#deliberately left it ambiguous so that it could be any verse

[tealeavesandthorns]

The music was coming from a small set of speakers and just above it Maria could be heard singing at the top of her lungs and dancing as she worked.

"I was so lonesome, I was blue I couldn't help it, it had to be you and I Always thought you knew the reason why"**

**Why Did It Have To Be Me - Mamma Mia 2 Soundtrack

[finishinglinepress]

FLP POETRY BOOK OF THE DAY: My Body Is Not an Apology by Megha Sood

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Megha Sood is a Pushcart-nominated Poet, Editor, and Blogger based in New Jersey, USA. She is a Poetry Editor at MookyChick(UK), Life and Legends (USA), and Literary Partner in the project “Life in Quarantine” with Stanford University, USA. Works widely featured in journals, Poetry Society of New York, Kissing Dynamite, and many more. Author of Chapbook ( “My Body is Not an Apology”, FinishingLine press, 2021) and Full Length (“My Body Lives Like a Threat”, FlowerSongPress,2021).Recipient of Poet Fellowship 2021, Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, National Level Winner Spring Mahogany Lit Prize 2020, and Three-Time State-level winner of NJ Poetry Contest.Blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/.Tweets at @meghasood16

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR My Body Is Not an Apology by Megha Sood

My Body is Not An Apology is a testimony of female rebellion and a journey of self-discovery in a most wanted and unwanted way. The poems roar to voice the pain of silent torture, cruelty, and agony of a woman’s heart to reclaim her dignity not only as a female but also as an individual. This book is a fierce approach to life in poetry, and the poet dissects the ironies of women’s existence with razor-sharp language, intellect, and courage like Simone de Beauvoir. In the poet’s own words, it is a triumphant proclamation and an unfettered declaration.

–Kalpna Singh-Chitnis (Poet, Writer, and Filmmaker)

Sometimes with acerbic irony, sometimes with wise comeuppance, but never with hopeless resignation no matter how bleak the refracted rays of reality, Megha’s stanzas find their way through the blind alleys of patriarchy and misogyny looking it unblinking in the eye. The vulnerability of her perception is also her strength, as each stanza duals with difficult truths using the female body and the form of poetry as weapons of grit and gumption. This little book is a fist of fury and unveiling.

–Rochelle Potkar, Author of Paper Asylum & Bombay Hangovers

These poems recognize the body as the ‘eye of the storm’ in the turbulent churning of our age. The guttural cry of the feminine forges these poems with a primal rawness cast in images as varied as radishes, pickles, broken book spines, and armchairs. Megha Sood joins her unapologetic voice with urgency to erase any error of ambiguity, ‘You don’t own shit’. These poems will ‘sit like a welt’ on the tongue of the world.

–Usha Akella, Poet & Founder, Matwaala, South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival

A unique feminist exploration through the written word, investigating the body and the world society overlays atop women, Megha Sood does justice uncovering, discovering, and discarding herself to find an inexorably beautiful woman within. Sood’s My Body Is Not an Apology chisels away at the construct our society imposes on women, revealing an exemplar poet of the highest caliber.

–Joshua Corwin, author of Becoming Vulnerable

Megha Sood’s “My Body is Not an Apology” is a powerful debut with poetry that contains multitudes. These poems are fierce and unapologetic as they explore the toxic culture around gender-based discrimination and reproductive rights. Sood crafts with cutting precision as we read about personal experience and the influence of these issues in the wider world. Far from a desperate cry of the disenfranchised, these poems raise a fist and demand to be heard from a position of strength. Woven in and around every poem is the question that asks: what would life be like if we could change this? This book is a clarion call to eradicating gender-based injustice. It is also a book full of hope and empowerment.

–Juliette van der Molen, Poet, Writer,Feminist

My Body is Not an Apology by Megha Sood is a woman’s journey through gender-based discrimination. It is a cry and a plea as Sood questions, “How can you live a life like a broken spine of a book?” In her poems, we see a parallel to Sylvia Plath, and her words bring alive the voices of the Bronte Sisters, Emily Dickinson, and Phyllis Wheatley. At the same time, we see similarities to Sarojini Naidu’s rage and certitude when Sood says, “But I never give up …as I learned from the footsteps of warriors.” Sood’s My Body is Not An Apology is a whimper, a roar, an awakening in the feminist world.

–Meenakshi Mohan, Ed.D., Professor, writer, painter, critic

Megha Sood’s poems show a vulnerability that is welded to resilience in remarkably ingenious ways because poetry occupies the interstice between the felt and the unspoken.

Don’t let the aroma leave the pickle jar

Keep the lid tight

my granny used to say–

Some things are better left unspoken. (Even My Grief Should Be Productive)

Here’s the wisdom of an entire civilization. Sometimes it comes pickled in a jar. Call it Indian or South Asian, or what you will. It teaches you how to hold one’s own, anywhere.

–Lakshmi Kannan, Poet, Novelist, Short story writer, and Translator.

Megha Sood’s chapbook, My Body Is Not An Apology is exactly what the title says. The human body is not an apology for anyone. It’s not meant to make us feel ashamed simply for being born as we are, for existing, for belonging to any race, religion, gender, age, or any diversity markers that exist in our world. Our body is also not space where anyone can reside with abuse, disdain, or evil. Our body is a temple where our soul lives protected and safe. Megha through her deeply sensitive and poignant poems urges readers to ponder, deliberate, and act upon ensuring that our body is not an apology. Megha’s poems are fierce and tender at the same time. They are like raging storms or quiet whispers; both compel us to listen, look and consider. Megha delves into a plethora of issues that plague the human mind and in consequence the body. She questions and pulls the reader back again and again to her poems leaving behind a memory of heightened awareness. Very few writers can do as such. This collection of twenty-five poems will surely leave a mark upon your heart. Among the contemporary diaspora writers, Megha Sood is one to definitely read!

–Anita Nahal, poet, professor, flash fictionist & children’s writer. Find her works at: https://anitanahal.wixsite.com/anitanahal

“I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

The gripping, riveting poems of Megha Sood’s chapbook ‘My Body Is Not An Apology’ carries the inherent legacy of the truths that our exemplary literary predecessors Virginia Woolf, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath, Nikki Giovani, Alice Walker, Kamala Das, and others, embodying unabashed feminism, upheld in their poetic creations.

When the poet utters her angst and her rhetoric reflects a discourse, built around the quintessential strength of a woman, these lines are born from her pen: “My body is not an apology/ it’s a roar: a declaration/ an unapologetic/ unabashed/ straight truth in your face/ a war cry:/ a deafening scream from the silence.” These lines hit the nail at just the right place, confronting the age-old power dynamics of a patriarchal social structure. As a strong woman of color, as a sensitive poet, her verses in the collection are like smoking cinders of the thinking feminine voice, empowering and liberating the feminine psyche. In the growth of her poetic voice, she has successfully absorbed the little nuances of her Indian roots and her grandmother’s legacy of truth (reflected in the poem ‘Even My Grief Should Be Productive), at the same time, having the deep insight of a woman acknowledging that her ‘body goes from a shade darker than yesterday’, as she gives birth to her ‘own revolution’. In the collection, the body and being of the poet as a woman reaches its zenith of celebration as she categorically unfolds the themes of the feminine identity, body politics, repression of womanhood, and also, the rampant rhetorics of violence ingrained in our postmodern society. Her voice is both subtle and empowering, essential and redeeming, hence the chapbook will indeed be an asset in the ever-evolving arena of feminist writing and art.

–Lopa Banerjee, Critically acclaimed author, poet, translator, editor from Texas, USA

#flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry

[distase]

Dear Esther. I sometimes feel as if I’ve given birth to this island. Somewhere, between the longitude and latitude a split opened up and it beached remotely here. No matter how hard I correlate, it remains a singularity, an alpha point in my life that refuses all hypothesis. I return each time leaving fresh markers that I hope, in the full glare of my hopelessness, will have blossomed into fresh insight in the interim.

Dear Esther. The gulls do not land here anymore; I’ve noticed that this year they seem to shun the place. Maybe it’s the depletion of the fishing stock driving them away. Perhaps it’s me. When he first landed here, Donnelly wrote that the herds were sickly and their shepherds the lowest of the miserable classes that populate these Hebridean islands. Three hundred years later, even they have departed.

Dear Esther. I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been here, and how many visits I have made overall. Certainly, the landmarks are now so familiar to me that I have to remind myself to actually see the forms and shapes in front of me. I could stumble blind across these rocks, the edges of these precipices, without fear of missing my step and plummeting down to sea. Besides, I’ve always considered that if one is to fall, it is critical to keep one’s eyes firmly open.

Dear Esther. The morning after I was washed ashore, salt in my ears, sand in my mouth and the waves always at my ankles, I felt as though everything had conspired to this one last shipwreck. I remembered nothing but water, stones in my belly and my shoes threatening to drag me under to where only the most listless of creatures swim.

Level 1: The Lighthouse

Donnelly reported the legend of the hermit; a holy man who sought solitude in its most pure form. Allegedly, he rowed here from the mainland in a boat without a bottom, so all the creatures of the sea could rise at night to converse with him. How disappointed he must have been with their chatter. Perhaps now, when all that haunts the ocean is the rubbish dumped from the tankers, he’d find more peace. They say he threw his arms wide in a valley on the south side and the cliff opened up to provide him shelter; they say he died of fever one hundred and sixteen years later. The shepherds left gifts for him at the mouth of the cave, but Donnelly records they never claimed to have seen him. I have visited the cave and I have left my gifts, but like them, I appear to be an unworthy subject of his solitude.

At night you can see the lights sometimes from a passing tanker or trawler. From up on the cliffs they are mundane, but down here they fugue into ambiguity. For instance, I cannot readily tell if they belong above or below the waves. The distinction now seems banal; why not everything and all at once! There’s nothing better to do here than indulge in contradictions, whilst waiting for the fabric of life to unravel. There was once talk of a wind farm out here, away from the rage and the intolerance of the masses. The sea, they said, is too rough for the turbines to stand: they clearly never came here to experience the becalming for themselves. Personally, I would have supported it; turbines would be a fitting contemporary refuge for a hermit: the revolution and the permanence.

When you were born, your mother told me, a hush fell over the delivery room. A great red birthmark covered the left side of your face. No one knew what to say, so you cried to fill the vacuum. I always admired you for that; that you cried to fill whatever vacuum you found. I began to manufacture vacuums, just to enable you to deploy your talent. The birthmark faded by the time you were six, and had gone completely by the time we met, but your fascination with the empty, and its cure, remained.

Those islands in the distance, I am sure, are nothing more than relics of another time, sleeping giants, somnambulist gods laid down for a final dreaming. I wash the sand from my lips and grip my wrist ever more tightly, my shaking arms will not support my fading diaries.

Donnelly’s book had not been taken out from the library since 1974. I decided it would never be missed as I slipped it under my coat and avoided the librarian’s gaze on the way out. If the subject matter is obscure, the writer’s literary style is even more so, it is not the text of a stable or trustworthy reporter. Perhaps it is fitting that my only companion in these last days should be a stolen book written by a dying man.

The mount is clearly the focal point of this landscape; it almost appears so well placed as to be artificial. I find myself easily slipping into the delusional state of ascribing purpose, deliberate motive to everything here. Was this island formed during the moment of impact; when we were torn loose from our moorings and the seatbelts cut motorway lanes into our chests and shoulders, did it first break surface then?

When someone had died or was dying or was so ill they gave up what little hope they could sacrifice, they cut parallel lines into the cliff, exposing the white chalk beneath. You could see them from the mainland or the fishing boats and know to send aid or impose a cordon of protection, and wait a generation until whatever pestilence stalked the cliff paths died along with its hosts. My lines are just for this: to keep any would-be rescuers at bay. The infection is not simply of the flesh.

They were godfearing people those shepherds. There was no love in the relationship. Donnelly tells me that they had one bible that was passed around in strict rotation. It was stolen by a visiting monk in 1776, two years before the island was abandoned altogether. In the interim, I wonder, did they assign chapter and verse to the stones and grasses, marking the geography with a superimposed significance; that they could actually walk the bible and inhabit its contradictions?

We are not like Lot’s wife, you and I; we feel no particular need to turn back. There’s nothing to be seen if we did. No tired old man parting the cliffs with his arms; no gifts or bibles laid out on the sand for the taking. No tides turning or the shrieking gulls overhead. The bones of the hermit are no longer laid out for the taking: I have stolen them away to the guts of this island where the passages all run to black and there we can light each others faces by their strange luminescence.

I quote directly: “A motley lot with little to recommend them. I have now spent three days in their company that is, I fear, enough for any man not born amongst them. Despite their tedious inclination to quote scripture, they seem to me the most godforsaken of all the inhabitants of the outer isles. Indeed, in this case, the very gravity of that term – forsaken by god – seems to find its very apex.” It appears to me that Donnelly too found those who wander this shoreline to be adrift from any chance of redemption. Did he include himself in that, I wonder?

Dear Esther. I met Paul. I made my own little pilgrimage. My Damascus a small semi-detached on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. We drank coffee in his kitchen and tried to connect to one another. Although he knew I hadn’t come in search of an apology, reason or retribution, he still spiralled in panic, thrown high and lucid by his own dented bonnet. Responsibility had made him old; like us, he had already passed beyond any conceivable boundary of life.

I threw my arms wide and the cliff opened out before me, making this rough home. I transferred my belongings from the bothy on the mount and tried to live here instead. It was cold at night and the sea lapped at the entrance at high tide. To climb the peak, I must first venture even deeper into veins of the island, where the signals are blocked altogether. Only then will I understand them, when I stand on the summit and they flow into me, uncorrupted.

I would leave you presents, outside your retreat, in this interim space between cliff and beach. I would leave you loaves and fishes, but the fish stocks have been depleted and I have run out of bread. I would row you back to your homeland in a bottomless boat but I fear we would both be driven mad by the chatter of the sea creatures.

I find myself increasingly unable to find that point where the hermit ends and Paul and I begin. We are woven into a sodden blanket, stuffed into the bottom of a boat to stop the leak and hold back the ocean. My neck aches from staring up at the aerial; it mirrors the dull throb in my gut where I am sure I have begun to form another stone. In my dreams, it forms into a perfect representation of Lot’s wife, head over her shoulder, staring along the motorway at the approaching traffic, in a vacuum of fatalistic calm.

This hermit, this seer, this distant historian of bones and old bread, where did he vanish to? Why, asked the farmers, why asked Jakobson, why bother with your visions at all, if you are just to throw your arms up at the cliff and let it close in behind you, seal you into the belly of the island, a museum shut to all but the most devoted.

He still maintains he wasn’t drunk but tired. I can’t make the judgement or the distinction anymore. I was drunk when I landed here, and tired too. I walked up the cliff path in near darkness and camped in the bay where the trawler lies beached. It was only at dawn that I saw the bothy and decided to make my temporary lodgings there. I was expecting just the aerial and a transmitter stashed in a weatherproof box somewhere on the mount. It had an air of uneasy permanence to it, like all the other buildings here; erosion seems to have evaded it completely.

The vegetation here has fossilized from the roots up. To think they once grazed animals here, the remnants of occupation being evidence to that. It is all sick to death: the water is too polluted for the fish, the sky is too thin for the birds and the soil is cut with the bones of hermits and shepherds. I have heard it said that human ashes make great fertilizer, that we could sow a forest from all that is left of your hips and ribcage, with enough left over to thicken the air and repopulate the bay.

I dreamt I stood in the centre of the sun and the solar radiation cooked my heart from the inside. My teeth will curl and my fingernails fall off into my pockets like loose change. If I could stomach, I’d eat, but all I seem capable of is saltwater. Were the livestock still here, I could turn feral and gorge. I’m as emaciated as a body on a slab, opened up for a premature source of death. I’ve rowed to this island in a heart without a bottom; all the bacteria of my gut rising up to sing to me.

I have become convinced I am not alone here, even though I am equally sure it is simply a delusion brought upon by circumstance. I do not, for instance, remember where I found the candles, or why I took it upon myself to light such a strange pathway. Perhaps it is only for those who are bound to follow.

Level 2: The Buoy

Dear Esther. I have now driven the stretch of the M5 between Exeter and Bristol over twenty-one times, but although I have all the reports and all the witnesses and have cross-referenced them within a millimetre using my ordnance survey maps, I simply cannot find the location. You’d think there would be marks, to serve as some evidence. It's somewhere between the turn off for Sandford and the Welcome Break services. But although I can always see it in my rear view mirror, I have as yet been unable to pull ashore.

Dear Esther. This will be my last letter. Do they pile up even now on the doormat of our empty house? Why do I still post them home to you? Perhaps I can imagine myself picking them up on the return I will not make, to find you waiting with daytime television and all its comforts. They will fossilise over the centuries to follow; an uneasy time capsule from a lost island. Postmarked Oban: it must have been sent during the final ascent.

Dear Esther. I have found myself to be as featureless as this ocean, as shallow and unoccupied as this bay, a listless wreck without identification. My rocks are these bones and a careful fence to keep the precipice at bay. Shot through me caves, my forehead a mount, this aerial will transmit into me so. All over exposed, the nervous system, where Donnelly’s boots and yours and mine still trample. I will carry a torch for you; I will leave it at the foot of my headstone. You will need it for the tunnels that carry me under.

Dear Esther. Whilst they catalogued the damage, I found myself afraid you’d suddenly sit up, stretch, and fail to recognise me, I orbited you like a sullen comet, our history trailing behind me in the solar wind from the fluorescent tubes. Your hair had not been brushed yet, your make-up not reapplied. You were all the world like a beach to me, laid out for investigation, your geography telling one story, but hinting at the geology hidden behind the cuts and bruises.

I have found the ship’s manifest, crumpled and waterlogged, under a stash of paint cans. It tells me that along with this present cargo, there was a large quantity of antacid yoghurt, bound for the European market. It must have washed out to sea, God knows there are no longer gulls or goats here to eat it.

There must be a hole in the bottom of the boat. How else could new hermits have arrived?

It’s only at night that this place makes any sluggish effort at life. You can see the buoy and the aerial. I’ve been taking to sleeping through the day in an attempt to resurrect myself. I can feel the last days drawing upon me – there’s little point now in continuation. There must be something new to find here – some nook or some cranny that offers a perspective worth clinging to. I’ve burnt my bridges; I have sunk my boats and watched them go to water.

The buoy has kept me lucid. I sat, when I was at the very edge of despair, when I thought I would never unlock the secret of the island, I sat at the edge and I watched the idiot buoy blink through the night. He is mute and he is retarded and he has no thought in his metal head but to blink each wave and each minute aside until the morning comes and renders him blind as well as deaf-mute. In many ways, we have much in common.

I’ve begun to wonder if Donnelly’s voyage here was as prosaic as it was presented. How disappointed not to have found the bones of the holy man! No wonder he hated the inhabitants so. To him, they must have seemed like barnacles mindlessly clinging to a mercy seat. Why cling so hard to the rock? Because it is the only thing that stops us from sliding into the ocean. Into oblivion.

An imagined answerphone message. The tires are flat, the wheel spins loosely, and the brake fluid has run like ink over this map, staining the landmarks and rendering the coastline mute, compromised. Where you saw galaxies, I saw only bruises, cut into the cliff by my lack of sobriety.

I don’t know the name of the wreck in the bay; it seems to have been here for several years but has not yet subsided. I don’t know if anyone was killed; if so, I certainly haven’t seen them myself. Perhaps when the helicopter came to lift them home, their ascent scared the birds away. I shall search for eggs along the north shore, for any evidence that life is marking this place out again. Perhaps it is me that keeps them at bay.

I remember running through the sands of Cromer; there was none of the shipwreck I find here. I spent days cataloguing the garbage that washes ashore here and I have begun to assemble a collection in the deepest recess I could find. What a strange museum it would make. And what of the corpse of its curator? Shall I find a glass coffin and pretend to make snow white of us both?

Why is the sea so becalmed? It beckons you to walk upon its surface; but I know all too well how it would shatter under my feet and drag me under. The rocks here have withstood centuries of storms and now, robbed of the tides, they stand muted and lame, temples without cause. One day, I will attempt to climb them, hunt among their peaks for the eggs, the nests, that the gulls have clearly abandoned.

I had kidney stones, and you visited me in the hospital. After the operation, when I was still half submerged in anaesthetic, your outline and your speech both blurred. Now my stones have grown into an island and made their escape and you have been rendered opaque by the car of a drunk.

I have begun my ascent on the green slope of the western side. I have looked deep into the mountain from the shaft and understood that I must go up and then find a way under. I will stash the last vestiges of my civilisation in the stone walls and work deeper from there. I am drawn by the aerial and the cliff edge: there is some form of rebirth waiting for me there.

I have begun my ascent on the windless slope of the western side. The setting sun was an inflamed eye squeezing shut against the light shone in by the doctors. My neck is aching through constantly craning my head up to track the light of the aerial. I must look downwards, follow the path under the island to a new beginning.

I have begun to climb, away from the sea and towards the centre. It is a straight line to the summit, where the evening begins to coil around the aerial and squeeze the signals into early silence. The bothy squats against the mount to avoid the gaze of the aerial; I too will creep under the island like an animal and approach it from the northern shore.

When I first looked into the shaft, I swear I felt the stones in my stomach shift in recognition.

What charnel house lies at the foot of this abyss? How many dead shepherds could fill this hole?

Is this what Paul saw through his windscreen? Not Lot’s wife, looking over her shoulder, but a scar in the hillside, falling away to black, forever.

When they graze their animals here, Donnelly writes, it is always raining. There’s no evidence of that rain has been here recently. The foliage is all static, like a radio signal returning from another star.

In the hold of the wrecked trawler I have found what must amount to several tons of gloss paint. Perhaps they were importing it. Instead, I will put it to use, and decorate this island in the icons and symbols of our disaster.

Cromer in the rain; a school trip. We took shelter en masse in a bus stop, herded in like cattle, the teachers dull shepherds. The sand in my pocket becoming damper by the second.

The bothy was constructed originally in the early 1700s. By then, shepherding had formalised into a career. The first habitual shepherd was a man called Jakobson, from a lineage of migratory Scandinavians. He was not considered a man of breeding by the mainlanders. He came here every summer whilst building the bothy, hoping, eventually, that becoming a man of property would secure him a wife and a lineage. Donnelly records that it did not work: he caught some disease from his malcontented goats and died two years after completing it. There was no one to carve white lines into the cliff for him either.

Inventory: a trestle table we spread wallpaper on in our first home. A folding chair; I laughed at you for bringing camping in the lakes. I was uncomfortable later and you laughed then. This diary; the bed with the broken springs – once asleep, you have to remember not to dream. A change of clothes. Donnelly’s book, stolen from Edinburgh library on the way here. I will burn them all on the last morning and make an aerial of my own.

When the oil lamps ran out I didn’t pick up a torch but used the moonlight to read by. When I have pulled the last shreds of sense from it, I will throw Donnelly’s book from the cliffs and perhaps myself with it. Maybe it will wash back up through the caves and erupt from the spring when the rain comes, making its return to the hermit's cave. Perhaps it will be back on the table when I wake. I think I may have thrown it into the sea several times before.

Three cormorants seen at dusk; they did not land. This house, built of stone, built by a long-dead shepherd. Contents: my campbed, a stove, a table, chairs. My clothes, my books. The caves that score out the belly of this island, leaving it famished. My limbs and belly, famished. This skin, these organs, this failing eyesight. When the battery runs out in my torch, I will descend into the caves and follow only the phosphorescence home.

My heart is landfill, these false dawns waking into the still never light. I sweat for you in the small hours and wrap my blankets into a mass. I’ve always heard the waves break on these lost shores, always the gulls forgotten. I can lift this bottle to my ear, and all there ever is for me is this hebridean music.

In a footnote, the editor comments that at this point, Donnelly was going insane as syphilis tore through his system like a drunk driver. He is not to be trusted – many of his claims are unsubstantiated and although he does paint a colourful picture, much of what he says may have been derived directly from his fever. But I’ve been here and I know, as Donnelly did, that this place is always half-imagined. Even the rocks and caves will shimmer and blur, with the right eyes.

He left his body to the medical school and was duly opened out for a crowd of students twenty-one days after his passing. The report is included in my edition of his book. The syphilis had torn through his guts like a drunk driver, scrambling his organs like eggs on a plate. But enough definition remained for a cursory examination and, as I suspected, they found clear evidence of kidney stones. He is likely to have spent the last years of his life in considerable pain: perhaps this is the root of his laudanum habit. Although its use makes him an unreliable witness, I find myself increasingly drawn into his orbit.

What to make of Donnelly? The laudanum and the syphilis? It is clearly not how he began, but I have been unable to discover if the former was a result of his visiting the island or the force that drove him here. For the syphilis, a drunk driver smashing his insides into a pulp as he stumbled these paths, I can only offer my empathy. We are all victims of our age. My disease is the internal combustion engine and the cheap fermentation of yeast.

Jakobson’s ribcage, they told Donnelly, was deformed, the result of some birth defect or perhaps a traumatic injury as a child. Brittle and overblown it was, and desperately light. Perhaps it was this that finally did for him, unable to contain the shattering of his heart. In halflight, his skeleton a discarded prop, a false and calcified seabird.

They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. He’d struggled halfway down the cliff path, perhaps looking for some lost goat, or perhaps in a delirium and expired, curled into a claw, right under the winter moon. Even the animals shunned his corpse; the mainlanders thought to bring it home unlucky. Donnelly claims they dragged it to the caves to thaw out and rot, but he is proving an unreliable witness.

They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. His fingernails were raw and bitten to the quick; they found the phosphorescent moss that grows in the caves deep under the nails. Whatever he’d been doing under the island when his strength began to fail is lost. He’d struggled halfway up the cliff again, perhaps in a delirium, perhaps trying to reach the bothy’s fire, before curling into a stone and expiring.

They found Jakobson in early spring, the thaw had only just come. Even though he’d been dead nearly seven months, his body had been frozen right down to the nerves and had not even begun to decompose. All around him, small flowers were reaching for the weak sun, the goats had adjusted happily to life without a shepherd and were grazing freely about the valley. Donnelly reports they hurled the body in fear and disgust down the shaft, but I cannot corroborate this story.

This beach is no place to end a life. Jakobson understood that, so did Donnelly. Jakobson made it halfway back up the cliff. Donnelly lost faith and went home to die. I have the benefit of history, of progress. Someone has erected an aerial to guide me through these black waves, a beacon that shines through the rocks like phosphorescent moss.

Climbing down to the caves I slipped and fell and have injured my leg. I think the femur is broken. It is clearly infected: the skin has turned a bright, tight pink and the pain is crashing in on waves, winter tides against my shoreline, drowning out the ache of my stones. I struggled back to the bothy to rest, but it has become clear that there is only one way this is likely to end. The medical supplies I looted from the trawler have suddenly found their purpose: they will keep me lucid for my final ascent.

Level 3: The Caves

Did Jakobson crawl this far? Can I identify the scratches his nails ruined into the rocks? Am I following him cell for cell, inch for inch? Why did he turn back on himself and not carry through to the ascent?

From here, this last time, I have understood there is no turning back. The torch is failing along with my resolve. I can hear the singing of the sea creatures from the passages above me and they are promising the return of the gulls.

Donnelly did not pass through the caves. From here on in, his guidance, unreliable as it is, is gone from me. I understand now that it is between the two of us, and whatever correspondence can be drawn from the wet rocks.

Donnelly’s addiction is my one true constant. Even though I wake in false dawns and find the landscape changed, flowing inconstantly through my tears, I know his reaching is always upon me.

It was as if someone had taken the car and shaken it like a cocktail. The glove compartment had been opened and emptied with the ashtrays and the boot; it made for a crumpled museum, a shattered exhibition. I first saw him sat by the side of the road. I was waiting for you to be cut out of the wreckage. The car looked like it had been dropped from a great height. The guts of the engine spilled over the tarmac. Like water underground.

They had stopped the traffic back as far as the Sandford junction and come up the hard shoulder like radio signals from another star. It took twenty-one minutes for them to arrive. I watched Paul time it, to the second, on his watch.

There is no other direction, no other exit from this motorway. Speeding past this junction, I saw you waiting at the roadside, a one last drink in your trembled hands.

I’m traversing my own death throes. The infection in my leg is an oilrig that dredges black muck up from deep inside my bones. I swallow fistfuls of diazepam and paracetamol to stay conscious. The pain flows through me like an underground sea.

If the caves are my guts, this must be the place where the stones are first formed. The bacteria phosphoresce and rise, singing, through the tunnels. Everything here is bound by the rise and fall like a tide. Perhaps, the whole island is actually underwater.

I am travelling through my own body, following the line of infection from the shattered femur towards the heart. I swallow fistfuls of painkillers to stay lucid. In my delirium, I see the twin lights of the moon and the aerial, shining to me through the rocks.

In my final dream, I sat at peace with Jakobson and watched the moon over the Sandford junction, goats grazing on the hard shoulder, a world gone to weed and redemption. He showed me his fever scars, and I mine, between each shoulder the nascency of flight.

When I was coming round from the operation, I remember the light they shone in my eyes to check for pupil contraction. It was like staring up at a moonlit sky from the bottom of well. People moved at the summit but I could not tell if you were one of them.

This cannot be the shaft they threw the goats into. It cannot be the landfill where the parts of your life that would not burn ended up. It cannot be the chimney that delivered you to the skies. It cannot be the place where you rained back down again to fertilise the soil and make small flowers in the rocks.

I will hold the hand you offer to me; from the summit down to this well, into the dark waters where the small flowers creep for the sun. Headlights are reflected in your retinas, moonlit in the shadow of the crematorium chimney.

This is a drowned man’s face reflected in the moonlit waters. It can only be a dead shepherd who has come to drunk drive you home.

Level 4: The Beacon

The moon over the Sandford junction, headlights in your retinas. Donnelly drove a grey hatchback without a bottom, all the creatures of the tarmac rose to sing to him. All manner of symbols crudely scrawled across the cliff face of my unrest. My life reduced to an electrical diagram. All my gulls have taken flight; they will no longer roost on these outcrops. The lure of the moon over the Sandford junction is too strong.

I wish I could have known Donnelly in this place – we would have had so much to debate. Did he paint these stones, or did I? Who left the pots in the hut by the jetty? Who formed the museum under the sea? Who fell silently to his death, into the frozen waters? Who erected this godforsaken aerial in the first place? Did this whole island rise to the surface of my stomach, forcing the gulls to take flight?

I sat here and watched two jets carve parallel white lines into the sky. They charted their course and I followed them for twenty-one minutes until they turned off near Sandford and were lost. If I were a gull, I would abandon my nest and join them. I would starve my brain of oxygen and suffer delusions of transcendence. I would tear the bottom from my boat and sail across the motorways until I reached this island once again.

Of fire and soil, I chose fire. It seemed the more contemporary of the options, the more sanitary. I could not bear the thought of the reassembly of such a ruins. Stitching arm to shoulder and femur to hip, charting a line of thread like traffic stilled on a motorway. Making it all acceptable for tearful aunts and traumatised uncles flown in specially for the occasion. Reduce to ash, mix with water, make a phosphorescent paint for these rocks and ceilings.

We shall begin to assemble our own version of the north shore. We will scrawl in dead languages and electrical diagrams and hide them away for future theologians to muse and mumble over. We will send a letter to Esther Donnelly and demand her answer. We will mix the paint with ashes and tarmac and the glow from our infections. We paint a moon over the Sandford junction and blue lights falling like stars along the hard shoulder.

I returned home with a pocket full of stolen ash. Half of it fell out of my coat and vanished into the car’s upholstery. But the rest I carefully stowed away in a box I kept in a drawer by the side of my bed. It was never intended as a meaningful act but over the years it became a kind of talisman. I’d sit still, quite still, for hours just holding the diminishing powder in my palm and noting its smoothness. In time, we will all be worn down into granules, washed into the sea and dispersed.

Dear Esther. I find each step harder and heavier. I drag Donnelly’s corpse on my back across these rocks, and all I hear are his whispers of guilt, his reminders, his burnt letters, his neatly folded clothes. He tells me I was not drunk at all.

From here I can see my armada. I collected all the letters I’d ever meant to send to you, if I’d have ever made it to the mainland but had instead collected at the bottom of my rucksack, and I spread them out along the lost beach. Then I took each and every one and I folded them into boats. I folded you into the creases and then, as the sun was setting, I set the fleet to sail. Shattered into twenty-one pieces, I consigned you to the Atlantic, and I sat here until I’d watched all of you sink.

There were chemical diagrams on the mug he gave me coffee in; sticky at the handle where his hands shook. He worked for a pharmaceutical company with an office based on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. He’d been travelling back from a sales conference in Exeter: forming a strategic vision for the pedalling of antacid yoghurt to the European market. You could trace the connections with your finger, join the dots and whole new compounds would be summoned into activity.

There were chemical diagrams on the posters on the walls on the waiting room. It seemed appropriate at the time; still-life abstractions of the processes which had already begun to break down your nerves and your muscles in the next room. I cram diazepam as I once crammed for chemistry examinations. I am revising my options for a long and happy life.

There were chemical stains on the tarmac: the leak of air conditioning, brake fluid and petrol. He kept sniffing at his fingers as he sat by the roadside waiting as if he couldn’t quite understand or recognise their smell. He said he’d been travelling back from a sales conference in Exeter; he’d stopped for farewell drinks earlier, but had kept a careful eye on his intake. You could hear the sirens above the idling traffic. Paul, by the roadside, by the exit for Damascus, all ticking and cooled, all feathers and remorse, all of these signals routed like traffic through the circuit diagrams of our guts, those badly written boats torn bottomless in the swells, washing us forever ashore.

When Paul keeled over dead on the road to Damascus, they resuscitated him by hitting him in the chest with stones gathered by the roadside. He was lifeless for twenty-one minutes, certainly long enough for the oxygen levels in his brain to have decreased and caused hallucinations and delusions of transcendence. I am running out of painkillers and the moon has become almost unbearably bright.

The pain in my leg sent me blind for a few minutes as I struggled up the cliff path: I swallowed another handful of painkillers and now I feel almost lucid. The island around me has retreated to a hazed distance, whilst the moon appears to have descended into my palm to guide me. I can see a thick black line of infection reaching for my heart from the waistband of my trousers. Through the fugue, it is all the world like the path I have cut from the lowlands towards the aerial.

I will drag my leg behind me; I will drag it like a crumpled hatchback, tyres blown and sparking across the dimming lights of my vision. I am running out of painkillers and am following the flicker of the moon home. When Paul keeled over dead on the road to Damascus, they restarted his heart with the jump leads from a crumpled hatchback; it took twenty-one attempts to convince it to wake up.

A sound of torn metal, teeth running over the edge of the rocks, a moon that casts a signal. As I lay pinned beside you, the ticking of the cooling engine, and the calling from a great height, all my mind as a bypass.

I’ve begun my voyage in a paper boat without a bottom; I will fly to the moon in it. I have been folded along a crease in time, a weakness in the sheet of life. Now, you’ve settled on the opposite side of the paper to me; I can see your traces in the ink that soaks through the fibre, the pulped vegetation. When we become waterlogged, and the cage disintegrates, we will intermingle. When this paper aeroplane leaves the cliff edge, and carves parallel vapour trails in the dark, we will come together.

If only Donnelly had experienced this, he would have realised he was his own shoreline, as am I. Just as I am becoming this island, so he became his syphilis, retreating into the burning synapses, the stones, the infection.

Returning to my car afterwards, hands still shaking and a head split open by the impact. Goodbye to tearful aunts and traumatised uncles, goodbye to the phenomenal, goodbye to the tangible, goodbye Wolverhampton, goodbye Sandford, goodbye Cromer, goodbye Damascus. This cliff path is slippery in the dew; it is hard to climb with such an infection. I must carve out the bad flesh and sling it from the aerial. I must become infused with the very air.

There are headlights reflected in these retinas, too long in the tunnels of my island without a bottom. The sea creatures have risen to the surface, but the gulls are not here to carry them back to their nests. I have become fixed: open and staring, an eye turned on itself. I have become an infected leg, whose tracking lines form a perfect map of the junctions of the M5. I will take the exit at mid-thigh and plummet to my Esther.

The stones in my stomach will weigh me down and ensure my descent is true and straight. I will break through the fog of these godforsaken pills and achieve clarity. All my functions are clogged, all my veins are choked. If my leg doesn’t rot off before I reach the summit, it will be a miracle. There are twenty-one connections in the circuit diagram of the anti-lock brakes, there are twenty-one species of gull inhabiting these islands , it is twenty-one miles between the Sandford junction and the turn off for home. All these things cannot, will not, be a co-incidence.

Bent back like a nail, like a hangnail, like a drowning man clung onto the wheel, drunk and spiraled, washed onto the lost shore under a moon as fractured as a shattered wing. We cleave, we are flight and suspended, these wretched painkillers, this form inconstant. I will take flight. I will take flight!

He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all. He had not drunk with Donnelly or spat Jakobson back at the sea; he had not careered across the lost shores and terminal beaches of this nascent archipelago. He did not intend his bonnet to be crumpled like a spent tissue by the impact. His windscreen was not star-studded all over like a map of the heavens. His paintwork etched with circuit diagrams, strange fish to call the gulls away. The phosphorescence of the skid marks lighting the M5 all the way from Exeter to Damascus.

Blind with panic, deaf with the roar of the caged traffic, heart stopped on the road to Damascus, Paul, sat at the roadside hunched up like a gull, like a bloody gull. As useless and as doomed as a syphilitic cartographer, a dying goatherd, an infected leg, a kidney stone blocking the traffic bound for Sandford and Exeter. He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all; all his roads and his tunnels and his paths led inevitably to this moment of impact. This is not a recorded natural condition: he should not be sat there with his chemicals and his circuit diagrams, he should not be sat there at all.

I have dredged these waters for the bones of the hermit, for the traces of Donnelly, for any sign of Jakobson’s flock, for the empty bottle that would incriminate him. I have scoured this stretch of motorway twenty-one times attempting to recreate his trajectory, the point when his heart stopped dead and all he saw was the moon over the Sandford junction. He was not drunk Esther, he was not drunk at all, and it was not his fault, it was the converging lines that doomed him. This is not a recorded natural condition, the gulls do not fly so low over the motorway and cause him to swerve. The paint scored away from his car in lines, like an infection, making directly for the heart.

A gull perched on a spent bonnet, sideways, whilst the sirens fell through the middle distance and the metal moaned in grief about us. I am about this night in walking, old bread and gull bones, old Donnelly at the bar gripping his drink, old Esther walking with our children, old Paul, as ever, old Paul he shakes and he shivers and he turns off his lights alone.

I have run out of places to climb. I will abandon this body and take to the air.

We will leave twin vapour trails in the air, white lines etched into these rocks.

I am the aerial. In my passing, I will send news to each and every star.

Final monologues

Dear Esther. I have burnt my belongings, my books, this death certificate. Mine will be written all across this island. Who was Jakobson, who remembers him? Donnelly has written of him, but who was Donnelly, who remembers him? I have painted, carved, hewn, scored into this space all that I could draw from him. There will be another to these shores to remember me. I will rise from the ocean like an island without bottom, come together like a stone, become an aerial, a beacon that they will not forget you. We have always been drawn here: one day the gulls will return and nest in our bones and our history. I will look to my left and see Esther Donnelly, flying beside me. I will look to my right and see Paul Jakobson, flying beside me. They will leave white lines carved into the air to reach the mainland, where help will be sent.

Dear Esther. I have burned the cliffs of Damascus, I have drunk deep of it. My heart is my leg and a black line etched on the paper all along this boat without a bottom. You are all the world like a nest to me, in which eggs unbroken form like fossils, come together, shatter and send small black flowers to the very air. From this infection, hope. From this island, flight. From this grief, love. Come back! Come back...

[quinntessentiallyglee]

Alright, since none of you seem inclined to talk me out of it, perhaps you can help me kick my D.E.B.S. verse off on the right foot by providing a little feedback before I finally cave and make this a reality.

For anyone not familiar with D.E.B.S. (and I can not recommend the movie enough if you fall into this camp), the basic premise is that there is a secret test embedded in the SAT that determines aptitude for espionage. Women who score highly on the test are recruited into D.E.B.S. (Discipline, Energy, Beauty, Strength), a clandestine paramilitary academy.

Question the first:

Should I go all D.E.B.S. or a mix of D.E.B.S. and Villains? without spoiling too much for those of you who haven’t seen the film, half the reason I love D.E.B.S. as much as I do has to do with the Lucy Diamond character, a villain, and I think having a few OC villain’s built into the Verse from the start to go with my OC D.E.B.S. might not be the worst idea.

Question the second:

While I will almost certainly add my Glee three, and probably my OCs (I’m not sure Mal fits, so she might be left out) to the Verse, I have a very, very, long list of potential FCs, and even whittled down to the ones I think might best fit, which ones would be the best to start with? (This is by no means a complete list of FCs I would like to see in this verse, let alone of FCs I’d like to play--so if you have any you’d like to suggest, please do.)

Anna Kendrick -- Status: D.E.B.S. (Graduated) / Villain: I can sort of see her as a Villain, but only just. Primarily, I see her as a D.E.B.S. in a mentor/handler role. 

As a D.E.B.S., She’s someone who’s been out of the academy for a few years and has a bit of a rep, both at the Academy and among Villians as a no-nonsense, get-the-job-done (by-the-book or not) type, which she is, but unbeknown to most, she’s fairly laid back when not on the job.

As a Villain, She’s more of a Lena Luthor type; someone who’s inherited the family business--and drama--and is suspect more for her family name than anything she’s done... while still morally and ethically ambiguous enough that those keeping an eye on her feel justified in keeping an eye on her.

Ashley Tisdale -- Status: D.E.B.S. (Graduated) / Villain: I see her more as a Villain role, but I can also see her as a D.E.B.S. 

As a D.E.B.S., she’s been out the Academy for a while, probably the same class as Anna (and always in Anna’s shadow... not that she’s bitter about that or anything). Unlike Anna, she’s very by-the-book.

As a Villain, I see her as less of a ‘world domination’ type, and more of an ‘I just want money’ type. She tends to draw the line at any real violence and prefers to use her wiles to lure her marks into giving her whatever it is she’s after, be it cash, cars, gems, or government/business secrets she can auction off to the highest bidder. 

Brenda Song -- Status: D.E.B.S. (Graduated) / Villain: I see her more as a D.E.B., but I can see her as a Villain. 

As a D.E.B., she’s also likely from the same class as Anna and/or Ashley, but unlike them, she’s not a field agent (usually). Primarily she functions as an Analyst/Case Officer with a bit of a “Mother Hen” attitude when it comes to her agents. While not top of her field, she’s solidly in the top third.

As a Villain, I’m seeing her as a mercenary-for-hire. Not the Big bad, but works for--and has inside knowledge on--a lot of them. While competent in hand-to-hand, her primary skills lie in assassination, both subtle and direct.

Charisma Carpenter -- Status: Academy Faculty: Charisma specializes in Negotiation and Seduction. She has a storied career and is something of a legend among the D.E.B.S. (and among a few of the older Villains), some of which might have to do with rumours that she may have started for her own amusement. 

China Anne McClain -- Status: D.E.B.S. (Recent Graduate?)/ Villain: While China makes an excellent Villain, I see her primarily as a D.E.B.--if one on the border of switching sides. 

As a D.E.B.S., she’s an expert in bladed weapons, always carrying at least one on herself at all times. When she first came into the D.E.B.S. program, China had a bit of a patience/temper management issue but has improved on both over the course of her training and is now a highly valued agent... if a little direct in her solutions at times. Her class is a few years behind Brenda/Ashley/Anna’s.

As a Villian, she broke away from the D.E.B.S after a mission gone south and, like Brenda, is now a mercenary for hire. Unlike Brenda, China has aspirations to be more than just ‘a fucking minion’ and is biding her time until the opportunity presents itself to become one of the top dogs.

Demi Lovato -- Status: D.E.B.S. / Villain: I’m fifty-fifty here, I can see both fitting her equally well.

As a D.E.B.S., She’s still a year shy of graduating, and already a little disillusioned with the life of a spy. This might have something do with the fact that outside of a few special cases, she’s rarely called on to put her specialty in explosives to use in the field, leaving her feeling like a bit of a fifth wheel. Or it could be the fact that she’s never really clicked with the other D.E.B.S.

As a Villain, she’s started out as a small-time grifter before catching the eye--and wallet, of the local Crime Boss’ Consigliere. A few years later, and Demi was sitting high, heiress apparent to the whole organization. This did not sit well with some of the longer serving members, and shortly before her twenty-first birthday, several of those members decided to take her out of the running.

They failed. After that, no one questioned her claim to the throne. Especially after rumours of her ‘souvenir collection’ started to circulate.

Emily Osment -- Status: D.E.B.S.: While she could possibly work as a Villian too, I don’t see her as one.

As a D.E.B.S., She’s known best for her oddball sense of humour and ‘distractability’, often bouncing between several subjects in the span of a conversation. Some describe her as ‘an excited little puppy’, others as ‘a wash-out waiting to happen’. Either way, no one can deny her test scores which are consistently in the top fifth percentile across the board. Despite her test scores, Emily has failed to shine in any one particular specialty, proving instead to be a middle-of-the-road jack-of-all-trades.

Emma Watson -- Status: D.E.B.S. (Graduated) / Villain: Another one I’m split fifty-fifty on. 

As a D.E.B.S., She excels at languages. Much to her disappointment, this has led to her playing more of a support role--translating intel, acting as a liaison between D.E.B.S. and foreign agents/agencies, etc--with little to no Fieldwork since her graduation.

As a Villain, she comes from old money, and while the initial deposits all those years ago might not have been ill-gotten, enough of the ones since have arrived under questionable circumstances (and often in disguise). Not one to hide from--or be hidden from--the truth behind her family’s wealth, Emma has apprenticed under her parents for the last several years in those borderline illegal activities that help to keep the coffers full while dabbling in a few over-the-border ones on her own.

Hayley Atwell -- Status: D.E.B.S. Dean/Director / Villain: Another fifty-fifty. I can easily see her in both a white hat and a black one. 

As D.E.B.S. Dean/Director, She’s held the position for several years and, unlike the rest of her faculty, remains something of a mystery to the Agents and Agents-in-training serving under her--all of which she knows by name (as well as knowing them better than they suspect, or she lets on). Like Brenda, she has a bit of a ‘Mother hen’ attitude when it comes to the women under her command but where Brenda’s comes in the form of bordering-on-annoying-at-times check-ins both on and off the clock, Hayley’s is decidedly of the tough-love variety.

As a Villain, She’s one of the big ones. Years of experience have taught her all the tricks in the book on both sides of the battle between good and evil, and she’s invented a few more along the way. Her criminal syndicate is a sort of Anti-D.E.B.S., though nothing as formal. Most of her recruiting is based on gut instinct and necessity rather than tests (secret or otherwise). A careful look at the files for her recruits would turn up a common element, though: Almost all of the women in her organization were victims of one form of abuse or another before they were recruited. It might come as no surprise then to learn that Hayley’s criminal endeavours have a bit of a Robin hood flavour, tending to target the corrupt regardless of their public perception--a fact which has pissed off more than one government who had their hands caught in the cookie jar--with a fair portion rumoured to be passed along to the Poor. It should be noted that while numerous charities and foundations have received sizable donations after one of Hayley’s heists, there has been no confirmed connection between Hayley or her syndicate and any of the organizations in question.

Salli Richardson – Status: D.E.B.S. Dean/Director / Other: I'm leaning more towards "Other" but in any verse where Hayely is a Villain, I see Salli as her D.E.B.S. counterpoint.

As D.E.B.S. Dean/Director, much like Hayley, Salli has held the position for several years, and like Hayley, Salli remains something of a mystery to her students/agents. Unlike Hayley, however, the question mark hovering over her past is more the result of security clearances and protocol than a deliberate attempt to create an air of mystery around herself. Despite this, She is not a stickler for the rules and values results and competence over blindly following orders (a trait she shares with her Other self).

As Other, She fell just shy of a qualifying score for D.E.B.S. recruitment on the secret test--a fact that, should she ever learn it, would annoy her both because she came as close as she did to becoming a D.E.B.S., and because she wasn't considered good enough to become one. Either way, the same skills and inclinations that almost made her a D.E.B.S. candidate led her in to law enforcement (C.I.A. or F.B.I, I'm not sure which) where she managed to work her way up the ladder with surprising speed despite the 'Boys Club' mentality she faced, both as a woman and a POC. Not long after one of her operations crossed paths with D.E.B.S., she was officially read in on the D.E.B.S. program and named the official liaison to the D.E.B.S.. A position she resents, considering it a career dead end, and a particularly galling one given that whenever she has to deal with "that bunch of fetish costume-wearing, Jane Bond wanna be's", her official contact is someone half her age. While not a Villain, she definitely counts as an Antagonist to the D.E.B.S. as a whole.

Selena Gomez -- Status: D.E.B.S. (Graduate [?] ) / Villain: While I can see her as both, I’m leaning more towards her as a D.E.B.S.

As a D.E.B.S., she has a much more laid back attitude than most of her fellow Agents(-in-training). At least when it comes to spycraft. Get her started on anything Tech (where her own talents shine) or anything pop-culture, and she can be almost overpoweringly enthusiastic. Unlike most of her Class, Selena is hoping for a support role once she Graduates (or is very happy she got one after graduating, grumbling only when necessity forces her into the field).

As a Villain, she still has those mad Tech skills, putting them to use as the notorious hacker, Conchita, infamous for raiding servers for whatever catches her eye before leaving behind her calling card, an eight-bit, animated, laughing clam.

Tessa Thompson -- Status: D.E.B.S. (Graduated) / Villain: I see her more in the Villain role, but it’s a close contest.

As a D.E.B.S., she’s a few years ahead of Anna/Ashley/Brenda. At best, Tessa was in her final year at the Academy when they were fresh recruits, but more likely she was a year or two graduated herself by that point. Known best for her resolute calm in the face of danger, she’s a veteran of several of the more action-oriented missions of the last few years. She is rarely seen on campus and tends to spend most of her time in the field. The general consensus is that she’s being groomed for a leadership position down the line, possibly even for the Dean/Director’s chair.

As a Villain, She retains that calm-under-fire demeanour and is most likely someone’s right-hand/second in command (Hayley’s if she’s also a Villain, With Emma as second choice, likely as Bodyguard). She has no desire to take the top spot and prefers to spend her downtime alone (when she’s not in the mood to relieve a little stress with the help of a one-night stand or two, that is. She doesn’t do long term.)

Zendaya Coleman -- Status: D.E.B.S.: Again, I can see her as a Villain, but I feel she fits best as a D.E.B.S.

As a D.E.B.S., she’s something of an outcast in her class, but not because she’s not likable. On the contrary, she’s very likable. That’s part of the problem; she has a way of getting a person to drop their defenses around her. A trait that plays largely into the main reason why her fellow D.E.B.S. avoid her when they can; her PsyOps Specialty.

Question the third:

Do I add the D.E.B.S. verse to this blog, or make a new blog for it? Either way, I will likely test out one or two D.E.B.S. verse characters here to gauge interest before setting up another account, but in the course of writing this, it has occurred to me that I might be better off making the whole thing its own thing in the long run.

[maj7sharp11]

While "Two Trucks" (Cicierega, as Lemon Demon, 2013) opens on an a minor chord, the fourth repeat of the lick terminates early, stressing the final chord of the opening lick, F major. It is F major that quickly dominates as the tonal center for the first refrain, and for the work as a whole--or does it? The quite typical I-vi-V-I progression that harmonizes much of the song's development, including every refrain, is convincing evidence that the work is at least partially in F major. Yet, surprisingly, the key signature is all white keys: there is not a single B flat in the entire song.

Although the B natural in the refrain harmonization can be written off as a brief tonicization of C major (especially given the jazzy quality of the chromatic neighbor G#s in the same progression), the opening lick, Am Dm C F, which recurs in most of the verses, maintains ambiguity, since it is a minor, not F, which is metrically accented. Moreover, when Lemon Demon fashions an instrumental after the second verse modelled after the opening chord progression, a theme in the higher voices unequivocally establishes the key as a minor. Even the bridge, which shares a bassline with the refrain, and whose bouncy countermelody beginning on an F should support the overall key, takes on an unusual modal quality when the countermelody not only includes several B naturals, but even outlines an a minor chord in the second line! If anything, the key of the song should be pegged as F Lydian, not F major. (The modal quality of this countermelody, as well as its high register in contrast to much of the song, is evocative of the occasional use of inversion in the symphonic form, although it is not actually an inversion of any previous theme! This supports the bridge's lyric content, where Cicierega "inverts" the content of the refrain.)

Nonetheless, Lemon Demon continues to maintain a deliberate tonal ambiguity until the outro. While conservatory students are often told that accidentals can indicate the practice of raising the seventh degree in minor, the many G#s Cicierega uses in the song are rarely resolved to As, and if Cicierega does resolve them in the expected direction, it is during F major chords. Additionally, while C major is featured heavily throughout the song, invariably resolving to F major, the dominant of a minor is largely missing. The guitar solo appearing above the second and third refrains also includes noodling between Cs and Ds, flirting with d minor even--what would appear to be the "common ground" between the two tonal centers of F major and a minor. And, of course, the singing itself is entirely unpitched for the majority of the song, clarifying no tonal questions whatsoever.

The song, however, takes a turn in the final epic reprise-outro, when a seemingly unimportant E at the conclusion of the refrain bassline catapults the song into a minor, and the as-of-yet nonmelodic singing line finally takes on harmonic context. Lemon Demon sings the refrain lyrics over the opening chord progressions, instead of the original F major, and the clearly a minor theme from the previous instrumental. Although some tonally ambiguous elements persist, such as a descending scale alternating with a D à la "Toccata and Fugue" at the 3:25 mark, the song remains firmly in A minor until it ends--or does it? If the reprise was parallel to the pre-bridge instrumental, in both its unapologetic key of a minor as well as the reuse of the same theme, could not the key fade back to F major at the end of the song just as abruptly as it did between the instrumental and the bridge?

After Cicierega is all sung out, the instrumental fadeout features the unadorned opening lick. As the sound of two engines revving plays, the opening lick, stripped of its tonal context, is just as ambiguous as it was at the beginning of the song. The chords themselves, bare, are a v-i and a V-I in d and F respectively; nothing but the meter suggested a minor--and even that can be affected by a metrical trick, as the opening showed! In the fadeout, the question is left unanswered: never again will any upper voices or metrical accents snap the interpretation one way or another. These two keys, coexisting and melding into one another so easily, are quite possibly symbolic of the titular "two trucks," whose effortless interplay creates something beautiful, that "could bring you to your knees"--that could make "grown men cry."

[mrlnsfrt]

Love is... (part 2)

Recap

Before we continue our journey through the book of Ruth in search for a deeper understanding of love, let us briefly review.

The very last verse of chapter one sets the stage for the second act by summarizing the critical information.

So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess her daughter-in-law with her, who returned from the country of Moab. Now they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest. Ruth 1:22 NKJV

At this point the story seems to be all about Naomi, Ruth is merely a tagalong. Naomi has returned, and by the way, Ruth is also with her. 

And by the way, Ruth, she is a Moabitess.

She is not an Israelite, she is an alien and her alien status will cause much tension the story. As a Moabite in an Israelite world she can hardly expect any acceptance with the locals.

Ruth is Naomi’s daughter-in-law so she is related by marriage, but her husband is dead, and she had no children. Meaning she needs help and has no way of getting it and no claim to it.

Also her mother-in-law, Naomi, is someone who fled to Moab during the famine, so she might not be the best Israelite to be associated with if you expect to find grace in the eyes of the locals. Also, her mother in law is also a widow, and has no sons. It would not be a far stretch of the imagination to imagine how the locals might consider her cursed by God.

Naomi has returned empty, except for her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who is both a widow and a foreigner. Things are not looking good, but at least these two women have each other.

Nevertheless, when we consider the season, the time of the year, we catch a glimmer of hope. Naomi and Ruth arrive in Bethlehem in the beginning of the barley harvest. Naomi and Ruth arrived at the house of bread (Bethlehem) just as the grain is ready to be cut. The time period was likely April or early March (by our western calendar).

Since barley was the first crop to be harvested each year their arrival time could not have been more perfect, for they will be settling in during a time when there is plenty of food available for them to store for the dry season. (Block, Daniel Isaac. Judges, Ruth. Broadman & Holman, 1999. p650)

Introducing Boaz

With the new chapter, Ruth chapter 2, we also get a new character.

Boaz.

There are four very importants details about Boaz that we learn from this brief introduction.

1 Boaz is a relative of Naomi’s husband. It is important for us to note that this does not mean that Boaz is an acquaintance of Naomi, but a relative of her husband. If you happen to be familiar with Israelite family law and custom this details will give you hope. But we will not talk about it in more detail just yet.

2 Boaz is described by an ambiguous Hebrew expression. The same expression used to describe Gideon in Judges 6:12. In reference to Gideon the expression is translated as “mighty man of valor, noble warrior, military hero.” (Block, 651) But will Boaz be like Gideon in this sense, a warrior?

Another way of interpreting this phrase would be “man of substance, wealth” (Block, 651) a man of standing in the community. This would mean that Boaz is not just an average Israelite. This will need to be confirmed later on in the story.

Finally this ambiguous phrase could also be interpreted “noble with respect to character” (Block, 651). You would expect this man to be heroic, to save…

The narrator is hinting at something positive about Boaz, but we will have to wait and see which definition will better fit him once we witness him in action.

3 As we already mentioned earlier, Boaz is from the clan of Elimelech. A clan is a subdivision of a tribe. This confirms how Boaz is a relative of Naomi’s husband.

4 The name Boaz could mean “strength is in him” (Andrews Study Bible note) or “In the strength of YHWH [I will rejoice/trust].” (Block, 651)

Ruth takes action

For the first time Ruth is portrayed as the primary actor and Naomi now becomes the reactor. Ruth seizes the initiative. Even though Ruth is an alien in a  foreign land she is determined to make something of her life and she goes to find work in order to provide both for herself and for her mother-in-law.

Ruth politely requests that she may go an glean or “gather scraps.” This is not to be confused with harvesting. Ruth would be picking up ears of grain that were inadvertently dropped or left standing.

Mosaic law displayed particular compassion for the alien, the orphan, and the widow by prescribing that the harvesters deliberately leave the grain in the corners of their fields for these economically vulnerable classes and not go back to gather the ears of grain they might have dropped. (Leviticus 19:9,10; 23:22; Deut. 24:19) 

As a Moabite and as a widow Ruth more than qualified to glean. But she could not count on the goodwill of the locals. Moses had given the people of Israel the law, but the people did not always follow the law. That is why Ruth mentions that she will glean behind someone who will look upon her with favor.

The expression to “find favor in the eyes of” means one person acknowledges her/his dependence upon and need for mercy at the hand of a superior. Usually this would take place in the court of a king. The favor of the superior cannot be taken for granted. (Block, 652)

Ruth is dependent upon the mercy of the men in the field. Keep this in mind for this is one of the key points in this story.

The next part of the story is really interesting. 

"Lucky" Ruth

Ruth 2:3 is best appreciated in the original language. A literal translation would go something like,

"...and her chance chanced upon the allotted portion of Boaz..." 

The narrator intentionally draws attention to Ruth’s luck. What are the chances of her arriving exactly int he field of Boaz?

What an incredible stroke of luck right? 

Or is it?

Either Ruth is extremely lucky, or God cares and guides and blesses her.

This awkward and redundant phrase is one of the key statements in the book. The book of Ruth can be seen as just a love story. But that would make Ruth one extremely lucky woman. Or, perhaps, the book of Ruth is teaching us about God. 

To the devout Israelite, there is no such thing as luck, or chance.

When the writer of the book of Ruth excessively attributes these events in Ruth’s life to chance he is intentionally forcing the reader to disagree with him. The attentive reader is forced to sit up and disagree, especially in light of everything that follows this “chance” encounter. The writer is using irony to drive home a theological truth.

This statement does the opposite of what it says. Instead of interpreting these events in Ruth’s life as mere chance it undermines such an interpretation and undermines the search for purely rational explanations for human experiences. This statement and the entire story in the book of Ruth refine the reader’s understanding of providence.

The writer is actually screaming “See the hand of God at work here!” (Block, 653)

God provided and guided, but Ruth had to decide to go out and glean. Ruth did not stay home feeling sorry for herself and fearing how she might be treated if she tried to glean. She did not wait at home for God to drop food on her lap. She went out there and "lucky" her, she went straight to Boaz’s field.

God’s hand allowed the famine and the death of Naomi’s husbands and sons. The hand of the same God also guided Naomi and Ruth back to Bethlehem at the exact time of the wheat harvest, and it is the same hand that guided Ruth to the field of Boaz. But the "coincidences" don't end here.

Behold Boaz

The attention now shifts from Ruth to Boaz who arrived at the field where Ruth is, while she is still there. The writer seems surprised that Boaz "happened" to show up at the right place at the right time.

Look who’s here! Its Boaz! The guy briefly mentioned at the introduction! Nobody saw that coming right!?

In the providence of God, Ruth went to the right field, on the right day, and at the right time.

Boaz arrives with a blessing on his lips.

Now Boaz was seen coming from Bethlehem. He said to the people gathering the grain, “May the Lord be with you.” And they said to him, “May the Lord bring good to you.”  Ruth 2:4 New Life Version

We see right from the get-go that Boaz provides  a positive work environment for his people. Boaz is a model of true covenant “hesed.” 

Boaz’s speech is characterized from beginning to end by grace. (Block, 655)

When Boaz asks, "whose young woman is this?" (Ruth 2:5) it may sound harsh to our modern western ears, but this question is the equivalent of “Whose daughter or wife is she?” or “To which clan or tribe does she belong?” I know it can still sound chauvinistic to the modern reader, but in its cultural context that information was important. 

The focus of the story returns to Ruth, and the reader begins to wonder about her status as an alien and as a widow.

But Ruth is not only described by her status as a foreigner, but also by her actions, she accompanied her mother-in-law, she had been working hard all morning, except for a short break (verse 7). Ruth is not a passive victim of her lot in life, she is a fighter, she gets things done, she makes things happen, she does not sit idly by the sidelines.

Boaz is also an incredible man, but in a different way. From the moment he first opens his mouth until the last words he speaks his tone exudes compassion, grace and generosity.

“In the man who speaks to this Moabite field worker biblical hesed becomes flesh and dwells among humankind.” -Block, Daniel Isaac. Judges, Ruth. Broadman & Holman, 1999. p659 (emphasis mine)

Boaz refers to Ruth as “my daughter” intentionally breaking down barriers that separate her from him. Like a loving father Boaz offers this foreigner his protection and his resources. Boaz knows she is from Moab, but he treats her with respect, with dignity, with love. There is no hint of physical attraction or anything romantic. This is a love that we are not used to encountering. This is hesed in action. 

Boaz also commands his men not to bother Ruth, the verb used here includes not to strike, harass, take advantage of, or mistreat. (Block, 659-660) Boaz just instituted the first anti-sexual-harassment policy in the workplace recorded in the Bible!

Because Boaz is so in tune with the biblical notion of hesed he is way ahead of his times, and those who work for him are privileged to have such a great leader.

Boaz even allows Ruth to drink from the water his men had drawn. This is extraordinary! The water would usually be drawn in the cool morning, a large container would be filled than brought to the field where the workers would drink from throughout the day. Not only that, the cultural context would expect foreigners to draw water for Israelites and women to draw water for men. (Block, 660)

Ruth cannot believe how gracious Boaz has been to her, a foreigner.

Then she fell with her face to the ground and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes? Why do you care about me? I am a stranger from another land.” Ruth 2:10 New Life Translation

Even though we are not sure if Boaz even knew Ruth’s name at this point, she was just the Moabitess who came with Naomi, he acknowledged her. Boaz has dignified this destitute widow from a foreign land and treated her as a significant person. Ruth is aware of her social status, as not only a widow, but also an alien, from Moab to make matters worse.

Boaz is aware of Ruth’s actions, his extraordinary kindness towards her mother-in-law and her courage in accompanying her in her travels to a foreign land. Later her actions will be characterized as hesed but not yet. (Block, 661) Ruth’s faith in leaving her home and family behind could be compared to Abraham’s faith. Ruth left her gods for Israel’s God.

Boaz is a great example of a good man, a man of noble character as described in Ruth 2:1. Boaz is a genuine member of the community of faith, he is a true believer who embodies the standards of covenant faithfulness (hesed). He spontaneously utters words of encouragement and naturally performs deed of kindness (hesed).

In the beginning of the chapter, Ruth had expressed to Naomi her desire to to glean behind someone in whose eyes she might find favor, although she was not praying at the time, God heard her wish.

Boaz is kind to Ruth because Yahweh has prepared his heart for her!” - Block, Daniel Isaac. Judges, Ruth. Broadman & Holman, 1999. p662

God had been working preparing Boaz, developing him into the man that he is. God was preparing Boaz to bless Ruth. Do you realize that God could is preparing you to bless someone? If you don't fight and rebell against God's will and His plan for your life, He will use you like He used Boaz, to bring great blessings to someone. 

Or perhaps you identify as Ruth, doing your best to help and follow God. God has someone who will bless you.

After all this, Boaz does not believe he has done enough for Ruth, so he blesses her as well. He calls upon the LORD to repay Ruth for her actions.

May the Lord reward you for your work. May full pay be given to you from the Lord, the God of Israel. It is under His wings that you have come to be safe.” - Boaz (Ruth 2:12 New Life Version)

Boaz’s blessing illustrates the principle stated in Proverbs 19:17; 14:31; 17:5.

"Giving help to the poor is like loaning money to the Lord. He will pay you back for your kindness." (Proverbs 19:17 Easy-to-Read Version)

"Whoever takes advantage of the poor insults their Maker, but whoever is kind to them honors him." (Proverbs 14:31 Easy-to-Read Version)

"Whoever makes fun of beggars insults their Maker. Whoever laughs at someone else’s trouble will be punished." (Proverbs 17:5 Easy-to-Read Version)

Ruth, by her acts of kindness to Naomi has not only indebted her mother-in-law but also The LORD. So Boaz prays that the LORD will repay her for her work. In coming to Israel Ruth had turned to the God of Israel for protection. So Boaz introduces one of the most beautiful pictures of divine care in all of Scripture. He describes God as a mother bird who offers he wings to protect her defenseless young. (Block, 663)

Ruth has found relief under the protection of Boaz.

“Like a young chick frightened by the pouring rain, she has come out of her fears and found comfort and security under the wings of God. Those wings are embodied in the person of Boaz.” (Block, 665)

 Ruth is amazed that differences of race and class do not stifle Boaz’ compassion towards her. 

But he was not done.

Meal Time

Social realities were expressed at meal time.

But this meal time was not what one would expect in its cultural context.

For one thing, Boaz, the landowner, is eating with his harvesters. That was already unusual for the time, but Boaz goes beyond that and invites Ruth, an outsider, a Moabitess, to join him and his workers. 

The fact that Boaz has to call her to come closer shows that she had deliberately, and appropriately (according to the customs of her time) kept her distance.

Not only does Boaz invite her to join him and his workers for the meal, he invites her to share the food prepared for his workers.

Boaz does not even allow her to eat dry bread while he enjoyed more pleasant food, but invites her to dip her bread in a sauce or condiment used to moisten and spice up dry bread.

Not only that Boaz served her roasted grain himself. He gave her with his hand, a word used only here in the entire Old Testament.

Boaz is so generous, Ruth eats and has food left over. The writer makes sure to mention this detail to help us grasp Boaz’ generosity. Boaz did not just feed the hungry, but he took an ordinary occasion and transformed it into a glorious demonstration of compassion, generosity, and acceptance — that is exactly the biblical understanding of hesed. (Block, 667)

This chapter, this story, these dialogues, teach and develop a theology of love. In this story we learn that

“The wings of God are not only comforting to Israelites; they offer protection even for despised Boabites.” - Block, 667.

Back to gleaning

 After the meal, Boaz tells his workers to pull out some of the stalks and leave them lying on the stubble for Ruth. His workers are not to humiliate or insult her. Boaz's workers will not threaten Ruth physically or shame her psychologically because of her alien status or the low class she represents just because of her current situation, having to go begging to be allowed to glean in the fields.

Boaz made provisions for Ruth to work in peace and to have enough to support her and her mother-in-law. (Block, 669)

After a long day’s work Ruth gleaned and threshed one ephah of grain. This is the equivalent of roughly 6 gallons which could have weighed from thirty to fifty pounds. The harvesters must have listened to Boaz and allowed Ruth to glean liberally.

Naomi is surprised by Ruth’s productivity and utters a blessing upon the man who took notice of her daughter-in-law.

Her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you gather grain today? Where did you work? May good come to the man who showed you favor.” So Ruth told her mother-in-law, “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz.” - Ruth 2:19 New Life Version (emphasis mine)

Once Naomi finds out its Boaz and she realizes Ruth's “luck” Naomi spontaneously erupts with a second blessing for him.

Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he receive good from the Lord, Who has not kept His kindness from the living and the dead.” Then Naomi said to her, “The man is near to us. He is of our family.” - Ruth 2:20 NLV

Ruth stays in Boaz’s field not only until the end of the barley harvest but the end of the wheat harvest as well (Ruth 2:23). Ruth must have been out in the fields 6-7 weeks from late April until early June (by our western calendar).

Conclusion

Boaz has been introduced as an extremely kind and gracious man and as one who qualifies to rescue the line of Elimelech. Though Boaz has helped Ruth and Naomi economically, there are no hints that he is doing anything about the real crisis created by the death of all the male member of the family.

Will this situation be resolved?

How will it be resolved?

For that, you have to come back next week.

Application

For now I hope that we can be like Boaz.

I hope we can live as a personification of God’s love.

Boaz does not shame Ruth, but respects her. He does not judge her by her origin or her current condition or social status, but praises her for her kindness admiring her determination and courage. 

Boaz allows her to provide for herself and her mother-in-law without fear of abuse in any form. He respects her and grants her dignity.

He goes above and beyond the social norms of the time, he breaks the prejudice and crosses lines that the society and culture of his time had erected. 

Boaz was a true Israelite and did what was right. He embodied the love of God. He was blessed by God and blessed those around him.

It is my prayer, that you will also be a blessing wherever you go, breaking down barriers and walls that prejudice builds up. Let us live by God’s standards. Let us teach the world the true meaning of love by how we work and how we treat those around us. Because that is more powerful than any theological truth that might come out of your lips. 

[setaripendragon]

Like Fire and Water - Part 6

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 Woo, final part! Look at me making up a bunch of history for the Avatar verse. I absolutely headcanon that the Yu Yan were once air-benders (okay, the Temples cannot be the only air-benders, Embers has convinced me of that, and also; Air Nomads. The monks and nuns lived at the temples, that’s not nomadic.) that were absorbed into the Fire Nation looong before anything even remotely associated with canon happened. The ending feels a little cramped to me, but I had so many people I wanted to give a say before I wrapped things up, but not enough material for another part, so... I did the best I could. I hope you guys find it satisfying.

Today had been a very long day. Not that Ursa wasn’t glad to have seen her daughter, and finally – finally – managed to apologise for the way she’d left, but it was exhausting. Azula had been a handful growing up, and she was worse now. They had parted amicably, at least, with promises to write. Azula had hinted that she was planning to return to the Fire Nation, which made Ursa suspect that she was, in fact, going to try and infiltrate Ba Sing Se. Or perhaps Azula had expected Ursa to think that, in which case, her hints had probably been the truth.

Ursa shook her head to herself, and poured another cup of ginger tea. She was over-tired, and five years out of practice at playing courtly intrigue. Better not to try and divine Azula’s intentions. Instead, she would wait and see what happened next, and pray her family came out of it in one piece.

When she’d received the message that her daughter was outside Ba Sing Se and waiting with Hakoda’s ships to meet her, she’d been terrified she’d get there to find the beach on fire and Hakoda dead amongst the ashes. But no, he’d been fine and even, if her ears hadn’t deceived her, cracking jokes. And Azula hadn’t set anything on fire, although she’d clearly been tempted a few times during their conversation. The fact that Ursa was also a fire-bender, and could probably put any fires she started out was the only thing that seemed to stop her on a couple of occasions.

Hakoda had promised, once they’d seen Azula, Mai and Ty Lee off – Ursa was glad those two had stayed; if there was one thing Azula needed more than anything else it was a couple of true friends – that he would try and make it back to the city for the night. Ursa appreciated it. She could really use her husband’s support and bad jokes right about now.

The worst part about seeing Azula was the way that, every now and then, an expression would cross her face that was so purely Ozai that Ursa wanted to cry. No matter what Hakoda said, she hated herself a little for leaving her children with that monster. He’d injured them both in different ways, and Ursa would kill him for that, if she thought herself capable. Azulon had been old, and easy to get the drop on. Ozai was in his prime, and quite a bit more cunning than Azulon had ever been. Azulon had been ruthless and cruel, yes, but he was always very straightforward about it.

A knock at the door shook her out of her thoughts. It was probably uncharitable of her to think ‘oh spirits, what now?’ as she climbed to her feet and headed for the door, but she wasn’t in any mood to take it back. She was even less inclined to take it back when she opened the door and found Katara standing there, apparently alone.

She found a smile for the girl anyway, even if it probably did look tired and sad rather than the welcoming she’d been aiming for. “Katara. I wasn’t expecting to see you until the weekend.” She said as she stepped out of the way to let the girl in.

“I… wanted to talk to you without my dad around.” Katara admitted stiffly, glaring around the room. She didn’t seem at all softened by the Water Tribe decorations that Hakoda had added over the last few months. “Or Sokka. He wandered off with Toph for a while, to give us a chance to talk.”

“I see.” Ursa murmured politely, even though she wasn’t entirely sure she did. “Tea?” She offered, because manners were important.

“Sure.” Katara agreed shortly. She gave the teapot a deeply suspicious look as Ursa poured Katara a cup and refilled her own. When Ursa settled back at the table and wrapped her hands around her newly steaming mug, Katara reluctantly joined her, sitting across from her and toying with her own cup, fidgety and pensive. “Sokka told me that you killed Fire Lord Azulon.”

Ursa nodded. “I did.”

“I thought he died in his sleep.” Katara fired back, eyes narrowing.

Ursa smiled, although it felt sharp on her face, and clearly looked less than friendly to Katara, because she leaned back a little bit, and then, with very deliberate casualness, stirred her tea with a graceful swirl of her hand in the air. “Very, very few nobles of the Fire Nation die of natural causes, Katara.” Ursa informed her, ignoring the silent threat. “Azulon died in his bed, certainly, and he was asleep before I woke him with my blade at his throat, so that he would know who had killed him, and why.”

Katara absorbed that, then frowned. “Why?”

“That… is a complicated question.” Ursa said finally. “And it ties in to a lot of my history that you don’t know.”

“You’re Fire Nation.” Katara stated coldly.

“Yes.” Ursa confirmed. “I’m always surprised at how long it takes people to notice,” she said, gesturing at her eyes, “and it takes them even longer to reach the logical conclusion. Then they’re far too easily put off by a story about an Earth Kingdom mother and the pirate raids along the coast.”

Katara’s expression turned hard. “Fire Nation raids.” She stated, and the ‘your people’ behind it was loud and clear.

It was not an easy accusation to answer, and Ursa thought her words over carefully before she said anything. “Yes.” She agreed finally. “In that particular case, I won’t argue that the Fire Nation is at fault.”

“That particular case?!” Katara demanded furiously.

“Mm.” Ursa hummed. “Under Sozin and his son and grandson, the Fire Nation has committed many atrocities. And before Sozin it was the Earth Kingdom that pillaged and raped its way across the continent, under Conqueror Chin’s command. And before Chin, it was the pirate hordes of Chief Kalea looting and murdering up and down the coast. And before that it was the devoted zealots of the Living-Earth-Mother, Queen Nitocris. And before that it was the Yu Yan-” Katara made a triumphant sound, like she hadn’t even registered any of Ursa’s other points. Ursa gave the girl a stern look. “-air-benders and their founder, Taiyari.”

Katara gaped at her. “The Yu Yan aren’t air-benders!”

“Not anymore.” Ursa agreed sadly. “But once, the Yu Yan archers were the terror of the skies. After their defeat they disbanded and vanished into the other three nations. As far as I’m aware, the Fire Nation is the only place they maintained most of their customs. The accounts of their origins are old, and rare, but they have some preserved documents here at the university, if you doubt my sincerity.”

That, at least, seemed to give Katara pause. She stared down at her tea while she marshalled her thoughts. “How do you know about all of that?” She asked, still suspicious, but with less hostility than before. “I’ve heard of Chin the Conqueror, but…”

“I like my history.” Ursa admitted with a faint smile. “I’m more fond of myths and legends, but I know the darker side of history, too.” She paused to sip her tea. “I like to learn about a time when my people weren’t the enemies of the world. It gives me hope that all has not been lost for my people. The other Nations have treated the world just as horribly, and yet life goes on, their people continue, and most of them keep trying to do good.”

Katara opened her mouth, then stopped and frowned. “You distracted me.” She accused, although with less venom than Ursa honestly expected. “Why did you kill Azulon?”

“Simple answer?” Ursa offered, and when Katara nodded, she offered her a gentle smile full of irony. “He threatened my children.”

Everything about Katara seemed to soften at that, anger draining out of her like the tide. “And what’s the complicated answer?” She asked after a moment, glancing up with a challenging expression that just dared Ursa to try and dodge the question again.

Ursa found she couldn’t actually meet Katara’s eyes while she tried to tell the story. She looked down at her tea. “It started, I suppose, when I got engaged to a very charming young man.” She began carefully. “I was an only child, and my parents were minor nobles who pinned all their hopes for political ascension on me. I was shown off at parties and banquets, but most noble boys…” She trailed off, and shrugged ruefully. “But that is a poor excuse for why I fell for my husband’s charms. And I did fall for them. Hard. I thought he was… well, like me, I suppose. A second son, with no real power of his own, used as a game piece by his father to accrue more influence.”

“But he wasn’t?” Katara asked shrewdly.

Ursa pursed her lips. “Well, he was, but where I had learned compassion, to treat those below me as more than just pieces to step on to get myself higher, he had learned cruelty. And he wanted, above all else, to have power over those who presumed to control him.” Here she smiled bitterly, and shook her head. “And when he misstepped, and Azulon ordered him to kill his son in penance, he was going to do it.”

“Kill his-!” Katara gasped, hands flying to cover her mouth. “And he-!”

“Now, after five years to reflect, I begin to wonder if Azulon hadn’t meant for him to simply give up his son, adopt him out to his brother, but either way, Azulon’s order was ambiguous enough that my husband decided to kill two birds with one stone, and get rid of ‘the embarrassment’ and get back into his father’s good graces at the same time.”

There was a long, drawn out silence.

“His… father’s…” Katara breathed, horrified realisation dawning on her as she said those two condemning words. “You-!” She began, but seemed to choke on her next words. “You married-! You were the-! Your son is-” And she stopped. And stared.

Ursa looked up at her at last, but saw only shell-shocked disbelief on Katara’s face, nothing more telling. “Yes.” She said, hesitating before going on. “I married Fire Lord Ozai. Although, at the time, he was only Prince Ozai, and by the time he was crowned, I had already been banished.”

Katara took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “The Fire Lord was going to kill his own son.” She stated in tones of disgust.

“Yes.” Ursa confirmed. “And despite committing treason to protect my children, all that did was leave me banished and unable to protect them when Ozai turned my daughter into his perfect little soldier, and branded and banished my son simply for speaking up in defence of his people.”

Katara recoiled. Her hand flew up to her left eye, and when Ursa nodded wordlessly, she blanched and went pale. “His own dad did that to him?!” She gasped, horrified. Then her expression hardened. “I always knew the Fire Lord was a monster.” She spat.

“Quite.” Ursa agreed with a hint of dark humour.

For a moment, Ursa wondered if her humour was in bad taste, but then Katara smiled, a grim, knowing sort of smile. The moment settled, and they both finished off their tea in the comfortable silence that followed. Ursa refilled their cups without speaking, resolved to give Katara the time she needed to process everything. Katara quietly thanked her for the tea, then abruptly groaned and buried her face in her hands. “I just can’t believe this.” She complained.

“Which part?” Ursa asked kindly.

“My dad married the Fire Lord’s ex-wife!” Katara burst out, incredulous and pained. Ursa raised an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to realise the implications of what she’d just said. Slowly, Katara began to put the pieces together. “That’s… going to really piss the Fire Lord off, isn’t it?” She asked slowly.

Ursa raised her teacup to her lips to hide her vindictive smile. “Probably.” She said blandly.

Katara stared at her as Ursa sipped carefully at her tea, then lowered it again, carefully maintaining a straight face as she did so. A tiny giggle escaped Katara, and then she clapped her hands over her mouth in a futile attempt to muffle her laughter. “Oh, Tui and La, that’s… that’s actually really funny.”

“You father thought so, too.” Ursa muttered, unable to hide her smile any longer. “After he got over the shock.” She sighed at the memory. It was a good one, full of laughter and love. She’d had too few of those before Hakoda, and too many to count since she’d met him. “And just to be clear,” she went on, her tone serious enough to catch Katara’s attention, “your father really is a thousand times the man Ozai wishes he could be.”

Katara’s smile slipped sideways into something strangely rueful. “You… really do love him, don’t you?” She asked, quiet and sad.

Ursa blinked, caught off guard by the sudden melancholy beating off Katara in palpable waves. “I- Yes, I do.” She replied.

“I’m sorry.” Katara said, and then sniffed like she was trying not to cry. “Sokka was right, it’s not- it’s not fair of me to blame you, but I just…” She choked on a laugh that sounded terribly close to a sob. “I just miss my mum. I want her back.”

Ursa wasted no time in sliding around the table until she could pull Katara into a hug. Katara went stiff for a moment, then seemed to melt all at once, hugging Ursa back with surprising force. “You don’t have to be sorry for missing your mother, Katara.” Ursa murmured into dark hair. “And you’re allowed to be angry that she’s gone, that she was taken from you. I only hope that you can come to see me as an ally, not your enemy.”

Katara sniffed again and drew back, and Ursa was surprised to notice that it didn’t seem like any tears had been shed. Katara’s eyes were wet, but the tears hadn’t spilled over. “Well, you did murder the man who ordered my mother’s death, so…” She said, cracking a grin. When Ursa let out a startled but pleased laugh, Katara’s grin softened into a smile. “Yeah, I think-”

There was a knock at the door. Ursa rolled her eyes, and cursed the spirits for their idea of good timing. Katara grinned. “I think it’s probably Sokka.” She offered, and when Ursa stood and opened the door, she found that Katara was right.

“Hi!” Sokka exclaimed brightly, something a little manic in his eyes. “Did you tell her about the Fire Lord, yet?”

“Sokka, I thought you’d told me about the Fire Lord.” Katara said, in a tone of growing suspicion.

Ursa kept a straight face only through sheer force of will as Sokka blanched, and looked nervously over his shoulder. “Uh, yeah, totally.” He said awkwardly. “I mean, I should- give you two more time to- chat. And not kill each other. That’d be… really good. Maybe Toph should stay here to mediate-”

“Don’t exaggerate.” Ursa chided mildly. “Katara hasn’t even tried to drown me once.” She mused, stepping back to let Sokka inside. He didn’t seem to want to take the hint, and dithered in the doorway. “A few angry words are the least of what I’ve had to deal with today.”

“Yeah, but-” Sokka began.

“But what, Sokka?” Katara asked, coming up to stand at Ursa’s shoulder, arms crossed and a deeply unimpressed expression on her face. “What did you think I was going to do to the woman who picked Dad over the Fire Lord?”

Sokka blinked at her rapidly for a moment. “She-! You-! Argh! You’re evil.” He accused. Then raised his voice a little as he stepped inside, jostling his sister with his shoulder in a petulant sort of revenge. “Okay, I think it’s safe, guys!”

“Excellent!” Iroh’s voice preceded him into the apartment, and Katara stiffened as Zuko came into view over Iroh’s shoulder. Ursa couldn’t help but smile, though. He looked stiff and angry, but Ursa knew her son, and she knew the difference between his true anger, and the way he tried to hide his insecurities. He was nervous, not angry, so she pulled him into a hug the moment he was in arm’s reach. “It is very lovely to meet you properly this time, Katara.” Iroh was saying, as Zuko clung to Ursa as though to reassure himself that she really was there, and she hadn’t vanished since he’d seen her yesterday.

“Uh-huh.” Katara drawled.

“Oh, get over yourself, Sugar Queen. Uncle’s nice.” Toph interjected.

“Uncle?!” Katara echoed incredulously.

“I would be most honoured if you would consider me your uncle.” Iroh announced, as if Katara’s question had been jealous, rather than infuriated. “Ursa is as good as a sister to me, and it would be a delight to count her family among my own.”

Zuko finally drew back and let Ursa usher him into the apartment and close the door behind them. “Katara, would you like to help me with dinner?” Ursa asked over the bubbling chaos that had spilled into her apartment.

“Yes.” Katara said quickly, grateful for the excuse to dart around Iroh and over to Ursa’s side. Only once she was there did she register that it meant she was in close proximity to Zuko. Her eyes narrowed sharply. “You’d better not cause any trouble, because if you think-”

“Whoa, calm down, sis!” Sokka called over some conversation about the tea market in the Earth Kingdom. “Our new brother has agreed to a truce as long as we’re in the family home, so don’t go starting any fights, or Dad’s going to be pissed.”

“Mum’s going to be pissed.” Zuko corrected, shooting Ursa a look from the corner of his good eye.

“I would. I finally managed to buy an apartment of my own, so I would hate for it to get burned down or water-logged.” Ursa agreed.

“Hmph. Fine.” Katara huffed. “Is he going to be helping with dinner too?” She asked Ursa, pointedly not asking Zuko. Ursa had a feeling there was a right and wrong answer to that question, and she had a feeling it wasn’t the one she might have expected it to be.

“Yes.” Ursa said, and was pleased to see that it was the right answer. She led the pair of them into the small kitchen and started flipping through her small notebook of recipes to find something that would feed… Oh, spirits, at least six, possibly seven.

“Just don’t ask me to make the tea.” Zuko groused, accepting the box of eggs Ursa passed him from her pantry and passing them to Katara, so that he could take the vegetables Ursa was holding out.

“Hey, if we’re staying for dinner, we should invite Aang!” Sokka suggested.

Battle-honed reflexes were the only things that saved their dinner from ending up splattered all over the kitchen floor, and two voices shouted “No!” in perfect unison.

“Aw, come on, guys. It’s not fair to leave Aang out!” Sokka protested.

Iroh cleared his throat. “Perhaps Miss Be Fong and I could keep the Avatar company. That way he need not be left alone, and the four of you can have a nice family dinner together.” He suggested. It was a good idea, and no one had any real objections, so after Zuko had reluctantly let his Uncle hug him, and Toph had punched all three teenagers in the arm hard enough to make them wince, they left.

“So!” Sokka clapped his hands together, then rubbed them like an evil genius. Ursa wondered if it was as clear to Katara as it was to her just where he’d picked up that mannerism. “Dinner! How can I help?”

Three minor disasters and one successfully made stir-fry later, Hakoda arrived home, looking worn out but relieved, only to pause when he spotted Katara. He opened his mouth to speak, but Katara beat him to it. “I’m sorry.” She said quickly, wringing her hands together and not quite meeting her father’s eye. “Dad, I’m sorry about… what I said before.”

Hakoda huffed a happy little laugh, and hugged her. “Thank you, Katara.”

When Katara let go, Hakoda made a beeline for Ursa, and she put the stir-fry down on the table just in time to turn into his embrace. He was warm and solid in her arms, and he nuzzled into her hair with a little hum of contentment, before she tipped her face up to offer him a proper welcome home kiss.

“Dad, no! Stoooop!”

“Oh, ew, gross!”

“Urk, do you have to?”

They only stopped kissing because Hakoda was laughing too hard to continue. Ursa rolled her eyes at him, but her own smile gave her away. She hummed thoughtfully, giving Hakoda a considering look. He met her look with happy curiosity, and the sheer perfection of the moment made Ursa feel more than a little playful. “Yes. Yes, I think I do have to.” She informed their kids, and promptly kissed her husband again. Ever in favour of a good prank, Hakoda made sure to kiss her back quite thoroughly.