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chantsdemarins · 1 year ago

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Find Tom: Part 2

(a little new art too)

The whole "soccer era" Tom was the push I needed to jump back into a Tom fic, although I am by far much more comfortable just sticking with Loki. I hope this isn't cringey. It’s not that great but I feel like it needs to be posted. 😑

⚠️It's mature so no under 18 readers!

❤️It's a love poem with not a lot of plot!

☠️I used some new smutty words

Lastly, I truly appreciate anyone who takes the time to read my work! No comment is too small, no reblog is unfelt. I wouldn't do any of this if I didn't have readers. You mean the world to me.

@lovelysizzlingbluebird @mischief2sarawr @five-miles-over @lokischambermaid @lokisgoodgirl @mochie85 @ijuststareatstuffhereok89 @kats72 @fictive-sl0th @sailorholly @tbhiddlestan83 @peaches1958 @huntress-artemiss @goblingirlsarah @jennyggggrrr @mjsthrillernp @wolfsmom1 @lady-rose-moon @mygfloki @buttercupcookies-blog @lokixryss @simplyholl @eleniblue @kingtwhiddleston

Thank you-thank you-thank you!

Read Find Tom Part 1

He had stayed an extra week-you had called in to work with hope and a prayer you wouldn’t lose your job.

How could you have known that the remarkable business of bedding a movie star not only included being passionately taken on every mid-modern furnishing capable of withstanding Tom’s athleticism but also came replete with nuanced discussions of such things as little-known facets of British history?

A mere night with this man would have been impossible. His words alone filled the time so completely while his cock took up the rest of the hours left in the day. You needed a lifetime but would have to settle for a week. You also felt like Tom’s spare thoughts were enough to earn him a second Cambridge degree.

You often found yourself pouring strong coffee between glasses of Cab to keep your mind sharp enough to ask intelligent follow-up questions. Which you always did. It was impossible not to notice how his conversational ability effervesced through him, a surging sparkle that galvanized in his eyes, creating a disproportionate lure and the impulse to return the enchanting discourse in kind. Over the course of the week, you had time to observe how many of Tom’s features would appear as backdrops to his emotions.

Like the plane of his nose, its pristine alpine slope, when he was grinding his hips into you. Or how his smile consumed half of his face while his lips found yours.

His eyes were mesmerizing vehicles of his intellect like twin comets streaking the sky. You had to watch them. You couldn’t take your own eyes off them. He saw not only you but what was beyond you, possibly what you would become. He had a witchy sense.

Also, strangely when you least expected it, a pallor of sadness would also occasionally descend between your bodies. A departure from his enthusiastic nature that usually led the way. It was clear something had made a lasting impact on him. Was it another woman? A situation? Strife of the elite? Champagne problems that you could never understand. You wanted to ask him to tell you, but you let the sadness be a silent companion to your passion.

All this revelation was amplified in the vintage quiet of the Sea Ranch cottage you had all to yourselves.

That first night, he took you easily. Perhaps embarrassingly easy. After all, you’d been wet since you saw him from across the crowded room. An uncomfortable distraction while you talked about your lives and listened to the quartet play The Lark Ascending in the main room of the after-party. Something about the tender violin and his deep voice from a place far away. The details. The decorations, wild peach-colored streamers blowing in the ocean wind battering the rafters. A hum in your ears.

The way he leaned in closer when you knew he could hear you. You’d swallow him up if given the chance. Later at his Sea Ranch cottage, what felt like an eternity after so much conversation and ephemera, you were finally a crumpled passionate mess. You remember looking down and seeing him finally enter you, the implications, the spectacle.

You felt your breath leave and never quite return.

Later as dawn coursed through and put the evening to rest, Tom made sure to use the California poppy napkins to tidy you both up but stopped himself short of a full janitorial protocol. There was something a little wicked about his disregard. He liked seeing you wrecked. He liked seeing the lingering elements of the sex you just had, still on you. He didn’t want to make things too neat. You felt exposed but did not want to assemble a wall between you.

The instinct was that of vulnerability. Only sometimes found in casual romance. Only sometimes experienced by you.

By Tuesday, Tom’s effulgent historical discourse had fully found its way into your conversation yet again. You sat on the ocean-facing porch in two aging red deck chairs, a temptation for Tom’s fingers. He easily peeled off their flaking paint and collected it into a neat pile on the property’s 1972 glass Sands Hotel ashtray.

He would continue to move the small pile around with his long finger mixing the chipped paint with the singed tobacco and marijuana wrappings from the day for the hours you talked. Tom would grow quiet only when he rolled his own cigarettes one-handed.

You wondered if he smoked back in London or only when on holiday or business, or as an affront to suffocating California standards of healthy living. The sea wind picked up and moved through his rust-colored hair, salt air conjuring it into full attention.

Apparently, he had forgotten his blow dryer, but now, surprisingly, he seemed besotted with his curls. He ran his hands through them as he resumed your previous conversation.

You tried not to lose your concentration on the details. Tom’s mental ephemera began to have a companion in the details of his being you were collecting in the hallows of your own mind. Topics spun wildly from one to another but often fell back into history and philosophy. You prided yourself in keeping up, even if you had to use the cottage's old ethernet cable and early 2000s PC to look up “ontology.”

"British history is rife with privileged white opportunists, wouldn't you say?" His words were intended for both the relentless waves below and you as he stared off into the inky distance. That was quite the conversation shift. You had both just been talking about Steinerberg, Switzerland. He’d been while filming The Night Manager. He went on.

"Take William Bennett, for example, a complete ass."

"William Bennett?" Repeating his choice of subject often gave you a few vital seconds to collect your thoughts.

"Indeed. He essentially earned his fame from an aquatint print of the New York City fire in 1836. The untold story is that he bought the original sketch from an impoverished Italian artist, Nicolino Calyo. Calyo was there amidst the 700 homes succumbing to flames. Bennett essentially duplicated it, and therefore, as a wealthy, idle British artist, he managed to elude any consequences." You scrunched your nose in a silent response before replying.

"And Calyo?" you finally ventured, already anticipating Tom's reply.

"Naturally, he ended up dead and destitute. The old D and D, if you will.”

You laughed but felt a parallel emerge within you. Your life seemed uncomfortably akin to Nicolino Calyo's. Your mind raced - was Tom, beneath his casual Louis Vuitton button-down, a modern William Bennett? Your thoughts looped back to yesterday's breathy exchange after you’d gone down on him and where you confessed that after a long hiatus, you'd begun painting again. Was he secretly archiving the ideas you'd shared about your nascent series, ready to unearth them during his leisure in Margate - a place allegedly sharing the "spirit and design" of Sea Ranch? While Tom moved your things inside as the chill of the evening overtook you both, your mind was fixated on your previous conversation.

In your carnally vexed state, you'd unveiled your infatuation with the hues of mint green, adobe red, and translucent pink. His curiosity had been particularly piqued by "adobe," which led to a discourse on the disparity between the tangible "true adobe" and the digitized shade we've now associated with the word.

He reflected on his time in New Mexico during the filming of the first Thor movie, where he was first introduced to the color scheme of the American Southwest. It had been a captivating conversation that moved fast. An image of Tom as a reincarnated William Bennett, unveiling his own mint green and adobe masterpiece at a glitzy auction event eight years from now felt lodged in your mind.

Apparently, this emerging anxiety of trusting such a departure from your usual type of lover was hard. None of your other partners would still an idea you had for a painting and make millions from it, but of course, neither would Tom. You were becoming irrational. You poured yourself a new glass of wine, emptying another bottle. Closing your eyes for a moment by yourself while Tom assembled the next part of your evening with his usual intentionality intact, even if he didn’t catch your mood. He tracked even the tiniest details in the short time you’d spent together. You wondered if his sadness had descended, preventing him from noticing.

The next day you made love in the early morning hours, savoring his body. He was deeply asleep his naked luminosity shining against the white of the sheets. Tom still smelled like the rosemary he had picked from the bushes out front. You had watched him in his running shorts and nothing else, springs of rosemary in his hands.

He remarked about how wild rosemary doesn’t grow in England; at least, he didn’t think so. He joked he would take some of it back in his suitcase. He’d smell like California. He’d smell like privileged things like taking an extra week off. At that moment, you had felt his lineage as if a halo surrounded him - an impenetrable force field.

The afternoon found you both in the living room, wrapped in tartan blankets, partaking in an improvised indoor picnic. Tom had run a 10-mile round trip to Jenner's only grocery store. The sight of him returning with baguettes, ham, brie, and more wine bottles settled his existence in your mind as a true enigma. His sweaty, proud smile covered his face completely as held the baguette up to the sky in a triumphant cheer. You ran to him and held him around his middle.

You always loved the way tall skinny guys felt. It was a too-familiar gesture for such a casual situation, you tried to pull back, but he nestled his head into the crook of your shoulder. You closed your eyes and heard only the ambient sound of birds.

The morning of the sixth day, you dressed in his white undershirt and boxer shorts. You both reveled in the amusement of exchanging clothing items to create new outfits each day. The addition of Tom’s packed subtly luxurious clothing gave you both interesting options. His Armani suit jacket with just your black underwear. Tom amusingly in your skirt, paired with his unexpected choice of nude suede Herve ankle boots.

Your scarf and his sleek Ray-Bans. His running shorts were cleverly repurposed as a strapless jumpsuit. In the end, the clothes would always come off. You would be naked. You would have your hands consuming one another in a shocking discovery of hidden pleasure. The responses were the truth.

The thing you both could trust. In his sighs, in the warm breath that haunted your collar bones. In the flush of his cheeks. In the sweat on his forehead or the goosebumps on your arms when his fingertips traced the edges of your body with the precision of an engineer, you held on to the touches, the utterances of euphoria. With every orgasm, you felt the incredible raw honor of being human.

You wanted to slow it down long enough to feel it truly. To feel a king cuming inside you. To feel his cum and his claim while lost in the gravity of his eyes. Those magnificent extensions of his brain were a lifeline. Your bodies became sculptures, black quartz in the hot sun.

By Sunday, the end of your time together had finally found its way to you. He whispered in your ear after pulling out, catching any breath he could. He could only stay until Monday, he had to go back to London. You stared at the slow oscillations of the Casablanca ceiling fan. “I’ll miss this,” your words were an echo of the real words you longed to say.

His eyes closed, lashes casting delicate shadows on his cheeks.

The woman he would one day choose to marry, you thought, God help her. She would undoubtedly be transformed if your brief moments with Tom were any sign. However, for some melancholic reason, you knew it wasn’t going to be you.

You weren’t destined to be the lover who would eventually turn into a wife. He only had room for the ecstasy of passion and intellectual tête-à-têtes. This affair was incomplete, with no clear conclusion in sight. It wasn't a tale like that of William Bennett and his ill-gotten fame through art theft—a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

No, this was something else entirely. Suddenly, as if he was privy to the endless stream of inner thoughts, Tom spoke. "I met you at the right time, y/n," he said, his piercing blue eyes now open.

He jumped out of bed and casually dressed, slipping on a single item of clothing or, more accurately, an accessory — his Gucci belt wrapped sideways around his bare body. It was difficult to concentrate as he strolled past the expansive windows of the cottage. His muscles and his semi-hard cock were the only things holding that thing in place. Your cheeks grew hot. Tom followed up his emotional revelation with a more practical question.

"Shall I make us eggs on this, our final morning together?”

Without waiting for your response, he ventured into the kitchen, energetically rummaging through the cabinets in search of pepper before swinging open the refrigerator.

As he busily prepared breakfast, his underlying sadness was emerging, defying the rational part of his mind that wished it weren't there. Balancing a glass bowl against his stomach, he swiftly began whisking eggs, his intense gaze fixed upon you. This prompted you to inquire once more, "Why is this the right time, Tom?"

He continued whisking the eggs as he replied, "You found me, truly. Sometimes, we serve that purpose for others, akin to amateur archaeologists. Returning to London, I will be more whole, not less."

You found yourself fidgeting with the hem of Tom's t-shirt you were now wearing.

"You desired this life you have didn't you? You wanted fame?"

"I don't know, y/n. I wanted to do what I loved," Tom confessed, pouring the frothy mixture into the heated pan.

"I doubt it’s that simple, I'm sure you've had to make difficult decisions to reach the top."

"Like parting ways with a beautiful woman I met while on an extended work trip?"

"Yes, exactly like that,” you struggled to say.

"It happens all the time, love, all the time. Regret is my middle name. Thomas Regret Hiddleston."

With that sentence, he refocused his attention on cooking, his hands and mind engaged in a synchronized activity not unlike sex, serving a similar yet less emotional purpose.

You discovered a tablecloth tucked away in the back of a cabinet and spread it over the aged blonde table. Professionally, he placed the plates of food before you.

"Quite the last supper we have here," you remarked, attempting a joke to mask your emerging underlying sadness, though failing in your intended delivery.

Your gaze fell to the floor, unable to meet the sunlight streaming through the windows or Tom's eyes. He continued in his relational eulogy, "Its breakfast, y/n, and many more will come. Someday, you'll have a partner, and I'll have someone too. We'll be enjoying meals with them, and something will trigger a memory. Perhaps we'll be by the sea on vacation, and you'll remember me, and I'll remember you."

So he was thinking similar thoughts as you. He did not feel he met his future wife at a Bay Area film festival after-party. It was a long shot at best. You nervously tried to continue talking.

"Of course, not simultaneously. How could we possibly know if we remember each other at the same time?"

"We will never know, y/n. We will only remember each other out-of-sync for the rest of our lives."

With that bittersweet but strangely truthful statement, he reached across the table and gently took your hand and kissed it. You wouldn’t watch him leave late that night. You skipped the coffee after the wine, and poured yourself another, watching the moon reflect off the darkness of the glass.

#tom hiddleston #loki fandom #mcu #tom hiddleston fanfic #tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston x you #loki art #loki fanart #marvel loki

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sun-dog-au · 6 months ago

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🌙Welcome to the SunDog AU!☀️

(In which you can ask Sniff questions!)

An alternate universe based in the general Moomin franchise created by @flowerbloom-arts , this blog follows the story of Sniff and a few other people in Moominvalley as strange things happen that have to do with their sky.

Sniff is an odd and easily tempted child who may not remember much of his own past, but perhaps time will tell if he is involved with these supernatural shenanigans!

[Join the AU discord]

[The AU in its current state is a reboot! To see the content made for the older version, you can look at the masterpost here]

Main Story

(Not written yet!)

Comics

While the AU is no longer a webcomic story, I'll still make comics for bits of story and songs that wouldn't fit into the main story, such as adaptations of moments from the books/comic strip or original backstory and silly moments from before or between the main storyline. These will be listed by order of in-universe chronology.

Adaptation - Moominmamma and Moomintroll adopt Sniff (Moomins and the Great Flood)

Lyric comic - Omen by Mother Mother (intro)

Illustrations

Sometimes I just do little drawings that don't fit elsewhere, so this is the section where I list the ones I did. These will be listed by date posted.

Miscellaneous

Pride Month profile pictures

Tarot Cards

(tba)

Reference sheets

Every character has a unique design that intentionally diverges from canon in the AU, so I made reference sheets for them! Some of them may be original characters, which are colored in red.

Sniff, Query

The Moomins and the Snorks

Snufkin, Little My, the Mymble's Daughter

Mrs. Fillyjonk and her kids, Mabel

The Muskrat, Stinky, Cedric, Mr. Hemulen, the Inspector

FAQ

Some bits of information are needed to be known before diving into the main plot of the AU. Here are some important questions about the setting of the AU that some of you may ask, or if a certain question is asked often enough, it'll be added here.

Any non-frequently asked questions about the meta of the AU that you may want to know will be in the #Queries To Bloom tag.

When does the story take place?

The story starts in the summer of 1949, less than 4 years after Sniff was found in a supersized dark forest by Moominmamma and Moomintroll while on their search for Moominpappa (a.k.a. Moomins and the Great Flood). After that, it's just a matter of figuring out the timeline yourself.

Which adaptation is this story following?

The story is set its own unique canon which primarily follows the books and comics, but does take characters, stories and lore details presented in Shin Moomin, Tanoshii Mūmin Ikka, Moominvalley 2019 and maybe even other sources.

Did the original stories made by the Janssons happen in this AU?

With very few details skewed here and there, the first few Moomin books (Moomins and the Great Flood, Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll) have taken their place over the course of a year and a half from 1945-1946 in-universe. There are also a few comic stories, if changed in detail, which have already taken place for the 2 years before the story begins, these comics are; Moomin's Desert Island, Moomin Builds a House, Moominmamma's Maid, Club Life in Moominvalley, Moomin Falls in Love, Moomin's Lamp and Mymble's Diamond.

Other stories will either be adapted in the main storyline (the AU will be primarily written as an adaptation of different stories from previous adaptations with a few original stories) or will be implied as having happened between chapters.

#moomin #sun dog au #moomins #moominvalley #masterpost #master post #long post

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indeedcaptain · 10 months ago

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Regulatory Relations, chp. 13: The Children of Tarsus Redux

Hello everyone!! I hope you're having a happy Threshold Day!! Here is the big ole honkin monster of an installment for Regulatory Relations that has taken over my whole brain.

social media dry january was so much easier last year when i wasn't actively in a fandom. i just want to look at star trek memes so badly. see you all in two days!!!

Some things:

thank you so so so so much for reading. the response to this fic has been so joyful and supportive.

this story has gotten deeper and darker than originally planned, so I've officially changed the rating from "archive warnings not needed" to "graphic depictions of violence".

on that note: this is The Tarsus Chapter. content warnings for descriptions of violence, starvation, and death.

i wrote a song about Kirk and Kodos post-Tarsus :) if you're into that sort of thing I've reblogged it to this blog and the link is available here.

☆☆☆

At first, everything was dark. His room, the bed beneath him, even Spock’s hand in his--- all of it had vanished, replaced by the warm black nothing. He could not feel his body. He was not sure if he had one, here. But then he heard his name.

Jim?

Hello, Kirk said, or thought, and he sensed something that felt like Spock out in the darkness. It felt like his dry humor, his curiosity, the fierce energy of him coiled into waiting stillness. Can you hear me?

Yes, Spock said, and he sounded--- felt--- closer now. Are you in discomfort?

No, Kirk said, after a moment. But it doesn’t feel like the other times we’ve melded.

I guided your mind through what was necessary in previous circumstances. Here I have created space for you instead. Kirk felt the gesture of Spock’s mind, sweeping out around them. What you show me, I will see.

Cautiously, he thought of somewhere to start. Kirk cringed in anticipation of the nausea, the choking panic, but it did not arrive. He was uncomfortable, unhappy, flayed out and vulnerable, but he could physically continue. The Iowa farmhouse appeared, rippling out in vibrant color from the point that he thought he inhabited in this strange in-between space. The faded white wood paneling, the wide porch with the swing and its rusty chains, the windbreak row of trees, and the cornfield, stretching out as far as Spock’s mind allowed, were replicated as faithfully as if they were physically there. And then they were; Spock materialized at his side as his own body appeared beneath him.

Spock looked around. Is this where you were raised?

Yes, Kirk said, and as they watched, a child with sandy brown hair flung open the screen door, flounced down the stairs, and vanished into the cornfield. An older boy came out more slowly, accompanied by an adult woman with the same sandy hair. They talked on the porch, staring in the direction that the younger one had gone.

That was me, he said quietly. This is the beginning, I suppose. He had laid out in the cornfield for hours, watching the clouds pass through the sky as tears leaked from the corners of his eyes into the dirt beneath him. Kirk closed his eyes and pushed the memory forward, and when he opened his eyes again the sky had darkened and Jimmy was trudging out of the cornfield back to the farmhouse. He wiped the back of his nose with his forearm and let the screen door swing shut gracelessly behind him.

Akin to the strange logic of dreams, Kirk and Spock stood in the kitchen of the farmhouse without having moved. Jimmy sat at the wooden table, arms crossed protectively across his chest, as Winona Kirk pulled brochures out of a Starfleet-issue duffel bag.

“I don’t want to go to Mars,” Jimmy said.

“You don’t have to,” Winona soothed.

“I want to go with you and Dad.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” Winona said. “For this posting, that’s just not an option.” Jimmy crossed his arms more tightly across his chest.

“Can’t I stay here?”

“Not by yourself.” Winona found the brochure that she had been looking for, the glossy paper reflecting the warm light and fluttering with the movement of the ceiling fan, and pulled the chair out next to Jimmy. “Look at this one,” she said quietly, and placed the brochure on the table in front of him. He turned away, staring out the window over the sink. “It’s not like Sam’s school. It’s all hands-on, all learning by doing. You’d get to be on a farm, just like here, with other kids. Dad and I could come visit you when we get leave.” Jimmy kept his gaze locked on the window, and Winona stood after another silent minute. She kissed him on the forehead and exited. When she was gone, Jimmy turned to the brochure. He frowned at it, but he picked it up and opened it.

Kirk knew what came next. He had been enchanted against his will by the promise of the experiential Farm School, and it would become his home for two beautiful years.

I wish I could just show you the good things, Kirk said. There were good things, too.

I believe you, captain, Spock said. Show me whatever you need.

Kirk crossed to the table where Jimmy--- his younger self, and it was hard to remember that he had ever been so young--- sat, flipping through the brochure. He looked down at the shiny pictures. They didn’t do it justice. I just need--- I need you to see what I saw. I think that’s what all this is about. Spock crossed to him, standing next to him, and even in the meldspace Kirk felt the comfort of his presence.

Kirk laced his fingers through Spock’s and remembered.

☆☆☆

Tarsus IV was the fourth planet in a small system in the middle of nowhere, Beta quadrant. It was Class M, with mostly mild seasons, and by the time Jimmy arrived, it was populated with eight thousand others, entirely human. It was not a highly developed colony; humans had only been there for twenty years, and it was technologically delayed--- no replicators, no transporters, only one government-owned high-speed comms relay to the rest of the Federation. Those who lived there were agriculturalists; scientists and farmers looking to conduct their research or make a living selling crops to the traders who passed through on their way to the further-flung starbases. After Jimmy had set his narrow shoulders, gritted his teeth, and taken the brochure upstairs to his parents, they had bought him a physical copy of a traveler’s guide to Tarsus IV. He read it back to front, over and over, until the spine crumbled in his hands and they replaced it with a digital copy on his padd. Six months after he had stormed from the kitchen and into the cornfield, the shuttle containing a newly twelve years old Jimmy Kirk touched down on Tarsus. He was met at the shuttle pad by two women in their twenties. Their names were Madeleine and Natalya, and, as Starfleet Academy graduates who had elected to take elementary teaching posts instead of a commission on a ship, they were impossibly cool and rebellious to a child whose parents rarely spent more than eight months anywhere. They took him to Farm School, where he was given three rough-spun jumpsuits to wear on outside days and a tour of the grounds. There were fields, a big house that doubled as a cafeteria and dormitory, a school building with classrooms and a gymnasium, and a contingent of laboratories built for little scientists with child-sized hands.

“Do you know what you might want to study?” Natalya was tall, blonde, and strong, and she and Madeleine both had been science track at the Academy. She led Jimmy through the different buildings, wandered through a wheat field with him, and then took him to the highest point on the campus so he could look out and see the sprawl of Farm School and the town beyond.

“Everything,” Jimmy said. For the first time in his life, Jimmy was judged by his own actions and interests and not by the reputations of his family. He could raise his hand in class and be called on by a teacher who had never taught his brother. He could take extracurriculars in engineering and make mistakes without being asked, “Didn’t your mom explain this to you?” He could shadow his tutors and tell them that he wanted to be a scientist without any of them assuming that he would be a captain, like his dad. For almost two years, he learned and grew and made friends with kids who cared more about his first name than his last.

For almost two years, he was happy.

Jimmy’s second summer on Tarsus IV was the driest on record. The swimming hole where he and a few of his friends spent most afternoons after their classes were over had shrunk considerably since the spring. The sudden thunderstorms that he had grown accustomed to the previous year were few and far between.

In late August, when they were on a break from their classes, Jimmy snuck into the patch of field that they had given him for his summer project to check on his crops: a small growth, only a few square yards, of yellow corn. He had hoped to have enough to make cornbread for his classmates once it had all reached peak sweetness. He walked slowly though the fields, brushing his palms carelessly over the purple amaranth that was his friend Laika’s project, one eye on keeping his feet in the walkways and one eye on the clouds above him. The formerly teal-blue sky had darkened considerably, and though he didn’t mind the rain, the teachers got nervous when any of them were out in a storm. The soil of Tarsus had a considerably higher metallic content than Earth, and they weren’t keen on testing the survival rate of lightning strikes on the children in their care. He walked faster.

His corn had grown to the right height, but as he brushed his hands against the stalks, they bent in a way that was unfamiliar. He frowned. He had spent the first twelve years of his life running through farm fields; he had long understood the way that the laws of physics exerted themselves on the stalks of late-summer corn. The stalks moved ponderously, with less structural resilience than he was used to. The ears swung heavily and drooped down more than he had expected. Jimmy reached out and grabbed one, thinking to pull it off the stalk and peel back the silk to peer inside, but he froze when it landed in his palm. Rather than the bumpy firmness of corn, it felt as though there was goo trapped inside the shell. He hefted the mushy ear in one hand and poked at it with a finger. His finger left an indent, meeting virtually none of the expected resistance. A single drop of a deep, metallic, mercurial blue liquid oozed out of the top and dropped to the soil below. He dropped the ear, and it hung morosely from the stalk, dripping blue ooze onto the dirt.

Jimmy turned and ran for the safety of the main house as the sky broke open above him. By the time he got inside, Natalya was standing in the foyer with a towel for him.

“My corn melted,” he said, confused, dripping rain onto the pale wooden floor.

“We can check it out when the storm is over,” she said, scrubbing his drenched hair with the towel. But it was movie night, and one of the littlest kids got overtired and set off a giggling fit that derailed everyone’s attention, and by the time Jimmy laid down in his bunk bed he had forgotten about the corn entirely.

Ten days later, during their first class after the break, Madeleine took them outside to check on their summer projects. Jimmy had fallen to the back of the group, play-fighting with Tommy, when they heard a dismayed scream from the front.

Laika wailed, “What happened?” She knelt in what remained of her amaranth. The proud purple bushels had veered decidedly towards blue and lay in mushy puddles, the flower heads shedding off the stalk in her hands.

“Laika, don’t touch that, get out of the mess,” Madeleine said, and stepped away from the group to flip her comm open. She said something quietly into it, out of Jimmy’s hearing, but her face, normally split by her wide smile, was pinched with concern. Laika stood, wiping the remnants of her summer project off her hands and the knees of her jumpsuit, and frustrated tears glinted in her eyes.

“My corn,” Jimmy realized, remembering, and took off running. He heard Madeleine shout behind him, but he couldn’t hear what she said and therefore didn’t have to listen. He skidded to a halt in the dirt after a few more seconds anyway, his heartbeat pounding in his ears. The stalks still stood, half-bent, and the ears were still attached, in the loosest sense of the word. But whatever might have been growing inside had melted out, dripping down into the soil into noxious blue puddles.

Madeleine appeared over his shoulder and gaped at the oil spill that had been his summer project. “Let’s go, Jimmy,” she said, and steered him away, back towards the main house. They passed Natalya, standing with their biology teacher, Mr. Park, and the chemistry teacher, Mr. Lopez, talking next to the remains of the amaranth. Madeleine took them all inside and they played dodgeball in the gym until they were released for the afternoon. After dinner, Jimmy and some of the older kids played cards in the dorm until Madeleine called for lights out, and even Laika was pulled out of her mournful shell to play with them by the end of the night.

That was the last normal day.

One of the best parts of Farm School had been the food. There were no replicators on Tarsus, and Jimmy didn’t like the fake chemical aftertaste of most replicated food anyway. They bought food from the town and the other farmers, and got shipments from the traders that stopped through every month or so, but the majority of what they ate came from the farm itself. Over the next two weeks, the farm-grown food stopped appearing at mealtimes. Halfway through September, Natalya pulled all of the older children, thirty or so out of the one hundred at the school, aside before dinner.

“I think we all know that it was a very dry summer,” she said, and one of the boys started sniffling immediately in the back of the classroom. They had known that something was wrong after all their summer projects had died horribly, but Madeleine still showed them old Earth movies when they scored well on math tests and Natalya had taught the more flexible kids some of her gymnastics moves. The school schedule had marched on, and so, they had reasoned, things couldn’t have been too bad. But now Madeleine was here, her wide smile replaced by an unfamiliar strict line, talking to them without the littles present. It became impossible to ignore the changes that they had silently agreed not to discuss.

“Please, do not worry. We will take care of you. We’ve already talked to the governor, and help is coming, but until it arrives things are going to have to be a little different.”

The older kids voted to join the teachers in hiding the worst of the situation from the littles, and though it was not mandatory they joined the teachers in accepting limited rations to give the littles the last of the fresh produce. Jimmy sent a holo of his lab station to Sam with the caption, “still cooler than math school!!” and a message to his parents that said, “i miss you.” Over the slow civilian comms relay that the school had, neither of his messages would be received for a month at least. By then, Madeleine had said, Starfleet or one of the trade ships would have arrived and things would be back to normal. But it made him feel better to know that his messages were out in space, soaring from beacon to beacon towards his family.

“Summons from the governor,” Madeleine said cheerfully when she woke up the boys in Jimmy’s dorm room on a morning in late September. “Personalized invitations, too! Jimmy, your parents aren’t in the quadrant now, are they?”

Jimmy yawned, stretching, the morning sun warming the room through the white linen curtains. “Nope,” he said, half-asleep. “They’re still in Delta for a while, I think.”

Madeleine hummed, but she tapped something on her padd. “You and Tommy are coming with me and Natalya today.” Tommy hung his head down from his place on the top bunk.

“Me, too?”

Madeleine ruffled his hair, fluffy with gravity. “Better dress nicely. No holes in your jeans.”

“But they’re cool!”

“You say that now,” Madeleine said. “And in thirty years you’ll look back at holos of yourself and say, why was my clothing falling apart all the time?” She chucked him on the back of the head gently and left them to get ready. They rose, and dressed, and breakfast was sparse but Natalya snuck them each a cup of coffee and it helped to cut the hunger.

Farm School was on the side of a mountain, set above the main town, and its farmland was surrounded by forest. Someday, Jimmy thought, more people would live here, and there would be less forest, and Tarsus would feel less isolated from the galaxy as a whole. But he was glad to live here now, because Mr. Lopez sometimes led them on hikes deep into the woods to identify each of the birds by their song, and it was easy to forget that there was anyone else in the universe at all. Madeleine and Natalya led their parade of fifty down the hill, down the packed dirt road from Farm School that would meet the paved road that led into town. It was a familiar road; when there were holidays, or after the harvests, the governor’s office would put on festivals and the students would run down the road in packs of four and five to spend their credits on sweets and new books and clothing. The littles skipped between them, holding hands, but Jimmy and the other older kids didn’t want to waste their energy, not when they’d have to walk back up the hill in the autumn sun later.

They followed Natalya and Madeleine to the town hall. There was an auditorium there, in a drafty old hall towards the back of the brick building, where sometimes the local players would put on shows or traveling troupes would stage concerts. Today it would be nearly at capacity--- it sat almost five thousand people, and it was over half-full already. Madeleine narrowed her eyes at the presence of the governor’s security force, wearing their forest green uniforms, lining the walls and standing at the entrances, but she led them into a few rows near the back of the hall where they could all sit together. She and Natalya talked quietly with their heads close together while Laika pulled a deck of cards from her back pocket and dealt Jimmy and Tommy into a game of ratscrew. One of the littles, Kevin, stood over Tommy’s shoulder and asked too many questions, and two others, Ellie and Mira, slid themselves into Laika’s lap when it became apparent that Madeleine and Natalya would not be distracted from their conversation by their pleas for attention. The game devolved quickly from there, but the littles could be convinced to play Go Fish instead of the faster slapping game as long as the older kids pretended that it was cool. The other kids had distracted themselves similarly; a padd with books, a holofilm between two girls sharing a set of headphones, one of the younger kids with his ever-present sketchbook. The auditorium filled up around them, until the enormous wooden doors banged shut and Madeleine pulled them all to their feet to pay attention. The crowd fell silent.

A small door to the right of the stage opened, and the governor stepped out, flanked on either side by his green-shirted guards. Jimmy had seen him before, at the winter festival and harvest celebrations. He had wavy silver hair, and uncannily light brown eyes that Jimmy could see flashing in the stage lights even from where he stood in the back. Governor Kodos climbed the stairs to the waiting podium, and with a nod to someone offstage a microphone buzzed mechanically to life.

“Good morning,” he said, and gazed solemnly at them. “I appreciate every one of you taking the time to join us here today. It was short notice, but the community we’ve built here never shies away from pulling together for each other, does it?” Madeleine and Natalya exchanged glances over the heads of the kids lined between them. Madeleine rolled her eyes. Kodos continued, but Jimmy had a hard time focusing on his words. The auditorium was hot with the trapped body heat of four thousand others, and he wished that they had all sat before Kodos started talking. His attention drifted.

“...grateful for the sacrifices you have made thus far, and grateful for all those to come,” Kodos said. Madeleine’s head snapped up, and her eyes met Natalya’s. Jimmy saw, in the laser-focused line between them, that they had heard something that he had not, and the skin on the back of his neck crawled. Around them, the quiet listening stillness of the crowd shivered into an animal intensity, a predatory waiting. Natalya glanced around, and a muscle twitched in her jaw. She and Madeleine passed something invisibly, silently, through the air between them.

In the space between one breath and the next Jimmy watched as his teachers shed their masks of civility to reveal iron ferocity beneath. They might have been science track at the Academy, but they were still soldiers. The crowd’s discontented energy began to boil over. Natalya grabbed one of the littlest kids, hefted her into her arms, and marched straight at the nearest guard, standing in front of an exit. Madeleine swept backwards as she shoved Jimmy towards Natalya and the door.

“Start walking,” she hissed. “Get the littles, get to the exit, and get out!” Jimmy turned, on autopilot, and shoved at Tommy’s shoulder. Madeleine doubled back to push the second row of students towards the door, putting herself between them and the guards lining the back wall.

“Move,” he whispered to Tommy, and they shuffled towards Natalya and the guard.

“She had an accident,” Natalya said, smiling. “Excuse us. I need to change her before it starts to stink.” The little girl in her arms hid her face in her neck under the scrutiny of the guard. Their line bunched behind Natalya as the crowd behind them started to yell out.

“Quiet!” Kodos’s voice boomed out through the auditorium, and for a moment everything went perfectly still. “I have no alternative but to sentence you to death. Your execution is so ordered, signed Kodos, governor of Tarsus IV.” There was one heartbeat of pure silence.

A phaser whined and discharged on the other side of the room. Someone screamed. Then five, seven, twelve other phasers fired. Bodies dropped to the ground. The crowd surged forward, out, away from the guards or towards them, yelling and crying out. Natalya kicked her guard in the knee, grabbed for his phaser as he fell, and shot him point-blank. Even as two other guards from the back of the auditorium ran towards her, she shoved the auditorium door open, revealing the cement hallway beyond.

“Go!” Natalya roared in pain as she staggered forward, a phaser burn eating through the shoulder of her jacket and revealing the muscle fiber beneath her scorched skin. She shoved the little girl in her arms at one of the older kids pushing by and turned, raising her phaser. As Jimmy passed through the doorway, running after Tommy, his heart in his throat and the cacophony of phaser fire filling his ears, he turned back--- to look for other kids left behind, or to look for Madeleine and Natalya, he wasn’t sure. He saw the bodies of his classmates, unlucky enough to have been in the last row and in the direct line of fire of the guards lining the back of the hall, curled together on the floor by their seats. Madeleine was sprawled over them, covering them, unmoving. There were piles of people, twisted together in awful ways, in front of the guards still holding phasers. And at the head of it all, Kodos onstage, hands clasped together, watching over the scene with a terrible calm.

The last time he saw Natalya, she stood in the open doorway between her fleeing students and the advancing guards with a half-charged phaser in her hand, blood dripping down her useless arm from the hole in her shoulder.

She screamed, “Close the door!” as she fired at one of the guards. Jimmy grabbed the door and slammed it shut, and he felt the reverberation of impact as something--- phaser discharge or Natalya or both--- hit it from the other side. He backed away, watching the door, but Natalya held the line. The door didn’t open. He turned and sprinted in the direction that Tommy and the others had gone as muffled screams faded behind him.

The backstreet behind the town hall was bizarrely, unsettlingly quiet. Natalya was gone. Madeleine was gone. Half of the students that they had come down with, maybe more, had been lost to the chaos in the auditorium. As Jimmy pulled the last door shut behind him, he saw Laika’s little gasp of relief. There was a question in her eyes, but he shook his head. There would not be anyone coming out behind him. They were on their own. Jimmy wound through the crowd to stand with her and Tommy, brushing his hand over the head or shoulder of a sniffling little as he passed through them.

“We can’t stay here,” Laika whispered, and she glanced nervously over her shoulder. “Where…?”

“We have to get out of the town,” Tommy whispered back. Jimmy stared at the plain white door that separated them from the slaughter in the theatre. He saw Madeleine sprawled protectively, uselessly, over the bodies of his classmates, Natalya’s broad shoulders filling the last doorway like she could protect them all. His heart thudded painfully against his ribs. Inside his head, he was screaming and screaming and screaming, but it didn’t come out. He felt his soul splitting into two. One part of him shrieked and beat his hands bloody against the white door. The other part was as cool as porcelain, utterly disconnected from everything he had seen, unfeeling but for the desire to stay alive, to keep the last of his friends alive.

“We’ll go through the woods,” he said. Laika and Tommy looked at him, but he couldn’t meet their eyes. The white door burned in his vision. “We probably know the forest around Farm School better than anyone else. If we get into the trees we at least won’t be seen. Then we can go home and find Mr. Park and he’ll know what to do.” He finally looked at his friends, and when he met their eyes, they nodded.

“Hold hands,” Laika said. She raised her voice slightly. “Ten and ups, grab a little. Buddy system.” Their little crowd--- only thirteen of them left, out of so many more--- shifted, reaching for each other. Jimmy felt like his bones were vibrating with the effort of keeping himself steady, but a tiny hand slid into his, grabbing onto three of his fingers with a chubby grip and anchoring him. He looked down.

Kevin stared up at him with enormous brown eyes, and it was the first time that Jimmy had ever seen him at a loss for words. He squeezed, feeling the fragility of the younger boy’s hand, and settled his shoulders back, the way he’d seen his dad do, the way Sam did. If they could get back home, then Mr. Park or Mr. Lopez would be able to fix this--- whatever was still fixable. All they had to do was get home. They could do that.

“Ready?” Jimmy’s mind shut everything else out--- his own screaming, the white door, Natalya’s bloody braid, the bone of her shoulder--- except for the only thought that mattered, singing through him in time with his heartbeat: get home, get home, get home. Laika nodded. Tommy nodded, gripping the hands of twin girls who had only arrived on Tarsus a few months prior. “Let’s go.”

They ran down the back alley that stretched along the back length of the auditorium, and their footfalls echoed eerily in the silence after the deafening phaser fire. Laika, who had arrived on Tarsus before any of them and knew the town better, took the lead. They followed her sure, quick steps, and she zigged down another alley that would take them out of the town, away from the main road, into the forest. Jimmy could feel the effects of a month of rationing in the burn of his lungs and heart, the empty energy of his cup of coffee making him jittery on his feet. When Kevin lost his footing on the uneven stones, Jimmy hauled him up onto his back and stumbled on.

It was as Laika led them onto the narrow plain between the edge of town and the start of the forest that they heard shouts behind them. Jimmy whipped his head back, searching for the source, and the flash of a hunter green uniform made his stomach leap into his throat. “No, no, no, no, no,” he whispered, in time with each footfall, and sprinted as hard as he could after Laika and the others. Kevin’s arms were clenched around his neck, and he could hear the younger boy’s muffled cries against his neck. He was almost across the plain, almost to the safety of the trees, when he heard the whine and discharge of phaser fire. He flinched to the side, but he was still on his feet. He was still running. Phasers discharged again and again, and the dry grass around him caught fire as he ran haphazardly towards the trees, trying to make them both a moving target.

Jimmy flung himself and Kevin behind the trunk of the closest tree. Pieces of bark exploded around him as phaser fire hit the other side. Jimmy slid Kevin from his back, pressing him to the ground.

“Are you okay?”

Kevin nodded, eyes wide and face completely blank. Jimmy thought that his own face might have looked the same. He wanted his parents--- but, no. If he thought about them, or the farmhouse in Iowa, he would never survive. He couldn’t think about anything but getting to Farm School with the littles and finding Mr. Park. Far-off phasers fired again and again, but his tree still stood. He looked up, and Laika was there, and Tommy and two other littles.

“Where is everyone else?” Jimmy’s voice was hoarse, scratching against his dry throat. His lungs still burned from the exertion of their flight. Laika’s eyes flicked reluctantly over his shoulder, out to the bare stretch of earth behind him. He dared one look over his shoulder. There were a handful of the guards from the auditorium, their pursuers, pacing the outskirts of the town with rifles in hand, and a trail of seven little crumpled bodies between the last of the buildings and the first of the trees.

Jimmy’s stomach heaved, but nothing came up. Stomach acid burned his throat. Tears stung his eyes. He heard a thin wailing, coming from Laika. He didn’t think she was aware that she was making noise. He closed his eyes and let the stony, unfeeling half of his brain take over.

“Get home,” he said, and Laika stopped wailing with a hiccup. “All we have to do is get home. We can do that.” He took Kevin’s hand in his again and held Laika’s gaze, before holding Tommy’s. “We’ll get the littles home. Mr. Park will know what to do.”

For a moment they stared at him, and Kevin sniffled. But then they nodded, and Laika turned to look at the sun before turning back to the woods.

“You know the way best,” he said. Laika loved to go birdwatching with Mr. Park. She had spent almost every weekend wandering through the woods, even when it was cold or rainy. “You can do this.” She nodded again, and she took the hands of one of the littles, and she led them up the mountain. Far from the main road, every step took them deeper into the trees until they couldn’t hear any sound but the wind through the reddening leaves and their own unsteady breathing.

They walked for two hours, taking a meandering route as Laika cast nervous glances in the direction of what Jimmy thought was the main road. As the sun started to slide down towards the opposite horizon, Jimmy caught her eye.

“All good?”

She chewed her lip nervously, glancing over his shoulder, but then her eyes snagged on something. She nodded decisively and pointed. Behind him, high up in an enormous tree, was the Farm School treehouse. “We’re close,” she whispered, and she led them on.

Farm School was as silent as a grave when Laika led their pack of six through the back entrance to the campus. They glanced around, but there was no one in sight.

“Maybe they’re hiding,” Tommy said. “Should we split up to look?”

“No,” Jimmy and Laika said, in unison. Jimmy shook his head as Laika said, “We should stay together.” Tommy nodded, and redoubled his grip on Mira and Ellie’s hands.

“Big house first,” Jimmy said, and they scuttled across the campus, through the empty fields. The grass had been trampled down, and any remnants of the ill-fated summer projects had been ground underfoot. They slipped into the main house silently, through an unlocked backdoor. The big industrial kitchen was empty, with the cabinets and closets thrown open like someone had rummaged through.

Jimmy pushed ahead to cross into the cafeteria, but Laika slowed, considering the empty shelves. “Someone took everything that was left here,” she said. “I don’t think the teachers would have done that. There’s not even salt left.” She was right, but there was nothing else they could do. They continued on.

There was no one in the big house. Not even bodies. Half the students had stayed behind that morning; those who hadn’t received a specific invitation to the day’s event. Jimmy’s brain reared back from the implications of that idea, and he put it from his mind. One thing at a time. They had gotten home. Now they had to find Mr. Park.

But he wasn’t in the big house, and he wasn’t in the classrooms or gymnasium. Jimmy turned in a circle under the dying sun, considering the shadows sinking over the campus. “The comm system is in the labs. It was in Mr. Park’s office, I think. Maybe he’s there.”

Laika nodded. She and Tommy looked at each other, and Tommy said, “I’ll stay with the littles in the big house. We’ll be in our room. You guys go look.”

Jimmy opened his mouth, ready to stop them from separating, but Laika shook her head, almost imperceptibly. They left Tommy with the littles and stole across the darkening campus to the laboratory building.

“I thought we said we weren’t splitting up,” Jimmy hissed, as they pushed open the door into the building. Laika considered him for a minute before she said, “Just in case there’s something we don’t want the littles to see.” Jimmy’s stomach dropped.

The labs were as silent as everywhere else was, but Jimmy’s ears still rang with the echoes of the phaser blasts. They tread carefully, fearfully, but every lab was empty. Mr. Park’s door, at the end of the central hall, was ajar when they reached it, and they exchanged uneasy glances. Mr. Park was quiet, and private, and his door was never open. But the comms unit--- an enormous, outdated, clunky thing compared to the sleek Starfleet one that Jimmy’s parents had kept in their Iowa house--- was on a table within.

Laika pushed the door further open. Jimmy crept in first. There was no one visible, but the comms unit was on. The front screen emitted a soft green glow. Jimmy approached it and tapped the playback button.

Mr. Park’s voice, harsh with his labored breathing, filled the room. They both jumped. “This is Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park, retired, sending an SOS from Tarsus IV. Something--- ah--- has gone terribly wrong. At first it was just a food shortage--- they said it was some fungus, but it was nothing I’d ever--- god! I’d ever seen.” Mr. Park’s breathing grew heavier, his breath hissing between his teeth. “Kodos has the only real comms relay, and he said he called for help, but I don’t think--- I don’t think he did. I don’t think anyone’s coming. And they took the kids. God, his guards took the kids. They had a list.” Jimmy turned to look at Laika, horror building in his chest, stealing his breath, but she wasn’t looking at him or the comms station. “He’s doing something. Kodos is up to something.” Mr. Park wheezed horribly, something wet rattling in his lungs. “This is it for me, but if anyone’s out there, monitoring any of these frequencies… get to Tarsus as fast as you can. While there’s still anyone to save. Park out.” Jimmy turned around to look where Laika was looking. A pair of dirt-stained work boots and two denim-clad legs poked out from behind Mr. Park’s desk. Laika shook her head, mouthing, “No, no, no, no,” and Jimmy grabbed her by the arm, towing her backwards.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, and she let him turn him from Mr. Park’s body and away from the office. Jimmy left the comms relay on but shut the door behind them.

“We can’t stay here,” he said, as they crossed back to the big house. “Some of the guards saw us running. They’ll come back for us.”

“The treehouse,” Laika said. “We’ll take the camping stuff and stay there. We can--- there’s probably some stuff we can still forage, at least for a few weeks, and drink from the streams. We can stay out there until help arrives.” Jimmy nodded.

“We can keep the littles safe. That’s what Madeleine and Natalya would do,” Jimmy said, and Laika’s lip trembled, but she nodded too.

The sun had set by the time they returned to the big house. They told Tommy what they needed to do, took all the camping supplies that they could carry, and left Farm School behind. As the six survivors headed back into the woods, towards their treehouse, their former home receded into shadow and was gone.

The four in-between weeks were fuzzier in Kirk’s memories than the beginning and the end. Most of the days blurred together in a mess of hunger and sleep, of stripping the bark off of trees with a knife and digging out the soft wood inside to eat; of telling the littles that collecting acorns was a game and whoever found the most would win; of the bright sharp days after stealing something worth eating from the town when they were brave or dumb enough to risk getting caught by the guards who still hunted runners on the streets. Kirk let most of those memories spin by them in blurry streaks, waiting for the memories of the days that mattered.

There was the day that the littles were too weak to climb the rope ladder anymore, and the big kids were too weak to carry them up. Jimmy packed up their sleeping bags and iodine tablets and tossed them down out of the treehouse, and Laika led them to an old animal warren that she had found while scavenging. Whatever large creature had created the den in the roots of the tree was long gone, and they crawled down into it gratefully. If Jimmy was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure how many more times he could have made it up the ladder before eventually falling--- the exertion made him dizzy, and his hands were too weak to grip the rope ladder. The den was more dangerous than the treehouse had been--- closer to town, closer to the ground, and every once in a while they heard deep voices of adults echoing through the trees. But they didn’t say so out loud.

In the beginning, before there was only the hunger and then the numbness, Laika and Jimmy and Tommy had harsh, whispered conversations about trying to save their classmates. What had they been taken from Farm School for? If terrible things were happening to them, shouldn’t they try to help them? They had no weapons, no help, no way to fend off an army of Kodos’s murderous guards if they tried to free their classmates, but talking about taking action kept away the urge to lay down and die.

Then, three weeks after the massacre, Laika came back with one expired can of sweet potatoes and a haunted, ragged look that Jimmy hadn’t seen on her before. He dragged her down into the den, catching her when she stumbled on her feet. Tommy leapt up to grab her other arm, and even with both of them holding on she trembled so badly that Jimmy thought she would vibrate out of her skin and into a puddle. They set her on the ground, used one of their hunting knives to wedge the top of the can off, and split the meager amount between the six of them.

“I saw Gemma,” she whispered, later that night. Jimmy sat, back against the wall of the warren, watching the tunnel entrance. Tommy lay with his back to it, one of the littles curled up against him for warmth. Laika sat cross-legged between them, no longer shaking but with a thousand-yard stare that seemed to burn through the wall of their safe hidey-hole, like she could see all the way back to the town. “There was a house with all the doors open, and I could see the kitchen… I thought I might get in and out, that there was no one inside.”

“Gemma was in the house?”

“Her parents live here,” Laika said dully. “Or, lived. They were all dead.”

Tommy closed his eyes. Jimmy said, “Starved?”

But Laika shook her head. “I don’t think so. They didn’t have food either, like I thought they might, but there was something else wrong with them. Their skin was all gray.” Jimmy shivered. “I looked everywhere, but that was all they had,” Laika said, lifting her chin at the now-empty can. “But they weren’t going to eat it.”

They sat in silence, listening to the quiet rustling of the trees outside, until Tommy unscrewed the lid to one of their bottles of stream water and offered it to Laika. She shook her head. “I drank enough out of their faucet,” she said.

“Fancy-pants,” Jimmy said, and he took the bottle when Tommy passed it to him. Laika laid down where she had been sitting, between Tommy and the wall, and Jimmy squeezed both of their hands before moving to lay between the littles and the entrance to the den. His bones pressed uncomfortably against the ground, but he curled up next to Mira and Ellie and fell asleep.

Jimmy woke up a few hours later. It stunk of warm skin, of sickness and rot. The earth was hard beneath his body. It felt like his hip bones, his tailbone and shoulder blades, each of his knobby vertebrae, were pressing a bruise against the inside of his skin where they rested heavily against the ground. It was mostly dark out, no sunlight to illuminate the rabbit-warren tunnel, only the faint light of a waxing moon providing any visibility. The shadowed bodies of his pack lay alongside him in gentle repose. He counted them off: one was him, two was Ellie, three was Mira, four was Kevin, five was Tommy. At six, he jerked to a halt. Something wasn’t right. Before he was aware that he was moving he had scrambled across the dirt to her: Laika, her brown hair a rat’s nest of dirt and leaves, unmoving.

“No, no, no,” he whispered, and shook Tommy’s shoulder. “Tommy, wake up!” Her unnatural stillness had caught his attention: now that he was next to her, he could see more clearly the graying waxy pallor of her cheeks and lips, the immobile smoothness of her eyelids. Tommy woke with a jolt, rolling over immediately. He pushed himself up with one hand and shook Laika with the other.

“Hey,” he said, his voice growly with sleep. “Wake up.”

Jimmy grabbed her other shoulder, shaking her, the other hand coming to rest against her gaunt cheek. “Hey. Laika. It’s not funny. Wake up.” But Laika did not wake up. Her eyes did not open. Her chest did not rise.

“Jimmy, what happened?” Tommy whispered.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy said, disbelief raising his voice high like one of the little’s. “I just woke up, and I saw that---” He gagged, overwhelmed by the smell of dirty skin and death, sickness and rot. “Laika, wake up!” God, he was so tired, and so hungry, and there were only five of them now, and what would they do without her? She had been so brave, had stolen for them, had known the woods and the way around town better than anyone, and now she was so still and silent, and they couldn’t drag her back from wherever she had gone without them. He closed his eyes, and the cold, analytical half of him rose up and drowned the half of him that cried out at how unfair it all was.

“We have to move her,” Jimmy whispered as Tommy whimpered to himself, hand still mechanically rocking Laika’s shoulder.

“What? No! Why?” Tommy whispered back.

“We can’t let the littles see her like this,” he said.

“Where are we going to put her? We can’t bury her!”

“Down the mountain. Near the town. They won’t notice another body.” Jimmy hated the words as they came out of his mouth: practical, useful, awful. He wanted to lay down next to Laika, close his eyes, and follow where she had gone. But he couldn’t--- not with Tommy and the littles still here. Not with his last holo to Sam and his message to his parents still soaring through space. Tommy sniffled, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and nodded. Jimmy nodded back and shoved Tommy gently. Tommy got up, stepping carefully around the sleeping littles, and gingerly picked up Laika’s ankles. Jimmy wormed his hands under her shoulders and bent his arms under hers, picking her up off the ground. They backed up to the entrance and Jimmy went as slowly as he could, arms burning with the strain of Laika’s weight, until he felt the cool air of the night outside of their den on his back.

Together they carried her down the mountain in the worst parade of two Jimmy had ever been a part of, and they left her on the outskirts of the town. Tommy kissed her forehead and cried. They held hands as they stole quietly back to their safe hole. They crawled back inside, each refusing to let go of the other’s hand, and fell asleep curled together.

When the littles woke up the next morning, and Jimmy pulled them all into the circle of his arms and told them that Laika wasn’t coming back, they were too tired to cry. But he felt their shoulders deflate, sinking further into themselves, and he held them closer. Tommy leaned against him, keeping Jimmy from tilting over, and their broken family of five slept most of that day away, letting the sun rise and set without them.

The next day, Tommy left them in the den to scavenge acorns. He came back as the sun slipped down below the horizon, staggering with exhaustion, his empty, distended stomach painfully visible as he held his bounty in the bottom of his shirt like an apron. Using two rocks and all the strength left in their arms, he and Jimmy cracked them open and scraped the meager meat out of the shells to distribute between themselves and the littles. The underbrush had died with the changing of the seasons, and Laika had held most of their knowledge about what plants were edible. Without her, they would have to survive on acorns and tree bark and water.

The morning after that, Mira cried and wailed and refused to open her eyes, curled around herself. Ellie moaned in sympathy, and Kevin sat next to them and talked incessantly about anything that came into his mind, just to distract them. But his eyes were dim and glassy, and more often than not his sentences trailed off before he finished them. The morning after that, all three littles refused to sit up and curled together with heavy-lidded eyes.

“I’m going into town,” Jimmy said. For a second, it seemed like Tommy would argue with him, to ask him to stay. But in the end he just nodded and pulled Mira against his chest, rocking her side to side. Jimmy left them like that. If Laika was right, and something other than starvation was killing the colonists, there might be something left for them to scavenge. He would find it and bring it back to them, and the littles would sit up and talk to them, and they would survive another few days.

The leaves had begun to fall from the trees. If he had counted the days correctly, and there was no guarantee that he had, October would start soon. Last year, that meant harvest festivals and a gourd that was certainly not a pumpkin but could be carved like one to be set out on every doorstep. Gemma had won the carving contest--- but he wouldn’t think about Gemma now. He dragged his legs, step after step, down the mountain to the town.

He didn’t see another living soul, but the bodies of the colonists were everywhere. On their front stoops, laying behind houses, on the main street, their graying, decaying corpses bloated and stinking. Some of them looked emaciated, their skin shrink-wrapped to their bones. But Laika had been at least partially right: not all of the dead looked like they had starved. Jimmy felt the knobs of his own knees knocking together as he passed the grayish-blue body of a man who looked like he should have been in the peak of health, except for the fact that he was dead.

He stole from doorway to doorway, peering around corners, moving as quietly as he could. But for the first time since the day in the auditorium, he didn’t see the green-shirted law enforcement agents prowling the outskirts of the town, nor guarding the waist-high iron fence that circled the governor’s house. He ducked around another corner, closer to the center of town, and stumbled over a pair of legs in dark pants.

He reared back, his heart in his throat at the forest-green jacket on the torso, before he registered the sickly gray pallor of the body’s skin. This guard looked like Jimmy imagined he did; sunken cheeks, deep circles under his eyes, and the bones of his knuckles jutted out of the skin like mountains. “Not even guards get fed,” he muttered to himself, and he felt a savage relief that those who had not been sacrificed, who had done the sacrificing, had not been spared the horrors that they had endured. He moved to continue onward before pausing. The guard’s phaser was still tucked into his holster.

Jimmy held his breath and bent over the body. It was stiff, unmoving, as he reached with shaking fingers to unclip the strap and slide the phaser out. He watched the body nervously, but it did not awaken to grab him. He glanced at the settings on the phaser, but he didn’t know what they meant, so he left them as they were and stuck the weapon in the waistband of his ratty jeans.

He had only taken one step away from the body when there was a crackle. He spun, horrified, but the guard still hadn’t moved. The crackling noise came again.

“My chosen ones,” Kodos rasped. His voice came through an ancient portable radio, clipped on the other side of the guard’s belt. Jimmy froze as that voice pierced through the fog of hunger and exhaustion, lighting up his brain with fear and anger. Why had so many people died, why had Laika died, and Kodos still got to live? Kodos coughed. “The grand experiment must end here. There is no path forward. Forgive me.” He wheezed again, voice quieting. Jimmy hunched next to the corpse and the radio, ears straining. “If anyone is out there, heed me. We must burn it down.” He reeled back.

“Burn it down. Destroy the evidence. Cleanse this place.” Kodos coughed, and then the crackle of another radio breaking through the static interrupted him.

“I hear you, sir,” someone else’s voice muttered, weak and ragged. “I can do it.”

“I owe you… a debt of gratitude,” Kodos said. Then the radio went silent. Jimmy froze on his haunches, consumed by his anger, replaying Kodos’s message in his head. Then something clicked, and he staggered to his feet. Blood dribbled slowly back into his weak limbs, but he forced them into movement. He turned back the way he had come and heaved his starving body back home. Kodos had called to burn it all, and someone had responded.

It had been a dry summer. It hadn’t rained in weeks. His friends were in the woods.

Lungs aching, muscles cramping, swollen stomach pinching in pain, he ran. Against the wishes of every bone in his body, he ran as hard as he could, straight down the center streets of the remains of the town, back towards the den and Tommy and the littles. He had to warn them. The woods were going to light up like a matchstick after the summer they’d had. They couldn’t have starved and survived for so long for Kodos to kill them like this, impersonally, anonymously. Madeleine and Natalya didn’t die in the auditorium so that Kodos could have the final word. Jimmy broke from the town and sprinted flat-out for the cover of the woods.

Stealth didn’t matter anymore. He screamed, “Tommy!” He sucked in huge, gasping breaths as his stomach threatened to rebel and his legs cramped and his knees ached. “Tommy! Get up!” He staggered through the woods, his vision going black at the edges as his body tried to collapse, but he shoved himself up and kept going, screaming for his friend.

Finally, up ahead, the enormous tree that had sheltered them--- and from the roots of it, an addled Tommy and littles emerging into the sunlight.

“Jimmy?” Tommy rubbed one eye, dizzy in the sudden brightness. “What happened?” Jimmy opened his mouth to respond when they heard it. Further up the mountain, something snapped and popped, then rustled, then roared. The fire caught.

“Run,” Jimmy said, grabbing Kevin and swinging him onto his back as Tommy grabbed Mira and Ellie’s hands. “Run!” His body protesting every step, his spine bending under Kevin’s weight, Jimmy and Tommy fled. Something cracked, and a hot gust of wind pressed them forward, singeing their hair and burning their backs. Mira started to cry. It was still somehow better than her half-dead silence from that morning.

“What---?” Tommy gasped out, footsteps pounding in time with Jimmy’s.

“Kodos,” Jimmy spat. “Fire.” Tommy moaned with fear, but when Ellie stumbled at their speed he hefted her onto his back. Behind them, the woods that had been their shelter and salvation erupted into an inferno. The flames caught the few leaves that hadn’t fallen and spread in a crown fire over their heads as they pelted out of the forest. Out of the corner of his eye, Jimmy could see it racing down the hill, almost even with them. Tears streamed down his face from fear and the smoke, which caught in his lungs, stung his skin. He could see similar tracks running down the dirt on Tommy’s face.

They had the littles. They had each other. They broke from the cage of the treeline as the fire leapt at their heels and caught in the dry autumn grass of the open plain between them and the town. The grass blazed up immediately, and Jimmy’s legs, his hips and back and shoulders burned with it. Tommy cried out and swung Ellie up too, away from the fire, her screams drowned out by the roar of the crown fire above.

Ahead, there was one patch of unburned safety that Jimmy could see. He cut towards it. “The road!” Tommy followed him, coughing as he ran, and they covered the distance to the hard-packed dirt as fast as they could. They staggered onto the dry earth as the plain behind them sparked and hissed.

Mira moaned, and the pathetic little sound broke through Jimmy’s panic as the pain of their exertion set in. He let Kevin slide to the ground, and the friction of the little boy’s clothes against his scorched skin was like being burned all over again. Ellie had gone very, very pale, the only shock of color on her skin the angry red of her legs and feet.

Tommy wobbled, and Jimmy grabbed his elbows, keeping him upright.

“Stay with me, okay?”

“It hurts, Jimmy,” Tommy said, and Jimmy didn’t dare look down over his shoulder to his back. His clothes were sloughing off of him, destroyed. Kodos couldn’t have him like this.

“Just a few steps more,” Jimmy said. He took Kevin’s hand in his and gently picked up Mira. “Can you walk with me? Just a few more?” Tommy wavered on his feet, but Ellie slid her hand into his and he nodded.

“It’s just a little further,” Jimmy said. “Then you’ll feel better.” There was a reservoir on the other side of town; even the farm’s irrigation system had been hooked up to it. Jimmy had never prayed as hard as he did that moment for there to be water in the reservoir still. Step by excruciating step, he led them down the road for the first time since the massacre day. Tommy fell silent and his eyes sometimes slid shut, but he held Ellie’s hand and walked on. Jimmy lost the feeling in his legs, but Mira let him put her down after a few minutes and she limped alongside them. The fear of guards or Kodos never really went away, but they didn’t see another living being on the road. The fire burned on the other side of the town, its roar muted by blessed distance and halted by the paved roads. Minutes later, or maybe hours, he was peering over the stone lip of the reservoir. The drought had done its damage, but there was a few blessed feet of water within. He found the stone steps leading down into it.

Jimmy walked the littles down into the water. They stood still and quiet as he stripped their burned clothing away from them before stepping into the water with them. Then, once they were carefully ensconced in the water where it was shallow enough for them to stand, he stripped his own clothing away. The phaser he had stolen, somehow still in his jeans despite his pell-mell flight, got dropped on top of his pile of clothes along with his t-shirt before he followed the littles into the water. He didn’t know if it was clean, but he couldn’t bring himself to care: it was cool, and there was enough to stand in, and it felt like heaven. Tommy’s clothes dripped off him, shredding as he pulled his shirt over his head, and his back was a mess of dirt and singed skin. But he sloshed into the water, eyes closing in relief, and the five of them drifted as the fire burned itself out on the other side of town. Smoke billowed overhead, clouding the teal sky with the angry black smog of organic matter. The ash fell like dirty snow. They still didn’t have anything to eat, but they filled their bellies with water, and it almost felt like being full. As the sun slipped down behind the horizon, they piled together on the day-warmed terrace steps and slept.

A high, distant droning woke Jimmy from his restless sleep, early the next morning. It wormed into his dreams, filling his mind, before his subconscious recognized it and he jolted awake. Kevin tipped away from him as he shot upward, scrambling for his jeans. Tommy’s eyes opened slowly.

“Where’re you going?” His words were slurred, but Jimmy didn’t have time to wait for him to wake up. If he was right, it wouldn’t matter.

“Shuttle!” Jimmy grabbed the phaser and his t-shirt, jabbed it into the waist of his pants and dragged it over his head. “I’ll be back!” His whole body felt alight with something he almost didn’t recognize--- hope, a hope so big that it hurt to breathe. He sprinted up the terraced steps, cocking his head to one side and scanning the sky as he ran. It was just past daybreak, the true teal of the sky still warming up from the inky black of night. He ran towards what he thought was the source of the sound, straight up the road from the reservoir towards the town. Maybe he could shoot the phaser in the air and get the attention of the pilot? They had to be looking for the colonists: whether it was a trader or a rescue shuttle or even just a random traveler, they had to be looking for the people who lived here. It must have already landed; he didn’t see anything in the sky. He followed the high humming of an active engine through the town square, past the cursed town hall, past the burnt husks of houses unlucky enough to be built from wood instead of brick. The land to his right was scorched black earth, ash as far as the eye could see. Eerie black fingers of burnt trees reached for the sky. He tore down the road towards the song of the engine.

“I’m here! I’m over here!” He hollered as loud as he could until his throat burned, but he didn’t see anyone. There was no movement, but the roar of the shuttle was growing so loud that it was vibrating the air around him. A shuttle meant people. People meant help.

Jimmy skirted the outer fence of the governor’s house, running along the northernmost edge. His hand brushed the iron of the latticework, and it trembled with the force of the engine. It had to be closer. He passed the back edge of the house and skidded to a halt.

The governor’s backyard was an enormous expanse of burnt grass and bushes, and parked in the center was a black shuttle. As Jimmy’s heart pounded and he cried out in outrage and disbelief, he registered three details in stark relief.

The first was that the Kodos’s guards had exchanged their hunter-green uniforms for black ones. Two of them held up a sagging gray body between them, and a third circled them with a plasma rifle in hand.

The second was that the shuttle door was open, and a fourth guard leaned out of it, reaching for the body.

The third was that the body was staggering to its feet, lifting its head. It was Kodos. He was alive. His horrible uncanny eyes were alight in his gaunt and crevassed face.

This was a mistake. This had to be a mistake. Help could not have arrived for him, after what he had done. What about the littles? What about Tommy? What about him?

He screamed out, “Hey!” The procession of guards and the devil himself paused, all four of their heads turning to look at him. “Help us!”

Time slowed as the guards looked at him, on the other side of the fence, then looked at each other. Jimmy grabbed the fence between them, shaking with the force of his hope and disbelief, and watched as they looked away from him and kept walking.

They kept walking. They were going to put Kodos on the shuttle and take him away and leave them here. Fury like Jimmy had never felt before rose like a tsunami within him, drowning out all reason and leaving only the knowledge that Kodos did not deserve to be rescued from the ruins of the colony that he had destroyed.

There was a phaser tucked into the back of his jeans. The cool metal of the barrel dug into his back. He took it out and, like he was shooting skeet back on the farm with Sam, sighted along it. He saw Kodos’s fine gray hair and craggy face on the other side.

He fired.

The head of the nearest guard snapped up at the whine of the weapon. He locked eyes with Jimmy and, without hesitation, stepped directly in front of the bolt of energy meant for Kodos. Jimmy watched in frozen horror as the phaser fire hit the guard and tore him open. He spun and dropped to the ground. Kodos glanced blankly at the body on the ground, just another sacrifice for him, and allowed the guard in the shuttle to grab his arm and haul him in. The guard with the rifle pointed it directly at Jimmy.

He had shot at Kodos and missed. The shuttle and the people on it weren’t going to help them. Jimmy stood his ground, phaser still raised, and glared at the guard, refusing to look at the rifle aimed at his head. He was going to die, but he was going to do it without flinching. In his periphery, he saw the last guard drag the body of his comrade into the shuttle. The blood from the wound glinted against the dirt in the early-morning sun.

The other guard came back around and pushed the barrel of the rifle down. “Leave it,” he said. “Look at him. He’s almost dead anyway.” With a final sneer the rifleman turned away. They swung themselves into the black shuttle, and the door slammed shut behind them.

Jimmy watched numbly as the shuttle lifted off vertically, soaring higher and higher until it was just a black dot against the blue sky. Then it was gone. He looked down again, and saw the blood of the man that he had killed drying on the hard-packed earth.

He threw the phaser as far as he could away from himself and, turning from the scene of his violence and failure, vomited up all of the water left in his stomach. He leaned back against the sharp metal of the fence and slid to the ground, staring blankly at the blackened edge of the prairie beyond the town. He didn’t know how long he sat there for before Tommy’s voice broke through his reverie.

“What happened?” Tommy was shaking him, panic on his face, and Jimmy felt guilty. He had meant to go back to them, but he couldn’t seem to shake the whine of the phaser out of his ears. It was hard to hear anything else over it. The littles hovered over his shoulder, their drawn faces pinched with worry.

“Nothing,” Jimmy said, with a glance at the littles. He coughed, stomach acid burning in his throat, and let Tommy help him up. “I think this house is empty now, though. Let’s see if there’s anything in there to eat.”

“Isn’t this the governor’s house?” Tommy dropped his voice low as the littles straggled behind them in a line. “You don’t think he’s…?”

“He’s gone,” Jimmy said, and his own voice was rough and unfamiliar.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jimmy said, and glanced down at the littles as Kevin snagged two of his fingers in his weakened grip. He led them into the empty house, and they walked quickly past the rooms where the bodies of guards decayed on couches and seated against walls, until they arrived in an enormous kitchen. It seemed to be made entirely of ceramic and aluminum, with two huge ovens set into the wall and a stovetop built directly into the counter. It was so different from the industrial-sized kitchen at Farm School, which managed to feel warm and cozy despite being built for mass production. This kitchen was cold and clinical. They opened all the cabinets and drawers, finding only utensils and pots and pans, before Tommy noticed a narrow door set back in a corner. He opened it, and revealed stairs leading down into a darkness that smelled like soil and rot. They both looked mistrustfully at it.

“I’ve got this one, Jimmy,” Tommy said finally, and left him standing in the kitchen with the littles. Jimmy continued to open cabinets and drawers, finding nothing but kitchen utilities, until Tommy climbed back up the stairs, wiping his hands on his already horrible pants.

“It’s awful down there,” Tommy said, but he clutched a can in his hands victoriously. “Like the summer projects all over again. But I did find this.” He wiped oily blue smears off the label, revealing a label for baked beans that had expired the year previous. They heated the beans up in a pot on the stove, reveling in the warmth from the electric burner, and the five ate directly from the pot with wooden spoons, just because they could. They dumped the pot and spoons in the sink without cleaning them.

They scavenged through the house, stealing blankets and pillows off of couches that were unoccupied, and found a room that didn’t stink too badly of decay--- a sunroom near the back of the house, through the windows of which Jimmy could see the flattened, desiccated grass where the shuttle had been. As the littles slept, their bellies not empty for once, Jimmy told Tommy, quietly, shamefully, what he had done. The sun was setting by the time he finished.

Tommy considered what he had said, turning the embroidered edge of a blanket over in his hands. Jimmy picked at the burned skin on his hands and tried not to think about the blood against the dirt.

Finally Tommy looked up, eyes flashing in fading light, and said, “Fuck ‘em. He probably deserved it.” Something in Jimmy’s heart unclenched. He and Tommy fell asleep facing each other, with a roof over their heads and the littles between them.

He awoke the next morning to shouting and movement, adults in red and blue and gold swarming into the room with phasers and comms. Jimmy flung himself upright, crouching over the littles, baring his teeth at the intruders before he recognized the familiar uniforms.

“Oh, my god,” the closest Starfleet officer said, a whirring tricorder in her hand. “You’re alive.”

The memories of the next month were a blur of pain and space. Jimmy and Tommy and the littles were beamed up together to the U.S.S. Valiant, where they were poked and prodded and tied to biobeds with IVs of fluids and nutrients. They were scanned with every machine in Medbay, it seemed, while the doctors spoke quietly to each other and refused to tell them anything about what the scans said. Not a single one of them stopped shaking for the first seventy-two hours.

After living feral for a month, adjusting to the sterility of a starship was excruciating. The littles screamed shrilly when Jimmy or Tommy were out of their vision. Jimmy ate a meal from the replicator and threw it up immediately. Tommy had to be sedated and restrained after the doctor tried to put him in the metal box of the dermal regenerator for his back. They refused to sleep apart from each other, and the whirs and beeps of the unfamiliar ship made it impossible to pretend that they were in their treehouse or the den. Jimmy whispered to Tommy that he was afraid of Kodos coming to find him, and Tommy held his hand in the dark of the room that they all shared. Under the harsh lights of the starship and after the dirt and blood and soot was washed away, their skin was an unhealthy gray, and every day medical staff took their blood and patted their heads and made nervous eye contact when they thought the children weren’t looking.

In the end, the captain and the first officer told Jimmy and Tommy, it was Lieutenant Commander Ashton Park’s last desperate call that got the Valiant to Tarsus in time. Kodos had never used the government relay to call for help, not even when the harvest first started dying.

Then there was the journey back to Earth. Tommy and their littles were shipped off to what remained of their families, and no one would tell Jimmy where they went. Jimmy’s own parents were waiting for him when he got to Earth. A week after he arrived home, Sam kicked his hospital door open and set up shop next to his bed while he slowly ingested three months’ worth of nutrients through an IV and finished regrowing his skin. Every night, he woke up screaming Kodos’s name, and his parents looked nervously at each other, and Sam stopped going home with their parents and instead dragged a cot into Jimmy’s hospital room.

Then Dr. Johns replaced the familiar Iowa family doctor that he had been seeing. Jimmy confessed that he wasn’t sleeping, couldn’t bear to be the only person breathing in a room, and he told Dr. Johns that all he could think about was Kodos coming back for him.

“Kodos is dead, Jimmy,” Dr. Johns had said kindly, reading the screen on the machine hooked up to Jimmy’s arm.

“You found him?” Jimmy sat up so suddenly he got dizzy, the hospital room swirling around him. Dr. Johns gave him an odd look.

“Governor Kodos died on Tarsus, Jimmy. In the fire that claimed everyone else.”

“No,” he said. “No, he didn’t. I told you, and I told the doctor on the Valiant. There was a shuttle! It came and got him!” Dr. Johns sat on the edge of his bed and pushed him back against the headboard with a gentle hand.

“Please, calm yourself,” he said. “You are very upset. You survived something awful. It is only natural that your thoughts are confused at this time.”

“I’m not confused,” Jimmy had insisted. “I know what I saw. And he got out.” Dr. Johns had a conversation with his parents outside his hospital room, and through the little window set into the door he saw his mother stare haughtily out the hallway window as his dad wiped a hand across his devastated face. Sam held his hand and said, “I believe you, Jimmy.” But Sam couldn’t convince their parents or Dr. Johns, and then Jimmy woke up from the same awful nightmare to find his old friends from his elementary school in Iowa standing behind his mom with balloons. They sat around him as he tried to sit up straight and felt the weakness in the muscles along his spine, and then after a painfully awkward hour they left, and he did not see them again until he started back at school the following year, when he only had to check in at the Dr. Johns’s clinic once a week for blood testing and dialysis. They said hi, and they signed each other’s yearbooks, and Jimmy skipped the school dances and football games and a lot of his classes to climb up to the roof of the high school and stare at the stars instead.

Then he got to the Academy, and he met Elise.

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” she said to him during their first meeting, her eyes twinkling. “We knew you were going to be special.” He talked about Kodos and Tarsus, and it helped, until it didn’t. She taught him how to hide the parts of him that the IVs and dialysis and dermal regenerators didn’t fix. He met Bones, and made friends, and he was surrounded by people who didn’t know where he had been and what it had done to him, and he was happier than he’d been in years, despite the nightmares and the panic attacks and the grief. He missed Tommy and the littles, but Elise said that she’d checked in on them and that they were doing well, and at the Academy he got to learn by doing and experimenting for himself the way he had at Farm School. Then he’d graduated, and worked his way up the ranks despite the ceaseless fear that Kodos would hunt him down someday, and eventually he became a captain and was given the Enterprise. The ghosts of Tarsus lived in him, but he had bricked them behind a wall that got thicker and thicker with every passing year.

It wasn’t until he had gone and fallen in love that he had been forced to reckon with the fact that he still carried those ghosts at all.

☆☆☆

The memory-stream faded, leaking away into the abyss. Kirk stood in the black of the meldspace. His whole soul ached with grief and remembrance, but there was a clarity to it. There was still a wound in him, one that had healed poorly, but in the telling, some of the rot in him had been finally cleaned away.

Jim, Spock said, and it was with a slight jolt of surprise that Kirk remembered that he wasn’t alone. Spock’s voice was ragged. I grieve with thee.

Kirk bowed his head, and he sensed Spock’s mind curled around his, protective, comforting.

I will take us from the meld now, Spock said. You will rest. And then we must talk about what you showed me. The rough edges of Spock’s voice were smoothed over as he reasserted his control, and Kirk felt a flicker of unease at his words. He had tried to convince the rest of the world that Kodos had escaped, and had failed each time. But then Spock said, without preamble, I believe you, captain, and one more piece of Kirk’s anxiety melted away. There was a sense of rising, as if coming up from the bottom of a deep pool, and the blackness lessened until Kirk felt himself reemerge from a very long tunnel back into his own mind.

He still lay on his side, Spock’s hand pressed to his face and clutched between his own. His arm was numb beneath him, and his eyelids were sticky with stillness. He opened his eyes as Spock pulled his hand back from his face, extending and clenching his fingers. Spock’s eyes opened as the familiar noises of the Enterprise around him floated slowly back into his awareness: the hum of the warp drive, footsteps in the corridor, faint beeping from far away.

“That’s what I saw,” Kirk said. “That’s what I did.” He rolled over onto his back and stared up at his familiar ceiling. He was tired, all the way down to his bones. He felt as though someone had wrung his brain out like a sponge. “Can we discuss this in the morning?”

“Certainly,” Spock said, after hesitating only for a second. His voice was deep with disuse. Kirk closed his eyes and waited for him to get up.

He did not get up.

Kirk opened his eyes and turned his head. Spock still lay on his side, watching him. Rather than the pity or disgust Kirk expected, Spock’s face was open and warm.

“What?”

Spock hesitated, before reaching across the space between them and resting his hand on Kirk’s bicep. “I am disquieted by the possibility of you having died before I knew of your existence in our universe.” His fingers flexed, tightening on Kirk’s arm. “I have never been more grateful for your refusal to submit to the law of large numbers.”

Kirk closed his eyes, feeling the warmth of Spock’s palm on his skin. He brought his other hand to cover it, his fingers brushing the back of Spock’s wrist. They lay next to each other, their breathing slowing until they were inhaling in tandem. The post-meld exhaustion pulled at Kirk’s mind, the gentle rhythm of Spock’s breathing lulling him to sleep.

“Jim,” said Spock quietly. Kirk forced his eyes open again, fighting the weight of his eyelids. “Would you like me to stay?” Kirk looked at him, trying to read his expression--- the Vulcan’s face was neutral, watching him in kind. But his arm was still stretched across the distance between them, his hand steady against Kirk’s arm. Spock had walked unflinchingly beside him through every memory of the worst days of his life; he did not think that he would begrudge him his company now.

“Please,” Kirk said. Spock’s hand pressed against his arm before he sat up swiftly and stood.

“I will return momentarily,” he said, and Kirk nodded. Spock crossed the room, retrieved his clothing from his half of the closet, and vanished into the bathroom. Kirk heard the air recycler kick on at his entrance, and he pressed his hands to his eyes.

Despite everything, despite his grief and trauma and the ghosts and his failures, he felt the irrepressible start of a crooked smile forcing its way onto his face. He felt lighter. He felt free. He had shared everything that Elise had told him could never be shared, and Spock had not run screaming from the room or removed him from duty. He had told Spock about Kodos and the shuttle, and Spock had believed him. Showing Spock what he had done, what he had failed to do, hadn’t been the end of the line. It was only the beginning of the conversation. And then Spock had reached out to touch him. He wasn’t alone.

Spock reentered in the tunic and pants he slept in, with his makeup gone and smelling faintly of mint. Kirk sat up. Spock met his eyes.

“You know,” Kirk said, before he could chicken out. “That couch is not the most comfortable piece of furniture to sleep on.”

“I did not object to it,” Spock said, but he clasped his hands behind his back and cocked his head slightly.

“It’s not awful, but the bed is better for a proper rest.”

“Indeed,” Spock said slowly, and Kirk saw a hint of that daring steal into his eyes, glinting in the half-dark. “What do you propose, captain?”

“I think the most logical course of action is to share the bed,” Kirk said. “It’s been a long night. And we’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

“I had assumed the day would be the same size as all other days, but I am curious to hear why you think otherwise,” Spock said, and he crossed the room to the bed. Kirk scooted backwards so he could slide beneath the comforter, and Spock joined him.

“Computer, lights to zero,” Kirk said. He tried to steady his breathing, sink into the sleep that his exhausted brain wanted, he couldn’t. Though his brain unhelpfully, unsurprisingly supplied him with the image of the shuttle taking the governor away again, and he could still feel the lingering dread and exhaustion in his limbs, the fear that Kodos would hunt him down had lost a little of its strength. Even if Kodos did find him out here, he was only human, and there was a Vulcan laying in Kirk’s bed. Spock would tear Kodos apart if he came anywhere near him again. The thought was comforting, but he still couldn’t convince his mind to rest. His memories were too close to the surface. He lay in the darkness instead, listening to Spock breathe.

“Jim.” Spock’s sudden voice spooked him.

“Yes?”

“You are unable to sleep.”

Kirk huffed out a laugh. “Something like that.” He heard Spock shift, the sheets rustling against his sleep clothes. Then a long, hot arm snaked around his torso and pulled him backwards, until he was pressed with his back to Spock’s chest, Spock’s arm over his waist.

“You find physical contact soothing,” Spock murmured, and his breath ghosted over Kirk’s ear.

“But you don’t,” Kirk said. He should pull away, allow Spock his space, but---

“I do when it is you,” Spock said, and Kirk was shocked into silence. “I appreciate the confirmation that you are near and safe.” The warmth of Spock’s chest, the steady beating of his heart against Kirk’s spine, and his even breathing against his neck was doing more for him than Bones’s sedatives ever did. His eyelids grew heavy, and the whirling images through his mind slowed and dimmed, losing their sharp edges, as he breathed in time with Spock.

“Rest now,” Spock said softly, and he did.

#spirk #spirk fan fic #k/s fan fic #star trek fan fiction #fake married #regulatory relations #my writing

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iensrobens · 11 months ago

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A wrap-up for this blog for a hiatus

Just realised I posted 15 sets of drawings during the past 20 days. This is the craziest thing I ever did and such a relief of all my obsession with the game and Shadowheart since August. First time in my life creating fan content and picking up drawing again in 10 years was absolutely fun. (and of course learning to use these sns apps is also interesting, I know I sound like an ape first seeing human technology but I’m really ancient in this sense.)

I’m no artist and drawing isn’t even a hobby, just that I happen to have an iPad with Sketchbook installed.(and I only got to know how to rerank layers with it 2 pics ago so sorry for the quality for my first few drawings.) I just want to draw all the scenes I depicted in my head and very personal ideas towards the story as I tried writing and had to toss everything in trash can because I struggled making up comprehensive sentences.

I was quite anxious and felt so panicked that if my personal taste is weird and my drawings are bad (as you can tell, I don’t know how to do color) but I’m glad and surprised to see ppl like those. The numbers I’ve seen in my notification tab is far more large than the number of ppl I met in real life. (and it is very relieving to press on the blue dots.)

I really appreciate all your likes and comments and even followings-totally unprepared for this. I read every comments you made and those warms my heart and I jumped around the room when I see you got the references and hints I buried. (although I’m not sure what is the correct courtesy to reply your reposts and comments.)

I can’t recall if I ever obsessed with another character to the same extent like Shadowheart-the only one I actually started to do fan art by myself.

(As I mentioned I’m bad at writing so the next part may be very unorganised because my thoughts are flying in my mind.)

I played as her for my first playthrough. I had a quite traumatised experience for this-knew her background and past story, saved aylin but killed parents as I thought it is what THEY want, but I don’t know what HER wants; romance laezel as the dynamic was so intriguing and so good, saved her prince and let her fly away as I though she belongs to the sky and it was best for her-of course the one who becomes a squid is then Shadowheart-and I just straightaway stabbed myself at the dock. Everyone got their good ending except shad herself, and it was so grieving-all she wanted were actually all gone in that playthrough-family, lover and herself; past, present and no future. I just felt I did my girl so dirty.

Then with the customised character playthrough I actually get to know her more completely-with amazing voice acting, the interactions and all the hidden dialogues around the world-like the childhood memories dialogue which are a condition for letting her save her parents-I feel that is the preferable way as all the needed is done and she made her own decision. (But is the origin playthrough now added these narratives? I was thinking Allister Marley was Astarion’s real name.)And then the evil Durge route for her Shar path to see an alternative timeline, though I prefer the selunite route as the cycle has to end, we are better than this but that gives so many story telling ideas.

I tried to type something like character study but I can’t make it expressive enough even for myself to understand. I just hope then all I wanted to see and say is conveyed in the drawings. God knows I tried.

And thus I have exhausted all my ideas (and my annual leaves) for it. Now I have to remind myself to really focus on my real life work. Until next time my friends on Internet, perhaps I’ll pop up again when DLC or definitive edition drops.

#placeholder tag

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ninetailedvulpecula · 2 years ago

Note

ILL SEND YOU CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT QUESTIONS

How did you first created Kitus?

Is kitsu a reflection of you or no? If yes how so?

How long have you been writing for Kitsu? Are they your favorite OC?

Is they anything that Kitsu can do that you can’t or wish you can do?

OOC: OH BOY HERE COMES QUITE THE STORY! Gonna slap this all under a Read More because this is quite some extensive lore-

1: Back when I was very Smol (12/13 or so) I customized littlest pet shop and with my parents permission, I sold them on Etsy for awhile. I loved coming up with unique combinations and sculpting on them and it was a really fun thing I did!

(I’ve been considering getting back into it recently- I was harassed in high school really badly over this hobby of mine and stopped for years.)

I had just received in the mail a science magazine that was centered around space and had wanted to try out some techniques to paint galaxies and stars and such. One thing led to another, and that’s how I came up with Kitsu! I had actually made a red panda with the same sort of color scheme at the same time, but decided to keep Kitsu instead of that red panda custom.

As for their name- it was a placeholder name that never got changed.

As you can see, their design was quite different as to what you see today! Some key differences are that they used to have galaxy blotches, they are missing their constellations, and they were a normal fox- not a fennec! I ended up using what is referred to in the community as a “crouching cat” base for them- It was what I had on hand and I thought it was very cute. ^-^

Kitsu’s Anthro form didn’t appear until around 2017!

2: This is a funny question because it’s fluctuated throughout the years. I had always drifted between having Kitsu as my representation of me, and then feeling weird about it and making another character that would fill that role. Over the past few years they have become that true representation of myself- HOWEVER.

The roleplay world Kitsu is a version of Kitsu that is a bit different than myself. I’ve taken a lot of my own life experiences and feelings and given them to Kitsu, but at the same time, they do a lot of stuff I would simply not do. (Such as drink or smoke.) The version you see of kitsu is not me directly, however, I’d deem them pretty close. They’re absolutely more of what I wish I could be.

3: This blog is my first real time that I’ve used Kitsu as a character VS a representation of myself. I still draw and write vents using them in place of myself, being that they are in some ways, me. So uh, less than a month technically 😅 I’m still coming up with a lot of things about them as I go along.

As for them being my favorite character? It’s hard to say- I have a lot of really cool and creative characters that have a lot of TLC put into them, but I always find myself returning back to this silly blue fox. So yes, I’d say they are. Most interesting? Probably not, but it depends on what people think.

4: Kitsu is, like I said before, somewhat of a more idealized version of myself. I envy their ability to be self sufficient and live on their own, hold a job and go to college at the same time. They’re also a lot more patient than I am, something of which I should absolutely take notes from.

Besides being a fluffy fox? They can also somewhat hold their liquor and smoke without consequences. I don’t drink or smoke irl, and I have no real interest in doing either. It’s just a fun thing to have them do every once and awhile.

There’s a lot more going on personality wise that I wish that I had from them, but I won’t go into that or else this would be the length of the “color of the sky” post.

Thank you for the questions! 💜

Bonus answer for a question you never asked:

Kitsu came before I started calling myself Kit. I liked being called Kitsu online so much that when I came out as non-binary, I just decided it would be easiest to call myself Kit. Rather fond of the name, people tell me it suits me quite well.

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drst · 2 years ago

Text

I posted 2,866 times in 2022

64 posts created (2%)

2,802 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@darthmelyanna

@ekjohnston

@mylittleredgirl

@akiyta

@havocthecat

I tagged 626 of my posts in 2022

#sparktober - 45 posts

#tis the season - 40 posts

#stargate atlantis - 35 posts

#star trek - 21 posts

#star wars - 21 posts

#sparky forever - 21 posts

#obi wan kenobi - 21 posts

#muppets - 20 posts

#writing - 19 posts

#leverage - 17 posts

Longest Tag: 118 characters

#when you see a post that perfectly describes a feeling you never consciously acknowledged or shared with another human

My Top Posts in 2022:

Please read this and share.

178 notes - Posted May 5, 2022

See the full post

218 notes - Posted April 3, 2022

“Because of color theory” may have replaced “I like your shoelaces”

248 notes - Posted March 7, 2022

when you planned to write but got sucked into rereading one of your old fics

305 notes - Posted February 15, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I just had a small “oh” moment about Tumblr and how the user base has self-selected over time to certain personality types.

I tend to reread/rewatch things I love a lot. I reread the same fic a hundred times. I rewatch tv shows over and over - and not like I revisit them every few years, although I do that sometimes too, but I will finish a show and decide to rewatch it again right away to pick up on things I didn’t notice the first time through.

My family and many of my friends are not like this, or aren’t as extreme about it. They watch something and that’s it. They read a book and they’re done and they don’t really think about it again. I can do that, sometimes, but not as often as I hyperfixate on something and just go all in for weeks or months, until I absorb every micron of it.

And if I go back to rewatch some time later, I usually skim through to my favorite moments, rather than a complete rewatch or reread.

I have no idea how many other people on this hellsite have hyperfixation tendencies (more than a few I’m sure), but this seems to be the only social media site where content circulates infinitely. I will occasionally see certain memed tweets show up on twitter (dril “I’m not owned” for example), but Tumblr not only recirculates memes we just recirculate cool posts about stuff. No, I did not love the color of the sky clogging up my dashboard but I laugh every time I see it, and I reblog every color theory joke. I love humans are space orc posts coming back around, or “your blood is seawater” etc.

We don’t just endlessly reshare memes, which is what happens on Twitter and somewhat on Facebook, there’s just posts that aren’t really memes but are just popular or interesting that endlessly reappear. And I’d bet a lot of us stop and reread those posts again, even if we know the content (or we’re looking to see if there’s been an addition). We turn cool posts into running jokes, like with color theory and Ea Nasir.

It slots together with my occasional “I want to go rewatch that scene from S1 again for the 1000th time” impulses to revisit things I love.

I don’t know I just saw the “blood is seawater” post and reread the whole thing again and it got me thinking about how seeing old posts cross my dash doesn’t feel annoying (unless every single person I follow is doing it) and it��s more like seeing an old friend.

Also I’d like Tumblr to stop hiding long posts, I can scroll, it’s annoying to have to click back and forth.

6,845 notes - Posted May 14, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

I gotta start creating more original posts, sheesh.

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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solidclan-stories · 5 months ago

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Welcome to Solidclan!

Hello, You can call me Kat (she/her)! Warrior cats is literally my life rn so I thought I will post about one of my oc clans!

What is Solidclan?

Solidclan is my oc clan from basically a warrior cats au! Solidclan is not clangen, in fact I thought of Solidclan and made it's story before I knew clangen existed and clangen might've not even existed yet. Solidclan is about cats that left their clan to form a new one that's better.

The story of Solidclan will unfold as each chapter gets posted, and with chapters comes books! So this story is a book series written by me (or @therealcatlady123, which is my main blog). I am hoping to have multiple arcs and stories for this clan posted, really depends on how well the blog does!

Stories from Solidclan

Arc 1:

Book 1: A Starless Sky

Last chapter posted: None yet!

Extra Stories:

None yet!

Author's note:

This is a fan-fiction about the Warrior Cats series made by the Erin Hunters. They gave me inspiration for this story but all characters are mine. I made up every character and they were not stolen from the book series. The only cat people might think would be stolen from the series is Muddy, but that’s only because I wanted his design to look like that. I will also be using the four original clans; Thunderclan, Windclan, Shadowclan, and Riverclan. Just note that nothing in this book happens in the real warrior cats timeline, since the Erins did not help me make this or develop a story. Don’t try to connect the characters to Erin Hunter’s characters.

Some of the cats in this won’t be realistic coloring since I’m pretty sure you can’t have green cats in real life not unless you dye the cat's fur. These cats are called Solidclan because in my original designs the founders of Solidclan were only solid colors, but I changed it to make them look interesting, especially for art on the covers. So the reason for the name may be stated differently in the book. I would also like to thank my friend, Alex for being my beta reader. Thank you for reading my stories and enjoy.

Green Cats?

So, like mentioned in the author's note there are green cats. Basically I created my own little gene called the green gene which makes a cats fur appear green. This gene is not real. Don't go around looking for a green cat since they are not real. This mutation in the story was created by twolegs to use to make their pets look cool. The mutation does nothing else to the cat besides making the cats fur appear green and is not harmful to the well-being of the cat.

For the genetic nerds out there (because I am also one): for the green gene to work in realistic genetics it is part of the gene that makes a cat's fur black, chocolate, or cinnamon. The green gene is recessive to the rest. Ex: Black > Chocolate > Cinnamon > Green. This means that the green gene can also be used with ginger to make beautiful tortoiseshells.

What can I do with these cats?

Like I said in the author's note, you cannot pair these cats and/or link them with the canon cats from Warrior Cats. So what can you do with these guys?

Can do!:

Make fan-art and draw them

Fan-fiction or fan au's would also be okay!

You can post about this blog too

You can ship cats together (just don't push for the ships to happen)

If you want to explain why you think two cats that you ship are good together you can explain why and give like a text analysis, I won't count that as pushing for a ship to happen if you're just stating facts, reasons, or opinions!

I will allow you to link the cats to canon cats from the books if you make a fun little theory and not push for them to be related or go around telling people that those cats are related and it is canon

Make hypo-kits/parents/siblings

If there's a ship with two cats that aren't canon but still want to make hypo-kits for those cats that would also be okay since you're not pushing for the ship to be canon

If a cat already has set parents in the book but you want to make hypo-parents or make their parents some other cats in the clan and/or story that would also be okay! It'll be like an au

If I think of any other things people can do I will add to this list! If you have something you want to do but you don't see it on this list and/or you're not sure if it would fit into one of these categories just ask me! If you do make any fan-art and stuff tag me so I can see it!

Can't do:

Claim the cats in this series as your own

Copy-paste the writing and/or art and claim it as your own

Push for a ship to happen. What I mean by this is don't ask me to make two cats get together. You can ask if they're going to get together but don't make it seem like you're demanding for them to get together. I already have the story planned out with all the future kits and mates and I wouldn't want to change any of it and it would be annoying to see people in my inbox demanding for a ship to happen. And remember, tone doesn't carry over text well sometimes. If you're asking if two cats are going to get together make sure to read it over and make sure it's clear that you are just asking and not pushing. You wouldn't want to be blocked over a misunderstanding!

Same thing as pushing for a ship to happen, don't push for me to change a cat's parents, siblings, or kittens. It won't happen and is an easy way to get blocked

Again, if I think of any other stuff you can't do I'll add to the list!

Tags:

Anything that's fan-created will be tagged as #fanart

Anytime a character shows up I will tag the cats name even if they are just briefly mentioned so if you search tags you can find everything about them! However, the name tagged will be the name they have at that point in time to avoid spoilers!

At the end of each post the book that post talks about will be tagged. At the end of each chapter the book it's a part of will also be tagged

Each chapter will be tagged with it's chapter number. (trying to make it easy for you guys to find stuff, especially once this blog gets big). The tag will look like #chapter 1, #chapter 2, ect.

Any asks will be tagged #sc asks

any solidclan post will be tagged #sc and #solidclan

Any refs will be tagged #sc refs

In the future I will be doing character analysis'! Those will be tagged as #sc character analysis

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frogsandfries · 1 year ago

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Oh-kaayyyy

So there's a semi-annual inspection on my weekend. Is this legal? I'm not on section eight..... Anyway, I figured it wouldn't entirely kill me to clean up a bit now and I can do some more--like beginning to vacuum--over the next couple days. Like, no way in hell am I taking my recyclables out. I just put on my slipper socks; it's dark outside and it was cold earlier when I was returning my stupid fucking router.

Plus, my place never gets like......hoarder gross, just like, this person lives here and has ferrets for cats.

Anyway, I finally, finally got the goddamn stupid fucking router to work. So I finally downloaded the blogs I would most be sad to lose.

Uuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmm

I didn't realize that basically, it tears the blogs apart and then if you want them put together, like in a book I would imagine......... you have to manually find a way to put that shit back together. Also, a blog as big as frogsandfries presently is (22,156 before this post)............at least on this laptop, isn't downloading nicely.....and also, would be someone's life's work to reconstruct. Sooooooooooo that's fun. Imagine you could cram an average of just like, 1.5 posts per page......I'm imagining a 5x8 book, because that's like, a normal book size.....a book of just this blog would be gargantuan. Or just a ridiculous number of volumes.

Also, does anyone else just think about the.....just overwhelming quantities of information they've created? Like, here I am undertaking turning someone else's life's work--thousands of pages of handwriting and typewriting--and not even thinking about the mountains of Me that I'm leaving behind. I mean, there are the books that I'm binding, preserving parts of the internet archive of fanfiction; stories that people wrote, openly admitting that they were inspired by someone else. And then there are the gigabytes of just photos that saved to my google cloud (not counting all the pictures I either lost or got posted to a blog and have been buried). I've already planned to put all my pictures from google into photo books. I've already planned to print them on some kind of glossy paper.

And this is just information from the past ten or so years.

What about moving forward? I have at least another three to five decades of life expectancy, and I don't see myself being any less generative. I'm still going to keep screenshotting wild things I find on the internet, I'm still going to keep gathering studies and references. Honestly, a book of just things that inspire me or that I would stick to a pinboard so that I can see them would probably be a whole book. My cats will probably get their own book. I'm going to keep logging and showing off the things that I create. I'm going to occasionally need to journal my thoughts.

I'm just trying to picture all of these honestly, what should be impossible amounts of information that we all produce on a daily basis. And for better or for worse, one day, the sands of time will just.....wipe it away. The first to vanish will be the things that were never preserved offline. And who am I, really, to cling to an opportunity for some form of immortality? I mean, apart from a person who is having these.....big, tiny, existential thoughts.

Anyway. I kinda started to do a 'strangers in my home' clean on my apartment. I never did end up finishing those 'colors of the sky' notebooks........ I have so many big projects..... I want to finally, one, crack the Darger texts and turn it into something that is.....what's the word that I'm looking for here.... I intend to probably post it to something like AO3 and maybe even post it to like, Amazon or some other PoD site for people to request at their leisure. I want to make it something accessible and malleable. Like, you definitely could download it totally for free yourself off of AO3, and print it on the paper of your choosing--or you can go the convenience route. Not that I even remotely expect any kind of notoriety for doing this. I'm just doing it because it calls to me.

Maybe then I can finally turn my attention to archiving and preserving my internet existence.

I put up those lights I've been mumbling about. I was having an issue with my internet which is really the only reason I left my home instead of being at work. My phone is dead rn, but it's really cool. It was gloomy today, but this strip of lights lights up the space like daylight. I really can't get over it and I'm so eager to buy probably my final set of lights for over the couch.

I'm also thinking about purchasing more jars, maybe in a few different sizes, for these fairy lights, and probably finding a way to pin a few jars of lights to the wall, for a bit of ambient lighting.

Also, I think this is my last random rambly thought, but if you have the patience, apparently you can just kinda one-fell-swoop download all your photos off your google cloud???? I probably won't do this unless I can muster enough self-control to save for a hard-drive because......can you even imagine downloading that much information all at once??

I really ought to at least pick at that project once in a while.

0 notes

perlen-gold · 2 years ago

Text

I posted 1,741 times in 2022

That's 909 more posts than 2021!

56 posts created (3%)

1,685 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@kcbb01

@daggerbean

@perlen-gold

@daggerbeanart

I tagged 1,694 of my posts in 2022

Only 3% of my posts had no tags

#fenris - 1,435 posts

#dragon age 2 - 1,431 posts

#dragon age ii - 1,315 posts

#da ii - 1,017 posts

#da 2 - 902 posts

#fenhawke - 753 posts

#hawke - 740 posts

#garrett hawke - 471 posts

#dragon age - 281 posts

#m!hawke - 258 posts

Longest Tag: 120 characters

#why would i like mental stability if i could have a hyperfixation on a certain murderous fleeting abused and unique elf?

My Top Posts in 2022:

For the WIP game: Bethany 😭🐣 but please, at your own convenience! Whenever free~

💕 @kourvo Oh god, I get a feeling you're preventively crying....😭 You have a knack for picking the dismal chapters ... or is it just me writing a lot of awful stuff? I apologize for all the sad writing I've done and choose a part of this (rather long) chapter that's NOT totally doleful! or at least ending ... well, badly!!! O_O

💕 Also, a hundred hundred 💐 thanks to you for your interest!!!!! 💕

The constant rumbling dulled into a distant, bland thunder-mist around them. The sky smoked with a heat-haze that chilled the bones, renouncing the skin clammy cold with sweat.

“Look at them.” she whispered. Bethany had spotted what the others had failed to notice. Carver, his cheeks hollowed and grayish, moved closer. Hawke did not wish to, did not want to see. Yet he stepped beside her.

Wherever the hurting eye smarted enough to linger, smoke issued from the scorched ground in crouching spiraling fumes, and heavy brumes obscured the firmament, the sun a sickly yellowish smeared, blurred, blind spot above the skeletal land. For days, the blowzy earth had rung out with screams, then rubicund rains, dry and sharp on a sizzling lip, showered it with an acrid anger savoring of copper coagulated with red. Pulping stray villages into the black ground and obliteration. Where it plagued, a dim pinkish glow took up permanent residence in the soil. Hawke thought he would never see another color in his life.

Now, however, the wastelands stretched with an odd quiet. The wind, weakly bending on the sumless columns of taupe smoke, was chewing on its own mute voice. The chirruping and twitter of birds haunting the severed limbs of burned trees was gone. No insects. No clittering crickets. No bumbling beetles. There were no flies. Not even festering on dead flesh.

Squinting, Carver wrinkled his nose in what was badly disguised disgust. Hawke looked at them, too. His mother held her head averted, refusing to observe that which enthralled her children’s gaze. Her grimy fingers were clasped over her parched mouth.

“I wonder how and why the darkspawn bother to erect them,” murmured Carver in another attempt to shrug off the revulsion sneaking slyly upon their heels.

From all pores the earth reeked of decay. Meanwhile, the putridity of the stench ate holes into cloth and clothes. Into noses and mouths. Where it moldered until even the most craved sip of water consigned the ghastly smack of ashes.

In this inferno, in this desolation a forlorn group of five people, barely recognizable as humans anymore, slogged along what was once a winding woodland path shimmering in dancing flecks of gold and green light, and what was now trampled into a meandering dirt track, every other bend blocked by hollow flames. Above their insignificant heads, where swirls of filthy clouds were surging in one direction, everything appeared to be in a fleeing movement whereas below there was no movement whatsoever. Except for them.

On both sides low hills fringed the rocky road, grayish-black boulders jutted out from under the murdered earth as if its intestines had been forced inside out by a thousand cruel hands. The small group had stumbled onward, a black-haired man in front, aliens in this country of silence and immutability. Their never-ending steps had long since dulled into a half-compromise somewhere between running and dragging. In the evening, when the sun forgot to sink and simply extinguished amidst fumes and haze, the man in the lead would throw himself wherever he stood, eyes closed, his breathing ragged, sleeping in fits to waken to the malodor of fear on his own skin - drenched in sweat and nightmares; only to find reality to be worse than any dream. In his waking state, however, Garrett Hawke kept moving in a constant, purposeful, alert fashion. That is, until his younger sister curbed, stopped at the edge of the road.

“Look at them.” whispered Bethany.

Hawke did not need to move closer to behold the iron lance. Thrust deeply into the ground and erected in a haphazard fashion wayside. Nor didhe need to come closer to consider the brown and round objects threaded like a grotesque string of pearls. Thus adorned, they stared at him with their empty, blinded sockets stretched above a bare, lipless grin. A nauseating smell drifted from their leers to pick at his nostrils, although Hawke had long since stopped to try and fathom whether it was the shrieking aroma of rot or the wafting, spoor-like foul scent of the horde. His senses begged for him to turn away but the empty holes, one pair neatly above the other, did not allow him to falter and kept their, Bethany’s, Carver’s, his stare paralyzed.

“Look at them.” whispered Bethany.

And then Hawke saw it too. His nostrils flared. His stomach, so numb, protested. His insides gave a lurch, surprising him with the force of the reaction of which his body was still, after all, capable.

And then Bethany, though she was muttering, spoke quite clearly:

“They are children’s.”

“Can’t be.” Already, Carver was turning away, quick to trod on along the bleak road which they had been following for hours and hours at a time.

“Look at the size of them.” Bethany breathed, once more quite audible.

“Can’t be.” Their brother’s reedy voice hang suspended in the stiff air. Stubbornly, Carver marched on.

“Bethany, don’t look at them.” said their mother whose voice, in some way, from deep down or the putrid air around them, had found some strength once more.

But Bethany did look, intensely so, as if by her steady, transfixed gaze she somehow could undo the past and change the present into something … else.

“I am not sure how much more we can survive of this,“ breathed his mother, tottering in Carver’s wake. She lurched a little, then regained her footing. Mulishly she stumbled on after her youngest son, grubby face grim, eyes averted.

Hawke kept looking but he did not so anymore at the small things which were once – now fuscous skin and fleshless – children’s heads embellishing metal spears showing them the way through the incinerated land. Rather, Hawke looked at his younger sister.

She was ready for anything. Any obstacle, any heinousness to come and claim their very lives. Any hindrance they would have to fight, again and again, over and over, to cling to dear life.

Darkspawn.

Darkspawn. The mere word had used to send his mother into a frenzy. Made her eyes glaze over. Her frame sway. Her mind go blank.

Two years ago when Hawke had told about the attack in the woods, quite far from fright, the villagers laughed, frowned, turned their backs on him and shook their heads in disbelief while saying: “The Hawke boy has always liked to jest.”

“What are they thinking, that we are making this horror up?” Bethany asked hotly, tears glistening in her angry eyes. Carver, on the other hand, crossed his arms. “The last blight occurred ages ago. So why should anybody remember? People simply do not want to believe their bedtime horror stories.” he said savagely.

See the full post

27 notes - Posted August 8, 2022

Fic List

Dragon Age

PYRE

Rating: M

Pairing: Fenris x m!Hawke

Summary: A journey of grief, purpose and pain following the events of Here Lies the Abyss

Link: AO3

Companion

Rating: G

Pairing: Fenris x m!Hawke

Summary: A night of trapping darkness and fear after an earthquake.

Links: Tumblr I AO3

Fear Not The Night

Rating: G

Pairing: Fenris x m!Hawke

Summary: Under the rift-torn sky Hawke struggles for a decision while contemplating his memories and a certain message by Varric.

Links: Tumblr I AO3

Home

Rating: G

Pairing: Fenris x m!Hawke

Summary: A day of quiet changes in Hightown.

Links: Tumblr I AO3

In The Darkness Of The Night

A FenHawke inspired poem.

Links: Tumblr I AO3

Only in the Dead of Night

Rating: G

Pairing: Fenris x m!Hawke

Summary: A moment of intimacy under cover of a star-strewn night.

Links: Tumblr I AO3

See the full post

34 notes - Posted April 1, 2022

I know, it’s been 11 years since Dragon Age 2 was published.

But shit.

I need more FenHawke content!

75 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

I simply love the friendship between Fenris and Aveline.

I think, she was his very first friend (aside from Hawke). A friend he could accept because she showed him she cared but not too brashly, somehone who accepted his “no”s and anger, and yet still spoke her mind truthfully around him, neither treating him as glass nor with spite or condescendence, who is a fighter and hardened by grief and violence herself, and, in a way, understands parts of him before anyone else does.

Favorite quotes:

“I shall endeavor to exist with less offence.”

“It feels good to be captain of the guard, yes?” - “No, I will not change the patrols around your mansion again.”

“Fine, fine, have your ´man time`, then.”

“Sadly, they never made it to prison.” - “You always know how to make me smile, Aveline.”

“You were never ordered to kill?” - “I was a soldier, but I was willing.” - “I was willing as well, but not by choice. *laughs* If that makes any sense.” - “Does anything in this mess?”

88 notes - Posted February 24, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Fenris by Oksana Kharitonova, freelance 2D artist

(Source: https://aira_gitt.artstation.com/ )

451 notes - Posted June 11, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #haha not much to brag about #I don't create a lot of content save for a bit of writing #I'm kinda disgruntled that “fenhawke” isn't my number 2 tag

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bearcina · 2 years ago

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I posted 14,671 times in 2022

That's 1,820 more posts than 2021!

151 posts created (1%)

14,520 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@deloreandarling

@deadly-operating-system

@thebadwulff

@boss-of-armadildos

@mens-rights-activia

I tagged 452 of my posts in 2022

#bear babbles - 143 posts

#ophelia amana - 79 posts

#the outer worlds - 65 posts

#bear writes - 28 posts

#ada/the captain - 21 posts

#zora blackwood - 18 posts

#zora blackwood/female captain - 14 posts

#fanfic - 13 posts

#tow ada - 11 posts

#ada/female captain - 11 posts

Longest Tag: 118 characters

#and the colors the healer would wear that match the locals and how her new dress and wardrobe are especially luxurious

My Top Posts in 2022:

Masterlist

13 notes - Posted January 19, 2022

I Think I Prefer To Stay Inside

Rating: General Audiences

Portal (Video Game)

Relationship: Chell&GLaDOS, future Chell/GLaDOS

Tags: lonely glados, glados missing Chell, it's rainy at Aperture

Part of We Have Science To Do series, this is part 1/?

Words: 552, written 8/31/2020 (💀 sorry it took so long to cross post here)

GLaDOS realizes that it's lonely down in the once-salt-mine without her favorite test subject around. It's raining. She longs for her unpredictable anomaly of a test subject.

It was raining above Aperture, pitter-pattering against the tin roof of one of the many sheds. A camera whirred, scanning an endless wheat field, capturing bits of the starry sky in the distance.

Pitter-pattering rain, not particularly heavy or too light, just enough to hydrate the soil again for the wheat to grow another few inches in time for it to be frosted over and die for the beginning of fall, which was just twelve days away- scientifically speaking.

The facility was quiet, the buzz of nuclear reactors far away, no bubbling of acid pits in tests, and the fan system in her chamber was running quiet and efficient for the first time in months. Microphones were turned off, the endless drone of the buzzing of lights ground away at her patience- the co-operative testing units were powered down, having been far too annoying to be of any use. Her circuits buzzed with useless energy, calculating stray needs for electricity on the hundreds of test chambers awaiting in standby.

Her crows had died last week. There wasn’t even a cawing of a single crow through the facility.

Empty. The facility was empty. No matter how hard, how far down she reached with cameras or just curious pulsing of wires and flickering lights, there was nothing but Herself. It was all just her facility- everything was Hers.

The facility had been slowly cleaned, panels put back together, turrets melted down, old weighed storage cubes melted down and remade, and that awful potato plant was finally trimmed back down into place, only encompassing the Bring Your Daughter To Work Day rooms. Even then, that wing of the facility was left to its own devices, locked away to hopefully be forgotten about, at least until she needed the plant trimmed again.

She looked out the cameras mounted on the shed again, far off as she could view. The rain drizzled onto the camera, clouding the lens, filling her chambers with the gentle pitter-patter of rain on the tin roof. A puddle of rainwater was forming near the door of the shed, an old indent of where something very cube-like had sat for weeks. It was gone, the wretched thing. It had sat there for three weeks, scorched and covered in soot and dIrt, before it was retrieved by the ex-test subject.

She missed her test subject. Science had been ground to a halt, her co-operative units far too predictable after three months of unending, unproductive, “testing.” All the humans that had been kept were vegetables, not worth the time of an hour to revive, just for it to not be able to breathe on its own.

Not a single test subject left in her facility.

She was just content to listen to the rain and watch the wheat field, hoping for her test subject to return back to her.

And eventually, her test subject did come back. She was dragging along the scorched companion cube, the once bright-orange jumpsuit torn and soiled with blood and dirt.

GLaDOS was happy to open the door to the shed, an elevator ready to bring her favorite test subject back home, even if she would have to clean the facility and fix her wounds.

Maybe after all of this Chell would prefer to stay inside, just like she does.

14 notes - Posted January 19, 2022

Olarom!

17 notes - Posted January 17, 2022

Just a few fun Ophelia's for the evening!

Top is based on the Anti-Riot Iconoclast armor, bottom is her in her sleepwear! I'm excited to doodle more, since it wasn't as hard drawing the armor as I thought!

18 notes - Posted June 23, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

ADA and Captain Ophelia Amana in this cute little picrew!!! rb and toss your blorbos in!! 💖💖💖

I finally decided Ophelia 100% does space buns for her hairstyle instead of the junlei style I chose in-game 😂

21 notes - Posted June 6, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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sun-dog-au · 2 years ago

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Welcome to the Sun Dog AU!🛸

An alternate universe based in the general Moomin franchise created by @flowerbloom-arts, this blog follows the story of Sniff and a few other people in Moominvalley as strange things happen that have to do with their sky.

Sniff is an odd and easily tempted child who may not remember much of his own past, but perhaps time will tell if he is involved with these supernatural shenanigans!

Join the AU discord!

Comic Story

The string of comic pages which harbour the main storyline of the AU

Chapter 1: A Star With A Tale

In which we are introduced to a familiar but slightly off world.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Chapter 2: Red Warning From Space

In which something out of this world flips Moomin Valley upsidedown.

Cover

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Character Reference Sheets

Each character may be close in design to their canon counterpart (particularly those of the 90s series of Moomin) but they intentionally veer off from them in certain aspects such as the color of a certain primary colored clothing piece or some details which may come in play into the dialog or story.

So these are the characters who have reference sheets thus far:

Sniff

Query (original character)

Snufkin

Moomintroll, Moominmamma, Moominpappa, the Snork Maiden

The Inspector, Stinky, the Muskrat, Mr. Hemulen, Little My, Cedric

Miscellaneous Memories

There are some (rather important) moments or information which don't fit into the main storyline due to timeline issues or simply not fitting into the flow of the narrative, so comics like these are put into their own tag to avoid any messes. Some of these are word-for-word adaptations of the original source material.

These moments are listed in order of timeline instead of order of posting.

Sniff meets the Moomins (Moomins and the Great Flood)

Fearing a ‘secret society’ (Comet in Moominland)

The visit to the Observatory (Comet in Moominland)

First Hibernation (Finn Family Moomintroll, mostly not in book)

A boat made of false teeth (Finn Family Moomintroll, not in book)

The Trial (Finn Family Moomintroll)

The Hobgoblin grants wishes (Finn Family Moomintroll)

Illustrations

While often generally unimportant for information or details, it's nice to have them put in a list like this for viewing convenience, I like to get a little more 'pretty' with drawings like these.

These illustrations are listed in order of posting rather than in-universe timeline.

Sniff with a pearl necklace

100 follower special

Meteor Shower (song)

200 follower special

1 year anniversary special

Tarot Cards

‘The Fool’ (upright)

‘The Fool’ (reversed)

FAQ

Standing for "frequently asked questions", these are questions about the AU which should be basic or fundamental to understand so that they may not be asked over and over again by those interacting with the blog.

When does the story take place?

- The story starts in the summer of 1949, less than 4 years after Sniff was found in a supersized dark forest by Moominmamma and Moomintroll while on their search for Moominpappa. After that, it's just a matter of figuring out the timeline yourself.

Which adaptation is this story following?

- The story is its own canon which is a unique hodgepodge of details and stories from the books, the comics, and details or information sprinkled in from the 90s series and even Moominvalley 2019.

Did the stories made by Tove Jansson happen in this AU?

- With very few details skewed here and there, the first few Moomin books (Moomins and the Great Flood, Comet in Moominland and Finn Family Moomintroll) have taken their place over the course of a year and a half from 1945-1946 in-universe. There are also a few comic stories, if changed in detail, which have already taken place for the 2 years before the story begins, these comics are; Moomin's Desert Island, Moomin Builds a House, Moominmamma's Maid, Club Life in Moominvalley, Moomin Falls in Love, Moomin's Lamp and Mymble's Diamond.

Other stories (from the books and comics) may happen in between or in the background of chapters, though chapters themselves will also follow some pre-existing storylines.

[More will be added in the future]

#moomin #moomins #moominvalley #sun dog au #moomin au #master post #long post

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canyouhearthelight · 3 years ago

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The Miys, Ch. 154

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

I was able to get the Master Post cleaned up this morning. I know there is a reblog going around with some of the links missing... I put that one up originally as a place holder so I could update my page links in chapters 101 through this one. I did NOT anticipate it would get immediately reblogged, which made me squeak in pleasant surprise. I’ll reblog the full post so everyone has the right one.

Also, thanks to @baelpenrose, @the-raven-fae, and @charlylimph-blog for keeping me going and all your help beta-reading and checking my links. You three are the real heroes here!

“The quiet rooms are done,” Hannah yawned the next morning. “It’s a good thing we decided to make them available immediately, because the first one had people scheduling time before we finished the second one.”

“How many did we end up with?” I asked, pushing down my own urge to yawn. I had always prided myself on being able to resist the urge to yawn when others did, and I wasn’t letting that stop now.

The model of the Ark came up on the table emitter, and Hannah zoomed in on the highlighted areas. “Right now, we have twelve, just like you set up for the second Food Festival. But I’ll be honest, they rooms are already booked for the foreseeable future, and I don’t think that’s tenable.”

“Agreed. I’ll talk to the rest of the Council, but at this point, we need to see about setting all available spaces for quiet rooms.” I nodded and added that note to my agenda. “Moving on, food vendors being allowed in BioLab2. Any updates?”

Parvati flicked the data to everyone. “Grey isn’t thrilled with the possibility that the food will contaminate the aquatics, but is willing to allow vendors in ‘The Fairy Circle’?” She gave me a questioning look. “They said you would know what that meant.”

I just smiled and shook my head. “It’s where I go camping. Conor managed to pull off a prank that fooled even Charly and made a Faerie circle. It’s a good choice, though: ten, eleven feet across, accessible, and far enough from the water that there wouldn’t be any risk.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Credit to Conor on that one. But, Grey was very enthusiastic about the idea of setting up some picnic tables throughout the woods and letting people bring picnics.”

“I already have some vendors on board, there,” I breathed in relief. “Especially the ones who specialize in the type of foods that lend themselves well to being portable.”

Hannah’s face lit up. “Do we get to taste test some of these? I’m really getting some bento box and pasty vibes from what you just said, and I’m not sure which I’m more excited about.”

“I think I can get that to happen,” I laughed. “I wouldn’t mind trying some of the options myself, but I can at least already confirm that all bases are covered for dietary requirements. Next up, where are we on the holiday date?”

“Still working with the other departments to finalize a date where all projects can be completed, paused, or at least at a point where they don’t require direct observation. Everyone is on board, though.”

“That’s the biggest hurdle,” I confirmed. “Means we can proceed with at least putting the rest of the events together in preparation for the final date. I trust you two in handling the party aspect of it, and Charly is already working Bash on another Kink Night event at the Undine - minimal planning needed there. So, let’s figure out who is coordinating the paint-tag fight, and we can loop back to the plans for the party.”

“While I am entirely sure Charly can handle planning for both the paint tag and the other - seeing as both were her ideas - it doesn’t feel fair to leave them both entirely on her shoulders,” Hannah agreed. “It says here that you already had Conor confirm we missed Holi?

“By about six months,” I confessed. “So we’re pretty much both too late and too early.”

“I do believe the arrows would be frowned upon, in any event,” Parvati joked. “I still have her paint formulas - flavors are not listed, but there is a distinct lack of both black and yellow.”

“Those were… scotch bonnet for the black, I know that one. I think the yellow was gochujang, which would still hurt if you got it in your eyes,” I recalled.

She flicked her hands, bracelets chiming. “I will ask for a new formula for yellow, but I think we can live without black paint. The yellow was lovely, though.”

“Ask nicely, and she’ll probably give you the glitter formula colors, which I think are different flavors from the regular palette,” I suggested. “And the glitter is ultra-violet reactive, so that’ll be fun.”

Emphatic stabbing at her datapad ensued - impressive, because it wasn’t even physically there, just emitted from the band on her wrist. “Once I have those, I believe Hannah and I can coordinate that along with the party. There is no food component, it is only for one day, so the scope is far smaller than the Festival was.”

“And besides,” Hannah added with a shrug, “whip up some paints and some spongy balls to soak it up, set boundaries, invite anyone who wants to attend. Planning done.” She dusted her hands off for emphasis, but she had a point.

“I’ve got the care packages well underway, so we’re solid there. The party. What’s the plan there?”

Parvati dismissed the schematic from the table emitter and sent a different image to it. This one was practically the opposite of what I had expected: where I had anticipated Food Festival 2: Pyrotechnic Boogaloo, I was instead looking at a park that I was reasonably certain only existed in dreams.

Soft green grass that my toes wiggled to touch spanned a rolling, looping thoroughfare. Trees arched overhead like an arbor, and were either woven with lights are absolutely covered in fireflies. Between breaks in the canopy, a night sky filled with more stars than I had seen in my living memory. Here and there small braziers burned brightly with fire, resting on sturdy rugs and dotted around with cushions.

“Vati,” I whispered hoarsely. “We can’t use BioLab2 for this, can we? Will Grey allow it?”

“We can, and they are.” Her smile was the feral one that usually preceded a coup de grace of event planning. “This, however, is not BioLab2. This is the corridors of levels twelve through fourteen, leading into the lab.”

My first urge was to guess what she was planning, but my mind came up blank. I circled around my desk to stand closer to the table. “Okay, talk to me. Make it make sense.”

She nodded. “The grass is real, laid down like sod. The terraforming teams have agreed to let us use it, provided we allow them to collect data on how it holds up to so much foot traffic and include a post-event question regarding the tactile feel on bare feet. So, bare feet they shall have.” She winked when I realized she and Hannah were going to make it part of the theme. “The trees are an illusion, simple light emitters against the corridor walls, combined with the existing texture of the surface.”

When she moved the image to mimic walking further down the path, Hannah picked up. “The larger spaces are actually where the corridors are longer between quiet rooms. Rather than trying to pull off the tree illusion, we’re going to create a night sky with shooting stars, comets, the works. Like a dream.”

“I like it. It’s not what I was expecting, but I’m even more impressed for that.”

“We couldn’t compete with Charly,” Parvati confessed. “She is already going to have our base desires covered. Anything we tried to do would look like a pale imitation. So, we went the other direction: What else do we do to feel alive?”

“We dream,” I laughed. “It’s all a fairy tale dream, isn’t it?”

“That’s the goal,” Hannah confirmed. “A beautiful dream. One day and one night where you can live out your humanity however you want, without having to compromise. If someone wants to throw paint with childish abandon, then stroll and dance through a dream, and finish the night at the Undine trying something they never dared to do before, they can do that.”

“When you put it like that, it sounds decadent.”

“I was going for hedonistic, over all, but you’re on the right track,” Parvati laughed. “Hannah and I agreed that everyone on the Ark needed one perfect day. And since perfect is different for everyone…” She shrugged. “We just decided to give them all the options. The quiet rooms will be open if their perfect includes a botanical garden, or a cloud… the mess halls will be open if it means a feast, or even just decadent hors d'oeuvres they could never make an excuse to try. It’s literally all on the table.”

“Consider it signed off on.” I still couldn’t take my eyes off that grass, toes wiggling happily. “Just let me know the date when we have one, I need a pedicure to enjoy this completely.”

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#the miys #found family #humans are weird #science fiction #aliens #apocalypse #humans are space orcs #humans are space fae #earth is space australia #post apocalypse #post post apocalypse #original science fiction #original sci fi #original writing

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sage-nebula · 3 years ago

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Game Review — Blue Fire

One of my all-time favorite game series is The Legend of Zelda. My favorite game of all time is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And my second favorite game of all time is Hollow Knight. So it would make sense, then, to think that a combination of the two would be the most amazing thing the world had to offer me.

Overall Score: 7/10

Well . . . it could have been better. It also could have been worse, absolutely, but it also could have been better. For more detailed thoughts, jump below the cut (and view on blog due to formatting).

The Pros:

The graphics and animation are beautiful. The specific Zelda game the graphics brought to mine (despite the color palette, which was clearly more Hollow Knight inspired) was The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Whatever reason the developers had for going the cel shaded route (maybe they had an artistic vision in mind, or maybe it was easier somehow) it was a good one to make. In particular, all of the glowing and flame effects were lovely, the shadows all fell in the right places, the characters were charming to look at, et cetera. Everything worked well with the acrobatics as well. Visually, the game is beautiful.

For the most part, the platforming is fair and even platforming challenges are doable with enough practice. This is particularly true for the overworld / main dungeons, rather than the Voids, which are more extra dungeons that you don’t have to complete to beat the game (although doing so certainly makes the game easier given that each completed Void gives you another life heart). While there were some areas where the game lagged for whatever reason and threw off crucial timing, as well as some Voids that were definitely more Platform Hell than simply platforming, the platforming puzzles were very well put together for the most part and were enjoyable to play.

The fast travel system, when unlocked, is incredibly convenient and takes a lot of the headache out of traveling around the world, particularly given that you use the shrines for a number of things (fast travel, saving, char—spirit equips) and there aren’t any maps present in this game whatsoever. It does take some time to unlock fast travel and you’re not exactly pointed in the direction to get it (in fact I had to look up to figure out where I was supposed to go to get it), but once you have it it’s a well-developed system that took a lot of pain out of playing that would have otherwise been there.

A minor thing that I liked, but (just like in Hollow Knight) when you die, your spirit or soul is left behind. Also like in Hollow Knight, it keeps all of the money you had on you when you died. Essentially, it is the exact same thing as the Shade from Hollow Knight, but white instead of black. Anyway, the minor thing I liked about this is that if you die in a boss fight, your spirit waits for you directly outside the boss arena, meaning that you don’t have to try to reclaim it while the boss is trying to kill you. It was a nice bone the developers threw the player.

While no tracks in particular standout, and while the OST doesn’t live up to the OSTs of the inspirations behind this game, there were times when the music was very nice, which is always a plus.

While the main quest is very short, there are numerous sidequests you can do even apart from the Voids that give you things to do in each area, making them feel a little less small and giving you a bit more time with the game, as well as unlockables as rewards (mainly in the form of new costumes, but still). There are lots of little secrets hidden around in each area too, which is nice to discover if you’re someone like me who loves exploring in games.

The Neutrals:

The story. The story is . . . how do I put this . . . okay. So, it’s clear the developers wanted to write a story with the aesthetic of Hollow Knight (ruined kingdom, lots of shadow / light dichotomy, fallen kingdom, et cetera), but with an overt storytelling style like The Legend of Zelda. So you get a lot of exposition about what happened in the past, and what you as the main character are supposed to do now . . . but the thing about the exposition is that not only is the same thing repeated about fifteen different times (such as the constant harping on about how the main character contains both light and shadow within them), but also there are huge chunks of seemingly important detail that are just left unexplained. Like for instance: we know that the Fire Guardians from the Fire Keep were one of the last strongholds against the Shadow (who was also the sixth god and has also corrupted the queen yadda yadda). And we can extrapolate that the Fire Guardians were specifically trying to create a warrior that was both light and shadow based on the fact that the game starts with the main character breaking out of a test tube with a bunch of corpses that look just like the player scattered around, seeming to be failed experiments (i.e. just like how the Pale King created the Hollow Knight in Hollow Knight). But the only Fire Guard that we see around is Von. I think he mentions briefly once that the Fire Guards were trying to make the warrior, or had made the warrior, or something like that, but we’re never told why, exactly. We don’t know what processes led to that. We don’t know who was in charge. We don’t know why this specific type of warrior was needed except “since you have both you may be the answer.” And the fact that there were apparently a bunch of failed experiments is never really touched upon either. Furthermore, we’re told that the five gods had lifted Penumbra (the world) into the sky to protect it from the Shadow (a la Hylia raising Skyloft to protect the people from Demise), but that it didn’t work and the Shadow ultimately got to them anyway. So allegedly this is a post-apocalyptic land. But the only thing to really be ravaged is the Temple of Gods, where apparently the corrupted queen sleeps. Everyone else seems mostly fine as long as they avoid the monsters? It’s like they were going for what Hollow Knight did, but didn’t quite want to go the full route of having corpses literally everywhere on-screen at all times. Although weirdly enough, there is also a distinct lack of NPCs which makes the world feel more empty than Hallownest despite the circumstances . . . What I’m getting at here is that there definitely is a story, but it was told in a way that was pretty sloppy. It’s not so sloppy that it detracts from the overall experience, but it’s like too much was piled on in some areas and not enough was explained in other areas. Or like they took some things they liked from other games (e.g. making the creation of the “warrior of light and shadow” reminiscent of the creation of the Hollow Knight) without following through on what made those things work. Like it wasn’t just that there were a lot of failed Knights and that their corpses were tossed into the abyss and that The Knight had to try to claw his way out (as did Broken Vessel and others) while the “successful” Hollow Knight was raised by the Pale King. It was also that we know that the entire reason why the Hollow Knight was created in the first place was to contain the Radiance / the Plague. It was also that these hundreds or thousands of corpses were the Pale King’s children. It was also that the Pale King has a monologue over that segment saying, “no mind to think, no will to break, no voice to cry suffering” as requirements for the Hollow Knight to be considered successful. The horror didn’t come just from the corpses being tossed down the pit around you as you had to climb up in an attempt to get out, but also at all of the surrounding context, which was left entirely out of Blue Fire’s version with the warrior of light and shadow. Not that they should have copied it (although if they had it really wouldn’t have been surprising), but it’s clear what they were trying to do and where they failed because they didn’t have the follow through to go with it. I feel like the above paragraph is so critical I should move it to The Cons, but I do want to say that I don’t think the story itself was terrible. It borrows so much from both Zelda and Hollow Knight that it really isn’t original and it doesn’t follow through on things that made those stories work, but overall it doesn’t ruin the experience, even if all of the repetition gets old pretty quickly. Although as a final note, I’ll also add another thing that bugged me, which is that we never learn what the people of Penumbra are. Like we know the Shadow is bad, but they all look like Shadow people. We know there are creatures called “onops” but we don’t know what they are, or if everyone is an onop. Whereas in Hollow Knight we know that all the characters are bugs. It’s just another little thing that wasn’t explained but probably should have been.

On a less long note, the combat is also pretty mediocre. Again, it’s not bad. There is a parry system that, if you learn to time it right to actually pull off the parry, is pretty cool. But although you are given magic, which is useful for killing long-distance enemies, the magic can’t do a single thing for you in boss battles no matter how many times you upgrade your mana. Additionally, it is very much a “mash Y to win” type of game, where Y is the button you use to attack and you just mash that while jumping around. There’s no complexity to the combat at all or any strategy that is really required. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s nothing to write home about either.

The charms in this game are called spirits, and while you can buy a majority of them from shopkeepers, you can also “capture” your own by coming across the spirit of a dead person and trapping it to use its power for yourself. This is made apparent when you go back to a young child who is dead the second time you go to see them, and capture their spirit for use. Also when you literally murder an NPC for a sidequest and then later capture their spirit to use for your own use. And aside from the sidequest giver being horrified you killed the NPC and telling you to keep it hush-hush (without even knowing that you can and will capture the spirit of that murder victim for your own use) this . . . is never really remarked upon. Ever. And the thing is, it creates a sort of dissonance, because your character is treated as a hero in this game. No one seems horrified by you, there’s never any question of whether your existence is moral or not, nor any reason to think that your character would be amoral. In Hollow Knight, the Knights were created to be soulless husks who were there to be vessels for the Radiance / infection. Hornet in particular calls out your cursed existence and how she does not like you because of it. But although you can learn “emotes” from statues (which is teaching your character either actions or emotions, it’s unclear), no such deal is made here. So this aspect of the game is strange, even if I can at least appreciate that they tried to make their spirits a tiny bit different from Hollow Knight’s charms. Though with that said . . .

The Cons:

It’s one thing to be inspired by other games, but the sheer amount that this game cops from The Legend of Zelda and Hollow Knight is, at least to me, incredibly distracting. Just a handful of examples off the top of my head: — In Hollow Knight, you have a Shade that lingers where you last died and keeps all of your money from when you died. In Blue Fire, you have a spirit / soul (again, it’s unnamed) that lingers where you died and keeps all of your money from when you died. You have to retrieve them before you die again to get your money back. — In Hollow Knight, you have different circular charms that each have a different design, name, and grant you different abilities. You can only have a certain amount equipped at a time (though you can increase how many you can equip at once) and you can only equip them at save points. In Blue Fire you have different spirits that are contained in circles that each have a different design, name, and grant you different abilities. You can only have a certain amount equipped at a time (though you can increase how many you can equip at once) and you can only equip them at save points. — Everything I explained above about how the main character breaking out of a test tube at the beginning, surrounded by corpses just like them, felt like an echo of the Knight’s creation in Hollow Knight (but again, not as effective for reasons outlined above). — The default tunic has a hat that is exactly like Link’s from The Legend of Zelda. This is made even more obvious with the dyed green tunics. — The story segment detailing how the five gods created Penumbra was copped from how the golden goddesses created Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. To compare the dialogue: Ocarina of Time: “Din. With her flaming arms, cultivated the land and created the red earth.” Blue Fire: “Dina, God of Land. With her mighty body of stone, Dina carved mountains, deserts, and landforms in the earth.” It’s in the exact same cadence, to the point where I half expected the artifact they created at the end of the story to be the Triforce (instead it was called the Oath of Sarana). — In Hollow Knight, the titular Hollow Knight is housed inside the Temple of the Black Egg, and is in fact locked inside that Black Egg to seal the Radiance / infection. There are three locks on the egg, and each one will only be broken when one of the three Dreamers dies. You have to break all three locks to face him, a corrupted “final” boss. In Blue Fire, the corrupted queen is housed inside the Temple of the Gods. There are three locks on her door, and each one will only be broken when one of the three Shadow Lords dies. You have to break all three locks to face her, the corrupted final boss. — It’s implied that, especially in places like the Temple Gardens, that the humanoid enemies that attack you are not monsters, but are people who were once completely normal and even forces of good who were corrupted by the Shadow. This is exactly like how all of the enemies you face in Hollow Knight (with the exception of, say, Hornet) were also once normal bugs before they were turned into zombies by the infection. I could go on. The point is, it’s perfectly fine to be inspired by something. Hell, it would be hard to find an action/adventure game that wasn’t inspired by The Legend of Zelda at this point. But it’s one thing to be inspired by something, and another thing to completely rip-off your inspiration to the point where the similarities are distracting to your audience. And it’s not just me; when I was looking up the exact dialogue for the story of the gods from Blue Fire, I found others who were pointing out just how similar everything was to Hollow Knight in particular, including someone who, like me, realized that the Temple of the Gods was essentially the Temple of the Black Egg. When things are this blatant, it feels a whole lot less like inspiration and a whole lot more like plagiarism.

The Voids all have a star rating to indicate how difficult they are. These star ratings are completely meaningless. Granted, partly it’s because everyone is going to have different abilities and so it will be hard to create an overall difficulty scoring that will be accurate for every player, but it’s also telling when a four-star course is miles easier than a two-star course, which I found to be the case on more than one occasion due to level design that was, at times, kind of bullshit.

Although there are NPCs, there are none who are memorable or standout, despite the fact that most of Penumbra’s populace is (maybe?) still alive. Unlike in Hollow Knight, where there were characters like Elderbug, the Last Stag, Hornet, Quirrel, and so forth that were memorable and lovable, all of the NPCs in Blue Fire feel rather the same and are pretty easily forgettable.

The world itself is incredibly small. While the fact there are no maps makes this kind of a good thing, on the other hand it’s a bit disappointing that there are a total of two towns and then a few small connecting areas. It doesn’t really make it feel like the kingdom that it’s supposed to be.

On that note, why aren’t there maps? The fact that there is fast travel is really more of a necessity than mere convenience because there are no maps to help lead you around. If you put down the game for a while and then go back to it, you might not remember how to get to different areas in the game, and if you haven’t unlocked fast travel yet (since it is something you have to unlock) you’re going to be pretty much boned due to the lack of a feature that is in basically every other game.

Overall, while this is not a game I think I would ever go back to, it also isn’t one that I regretted purchasing and playing. It could definitely have been better, but it also could have been worse. My only hope is that the next game this studio makes is more original, rather than copying so much from other, more successful titles. (Or at the very least, that they study why certain things worked in more successful titles, instead of just copying at the surface level and calling it a day.)

#2021 game reviews #blue fire #blue fire game #have had this sitting in drafts forever #tbh probably could have added more but I just don't feel like opening this game again to refresh my memory #which probably says more than this whole review does tbh

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