#do i think i just fell out of a coconut tree? perhaps! but she’s also a zionist

[comraderoscoes]

hot take not hot take mild take even but i hate how the memefication of politicians always ends with people conveniently forgetting they’re a terrible person

[topazadine]

One day, perhaps while reading 9 Years Yearning, you may ask yourself ....

Who the Hell Is Cerie Korviridi and Why Am I Slowly Falling in Love with Her??

It's a good question, and one that suggests you have poor taste in women. Regardless, I'll give you a quick brief of who this awful chaos gremlin is.

Cerie Korviridi is a Bremish High Poet, meaning that she can use poetry to enact physical change in the world. For example, she might drop a coconut tree on someone because said person has trapped her good friend on a desert island to be eaten by dogs. Or maybe she'll just light something on fire, who knows.

A quick rule of thumb, though, is that if Cerie starts reciting High Poetry, something horrible is probably about to happen.

She is an Inculcated Poet, rather than one naturally blessed with the power (a Bestowed Poet). Cerie started studying High Poetry at age 8, after her parents were killed in a raid on the family farm. At age 21, she had her fingernails pulled out and the nail beds emblazoned with magical sigils to demonstrate her devotion to the goddess Poesy.

One can imagine that a woman who willingly lets someone torture her is ... a bit strange. She's intense, snarky, but also emotionally closed off. If you didn't know her well, you'd imagine her an absolute ice queen, and she is - but for a good reason.

This poor lass often feels like the entire world is on her bony little shoulders and frankly, she hates it. She'd much rather live a normal, chill life with her brother Uileac and brother-in-law Orrinir, where her most pressing issue is that Orrinir yelled at her for yet again putting a teacup on the end table without a coaster. And worrying about Uileac and Orrinir dying in battle. Pretty normal stuff for a woman whose country has been in conflict for centuries with a more technologically advanced country.

But alas, she chose this life for herself by agreeing to enter the High Poet Society training program when she suddenly found herself orphaned as a child. Damnit, girl, you should have had some foresight as an 8 year old.

Unlike most High Poets, Cerie does not live at her local meronym (essentially a monastery) in Goldnin, a suburb of Breme's capital. Instead, she lives at home with Uileac and Orrinir, who are both soldiers in the Bremish Army.

Well, she used to live there. Then some stuff happened. She met a horrible woman named Haniya and fell in love with her. The world was rearranged. She got some fancy titles. Attempted coups fucked her life up. Kingdoms were destroyed. That's for later, though.

Cerie is like a more irritable form of Bilbo, really. Of course she wants to help her country win the eternal war, but she wants to do that in a less ... active way. You know, enchanting weaponry with High Poetry so it never misses its mark? That kind of hands-off stuff.

So you're probably wondering now ....

Cerie sounds awful. Why would I fall in love with her?

The same reason Haniya did, really.

Cerie doesn't pretend to be anything she's not. She doesn't care about power, doesn't care about status, doesn't care about anything but the people she loves and the country she fights for. Uileac and Orrinir (and later Haniya) are her entire world; she'd destroy whole continents if they needed her help.

This girl is the kind of woman who would talk back to royalty because she has absolutely no interest in unwarranted authority. You have to earn her respect through action, not titles. But once you do earn her respect and love, she'll do damn near anything for you, even at personal cost.

Another reason that Cerie is lovable is because she's very pragmatic. She's the kind of woman you want around in an emergency situation because, as a High Poet, she is used to thinking of creative solutions for problems. That's her entire job: coming up with poetry that specifically matches a certain circumstance, because High Poetry can only be used once.

She has trained for years to draw from generations of canon and adapt it for a given situation, sometimes with just a few minutes to figure it out. While she's not a soldier and couldn't fight to save her life (nor is she very comfy having swords aimed at her), she is still an excellent resources during times of stress.

After a disaster, Cerie immediately gets to the basics: triage people, stabilize structures, get food and water. She does what needs to be done, no matter what it is, and leaves the breakdowns for later. This can be annoying sometimes, especially when other people are freaking out and she tells them to shut up and get to work, but it's also an invaluable asset.

That practicality is such a strength; she's not going to rush into danger right away or make the most catastrophic decisions under pressure, though sometimes her temper gets in the way and she pops off a vicious comment. Instead of flailing around, she thinks, considers, plans, and executes with ruthless efficiency.

In stories including her, you can expect that there will be no idiot plots, even if the idiot plot would be more dramatic and interesting. You will not be rolling her eyes and groaning about her bad decisions, which is something I personally hate in books. Of course, this doesn't always mean she makes the right choice, but her decisions are logical and, for the most part, well thought-out.

With so many terrible situations, sometimes the most practical option is best, even if it results in tragedy. You can rely on Cerie to make those choices, no matter the cost to herself. She justifies the sacrifice by knowing that she is part of a larger whole that will live on after she is gone. Her faith and loyalty make it possible for her to find peace even when it's painful and she feels she can't go on.

So, why should you love her? Because she tries her best.

[bcbdrums]

Sand, Snowmen, and Aloha Conversations

A belated entry into whitem's fanfic challenge, to write a Christmas story in the month of July. I took the concept a bit further... Enjoy!

Read on:  AO3     FFn

-----------------

Sand, Snowmen, and Aloha Conversations

Drakken hefted his bag higher on his shoulder, but it still caught on the too-narrow door as he fairly stumbled out of the airport shuttle and followed Shego to escape the crowd on the discomfitingly warm December evening. The heat further turned his stomach which had already been unsettled from the flight, the shuttle ride, and questionable snacks. He didn't need to look up to see Shego's knowing smirk as the seemingly hours-long debate regarding temperature came back to his mind.

-----------------

Earlier...

"If you'd only put some clothes on..." Drakken grumbled, though it was halfhearted at that moment.

Seated on the floor against the wall of the San Francisco airport and waiting for their delayed flight to arrive, Drakken was sure they were quite the spectacle in addition to being the only blue and green people in the place. Shego was already dressed for their Hawaiian vacation in shorts, tank top, and a thin over-shirt. He himself was dressed for the drizzly San Francisco weather, and that coupled with the air conditioning made the airport very cold.

He had been taunting Shego for hours about her chosen attire, but she had firmly teased him right back that he would be too hot when they reached their final destination. In the present however, she was too cold, so as his back was leaned against the wall with the great window above him, Shego was between his legs with her back leaned against his chest, his arms wrapped around her folded knees and her hands beneath his. He had refused to give up his jacket to her.

"You'll see when we get there. Besides. You can't tell me this isn't nice?"

Drakken rolled his eyes as her fingers laced between his. It would be nicer if they weren't on an airport floor, and people weren't giving them looks.

At that moment, the clerk announced their flight had arrived and the impatient passengers began lining up to board. Shego leaned her head back against Drakken's cheek when he made to move, and he paused.

"You still have time to change," she said with a smirk.

"And end up more blue from the cold?"

"It's actually 'bluer.'"

"Oh har har."

-----------------

Present

Drakken rolled his eyes when he arrived at Shego's side, ready for the teasing to continue, but she was focused elsewhere. He looked first at her face, his brow rising at her pleased and yet peaceful expression. Then he turned and set his eyes on the resort for the first time, and his jaw fell open in shock.

The first sight his eyes beheld was red, and then the warm shine of strings of colored lights. While lacking the familiar pines, firs, and other cold-weather trees that gave him the feeling of winter, the palms and other tropical trees had been decorated with strings of white lights wrapped around their trunks and colored lights strung between them. There were also large bushes lining the walk and one prominent one that had been shaped into a tree, all utterly covered in large red leaves, which Drakken realized with a sense of awe were poinsettias.

His concern that Christmas in Hawaii would be miserable started to melt away, but then his gaze fell upon a billboard lit with floodlights that made his stomach turn even more. The sign professed what he had been telling Shego for weeks was impossible, to "Enjoy Christmas in Hawaii!" but beneath the text were what he could only think of as atrocities: a very tanned Santa Claus sporting flowered swim trunks beneath his open robe, seated in a beach chair with a fruity drink in hand, flip-flops on his feet and sunglasses on his face. Next him stood a trimmer-than-typical Mrs. Claus wearing grass skirt, coconuts, and numerous leis and a hibiscus in her hair.

"Come on," Shego said happily, oblivious to his horror and disgust at the sight in front of him. Drakken watched for a moment as she strolled ahead of him, bag comfortably over her shoulder and her pony-tailed hair swaying behind her as she strode toward the resort in her perfectly weather-appropriate attire. Too many emotions were swirling through Drakken for him to even form a coherent thought, and he merely followed behind her as sweat began to pool at the back of his neck from the heat and humidity.

When they arrived at the lobby, Drakken felt a wave of relief at seeing a massive traditional Christmas tree, but a new disaster met his eyes and he suddenly felt he might lose control of his stomach. True, poinsettias were liberally placed in every direction he could see, but the blow-up snowmen wearing Hawaiian t-shirts, leis, and sunglasses ruined any winter-y aesthetic they may have given.

Drakken heard Shego give a choked gasp, but his closer look at the Christmas tree caused him to forget whatever must have startled her. While the tree was brightly lit and had numerous colored baubles of different sizes, everything else about it was distinctly Hawaiian. Instead of strings of cranberries or popcorn, it had massive flower garlands in white and yellow. He could hardly see the green of the tree for the other various tropical flowers that had been affixed to the branches, veritably concealing that the tree was an evergreen. And worse still was the decoration that topped the tree: Santa, this time without his robe, wearing a brown grass skirt with his round belly on display for the world to see. He still had his red fur hat, but wore no robe or shirt and had only the ukulele in his arms to provide any hint of modesty.

"Check-in is over here," Shego said in a rush, grabbing Drakken's arm and pulling him so hard he had to clamp his jaw together as the upset in his tummy lurched up his esophagus.

He lowered his gaze and went through the motions as Shego handled the majority of their check-in, focusing on keeping his stomach calm as his emotions still swirled undefinable within him. All he knew for sure was that he was too hot, felt like throwing up, and was certain that Christmas was ruined.

The walk to their suite was just as mind-twisting, with more poinsettias mixed in with distinctly Hawaiian decor, including miniature decorated palm trees, some distinctly fashioned to be shaped like evergreens. Once inside the room, Shego dropped her bag on one of the chairs and Drakken watched her seem to relax. What had gotten her tense?

"I'm thinking room service tonight?" Shego said cheerfully as she pulled off her scrunchie and shook out her hair.

Drakken looked at the poinsettia plant on the table and the Christmas...palm in the corner. He stepped further into the room after Shego, letting his bag slide off his arm to the floor as he saw a new atrocity in the form of a decorative sculpture on the nightstand next to the bed: Santa again, in Hawaiian attire, seated in an outrigger canoe pulled by dolphins through crashing waves.

"Shego."

"Hn?" She turned and regarded him, pausing in the middle of re-tying her hair.

"I want to go home."

Shego's eyes narrowed and she frowned, looking almost hurt for a moment before her expression hardened.

"We're not talking about this again," Shego answered, turning away and grabbing the TV remote. "You probably stink under all those layers, so get out of those clothes and take a shower. I'm going to look at the surfing forecast."

Drakken watched as Shego sat on the foot of the bed and crossed her legs, swinging her foot back and forth as she leaned back on her hand and started flipping channels.

The conversation clearly over, Drakken grumbled as he went through the motions of yanking off his jacket and fumbling through his carry-on bag for his toiletries. He was about to protest that he didn't have enough of his luggage to shower, but at that moment a knock at the door heralded a courier with the rest of their things. And so it was about ten minutes later that found Drakken in the opulent shower under the most luxurious stream of water he'd ever experienced, and unable to enjoy it.

He had agreed to Christmas in Hawaii because, as Shego had pointed out, they had never taken a vacation just for the two of them, and they had almost spent an inordinate amount of time in freezing climates due to both his preferences and world-takeover schemes. His argument that they had a lair in the Caribbean was brushed off, since truthfully, she was never out enjoying that beach. And the rocky outcroppings mixed with rough sand weren't really anything that could be enjoyed, anyway.

Drakken hadn't worried too much initially about his favorite holiday being spent away from the snow, until Shego had started discussing all of the tropical traditions she wanted them to partake in. Luaus, surfing, and learning to hula were not among the things he wanted to do while celebrating Christmas. And this new revelation that the islanders seemed content to mock everything about the holiday made it all the worse.

The shower settled Drakken's stomach, but not his mind. He spent most of the time preparing what he felt was a logical argument for returning home, or perhaps going to a mountain retreat for vacation. Cocoa-moo in front of a cozy fire enticed him at least, and he was more than willing to compromise and give her a tropical vacation even if it wasn't his cup of tea...as long as it wasn't during Christmas.

When he emerged from the bathroom, clad in his pajamas, he opened his mouth ready to begin his speech, but Shego's behavior took him aback. She had startled at the sound of the door opening, and was hurriedly changing the channel on the TV. Drakken glanced at the screen to see a weather report playing in the split second before she turned the device off entirely, dropping the remote on the bed and raking her fingers back through her hair.

What was wrong with her?

"How's the shower?" she asked in a rush, nearly fumbling on the words.

"...It's nice. Shego—"

"Good, I'm going to take one and you look here at these."

Shego had rolled back and grabbed a small stack of magazines and brochures from the nightstand next to the bed, and stood up and thrust them in his hands. Drakken looked down to see that the magazines were clearly useless advertisements, but there was also a brochure about sights to see and events they could partake in, and a special one due to the holiday.

"I want to go surfing first thing in the morning, but we should work out a schedule for the rest of the day."

Drakken blinked in confusion between the periodicals in his hands and Shego, who still looked nervous as she moved to her suitcase to take out the things she would need for a shower. He sat down on the bed with a grimace and pushed aside the holiday brochure in favor of a laminated one that looked like it always sat on the room's nightstand and only occasionally had fingerprints wiped off of it. The first page explained the tradition of the Luau, and so he narrowed his eyes and began to read it.

The brochure was extremely detailed, and so intrigued was he by the tradition of cooking a pig underground, that he hadn't even realized Shego had vanished into the shower until he lifted his eyes to ask her a question. He listened for a few moments to the sound of running water through the walls, and then looked down again. In his peripheral vision he glimpsed the holiday brochure, which was embossed with a swim-trunks clad Santa, this time surfing in a canoe over rough waves as the dolphins pulled him toward the islands. Drakken felt a swirl in his stomach and didn't even open it to see what the "special event" on the beach was the next day.

He set all the magazines and brochures back on the nightstand as the weighty thought of Christmas being ruined settled over his mind again. But for Shego's sake...he would have to try. She was clearly set on staying.

He looked for the TV remote in hopes of watching something mindless for distraction, but it wasn't on the bed where he'd seen Shego drop it, nor was it on the TV stand.

A search that took too long and ended in frustration revealed it wasn't on any other surface in the room either, nor under the bed. Drakken was scowling in mystified annoyance when as a last resort he yanked open one of the dresser drawers and then stared blankly at the remote sitting on the wood inside the otherwise empty space.

"Why would she put it in there?" Drakken said to himself as he debated giving up on it at that point and just going to sleep. But he decided to try seeing what was on anyway.

He sat back against the pillows and turned the TV on and after a quick glance at the news station she'd left it on, he flipped the channel. What he saw then caused him to lurch forward, startled. For just a split second, he could have sworn he saw the familiar green, red, and white ending title card of Snowman Hank and heard the final chord of the guitar. But the image changed to a commercial for chocolates instantly with a new jingle to displace whatever else might have logged in his mind.

The bathroom door opened, and Drakken turned with the intent to question Shego about the hiding of the remote and the possible programming on TV that night. But his words failed him when he saw her.

She had donned a nightgown he had never seen before, deeply cut in the front in a V and asymmetrical from her hip down to mid-thigh on the other side. The fabric was iridescent, shining dark blue and teal as she walked, and it was also translucent, revealing she'd chosen to wear nothing else beneath. Her hair was fluffed behind her as she'd chosen not to wash it.

"I think we're due for a little...relaxation, before bed," she cooed with a smirk. Drakken continued to stare at her, from her face clear of all makeup and showing her natural beauty, to the natural beauty of the rest of her highlighted by the nightgown.

Before he knew it, he was blinking back again at the TV commercial as Shego had slid behind him on the bed, her body pressed against his back as she began to gently massage his temples.

"Oooh..." was the sound that came out of him, and he almost blindly turned the TV off and tossed the remote before reaching back to set his hands on Shego's knees and begin slowly rubbing his hands up and down the smooth skin.

Shego shifted to set her legs alongside both of his, giving him access to more of her as her hands also traveled down to his shoulders. Everything else forgotten with the warmth of his wife pressed against him, Drakken felt a rush as he turned around to hasten her intentions for the evening. She hummed in delight and slid down as his lips met hers powerfully and he knelt above her, the world forgotten.

"I think..." Shego said breathlessly, "we should continue this in bed."

Drakken chortled and made to get off of her, but as he turned his head he came face to face with the figurine of Santa Claus in the outrigger canoe, pulled by dolphins over the waves, the bearded man's painted eyes looking right back at his with mirth.

"Drakken? Drakken? Uh, getting into bed? Drakken?"

"I...I can't."

"What?" Shego said in annoyed confusion.

"I can't with...that thing looking at me."

Shego groaned. "Drakken..."

"And that...thing over there," he said and gestured to the decorated palm tree. "None of these things are Christmas."

"Dr. D...." Shego whined as Drakken sat up fully and moved to the other side of the bed.

"It's my favorite holiday, Shego. I don't mind enduring this...tropical exile, but can't we do it any other time of year?"

He cast a scowl at the tree in the corner once more before looking back to Shego, and he recoiled at the look on her face. She looked near to tears, but the anger in her eyes was fighting for dominance. He realized suddenly he might have gravely miscalculated, but Shego didn't give him a chance to reconsider his words.

She threw back the blankets on her side of the bed and crawled beneath the covers, turning out the light with so much force Drakken was surprised she didn't break the switch. He blinked at her form in the dark as she shifted around repeatedly to try to get comfortable, finally settling on her side.

"Tomorrow morning we're going surfing," was her only response through the dark, her voice muffled by the blankets.

Drakken watched the too-quick rise and fall of her shoulder as she breathed. After several moments of indecision, he finally sighed and crawled beneath the blankets himself. He would give her her tropical vacation... But forever after, Christmas would be done his way.

-----------------

A good night's sleep, thankfully, had helped with the start of a new day. Drakken still felt his favorite holiday was a loss for the year, but worse was the idea of an upset Shego for days or even longer. So he kept his mourning about Christmas to himself and instead greeted her that morning with his best smile as soon as he felt her shift in the beginnings of wakefulness.

Shego was surprised, blinking blearily up at him as he imposed above her, but her hands instinctively and sleepily gripped the fabric of at his shoulders.

"Merry Christmas Eve," Drakken said, before continuing the greeting with a kiss.

To his relief and joy, Shego responded, and from there they picked up where he'd forced them to leave off the night before.

Later, after the joint shower Shego insisted on—for time, was the excuse—and then a quick continental breakfast, they were back in their room with Shego hurrying him to dress for the surfing.

"Are you sure I won't need a wetsuit?" Drakken asked.

Shego's groaned reply told him he'd asked that question too many times since leaving the lair.

"The water is warm... And the waves aren't that choppy, even you should be able to handle them."

"Need I remind you that I have achieved many a death-defying stunt, a number of them at your side."

"And I'm not going to be babysitting you to make sure you don't drown or get eaten by sharks while you—"

Shego stopped short as Drakken held up his swim trunks in front of him with a smile.

"Where...did you get...those?" Shego asked slowly, her eyes wide and her expression incredulous.

"On ePier," Drakken said with a half-grin, admiring his one-of-a-kind Snowman Hank swim trunks.

"Wait...wait is that what you were freaking out over that one time?"

Drakken glanced away guiltily, and Shego continued.

"When you were going to spend half the funds for our new plan on something but I stopped you and you lost the bidding and had a tantrum?"

Drakken huffed as he changed into the swim attire. "Thanks to you I had to hack the website..."

"For...those?"

Drakken looked up to see her expression had changed from one of shock and annoyance to one of amusement.

"What?" he asked, his eyes narrowing.

"They're so...so..."

Drakken glanced down.

"Old fashioned," Shego finished with a choked sound, holding back laughter.

The swim trunks were shorter than the modern styles he'd seen in Shego's magazines, and the material was different as well. The design had Hank's face directly in the front, his red nose centered and handlebar mustache leading to where the shorts split in the middle for his legs. The rest of the design was a teal backdrop with falling snow. Truthfully, Drakken wished the beloved character hadn't been split in the design, but they were the only adult Snowman Hank swim trunks ever made.

"Probably for the best he never had the carrot nose."

"What?" Drakken said, looking up.

Shego blinked at him and then shook her head. "Never-mind... Don't forget sunscreen. We'll be more likely to burn when we're on the water."

Drakken checked that they had everything they would need in the large beach bag as Shego changed, distracted from his task by stealing several glances at her as she changed into a new suit—black and patterned over with teal tropical leaves and red and pink flowers, all of which set off her skin tone beautifully.

"Got everything?" Shego asked as she pushed her sunglasses onto her face.

"Mm-hm," Drakken said automatically, still staring as Shego slipped a wrap on over her suit and dropped a straw hat onto her head.

"Then let's go."

Drakken tried to focus on Shego's surfing instructions as they walked the halls, keeping his eyes on either her or the floor as to avoid seeing the abominable decor that was a sad mimic of his favorite holiday. Poinsettias were ruined for him forever, not that he had ever liked them much to begin with, and he was struggling not to now view Christmas trees and lights as mere commercial trappings as opposed to the joyful memory-inducing traditions he had grown up with and cherished all his life.

They exited the hotel and continued the short distance to the beach, where Drakken noted with mild interest a stage had been set up for a concert later, and there were a few tents and a massive blow-up snowman at least twenty-five feet high that he could only see the back of from that angle. Drakken tried not to cringe and hoped there wasn't too much more non-traditional holiday decor to distract him from trying to make Shego happy on her desired vacation.

They walked amid a crowd towards a surprising number of vendors' tents and where the surfboard rental was located. But when they arrived finally on the beach and could fully view everything, they both stopped short. Shego recoiled with a cringe of disgust, while Drakken's eyes widened and his face bloomed into a smile of unbridled joy.

The giant blow-up snowman was in fact...Snowman Hank. A quick glance around showed that many of the vendors were selling Snowman Hank merchandise, some of which was new that Drakken had never seen before, while another tent had a sign that clearly said "vintage." The banner above the stage read "Hank-a-palooza" and Drakken realized that a number of tourists were wearing Snowman Hank t-shirts, had Snowman Hank inflatables, and were carrying a variety of other merchandise. In the two nearest tents they saw small TVs playing the beloved movie.

"I..."

"Why...?"

Neither of the couple had a chance to further their thoughts, as a passing man suddenly noticed Drakken's swim trunks and approached him.

"Dude! Which tent did you get those at? The vintage shop said they haven't seen those in years!"

"I...bought them on ePier," Drakken answered haltingly.

"Aw man... I won a pair there once, but somehow after the bidding had closed someone else snuck in a higher one. Must have been last second."

Drakken swallowed and gave a nervous smile.

"Well, see you at the show tonight!"

"Wait," Shego interjected, and Drakken thought her voice sounded a bit hoarse, "what show tonight?"

"You mean you don't know?" the man answered incredulously. "It's Hank-a-palooza! Oh you're tourists, huh..."

Drakken nodded, looking past the man at a person in a Snowman Hank costume that must have been absurdly hot in the heat and humidity on the beach, standing next to a snow-cone stand and delivering the product to eager children.

"Yeah we do this every year, man! At first it was small, sort of a cult gathering thing according to everyone else around. But after the show stopped airing on Christmas Eve...it exploded! And it got even bigger once we got permission to air the show on local networks."

Drakken thought to the night before and Shego's hiding of the remote. He glanced at her, his brow raised in question. She hurriedly looked away and began fidgeting with her hair.

"Tonight the Rocky Mountain Boys are playing all the songs from the movie, and after the concert we'll have a midnight screening on the beach!"

Drakken felt a fresh bubble of joy rise up inside of him and he grabbed Shego's arm in glee as his feet began dancing in excitement.

"Like a drive-in?"

"Yeah, but just laid out on the beach man! Best of both worlds!"

"Ohhhh will they serve cocoa-moo and peanut butter stickies?"

"Dude," the man scoffed, "we can't watch Snowman Hank without his signature Christmas treats!"

"Ohhh goody! Shego! Christmas is saved after all!"

Shego pulled against Drakken's hold on her arm slightly, and though she wore sunglasses he could see the barely concealed grimace on her face. But her look couldn't burst his bubble of happiness as he considered that he'd still get to have one of his most important traditions, and in a bigger way than ever before. The only way it could be better is if they would be curled in front of a fireplace on a snowy evening.

"...Yeah," she finally said, drawing out the word. Drakken felt the first twinge of worry as she used her free hand to pry at his fingers on her arm. He released her then and stared at her hidden eyes in concern. "Right now we're going surfing, so," she turned a fake smile to the man who had joined them, "thank you so much!"

And with that, she grabbed Drakken's elbow and dragged him in the direction of the surf board rentals.

As they walked there were a number of comments and call-outs from passers-by about Drakken's vintage swim trunks, and he acknowledged them enthusiastically. But it seemed that Shego's grip became tighter each time. Drakken couldn't feel too concerned though at seeing more Snowman Hank decor and memorabilia than he'd ever dreamed. They passed tents with speakers playing his favorite songs, and it lifted him back into the holiday joy he had feared lost on the vacation. He felt hope for the first time that perhaps he could do both—give Shego the vacation she wanted, and still enjoy Christmas.

When they reached the surfboard rental stand, Shego finally let go of his arm.

"You didn't put on sunscreen yet, did you," she said with an edge, beginning to fumble in their bag.

"No... But, Shego! We can still enjoy Christmas!"

She turned toward him suddenly, lowering her sunglasses and revealing the fire in her eyes.

"We are not lying on the beach tonight and watching a singing snowman on a giant screen. I was trying to get away from all of that!"

Drakken recoiled, all of the warmth inside him fading to something chilled even as the sun continued to heat his skin.

"You...? You don't like Chri—"

"Come on, it's our turn," Shego cut him off and strode past him to the stand, her sunglasses hiding her eyes again.

-----------------

Throughout the day of surfing, hula lessons, and partaking of tropical meals including something disgusting called poi, Drakken found he missed the previous day when he had only been cringing over the island's defiling of his favorite holiday and mourning the loss of his favorite traditions for the year. Now it was worse, with the fear that Shego loathed his favorite holiday.

He had spent the day putting on a brave face, both to make Shego happy and also in hopes of bargaining for Snowman Hank that night. Some of the island activities had even been fun. He didn't know yet what she had planned for Christmas day, except the traditional exchange of gifts and a Luau for dinner in the evening. Since he had been going along with all of her whims, he didn't think the one night of watching his favorite movie was too much to ask for. He just needed the opportunity to bring it up. And perhaps find out why she didn't like Christmas, too.

The sun was already setting, it being winter, and the air was a little less humid. He suggested a walk along the beach, and Shego, who had been in good humor since their surfing that morning, readily agreed.

With clouds layered across the sky, the sun was well-hidden and shades of violet directly above morphed down into reds, pinks, and finally gold at the horizon. The light they walked in the slow-rolling surf was already fairly dim, and Drakken allowed himself to forget about his concerns as he simply enjoyed the feel of his wife's hand in his and her warmth at his side.

This feeling only grew when Shego drew near to him and set her head on his shoulder, her arm moving to wrap around his waist. He matched the gesture and was glad they had found a secluded area, hidden by trees and some volcanic rock as Shego stepped up on her toes to kiss him.

"Mmmh, sit with me," she said softly when their lips parted, and before Drakken knew it, she was drawing him down into the break of the waves on the sand. He didn't mind, as they had just finished another round of surfing until the light grew too dim, and he drew her close as she settled between his legs, knees drawn up to her chest in a position reminiscent of that at the airport the morning prior. He set his legs beside hers and wrapped his arms around her, and she nestled back against him.

Drakken took a deep breath.

"Shego?" he asked as a wave broke over their feet and dampened the bottom of their suits where they sat in the sand. "Why don't you like Christmas?"

Shego stiffened slightly in his embrace, but after a moment she relaxed. Her hair was draped back over Drakken's shoulder and it tickled his arm where the breeze blew it. She leaned back to glance up at him slightly, and then looked back out at the waves slowly rolling up the beach.

"It's not that I don't like it," she replied with a sigh. "It's more...I've had enough."

"Had enough?" Drakken pressed, unsure what she meant. They had never gone as overboard as he wanted to during villainy out of necessity. One year in fact he had even forgone almost everything for the sake of a world domination plan, so he wasn't sure how to interpret her words.

"Yeah. It's all too commercial. I'm not even sure why you enjoy..." Shego gestured idly as if to the array of decor he would have liked to put up, "all of it. And..." she said through a breath, "I'm not sure how to...how to do all those things, either."

Drakken furrowed his brow in thought. "Don't know how to do it?"

"You know how my family grew up. And then after the comet, everything was different... We didn't do these...big extravaganzas that you like. And I'm sorry Dr. D., but it all just feels fake anyway."

Drakken thought again, and as he was about to reply Shego drew another breath.

"The cheap little holiday things my family did were enough anyway. Christmas wasn't about all the lights and traditions, it was about...being with each other."

The last was nearly mumbled, and Drakken wondered what sad memories of the past she had drug up to be able to answer him honestly. He watched the slow roll of another wave across the sand as he held her closer, drawing a breath through his nose before giving his own response.

"That's a lot of why I enjoy the traditions."

"What?" Shego asked, looking up at him.

"Because they were things I used to...do with my family. With my mother. And...sometimes I think I remember putting strings of popcorn around a tree as my father held me up... But I might be imagining that."

Shego shifted a little to see him better, her eyes encouraging him to continue.

"I think it's...the memories everything carries," he concluded, meeting her eyes, his brow twisting upward as he hoped for her understanding. Shego met his gaze with wide eyes for a moment before she looked down with a grimace.

"You really wanna go to that thing tonight," she said with a scoff.

Drakken blinked, the hope falling to worry. "Please, Shego?"

He watched as her look gradually seemed to soften then, her eyes alive as they clearly raced over something she was processing. Finally, she turned to look up at him.

"Just this—"

"Oh, thank you Shego!" he said, giving her a squeeze and mushing her face against his jaw.

"Just this one thing, though," she finished, her voice a bit muffled.

Drakken nodded, her damp hair rubbing against his cheek. Things wouldn't be the same or the way his heart wanted, but at least he could still have Snowman Hank...and bigger and better than ever before.

-----------------

Shego leaned back on her sun lounger, watching Drakken. He was swaying in a line of other people, his arms around them and theirs around him as the final song of the concert was played from the stage and everyone sang along loudly with them. After that there would be a short break before the movie would begin, and Shego had taken the opportunity to get in line for hot chocolate and snacks before the rush, and so was already settled and waiting for the raucous event to end.

She glanced at Drakken occasionally in the minutes following the wild applause as he happily chatted with fellow fans of the cartoon snowman, but it wasn't too long before they all went back to their own groups, or joined the massive crowd now seeking refreshment. Shego was looking up at the lights strung between trees when she finally heard Drakken's feet running toward her.

"You're going to kick a bunch of sand up here!" she protested, sitting up quickly in the dark.

"Shego! If we don't hurry they'll run out of—"

Shego's holding up of the cups of hot chocolate stopped him, and she watched him study the beverages in her hands and then the plate of peanut butter stickies on the blanket next to her, along with some other treats she had procured that she would enjoy.

"Is that mango?" Drakken asked as he sat down in his own chair and settled in across from her.

"Yes," she said, handing him his cup.

"That's not really in the spirit of the season," Drakken protested mildly.

Shego gave him a look. "In case you forgot, I'm not really in the spirit of the season."

Drakken's face fell slightly, and Shego mentally kicked herself. She thought back over the day, and how he had gone along with everything she wanted to do without complaint.

It was true she didn't like cartoons. Especially ones with singing animals and anthropomorphized objects. It was an interest she simply couldn't share with Drakken. And she had been rather bothered herself by the non-traditional decor, both for the fact that she had been trying to escape commercial trappings, and also that everything she considered 'Christmas' had a strange different spin to it that made her feel even more out of place.

All she had wanted for the holiday was the beach, and him.

"Tomorrow night is your Luau," Drakken said, breaking through her thoughts. His voice was slightly unsteady. "I'm curious about this cooking a pig underground... But I don't want to try poi again."

Drakken grimaced at the thought apparently as he picked up a peanut butter sticky and took a bite. His face cleared then as he smiled, but Shego still saw hints of worry creasing his forehead. She thought again to everything he had done for her that day, to give her the Christmas she had wanted.

"But first, we have the morning," she said carefully, drawing his attention. "We can have room service bring us...whatever we want for breakfast, and I have some gifts to put under the tree for you. Even if it is the wrong kind of tree."

Shego watched as Drakken hesitated to respond, his eyes revealing his uncertainty over her gesture.

"It would be nice if it were a morning like this one was, too," she said, standing up suddenly to squeeze into his chair next to him.

Drakken's face flushed, and he only responded by looking at her curiously as he swallowed down the treat with a drink of hot chocolate.

Shego let her gaze fall for a moment. "Sorry...if I ruined your Christmas."

Drakken set his cup down and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to lay across his chest.

"You didn't," he said with a warm smile.

Shego could taste the chocolate on his lips when he kissed her, and the warmth that bloomed in her chest was not from the hot beverage they had partaken in. She wanted to take the moment further, but Drakken broke away suddenly and she watched his eyes lift and his face brighten with joy.

"It's starting!" he said with glee, giving her a squeeze. Every hint of disappointment or uncertainty was gone from his face as he looked at the large, colorful titles being projected across the giant screen strung up between palm trees. Shego couldn't help herself but to chuckle. She had chosen this man, after all.

"Oh, Shego, could you hand me my cocoa-moo?"

Shego reached down to the blanket and carefully passed him his beverage and then moved the plate of snacks to rest on his thigh where they could both reach them. She took a sip of her own drink before nestling down against his shoulder, the strains of the song that was becoming familiar finally registering in her ears.

"'It's not the turkey and the stuffing, nor the gifts around the tree,'" Drakken began quoting along with the opening theme. "'It's a warm and fuzzy feeling, that begins with you...?'"

He stopped and looked down to Shego, his brow raised. The dialogue of the movie had continued on—something about putting away petty problems—as he stared into her eyes with nothing but love. She felt the warmth in her chest again and returned his look as she leaned up to kiss him, her lips brushing his as she completed the spoken lyric.

"'And me.'"

[johndaltcn]

WANTED IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK: TAYLOR DANVERS or A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MISSING HER.

Drowning. John could think of worse ways to die. A car accident where you hurl out of the windshield like a ragdoll, some form of cancer, being beaten to death, a gas leak, poison. The list was seemingly endless. John could have conjured new ideas with each breath, with each turn of his head, which each greeting. He’d be sitting opposite a middle-aged man with a greying beard and a beer belly who needed a new motor for his boat and, suddenly, dying of old age alone in your bedroom. Though, there was still drowning in the ocean. Perhaps he would have eventually given up the good fight when he was out there for too long. He’d wade into the eerie quiet of the sea. On days where the list feels useless, he imagines Taylor doing just that. A product of her surroundings, growing gills and a tail like they do in the movies. She’d be blue but shiny like a wet marble. Her arms would be spread and she’d be smiling up at the blue, blue sky and quietly go the way the world wanted. The way she wanted.

Waves. An interruption to a dream about a man stranded on an island. John stirs under his duvet, light from his window peeking through the heavy fabric of his curtains. The man eats a coconut with one hand and draws shapes in the sand with another. First, he draws a circle and then turns it into a smiley face. Next came a hard penis and then an ocean wave. A lonely, makeshift masterpiece.

As the sun comes up, the room becomes brighter, earning the sun to rise in his dreamscape. It looms just along the horizon, casting a glimmer of white and pale blue across the darkened sea. The edges look transparent paired with the white foam that laps against the sand. His toes dig hastily into the warmth there before the cool of the ocean comes running up his hairy ankles.

This was a nice dream. For now. A miracle. The man wanders around with a smile. He is alone but he is satisfied. No burdens have followed him to his little island. He may starve one day and become a mummy in the sand. Rich people in need of normalcy will arrive one day and find his skeleton perched against a palm tree. Inside his hands will hold a now withered, torn note that says I loved it here.

Dying alone stranded on an island. A piece of John’s brain leaves a reminder to write that down on his list of ways to die.

The man wakes once again after another island sleep, stretching his limbs with a hearty groan. The sun comes up just the same. Glimmering, warm. Today, there was a grey cloud somewhere in the East. Light eyes look to it with confusion. How dare the weather interrupt his state of mind. His shoulders frump like a disturbed toddler, padding across the sand and into the wild jungle where the leaves hung low and sweat became his best friend.

He walks and walks. He’s not sure why. Perhaps he was looking for an answer or someone to scold. The weather was sickeningly humid, the kind that makes every inch of you damp and slick. John could smell his own skin in his sleep. His own sweat too.

The man follows a path down a long line of dirt and sand. He reaches the other end of the island which is much more bleak. The clouds hang low and are a muggy shade of black and grey. The ocean is almost green like moss. It doesn’t lick the shore like the other end. No, it clings to it. It’s thickened over time, probably from oil and other grimes that he couldn’t name in this moment. To his right, he hears a strange sound. A wet but also dry sound that makes the hairs on his arms prick and rise. He looks, there’s a fish. It’s dying, moving around, and gasping for air. His throat tightens. Is it food or a test? He looks to the sky for an answer, perhaps from God, but it only darkens. He was very hungry and a nice, dying fish over a fire sounded like a blessing. But, by some impulse, he scoops the slimy thing up in his shaky hands and goes running through the thick jungle once more. He scrapes his arms and legs on branches as he runs and runs. The beat of his own heart becomes loud like a speaker on high. His breathing is jagged and he begins to squeak with each breath.

Once his slice of heaven comes into view once more, he dashes to the water. His perfect water with all the blues and whites. When he’s close enough, he places the squirming fish into the water. It flops around uselessly. John thinks he might have been dreaming about the stupidest fish in history. It flies right out of the water and onto the sand again.

Did this damn thing wish to die?

With that, he scoops it up again and basically tosses it into the water. “I’m trying to save you!” He yells though his words come out muffled. It sounded like his throat had been piled to the brim with cotton balls.

Then he turns, only to find that the shore had been covered in dead fish. Most of them squirmed and jumped along the sand, bouncing off one another helplessly. The sound was atrocious, like someone chewing loudly in his ear or rubbing their thighs against a wet sheet of marble.

It grows louder, the sound of dead fish and now gawking seagulls falling from the sky. They were hungry for fish but are too ambitious in their endeavor to feed. They crash land to the island and accompany the still dying fish. They’re dying now too. The sound becomes louder and louder and louder. The waves sound like nails brushing together. Rusty ones that have been since forgotten inside someone’s garage.

The man covers his ears and screams. He screams his cotton ball scream and wishes to go home to the mainland. There’s a rotted human hand poking out of the sand just at his feet before John wakes up, gasping for air.

Like in the movies, he hoists himself out of his bed upon waking up. His sweaty back presses carefully into the headboard once he comes to. He was alive, awake, and dry. Well, almost. A hand reaches up brush strands of hair that stick to his forehead. John swallows hard, breathing heavily for a few moments. Mostly to collect himself. It was often that he had nightmares like this. Though they were all different in certain ways, they did all have one thing in common. Water. Sea. John has come to accept that this was the price he had to pay for knowing and missing Taylor Danvers. It might have been the price of loving her too.

The covers are thrown from his body then, draping down and across his bed. The bottoms of his feet move to touch the cold hardwood of his bedroom which grounds him. You’re alive, John. Light that pokes from behind his curtains moves across the floor, creating a line from the window and to under his bed where most of Taylor’s things were stored. He could have easily stuffed them in a box within the back of his closet but something about that made John uneasy. Embarrassed, even. To him, it seemed like such a cliché and John was already coasting the line of borderline cliché these days. The nightmares were enough.

Once the sleep was rubbed from his eyes, John heads to his kitchen to make himself some coffee. He checks the digital clock above his stove. The bright green numbers read 8:12AM. 

At least it was early. At least he hasn’t become like his father, waking up late in the afternoon and still drunk from the evening before. The smell of coffee begins to envelop his home as he opens the creaky cabinet above his head in search of a mug. He plucks one with a decorative J on the front, a lackluster birthday gift his mother had sent him one year. She was a month early but he appreciated the sentiment regardless. Sometimes anything was better than nothing from Jennifer Dalton.

While he continues to wait for the pot to brew, he pictures Taylor dancing around the kitchen in her underwear. She did that almost every day, making a mess in the kitchen as she attempted to make both pancakes and scrambled eggs at the same time. How she made a mess of something so simple, John would never know, but he had always found that endearing. Her dark, smooth hair was always thrown up in a bun at the top of her small head. Her eyes were wide and muddy brown like a cartoon lamb. She would kiss his cheek and say he looked “positively handsome” each morning and then slide him a steaming cup with his beverage of choice.

The memory makes him purse his lips into a tight line as he picks up the pot and pours the coffee into his mug. Though he can never quite combat his thoughts. A specific memory comes to mind as he moves to sit at the marble island in his kitchen.

....

Rain tapped along the large windows inside his living room. His home is Dallas was large but comfortable, something out of an interior design magazine you’d find in a doctor’s office. Taylor had been reading a book, cuddled underneath an old blanket of John’s. Taylor made a habit of staying the night after a while and John didn’t mind. He enjoyed her company. He had slid beside her, removing the book from her lap and placing it carefully on the coffee table. A wide, beaming smile graced her expression in no time. She ran her fingers through his dark beard. John had started to ask about her family. He thought maybe they could spend a Christmas or a Thanksgiving with them sometime. At the mention of family, Taylor’s expression fell. He knew that look, it was always the look she sported when something or someone made her uncomfortable. 

“My family is disgusting,” She said through gritted teeth, scanning John’s expression as if he should have known that much. He only shook his head, feeling guilty. “Oh,” Is what he started with, a little lost for words. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

Taylor then went on about how her sister was a backstabbing bitch and that her mother was a liar and her father just the same. Apparently they had disowned her, cast her out like some unwanted puppy. The idea not only confused John but also baffled him. She was so intelligent, so willing, so creative. He couldn’t imagine what had happened to make something like this happen. To make her family dislike her with such vigor. 

“Well, what happened?” John asked then, head canting to the side. He had to know. By then, John had told her everything. About her mother and her bloated lips, injected hips, and much younger boyfriends. His father and his proclivity for drinking himself into a haze. And, then, his sister, a Jennifer Dalton wannabe with manicured fingernails and a voice that sounded so feminine and so grainy that it made you want to rip your ears right from your head. 

That’s when Taylor’s own brows knit together, a look of anger flashing across her face like a stroke of lightning. Had he said something wrong? Was he not meant to ask? John can vividly remember the feeling of panic that had washed over him in an instant. He could still feel it now like he was reliving the moment. 

She had grabbed his arm. Tight. Her much smaller fingers left a reddened imprint on his skin there. “Do not ask me about my family. Ever. I’m here with you now, John,” She cooed, releasing his arm then to stroke the sides of his face, “Nothing else matters but me and you. I want to forget them.”

At the time, that seemed fair enough. John had done so much to forget his own family, as well, especially once he moved away and his parents got divorced. Who was he to judge her or her reaction? He’d learn more about her past eventually. Someday. Perhaps this was how love worked. You had to fight for it and you had to deal with the pretty and all the ugly too. He remembers reading that somewhere. But he also might have heard it come from Jennifer’s mouth.

....

Back to the present, back to reality. Looking back, he should have known. Even then. The truth of the situation was that Taylor’s family had endlessly tried to have her arrested. For many things, actually. Theft, stalking, assault, battery, and more. She had once broken a Coke bottle and threatened to stab her sister and her boyfriend with it before running off to wherever it is she went. She always did that, apparently. Ran away, even as a child. After her death, John had taken a detour to Long Island, where she was from. It was a brief visit though her family was willing to tell John just what he needed to know. 

Taylor was troubled, unsettling, and not the greatest person in the world. Not by a long shot. She stole and mostly survived, never really living. Apparently, they had a grandmother like this too who died of something that John can’t remember. All he remembers is something about alcohol being involved.

Meeting Taylor’s family, for some reason, made it easier to make up scenarios or reasons why. To this day, he does regret seeking out the truth. He wished he would have let it remain a mystery, an unknown woman coming into his life who made him fall in love but then died in the process. That sounded much better than discovering that Taylor Danvers was an unstable woman who had no true moral compass. 

But, she was exactly that. As time went on, John began to see her as a lonely woman rather than a bad one. He started to look for excuses that, soon enough, formed into a ball of guilt. Perhaps she was depressed, maybe her family wasn’t telling the truth, maybe she needed a friend, maybe she lied about stalking, maybe something happened to her when she was young, maybe this, maybe that, maybe anything.

An alarm sounding through John’s home rips him from his thoughts. He sets his mug down and races back to the kitchen. He doesn’t know when he wandered into his living room. This usually happened when John’s thoughts went too deep, when he spiraled. A pan of scrambled eggs were burning on the stove. John didn’t even remember putting them up. With a shaky hand, he shuts off the stove and tosses the pan into the sink, running it under cold water. He grabs a dishtowel and fans the place and then his smoke alarm until it stops beeping.

Burning to death in a housefire. He mentally writes that down, adding it to his long list of excuses.

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

Overboard

A commission for @princessbatteringram from @agentkatie! Here’s a surprise with Lottie Hawke and Isabela! 

Varric made it clear: the ship was ready to sail. Lottie wasn’t. Neither was Isabela. But Varric also made it clear that if Lottie didn’t get up from her spot, the boat would sail away without her. She was half sure he was joking. That however, would all depend on Isabela.

“Done yet?” Lottie asked.

Isabela toyed with the black feather that adorned the top of Lottie’s sailor hat. “Not at all, sweet thing.”

Sweet thing, she said. Involuntarily, Lottie melted. Isabela had been clinging to Lottie’s hat all morning, fiddling with the feather on the cap and outlining the embroidery detail. Occasionally she stuck it on top of her head and posed, Lottie making the appropriate googling eyes. “You’re overdoing it!” Isabela would say, hitting her on the arm, but the truth was that the googly eyes and oohs and aws of appreciation weren’t something Lottie had to force. Isabela was stunning as far as mermaids went. Granted, Isabela was the only mermaid Lottie had ever seen, but out of all the human women Lottie had seen, Isabela was also in the top tier. Of course, there were no such thing as an unattractive woman, but Isabela soared high in Lottie’s mind. There was a reason she fell overboard in The Siren’s Call anyway.

As Isabela still fiddled with Lottie’s hat, Lottie recalled the grand adventure she thought sea-faring would be. Or at least, that’s what she said to Varric at the Hanged Man when she had the grand idea to buy a boat off a seller near Kirkwall’s docks. Lottie had a good feeling about it all when the purchase was finalized and they were off, but Aveline gave a hard stare before the captain’s boat, dubbed The Siren’s Call departed. She had a catchy name, until it became a reality, or at least of sorts. Isabela was no siren, she made sure to mention it when Lottie woke up stranded on the beach. “I’m a mermaid,” she proclaimed, showing off her dark blue tail, scales shimmering and fin flapping against the sand, and though insisted she was compelled to fall overboard by the siren on the rock. Yet Isabela assured repeatedly as Lottie continued to spit out seawater that she was, indeed, a mermaid, and sirens didn’t exist. And if they did, Isabela was sure to note they would have better things to do than lure pirates and seafarers to their doom.

It had been a week. They ate coconuts from the trees, swam, and talked by a campfire at night. Lottie asked if Isabela had some Mermaid’s Lagoon to head off to, but Isabela said there was nothing of the sort. Give it a week, Lottie said. She knew Varric would find her, but she was ambivalent when he appeared with The Siren’s Call Two that afternoon.

“Come on Hawke,” Varric said, Lottie and Isabela still in the sand. The Siren’s Call Two even had an experienced crew that Aveline hired to rescue her—a boat where she was unfortunately not the captain. At least Lottie still had her hat.

“I can’t believe you found her,” Isabela scoffed. “You’re better than I thought. A lot of dwarves have fallen at sea.”

“Dwarves don’t go to sea unless they’re dragged there by other people,” Varric said, glaring at Lottie. “Come on Hawke,” he ordered. “Time to go. I’m sure you can sail back here any time. Just don’t do it yourself.”

Sighing, Lottie stood, looking to the ship, where the crew was waiting for her. She looked at Isabela, her blue tail flopping against the sand. She grinned at Lottie, sashaying her shoulders in such a way that made her coin necklace glimmer in the sun. It first caught Lottie’s eyes when she was sailing, the open sea, that golden coin necklace that draped across Isabela’s chest. She made it out of coins she had found at the bottom of the sea, she had said one night.

Isabela must have mistook Lottie’s look. “I suppose you want this back,” Isabela said, holding onto Lottie’s hat.

“I—”

She looked at Isabela. She looked at the boat. She looked at Varric, staring with his hands on his hips. Wait a minute, she silently asked, eyes trailed to the dwarf. He rolled his eyes, but otherwise said he would be waiting in the rowboat, and they’d leave from there. From there, Lottie walked to Isabela. Isabela wasn’t a patient mermaid, but she sat quietly, waiting for Lottie to say something. She didn’t, not at first, electing to plop on the sand next to her instead.

“Thank you again,” Lottie said after a moment, breaking the silence “Really. You didn’t have to save me.”

She grinned. “I noticed you noticing me. Partially my fault you’re here. Maybe if I didn’t wave you wouldn’t have fallen off.”

“Well, I wanted a good story.” Lottie laughed. “I got one.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

It was the softest Isabela had spoken since Lottie had fallen overboard and came to the island. Pulling the hat off her head, she tried to give the captain’s back. Though Lottie held it in her hand for a moment, even considered putting it on,  she shook her head and handed it back to Isabela.  

“You mean to give it to me?” Isabela asked, flabbergasted. “But—"

“I’m not a real captain anyway,” Lottie had to admit. “You though—well, you’re not a captain either, but the hat looks better on you.”

“Oh, Lottie.”

Isabela reached around, unclasping her necklace. It took a moment before Lottie realized Isabela meant to give it to her, and not merely show off her breasts as Lottie first thought, and perhaps lecherously so.

“For you,” Isabela said, clasping the necklace around Lottie’s neck, Lottie trying not to look at Isabela’s breasts longer than necessary. Unfortunately, Isabela noticed—of course she noticed—and appropriately angled herself just so. Her dark hair was caught in the wind, and wearing Lottie’s hat, Lottie understood the Siren’s Call Two may take her back to Kirkwall, but she would always be that overboard sea captain who had fallen into the water, and into Isabela’s arms.

“Miss you,” Isabela murmured, a hand gentle in her hair.

“…goodbye.”

There was no embrace. Instead, Lottie rose from the sand, sensing Isabela outstretch her arms to lead her back. Lottie couldn’t look back, what if Isabela lured her? She said she wasn’t a siren and they didn’t exist, but Lottie was skeptical, moving from the beach to the water to the rowboat that would take her away from Isabela. Lottie fell, and fell hard, and shit, there was no way around it, she was a siren. She had lured her, almost convinced her to stay too, and not with a voice but with all her, all her, and—

“What’s wrong?”

Lottie hoisted herself into the rowboat, her bottom half sopping wet. Varric hit her leg with his when she didn’t respond.

“It was a…nice island, that was all,” Lottie muttered. “Good coconuts.”

Varric’s face was blank. “Somehow,” he began, leaning in, “I don’t think you’re talking about the ones on the trees.”

“No…Isabela!” Lottie shrieked, wiping tears away, and longingly toying with the necklace that hung around her neck. “Never met one like her before. She’s beautiful, she makes me feel like I’m actually a captain, and…and—”

“Go to her.”

She stared, mouth agape. “What?”

He put his hand on her knee. “Hawke,” he began, gentle “the island isn’t even a mile away from Kirkwall. I can come every week, I—”

She embraced him tight, he hit her back with comradery and happiness, encouraging Lottie to go to her. She jumped from the boat back into the water, overboard again, this time to her, to Isabela. Yet it was her excitement that did it, that made her legs and arms turn to lead. She couldn’t swim. She knew how, but she couldn’t.

And then arms were around her, welcoming, saving, and Lottie broke to the surface. “Isabela!” she cried out, coughing out seawater. They swam to the surface, or Isabela more swam and Lottie more held on, and still held on as she found herself encased by sand and water, on her back with nothing but sky overhead, until there was all Isabela. Isabela laughed, alive and in love, holding Lottie’s face in her hands.

“Couldn’t stay away from me, huh?” she asked, laughter still in her eyes.

“You stole my hat,” Lottie smirked, getting a glimpse of the captain’s hat from the corner of her eye.

“You stole my heart.”

“Well…” she played with a dark strand of Isabela’s hair. “You’re the siren. You’re the one that lured me here.”

“Would you want to be anywhere else?”

Lottie’s answer was a kiss. She tasted the salt from the sea and she tasted Isabela. She looked to the Siren’s Call Two, Varric at the top, waving. She wove back, knowing he would at least be visiting once a week, and brining snacks too.

But for the time being, there was Isabela, reaching for the hat Lottie gave her. She donned it, wore it well. She wore it better than Lottie, who frankly would have lost it anyway if she hadn’t gone overboard that first time. Isabela wasn’t going to lose it, not at all. Like how Lottie was, it was hers.

[glamorous-revenge]

A New Chief

((Ha! That’s right! I had TWO for the @moana-party​ exchange this time around! My second prompt was from @raptor-moon who requested:

An encounter with the kakamora goes very unexpectedly.

This was fun to write!! Hope you like it!))

A typical day in the Realm of monsters... or it had been. Monsters going about their usual business of hunting and survival, when out of nowhere a loud splash broke the surface of the watery ceiling high above their heads, and something plummeted straight to the earth. A flock of eight-eyed bats screeched as they were spooked from their perches, and a frog the size of a small bus hurriedly hopped away as the mysterious something struck the reed with a shattering crash. Enormous wooden splinters and shards of coral and shell fragments went flying until the object finally came to a full stop, and for a moment, all was completely silent.

A few of the more brave, or perhaps more curious monsters slowly drew back in toward the crash to see what had jut invaded their realm.

It was... unusual to say the least... A boat? A hut? A small island? The wreckage seemed to be a mix of the three, and it was immediately clear that even before the strange vessel had sunk to the ocean floor, it had been in some sort of violent collision, if the massive cracks and break alongside the hull were any indication. A few broken spears were tangled among the wreck as well, but... they were far too small to belong to any human.

So what-?

KNOCK KNOCK

The nearest monster, a cat-like creature with a scaly, whip-like tail and saber-like fangs, yowled and arched their back as the leaped away from the wreck as something deep inside started to move and shift. It let out a haunting hiss in warning, but the beams and bits of sail continued to move about.. And a little coconut with a face scrawled on a shaven part of its surface poked out of the rubble.

SLAP SLAP THUNK KNOCK

It struck its armor with mauve-colored hands, and tilted as it looked at the cat monster.

Seemed harmless enough. Cute, even.

Hackles lowered, the cat still growled as it started to stalk forward. Whatever this coconut thing was, it was alive, and would certainly make for a valuable snack, and the monster flexed its claws in anticipation.

Suddenly, the beams and splinters shifted again, and at least four dozen other faces emerged from the wreckage. The cat stopped in its tracks, baffled, and before it could take another step

"REEEEEEEE!"

The kakamora screeched defiantly, and grabbed the broken spears, or pulled out all manners of weaponry forged from sticks, stones and sea life. They jumped from the remains of their ship and charged at the monster. It yowled and scrabbled back, claws finding no purchase in the soft sand as it tried to turn about. Only by dumb luck was it able to finally right itself, and dash back into the undergrowth before the tiny pirates had reached it.

Several skid to a halt, and raised their weapons in triumph! ... But the rest kept running, straight into the wilderness. Almost immediately, confusion washed over the ranks... More stopped, some continued forward, and in the chattering chaos, at least one made it into the denser plantlife. Were they supposed to continue attacking? Were they supposed to fall back? Certainly didn’t seem like the organized and intricate coordination that most of the world had come to expect from them, but... they didn’t know what to do!

It was only when a blood-curdling shriek abruptly cut off by the crunch of a coconut shell from the shadows that snapped them all back to their senses. They huddled together, weapons pointed outward, until everything became calm once more.

The defensive ring disbanded, and the pirates looked to each other for some kind of answer. They’d never been that disorganized before... What happened? Usually the chief would give an order and-

... And there it clicked.

Their chief had been on the main boat, unconscious by one of their own darts during the collision. She wouldn’t have been able to do anything to rescue her crew members, and now she was miles away from them, with monsters, sea creatures and an entire ocean of water between them.

The kakamora slapped out panicked messages on their shells.

We have no chief!

Who will lead us?

How will we survive?

One with a seashell crown rapped his jawbone club over his neighbor to get everyone’s attention.

We must find a new chief! He announced, drumming on his head. A new chief to lead us and make us our own crew! One that can keep us safe around these monsters!

Nervous chattering rippled through the group, but ultimately they decided that he was right... But one problem... None of the pirates present knew the first thing about Lalotai...

No... They would need to search for a new leader... Someone who knew this strange new land like the back of their hand...

And if they didn’t want to end up like their fallen crewmate, they would need to find one fast.

---

Days? Weeks? Hard to tell as the time blurred in this sun-less, neon-dominated landscape. The pirates trudged along, dragging their weapons behind them, and practically suffocated with the heat, humidity and plantlife. Kakamora were evolved to handle life on boats... not trekking miles upon miles through dense jungle... but they were slowly starting to learn. They stayed close; never straying more than a few feet from multiple others, and they constantly had look-outs to warn the others of the first signs of trouble. A few of them had even started collecting small trinkets and ‘treasures’ to feel like proper pirates again.

But still, they were still nowhere near ready to tackle this place on their own; evident by the fact their group had shrunk by another half-dozen or so.

We should stop and rest...

Can’t rest... We need to keep going...

Those two messages kept getting knocked back and forth, regular enough that it almost formed a marching beat as they kept going forward. Why, if the creatures could actually sing, it might have made their trek a little easier. They could practically hear the melody in their heads...

...

Wait a minute... That wasn’t in their heads.

A few of the kakamora in the front of the group raised their hands out-of-sync, trying to get the rest of the group to stop. Sure enough, somewhere ahead of them, there was the unmistakable sound of someone... or something... singing in a tired, melancholy tone.

♪ “Shiny... I’m so shiny...” ♪

The smaller monsters looked at each other uncertainly... though this was the first thing they’d heard that wasn’t squawks, shrieks, screeches or grunts since they got here. The first sign of ANY kind intelligence in this gods-forsaken landscape. The uncertainty gave way to hope, and their nervous knocks clamored to a dull roar of anticipation.

The few at the front gave an excited cry, and the group rushed forward...

And almost bounced off of a large, bulbous eyestalk that lay in the clearing just beyond the trees.

The kakamora screamed, and the giant eye blinked as it swiveled to look at whatever had interrupted its owners singing.

“What the-!?” an almost deafening voice boomed out, and a few of the pirates fled back into cover while the rest stayed frozen stiff.

It was a monster, that much was painfully obvious, but one MUCH bigger than anything they’d seen so far. It appeared to be some sort of giant crab, blue-purple in color, and with a legspan of at least a hundred feet across. Hell, even the eye itself had to be three or four times taller than any of the pirates. The crab was upside down, locked in place on his back, and judging from the torn up terrain within his reach, he’d had been stuck that way for a while with no luck of righting himself.

A kakamora in a puffer fish hat tried to tap out a greeting, but the larger monster’s voice sent those hands to cover eardrums instead.

“Gods above, just PERFECT. Now the vermin have come crawling out of the woodwork,” the crab groaned. “Haven’t I suffered enough!?”

He struggled, trying to rock himself forward, and the ground below him shook from his efforts. More of the pirates fled for cover, but before they all disappeared, a few noticed something... unusual about this crab. As it leaned forward, they got a good look at his back...

And it was absolutely COVERED in gold.

Their eyes sparkled... A tempting hoard for such renowned thieves, even in such a place and as dire a situation. The enormous crustacean must have collected those treasures for millennia, scouring the place for every little bit of gold and shiny collectibles it had to offer!

Leaving no stone unturned.

Exploring... everything... hmm...

They exchanged looks... they were all clearly thinking the same thing, as impossible as it might be... But they were desperate.

The crab rolled back into place, covering up the treasure once more, and he fell limp with a melodramatic groan.

The kakamora reemerged from hiding, and they chattered and knocked quietly amongst themselves while stealing glances at the fallen monster...

And a plan slowly took form.

Afterall, the Kakmoras weren’t just pirates... No.

They were engineers... And though this very idea was crazy...

It just might work.

---

Over the next few weeks,the kakamora hovered around the fallen crab, and he was absolutely infuriated by their presence at first. They kept getting far too close for comfort, and over time, they started bringing all sorts of garbage around him... tree trunks, pillars of coral and stone, woven ropes from vines and coconut palm fibers... and no matter how often he roared or swatted at them, they just kept coming back. Eventually he had to grudgingly tolerate their existence.

The kakamora themselves were also becoming much more brave as they worked. There weren’t nearly as many monsters in this area, due, of course, to the giant crab, so they could venture out in smaller groups to get more work done. They’d even managed to build a camp, stock up on fruit and a few fish that had fallen from the sky, and built traps and harnesses to capture whatever small-ish monsters remained in the territory.

A kakmora with two bones tied to its head rode on top of a monster that looked like a chicken crossed with a lizard, and used it to push one final round boulder into place on top of the nearby geyser vent.

Perfection. Everything was in place.

THUNK THUNK KNOCK

The warning message rung out over the valley, and the workers scrambled to the safety of their camp. The bone-headed kakamora rode over to the crab’s head, and poked at the eyestalk with a large stick to get the crab’s attention.

He hissed as he woke up, and bared his teeth at the little coconut-wearing monster. “Rude,” he growled. “What do you want?”

The kakamora simply tilted his head, then gestured to the blocked vent on the hill in front of them.

The crab frowned. “A little late for that, genius...” he deadpanned.

The kakamora kept gesturing, but before the larger monster could piece everything together, the plan was already set into motion.

The ground rumbled, and suddenly the geyser erupted, sending hot water, steam and the large rock flying high into the air. It landed with a heavy crash, and started rolling towards, guided by barricades the pirates had built from coral and wood. It bounced around like a pinball before settling into a deep groove that sent it barreling straight toward a large ramp. It hit the ramp, and went flying in the air...

straight for the crab.

He screeched, and curled his limbs to try and protect his softer stomach, but there was no need. The rock landed perfectly as calculated, hitting the end of a large lever that had been wedged beside him, and with one sudden push, the startled monster was thrown forward.

The kakamora held their breath as he teetered in place, still baffled by what was going on. Of course the rock could only push the 800 ton chunk of muscle and chitin so far, even with the help of physics... but thankfully, just as gravity tried to claw him back down to earth, the crab got a sense of what had just happened, and with one desperate flail...

THUD

He fell forward, landing safely on his stomach.

The pirates cheered, screeching cries of victory that their hard work had paid off, and while the larger monster was still dazed and dizzy from the experience, they rushed forward in a coarse, hairy swarm and crawled onto his gold-laden shell.

“Wh... what.... Hey, get offa me!” The crab tried to stand, but atrophied legs were still clumsy from disuse after so long, and he wobbled as he tried to get up.

But the kakamora did not move. They continued to celebrate, surround by gold and wealth... their dreams come true! And yet, this was just the bonus.

Their real goal... the one they had worked so hard for...

They looked up at the crab’s face expectantly.

“... What the hell are you staring at me for?”

One started to thump rhythmically on its chest, and one by one, the other kakamora followed suit. The sound grew and grew with volume and intensity until the entire crew’s chanting echoed through the valley.

Far too creepy for the larger monster’s taste. “What are you doing? Stop that!”

... And they stopped. Immediately.

The crab blinked. He... hadn’t expected that to work so easily.

Were they... listening to him now?

He glanced down at some of the scattered treasures that had been knocked loose while he was upside down, and pointed at them with his claw.

“Uh... Pick those up?”

And without question, they did exactly that. The pirates shimmied back down his limbs and picked up everything remotely shiny they could find in the sand, and brought it back onto his shell before standing at attention once more.

Shock and confusion gave way to a sinister smirk, and the crab’s antennae perked forward in interest.

“Oh this is going to be fun~” he purred before chuckling to himself. You guys are going to do everything I say, hmm?”

They nodded, and pulled forth a makeshift headdress, not dissimilar from the one their old chief used to wear, and set it among the rest of the treasures.

“So you want me to be your leader? Only natural~ Who wouldn’t want to love and worship the King of Lalotai and serve his every wi-GAH!”

A dart had struck his eyestalk... He was going to be their leader but that didn’t mean they were gonna accept any nonsense. A kakamora subtly gave the one that had blown the dart a high five.

The larger monster grumbled, and tried to pick out the annoying irritant stuck in his armored skin as the stalk froze in an awkward position. “Fine, fine. We’ll work up to that... But I guess I do owe ya runts for getting me back upright. You can stick around... for now... But the instant you lot start irritating me, you’re GONE. Comprenez-vous?”

He was met with enthusiastic nods, and the pirates chattered and knocked happily on their shells, perfectly content with the arrangement.

Strange creatures, surely... Their new leader rolled his non-paralyzed eye, and after briefly stretching and getting reacquainted with his old legs, he marched off in search of something to eat.

In spite of the monster’s attitude, the kakamora were over the moon, and once more roared with cheers and victorious battlecries. They’d done it. They’d found a new chief. They found safety... treasure... their confidence... and even a new ‘boat’ all in one!

And all the while, they proved that they were capable of doing big things even in this giant-dominated world.

Now they could claim this new land as their own.

Now they would survive.

Look out Lalotai! The Kakamora don’t fear you any longer!

[writerlilahsuzanne]

Adrift - A Tack & Jibe short

Bodhi must have been a dragonfly in a past life. Or maybe a frog or a turtle or something else that thrives in the mess and muck of nature. It would explain how her body and soul settle and still out here in the Sound where the brackish water is placid, where it’s as if her kayak is slicing through a sheet of opaque glass.

She has mud and up to her knees from dragging her kayak through the surrounding wetlands, her long sun-streaked blonde hair sticks in sweaty clumps to her neck and forehead, and her own earthy scent swirls around her in the slow, heavy breeze: dirt and musk and patchouli shampoo and coconut sunscreen and lemon-eucalyptus bug spray that only sort of works.

When Bodhi was younger, her moms would have to beg her to come inside and take a bath, to sit at the table like a civilized person and do homework or chores that she never quite saw the point of. Why work on long division when she could climb a tree? Why study old men and the dates of wars when she could scoop tadpoles from a creek. Isn’t that more real? Life squiggling in her cupped palms, sturdy branches holding her, safe, up in the sky? And anyway, her moms always encouraged her to be free and wild and so she is.

It’s meditative, the rhythm of her paddles dipping in and out of the water; one side, then the other. Gentle waves glide along her boat, the seagrass and wild oats dance to the wind, the trees set farther back rustle with life. Along the way, Bodhi spots a flock of Redhead ducks that float in a clump near the shore, Seagulls and Royal Terns loudly scavenge for food and fish, Cormorants fly high above. She even spots a Great Blue Heron, long-legged and graceful and impossibly huge, picking its way slowly through the shallows. The Great Heron spreads its wings suddenly, perhaps startled by Bodhi and her bright red kayak, and takes flight. Bodhi drifts and watches it soar across the sky. Perhaps she was a bird, before, in a different life. She could spend hours or even days out here, all alone among the for birds.

“Hey, can we make a pit stop at the Visitor Center?”

She isn’t all alone. “Sure.” Bodhi smiles back at Hunter who is keeping pace behind Bodhi in her own kayak. Bodhi doesn’t mind the company, she’s out here with friends often, in fact, a whole group of them paddling the sound, or sailing between and around the chain of islands that make up the Outer Banks, or hiking through the dedicated nature preserve that takes up nearly half of this island. Hunter is around a lot lately. Like, always around a lot lately. Bodhi isn’t sure what she should take from that, exactly.

The Porter Island Visitor Center comprises two single-room buildings, one a museum-slash-information center, one a gift shop, both raised up a few feet on decks that connect via a weathered wooden walkway. There’s an outbuilding-type bathroom—barely more high-tech than an outhouse—and in the gift shop there’s a much nicer air-conditioned single stall restroom. They dock, and Hunter heads toward the gift shop.

When Bodhi moved here several years ago with her moms, the Visitor Center was one of their first stops. It was so quaint; a little sand- and salt-speckled shack with lighthouse and beach themed goods for sale. In the adjacent museum there is an entire wall dedicated to the years Blackbeard the pirate used the island’s shallow sound as a refuge in his downtime between the murders and pillages. There’s another whole wall about the island’s lighthouse. But Bodhi quickly adapted from suburban to tiny-island style living and now can’t imagine ever being anywhere else.

Bodhi idly browses the small sea-themed trinkets and a few racks of postcards, a shelf of hats and one of Porter Island t-shirts. There’s a section dedicated to books by local authors and books about local history and about the flora and fauna of the island. Bodhi flips through a book about seabirds. When Hunter emerges from the bathroom, she scans the gift shop until she finds Bodhi, then smiles like the sun coming out. Huh. That’s new.

“Ready?” Hunter freshened up while she was in the bathroom; her hair is smoothed down and damp with water instead of sweat, her light makeup touched up, and there’s no trace of dirt or grime. It’s interesting only because Hunter typically isn’t very fussy about that sort of thing. Sometimes, but she’s usually chill about... Well, everything. That’s why Bodhi likes hanging out with her. And doing other stuff with her.

“Yup. Ready.”

As they head out of the store, though, Hunter stops at the checkout counter and snags a giant sun hat from a spinning rack. “You’re so fair; you should get this.” She plops it on Bodhi’s head as the young-looking cashier watches them with obvious interest.

“This hat is like, excessive,” Bodhi says, tugging at the extremely wide brim. It’s one of those floppy sun hats, a rich lady sipping cocktails while on a yacht type hats. “Anyway, the sun is good for you.” Bodhi hooks the ridiculous hat back onto the rack. Cashier Boy’s mouth flicks up into a tiny smile. He’s cute. Too young, though, probably only eighteen or nineteen, Bodhi would guess. Bodhi is a little unsettled by that; being at a stage in her life now that someone that age would be too young for her to be interested in. Is this what getting old and mature feels like? Gross.

“The sun is good for you in small doses.” Hunter moves in closer still, brushes her thumb across Bodhi’s cheekbone. “All of those gorgeous freckles won’t be so lovely when they turn into melanoma.” Bodhi wrinkles her nose. Hunter’s thumb lingers at the corner of her jaw. Hunter’s eyes are pretty, Bodhi thinks. Like, she knew that but she hadn’t paid that much attention to them before. Well, she has. Just not this much. They’re like, ochre. Or a tiger’s eye gemstone.

“You guys are a cute couple.”

Bodhi startles and moves backward; Hunter’s hand briefly hovers mid-air then falls away. “No, we’re—” Hunter says, as Bodhi stutters out, “We aren’t— We’re—” But what even are they? A summer hookup that’s lasted four summers and now more? Friends, now that Hunter lives on Porter Island full time? Really good friends? Really good friends who hook up sometimes, but then go for long stretches without hanging out at all because it gets too intense too fast and yet they keep finding their way back together, as if it’s something cosmic or inevitable but neither of them really want it to be, unless they do?

It’s too complicated, too much to understand yet alone explain so Bodhi finishes her thought with a casual shrug.

It’s whatever.

“We should get back out there,” Hunter says, saving them all from the awkward moment. Bodhi doesn’t do awkward, so she’s grateful.

Back out on the water, Bodhi can’t seem to lose herself in the natural world like she always does. The cashier’s comment, and Hunter’s face after… Her own vehement reaction… Why Hunter has been around so much lately…

“Do you want to stay over tonight?” Hunter calls, trailing behind Bodhi’s kayak once again.

They usually end these excursions by falling into someone’s bed, or sleeping bag, or boat, or, once, a rustic treehouse. And usually it’s casual. It’s chill. Neither of them care to put a label on it because it’s just sex but if things have changed for Hunter, that means Bodhi should probably put a stop to it. Hunter’s her friend and that means something to Bodhi. She doesn’t hurt her friends, not on purpose.

“I dunno. I have to work early.” She never really has to work, let alone early, her moms are cool with Bodhi helping at the sailing shop they own whenever she’s in the mood to help. More or less. She probably should go in though, so it’s not a total lie. “But we can hang after if that’s chill.”

Bodhi can’t see her, and doesn’t crane around to look, but she can hear the disappointment in Hunter’s voice all the same. “Sure yeah, it’s chill.”

Bodhi is now certain that it’s anything but.

+++

At dusk, Bodhi sets up shop on the back deck, a packed bowl on the glass table in front of her, her bare feet propped up next to her phone, a full backpack ready to go next to her reclined patio chair. She waits.

The location is always a secret until the very last moment; a precaution so no one reports their activities and sends everyone scurrying away and they miss the entire event. Tonight an event Bodhi has been waiting for, since she missed the last one. Accidentally fell asleep, her own fault. Her friend on the inside will text her when it’s go time, so Bodhi watches the sun go down and the moon come out as her eyelids grow heavier and her mind and body relax. But not too relaxed; not this time.

She planned to go with Hunter tonight but…

“Hey.” Willa slides the back door open. Her curly hair is extra wild tonight; Bodhi loves that. She loves that her roommate and best friend is both predictable—never late for a shift at the sail shop, never oversleeps, never once missed a bill’s due date—and also totally off the rails unpredictable. Bodhi really never knows what Willa will do next. She’s predictable in her unpredictableness.

“Whoa, galaxy brain moment.”

Willa’s eyes narrow. “What?”

“Nothing.” Bodhi drops her feet to the deck. “‘Sup dude. Join me.”

Willa picks up the bowl and then holds it away from her, skeptical-like—sometimes she’ll partake, sometimes she won’t, but she always grabs first and hesitates later—then sits at the table next to Bodhi and picks up the blown-glass bowl and lighter.

“What are you doing tonight?”

A flame lights Willa’s face, she smokes and coughs and croaks, “Mostly questioning all of my life choices.”

Bodhi laughs, Willa is always so funny, even when she doesn’t mean to be. Especially then. “Same. But like,” Bodhi loses her train of thought when a cloud passes over the dimly lit moon. It’s wicked. What was she— “Oh. Yo, come with me tonight.” It’s not usually Willa’s scene, this sort of thing, but Bodhi couldn’t say with certainty what Willa scene really is except like, nothing or everything or… Something. Anyway, Bodhi doesn’t want to go alone, and that’s the relevant point.

Willa squints one eye closed, and fixes Bodhi with the other. “Sit around outside in the dark for hours, get eaten alive by mosquitos and no-see-ums while we wait for something that might happen?”

Bodhi grins. “Hell yeah.”

“I thought you were going with Hunter.”

Bodhi waves a hand in the air. She means it to be exactly as vague as it is.

“What’s up with you two?” Willa takes the bowl again and manages not to cough, and sits back more comfortably in her chair. There was time, at the very beginning, that Bodhi thought she and Willa might be something more than friends. First of all, Bodhi was very into the hot skater chick thing, and Willa is smart and determined and super fun besides, but she’s glad they only ended up friends. Bodhi gets a little emotional thinking about not having Willa around and has to smoke a little more weed to settle herself down.

“C’mon, come with me,” Bodhi tries again, when she’s sure she won’t sound too invested in Willa’s answer. “It’s cool, I promise.”

“Another night I would, I’m just so tired with everything going on and—”

Bodhi's phone goes off with a text, and she scrambles to get it. It’s the coordinates for tonight, so it’s now or never, or least not for another several weeks at least. And yet, Bodhi stays in her chair and watches her phone go dark again. “Maybe I’ll skip it,” she says it mostly to herself. “I don’t really want to go alone.”

Willa looks at her with alarm. She’s not the only one. Since when does Bodhi care about doing things alone? Since now, apparently.

“Bo, is it possible you miss Hunter? I mean you two were like, glued together and now you aren’t even speaking to her.”

It won’t be the same without Hunter there. That’s the issue. But why? Too stoned for this conversation and these thoughts, Bodhi’s mind is a jumble of feelings and half-formed ideas and spiraling tangents. She doesn’t have an answer for Willa, or herself, so she shrugs, as if she doesn’t care. She does, though. Too much. Way too much.

Willa stands, grabs the bowl and lighter from the table and plops Bodhi’s backpack into her lap. “Go watch your turtle eggs hatch.”

Federal law prohibits the sea turtle rescue organization from posting the location of active nests. It keeps the turtles safe and keeps flocks of tourists from gathering en mass on the beaches and bothering everyone who lives nearby. Bodhi’s friend Kea volunteers for the organization, she regularly patrols the beaches looking for nests and collects data, keeping tabs on the number of hatchlings that conquer the hard-won journey out to sea.

“You made it.” Kea keeps her voice low and ducks in for a quick hug.

The sea turtle rescue organization has already roped off a small section of the beach, and a handful of volunteers mill around nearby. There’s about ten other people gathered farther back, including a family with two young kids. Bodhi wonders if their parents are aware that they’ll likely be up until morning. Her moms brought her to a few of these hatchings when she was a kid, so she doesn’t judge. It’s cool, actually.

Kea goes off to take some measurements of the nest and count the eggs. It’s a Hawksbill nest, they think, so there are likely hundreds of babies getting ready to hatch. Bodhi finds a spot back with the rest of the non-volunteers. The kids are digging holes in the sand and jumping in and out of them, though their parents are making sure they don’t get too loud or wound up. Bodhi’s buzz has worn off. The night is humid and sticky. She does miss Hunter.

“Did you know sea turtles can hold their breath for seven hours?” Bodhi says to the kids when they scurry past her. They both stop. “And some kinds of sea turtles eat jellyfish.” Bodhi glances back to the parents to make sure they don’t mind her talking to their kids. “Do you guys already know that the babies have to find their way to the ocean all by themselves?” They both nod, in sync. She guesses one or both of them has an interest in sea turtles and probably have a few facts collected of their own. They’re quiet for a few beats, and then the smaller one asks,

“How?”

Bodhi tips her head. “How do they find the ocean?”

“Yeah… Yeah 'cuz if the mom leaves them and they’re just borned--”

“Born,” the other kid corrects.

“If they’re just born— How do they know where to go?”

Bodhi likes how innately curious kids are, how they instinctively yearn to explore the world around them and aren’t afraid to ask questions, to admit when they don’t understand things. She tries to keep that spirit alive in herself.

“Well,” Bodhi draws her knees up to her chest and smiles up at the kids. “Sea turtles are phototactic. Do you know what that means?” They shake their heads no. “It means they’re drawn to light. Like, when you have your porch light on at night and moths and other bugs all come to fly around it? Same thing. So when they’re born, the moon reflecting on the ocean tells them where to go. Cool right? Like, the moon and the ocean are calling to them, telling them where their home is.”

“Yeah!” says one.

“That’s why it has to stay dark,” the other one says, quiet, a little shyer than their smaller sibling.

Bodhi glances back to the parents again. “Right. And the beach at night can seem a little scary, but we’re totally safe and we want to make sure the baby turtles don’t get confused and go the wrong way. They could get too tired or hurt or a predator could get them and that’s not good.”

Bodhi talks sea turtle facts with the junior turtle enthusiasts a little longer, until Kea returns to announce two hundred and twelve eggs total.

“Can I take a peek?” Observers have to stay back, but Bodhi’s a regular at this point. Kea nods and leads Bodhi to the nest that’s illuminated only by the light of the moon.

“So when are you joining our ranks?” Kea asks while Bodhi crouches near the nest. She always asks that, when Bodhi will start volunteering for the rescue. Everyone else on the volunteer team is like, getting their PhD in turtle nesting or whatever, or else retired conservationists with more experience and knowledge than Bodhi will have in her entire life, so.

“Yeah, I’m good.” It sounds dismissive, she knows. As if she doesn’t care. But that’s better than everyone knowing she doesn’t have much to offer.

“All right, all right. You’d be so good in outreach and education, though. Especially with kids.”

Bodhi shrugs. Scratches her neck. “The trainings are too early…”

Kea wisely leaves it alone, though she changes the subject to something else Bodhi doesn’t want to talk about. “Oh, hey, where’s your girlfriend tonight? Hunter, right?”

+++

“I thought you were avoiding me?”

“I was.”

Hunter shifts in the doorway; her hips cocked, one arm braced against the doorjamb, the other stretched across. She’s tiny, a pixie with short brown hair and delicate features and round doe eyes, yet she takes up the entire doorway. “And?”

“And… Now I’m not?”

Hunter doesn’t move. She lifts an eyebrow. If she tells Bodhi to get lost—and she should—Bodhi will do it. But this is their dance: On and off, up and down, together and not. Hunter must be tired of it, though. Bodhi can tell because it’s usually Hunter who comes calling, and Bodhi who gives in once again. Bodhi says nothing and Hunter says nothing, then Hunter finally drops her arms and retreats into the muted cool of her condo, leaving the door open for Bodhi to come in.

This was easier when Hunter was only in Porter Island for the summer, four years of summer months working at one of her mom’s restaurants while she finished school. There was an end date, and Bodhi didn’t have to worry about what Hunter might want after that. Or what she wanted.

“How did the hatching go?” Hunter sits in a hard-backed leather chair, her arms and legs crossed. Hunter’s inherited home decor has always made Bodhi think of a law office waiting room, all heavy wood and leather and polished chrome. Such a contrast to Bodhi’s moms’ colorful bohemian vibe, or the kitschy beach-themed cottage she shares with Willa. The entire condo came as a gift, furniture and decor and everything, a life already chosen for Hunter.

“Good. Kea asked me to join their volunteer corps again.” Bodhi sprawls across the couch, her thighs stick to the black leather.

“You should.”

Bodhi shrugs. Hunter thinks she should do a lot of things. Bodhi sighs and stretches, her t-shirt and shorts bunch up, her hair falls loosely across her face. She knows what she’s doing, and it works. Hunter’s gaze shifts from exasperation to clear desire, and Bodhi wishes they could just keep things the same between them. It’s hot and fun and easy. Why does it have to get complicated just because Hunter moved here? “Look, Hunter. We’ve talked about this. I’m not looking for...” She leaves the statement unfinished because what is she looking for? A time machine? A way to capture the perfect summer fling and put it up somewhere for safekeeping, like fireflies captured in a jar?  

“I’m aware.” Hunter’s lips press flat, her eyes flick away. She gets Bodhi. It’s too much, sometimes. “And I’m not asking you to.”

Bodhi sits up. “Okay, then… Okay.”

Sea turtles bury their eggs deep in the sand, Bodhi told the two kids she’d befriended yesterday. They stayed all night and, enraptured, watched the hatchlings take to the sea. Buried so deep that by the time the babies hatch and claw their way to the surface the mama turtle is long gone, far out to sea. One of the kids asked, eyes wide with hope, if they ever find each other, if they might meet up out in the ocean one day. The ocean is too big, their sibling answered, matter of fact. So, so huge it’s impossible. But Bodhi wondered if maybe they did. Despite the odds, perhaps they could find each other someday.

Bodhi stands and offers her hand, reaching out across the expanse. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”

Hunter looks up. “You should have.”

“Yeah.” She should do a lot of things.

Hunter takes her hand and rises from the stiff chair, lips pouted and shoulders high. Bodhi tugs her close and kisses her until she stops frowning. Hunter releases a long breath and her body relaxes into Bodhi’s arms. She’s pliable and willing, and so Bodhi walks them to the bedroom and pulls off first Hunter’s clothes and then her own. She’s been with Hunter so many times that the taste of her is like coming home. She knows what makes Hunter sigh or moan or fist the sheets at her side or clutch fruitlessly at the carved oak headboard and it should bore Bodhi but it doesn’t at all. Being with Hunter, in bed or out, is easy. Why change that?

It’s quiet after, a heavy quiet, with Hunter curled at Bodhi’s side. Her fingers drift idly across Bodhi’s stomach.

“I applied to graduate school,” Hunter says, voice gone sex-rough. She clears her throat. “At UNC Wilmington, but also other schools that are… Well, farther away. My mom wants me to get serious about taking a regional manager position with the restaurant group. So. I wanted you to know that.”

“Cool,” Bodhi says. Her chest goes tight. “That’s chill.”

Hunter’s hand moves from Bodhi’s stomach, and she rolls away to find her clothes. “Ryan’s having a party tonight if you want—”

“Yeah, definitely.”

She met Hunter at a party like this one, with camping chairs gathered haphazardly around a fire, sand turned orange from the glow, the ocean so dark it bleeds into the sky, impossible to tell where one begins and the other ends.

Silhouettes move across the beach—dancing, laughing, tipsily leaning on one another. It seems to Bodhi as if she knows every single person on this island and has gone home with many of them and it’s so simple for her. It’s fun, like kayaking or sailing or free-falling off of a pier. She doesn’t need labels or relationships or complications. Or at least, she didn’t.

Hunter stays at her side all night, warm and happy. Bodhi keeps her arm slung around Hunter’s hips, a possessive gesture she rarely feels the need to make. She wants to keep her close by is all.

“I’m gonna get another,” Hunter says, waving an empty can in the air. Bodhi blames her own too many empties for tugging Hunter in close and kissing the top of her head. “Hurry back,” Bodhi says. She’s a very affectionate drunk, so she’s been told.

“Hey! Tell your girlfriend to bring her keg tap over!” Ryan is a loud drunk.

Bodhi ignores the first part. “What idiot is dragging a keg down the beach?”

“Me!” Ryan is fun, but… Well, he’s fun.

It’s not late, but Bodhi is already considering packing it in for the night. She’d rather stay in and hang out at Hunter’s, watch TV, smoke a bowl or two. God, she is getting old. If they leave to go get the keg tap, it’s very unlikely she’ll want to return. “Sorry, dude. Not tonight.”

Ryan boos at her and quickly gets distracted by someone who announces they brought vodka. Hunter returns and together they watch the vodka quickly disappear.

The party really is so much like the one where she met Hunter, and like so many more before that, and yet even Bodhi has to admit that it’s changing. Some people have moved on, and younger, wide-eyed and innocent faces have taken their place. The number of friends who have traded partying for jobs that have them up before sunrise is steadily growing, some even with new engagements and recently signed mortgages and 401Ks. Even Ryan is starting medical school in the fall. The guy who once did ten fireball shots in a row and had the brilliant idea to surf on the top of someone’s Jeep, fell off and found out two days later that he broke his arm in three places will be a doctor.

And next to go will be Hunter. Bodhi tugs her in close again.

+++

“Where’s your girlfriend?”

Bodhi is barely two steps into the marina when Mr. Kelley accosts her. “Why does everyone think we’re together?” Even her footsteps on the floating dock sound petulant, a sulking slap slap slap. Mr Kelley shrugs. He’s the owner of the marina next door to her parent’s sailing shop, and a family friend.

“I suppose you have a— You’re vibing.”

Bodhi pauses. “Mr. Kelley did you really say ‘vibing’?”

“I have nieces and nephews,” he defends. He’s white-haired and sun-worn with a slow, drawling accent and a heart of gold. “Anywho, let’s get to work.”

Once every summer, Mr. Kelley moves the long-time dockers and rental boats into a dry dock to scrape off the coatings of barnacles that have attached to the hulls, and after, applies a coating to slow the accumulation of the sticky little crustaceans. It’s difficult, dirty, exhausting work that Bodhi refuses to let Mr. Kelley do by himself.

“The bane of my existence,” Mr. Kelley says as they set to work on the first hull, while seawater still sluices off in rivulets. They’re definitely a nuisance, the barnacles, as they not only look unsightly but cause significant drag in the water and a waste of fuel in motorized vessels. Bodhi thinks they’re kinda neat, though.

“What’s really cool is like, their adhesive is one of the strongest substances on Earth. The tensile strength is crazy.”

Mr. Kelley grunts. “I believe it.”

They’re also super important to the ocean’s ecosystem since they clean the water like crusty little filters. They also eat with their legs and have the largest penis relative to body size of any animal. So that’s something. Which reminds her…

“Mr. Kelley,” Bodhi calls out over the frantic scraping. “How about you? Any new men you want to dish about?”

“Bah,” he says. “Men.” Which Bodhi takes as a no. Mr. Kelley spends all of his time out on this marina. Unless the perfect man comes sailing in one day and sweeps him off his feet, it’s never gonna happen. Bodhi tried to get him to join a dating app, but he waved her off and claimed he was too old.

Bodhi doesn’t bring it up again until they’ve finished one boat and started working on another. Her arms and shoulders are already sore, but in a good way.

“Let me set you up with someone.”

He sprays off his scraper with the hose, cups some fresh water in his hands, and splashes it on his face. “What is it you told me, Miss Bodhi? Love looks like a lot of things?” He sweeps his arms out toward the marina, the ocean, the sky. “What if this is my great love?”

Bodhi can’t argue with that. She could see herself ending up the same way, her love of the natural world around her could be enough to fill her heart. The thing is, though, she has strong feelings for Hunter. She can admit that. But what she wants to do with those feelings is the issue. She doesn’t really do monogamy and as much as she admires and appreciates her moms’ super-solid relationship, she just doesn’t think it’s for her. And so she’s at a fork in the road: be with Hunter, settle down, commit; or accept that Hunter will be the one that got away. Which can she live with?

The sun is sharp on her skin, sweat pools in her clavicles and between her shoulder blades and settles damply in the waistband of her shorts. She mops her face with the end of her shirt and takes a water break.

“Can I ask you, like. A totally non-judgmental question?”

Mr. Kelley’s face is red from exertion and the heat. He raises his eyebrows and comes to sit on the dock pile next to the one she’s perched on. “Okay, shoot.”

“Are you happy?” It seems like a rude question, but she thinks Mr. Kelley will understand what she means. He’s way chill for an old dude. “Like, actually happy out here alone, doing your own thing? Or would you trade it for something else— Or like, someone else?”

Mr. Kelley is thoughtful as he re-hydrates, then he sets his water bottle on the dock with a decisive thunk. “You get to be my age, Miss Bodhi, and you come to understand that some things just are what they are.”

Bodhi nods, squinting into the sun. “Yeah.” She feels like that now.

“Even still,” he continues. “You have but this one, bitty life to live and if you aren’t living in pursuit of the things—and the people—that make you happy, then what’s the point?” He fixes his pale blue eyes on her, somehow getting to the root of Bodhi’s question. “She makes you happy.”

Bodhi shifts on the dock pile, as if trying to move away from the accuracy of the statement. She nods again. “Yeah. She does.”

He stands with some effort and creakily picks up his barnacle scraper. Next year, she’s bringing other people to help with the operation; Mr. Kelley is going to seriously injure himself one of these days. Not that he’d let that stop him. “Then don’t be afraid to imagine what a life of happiness could look like with her. As you said yourself, love looks like a lot of things.”

Bodhi hops up to follow him back to the partially de-barnacled boat. “I have to say, I do not appreciate you using my words of wisdom against me Mr. Kelley.”

Hunter comes over that night, for sex and for dinner and to get stoned, in that order. Bodhi watches her cook linguine with clam sauce and allows herself to imagine it: Hunter there every morning, that faux-hawk bed-head her hair forms itself into and the way she always, very first thing, stumbles mostly asleep to the kitchen for a glass of water. She’s always parched when she wakes up but refuses to keep a water bottle by the bed because she claims it isn’t fresh enough. Bodhi imagines Hunter there to kiss her goodbye when she goes off to the sail shop or to sail or hike or kayak, Hunter there to greet her when she gets home. Dinner together every night. Regular dates with the same person. Regular sex with the same person.

Bodhi can easily use the blueprint of her parents’ incredible marriage to construct a healthy relationship of her own. She knows it takes sacrifice and selflessness and a willingness to put Hunter’s needs and wants in step with her own, always. Ahead of her own, even. But can that fit in with Bodhi’s more fluid definition of commitment? Would Hunter be okay with that? And what if she wants something Bodhi can’t give her?

Hunter sets two plates of food out on the table and gives Bodhi a concerned look before sitting down. “You okay?”

What if Bodhi is too selfish and too afraid of being constrained? If there were anyone that she could see a settled future with, it would be Hunter. If. Bodhi picks up her fork and plasters on a smile. “Definitely. Thanks for dinner.”

“No problem. Your turn next.”

Bodhi fake-smiles harder. “So have you heard from any of those grad programs yet?”

+++

Bodhi has spent the last two weeks at Hunter’s side, at Hunter’s condo, living out of a backpack that contains a toothbrush and two entire outfits that Bodhi swaps back and forth. She uses Hunter’s deodorant and shampoo and toothpaste and hairbrush until Hunter picks up extras for Bodhi at the store and stashes them all in an emptied out drawer. Bodhi spends a long time looking at that drawer. Her drawer. That she has at Hunter’s house.

“I don’t think I’ll ever want to live with anyone,” Bodhi says one night while they watch a movie. She’s draped over Bodhi, legs entwined, her head rests on Bodhi’s chest and her arm is snug around Bodhi’s waist. Hunter shifts a little, presses a kiss right above Bodhi’s sternum. “Okay,” she says. It’s to her credit, Bodhi thinks, that she doesn’t full-out laugh in Bodhi’s face.

One morning, they wake up before dawn to go hiking. Bodhi wakes first, rubs her eyes with both hands and nudges Hunter awake with her foot. Hunter sits up, groggy and mussed, and blinks into the darkness for a while. She grunts and, predictably, stumbles to the kitchen for her morning glass of water. Bodhi’s stomach twists with a deep pull of affection. She makes Hunter eggs and toast with fruit and packs a backpack and they sail out as the sun is beginning to skim the edge of the stretch ocean behind the condo complex.

The trails out on the North Carolina coast are all flat, easy walks; certainly no comparison to the rigorous mountain trails on the other side of the state. But as much as Bodhi likes the challenge of mountain hikes, there’s something special about the maritime forest trails. When they arrive on a different Outer Banks island for their day’s adventure, the hike takes them from the ocean, up the sparsely populated beach, around though the soft dunes, down onto a long boardwalk built over a salt marsh, and on into the woods. Bodhi always marvels at how these towering trees of pine and holly and oak and maple can not only survive but thrive in such a place; how it grows from nothing but shifting sand, withstands harsh winds and hurricanes and sea spray and flooding, and has found a home for thousands of years on a little sliver of an island. She tells Hunter as much.

“The beauty of nature,” Hunter says, offering Bodhi a sip from her water bottle. “Stand back, trust that things will unfold as they should, and amazing things happen.”

Bodhi doesn’t call her out on the obvious metaphor.

On their way out of the trail’s loop, they encounter an older couple looking a bit bewildered. They pass by, then Bodhi doubles back.

“Afternoon.” They’re both wearing khaki safari hats, cargo shorts, and multi-pocketed khaki vests. One of them has binoculars slung over a shoulder, the other has a camera with a huge zoom lens.

“Awesome day for a hike, right?” Bodhi has found that asking people if they’re lost or need help rarely works. People don’t like to admit that they don’t know what they’re doing, even if they’re tourists who have obviously never been here before. But if she waits, they’ll usually bring it up on their own.

“Oh, yes. Hot though!”

Bodhi mmhmms

“Say, can you tell us if this is the Fort Macon Trail?”

“It is,” Bodhi says. “And you can start in this direction because it’s a loop, but if you want the full experience, start from the beach and head into the forest that way. Make sure you follow the trees with white dots once you’re under the canopy, the trail isn’t super obvious in some places.” They thank her and head into the woods first anyway. She waves, walking backward as she adds, because she has a hunch, “Keep an eye out for Painted Buntings! They migrate through here this time of year.”

They give each other a wide-eyed look of excitement and Bodhi smiles as she turns away. She knows a birdwatcher when she sees one, and the colorful member of the cardinal family is a unique find.

“They’re a threatened species,” she tells Hunter once she catches up to her. Hunter’s face reminds Bodhi of the time she studied for something for once in her life and got third place in a spelling bee and her moms sat in the front row, cheering as if Bodhi had received the Nobel Prize. “What?” Bodhi squints at her.

“Nothing, you’re—” She slips her hand into Bodhi’s hand even though it’s sweaty. “You’re good at that. How you share nature with people.”

Bodhi looks away and mumbles, “I only told them about a bird.” It’s not a big deal.

Hunter shrugs, the motion tugs Bodhi’s hand up and down. “Okay,” she says.

Hunter has left the brochures from various schools sitting out on her coffee table for weeks now. Bodhi has looked at them a few times in the same way she kept looking at the drawer of her stuff in Hunter’s house. It’s hers for the taking, so simple, just reach out and grab the hairbrush, Bodhi. Just open the brochure. Just claim what you want already. After their hike, back at Hunter’s condo, while Hunter is in the shower, Bodhi takes a breath and flips a brochure open.

Downtown Porter Island gets crowded as soon as the weather starts to warm, though “downtown” is a very generous term for two streets and a parking lot. Bodhi and Hunter and Bodhi’s Mom and Ma get ice cream cones and find an empty picnic table, baked from the sun, and try to eat faster than the ice cream melts.

“So, Hunter. How are we feeling about grad school? Excited? Nervous? Concerned that you may be only doing this because of the weight of your mother’s expectations?”

“Jeez, Ma. Sometimes the former high school guidance counselor in you really jumps right out.”

Robin gives a pained smile. “Sorry. Only making sure.”

Hunter licks around her ice cream cone and nods. “Actually, I’m excited. UNCW has a solid business management program and I think the job will suit me. I get to travel, meet new people. I’ll be stuck in an office a lot but…�� She slides a knowing look to Bodhi. “I’m sure I’ll still spend lots of time enjoying the outdoors.”

Bodhi’s lemon sorbet gets a little stuck as she swallows.

“And it’s not too far,” Jenn, Bodhi’s mom, adds, likely for Bodhi’s benefit. “A quick ferry ride and a drive south a bit.” She pats Hunter’s arm. “Though of course we’ll miss seeing you all the time!” Bodhi swears she emphasizes the words all the time on purpose, also intended for Bodhi.

Hunter’s ice cream drips from the bottom of the cone, first a few drops, but then the soggy cone breaks away and a puddle of blueberry cheesecake quickly pools onto the table. “Shoot,” Hunter raises her sticky hands. “I’m gonna go get some napkins.”

“I’ll help,” Robin says.

As soon as they’re a few steps away, Jenn raises her eyebrows. “So.”

“So,” Bodhi repeats. She quietly eats her ice cream just long enough to bug her. If her Ma had stayed instead, she’d have been totally grilled by now, but Jenn likes to take the good cop role, usually. Bodhi spares her. “UNCW has a forestry degree.”

Her mom’s face plainly says she’s trying very hard not to react to that. “Oh? Is that so?”

“Mmmhmm.” Bodhi crunches into her cone. “It is so.”

Her mom pokes around her own cup of chocolate peanut butter cup with a wooden spoon. “You know, I was wondering how you were planning on handling the long distance relationship thing.”

Bodhi shakes her head. “We’re not in a relationship.”

“Enlighten me then,” her mom says. “What are you?” There’s no intent to argue there, only genuine curiosity and Bodhi can understand why. Even she isn’t sure how to define it, or if she ever really wants to. She’s come to realize that’s okay.

“She’s just— My person.” How else to explain it?

Jenn considers this, tips her head and swirls her ice cream thoughtfully. “Okay. I get that. And I’m excited for you, too. I think forestry is perfect for you, if you decide to pursue that. You know we always support you one-hundred percent, love.”

She does know it.

Hunter and her other mom are heading back, Bodhi watches them talk and laugh as they cross the street and it’s weird, it’s like her heart is bigger; stronger and brighter in her chest.

“I think it’s perfect, too.”

“And Hunter? Is she aware of how you feel?”

Bodhi doesn’t look away from Hunter’s approach, how right Bodhi’s life is when she’s around, how Hunter just knows somehow. “She does.”

She figured it out long before Bodhi ever did.

+++

It’s raining the day of the big protest in Wilmington. Fat drops of it make steam rise from the pavement as they all gather in place. Bodhi is sweltering inside of her raincoat. It does nothing to deter Bodhi and the other protesters, though, if anything it’s spurring them on. This is nature; it’s not always convenient. That’s the whole point.

The school is moving forward with plans to bulldoze an old-growth pine forest on the edge of campus to make way for a new practice field. Hunter has joined some other protesters in locking arms and forming a human blockade between the trees and bulldozers. Bodhi wasn’t crazy about her being directly in harm's way, but Hunter acknowledged Bodhi’s concerns and did what she knew was right anyway. And that’s what Bodhi loves about her.

“Did you know longleaf pine forests used to be one of the most extensive ecosystems across the South?” Bodhi offers a flyer to the small group scurrying by between classes. It’s fifty-fifty if anyone will take the flyer detailing the importance of pine forests and why they’re trying to save this one, and another one-out-three odds the flyer will end up directly in a trash can nearby. But Bodhi figures that's about one in six people who will read it and possibly be moved to join their cause. “And it’s also home to many plants and animals who don't live anywhere else in the world.”

Behind her, the bulldozers rumble.

“The forest you see behind me is nearly five hundred years old!” Aleksi, the leader of this and many other protests shouts through a megaphone. They have a shaved head and face full of piercings and the confidence and carriage of a leader. “It is home to at least thirty endangered species! Now I ask you, students, faculty, staff, esteemed guests, is this really worth sacrificing in order to give the athletic department yet another piece of our beautiful campus?”

The bulldozers finally leave at 7:30. The already gloomy day has grown darker. Everyone is exhausted and hungry and the construction crew will return the next morning, but the mood among all the protesters is jubilant. “The forest stands another day!” Aleksi calls, and everyone cheers. It’s decided that they’ll reconvene at a nearby vegan burrito place to celebrate and plan for tomorrow.

“I think I stared down that one construction worker for three solid hours,” Hunter laughs, lifting an umbrella someone gave her, a little too late, over both of their heads. Bodhi unzips her steamy raincoat.

“You were amazing.” Bodhi flaps her open raincoat in Hunter’s direction, trying futilely to dry her off even as the rain still splashes up from the pavement.

“Thanks.” Hunter drops a kiss on her lips. “Someone who was on the on the front line with me lives on campus and said they have some clothes I can borrow. Be right back.”

Bodhi watches her. An enormous part of her reluctance to commit to, well, anything, was because she was already happy. And what if she changed things and then she wasn’t happy? If it ain’t broke and all. But things change anyway, and like a fjord in a river, she might as well have some input on the direction of her own life. Nature is always changing, life is always and she has to learn when to change with it, and when to fight for the things that matter,

Aleski, in a black trench coat and black combat boots, approaches Bodhi. “Hey, I appreciate you two coming out. Hunter’s really a force, huh? Only quietly.” Aleksi laughs and Bodhi is fully drawn into their aura. Like, they’re super hot anyway, but it’s the charisma that really does it for Bodhi.

“Yeah, she’s something.” If Bodhi is a swiftly moving river, Hunter is a steady stream: under-appreciated and gentle, yet strong and steady enough to cut through a mountain.

Aleksi leans in, eyes lowered, intentions clear. “Is she your girlfriend?”

“No,” Bodhi says. Aleksi’s eyebrows lift. “She’s more than that.”

“Ah.”

Even now, Bodhi can’t quite put a label on their relationship, or if either of them ever really want to. It’s meant that Bodhi has to be more open and vulnerable, and Hunter more demanding of what she wants from Bodhi. Whatever it is, the two of them, it works. They love each other, they’re on the same page, and that’s enough. It’s more than enough.

Aleksi shifts away, their stoic face covering the sting of rejection.

“We’re usually open to a third, though.” Bodhi offers. Plenty of people aren’t really into that and that’s fine. Bodhi puts it out there only as an offer, nothing more. She’ll have to check in with Hunter first, anyway. Though Hunter’s gaze for Aleksi has been nothing short of awe and infatuation—and desire—from the moment the two of them met.

“Like a package deal?” Aleksi clarifies. They smile. It’s awfully charming. “I could be into that.”

Hunter appears from behind a building, now dry and wearing clothes that don’t quite fit. Bodhi’s heart soars. It’s incredible, Bodhi thinks. How rich her life has become by being open to love in all of its forms. Romantic love, sure. But love for her friends and family and the world around her. Although her path there has been a little erratic, adrift for a while in her own life and mind, in the end she got there.

Hunter holds her hand and, on the other side, Aleksi presses in close. Despite the heat and the rain and the exhausting day, Bodhi is buoyant. Her spirit is free.

And they will save that forest. Guaranteed.

Tack & Jibe

[sueboohscorner]

OUTLANDER S3 Ep 11 : "Uncharted" .....New version of Survivor

FIrst....Diana Gabaldon wrote about a short bit about a man on a tropical island that talked to a Coconut named "Coco" LONG before Tom Hanks had Wilson to keep him company.  Just an FYI.

So, Claire jumped ship and the water was supposed to carry her to the Grand Turks where she could get a ship to Jamaica.  That is not what happened. Claire floats for god knows how long and then sees land and barely makes it to the beach. 

The next 12 minutes is her drying her clothes, walking through the middle of the jungle, getting eaten alive by fire ants, having a boa constrictor slithering over her when she wakes up one morning, and basically trying to find water and survive.  In my opinion, 10 minutes too long, especially since there WAS a HURRICANE in the books which we did not get to experience.  I mean Claire hanging in a mangrove holding onto a tree for dear life in dangerously high winds is much more exciting to me.

Nevertheless, she passes out as she just starts to hear a voice and a dog barking.  She wakes up sometime later, convinced she is dying and trying to figure out where she is and then realizes she is tied to the bed hand and foot with a nice glass of water nearby. 

A woman comes in with a poor bedside manner in my opinion and gives Claire the water, but nearly drowns her in doing so.  She tells Claire in Spanish that she is tied up for her own good.  Claire passes back out.

She wakes up again, some time later, and there is a man sitting on the side of her bed and announces to "Mamacita" that their guest is awake at last.  He unties Claire and hands her some water and introduces himself as Father Fogden and asks how she got there.  Claire asks where "here" is and the Father is very pleased to hear she is English. The Father tells her she is on the island of Sam Domingue, three days from Jamaica.  He is shocked to hear that she not only jumped off a ship into the ocean, but is also a doctor.  "It is much more common in the colonies" she tells him lamely.  

Claire learns there is a small village on the other side of the island, a days walk from there.  She could get a boat to the next island over and then to Jamaica.  She is eager to go but the Father says that it is not a good idea in her condition and this is where he gets even weirder....consults with "Coco" his coconut friend for advice.  Oooooookaaaay then.  The Father asks Mamacitia if they have any clothing for Claire, perhaps one of Ermengilda's, but Mamacita says no in a big way and calls Claire a whore really not worthy of the clothing.  Mamacita takes Claire out back and gives her a towel with some soap and a robe.  She can take a bath and she relishes in it.

Back inside, Claire is seated to dinner with Mamacita and the Father.  He tells his story of being a missionary in Cuba and fell deeply in love with a woman there....Ermengilda.  She returned his affections, which surprised him.  However, she was already married to a powerful and dangerous man named Don Hernando and the Father, being a priest is never supposed to become involved with a woman, especially a married one.  So the couple fled together and ended up on the island where they are now.  However, shortly after arriving, Ermengilda became sick and died.  She was Mamacita's only child and is convinced that this "whore" is here to take her daughter's place.  Claire says she wishes to depart as soon as possible.  Of course, Mamacita is more than happy with that plan.  Father Fogden and Mamacita start to argue and Claire excuses herself and sits down the hall next to a room and sees a beautiful dress hanging.  Just then, the Father comes and tells her that it was his Ermengilda's dress.  

Claire listens to the Father talk about this woman he loved.  He turns to Claire and says, “When you loved someone as much as I loved Ermenegilda, it never leaves you."  . He looks at Claire and having heard her tale of woe about Jamie, he understands. “You have loved someone so much that you would risk everything for them,” he says.  Ummmm.....yeah.....that is why I am trying to leave NOW.

The only one left to convince is Coco to which Claire makes a brave, albeit lame attempt at having a conversation with the coconut when she hears the Father approaching.  However, we don't know if this would have worked, because Mamacita starts screaming for the Father.

When the Father and Claire arrive outside, Mamacita says that a "China man" killed and ate Arabella, their favorite goat.  She hands the Father the skinned head which he gently puts on top of a barrel and grabs a jar and dumps some flesh eating beetles on top.  “Voracious little fellows,” he says to Claire, “from a cave called Abandawe."  Claire immediately gets a flashback of Margaret Campbell in Edinburgh warning her about that cave.  I just call it the "other" stone circle.  Yes, people.....there is more than one worldwide and there is usually stone involved, but not always a standing stone circle. The Father says that it is highly regarded as a place of great power by the locals and that there is a history of people "just appearing there".  Hmmmmmm.

Claire asks for more information when she hears the work "China man" again.  Could it be?  She is told that there are sailors on the beach as some damage was done to their ship.  Claire is pointed in the proper direction and she takes off running.

Meanwhile, we finally see Jamie, sitting on the beach.  Apparently some strong winds (again....HURRICANE people...it IS hurricane season the same time every year) came along and they lost several crew members, like Captain Raines and Mr. Murphy (the cook).  They are busy trying to fix their mast and sails.  Marsali is even asked to help as she is good with a needle and thread.

Claire, running as fast as her feet can run through the jungle, convinced that it is Jamie (hey...it COULD be the same ship you jumped off of...but okay).  There is a montage of men working to get things fixed and picked up and Claire running.  Question becomes, will she make it on time? She cuts open her arm pretty good on the way through, but manages to keep going.  When she finally arrives on the beach, she sees the Artemis out in the ocean.  The ship hasn't left yet, thank goodness, but they are too far away to hear her screaming.  They are not ready to sail just yet, they are still adding the finishing touches to their repairs.  

Claire had pocketed a small mirror earlier at dinner time when she went to sit by herself.  She thinks of it now and uses it as a beacon which catches Jamie's eye.  When Jamie looks through the spyglass and sees his beloved Claire there, the next thing we see is Claire running toward the beach and small boat arriving at the beach, but Jamie is already out and running towards Claire. 

A beautiful reunion moment, where Jamie tells her he thought he lost her again and he thanks God that they have found each other.  Kissing of course comes with this.

A little later, Jamie and Claire are talking and Jamie confesses he has given his blessing to Fergus and Marsali to be married.  He has seen that Fergus loves Marsali like he loves Claire.  He thinks it a good idea to have a wedding as a way of lifting the mood of the men and a celebration (they found each other again!).  Claire just happens to know of someone who could help out in that area. Oh, and Mr. Willoughby stitches up Claire and she approves of his work.

Back at the "ranch", Marsali is trying to get herself ready for her wedding.  She is having difficulties with her corset and Claire comes to help her.  She asks Claire if she knows of a way to prevent pregnancy.  Claire asks why a young girl like Marsali would not be pleased to start a family right away.  First, Marsali says she just wants to have her and Fergus time to enjoy each other (very future modern of her).  She then confesses that when Jamie would pull her mother close, her mom would shrink back.  But, she sees Jamie with Claire and it is different.  Claire loves the touching, etc.  Claire admits she does and as she finishes up the corset on Marsali, tells her once they are back on the boat, she will tell her how it is done. 

Marsali is pleased that there is actually a way and that maybe Claire is not the devil after all.  Gee....thanks girl.

The wedding happens....well....for the most part.  LOL!  Father Fogden is high, crazy and possibly drunk (but there was none of the famous drink in the show).  He turns to the wrong man and asks him if he chooses to marry this woman and the poor man says no and points to Fergus.  The Father asks if he is sure as this "one" only has one hand a “I suppose it’s fine unless he’s missing his cock. He isn’t, is he?” asks the priest. To which Marsali responds, saucily, “I could tell you if you’d up and get on with it.”  Marsali is getting impatient and speaks her mind a few times.  When it comes to Fergus's turn, the Father asks his WHOLE name.  Fergus tells him that Fergus is his name. 

Jamie speaks up that his name is Fergus Claudel FRASER.  Fergus is more than pleased.

Back on the ship, we don't get to see Fergus and Marsali, but we get our Turtle Soup scene, although it isn't quite as good as the book version IMO.  Claire is slurping up soup and telling Jamie how good it is.  She is obvious drunk (from the soup) and Jamie also sees she is burning up of fever. 

She tries to get him to help her inject her with the penicillin.  Jamie gets close, but can't do the final deed of stabbing her with it.  Claire does it herself.  She comes on strong to Jamie and tells him to bolt the door as she is climbing over the table to him. 

Jamie thinks it is wrong to take advantage of a woman who is drunk and feverish.  Claire disagrees and says she is not drunk.  What follows is a hot sex scene (they finally do it like "horses" like Jamie thought on the wedding night), but Mr. Willoughby knocks to see how "first wife" likes the soup and if she wants anymore.  Jamie is trying his best to do his deed, and keep his wife quite but she isn't that easy to handle.  Mr. Willoughby gets the message when he hears a couple of sounds and walks away.

That is a great way to end an episode.  At least this week, they are together and not in danger.  However, we still have Jamaica and for one, I am NOT happy they chose to do it in only two episodes.  Jamaica is almost HALF of the freaking book and quite a bit happens while they are there.  Well, I guess we will see.

What are your thoughts or opinions on this episode?  I give it a FOUR as they once again spent too much time on something where they could put something they are leaving out IN.

[originaldetectivesheep]

The Thirty and One Nights' Momentary Diversion - The Opposite End of the Ocean, part II

In tonight's conclusion, the uneasy alliance between Oike and Hydragonean is sorely tested -- by perhaps the ultimate threat to the stability of their world.

Part I

The Opposite End of the Ocean - continued

Despite the cramped floorplan and the volume of gear stowed around them, Alioune and Lane both slept in the cockpit of the Panayv overnight. Alioune wasn't going to let Lane stay in the plane alone and potentially leave her behind, and there was no way that Lane was going to sleep on the beach and leave an Oike alone in their plane. As the first rays of the suns came through the canopy, Lane rolled up, bleary-eyed, to see Alioune sitting up on top of some of her gear, working connections through what looked to be a sieve of spun glass.  "Good," she said, before Lane could get a word in. "You're awake; I can go strain for food plankton now and not worry about you shouting for me."

Lane blinked.  "Go – but weren't you worried that I'd leave without you?"

Alioune smirked, and drew what looked like a plug head out from under her cloak.  "I was – last night, while you were still awake.  I took the interconnect out of the main aileron harness while you were still asleep – you're not going anywhere without me today."  She replaced the plug under her cloak and pushed up to open the section of the canopy over her; Lane shook their head and leaned over to sort out some food bars from their emergency rations.

After checking the fuel levels – the pump catalysis had started, but the tanks were still far too low to go anywhere – and getting most of their breakfast down, Lane decided to go out, walk around the island, and see what Alioune was doing.  It was a strange feeling, to decide something on their own – but there was no point in turning the engine on to scan the radio for posts that hadn't been in range the day before, nothing else to do as the tanks slowly filled from the reaction in the pipe, synthesizing fuel out of the stirring matrix of the under-sands, and no new orders from anyone, anywhere to give them guidance.  That, and the cabin of the Panayv hardly had room to turn around with two people's gear wedged into every corner.

Lane walked along the water's edge, looking around to see if they could spot Alioune – her tan cloak blended in with the sand, like she was meant to be out here in a way that Lane and their gray basic uniform weren't.  But she was still moving, lifting up her net through the water inshore, and shaking it as it somehow shed both sand and water through different lattices – and there was nothing else moving on the island.  There was nothing else alive on the island, Lane almost thought, but then she saw it – and, looking up at the crunch of Lane's boots through the sand, Alioune saw it too, her net falling away from shocked and distracted hands.

Against every kind of rational construction of the world, there was something rolled-over and sprouting green in a washed-in hollow of the sand – green-brown tendrils and a viny trunk half-set with sawtooth leaves barely budding, growing out of a dark-green, salt-soaked hull like two hands clasped together, splitting, budding, shedding, alive. Neither of them had ever seen anything like this before: it was hard enough to grow plants inside, out of the salt spray and the thin air and the mass ejections of the twin suns, on Pekshariif – no one had even thought to try raising plants outside in the six hundred years since settlement.  But now, here it was, a coconut or something like one, a coconut growing in the surf, a coconut that must have fallen from another coconut tree growing somewhere else in the world, if it hadn't been synthprinted in someone's secret laboratory, decades ahead of every other scientist in either nation, and strewn out deliberately to this forgotten island as a biological version of the pump head: a sign that others had been here, a beacon to later travelers, a beachhead that could grow and expand.  No – life came from life.  A child had a parent somewhere.  And the legendary parent of this child had to be –

Alioune's knife was already out, her net forgotten, the razor edge of the hardened ceramic poised between her and Lane, almost disregarding the plant still between them.  So she realized it too – so this was also what she had been sent to find.  Not this plant, not a plant like this – but some clue, something that would make the rumors of greenery carried by the waves to occasional places here and there around the western edge of the sea a little more solid.  The Ark Tower – it had to be, and yet it couldn't.  The colony ship should have broken up on impact, when it finally fell out of orbit – should have, and yet here was a coconut, or something that had been a coconut generations back, growing in the salt sand of an empty island hundreds of kilometers away from literally anything.

Lane spread their hands.  "We – we don't have to fight.  It's another traveler, another traveler, like us – the bet doesn't change.  We'll go on, by your bearing, and –"

"And hell," Alioune answered, eyes flashing.  "No – no way in this world will I take that chance – let you carry this thing back to your Autark.  You know it – you'll do this like you'll do anything else; you'll put it up to your computer and cut it in bits and have it flayed and dissected and a squadron of Kreshloks out to where it came from, and then whatever's left of that Tower, it'll get ground up and fed into your computer, too, a machine-stamped science that leaves us all with nothing but a machine-stamped world forever."

"And what – we should fly it back to your people, your crazy tangle of self-suffocating guildhalls?"  Lane was losing their temper in spite of themself.  "This plant will grow and drop seed and wither and die before you could get anything out of it – before your Council could decide if it needed to be studied by the farmer sept or the oceanographs or some half-extinct family line who was assigned to botany a hundred years ago!  So what if the Autark puts the Tower to use?  Isn't everything on this world put to use, just to survive?  At least we might find the Tower from this seed – you'd take years of sorting just to find the spare people in the right disciplines to launch an expedition!"

Alioune shook her head, slow and hard.  "Faster isn't always better.  Do you really believe it – do you really believe that you're on the right track, that your computer and your Autark are doing the right thing?  You say you're getting the best people in the best positions to make the best world, but from over on this side of the ocean, it just looks like your 'best world' is full of Kreshloks and the holes they put in islands when their missiles land: that's what you're building, that's what we see on the side of the Oike.  Do you really trust someone who thinks what the world most needs is more missile-cruiser planes with what's in that Tower?"

Lane had their knife out now, as well, but lowered it, thinking.  The chance to decide had gone to their head; they were almost admitting the Oike's arguments – there were a lot of Nervets in the fleet, more and more of them, and rumors that the next design, the ones they were building in Trnava, was going to be even larger, even more heavily-armed.  But the best world was organized under the banner of the Hydragonean Autarky, and as long as the Oike resisted, they had to be defeated.  They took a deep breath.  "I am a Hydragonean," Lane said at last, "and as such I have confidence in the Autark, the personated will of the All-mind, the determined best of all the Hydragoneans to lead the Autarky.  I believe that the Autark will make the most right decisions about any remnant of the Ark Tower, as the Autark makes the most right decisions in any matter touching the Autarky.  I will carry this seed to him, if I can, with a light heart and a clear conscience."

Alioune lowered her knife as well, but her eyes were still burning with rage. "And as one among the Oike, I can't let you.  The Tower, if it's out there, belongs to every person on this planet equally – anyone and anything in it's got its equal right to live free and undisturbed by its own lights.  I'll take this seed back to the Council of the Oike; they're better equipped to think this over and find a way for people to benefit the most and damage it the least than your air-wing of a country and the mad computer running it." She reached under her cloak, drawing out the interconnect plug, and held it up at arm's length over the water to her side.  "Make your choice – come with me back to New Kilmarnock with the seed, or this goes in the ocean, and we can't ever get off this sandbar."

Lane shook their head with a half-laugh, and then sat down with a thump in the half-dry sand over the water line.  "Do what you like," they said.  "As you said, back the first, I'll be straight with you – if you want to force me to fly to the Oike, I'll dive nose-first into a sandbar before I give up.  I'll save us the pain; you can drop that plug, meaning the plane's flaps will not work and we can't get airborne, and we can sit on this island forever until we get bored and cut our own throats."

"I'm serious," Alioune said, shaking the plug at the end of her fingers.

"As am I."  Lane spread their hands in utter resignation.  "You're surprised – I am surprised.  This is what happens, maybe, when I'm without orders.  I've made too many decisions already this morning – my head is spinning. Throw it – you might as well.  I – I can't, without direction, and if we're going to be out of radio range forever and I must keep making these decisions I ought to just stab myself while I'm ahead."  They reached for their knife again, lying on the sand, and as Lane tried to pick it up, Alioune suddenly dove over and tackled them, the plant forgotten.

"No! No – have some sense – have some sense, will you!  If you go and stab yourself, how are we ever going to get out of here?"

Lane struggled under her weight, the net of her cloak.  "But – the plant, the interconnect – I –"

Alioune pushed herself off them, sitting up on their legs, sending their knife away with a kick.  "The plant, you said it – if we keep to the bet, we can make another traveler of it – I'm already betting my life that I'll make it back to my people.  And the interconnect, what interconnect?  You think I'd run the risk of waking you up and finding me tampering with the engine?"  She pushed the 'harness interconnect' into Lane's face.  "This is just a bidirectional pin head from my spares box – if you knew the least thing about your own engine, you'd've known.  But if you knew the least thing about your own engine, you wouldn't've needed me to fix it yesterday either."  She threw the plug into the ocean with a sidearm snap, the piece bouncing and skipping across the waves, and stood up, shaking the sand out of her cloak.

"Get up.  We've got gear to move; there's got to be something we can transplant this seed into, to keep it alive, before those tanks fill all the way up."

It took another day, another tense and distrustful day staying out of each other's way, but not out of each other's sight, for the old pump to catalyze enough fuel for the Panayv to take off on – from there, it was another day and more, a day and a night and most of the next day besides, sleepless and grim next to each other, neither daring to let the other out of their sight, to move more than arm's reach from the plane's controls, before they came within hailing distance of a settlement.  Calvin-Volendam 14 – a Hydragonean outpost, barely more than a shack on a sandbar, but inhabited, and in condition to win the bet.  Lane watched Alioune even more closely as they drew closer – they couldn't afford the chance that she might seize the controls and crash them and their cargo into the sea.

"Panayv of Matelot Gulashkird, turn three degrees from true, and descend to three meters.  You are cleared to approach."  The voice out of the radio was clinical, electric; Lane slowly turned the wheel over towards the command direction, setting the flaps to sink the plane in.  They could see the buildings in the middle of the island now – the buildings and the high, wide T-tail and bulky missile tubes of a Nervets, an unlikely ambassador at a place like this.  Lane's eyes flicked across the HUD, trying to figure the appropriate glide path.

They lined up the plane on the radio beacon, aiming for an open stretch of beach, and were down to two meters from the waves when Alioune suddenly lunged for the controls.  Lane reached out an arm to block her, keep her from hitting anything important – but the damage was done.  Two meters of altitude meant no room for error, and one of the Panayv's floats, but not the other, caught in the water, sending it pinwheeling end over end, wingtip by wingtip across the waves, breaking up like a child's toy smashed against a wall.  Strapped in, they spun and jumped with the cabin, even as the plane tore itself apart around them, ending up on the surf line, half-upside-down, water pouring in from the cracks through the shattered canopy.

Only vaguely conscious, Lane was half-aware of shouted commands, heavy ceramic blades cutting apart the fuselage, slashing their seat harness, strong hands pulling them clear of the wreckage – other forms dragging Alioune clear, seizing the crate they'd used to transport the seed.  The rescuers left them on the beach, returning to the wreck to try and secure anything else of interest or of value. A shadow fell over Lane; they blinked, trying to make out who or what it might be.

"Matelot brevet Gulashkird.  I am Ensigne second Muhammad Dubreyvitch, commander of the Nervet-class ekranoplan Juncture, and the current commander at this post; at this time the voice and hand of the Autark.  Your report."

"The plant," Lane said, trying to keep their thoughts straight, to focus on their superior.  "The plant – in the crate."

"We have recovered the plant," Ensigne Dubreyvitch answered, "and as you know it must be forwarded immediately to the Autark.  As soon as the wreckage is cleared, we will depart."

"The – the Oike."

"The Oike lives; she will be tried and sentenced as a spy, for appearing in your company, and a saboteur, unless you claim that you botched your landing and destroyed your plane of your own accord."

"No," Lane said, "no – without, without her I would have died – never found the plant – never made it this far.  Surely –"

"Then in addition to your existing charge of acting without orders, you may face a charge of collaboration with the enemy.  May."  The Ensigne looked down the beach at the broken Panayv, the crews dragging fragments and panels of the wings and fuselage ashore. "May.  The truth of the Autark is absolute – his insights not always immediately discernible by we who were passed over for the post at the hand and the voice of the All-mind.  Perhaps all of this was in your orders, in your absence, from the start, and you have made no insubordination.  But until those orders are clear, you will be confined on suspicion of acting on your own – for acting without orders, unless your will tracks the will of the Autark to the last particular, is acting in defiance of the will of the Autark, is subverting the world project of the Autarky.  And if you could know what to do, at all times, as well as the Autark, you would surely be Autark in his place."

Lane closed their eyes.  This was it; this was Hydragonea, this was home, again, at last – they might be imprisoned, but they would be at prison at home again, far away from those isolated islands, bereft of orders, of commands, of structure, as though they were at the opposite end of the ocean.

[multiracialmedia-blog]

Uncombable Hair Syndrome: The Plight of a White Parent with a Multiracial Child

https://www.facebook.com/DailyMailAust/videos/1921806078054453/

Child with so-called Uncombable Hair Syndrome.

Revised April 12, 2017: The father of Lyla-Grace Barlow contacted us through Facebook to tell us his daughter really has a genetic condition and is very upset because he feels we’ve implied his daughter is mixed race. At no time have we and we invited him to read the article in its entirety, and if he is so moved, write one in response.

Revised April 6, 2017: Although the various sources used to research this article never linked to a credible source indicating Uncombable Hair Syndrome is a real condition that is indeed rare, the editors of Multiracial Media have learned that Uncombable Hair Syndrome is in fact a real and rare genetic condition, and has nothing to do with race.  Unfortunately the only people who are at fault here are the publications that never cited a credible source indicating this was indeed a rare genetic condition. We regret the unnecessary drama this has caused, however, the underlying message hasn’t changed. Many of the same issues the Barlow family deal with in their daughter are ones that people of color have dealt with for centuries.

This morning I came across this video in one of the Facebook groups I belong to for women who are multiracial with Black ancestry. The title of the video had me both annoyed and laughing at the same time: “She has Uncombable Hair Syndrome.” I had this feeling I was going to find myself knee-deep in some cult film from the 1950s and 1960s (also called B movies), like the “Creature From the Black Lagoon.”

At the center of this now-viral video is sweet Lyla-Grace Barlow, an English girl who “suffers” from this “genetic mutation.” The Sun, a daily periodical in England, ran this story two days ago and the title makes it seem like this poor child is suffering from an incurable disease:

Five-year-old’s rare condition means it’s AGONY to brush her untamed hair (and Albert Einstein was a sufferer): She is one of 100 living sufferers of Uncombable Hair Syndrome.

Did this newspaper just refer to this child as a sufferer? A little dramatic, no? Perhaps for some White people this is the end of the world. For someone who’s lived with frizzy hair since I hit puberty and my hair went from straight to wavy and eventually curly, I have just learned how to work with my hair. I admit it’s taken me a while to find the right products to use (which I had to re-evaluate when my husband and I moved to the tropics and the products I used in a dry, arid climate no longer worked), but I’d hardly characterize myself as suffering from anything. I certainly never imagined someone would dream up a name for this: Uncombable Hair Syndrome is really making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Once I stopped laughing, I thought about four things:

Welcome to the world of most PoC and Jewish people worldwide, as well as Mediterranean people

Maybe she’s got some sistah in her

Surely there are salons that cater to Black, Hispanic or Multiracial hair this girl’s parents can take her to. She lives in England, after all, where there are many Multiracial kids.

Ditch the comb and brush (that’s her parents’ first problem) and with the right products, this girl can transform that frizz into some gorgeous locks

Judging From the Comments, I’d Say Mine Aren’t the Only Ones to Suggest This Idea of Suffering From Uncombable Hair Syndrome Is Ridiculous

Nora is White and Jewish. I have known her for years and those beautiful curls are ones she’s figured out how to keep from frizzing.

From a Black friend of mine living in England who prefers to remain anonymous.

Tina, also from England, is White.

Thanks to this person who commented but prefers to remain anonymous, I now know that Mediterranean people deal with frizzy hair, too.

  Nice for a man to weigh in, a White man at that.

It was my own comment that made me see the light of day on this topic.

Although people of color, Jewish and Mediterranean people have been dealing with this issue for as long as we’ve been alive, it’s not much of an issue for White people who frequently (not always) have straight hair. Looking at the products available in beauty supply stores and pharmacies for White people and PoC, it’s clear marketing is very different. For White people, shampoos that promise volume are wildly popular. Volume is the very last thing PoC, Mediterranean and Jewish people, with what friends of mine call their “Jew-Fro,” want. I like my hair to hang down not out, which is what my hair wants to do naturally.

When White people encounter this anomaly, because products that are marketed to PoC, Mediterranean and Jewish aren’t marketed to White people, they’re lost. They’re traveling in uncharted territory. Of course I could go on the Internet, talk with a hair dresser or ask my friends to see if there’s a solution to my problem. Maybe it’s possible White people feel isolated. Not knowing other PoC, they’re left to their own devices. And in this family’s final frustrated hour, sharing their plight with news media was their way to deal.

So this got me thinking. If White people who’ve married another White person are at their wit’s end, what of the White mother who marries a Black man and who gives birth to a multiracial child with curly, frizzy, textured hair? If she doesn’t have friends or other family members to go to, maybe she’s embarrassed to walk in to a Black hair salon or a beauty supply place that caters to PoC and ask for help.

How Does the White Parent of a Multiracial Child Deal with Textured, Frizzy, Curly and So-Called Uncombable Hair Syndrome?

People the world over have been dealing with frizzy and what my mother used to call “unruly” hair for as long as there have been people. Before there were products lining the shelves of stores, indigenous people used products found in nature: Jojoba, coconut oil, olive oil, tea tree oil and myriad others. Nowadays companies have figured out that while they can synthetically manufacture some tincture to combat frizz, it’s useful to once again look to nature to tame the frizz.

I do have some suggestions that, no matter where in the world you live, can help.

First of all, ditch the comb and brush. Both cause static and with static, frizz is soon to follow.

Find a product that doesn’t weigh hair down, works with your child’s hair and brings out shine and curl, not dull frizz. For kids—even within the same family—with multiple ethnicities and at least two races inside them, there is no one-product-fits-all. What works for my older brother, who’s got an Afro, is too heavy on my hair.

Learn to braid your child’s hair (also referred to as corn rows and plaiting—pronounced platting). It’s one way to minimize frizz, which many PoC throughout the world, including England, Europe and the United States, have figured out. Looks like the parents of Lyla-Grace Barlow figured out this age-old trick now too.

Stop fighting Mother Nature. Accept what your child’s hair is and learn to work with it.

Stop using terms like “Good hair” and “Bad hair.” Nobody has either. These are common terms to describe straight and manageable (“good”) and textured and curly (“bad”) hair, and they’re extremely damaging to kids and will stigmatize your Multiracial child. When kids at school poke fun at your child’s hair, teach your child to love his or her hair and to take pride in how both his or her parents’ beautiful blending are represented in him or her.

Keep in mind Multiracial kids’ hair changes. Mine started out fine, straight and what my mother used to call “see through.” Until I reached puberty, my mother kept my hair very short because when it grew, it would break, it was so fine. I hit puberty and all those hormones curled my hair (very common for Multiracial people) and made it extremely thick. It was then I stopped using a comb or a brush. My mother tried getting both through my “unruly” hair, which she sometimes also called “a bird’s nest,” but all that happened is I’d end up in tears and she’d call me tender-headed.

Ask for help. Don’t be afraid to go to a salon that caters to other ethnicities for guidance. Nobody is expecting you to know how to work with your child’s hair if you have straight hair. 99 times out of a 100, both the people who work in the salon and the patrons will be happy to offer suggestions. Don’t be scared. Remember, we’re all people.

If you opt to chemically straighten your daughter’s hair, please read up on the pros and cons. Chemical relaxers come with prices: broken hair and unhealthy hair, for example, and there are also many political implications you’re exposing your daughter to.

I can’t stress this enough: please instill pride in your child. You married your spouse because you fell in love, and both of your genes will show up in your child/children. Don’t fall into the habit of referring to your child’s hair as good or bad, and don’t let relatives on either side do this. And if someone brings up the ridiculous notion of Uncombable Hair Syndrome, tell them, “Thanks! But I love my child’s hair and it’s beautiful.”

Uncombable Hair Syndrome: The Plight of a White Parent with a Multiracial Child if you want to check out other voices of the Multiracial Community click here Multiracial Media