David." He accused, shifting his weight from one paw to the other.

"Trace, I do all that for David cause ain't nobody else done it." I said, sighing. He had a point, one I wanted desperately to ignore. I didn't want David and I to go the same way Trace and I had. I couldn't do that to him. I couldn't hurt him too.

Trace glowered at me, then let his shoulders slump. "You are…too stupid for your own good." He said, frustration in his voice. "And for David's."

His words came with a finality I didn't dare question or add on to. I watched him pad back towards the store and followed quietly. He had said his piece and I had no idea how to respond besides simply going back with him. I felt a tightness in my chest, heat rising in my heart. Anger, remorse, regret, blame, all fighting on equal ground to decide how I was supposed to feel.

We got back to the store, David and Moss waiting by the door. Trace smiled, wrapping an arm around each of the caxies. "Got your goods, boys? Gods know I do!" He said with a laugh, letting go of David to pat his pocket, the sound of cellophane crinkling as he did. I stepped up behind Moss, ruffling his hair and putting on my best smile. I ruffled Moss' hair, earning an angry mrow from the young caxy.

David looked at me and mrowed curiously. "Everything okay, Rye? What did you and Trace need to talk about?" He asked, obviously a little worried. I shook my head, smiling.

"Jus' some old wounds needin' t'be licked, that's all." I said casually. Trace nodded, grinning.

"Yeah, he licked my old wound real good~" He said with a smirk. Moss playfully smacked his shoulder, laughing. I admired how easily he could slip back into his casual, playful attitude.

"Trace!!" the younger caxy exclaimed, trying to quiet their laughter. The four of us headed for the front entrance, and Trace stopped us at the doors.

"Alright, David, remember the game plan?" he asked, a wild smile on his face. David nodded excitedly.

"Yep! Tomorrow night at eight, you pick me up at Ryder's and we head out. I've got my stuff at my apartment so we'll make a stop on the way home so I can get it!" He answered eagerly.

Moss smiled, nodding. "I've got my gear in the back of the car! So we'll be all set and ready to go!" They said confidently.

"Y'all wanna tell me what this is about?" I asked worriedly, looking at the excited trio. Trace grinned at my question, like he knew how the answer was going to make me feel.

"We're going ghost hunting at the mall in Old Town." he said proudly, like it was worth bragging about. Old Town was no joke. Spire in the area failed during a storm, and the entire district was lost to a lightning strike. Hundreds, gone in an instant. The stories of ghosts ran rampant after that, and with the damage to structures, I didn't like the idea of David going out there one bit.

"Y'all ain't doin' that. Not with David. I know you'll be fine, Trace, y'got that wind shit ya do, an' I trust Moss t' take care'a themselves jus' as well. Davey, please tell me ya ain't goin' with'em?" I asked, half-pleading.

David simply shrugged, smiling. He was going, and wasn't about to give me a chance to turn him away from it. I sighed, nodding.

"Take care'a Davey out there then. Ya put'im first, 'fore yourself, got it, Trace?" I insisted, baring my teeth. The fox shrunk a little at that, but nodded.

"We'll take good care of him, we always do!" Moss said with a smile. The little caxy nudged Trace and pulled his jacket a little. "C'mon, we gotta go get some sleep if we wanna be up all night tonight!" they demanded, grinning.

Trace nodded, following suit and waving his hand at us. "You two be good, and don't forget what I said, Ryder!" he yelled our way, heading for his car.

David and I shared a laugh, my own being more tense than happy, and headed for the truck. If David was going to go, at least I knew Trace had agreed to watch him like a hawk. For all my worries, I could trust Trace to keep his word. I had to hold on to that.

I had to trust David would be safe without me tomorrow night.

[spacefinch]

Assigning a song to EVERY Magic School Bus episode

Gets Lost in Space-- "Space Oddity" by David Bowie

For Lunch-- "The Bloodmobile" by They Might Be Giants

Inside Ralphie-- "Girl at the Window" by Coast Office (my dad's band!)

Gets Eaten-- "Axolotl" by Cosmo Sheldrake

Hops Home-- "We're Going to Be Friends" by the White Stripes

Meets the Rot Squad-- "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" by Tears for Fears

All Dried Up-- "Solar Waltz" by Cosmo Sheldrake

In the Haunted House-- "The Edison Museum" by They Might Be Giants

Gets Ready, Set, Dough-- "American Pie" by Don McLean

Plays Ball-- "All Star" by Smash Mouth

Goes to Seed-- "Tree Among Shrubs" by Men I Trust

Gets Ants in its Pants-- "Tardigrade Song" by Cosmo Sheldrake

Kicks Ups a Storm-- "Mr. Blue Sky" by Electric Light Orchestra

Blows Its Top-- "Island in the Sun" by Weezer

Flexes Its Muscles-- "Bones" by Imagine Dragons

The Busasaurus-- "I Am a Paleontologist" by They Might Be Giants

Going Batty-- "This is Halloween" by Danny Elfman

Butterfly and the Bog Beast-- "Solar" by Cosmo Sheldrake

Wet All Over "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" by B.J. Thomas

In a Pickle-- "The Room Where It Happens" from Hamilton

Revving Up-- "Chemical Worker's Song" by Great Big Sea

Taking Flight-- "Never Let Me Down Again" by Depeche Mode

Getting Energized-- "Erie Canal" (Traditional folk song)

Out of This World-- "Love Don't Roam" by Neil Hannon

Cold Feet-- "Muted Land" by Faith and The Muse

Ups and Downs-- "All That Glitters" by Earl

In a Beehive-- "Buildings In Flower" by The Innocence Mission

In the Arctic-- "California Dreamin'" by The Mamas and the Papas

Spins a Web-- "Metropolis of Eden" by Sparkbird

Under Construction-- "We Built This City" by Starship

Gets a Bright Idea-- "Kill the Lights" by Set it Off

Shows and Tells-- "Time in a Bottle" by Jim Croce

Makes a Rainbow-- "Sunny" by Marvin Gaye

Goes Upstream-- "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers

Works Out-- "Good to Go" by LONIS and Daphne Willis

Gets Planted-- "The Moss" by Cosmo Sheldrake

In the Rainforest-- "Shadow of the Pines" by The Innocence Mission

Rocks and Rolls-- "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Marvin Gaye

Holiday Special-- "I Search For Tomorrow" by Leonard Nimoy

Meets Molly Cule-- "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" by ABBA

Cracks a Yolk-- "Daily" by The Innocence Mission

Goes to Mussel Beach-- "Pelicans We" by Cosmo Sheldrake

Goes on Air-- "Toxic" by Britney Spears

Gets Swamped-- "Spock Thoughts" by Leonard Nimoy

Goes Cellular-- "Cells" by They Might Be Giants

Sees Stars-- "Space Song" by Beach House

Gains Weight-- "Planet Earth" by Duran Duran

Makes a Stink

Gets Charged-- "Make a Circuit With Me" by the Polecats

Gets Programmed-- "Rule #4: Fish in a Birdcage" by Fish in a Birdcage

In the City-- "November" by Sparkbird

Takes a Dive-- "Taroko" by August Greenwood

This list took me almost 2 consecutive hours to write, so please feel free to send me asks so I can talk about why I chose the songs I did.

[whisperthatruns]

I might have been going this way, or I might have been going the other, I really couldn't be sure. Anyway, don't try telling stuff like that to certain people, you'd just be wasting your time. I don't even want to talk about it, to tell you the truth. Sometimes he'd sell off the first couple things he could get his hands on for some change to spend at his man on the corner, but it'd take you a while to recognize what the things had been. Like, I used to have this xylophone. It wasn't the best xylophone in the world or anything, but I knew a few jingles to play on it. Except once when I was older I went looking for it and all the keys were missing. I mean, every, single, one---it was just a wooden block left behind with a pair of rubber-tipped sticks. That's good copper you had lying around, boy! he said. Who are you, the queen of the world? "That's not the point!" Damn: all of a sudden I was yelling out loud in those woods. Something off to my side scurried away at the sound of my voice. "It's not just the queen of the world who gets to keep her stuff. It can be the rest of us too." Pah. More drivel. Same as ever, I see. "Shut up!" Where are you now? Lost, I bet. I was plunging farther still into the smells of wet bough and rotten moss. Dark things with pinpoints for eyes were moving in the trees. I heard his mean footsteps coming down the stairs after one of his sleepless nights spent arguing on the phone. The dungeon of my imagination had been flung open without the sun to keep watch. "You don't get to do that," I said, and I meant it. You don't get to go around selling all the copper you find because you think no one can do anything about it. Not the copper, not the bicycle pedals, the motors for my toy cars, the night-lights. Not the screws from the bed frame so that the mattress had to be put on the floor, or the graduation rings, the razor blades, the alarm clocks, the cuff links for my one good shirt, the remote for the TV. I stopped where I was and dropped to my haunches. The swamp water was chilling my clothes and that was the reason I was shaking. "I'm not some coward." Geez, I was having some serious tremors. My clothes were really damp. Something must have flown into my eyes, too, since I was having to wipe them a lot all of a sudden. All that ever happened to me was bad luck and cold clothes, and I was tired of it. And as a matter of fact, I was lying just now, it was the best damn xylophone in the world. And he had been the one to teach me the jingles on it. So if some of us who you see out here are not musicians, it's only because those we loved the most once took back the keys.

Eskor David Johnson, Pay as You Go (McSweeney’s, 2023)

[im-not-batman]

Second installment of my mission to write a Ronance oneshot based off each song from MOSS by Maya Hawke my beloved.

When she knocked on their door, it took a second for there to be a response. Nancy understood why when Robin came to the door dressed in coveralls that were more paint than fabric.

"Hey Robin-a-Roo, busy day?" She chuckled, a little sarcastically.

"You don't even know the half of it, Nance," Robin sighed with false weariness as she turned to walk back into the apartment with a broad grin. She left the door open for Nancy to follow her.

Nancy smiled with amused shock when she reached Robin's room.

Every surface was covered in sheets of tarp, save for one wall which was smattered with splats vibrant colour.

There were open cans of paint in every colour you could imagine lined up on the floor (also protected with plastic), and there were various paint brushes and tools strewn about. When she looked at Robin again though, she saw that clearly she had leaned in favour of using her bare hands for this endeavour.

"Voilà!" Robin announced, waving her arms dramatically at the wall. Her face was adorned with a broad and bright grin that reached her eyes. Nancy's chest flowered with warmth.

"Cool," she said with a smile of her own, "there's almost as much paint on the wall as there is on you."

"Oh, excuse me for getting excited at the prospect of flinging colours around," Robin rolled her eyes good-naturedly and turned to admire her messy work.

Nancy laughed again and looked at the set up Robin had going.

She grinned, "looks like fun."

Robin beamed and turned to face Nancy again, "it's a great stress reliever. Wanna join?" She wiggled her eyebrows in challenge.

"Oh I wouldn't want to ruin it," she replied, suddenly feeling sheepish and vulnerable.

Robin's voice dropped a little, and she smirked, teasing, "ruin my completely random, zero skill required, messy, impulsive, paint splashing?"

Nancy frowned, "Impulsive? Didn't you get the landlord's permission?" She asked.

"There wasn't time! I had to go to the hardware store to get the tarps and paint and then I was deciding which wall to do it on and covering everything else with plastic and tape!" She spoke while waving her arms around dramatically, clearly just trying to make Nancy laugh. It worked.

"Don't worry I'll paint over it when I move out," she promised and wiggled her fingers ominously as she asked, "so are you getting your hands dirty or what?"

This time it was Nancy who rolled her eyes, "Fine, but I don't really have any clothes I'd be okay with getting paint on."

"Just borrow mine," Robin offered without hesitation, already dipping a hand into a truly alarming shade of bright green and admiring the way it dripped from her long fingers.

She grinned at Robin's ease at offering up her clothes for her to essentially ruin. The trust that Nancy would know the right clothes to pick, the inherent intimacy of sharing clothes, shocked her a little.

An indescribable warmth spread through her chest as she rifled through the drawers. She grabbed a grubby old work shirt that she knew Robin only kept for messy projects like this, since it was embroidered with a company logo. And she recognised a pair of dungarees she'd seen Robin wear before – she had a habit of drawing on the knees and wiping dirt and dyes and all sorts all over them, so she assumed a little paint would be fine – and took them to the bathroom to change.

When she came back into Robin's room, Nancy lingered at the door. Robin had put on some music (apparently not minding her tape deck getting a little colourful) and was jumping around dancing to David Bowie. With her eyes closed, she didn't see Nancy return and so was unencumbered by embarrassment or shyness.

Robin smiled bright, she occasionally flicked out her arms towards the paint wall, leaving a splatter of neon green from the arc of her hands as she danced. It was pure joy. Nancy couldn't keep herself from joining.

As the chorus hit, she jumped into Robin's room, dancing like no one was watching and she started singing along. Well, shouting would be more accurate.

At first her friend looked caught. Like she didn't mean for anyone to see her goofing around dancing to one of her favourite songs, so Nancy made sure to act even goofier. Even out the playing field.

Robin's face then transformed into something akin to awe. Like she couldn't believe that Nancy was there. Finally, her expression turned into one of sheer happiness as she started dancing again and joining Nancy in her shout-singing of the chorus.

As the song faded out they found themselves theatrically falling to the ground out of breath, the plastic rustled beneath them. Any of Nancy's lingering annoyance for the people at her old job had been drowned out by the utter joy that coursed through her now.

She sighed as she finally regained her wind, "I needed that," she smiled as she sat up to look at the wall again, "so what do you want me to do?"

[wolfhowlsthewolf]

My Wolf Spotify Playlist!

Running with the Wolves - Aurora

Awake and Alive - Skillet

Numb - Linkin Park

Not Gonna Die - Skillet

New Divide - Linkin Park

Breaking the Habit - Linkin Park

Hero - Skillet

The Wolf - SIAMES

Meet me in the Woods - Lord Huron

Wolf - First Aid Kit

Willow Tree March - First Aid Kit

The River - Blues Saraceno

Natural - Imagine Dragons

She Wolf (Falling To Pieces ft Sia) - David Guetta

Titanium (ft Sia) - David Guetta

Animals - Maroon 5

Run Boy Run - Woodkid

Dirty Paws - Of Monsters and Men

This is War - Thirty Seconds To Mars

Walk on Water - Thirty Seconds To Mars

Puppet - Thousand Foot Krutch

War of Change - Thousand Foot Krutch

Courtesy Call - Thousand Foot Krutch

Youth - Glass Animals

Turn the Dirt Over - Sea Wolf

You're A Wolf - Sea Wolf

The Woods - Cosmo Sheldrake

Furr - Blitzen Trapper

Come Along - Cosmo Sheldrake

Moss - Cosmo Sheldrake

Birthday Suit - Cosmo Sheldrake

Tardigrade Song - Cosmo Sheldrake

The Valley - The Oh Hellos

Least of my Kind - Three Weird Sisters

We Will Commit Wolf Murder - of Montreal

I Run With Wolves - Manafest

Howls the Wolf (Moll's Song) - Kila

Blood Pact - Sea Wolf

Devil Town - Cavetown

Suggest more below!! :3

[zenasflower]

Perfection Flowers

Perfection flowers are a symbol of enduring beauty. They represent trust and reliability and will add a touch of elegance to your special day.

A perfect flower has both male and female parts inside, called pistils or carpels. These pistils contain the stigma, style and ovary which have seeds or ovules inside them.

Roses

As the iconic Perfection flowers, red roses are a classic gift that conveys love and romance. But they also symbolize gratitude, sympathy and affection. Likewise, the purple hue of a rose expresses admiration and gentleness. And orange roses are a symbol of passion and enthusiasm.

Roses can be grown in mixed borders, as shrubs (e.g., 'Cleopatra') in the garden or as climbers and ramblers for draping over pergolas and walls. Some are even able to grow indoors as houseplants.

Prolific UK-based rose breeder David Austin specializes in creating modern classics with impeccable form and fragrance. His 'Gertrude Jekyll' and 'Munstead Wood' are examples of roses that combine healthy growth with floriferous blooms and fantastic fragrance. "English roses," as he calls them, are a broad group that encompasses old varieties such as the Gallica, Damask and Alba roses as well as the Moss roses. These often are once-flowering but some such as the old Rosa mutabilis can be repeat-flowerers.

Stock

In flowers, stock is the male organ (anther atop a long filament) that releases pollen grains that are carried by insects or wind to the female pistil on another flower, or in some cases on the same flower. When the pollen reaches the stigma, it fertilizes it and develops into seeds. Plants may have either male or female organs in separate flowers (dioecious), or both in perfect flowers. Most crops covered by this website are monoecious, meaning that the male and female functions occur in different flowers at different times.

A ray of sunshine in bloom, Sunshine Perfection features yellow roses, bicolored yellow and green alstroemeria and stylish yellow gerberas. Send this cheerful bouquet to your loved one to show them how much you care. Due to seasonal availability, color and container substitutions may be necessary. Prices shown do not include delivery charges. Orders delivered within the continental US only.

Carnations

Carnations, scientifically known as Dianthus caryophyllus, are one of the oldest cultivated flowers. They’re beloved for their versatility and spectrum of colors, making them a favored bloom in bouquets and decorative arrangements. Their symbolism of love, fascination, and devotion translates across cultures and time periods, reflecting the dynamism of human emotions and experiences.

In the realm of weddings, carnations are celebrated for their enduring beauty and rich meanings. From elegant whites to vibrant reds, these blossoms represent the joy and sanctity of matrimonial unions.

In addition, a carnation’s significance in the arts and literature highlights its enduring ability to inspire awe and captivate the human imagination. Often, carnations serve as metaphors for the fragility of life and our fleeting moments of beauty. In modern visual art, the luminous nature of fresh carnations inspires artists to explore themes of identity and memory. Their depiction in art also reflects a broader societal trend towards embracing and celebrating diversity.

Alstroemeria

Alstroemeria is a popular choice to Sympathy flowers and add a pop of color to a bouquet. Its seemingly limitless colors allow for a subtle complement or a bold contrast to other flowers. These plants are known for their tolerance of drought, as well as resistance to common garden pests and diseases.

The blossoms, which resemble miniature lilies, have three true petals and three matching sepals. They are arranged in clusters along the tops of long stems that twist as they grow. Alstroemeria's petal structures hold cultural significance, representing friendship and support. They are often given as gifts to show appreciation and fondness for others. Their vibrant hues make them a common flower in weddings and other romantic arrangements.

Alstroemeria is a perennial plant that grows from tuberous roots. It thrives in a climate similar to its native regions of South America, notably Brazil and Argentina. Its tolerance to drought and resistance to disease help it flourish throughout the growing season, which peaks in July. Like other perennials, good drainage is key to preventing root rot.

[models-direct]

Keeping it real – everyday models are everyday people!

Close your eyes and think of a model, any model! OK, my guess is you thought of Kate Moss or maybe Naomi Campbell or Kylie Jenner? Apply to be a model Or perhaps the image that sprang to mind was a male model – perhaps David Gandy or Sean O’Pry? Of course, we think of all these famous faces whenever modelling is discussed or imagined – but the reality is that we could not be further from the…

[leatherylook1212]

Leather Jackets Through the Ages: A Style Evolution

The Timeless Journey of Leather Jackets: From their humble beginnings as utilitarian apparel to becoming iconic symbols of rebellion and style, leather jackets have woven their way through the fabric of fashion history. In this deep dive, we explore the transformative journey of leather jackets, tracing their evolution across the decades and examining their undying appeal in modern fashion.

1. The Early Days: Military Beginnings and Aviator Aces

Leather jackets took flight in the early 20th century, initially crafted as rugged outerwear for military pilots. The need for warmth and durability in open cockpits during World War I gave rise to the first aviator jackets, known for their thick leather and shearling linings. This section explores how these practical garments laid the groundwork for the leather jacket's robust, enduring design.

2. The 1950s: Hollywood Rebels and the Birth of Cool

The 1950s marked a pivotal turn for leather jackets as they transitioned from military gear to cultural icons, thanks largely to Hollywood. With Marlon Brando in The Wild One and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, the leather jacket became synonymous with youth rebellion and nonconformity. This era cemented the leather jacket’s role as a symbol of cool, forever changing how it was viewed in the eyes of the public.

3. The 1970s and 1980s: Punk Rock and Pop Culture

As the spotlight shifted from the silver screen to the music scene, leather jackets embraced punk and rock 'n' roll. Bands like The Ramones and artists such as Debbie Harry of Blondie championed leather jackets, aligning them with an edgy, anti-establishment vibe. This section will delve into how leather jackets were not just clothing but a statement against societal norms, embellished with studs, patches, and graffiti.

4. The 1990s to Today: High Fashion and Mainstream Adoption

As the decades progressed, so did the leather jacket's style. Explore the various iterations, from the tailored elegance of the 1960s to the bold experimentation of the 1980s. Witness how designers infused new materials, colors, and silhouettes into this classic garment, redefining its place in the fashion landscape.Entering the 1990s, the leather jacket found a new home in high fashion. Designers such as Jean Paul Gautier and Versace re imagined the leather jacket, incorporating it into haute couture collections. Today, leather jackets are omnipresent across all fashion spectrum's, from luxury designers to street wear and everything in between. We'll explore the current trends and how technological advancements in materials and dyes have expanded the range of styles available.

5. Iconic Moments: Leather Jackets in Film and Celebrity Culture

This section highlights iconic moments that have defined the leather jacket's status in popular culture. From Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator to the cast of The Matrix, leather jackets continue to be a go-to for filmmakers looking to convey toughness and mystique. Additionally, we will look at how celebrities today wear leather jackets on and off the red carpet, influencing fashion trends worldwide.From rock stars to fashion moguls, delve into the closets of cultural icons who have made the leather jacket their signature look. Analyze how figures like David Bowie, Madonna, and Kate Moss have personalized and elevated this wardrobe staple, cementing its status as a timeless fashion statement.

6. The Future of Leather Jackets: Sustainability and Innovation

As the fashion industry faces increasing scrutiny over its environmental impact, the future of leather jackets is entering a new phase. This section will address innovations in sustainable leather production, including vegan leather and other eco-friendly materials, and how they are shaping the next generation of leather jackets without compromising on style.

Conclusion: A Timeless Staple in the World of Fashion

Leather jackets have proven to be one of the most enduring pieces in fashion history, continuously evolving while maintaining their core appeal. From rugged practicality to high fashion statement, the leather jacket remains as relevant today as it was a century ago. As we look forward, it’s clear that while styles may change, the love for leather jackets surely will not, making them a permanent fixture in wardrobes around the world.

Final Thoughts: Your Personal Journey with Leather

As you reflect on the vast history of leather jackets, consider your own journey with this iconic piece. Whether it’s a vintage biker jacket that tells a story or a sleek new design that speaks to modern innovation, a leather jacket is more than just a piece of clothing—it’s a narrative of personal style and expression through the ages.So, our exploration of leather jackets through the ages, we are reminded of its enduring appeal and cultural significance. From its humble beginnings as a utilitarian garment to its status as a symbol of rebellion and style, the leather jacket remains an icon of fashion history, continuing to inspire and captivate generations to come.

[caxycreations]

Tylvinian Tales: The Wolf's Den

Chapter Nine: Sweet Tooth

Ferusian Law, Third Sequence, Article 3: Law of Trespass

Ferusian citizens are entitled passage and habitation of any residency or public space as recognized by the Department of Home and Business.

Citizens are strictly forbidden from passing through, entering, or inhabiting any residency or public space owned privately through individual or business contract, such as homes, apartments, or private contractors.

Citizens are also forbidden from entering any space designated as Hazard Level C or higher by the Department of Risk Assessment, such as some condemned buildings, glassed towns/cities, or storm-wrecked districts.

Citizens caught in forbidden areas are fined no less than $10,000 and given a minimum of two months community service, up to a maximum of six months imprisonment.

I woke up to the sound of a claw tapping on glass, and for a minute I worried I'd been out here so long security flagged me as a risk. A glance out the window brought a smile to my face instead of a scowl, seeing I was wrong. A pale blueish gray caxy was standing at the window, dark markings in the shape of a cats eyes framing their forest green eyes. Ears pierced ten times each, and sharing Davina's signature studs above the eyebrow.

A lip ring adorned the thick, black bottom lip they shared with their mother. Brown hair, fluffy and thick, messy but swept to part on the left side. They were wearing a dark green bomber jacket, one that matched with David's, and Davina's, in style if not in color. A hand-drawn, stylized S was on the left side of the chest. Trace's logo.

Moss.

I chuckled, unlocking the doors and stepping out, pulling the young hybrid into a hug. "Howdy, pup. How's life?" I asked, smiling. I could guess easily how life had been. Life with Davina was always interesting, given her habits. But I was still curious to hear how they'd been, and what they'd been up to, apart from that. Moss shifted in their seat, trying to get comfortable before giving me an answer.

"It's been good! Mom's been stressing over my weekend trips like usual, but she did mention something about taking my driver's test next year, so soon I'll be able to start practicing!" They said, half excited. Moss smiled, buckling into their seat and looking at me expectantly.

"Hell yeah! You gonna practice with 'Vina or Trace?" I asked, starting up the truck and pulling out of the lot, heading for the nearest Mac Patty's.

"I think I'd like to practice with Trace. Mom's great, most of the time, but I don't think she'd be very good at teaching me while she's busy fussing over every little thing I do behind the wheel." They said, letting out a chuckle. It was wild imagining Davina of all people fussing and fretting over little things, but I understood. Moss was special to her like that. We pulled in and got out, heading in and placing our orders before settling down at a table.

"How's it been here? Been good or...?" Moss trailed off, smiling curiously. I chuckled, shaking my head.

"Well, David's avoidin' home for a while. Tired of th' empty space, I reckon. Can't say I blame'im, he's got next t' nothin' unpacked there an' it's a damn depressin' little apartment." I responded with a dismissive wave. "Other'n th' houseguest I've been entertainin', it's been same as usual. Got a job offer though, security at th' club David had his 21st at."

Moss suddenly lit up, smiling wide at me and setting their burger down. "Oh yeah! I wanted to ask you, do you think you can get me in some time? I'm here every weekend, can't you get me in?" They asked, excited and almost pleading. They made wide, hopeful eyes, the smile on their face warm and eager. A hope, warmth, and eagerness I had to crush, unfortunately.

"No can do, pup. Ain't old enough an' they card ya at every turn in there. Davey almost gets thrown out ten times a night when he's in there, they have such a hard time trustin' his ID." I answered, half-sad at having to deny them. "Y'wouldn't be able t' get on th' dance floor, wouldn't be able t' get t' th' bar t' order water, an' ya wouldn't be able t' get in th' front door. Even if'n I helped ya by, they'd card ya inside an' we'd both be in trouble." I said with a sigh.

I watched them deflate, shoulders sagging and smile fading to a frown, eyes shifting to look at their food again. "Oh…Okay, sorry Uncle Rye." They apologized, low and quiet. I hated being the bearer of bad news. I glanced at the menu and chuckled, seeing a few pies, cakes, and ice cream options. I tapped one I knew they liked, a personal sized mulberry pie, and raised an eyebrow, smirking. They looked at the menu where I'd tapped and laughed a little, then looked at me.

"Are you sure, Uncle Ryder? I don't wanna cost you too much…" they said hesitantly. They glanced back to the menu, and I heard a soft, quiet mewl from them. I nodded, laughing a little and waving over a waiter, ordering two of the pies and a third to-go. Moss smiled, still not as energetic as they had been, but noticeably better than they had been a minute ago. We finished our food in silence, and when the pies came out, we ate them quickly and left.

Moss smiled as they sat their take-home pie in the floorboard, buckling in. "So guess what Trace said he would buy me today!" they said excitedly. I chuckled, shaking my head. Gifts from Trace were always bad news in the best way. I couldn't help but wonder what the fox had planned.

"What's that, pup?" I asked, smiling at them.

"Running shoes! There's a new shop that opened a few blocks from the mall, and he said when we leave there he'll buy me a pair!" the little caxy exclaimed. I smiled, nodding.

"Hell yeah! Well let's get ya back there so y'can get'em then." I said with a grin, putting the key into the ignition.

Starting the engine, I pulled out from the lot and headed back for the mall, settling into a space near the doors. Moss and I headed inside and, with a little searching, found David and Trace in Sugar Shack, a candy store David seemed incapable of skipping over when he came here.

"Trace! They have them this time!!" He exclaimed, bouncing giddily as he pulled a bar from the shelf. Double-stuffed king-sized cream bar, one of his favorites. Chocolate coating, Kanorian egg cream inside, and almonds throughout. He put several of the bars into his basket and skipped off to one of the scoop carts, grabbing a bag and filling it with various treats.

"Yep, I see that, did you leave any for anyone else?" the fox said with a smirk, walking over to keep up with David. Moss and I walked in and I grabbed a basket of our own, smiling.

"Go on, pup. Grab whatever y' want, I'll pay." I said, nodding to the candy. Moss shook their head and took the basket from me, quickly rushing off to fill it with their own selection of treats. I followed behind, tallying up the cost as they went. I knew better than to think they'd let me pay for it, and the only way I'd get the chance is if I was up there before they were and had the money ready to go.

"Oh my gods!!!" The exclamation turned every head in the shop, all eyes on the little grey caxy that had shouted. David was standing there holding a large box, a logo stamped on the back. He still hadn't noticed me, or Moss. I smirked, resigning myself to overpaying and just getting change back when Moss was done. Heading over to David, seeing Moss do the same out of the corner of my eye, I settled into place behind him, crossing my arms and looking over his find.

It was a gummy wolf, blue raspberry flavor. Industrial sized, the ones as big as a teddy bear. The eyes were peppermints, orange and white swirls meeting in a single point in the center. Trace had noticed me, but hadn't said a word, merely offering an acknowledging glance before focusing on David's presentation, the caxy now turning the box to face Trace.

"IT'S RYDER!!!" He yelled through his giggles, smiling wide. Moss, now approaching from behind Trace, nodded at David. The youngster nudged Trace, who nudged back with a grin, casually grabbing a couple of things from Moss' basket and slipping them into the inner pocket of his jacket.

"Sure is, Dee. I can definitely see Ryder." Trace said with a smirk, glancing at me again as he spoke. My smirk turned to a grin and I reached forward, grabbing the box from David's hands and heading for the front counter, carrying it under my arm and pulling my wallet out.

"Hey, that's-!" I heard David cut his words short, most likely realizing I had been the one to take it. I heard footsteps following, and as I set the gummy wolf down on the counter, David smacked my shoulder.

"That was rude, you know!" He scolded. I let out a chuckle and pulled a couple of hundreds from my wallet, looking around the store for a minute before nodding to myself and looking at the clerk.

"Here, $200, paying for everything these guys plan on getting. Whatever's left over you can pocket." I offered, holding the money out. The cashier, a black and brown husky, looked at the money and nodded, smiling.

"Understood, Sir! Take your time and stock up, we're closing for a few weeks for renovations in a few days so we won't be available much longer!" They responded, setting the money into a space beside the register to use when we checked out. David gave a mrow of disappointment and smacked my shoulder again.

"I was gonna pay for our candy…You need to save up-" I cut him off with a look, sternly locking eyes with him.

"Jus' cause ya got more'n we'll ever have in our lifetimes don't mean ya gotta pay for all our shit. Sometimes we wanna do somethin' nice for ya an' that's that." I said, relaxing into a smile. "Besides, I planned on payin' for the candy Moss grabbed an' figured I may as well cover all th' stuff if'n I'm gonna cover any of it."

David gave another indignant mrow before shaking his head, smiling wide and taking off to continue filling his basket. Moss gave me a playful glare before running off to stock up their own basket. Trace just stood beside me, rocking on his pads and watching the two boys collecting candy.

"Not gonna get any for yourself?" I asked him, looking over curiously. Trace simply smirked, making a show of shaking his head while his hand shifted in his pocket. I knew that signal perfectly. His coat was stuffed with snacks, tucked away in his 'special pockets' he'd had put in. Connections in the underground paid for themselves, I guess. "Understood." I said with a chuckle, shaking my head.

Had it been anyone else, I might have tried to stop them. Paid for their goods myself, at best, convinced them to pay themselves at worst, but Trace was a special case. We'd never seen eye to eye on this sort of thing, and learned early on in our relationship it was best not to ask where Trace got anything, and even better for us not to question the methods if we did find out. I watched David and Moss, giddy over the snacks they were finding, sharing excitement across the store.

Moss was athletic, healthy, they didn't indulge in sweets much, but a candy store like this had plenty they could enjoy. David was even helping, pointing out anything he found that wasn't some sugar-filled monstrosity of cavity-inducing sweetness. I leaned back, watching them, from David's tail, long and freely swaying in his joy, to his hair, flying every which way as he turned sharp corners, excitedly darting from shelf to shelf. It was too cute not to laugh a little under my breath, smiling wide.

Trace nudged my side, raising an eyebrow at me. "You ever gonna ask the lil guy out? Come on, man. You've been making puppy eyes at him for the last ten minutes." He asked, causing me to look at him with wide eyes, my brow furrowed.

"Jus' so y'know, I ain't got any intention'a askin' David out. We ain't like that, ya oughta know that by now. Jus' cause y'like fuckin' your friends don't mean everyone with a best friend is pinin' t' pound'em." I scoffed, shaking my head. Trace smirked a little more, flashing his teeth at me.

"You're just jealous it's so easy for me, but face it, anyone with eyes can tell you want a little more than just a night of caxy magic, you want the caxy himself." He accused, turning to face me properly. I frowned, shaking my head. The odd feeling here and there didn't mean anything, it was natural for folks as close to each other as David and I were to wonder once in a while, but that didn't mean we had to pursue it. I knew better than that.

"Might wonder now an' then, but I learned pretty well that friends don't make good mates. Learned that from you." I said pointedly, hoping the jab might make him drop the subject.

His own smile faded into a frown, and he sighed. "I'm different. I liked you. You loved me. Doesn't work if it's not a real back and forth, dumbass. Gotta be mutual." He said, leaning back against the counter and pulling his hands out of his pockets, crossing his arms. I nodded, looking at David and Moss again. Moss hardly had anything in their basket, focusing on the healthy treats, the sugar-free stuff. Comparing that to David's was an anthill to a mountain, David now carrying a second basket, the first piled high. I hoped I'd paid enough for all of it.

Moss ran up and set their basket on the counter, smiling. "I got all I wanted, Uncle Rye!" they said with a wide grin. The cashier scanned the items, a few bars, a couple bags of chips, some gum, and used a bit of the money I'd given to pay it out. Moss smiled, taking the bag of candy and settling in between Trace and I. Trace nudged Moss, the young caxy looking at him curiously. "What was that for?"

Trace nodded towards David idly. "Y'think Ryder and Davey would make a good couple, kiddo?" he asked casually, leaving me glaring at him. The last thing I needed was Moss thinking about that sort of thing.

"Aren't they already?" They asked the fox, genuine curiosity in their voice.

"No, pup, we ain't. Jus' friends." I answered before Trace could corrupt the situation any further. Moss looked at me, confused.

"But he lives with you, y'all sleep together most of the time, too. And you're always watching out for him, buying him gifts like today. Are…you two not dating?" they asked, and I began to wonder what sort of things Davina had told them, or neglected to tell them, about David and I. I shook my head, sighing. This subject was starting to wear on me.

"No. Davey's my best friend, ain't nobody like'im, but that's all. Gotta be mutual. An' it ain't." I said, looking over at the little grey caxy across the store, grabbing a few more candy bars and bounding towards one last display. "Th'feelin's ain't there, pup." I said plainly.

"Oh." The younger caxy said, idly pulling one of their snack bars from the bag and starting to eat it quietly. Trace looked at me, shaking his head and letting out a sound that was half a sigh, half a growl. I looked over just in time to notice him grabbing my shirt hard, pulling me with all his strength out of the store. I could have resisted, but if he wanted to talk, better hear him out than have him make a scene in the store.

"Moss, stay there and make sure David uses what Ryder paid before he tries paying himself. I've gotta talk to your Uncle." he said, scowling. We made our way out of the store, settling in a few stores down with Trace glaring up at me, arms crossed.

"Do you have any clue how dense you are? Any idea at all?" He asked angrily, scowl only strengthening. "David looks up to you, admires you, adores you, trusts you more than he does any of us, even his own damn sister. We see you two together every time we see one of you, can't get an hour alone with either one. Even when you took off with Moss, you were back in forty minutes. Just can not stay away. But the feelings aren't mutual?"

I started to answer, but he cut me off. "Nuh-uh, quiet, not done. I've watched you rush in like a bat out of hell for the kid, but I've never seen you hurry like you have for David. Nobody else gets that privilege." His expression softened, and he looked at me with sadness in his eyes, though he tried hard to hide it. "Not even me, back then."

I was taken aback. Trace was always the blunt one, having this explosion was rare. He always spoke his mind in the moment, and I wondered why he had bottled this up. But I wasn't about to ask and risk getting hushed again.

Trace returned to his scowl, shaking his head. "The feelings weren't mutual on your end, Ryder. Not then. But now? Now anybody on Relan can take one look and see that you'd take on Gaius himself if he were a danger to David." He accused, shifting his weight from one paw to the other.

"Trace, I do all that for David cause ain't nobody else done it." I said, sighing. He had a point, one I wanted desperately to ignore. I didn't want David and I to go the same way Trace and I had. I couldn't do that to him. I couldn't hurt him too.

Trace glowered at me, then let his shoulders slump. "You are…too stupid for your own good." He said, frustration in his voice. "And for David's."

His words came with a finality I didn't dare question or add on to. I watched him pad back towards the store and followed quietly. He had said his piece and I had no idea how to respond besides simply going back with him. I felt a tightness in my chest, heat rising in my heart. Anger, remorse, regret, blame, all fighting on equal ground to decide how I was supposed to feel.

We got back to the store, David and Moss waiting by the door. Trace smiled, wrapping an arm around each of the caxies. "Got your goods, boys? Gods know I do!" He said with a laugh, letting go of David to pat his pocket, the sound of cellophane crinkling as he did. I stepped up behind Moss, ruffling his hair and putting on my best smile. I ruffled Moss' hair, earning an angry mrow from the young caxy.

David looked at me and mrowed curiously. "Everything okay, Rye? What did you and Trace need to talk about?" He asked, obviously a little worried. I shook my head, smiling.

"Jus' some old wounds needin' t'be licked, that's all." I said casually. Trace nodded, grinning.

"Yeah, he licked my old wound real good~" He said with a smirk. Moss playfully smacked his shoulder, laughing. I admired how easily he could slip back into his casual, playful attitude.

"Trace!!" the younger caxy exclaimed, trying to quiet their laughter. The four of us headed for the front entrance, and Trace stopped us at the doors.

"Alright, David, remember the game plan?" he asked, a wild smile on his face. David nodded excitedly.

"Yep! Tomorrow night at eight, you pick me up at Ryder's and we head out. I've got my stuff at my apartment so we'll make a stop on the way home so I can get it!" He answered eagerly.

Moss smiled, nodding. "I've got my gear in the back of the car! So we'll be all set and ready to go!" They said confidently.

"Y'all wanna tell me what this is about?" I asked worriedly, looking at the excited trio. Trace grinned at my question, like he knew how the answer was going to make me feel.

"We're going ghost hunting at the mall in Old Town." he said proudly, like it was worth bragging about. Old Town was no joke. Spire in the area failed during a storm, and the entire district was lost to a lightning strike. Hundreds, gone in an instant. The stories of ghosts ran rampant after that, and with the damage to structures, I didn't like the idea of David going out there one bit.

"Y'all ain't doin' that. Not with David. I know you'll be fine, Trace, y'got that wind shit ya do, an' I trust Moss t' take care'a themselves jus' as well. Davey, please tell me ya ain't goin' with'em?" I asked, half-pleading.

David simply shrugged, smiling. He was going, and wasn't about to give me a chance to turn him away from it. I sighed, nodding.

"Take care'a Davey out there then. Ya put'im first, 'fore yourself, got it, Trace?" I insisted, baring my teeth. The fox shrunk a little at that, but nodded.

"We'll take good care of him, we always do!" Moss said with a smile. The little caxy nudged Trace and pulled his jacket a little. "C'mon, we gotta go get some sleep if we wanna be up all night tonight!" they demanded, grinning.

Trace nodded, following suit and waving his hand at us. "You two be good, and don't forget what I said, Ryder!" he yelled our way, heading for his car.

David and I shared a laugh, my own being more tense than happy, and headed for the truck. If David was going to go, at least I knew Trace had agreed to watch him like a hawk. For all my worries, I could trust Trace to keep his word. I had to hold on to that.

I had to trust David would be safe without me tomorrow night.