#ever seaward echoes more

[ragsweas]

This is very specific, but in 'Ever Seaward Echoes More' by Kari_Kurofai, dont remember which chapter, but Pharm asks Korn if it was him in th ending of the book, 'Light Hits the Gloom'. And Korn says yes. And the ending is, descriptive. About Korn ending his life. And Pharm asks Korn that did he try again or something alone those lines. And Korn says that things continued to happen, with Pharm's birth and he kept pushing his ending-it-all-life moment and then he couldn't because he cared for his nephew.

And I just. I always related more to Korn and I loved In as a character, in the show and moreso in this fic. And right now, it feels like I am him. I have never tried to end it all, not actively, but the Thought remains. But i cannot. Because I have a niece and my siblings who care for me. Because I kept pushing difficult thoughts of ending-it-all and I can't do it anymore because now my niece is growing up and if I go away she will notice.

It feels wrong even admitting it because Korn had a traumatic childhood and more traumatic moments in life and mine isnt like that. But he is fifty when he gets the love of his life at 50 and he starts to live again and he loves. He loves so much. And that continues to remain my favorite story because its going through so much trauma and living life and its difficult but he does. He lives.

And at one point he says, directly or indirectly I cannot remember but he says that he will always be sick and it's nobodys fault but he is better. He will have bad days and he will have those panic attacks and breakdowns and absolutely difficult times but he will live. And even before In comes back in his life, he is living. With a few memories and some family but he is living.

I told one of my friends yesterday that its surprising I hadn't had a spiral yet late in the day but there was still time. And that is how I live. Spiral to spiral. But yesterday i spent some time with friends and I was so scared of being obnoxious but I was living and today a friend called and we talked and she just wanted to talk. And that's a very difficult thing to comprehend, that someone just wants to talk to me for no reason. Even if I have people.

Point is, this story has saved me and given me hope ever since I first read it some two, three years ago and a recent re-reading just cemented the idea. I will live, I know, and maybe I will never have that kind of love because nobody will love me like In loved Korn, but Korn still lived. He tried to end it and it didn't succeed and he lived in his beach house after he wrote his heart out. He loved a monotonous life and he was definitely not fine but he lived. And I may just live.

[outofgloom]

KNOWLEDGE

All of the wards in the City of Secrets were screaming. From the inland rampart to the seaward piers, from the high pinnacle of the Cinis Mai to the street-level ward-stones they rang out intruder, attacker, invasion!

The elderpriest rushed through the corridors of the ziggurat, breathless and bleary-eyed with sleep. Down the polished passages and up the crisscrossing stairs, out into the Throne Chamber he ran. The vast space echoed with the alarms as he crossed to the east door and threw it open, looked out: 

From the top of the three-sided ziggurat he could see all the inland portion of the city, all the way to the walls and the mountain waste beyond. The smoke of Valmai could just be seen in the far, far distance, a small smudge against the morning sky.

There was no army encamped there. The walls stood strong. The city was dark and silent. Still the wards rang in his ears. 

From the east door to the southwest he ran. Still nothing. The streets were quiet below, still shrouded in sleep. Soon, the sky would be alight, and the City of Secrets would grind itself into wakefulness, but not yet. Still the wards clamored on.

Finally, to the northwest he ran and threw open the last door. That was when he realized that it was not morning. Below, the waters of the Halkatarax rivered their way through the city, into the bay and its great harbor, and then out to the open sea.

But there was no more sea, and no more harbor. Where the harbor-mouth had once been, there was now a mass of land blocking passage to the ocean. A pitted, craggy island.

Behind the island, a dark bar of shadow lay along the horizon, and a fog of darkness rose up to cover the sky above. It was not morning. It was perhaps midday, but the city lay in deep gloom, a gloom that was not darkness alone. There was something in the darkness, something that breathed silence and sleep. He could feel it, and so could the wards in the stones of the city. They did not sleep, of course. They were awake, awake and shrieking to warn him.

Another ping ran through the veins of the ziggurat and shivered through his feet, shocking him to action. He stumbled back inside with fear rising in his throat. Disastrous. Where were the guards? Where were the harbor-wardens? Was he the only creature stirring in the city now? Where had the dark island come from, and what did it portend?

He fled to the center of the chamber and stood before the throne. It sat solid as ever, a great, squat mass of protobsidian, gilded with gold. It was said that the Mantax himself had carved it from the slopes of cursed Valmai long ago, enduring the gouts of magma that had poured forth upon him, to bring it away. The throne was the lynchpin of the ziggurat and its ward-veins, and only the Lord Mantax himself was allowed to sit upon it. But the Mantax was not here–he was somewhere north, taking counsel with the other Lords of Order. In his absence, only the elderpriest was allowed to touch the throne, to utilize its secrets.

The sky was growing darker outside–not brighter–and a horrible sense of foreboding fell upon the elderpriest. Another shiver went through the ward-veins.

He touched the throne.

Disorientation, and then clarity. His perception traced through channels of stone and metal, through networks laid through the ziggurat and the earth beneath it, into the streets and the buildings, through the apertures which sensed light and sound all throughout the city. It was the City of Secrets, but no secret could be kept from he who sat the throne.

The streets were empty, he found as he shifted through the various avenues of sight. He looked into the buildings and found bodies there. Terror spasmed in him for a moment before he sensed the beating of their cores. They were asleep. Room after room, building after building, the same thing. All deep in slumber. It must be the fog…

Another ping came down one of the wards to the northwest, and he raced along it to see. It was on the main thoroughfare coming up from the harbor, on the south bank of the Halcatarax. But he could see nothing.

Wait…there was a noise. He focused, couldn’t quite make it out. He ground his fingers into the surface of the throne, tried to increase the connection, but it was no use. He wavered for a moment…only the Lord Mantax could sit the throne. 

But Mantax was not here. He was the only one here. Surely he would be forgiven.

The elderpriest clambered up onto the great seat, felt the interweaving grooves in the arms and back of the chair. He focused again and thrilled with the deeper connection. Back along the ward-veins he flew, and looked out onto the thoroughfare once more. The sound rang out again. Metal on stone. Close by. There was a shape moving in the fog, moving away. He raced ahead, along the local ward-vein, and looked out again. The shape resolved, and it was–

It was slit-eyes and a bent back, topped with spines. It was a staff humming with a sleep-inducing power, amplified through the gloom. And there was another: more slit-eyes, and a staff projecting a field of silence.

It was Rahkshi…and there were more, so many more. An army of Rahkshi creeping through the dark, all along the thoroughfare, and out into the city. They were emerging from the waters of the harbor, down from the shores of the island at the harbor’s mouth. 

That island…it was…He knew the shape of that island. There were deep pits in its surface, and from the pits came even more creatures: beasts that flitted through the air and others that crawled along the ground. Rahi creatures. Creatures of the Makuta.

Invasion. His jaw clenched at the realization, and he floundered for a moment in the ward-space, seeking for the right impulses to activate. The Mantax had spoken of the possibility that the Makuta might move against the Lords of Order, but there had been no open conflict. 

His hands skittered desperately across the grooves of the throne. 

Where was the Lord Mantax, and where were his armies? Surely he would be here soon. He knew all secrets; surely this was no exception. He would be here soon, yes, to ambush the invading force and destroy them, like so many times before. 

Where, where…what was the right configuration? He struggled to remember.

But…but if that was the plan, why had the Lord Mantax not apprised him? He was the elderpriest of the ziggurat. Was he no longer trusted? He had kept so many secrets, and so faithfully… 

Finally, the elderpriest found what he sought. Signals traveled out into the city, and things began to happen. Lightstones blazed bright along the streets, and earsplitting alarms began to clamor in the air. Many doors slammed shut, and others opened. There was a stir in some quarters, as the city's inhabitants were finally shocked into wakefulness. Awake and defend yourselves!

He could see more clearly now. He raced back to the main thoroughfare, looked out onto the street. A horrible noise of shrieking assaulted him as his perceptions emerged through the aperture, and he had to dial it back for a moment. The Rahkshi were screaming and fleeing from the lights. One of the creatures smashed its staff into the base of an obelisk and the spire toppled over, shattering its lightstone across the ground. The glowing shards repulsed the creatures even more.

He laughed at his success, watching them in disarray. He would awaken the guards and the harbor-wardens. He would lead the counterattack from here, and repulse the enemy. The Makuta thought to capture the city through sleep and silence, with their dull servants? Foolishness! Perhaps he would even capture the dark island itself, and add its secrets to his own—

The base of the ziggurat pinged him loudly, and his exulting stopped. Somewhere on the crisscrossing stairs outside. Had they penetrated that far into the city? He had seen no Rahkshi on the way. A chill went down his spine as he abandoned the further wards and moved to the ziggurat itself. There were guards on the ground now, shaking off sleep and brandishing weapons, and the pathetic Matoran were running here and there in terror. 

Shouts moved through the air as he set the wards to signal out the positions of the intruders in the streets. Then he was racing up the outside of the ziggurat, seeking the invaders along the stairs, commanding the outer doors to bolt and seal, and seal again, and—

He was seized bodily, and all his perceptions dissolved into a spinning, sickening rush as he was dragged from the throne and went sailing through the air…then resolved into red pain as he smashed into the far wall of the throne chamber.

More pain as he slid down and struck the polished floor. Agony rolled through his body, and he knew that his gilded armor was broken and bent. The personal wards in his armor plates told him that his internals were damaged. It was bad.

He was face down on the floor, but he realized that he was still seeing something. His perception was limned with red, and it throbbed horribly, but he was still connected to the ward-veins somehow. He was seeing the interior of the Throne Chamber. There he was, a broken pile on the floor, and there was the throne at the center, and between…

Between him and the throne there was a thing standing. It was made of many plates and metal shapes, joined by pistons and connecting gears. It did not move like a living thing, but more like the automatons he had seen the Fe-Matoran produce. It stalked toward his inert form, each limb moving as if by a separate, disjoint instruction. His disembodied senses felt the thing's feet blunt against the polished floor. Pain surged again, and he struggled to focus. He looked toward the throne. If he was still connected to the ward-veins, maybe he could—

The thing stopped suddenly and turned with surprising speed. All at once he was staring down into two bright green eyes behind a foreign mask. It was not looking at his body, but at him–at the point where his perceptions emitted through the wards. It could see him. 

The eyes glowed painfully bright, and an unknown power obliterated the aperture, flinging him back into his own skull. He retched at the reversal of his disembodiment, coughing and struggling on the floor. His sight had returned, though still blurry. He heaved himself up on one arm. The thing had already turned back to him. It stood over him now, and he waited for it to strike...

It did not strike. Instead, the thing reached down and touched him with one of its iron fingers...and the pain vanished. The rents in his armor closed, and his internal wards signaled a lessening of damage. He was…healed.

“Who…are you?” he asked breathlessly, pressing himself back against the wall, afraid, but thankful that he could breathe comfortably again.

A voice issued from behind the strange mask. It was not a living voice, but generated by mechanical means, he was sure.

“Do you not know?” the voice said.

“I do not.” It was the truth. Rahkshi and Rahi he knew, but not this mechanical thing.

“Are you not the elderpriest of the city of the Mantax, who shares in the knowledge of He Who Knows All Secrets?”

“I am.”

“And yet you do not know this secret.”

“I…I—”

The thing laughed a mechanical laugh, and the green eyes pulsed.

“What is your intention here," the elderpriest demanded, trying to put on a brave face, "and what is the meaning of this invasion? This affront to the Lords of Order will not stand.”

“More secrets that you do not possess.”

The elderpriest scoffed. “I assure you, when the Mantax is returned, declarations will be sent to the Makuta, and swift war will come upon them, worse even than in the days of the Wars of Order. You may transmit this to your masters—”

The room blurred and shifted around them, and suddenly they were back in the center of the chamber, next to the throne. He realized that he was standing up now. How…? He had no time to think.

The thing touched the protobsidian of the throne with an iron finger, scratched a spark out of it.

“Do not touch it!” he cried. “Only those ordained to possess the knowledge of Mantax may—”

“Ah, knowledge,” the voice interrupted. The green eyes flicked toward him. “If knowledge is required, then I am certainly ordained, for I am Knowledge.”

“What does that mean? You still haven't told me who you are.”

“I have. Just now.” The eyes turned back to the throne. “So this is the means by which you surveil the city,” the thing mused. “A useful tool for lesser creatures, I suppose. The Lord Mantax is dead.”

“It is forbidden for you to–” The words registered in his mind, and he stammered. “Wh-What? You…you lie!”

“He is dead, as are the other Barraki.”

“Outrageous! What proof do you offer of this claim?”

“No proof is necessary, except the proof of this city being taken in a few hours. The trifling forces of the Barraki are dismantling even now, across the universe. The Lords of Order are no more.”

“I know this to be false.”

The thing turned to him now, fixed him with a look that would have been inquisitive, had it been a living face.

“And how do you know this?”

The elderpriest hesitated, taken aback by the thing's sudden interest. “It is a…a secret. Something known only to the subjects of the Lord Mantax, and to no others.”

“If secrets are simply your own false beliefs, then you are a fool. Fools do not live long in my presence. Prove yourself.”

“I am the elderpriest. I do not need to—”

The thing stepped forward, and he remembered spinning and sickening, and red pain…

“Prove yourself.”

“Very well,” the elderpriest cleared his throat. “I shall grant you this secret: The Obsidian Throne was made by the Lord Mantax, who put his own wards of integrity upon it, that it should remain whole as long as he was living.” He pointed to the black seat. “The throne remains whole, its wards intact, and so the Mantax lives.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Fascinating,” the voice said. “And this is known amongst the people?”

“It is. All who serve the Mantax know it and are assured by it, as I am.”

“I see.” The thing turned its gaze back to the throne. “It is a good bit of mythmaking, I’ll give him credit. The Barraki are masters of such propaganda.”

“What do you mean?” The elderpriest stepped forward, indignant. “It is no myth. It is proof that the Mantax lives, and that he shall return to expel those who occupy his city.”

“It makes a good narrative for a resistance to hold to,” the voice mused, ignoring him. “Something that will have to be reckoned with, sooner or later.”

“This occupation will be short-lived—”

“It’s as good a place to start as any, I suppose.”

The thing snapped its iron fingers, and the throne shattered into rubble.

Shock. Confusion. The elderpriest looked wide-eyed at the pile of rubble as it collapsed to the floor. The ward was…the ward of integrity had been there…It had been strong. He had felt it, even to the point of shattering.

The thing turned to the elderpriest, dusting flecks of obsidian from its armor.

“Now,” it said, “do you renounce your duty to Mantax, one of the  Lords of Order, who is now dead, and do you pledge now the loyalty of your duty to the Makuta?”

“I…I do not renounce!”

“You have great knowledge, elderpriest, and much sway over those beneath the ziggurat. It is in the interests of the Makuta to preserve you, if possible. So I ask again, do you renounce?”

“I c-cannot renounce, for the Mantax is not dead. You may take this knowledge to the Makuta and let them consider it.”

The thing shook its strange mask.

“Ah, these are the words of a fool, for the Makuta are Knowledge.” Its eyes burned into green points “...and as I said, I am Knowledge as well.”

“I do not understand,” the elderpriest lied, shrinking backward.

“You do understand. The age of the Lords of Order is at an end, and now is the time of the Lords of Knowledge. Once more, I ask: Will you pledge to serve us in this new age?”

The green eyes bored into him. The throne was dust and black shards, its secrets annihilated, except for the ones he now carried.

“I will serve you,” he said, his voice trembling. 

“Then declare that the Mantax is dead.”

The throne was gone, but the wards remained. Mantax had laid down those within the ziggurat as well, he knew. They would have perished with him, surely. He could not be dead, and if he was not dead, then... someday there would be a reckoning...

“I will serve you, but I cannot declare this. The Mantax must live. I do not understand this contradiction. It is a secret that is…that is kept from me. Please understand.”

“I see,” the voice said. “Your faith is admirable, elderpriest, and worthy, I suppose, of your position as the keeper of the City of Secrets.”

The thing turned away for a moment, and the creak of pistons sounded almost like a sigh. Then its limbs rotated it back, and the green eyes looked upon him again.

“I have asked a great thing of you,” it said, “and you have revealed secrets to me. For your honesty, I will share one great secret in return, before I must again tend to my task in this place. Will you accept this, as the beginning of your service to us?”

“I...I will.”

“Very well. Then look.”

The strange mask slid upward and back, and metal plates retracted with a shriek. Pistons whined as the carapace of the Makuta opened horribly, and a dark thing issued forth.

And the elderpriest saw what was inside.

It had already told him.

It was knowledge.

[anghraine]

I’ve been following you for years now and my dumb ass just put together Míriel and Faramir. Between that and the wave dream it’s making me a bit emo I won’t lie lol

Aww, that's totally fair! And I appreciate the long-time follow :)

Miriel/Faramir anon, I just had another thought that just clicked thinking abt your aging post and Miriel remaining youthful/ageless while Pharazon ages and decays also foils with youthful Faramir contrasted against prematurely aging Denethor. One ends with drowning while the other (almost) ends with immolation. Ok bye lol

YES the water/fire youth/age visual imagery is so interesting, I think!

I've often vaguely associated Tar-Míriel and Faramir through the combination of the jewel imagery and the Akallabêth, yes. I don't think I've ever written about Faramir's dream/vision/ancestral memory of it without assuming that Míriel figures in some way, even though Tolkien never said so. Partly that's because the final image of her drowning on the Meneltarma is so much the image of the Akallabêth for me, but also the echo of the jewel theme.

One of my first fics ever (for any fandom) was about Faramir dreaming of Míriel drowning, and then waking up beside a pregnant Éowyn and adjusting. And it is not only for the coincidence of name elements that Faramir becomes Míriel in my f/f Aragorn/Faramir verse. I think that in canon, Faramir already has some intriguing associations with water:

fára in Quenya means 'shore' (though in fairness, he may have been named for his distant cousin, Prince Faramir of the House of Anárion, rather than meaning)

Faramir's first remembered grief is a dim memory of his dying mother, who "withered in the guarded city, as a flower of the seaward vales set upon a barren rock ... she turned her eyes ever south to the sea that she missed." He was five when she died, but pretty blatantly resembles her as well as Denethor in character.

Faramir often dreams of Númenor being drowned for completely unknown reasons (I mean, it actually happened, and it's Tolkien's dream, but we don't know why he gets the dreams about it in-story—though he's also particularly receptive to the prophecy-dream-riddle). Everyone knows his description of the Akallabêth dream, but the description is still pretty harrowing: "the great dark wave climbing over the green lands and above the hills, and coming on, darkness unescapable."

Faramir is standing by the water when he has the vision/not vision of Boromir's body floating down to the sea.

So it's even more interesting that Faramir's "case" of the Black Breath is different from everyone else's—the others grow cold/icy while he burns. Of course, that's potentially linked to his near immolation by Denethor, but the contrast with Míriel's death and the (metaphorical)(ish) shadow of the sea over him is really intriguing. When I was trying to figure out how f!Faramir-Míriel would get the Boromir vision, I was like "well she wouldn't literally be keeping watch by the river, but maybe it could reach her through some other water association, like ... oh! like the Akallabêth dream! and then I could have her relationship with Tar-Míriel's legacy and everything in it too..."

[technicallyverycowboy]

You recced Ever Seaward Echoes More (the really long UWMA In & Korn live but are separated for a long time fic) and THANK YOU for that I'm currently reading it and it is SO GOOD. Also I am crying so much it's so gorgeously sad

ever seaward echoes more by kari_kurofai

ahh i'm so glad! and yes, it absolutely does make yo ugly cry at several points :D

[part5of4podcast]

And we’re back to being spicy! Unlike today’s show which is very vanilla. Today we’re asking the question, is Until We Meet Again worth the hype? Or is it overhyped? What makes it a bad, good, or mediocre show? How close will we get to being kicked out of fandom today? Find out and listen for yourself!

Listen to this podcast on: Spotify | Youtube

Have an unpopular opinion about a BL? Don't worry, we probably do too. Saying all the things you do or don’t wanna hear Part 5 (of 4) is here to engage with BL media from Japan, Thailand, China, Korea and more. We're talking film-making techniques, narrative analysis, fandom woes, while asking questions like, hey why don't the bottoms move their arms? We may not be experts, but we are loud, chaotic, and full of opinions.

Check out each named series at our Series Page for official viewing/reading links.

Want to learn more about any specifics we discussed this episode? Check out our Further Reading Page!

Fanworks We Loved

In and Korn | Their Story [1x01-1x17]

Dean and Pharm | Their Story [1x01-1x17]

Korn ✘ Intouch | till forever falls apart by evilhagbl

In ✘ Korn ► As The World Caves In▸ Until We Meet Again by DraxLor BL

Ever Seaward Echoes More by @kari-kurofai

ㅡ unknown by @fydramas

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN | episode thirteen by @thyla

Fluke Looking Pretty by @zhaozi

If you have something’s going on, you need to tell me, got it? By @yohankang

im gonna take a long walk off a really short cliff by @dramawatchinggoblin

winteam + incorrect posts by @consentkingwin

WinTeam living their best life by @ealeczander

i just stole a kiss… by @markpakin

Credits:

Chaotic Hosts: Dé & Sinna

Beloved Editor: Bones

Creative Kingpin: Libby

Buy us a coffee!

[interdimensionalburnout]

Screaming

>>It's dark, as you look out from the open garage bay. Your sword slides back into its sheath as the yellow-and-black bar slides off its arm. The sky is clear for once, the poison dust blown seaward, the moon shines at you, burns at you, the magnifying glass on the ant. Fire doesn't begin to cut it. This mood hasn't taken in you in years and years, inside the timeloop OR outside it.

>>Beyond the garage is an overpass, that curves around another building. The heart of this eastern sub-city was once a market, long-buried by a tumorous, upward urban sprawl. Before the Revolutionaries took the sub-city to the north, this was a getaway locale for the rich. Luxury high-rise buildings, mansions in the sky, where the rich could "get away" from the stress of dealing with the poor, who lived on the lower floors of those towers they maintained. All connected by this little knot of overpasses, so no one ever had to even SEE their urban serfs.

>>In only two decades, the whole place has fallen by the wayside, a darkly ironic portent, answering in the draft of cold wind through rotting concrete, "what lasting monuments will we leave." The overpass out of this particular building, abandoned, without power, water, heat, all to prevent a hundred thousand homeless from having a place to sleep, that overpass has rotted at the elbow. You sniff the air, still seeking the source of this energy in your fingertips. The city is getting to you, now that it's getting THROUGH to you.

>>You turn from the half-abandoned luxury district, and step lightly into the darkness. The winter wind follows you into the raised parking garage, through the ruined metal gate, cut into a fraying hole. Sitting in the dark, a tarp thrown to the side at its rubber hooves, is a wild iron horse. Someone left their motorcycle, a custom thing, made for performance, for looking slick, for going faster than anyone could catch on equal footing. "This is no bike for the bourgeois," you think to yourself. "This beast," the words echo as you walk around it's cherry-red chassis, "Would reject you, noble scion of a worthless lord." Bare hands, marked with scars that followed you back home from beyond this time and place, caress the handle.

>>"This is better than you deserve," The decree receives only the reply of the city, the wind scattering trash and petrified leaves across crumbling pavement. It's unclear you mean by "you," as you set yourself gingerly on the seat. A spark, a jump of a live current, the very essence of your suddenly wild-feeling soul, flies from your legs. Like captured lightning, arcing between two points, the long-dormant battery comes flashing to life, and then beyond it. There's a roar, as the ignition switch is flipped. "But it'll be put to good work, regardless."

>>The garage scatters its shadows in the face of light, the first light in a decade or more that it has seen, but not the last. No, not the last. These buildings can't be left like this, and if they won't be taken by the people, they'll be given over as fuel for the fires of revolution. You go screaming into the night air, out the bay door, and off the overpass. You clear a city block, and about thirty feet of vertical space, before you land on another strip of raised road. The beast doesn't want to slow down, freed from its cage, but you take your hand off the clutch and drift to a stop, facing the building you just came from. The light from your goggles burn like searing red-hot wires, your hair blowing wild in the wind. A button, a detonator, has appeared in hand.

>>You wasted no time, but this isn't the kind of direction you plan on finishing with tonight. The button presses, two stories down from the garage you just exited, a bedroom suddenly comes alive with energy. Great, concussive force wakes up inside the plastic you left on the bed, and takes half the floor with it as it leaves. The fire, the wind, the explosion itself is nothing compared to the noise. You've made a noise that no one will ignore already, you cleaved a prison in two, vandalized symbols of power, but this is pointed.

>>Or it will be. The building lists like a hewn tree, finally yielding to the ax. The very atoms of the mighty body fall away in great chunks of concrete, the steel in the tower's bones bending fatally. The bike screams back to life under you, turning away from the first stroke of the night, and behind you, the building begins a free fall into its nearest neighbor before it can crumble from below. The second skyscraper is gouged out by the fall, and crumbles downwards like a struck man, sloughing down. The thundercrack of the explosion rings in your ears, echoes through the empty, lifeless part of the city.

>>The wind carries the noise ahead of you, even as you drive like hell, detonator gripped tightly in your hand, even as you work the clutch with white knuckles. You keep the button depressed, sending out the short-range signal as you pass by carefully-marked targets, weaving around crumbling highways faster than you can really keep up with. The storm in your body has utterly consumed you, the lightning in your blood twitches your muscle fibers, more in tune with the wind than with the mind. All around you, thunder follows.

>>Buildings spill their guts, old ghosts clutch their ears, masonry collides with masonry. This eastern detachment of this giant prison of a city, a vacation spot more than a spot of major industry, possessed few of these towers, no more than thirty truly pierce the clouds, but none of them will be left by the time the sun rises.

>>You finish the circuit, using the whipping, falling roads, pulled apart by their mighty anchors' collapse, as ramp to the even more neglected ground. The pavement accepts you with a hiss of gravel, and urges you to get out of the way of the flames that surely will follow. You speed west, towards your next target. You're death on a steel machine, a lightning storm wrapped up in a woman.

[chaos0pikachu]

🛥️and😭?

A fic that brought you aboard a new ship

Oh this one is actually tough I don't read a ton of fic for fandoms/stuff I haven't watched but honestly a lot of Strangers from Hell fanfic is so good that I ended up starting the show (also the gifs were COMPELLING)

When I was traveling for work I started reading some of the fic - A Choice is Made: Blank Page by scifigeek14 & Twist the Knife by memequeen1127 both come to mind - b/c they're of decent length and there were a couple that I was like "wow, gotta watch this show and get on board with this ship" lol I think if anyone vibes with Hannibal they'd vibe with Strangers from Hell (also the show has lee dong-wook doing what he does best, having wild gay tension with his costar)

Also this fic for Word of Honor b/c like, I didn't really ship Xie Wang/Ye Baiyi (they have one scene together the whole show lol) but like, I'm also a sucker for a good sugar daddy fic plus it's funny? I always wanted XW to realize he was to pretty to have such a busted daddy but he never listened to The Lesbians in the show which was his own dumb undoing so reading this fic and realizing Ye Baiyi would also make a hilarious old man sugar daddy was a lot of fun I saw The Vision

A fic that ripped your heart out (but it hurt so good)

Oh this is easy, Ever Seaward Echoes More by @kari-kurofai I don't think I've ever been shy about the fact that I find UWMA an overhyped show but this is hands down one of the best fics I've ever read and I've been reading fanfic since the days of ffnet's peak lol the only part of UWMA that I truly enjoyed was In and Korn and this fic just like 1) beautifully written, genuinely and 2) is about them and in a way that's rich, complex, and sincere with emotion the ending got me the first time I read it and it was amazing

Fic Recs (Ask Meme)

[eyayah-oya]

A Bit of Hope to Keep You Safe

Clone Ship Week | Day 7 | Armor - @cloneshipweek

Bacara/Rex

Rating: G

Warnings: none

Ao3 link

           Rex walked through camp with two cups of caf in his hand, looking for Commander Bacara.  They had time to relax before the next big push of the campaign, and Rex wanted to spend at least a few minutes with Bacara before they had to be a Captain and a Commander again.  It was so rare that they even got to see each other, let alone outside of a professional setting, that Rex was willing to take whatever they could scrounge together.

           Eventually, he found his way to the edge of the camp, overlooking a vast violet sea.  The boulders of ancient ruins littered the ground, and Rex found Bacara leaning back against the boulder on the seaward side.  Rex kicked a pebble to let the Commander know that he was there, and Bacara looked up.

           For the first time in a long time, Rex got a good look at his boyfriend.  Bacara looked exhausted.  The eyes that held so much warmth during ARC training now were shattered with grief and the burden of forever remaining strong for his men.  Bacara was the bulwark holding back the tide of the entire Separatist army from his men and the rest of the Republic.  When Bacara realized it was just Rex, the line of his shoulders slumped just slightly, and the man behind The Marine peaked through the cracks in his armor.

           “Rex,” Bacara breathed.

           With a small smile, Rex sat down next to Bacara and handed him one of the cups of caf.  “How are you?"

           "I’m holding up, tat’ka,” Bacara said.  He took a long sip of the caf and wrinkled his nose adorably much to Rex’s delight.  “Did you put any sugar in this?”

           “I gave you the allotment of sugar, same as every other damn cup of caf in the Republic,” Rex said, holding back a snicker.

           Bacara hummed and drained the caf as fast as he could before setting his cup down on the ground next to him.  With a languid stretch, Bacara leaned his head back against the boulder and closed his eyes, drinking in the rays of the sun.  His skin was paler than other brothers, a testament to how rarely he took his bucket off.  Rex scooted a bit closer to Bacara and pressed against his shoulder. A shudder ran through his body before Bacara leaned into the touch.

           Rex wanted to weep at how touch-starved and lonely he was. How many nights did Bacara spend alone while his men sought comfort amongst themselves?  How many times did he stand guard while the Marines shook apart and put themselves back together just to fight and die in another battle on a planet the Republic had all but forgotten?  There was not a single clone ever created that did well with being isolated. From the time they were decanted, they spent every second of their day with brothers.  But the Marines were isolated and Bacara even more so.

           There were few things in life that Rex wanted more in that moment, than to take Bacara and his men far away from the war and keep them safe and loved.  He wanted to hold Bacara every night, and tell him how loved he was until he stopped flinching at every touch.  Rex wanted to have the freedom to be there for Bacara since he refused to allow anyone else close enough to take care of The Marine.

           In the middle of a galactic-wide war, however, there wasn’t much Rex could do for any of those desires.  He could care for Bacara for however long this campaign lasted, and then they’d be separated once again with little to no contact.

           As Rex ran his fingers over the gouges in his thigh plate from an exploding tank, an idea struck him.

           “Bacara—” Rex began, then stopped.  How did someone even ask something like this?  Maybe he should have paid more attention to Kix and Jesse’s courtship.

           “Hmm?”

           For several seconds, Rex tried to figure out what exactly he wanted to say.  There were just so many different ways it could be taken, and Rex wasn’t even sure if the Marines were isolated enough from their brothers that this custom hadn’t reached them yet.  Giving a piece of himself to a brother, especially one from a different battalion, had certain meanings.  Rex fell in love quickly and loved deeply.  Bacara loved just as deeply, but he was also slower to trust and slower to love. It felt awful to even think it, but Rex really wasn’t sure how his suggestion would be taken.

           “Rex, whatever it is, I’m sure it will be fine,” Bacara sighed.  “Talk to me, tat’ka.”

           With a deep breath, Rex undid the clasps of his left vambrace, the only piece of his armor that he thought might be able to fit Bacara. Without a word, he turned and offered the piece of armor to his boyfriend and held his breath.

           Bacara didn’t say anything.  He stared at the vambrace, face carefully blank, and Rex was terrified that he’d pushed too hard too soon.  The shattered look in his warm brown eyes seemed to clear, some of the cracks healing, just a little bit.  They were silent, only the distant waves crashing against the base of the cliff and the calls of local seabirds could be heard.  Not even the camp was close enough to hear the everyday chatter of soldiers reconnecting.  After a minute, just long enough for Rex to get anxious, Bacara reached out and took his vambrace, his fingers trembling slightly.

           Rex let out his breath in relief.  Bacara understood what Rex hadn’t managed to find the words to express what was in his heart.  This was important, for both of them.  Vod’e traded pieces of armor with only their closest brothers.  It was a promise to return.  A promise that they had someone watching their back.  A promise to always be there for them. Some, like Echo and Fives, it was a gift between siblings.  Fives still cherished the piece of armor Echo had given him before the disastrous mission to the Citadel.  Others, like Jesse and Kix, treated it as a courting gift.  In either situation, the two who shared armor formed a connection that was unbreakable.

           “Rex—” Bacara whispered, his voice rough and broken. “Rex, are you sure—”

           But he refused to let Bacara finish that sentence.  Rex surged forward and pulled his wonderful, kind, gentle boyfriend into a deep and passionate kiss, though he kept every movement gentle and loving.  Everything he felt for Bacara was poured from his heart and into the kiss.  Every time Rex only managed to keep going because he knew he needed to come back to Bacara.  Every time he thought about his boyfriend fighting alone on far-off planets, surrounded by enemies.  He gave Bacara everything, his whole soul.  And Bacara welcomed every touch, every lick, every bite with the desperation of a man dying of loneliness.  A man dying for the love of his cyare.

           Bacara eventually took control of the kiss, pulling Rex into his lap and cradling his face in his large, warm palms.  The callouses scratched over his skin, sending tingles down his spine and curling his toes in his boots.  Rex sighed into the kiss.  He wrapped his arms around Bacara’s shoulders and let him find what he needed with every shared breath and every suck and nip.  Rex could only hold tight and refuse to let go.

           Since the first time they kissed, Rex had always fallen apart when Bacara kissed him.  There was a depth and a passion, building up heat until Rex was panting and hazy-eyed in his arms.  With every kiss, Bacara told Rex how much he loved him.  How much he meant to Bacara.  How desperately he needed Rex.  And this time was no different.

           Rex had no idea how long they’d spent trading kisses with him straddling his boyfriend’s lap, caf cups and vambrace left forgotten in the dirt next to them.  When they finally broke apart to simply rest their foreheads against each other, the sun was starting to dip below the horizon, turning the pink sky a gorgeous red and purple.

           “Rex?” Bacara murmured.

           “Hmm?”  He couldn’t gather up the scattered cells of his brain to come up with a more intelligent response than that.

           “You really want to exchange armor?”

           Rex idly slipped his fingers into Bacara’s curls, playing with the longer hair on top and scratching through his beard.  “Of course, Cara.  I love you.  I can’t do much to be there for you while we’re still fighting this war, but I can promise to always come back.  It’s not much—”

           “No, it’s perfect,” Bacara interrupted.  “I would love to exchange armor with you.”

           “Good.  I’m really glad.”  Rex nudged Bacara’s nose while his hand scrabbled to find his forgotten vambrace.

           Bacara huffed, amused, and grabbed the vambrace from where it had fallen on the opposite side of where Rex was searching.  “Is this what you were looking for, tat’ka?”

           Rex gave his best Tubie scowl he could, the one that never failed to make Ponds melt into a puddle, and nuzzled Bacara’s face.  “Not my fault you hid it,” he grumbled.

           “Of course.  It’s perfectly reasonable to start losing your mind when dealing with the Jedi.  No one would blame you for forgetting the little things.”

           “I can and will bite you,” Rex threatened.

           Of course, that had a slightly different effect on Bacara than Rex had been expecting.  His dark eyes turned black with desire, and he leaned forward to leave a sharp bite on Rex’s swollen bottom lip.  Rex gasped and his heart skipped several beats.

           “Cara,” he gasped.  “That’s not playing fair.”

           “Who said anything about fair?”  Bacara ran his hand along Rex’s arm, until he reached the empty space that his vambrace normally occupied.  “Can’t have you going into battle without a full set of armor.  That would be unprofessional.”

           “Yeah?  Are you going to do anything about it?”

           Bacara hummed in response.  With deft fingers, he quickly undid the clasps of his own left vambrace and pushed Rex back far enough that he could easily access both of their arms.  They were all clones, so the vambraces looked to be the same size.  It wasn’t cost-efficient, after all, to provide custom sizes of armor for the entire GAR.  But the padding inside might be different for Bacara and Rex, since the Commander was built a bit bigger than Rex.

           “Rex of Torrent,” Bacara started, his voice rumbling thick and low.  “I give you my armor with the promise that I will always watch your back.  I will always support you in everything you do. I will always love you.  And I swear I will return to you as best as I can. Do you accept?”

           Blinking away sudden tears, Rex leaned forward and captured Bacara’s lips in a soft kiss.  “I accept your armor and your promise.  Bacara of Nova, I give you my armor with the promise that I will stand by your side.  I will treat your men as my own, and I will support Nova in every way I can.  I will be your rock and your anchor.  I will love you as long as I have breath and I will always do my best to return to you.  Do you accept my armor and my promise?”

           “Yes,” Bacara breathed.  He shuddered and gripped Rex’s bare arm as tight as he dared. Rex wrapped his other arm around him and brought their foreheads together again, their lips brushing with every breath.  He held Bacara until he was steady once again.

           “Can I put my vambrace on you?” Rex asked once the shudders had faded to only the occasional tremor.

           Bacara nodded and with sure fingers, Rex slid the vambrace into place and clicked the clasps closed.  They both sighed when the armor settled into place and then Bacara was reaching for his vambrace.  He returned the favor and soon, they were both fully armored again, minus their buckets.

           “Thank you for letting me do this,” Rex murmured softly.

           “No need for that.  I’m glad you thought of it.  I wasn’t sure—”  Bacara trailed off.  There were a number of things that he could say, but neither one chose to acknowledge any of them out loud.  He wasn’t sure if Rex would want to wear his armor.  He wasn’t sure when they’d be able to see each other for the exchange to even be possible.  He wasn’t sure if either of them would live long enough to talk about exchanging armor.

           None of those concerns ended up being founded, and Bacara relaxed as much as he could against Rex.  Rex easily accepted his weight and held onto him as tight as he could.  It wasn’t the same as being on board a ship, where they felt a bit more comfortable removing their armor, but it was good enough for now.  Now was all they had, with the war pulling them across the galaxy from each other, and Rex intended to make the most of it.

           (Later, his men would send Rex knowing smirks and pointed observations, carefully out of hearing range of Commander Bacara.  While they teased and prodded at him, Rex knew that every single one of them were happy for him.  They all needed a little bit of love and comfort with the war weighing down on them.  Especially Captain Rex and The Marine.)

This is inspired by Soft Wars by @thefoundationproject . You should all go read it because it’s amazing!

[legendaryrooftopscene]

i was tagged by @sotaaoki almost a week ago sorry but i'm here to do it now!!

favorite colors: sage green and dusty blue (i was always partial to shades of green and blue but then we picked them for our wedding colors and now i'm obsessed)

currently reading: quite a few things, in small bits. I have like four comfort novels in rotation pretty much all the time: The Odyssey (trans. Dr. Emily Wilson), Who Fears Death by the irreplaceable Dr. Nnedi Okorafor, Good Omens, and This Is How You Lose The Time War. Also it's not a book but i'm reading an UWMA fic that's breaking me in half (Ever Seaward Echoes More by Kari_Kurofai).

last song: Why Don't You Stay (World Tour version) by Jeff Satur

last series: I'm currently slowly working my way through both The Devil Judge and PS I Hate You!

last movie: Netflix says Steel Magnolias, which I watch when I need to cry but can't for some reason.

currently working on: I just started a new full-time job (like an actual career job and not a eh-work-for-now type job) and it's taking up pretty much all of my bandwidth. I'd love to sew again when I get my feet under me, though.

Thanks for tagging me @sotaaoki!

I tag @rythyme and @leverage-ot3 and anyone else who sees this and thinks "man i wish someone would tag me in these things"

[bibliocratic]

I was going to write this for the Aspec Archives week, but I got overexcited, so here we are. 

AU: Mythical creatures. OG Archive team. 

Some CWs apply, see tags. 

The sea is more than water, her elder brethren taught her, warned her, chided her. It is home and harm and hungry, and you should not face it alone. Her siblings were older, ever knowing better, boisterous and boasting braver, but even they worried, scolded and fretted when she swam out too far alone into deep waters.

It will love you, but it will not always be kind, her eldest sibling bit out, snapped to mask their anxiety. There can be no bearings, in the deep-deep down, no anchors to denote where the sky lies.

When her people sleep, they rest wedged into some secure rock or crevice, tails looped around tails so no one is lost while dreaming.

You cannot be a shoal of one, my dearest, my youngest and bravest, the oldest of their shoal had said, when she told her she was planning on taking the rising when the waters warmed. Ascending landward on the tide swell, letting the shimmering scales of her tail split into skin.

She had not used the name Sasha at that time because that was a landward name she chose with care. Her folk gather names like a garland of pearls, to be constantly strung longer through life as age advances them; names for qualities, for momentous events, for hopes and desires. Her first name, gifted by her shoal, was guttural. It starts at the back of her throat, trails off into a susurration through gills. Mer is a difficult language to learn, though not impossible.

Tim tried. There is no one singular language of those who skirt the deepwaters, so he attempts to mimic her dialect. His pronunciation stumbling, he makes tentative sentences with the butchered grammar of fry. Martin’s grammar is even worse, though he picks up the eddies and waves of the sounds easier.

Jon, like most things in life, takes it as a challenge. One day, almost stubborn with nerves, to perform his task to perfection, he pushes out a juvenile approximation of her first name. Clipped and textbook and the stress in the wrong places, but Sasha smiles, showing her sharpest teeth in delight. Instructs him where to hold the hum at the back of his throat, how to roll the third phoneme upwards like an air bubble. Jon repeats it and repeats it, quietly smug and pleased at his achievement, and the sea in her soul rocks fondly at the sight.

She broached landward in the rising two moons after her age of maturation. She was one of a handful to come to shore. A sibling in Brighton who she phones every week, another two in Holyhead. Her first shoal traverses to warmer waters when the season shifts, and she would feel the rock-hollow absence of them if it was not for Tim, inviting her to participate in a hundred-and-one inane activities that keep her from feeling swept out; Jon, with his libraries of questions and intrigues, his quick-silver tongue; Martin, who sometimes swims a little further out from them but who finds her small knick-knacks in charity shops and craft markets and leaves them on her desk for no reason other than he has thought of her.

She makes three necklaces, plain with a strong chain, a single pearl attached. And on a day where her folk traditionally string garlands of seaweed and mangrove roots and colourful plants from coral reefs in a celebration of family –  there is no one word in her language for this idea; it poorly translates into hierarchies like sibling and brethren and elders, but these are not concepts that fit it exactly – she gifts them to the shoal that will anchor her in the depths of the sea, and bestows upon them names. Most Mer names are wishes for quick fins, calm waters, safe shores, and so she wishes these for them in a language they are not quite proficient in yet.

Her landward shoal is smaller than is traditional. But she loves them as treasures of her heart, and thinks she understands what her siblings told her, about anchors.

--

His parents, both harpies from local nests, are perplexed when his wings start coming in.

Must be a colouring from your mum’s side, his dad hums thoughtfully when Tim’s primaries grow in long and shining like struck bronze. He runs a careful finger down the central line of the rachis, and the wing shudders and jumps, the feathers still sensitive, and Tim complains that it’s ticklish. His wings are too small to fly away as his dad dives in, captures him in careful arms, corkscrewing upwards a little off the ground with Tim squirming and squealing and squawking in play, but they flutter and flap nonetheless.

The wing span’s from your dad’s side, no-one from my nest ever went more than five foot, his mother says, rubbing at the dark brown of his downy secondaries. Tim stretches them out wide, eager to boast at their length, the tips of his longest feathers reaching past his arms held out wide.

Danny’s wings are smaller. Magpie like, bold lines of white broken up by blue and black, the same as his parents. Tim’s wings, broader, a colour like beaten brass that tips into gold at the ends, draws attention, but he’s never been embarrassed. His family never treated him differently, so he didn’t dwell on it.

He can fly, though he doesn’t often. After his parents died, and after… after Danny, he moved to London, where there’s tighter airspace regulations and permits involved, so he mostly doesn’t bother. This doesn’t mean never, however. He has learned, while working in the Archives, that from the ground, his wings have enough lift to pick up both Jon and Sasha by at least a foot. He thinks he could probably manage Martin as well, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that Martin is mildly allergic to a whole host of things, including feather dander, meaning he gets a bit watery eyed whenever he gets too close to Tim’s wings, and he’s a sniffing, red-eyed mess come  moulting season.

Anyway, he can always fly when he leaves the city. When it’s been too long since Sasha’s scales touched seawater, she invites him out to the coast. Jon apparently has had enough of the coast to last a lifetime, and Martin gets funny about large bodies of water, so it’s often the two of them. She swims out, the greenish scales of her tail catching the sun-struck water, and he, above, feeling the breeze brush through his cramped wings, follows her wake. When she breaches the surface in a playful arc, he swoops down, trying to catch her at the same time as she tries to splash him.

“You never thought to look into it?” Jon asks. Always brewing with questions. Tim is obligingly holding out one of his wings, and Jon, who takes everything like a project, has books out and webpages up but with no further clue as to why his colouration and span differ so from his parents.

Tim shrugs. “Doesn’t matter really, does it?”

Jon hums, clearly not agreeing, and Sasha rolls her eyes fondly,  and that is the end of that.

-

Marysia had hoped her child would not take after her husband. She’d lit candles and attended masses during her pregnancy, worn the beads of her rosary smooth. Her child had been born on land, miles from shore, and her husband had been a grounded man, who had folded up his pelt on their wedding night for her and swore to wear no other soul than his human one.

But then her husband leaves, the box where he kept his second soul empty, and Martin is eight years old, and he wakes up one morning glassy-eyed and complaining of nausea, his lip bleeding from where his sharpening teeth have ripped the skin, and she knows her prayers were not answered.

It is not unknown, for the second soul of some folk to flourish later. But it is a rough awakening, to have one’s body grow a new skin out of itself, and Martin is off school for over a week, riddled with fever and fervour, constantly parched, crying and sweating out salt-water.

She watches his skin prickle with grey and black fur, blotching with white over his stomach as he coils up under his covers, throws them off only for his limbs to reduce to shivering. His brown eyes have gone black-shot, his cries a mix of language and barks, and Marysia fears she will lose her only child to the sea.

It will be hard for him to fit in, she tells herself. It would be best to choose one, and he has his friends and family and her on land, and who knows where his father is now, and surely it would be cruel, an unnecessary agony for him to endure some other foreign pull away from all he knows.

She does what she thinks is a kindness, though that is neither excuse nor forgiveness. After nine days, his fur has come through, sleek and soft, his whiskers twitching, and she helps him peel it off as one would do clothes, revealing sweat-sheened limbs, his eyes slipped back into brown again. His gaze still distant and feverish, he tries to cuddle into her, and she soothes him while she finishes stripping off his pelt and folding it neatly.

While he sleeps, she burns it in a fire in the back yard.

When he comes back to himself, she lies and tells him that he’s been sick with a bad fever. And he trusts her, and never questions it. He doesn’t understand that she’s burnt a part of him up, scattered the ashes to the winds, but it was for the right reasons. To keep him safe, and happy, and with her.

He grows up human-limbed and cloven-souled, and she never tells him the truth.

--

Sasha floats in an ever-dark, stolen away and hidden. There is a knot, a cage-trap around her legs, which have fused into her tail although there is no water. The sea, far away, like the wail in a conch shell, throbs in her soul as she strains and shouts and snarls in the wrapping of spider’s webs.

The sea is the only thing with her in the dark.

Sound has a particular quality, underwater. She hears it first, an echo that shivers through her, like being thrummed on the backdraft of some shallow wave. And then it is a wash of insistence. A command.

The compulsion uses her names, landward and seaward and it pulls and demands her attention, and she shrieks and cries back, struggling in the depths. She is being called home, up up up to breach the surface, and she cannot help but answer.

There is a crack and the sea splits, and she is choking on cold and dusty air.

“Sasha!” someone is saying. “God, is she – she’s not – ?”

“Get that stuff off her, come on. Sasha. Sash, love, can you hear us?”

A series of thuds as she splutters. A twisting, gnarling screech, and several swear words.

“Jesus!”

“Shit – shit, get her out of the way.”

“Boss, move, give me the – ”

The screech degrades into a glitching, warping scream. There is the multi-layered sound of compressed air, and crackling fire,the woosh and stench of something burning.

In time, she cracks her eyes open to the punch of light. Her tail flaps weakly. Someone is pulling great strands of silk that has clumped like poorly soldered iron around her limbs, making visceral noises of disgust. She’s cold-stream shivering, surrounded by broken wood and chippings.

“Hey, hey, we got you. We got you. You with us, Sash?”

The faint scratch of feathers against her cheek. Furnace-warm arms are holding her.

Jon is kneeling down in front of her. Holding an axe and stinking of smoke, and she knows, she knows, that it was his voice she heard, although she doesn’t yet understand why.

Martin throws a blanket over her as she shivers, her tail shrivelling and bisecting into legs. He has silk in his hair, and his fingers are trembling, but his face is broken with a look of such relief.

“It’s you,” he says, and his hand touches at his throat, at the necklace she made for him. “It’s you. It’s really you.”

It’s Martin in the end that carries her out of the tunnels, tucking the blanket completely around her. He is talking in the scatter-gun way he does when he is anxious, babbling, and she can’t bring herself to listen. He smells of soot and saltwater, and she’s never noticed that before.

She falls asleep, curled up into his hold, drained and shaken, but feeling utterly safe.  

--

Jon is human. Completely, one hundred percent, although Sasha had joked once that way way back there must have been some Spinx in the family. Tim’s long suspected that Martin’s not quite human, no matter how he presents, but that’s Martin’s business, not his. Some folks have lineages that are rare, or mistrusted, or misunderstood, and Tim’s not one to pry.

Jon, though. Human through and through. Which is why he’s so worried.

“I shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Jon says. Martin’s with Sasha, making sure there’s no nasty side effects to her imprisonment in the table. Jon’s had a face on him for a while which means he’s Worrying with a capital W, and it’s taken hours for him to untangle himself into a blustered declaration to the rest of the class, spiked with nerves. “That place, it had her. It shouldn’t have… I don’t know what I did, but I told her to leave, a-and she could. And she shouldn’t have been able to.”

“And you think that you did that?”

“I – I know I did that, Tim, I felt it, o-or. I mean, I felt something!”

“Ok, alright. Alright. Let’s, let’s calm down and look at this logically.”

Jon goes over what he said while they struggled to rescue Sasha from the deep. It was something he said, he’s sure of it, which is why he is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the main archive office space with Tim, his trousers getting dusty and his temper scraping frayed, getting increasingly frustrated when he tries recreating exactly what he did with his voice, going through questions and commands and instructions and inquiries. And while Tim answers, it’s clearly not what Jon’s looking for, and he’s rubbing the hair at the back of his head in the way he does when he’s getting increasingly frustrated and is too bull-headed to walk away.

Then Jon, rolling his eyes and seething in annoyance, asks him a throwaway question, one of many he’s been trying – what’s your favourite colour? (seriously, Jon, that’s what you’re going with?!); What did you do at the weekend? (you know what I did, you and Martin were with me!).

“Why did you join the Magnus Institute?”

They both sit, frozen and horrified as Tim’s mouth opens and his words trip over his tongue in their eagerness to leave his mouth. As his eyes grow wide and water with tears as he cannot stop speaking about Danny, about the Covent Garden circus and Joseph Grimaldi. As Jon sits, ramrod-backed and cannot stop listening, a muscle jumping in his jaw.  His expression wars between frantic and panicking and hungry.

Tim feels wrung out and hollow once he’s finished. Jon’s manic with apologies. It takes both of them a long time to calm down.

“Maybe… maybe you’re a siren or something?” Tim suggests, but Jon is shaking his head.

“It’s this place, Tim. It’s those statements, when I read them. It’s … I – I think they’re doing something to me.”

Tim looks at Jon and the light strikes off his eyes in a way that it shouldn’t on a human.

He touches Jon’s arm.

“We’ll sort this,” he promises. “We got Sasha out, didn’t we? The four of us, we can get to the bottom of this, yeah?”

Jon nods, and gives a small fragile thanks, and that’s human enough for Tim.

--

Marysia told herself she was not a bad mother. That her son was simply a hard child to love, that he had all the worst trappings of his father, his brown eyes perpetually caught with a far-away look that doesn’t know where to place its longing. But even as she sickened, and he sloughed off every facet of himself in a pathetic attempt to please her, she couldn’t find anything but sorrow in her heart to look upon the man grown over familiar in face, a growth that grew deep-set and fungal into contempt.

She almost spat the truth out to him. Once or twice, with the thought that confessing might bring them closer. She wished he’d chosen the sea instead, so she wouldn’t have to look upon her amputated, half-formed child who would always be lost.

But she never did.

And Martin finds out alone, cornered in an unlocked office, his hands dropping the lighter as a thousand eyes open and watch satisfied as they pour his mother’s choices down his throat to choke him.

--

It starts when Martin starts sleeping in archive storage. When Tim watches worms burrow into Jon’s skin at the same time as they latch and gnaw and wriggle under his own. When they get Sasha back, and find Gertrude’s corpse and Jon leaves and gets hurt and hurt and hurt again, and the world around them gets smaller and meaner and there is nothing Tim can do.

He takes to storing food in their desk drawers. Nothing that will go off, or won’t keep. Tins and dried goods and non-perishables. He lines the walls of Martin’s storage room with fire extinguishers of different types, fire blankets, and spare first aid kits bulging with plasters and bandages and antiseptic wipes. He buys blankets and pillows and rope and penknives. He stress-moults constantly, and tucks his feathers out of sight, irritated and embarrassed at the sight of them,  and it occurs to him that nesting is not a healthy way to deal with this.

He wants his family safe. He used to think it was such a small thing to ask for.

He thinks about that when the bomb goes off.

He burns, and he is dying.

His rage and fear burn off into a different fury. That it has come to this, his family so threatened, that all he has to his name is his sorrow and trauma and frustration and vengeance.

Tim wants nothing more than to live. To see them safe. To rail and rage against what seeks to harm them. So he burns and he burns and burns, his wings aflame and his mouth twisted in a scream, and does not die.

They dig him out breathing from the rubble. His skin stained grey with ash and soot.

His new wings stretch out red as the sunset.

[kari-kurofai]

The final epilogue to Ever Seaward Echoes More is finished!

[earthfluuke]

Have you read Ever Seaward Echoes More by Kari_kurofai? It’s a super long and super good fic in which In and Korm live and has lots of your head cannons

i have!! it's such a good fic, and it pains me (in good and bad ways). their writing is always amazing, so i highly recommend their stuff!

[one-boring-person]

Hey! I have another poly Lost Boys idea it’s kinda angsty but a good ending. I was listening to the slowed song “Dusk Till Dawn”, and thought what if the mate of the Lost Boys was taken by hunters for like a year and they weren’t able to find her. Then on a stormy night she shows up at the cave after having escaped the hunters. And the boys just break down from joy and relief. I understand if you don’t want to do this one though! Thank you for doing my other request!💜

No problem! I'll happily do this request, I find it really interesting💛💛💛(I'm sorry if the ending sucks, I'm not that great at emotion😅)

Agreed.

The Lost Boys x reader

Warnings: mention of death, blood imagery, implied injury

Masterlist

Winds howls through the echoing halls of the cave, whistling amongst the stalactites as it rushes past, creating a haunting ambience that seems to hang over the darkened areas like a black miasma, dampening the already depressive mood. Rain pelts the rocks outside, the waves crashing and roaring at the seaward entrances, adding an almost deliberate rhythm to the catawauling shriek of the wind, a deep chill diffusing into the air as the night wears on, the frequent growls of thunder and crashes of lightning helping to create some natural orchestra of noise. A damp odour perpetrates the usually stale air, giving it a fresher feel and smell, though this new scent will most likely cling to the inhabitants for days to come, the moisture easily soaking into leather coats and dark denim jeans, rendering the garments' warming-abilities useless. None of them notice this, however, as they slouch in their communal area, all of them oddly silent for once, each deep in their own thoughts, though they all share a similar objective, one they'd rather not talk about out loud anymore.

In his wheelchair, David idly flicks through a book, unable to concentrate on it as his mind recalls more depressive memories, the heart-wrenching pain in his body reinstating itself after a year of oppressing it, the vampire nearly biting through his lip to prevent himself from crying in front of the others, blue eyes narrowed slightly. Across from him, Dwayne leans against the wall, polishing an older part of his motorcycle, working the cloth rhythmically round as he grates off the grease and rust that has built up over time, dark eyes scrutinizing the bright silver under the blackish marks with an acuteness borne of experience and practice, trying his hardest to stay distracted. Over in the corner, Marko tends to his pigeons, fussing over them with a deep affection, feeding them and petting them as much as he can without smothering them, cooing silently to them as he does so, doe eyes not quite sharing the enthusiasm he is putting on, their depths flooded with partially concealed grief. A little way away from him is Paul, who is listening quietly to his walkman, staying mostly still for once in his life, hands crossed placidly over his chest as he lies back on the sofa, blue eyes staring aimlessly up at the ceiling, jaw set in a tense manner, a reaction he's always had to a hard topic.

The silence is broken by a particularly loud crash of thunder, the deafening sound snapping the four of them from their trances as they look up, each pair of eyes meeting with each other's as they do so. None of them say a word choosing instead to remain quiet, waiting for the others to acknowledge the subject eating at their conciousnesses. Eventually, it's Paul who manages to say something.

"I can't believe it's been a year." He murmurs out loud, drawing a hand down his face in habitual remorse, nails scratching lightly at his skin as he does so.

"Me neither." Marko agrees from across the room, setting the pigeons free again as he moves to sit on the edge of the fountain, his posture slouched and downcast.

"I can't believe she's gone." David mumbles quietly, feeling a little uneasy admitting his feelings to the room, but feeling it necessary in any case. His tone is hollow and empty for once, the snide undertones gone from it, leaving him sounding oddly vulnerable.

"I don't think any of us can." Dwayne points out, placing down the part in his hands and coming over to sit beside Marko, flicking his long, dark hair from his face. Paul pushes off his headphones and joins them, all four vampires watching each other in dull grief, listening to the sounds of the storm around them in silence for a few seconds.

Greif-stricken, they remain like this until Paul catches something on the wind, his head snapping towards it with a confused look in his eyes.

"What is it, Paul?" Marko questions, having noticed his friend's sudden discomfort, looking in the direction that Paul is gazing in.

"I could've sworn I just heard something...like a moan or something." The blonde informs them, listening out for it again until David goes to scold him.

"Paul, I'm not really sure now is the time to be playing tricks on us."

"I'm not! I swear I heard it!" Paul insists, straining his ears for the sound again, only just catching it as it carries past him on the wind, "There! Did you hear it?!"

Marko and David shake their heads, eyeing Paul oddly as they do so, slightly sceptical of his antics.

"I heard it." Dwayne speaks up suddenly, eyes wide.

"You did?" Marko exclaims in disbelief, prompting them all to listen closely again.

Under the howling of the wind and the ferocious tapping of the rain, once the thunder and lightning have faded for the moment, two sounds are audible: a pained moan, and trembling footsteps.

Instantly, the boys are out of their seats and racing to the entrance, ready to scare off this new intruder, unwilling to be crafty about it tonight, faces morphing as they go, eyes flashing yellow. David is first out of the cave, but he stops stock-still as his eyes fall on something a little way away, not quite believing what he's seeing, the others running into him with protests and cries of annoyance, only for these to peter out as they also find the object of their leader's attention.

There, lying face-down on the last step, clothes torn and wet, hair sticking to their head, is a body, the shoulders barely rising and falling as they breathe.

Unsure of what to do, the boys stand there, staring at the vaguely familiar figure until Dwayne decides to go over to them, going cautiously, expecting it to be a trap of sorts. When nothing happens, he kneels by the body and rolls it over, a sharp gasp escaping him as he sees the features, in disbelief over what he is seeing.

"You guys are not gonna believe this." The vampire says out loud, carefully moving to pick the body up as the others surge forwards, their shock voices loudly as they see who it is.

"Is that..?" Marko starts, allowing David to finish the sentence off for him.

"It is." He swiftly ushers Dwayne inside, allowing the brunette to lay his burden down on the sofa before the four of them crowd around her, eyeing the form of their presumed-dead mate.

Visibly discouloured, (Y/n) appears much thinner than before, her bone structure showing through her frail skin horribly frequently, her beautiful features gaunt and sallow, bedraggled hair matted and unkempt as it sticks to her now-prominent cheekbones, leaving her pallid lips uncovered and parted, a single trickle of crimson steaming down her icy cheek. Her clothes are ripped and torn in many places, showing areas of wounded and scarred skin, blood forming a thick crust around her side, cracking as she moves slightly, drawing a thin whine of pain from her. Slowly, her somehow clear eyes open up, having been woken from her sleep by the sharp jolt of agony, flicking back and forth as she tries to figure out where she is.

"P-paul? M-m-marko? D-Dwayne?" She manages out, her head turning slightly to look up at the platinum blonde, eyes locking, "D-david?"

"We're all here, kitten, don't worry. You're safe now." David is barely able to contain himself as he looks over the form of their mate, relief, happiness and joy flooding him, momentarily dampening the concern.

"G-good..." She forces out, coughing slightly, her body shivering in cold as she reaches up, grabbing for one of them like she used to, asking silently for one of them to hold her, despite their freezing body temperatures. Wordlessly, Paul slips in behind her, pulling her body into his with a smile, teeth digging into his bottom lip at the feeling of her against him again after so long.

Upon seeing this, the others exchange glances, all of them thinking the same thing.

"She's back...(Y/n)'s alive..." Marko muses, unable to keep himself still as tears start to track down his pale skin, eventually throwing himself forwards with a gasp of happiness, burying his head into (Y/n)'s chest, hands feeling at her body to make sure she's real.

Dwayne does nothing to hide the fact that he is beaming from ear to ear, cheeks wet from crying as he looks over the form of his mate, the brunette vampire turning his gaze up to pick with David's, resulting in an overload of emotions for the latter. Tears spill out over his cheeks, a wretched sob leaving him as he collapses to his knees, blue eyes fixing on (Y/n) as he reaches out one hand to grasp her's, taking off a glove so that he can feel her skin under his, a giddy shudder of relief erupting from him as he does so, unable to contain himself.

Ignoring the blood and rainwater, Dwayne lifts a hand to caress (Y/n)'s face, murmuring to himself quietly in disbelief, mixtures of English and his native tongue slipping into the exclamations, fingers brushing over the raised bone in her face.

"No one will ever take her again." The dark-haired vampire promises to the others, looking fiercely at them with conviction.

"Agreed." Marko responds, looking to the others.

"Agreed." Paul confirms, tightening his grip on the girl in his arms.

David takes a little while longer to respond, feeling that just saying so will do nothing.

"No one will ever take her again and live to tell the tale. I'm not gonna let them get close." He snarls, leaning in to press a soft kiss to (Y/n)'s scalp, "We're not gonna let them get close."

[esmeraude11]

Till All Aches Are Embers

Summary:

Elros was gone. He had chosen the Gift of Men.

His was the choice of Lúthien. He would never walk through the front door of the house she had built in Dor-Rodyn. She would never meet the woman he had married. Never get to see the children he had welcomed into his life. The grandchildren that had filled his heart with the same joy that he and his brother had given her.

Elrond was still parted from her and Elwing could only hope and pray that he would choose to sail someday.

Word Count: 5358

on ao3:

-*-*-*-

"I thought...I thought that we were going to be killed. I thought..." Elwing struggled to speak. To breathe. Tears tightened her throat. Grief clung to her as thoroughly as the sea spray to her dress each morning. "Eärendil, forgive me. Forgive me."

"I forgave you long ago, dear heart." Eärendil's voice was gentle. His hand warm as it lay between her shoulder blades. "You forgave me for my abandonment of you.”

"You did not intend to leave me. You were seeking your parents in Dor-Rodyn and aid from the Rodyn. You meant to return."

"And yet I did not. Not in time. Elwing...." Her husband's gaze was soft. His eyes filled with a familiar sadness. "It is long past time that you forgive yourself."

"Our son is dead. Our son does not know us." She could hear the rasp in her voice. The delicate rattle of air slipping from her throat as she curled into herself. Her forehead pressed against the wind-worn fabric of Eärendil's tunic. Elwing could taste the scent of wood and tar that clung to his skin. It stuck to the back of her throat. His hair, tied low and flung messily over his shoulder, was coarse with salt against the curve of her cheek. The pale golden strands caught in her fingers as she dug them into firm muscle.

The sound of the gulls crying seemed to echo her grief in the skies beyond her home.

It had been built against a cliff. The fine white limestone had gone into the creation of the house she called her own. A small settlement had sprung up around it as those of her people that could be counted among the dead had been slowly released from the Halls of Mandos and come to settle within the lands she had, in her grief, claimed.

The cliff face was home now to many small burrows and nooks that had taken shape at the mercy of her sorrow-filled songs. Many songbirds had made their homes within them. Birds that Elwing would normally say had no place in such spaces. The little creatures were drawn to her, however, and would remain by her side much as their brethren had oft remained by her grandmother’s.

She would gladly admit that the early years of her stay in the sheltered seaward cove had been filled with ready entertainment. Her songbirds had quarreled often with the native gulls of the region. Both had sought the cliff-side nooks and crannies for their nests and her mornings had been filled with the sight of birds wheeling above and below and alongside exposed stone for desired nesting spots.

Elwing could not say if her people would remain at her side in the future. Her father and mother had not yet been released from the Halls. There were few among the Sindar who believed that her great-grandfather would be re-embodied before them.

She had been told that guilt and grief weighed heavily on his spirit.

Many among the Sindar said that the King of Doriath took comfort in the company of his old friend, the King of the Ñoldor, as such she would likely remain Lady of the Sindar and Queen of Doriath-in-exile until her father's return.

Perhaps then she would know where she stood amongst her people.

Elwing did not know if her father would desire his crown and title back. Nor did she know just what he would wish to be called.

Their people, the Sindar, clung to the past. They sought assurance in old titles and names. Her father may or may not desire the same.

Elwing could not say.

She could only act as was required of her and hope for the best.

There were many who still saw her as the Princess of Doriath and the Sindar. As Dior's youngest child and King Elu's surviving heir. They had named her Queen of Doriath and Lady of Beleriand as soon as they were released from the Halls. These were the elves that had fallen in the Hidden Kingdom.

Those of her people that had fallen in the Havens in turn referred to her as Queen of the Sindar and Lady of the Havens.

The chosen name of their little realm was still under spirited debate in the public meeting hall that had been constructed at the center of their settlement. Many desired that it be named for Doriath. Others thought that the cove should be named for the Havens and the sea it bordered.

Elwing did not see them coming to a decision any time soon. She did not know if the Sindar who had slowly joined her would wish to rejoin her parents but she was grateful for their presence and continued support nevertheless.

A tall lovely tower had been built at the top of the cliff overlooking both the wide brilliantly blue sea and the steadily growing village camped within the cove.

Every morning was spent walking up a slow winding path from the base of the ridge to its top. A handsome door greeted her upon the completion of her small journey. The wood had come from the maple trees that shadowed the river that had cut a winding path through white limestone to empty into the sea and created the cove in the process. They were beautiful trees and grew tall and fragrant in the way that was pleasantly common in Avon and so rarely seen in Beleriand.

The door had been a gift from Queen Eärwen for Elwing and Eärendil.

Swans spread their great wings over a wide endless sea. A shoreline so distant as to be nonexistent. The sea churned and frothed underneath them. A tiny glimmering ship seemingly bobbed along into the distant horizon.

A great amount of detail had gone into the images construction. Pearls and shells had been polished and ground and set into wood. Delicate veins of lapis added color and definition to the water. Pale aquamarines, deep blue topazes, and dark shimmering sapphires twinkled from their settings within the fine grained wood.

It was beautiful. Perhaps a touch too ostentatious for what should be a simple external door. But such was the way of the Eldar of Dor-Rodyn.

Certainly a work of craftsmanship fit to be seen among the Noldor. But the Queen of the Ñoldor had commissioned the piece from craftsmen of renown among the people of her birth.

She had, Elwing remembered, smiled. Understanding shining within queer lamp-stone eyes. The sight altogether sweet and sad. An old bitterness had clung to the corners of her lips as she commented in a voice that echoed a song of wine-dark seas and a grieving people standing knee-deep in murky fouled waters that it was enough to have a home built by the Ñoldor.

No matter that the buildings were of Elwing's own personal design. There was no need for the entirety of Elwing's hearth and home to have been built by the hands of a people that she had only ever known terror from.

The knowledge that Eärendil had thrown himself into the task at hand had made the presence of his forefather's kin more bearable. But the Queen, his great-aunt, she had understood and Elwing had seen that understanding mirrored in the subtlest of ways.

Large white stones had been raised from a nearby quarry. The same white as the cliffs her house sat against. These became the walls of both her achingly empty manor home and her lighthouse. Its roof, and the roofs of many of the houses in the Sindar's new settlement, was made of a pretty blue stone. Near marble-like in texture and appearance. It ranged from a dark blue-black to a purer lilac in color and the Sindar had delighted in decorating their spaces with them.

These had been cut, carved, sanded, and polished by the Glinnil stonemasons that had been leant to her at Eärwen’s gentle suggestion to her father.

A vein had been discovered nearer the woods to the west within her chosen realm by the Noldor that King Olwë had sent for. A gift, he had said, for the great-grandniece he'd only just met. She could only smile and agree.

No matter that these Noldor were entirely unlike the ones that had attacked the Havens. They were men and women with the same grey-hued eye and features that carried more than a passing familiarity with the Fëanorean soldiers of her memories. She had, however, been surprised to see a fair number of green and amber eyed elves among them. To find faces as fair as the Fëanorean host with blond hair and grey eyes.

These, she had been told later, were the sons and daughters of the Minil that had intermarried with Ñoldor of Dor-Rodyn in the wake of Queen Indis’s marriage to King Finwë. They were the same as Eärendil and she remembered the easy and interested manner in which they had interacted with him. He was, regardless of his royal heritage, simply another blond-haired Ñoldo among their number.

They were the finest craftsmen among the Elves of Dor-Rodyn. The finest left among the followers of High King Finarfin. King Olwë's son-by-marriage. Eärendil's own great-granduncle. They had mined and shaped the stone for her home and the tower whose addition she had insisted upon.

A lighthouse to guide Eärendil home. To brighten the skies around her in the dark of night. To make her stay seem a touch less lonely.

Elwing could not deny that her home was too large by far.

Long hallways.

Sweeping staircases.

Echoing floors and wide windows.

All things that her caretakers could not afford to build in the Havens of Sirion. Eärendil had breathed life into her wishes and wants. His mother had been a skilled architect and had taught him as much of the arts that had constructed the White City of Beleriand before she had sailed. Seeking for her husband’s sake the land of her birth.

The house he had built her was beautiful. It would withstand a siege with an ease that the Sindar built homes within the Havens could not. Her people for all their skills could not claim the same prowess and powers that a Noldor prince could. Certainly not one of King Turgon’s line and trained in the arts that had built Gondolin. His was the mind that had constructed the Hidden City and seen it endure centuries in a war-torn land, after all.

She had not been able to quiet the smallest hope within her heart in those days that one day it would no longer be quite so large and empty. Elwing had dreamt that her uncle and cousin and their families would join her. Her sons with them.

She knew better now. Celeborn was a lord of elves far inland and beyond the shattered and sunken remains of Beleriand. Oropher was a king and had joined his people with those who called themselves the Tawarwaith. Her sons would never rejoin her.

Not together at least.

Elros was gone.

He had chosen the Gift of Men. His was the choice of Lúthien. He would never walk through the front door of the house she had built in Dor-Rodyn. She would never meet the woman he had married. Never get to see the children he had welcomed into his life. The grandchildren that had filled his heart with the same joy that he and his brother had given her.

Elrond was still parted from her and Elwing could only hope and pray that he would choose to sail someday.

There were days when she could not bring herself to return to the echoing quiet of her house at the base of the cliff. Her home was, more often than not, the Lighthouse's compact little apartments. Tight and confined. Filled with whittled bits of wood and spun threads ready for embroidering. Loose dust and wood shavings littered her workspace in small piles from countless hours spent carving and smoothing hand-sized pieces.

"By all accounts Elros was happy. He died surrounded by family near and dear to him." Eärendil's voice was hoarse now. With grief. Regret. Elwing could not discern the emotion within. But she could feel them as surely as she felt her own. His lips pressed, warm and wind-chapped, against the crown of her head and he continued. "Elrond is happy. He is married, the elves from Mithlond say, and his home is filled with laughter. The Enemy does not trouble them in the little haven that he has built for himself."

"I am glad." She felt the grief, ever present and yawning, press at the cage of her breastbone with every beat of her heart. And she was. Glad, that was. Nevertheless, she could not help the feelings that thrummed through her at the loss of her sons.

Elros had died and she had been unable to sit at his side. His had been the choice of Lúthien and he was lost to her now as surely as Lúthien was to her great-grandparents.

He had had children. Children that she would never meet. One had been named Tindómiel in the tongue of the people who had stolen him from her side. She could not forget that it was also Eärendil’s mother-tongue and the language of the Gondolindhrim that had once followed him and his mother and who must now surely follow Elrond on those distant shores. For her last living child was as much a prince of the Noldor as he was a prince of the Sindar.

Elros's decision to enshrine the dialect of the elves that had taken him from her within the culture of the kingdom he had founded was a pointed one.

It spoke of the feelings he must have had for the Fëanorians. The elves that had raised him and his brother. Men that had completed a task that should have remained with his parents not the people that had absconded with them.

But he had honored her in his only daughter's name and Eärendil in the name he had given his eldest son.

A nightingale and a jewel yet lived in the Land of Gift.

And yet... Elros had chosen to walk a path that honored the Fëanorians as well. A young and vibrant kingdom that sought knowledge and answers to all the questions that could be asked under the stars.

Perhaps it was in the nature of Men and their interactions with the Noldorin kingdom of Lindon. Elwing, however, could only compare it to that which she knew. And the Men of the Western Gift resembled the Noldor in such a heartbreaking manner that could bring nothing but grief to her heart.

He had been happy. And Elwing would never know the man that he had become.

There was some small part of her, a part that was mean and petty and grieving, that wished to lay blame upon the Sons of Fëanor for her son's decision. But...it had been his choice. None could force a child of the line of Lúthien to do anything that went against their own desires.

It would be wrong of her to deny him his choice.

Elrond had chosen the Path of the Elves.

Elros’s choice had lain with the Gift of Man.

Could she deny him his choice when Eärendil had given her his? Her choice had been her own heart’s desire and a selfish one that had allowed her to keep her husband. Had she any right to resent Elros the path he had chosen to walk?

"I am glad, Eärendil. I am glad and yet my heart weeps. And I...why do I grieve so? He was happy and that should be enough. It should be enough and yet it is not."

Why do you not weep as I do. Why- She could feel the questions bubbling up within her. They sat at the tip of her tongue and weighed heavily upon her mind.

It was terrible enough to have thought them knowing as she did that he might hear. She could not bear to speak them aloud and have them stain the air with their bitterness.

She felt his sorrow wax and wane in tandem with her own and Elwing tilted her chin up, pressing a kiss to her husband's jaw in silent apology. Eärendil’s arms tightened around her. His mouth sought hers out and he deepened the kiss for a fleeting moment.

"I do grieve, Elwing." His voice was soft and firm as he spoke into the space between their lips. "I am grateful that his life was happy in spite of all the terror and horrors of his youth. I am glad that the Fëanorians were kind to him in those by-gone days of captivity. It was never what I would have wanted and I will always grieve what was lost to us. But my heart rejoices too for Elros lived a life all his own and resides now in that unfathomable place beyond the circles of the world where all Men's spirits must go. "

"Eärendil. I-" She felt distress spark within her at his words and hastened to speak. Eärendil pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of her mouth and continued once she had quieted.

"Do not misunderstand me, my love. Some part of me will always wonder. My fëa will always ache for the fate of the Children of Man. But I do not regret my choice. For it was my own and in the end how could I choose anyone but you? She whom I had in ignorance and innocence both named 'daughter of moonlight' by the mouth of the River Sirion.

"He is gone and our grandchildren might very well walk the same path. We may never have the pleasure of meeting them and I will always mourn that. But Elwing. He was happy. He was happy and it is alright to feel as you do. For he was your son, same as mine. The manner of your grief is no greater or lesser than my own. He was our son and we had only a few short years with him. We were parted on such unhappy grounds.

“Should the Fëanorians be found repentant and remorseful of their actions and allowed re-embodiment for a chance to atone their fell deeds. Should they be able to atone for them. It will have changed nothing. For we will always be haunted by our loss and should Elrond sail for Aman, his brother will not be beside him. Elros will never again step foot into our home and we will still have lost our son when he was but a boy."

Eärendil was smiling now. His eyes bright with the light of the Silmaril that he had carried for these last centuries. He was a vision of beauty in his sorrow and tears clung to golden eyelashes like dew as he met her gaze.

But there was a tentative joy shining within the Mariner. A strength that bolstered his shoulders in the wake of his grief. Eärendil stood before her. Tall and proud. An Elven prince as beautiful as any of the lost kings and princes of Beleriand. Strong and unbent as his father Tuor was.

Elwing wavered there. Her eyes fixed upon his. Her hands pressed firmly against skin-warmed cloth.

"Elros was happy." It was as much a reminder to herself as it was a statement of fact. She returned his smile and sighed softly into the gentle breeze her grief had stirred. "I am glad. Truly. And I pray that his children and their children will have blessed lives in the Land of Gift, his Númenor, should that in-turn be their choice. But I shall always wonder." Here her smile turned bleak and Elwing looked away.

Her husband's gaze softened. He pulled her close and pressed a kiss to her temple and hummed low in his throat.

"Such is the fate of the Peredhil, I suspect." We who linger on these shores will always struggle with the fates of those who have chosen another path. His voice echoed clearly within her mind and Elwing allowed herself to take comfort in the gentle touch of his mind against her own.

Eärendil had come about his gift with osanwë naturally for all that he was one of the few members of his family outside of the House of Finarfin to do so. It had become stronger in the years that had followed his decision to plight his troth in marriage to her.

The power of the Silmaril had strengthened his reach all the further. As had her own influence upon his mind and fëa.

It was a comfort knowing that she would never truly be alone now.

Elwing could always reach out and know that Eärendil would be there in mind if not in body. Eärendil himself often made use of the unusual strength of their bond to share glimpses of sights that only he and his crew could see as Vingilot sailed across the star-strewn heavens above Ennor.

"He was a king." She tilted her chin up and tracked the movement of Anor far above them. The fruit of Galadlóriel sat heavy and golden-red in the center of a cornflower-blue sky. "He ruled a land that was fair and free."

"His mother was a queen." Eärendil's voice filled with a gentle warmth. Grief fading into the background as he pressed a calloused palm against the small of her back. "She is the lady of a people fair and free."

She smiled at that and met his unflinching gaze.

"Is she?"

Eärendil grinned, an impish curve touching his lips as he leant forward a touch.

"She is. A white-clad lady unrivaled by any in might or in beauty. She is lovelier than even the silver flower itself. A fair compliment, I should say, for all know that mariners love none more than Ithil.” Eärendil paused. A smile tugging at his lips as he peered down at her. “She is the fairest maid in all the land and fairer yet for she is my wife."

Eärendil’s mouth met hers in a gentle kiss and she could not help the smile that graced her lips. His eyes still red-rimmed and shiny with unshed tears, her husband dragged his fingertips up the knobs of her spine. His lashes were long and beautiful. They glimmered golden underneath Anor’s light and she sighed once more.

It, unfortunately, only encouraged him.

"Elrond is a lord." Elwing leaned into his touch and pressed her forehead against his. A smile tugging reluctantly at her lips as she stared into her husband's eyes.

"A fair lord indeed for he is his mother’s son!" Eärendil laughed now. His voice still tight with grief but a balm to her soul nonetheless. His eyes crinkled at the corners in well-trodden lines as he smiled. Eärendil’s eyes, normally a lovely blue-tinged grey, gleamed like brightest silver in his happiness. He pressed a chaste kiss against her lips as he pulled her closer to himself. As though they were not already so close as to be one person.

"His father is fairer yet for the Mariner-Prince is my husband." Elwing faltered then in the midst of this sweet moment. Her joy wavering as she stared up at the man before her. "I miss him. I miss them both."

Eärendil's mouth twisted unhappily and he sighed. His hold tightened around her the moment her own regret curled within her mind and he kissed her once more. As much a gentle rebuke as it was a comforting gesture.

"I know. I miss them as well. But there's naught we can do about it now. Elrond may yet join us here. His children with him should he have any in Endor. We will be reunited someday and that day will be filled with all the tears and joys of ages spent apart." Her husband’s fingers combed through the wispy curls at her nape and Elwing could hear the smile in his voice as he turned away. His face tilted towards the East. "I suspect that these feelings will never fade. But I pray that we will find some measure of happiness here."

"I am afraid." Afraid of.... Elwing trailed off within her own mind. And Eärendil's eyes filled with a quiet understanding.

"Afraid of replacing them?" Do you truly think that our sons would begrudge us our happiness? That they would resent the possibility of siblings in any measure? His voice was filled with a gentle warmth. The sound akin to the cresting waves that had once washed clean the sides of his ship. The taste of starlight and cold darkness echoing within the mental vowels of his words.

"Would they see it as such?"

"We could never replace one child with another." Eärendil’s voice deepened and hardened as his brows wrinkled in a rare show of displeasure. "Nor would I wish it." I do not think they would see it as such, no.

A song of rumbling skies and churning waters rang bright as bells in his voice to her ears. There was a light so bright and fierce in his eyes that Elwing could not help but wonder if this was how his grandfather, noble and doomed Turgon, had looked in his final moments in fair Gondolin when confronted with the destruction of that which he held dear.

She could not bear to look away. She had rarely seen Eärendil so overtaken with passion and it was as captivating a sight now as it had been then.

"One day Elrond will return to us. And..."

"Perhaps he will come to Aman and find a bright and happy home. One filled with laughter and moonlit smiles rather than grief and a cloying sadness."

A vision teased at the edges of her mind. Elwing could not say if it was touched with foresight for it was a nebulous gift and difficult to discern at the best of times even for one such as she. It was, nonetheless, a beautiful dream.

Elrond stood in the Lighthouse’s doorway. He was tall and fair. She could have easily mistaken him for herself if not for his height and the breadth of his shoulders. Those were his father’s.

Elwing could see hints of her husband in the man before her. His long dark hair was braided and bound in the manner of the princes of the Noldor, however. While Eärendil was likely to keep his hair tied in a simple mariner’s tail or leave it unbound and unadorned in the manner of the Sindar.

Her son’s eyes were filled with emotions she could not name as they stared at her. Ithil's soothing white light washing over her entryway and casting shadows into deep contrast.

A woman, silver-haired and lovely and oddly familiar, at his side dressed in the colors that she had come to recognize as belonging to the High King of the Ñoldor in Tirion. Though her gown resembled the cut that Queen Eärwen tended to favor rather than the high fashions of the City of the Ñoldor. A ring sat on her finger. Delicate silver and sturdy mithril to match the ring on Elrond's left hand. Both of such exquisite quality that they could only be Noldorin in nature.

Eärendil stood before them. A smile tugging at his lips. His eyes were bright with happiness and a child sat upon her husband's strong shoulders. Dark hair tumbling over narrow shoulders as they peered down at Elrond and the stranger.

She could not say if the child was male or female. But she could see herself in their face. Melian's influence lingering in yet another child. In the shape of their face, the color of their hair, and the light in their eyes.

But they had Eärendil’s beautiful wind-spun curls. His smiling mouth and laughing eyes. They had Elrond’s unfaltering gaze and she could Elros’s own sweetness in the child.

The vision was a lovely thing. It filled her with hope.

"Perhaps." Elwing could not help the smile that tugged at her lips then. Nor could she stop herself from pulling Eärendil into a kiss this time.

Her father might return someday. Her mother and brothers as well. Perhaps not. Elwing would always mourn what had been lost. But she would hope for the future too.

Elros was lost to her. To them. But Elrond would join them in the Uttermost West some day in the distant future.

Elwing would always grieve and she was right to do so. As her husband was in his hope and unfailing belief.

But... there was a glimmer of light in the darkness.

She would be happy someday.

Maybe not now and not always. But she would be. And there might yet be fair voices and sweet faces tumbling about within the wide echoing halls of her home at the base of the cliff.

Laughter would someday fill the still air of the lighthouse and lift stone dust and wood shavings in gentle whorls and eddies of joy.

Eärendil was here and they would never be parted.

None would invade their home now for a fair blood-soaked jewel.

Eärendil would come and go but he would always return in the end. She need not fear him lost to the sea. The Silmaril would light his way and the song her heart sang would always lead him home.

Elwing reached up and with gentle hands cupped her husband's face. She met his gaze and smiled with all the sweetness his love and her own happiness could muster.

I love you. Her words echoed the song of the nightingales and the gentle rustling of river-reeds swaying in a warming breeze.

Eärendil's mouth softened into a crooked smile. The silver of his eyes fading into a gentler cleaner shade of blue all too reminiscent of the waters that surrounded their home.

"And I, you."

They were here. They would wait. She could be content with that. Happiness would come in the future and might deem itself ready to stay one day.

The present was bleak but a light gleamed in the distance. It whispered of long-awaited reunions. Elwing could only hope that they would one day be reunited with Elros but she would look forward to the day that Elrond came westwards on a grey swan-necked ship.

She had waited so long already…

She could wait as long as was needed. So long as she had Eärendil at her side. Elwing turned in her husband’s arms and pressed herself against his side. Her eyes sought the distant horizon where the sky met the sea and she breathed a gentle sigh of contentment.

"We will be here."

Always. A promise within his voice and she could feel the determination that unfurled within him.

They would wait as long as it took for there was no hurry. She would take comfort in that and she suspected that Eärendil would as well.

That was alright.

Elwing would shoulder his burdens as readily as he did hers.

It was no true hardship.

The Enemy was defeated and though the Free Peoples of Ennor yet fought his lieutenant the greatest of threats had been beaten and locked away. The monsters forged of his corruption, gone with him. Eärendil had slain the Great Dragon himself. Elrond might still die in the Hither Shores but it was no longer as certain a fate. He might choose to sail rather than be forced to return through the Halls.

She could wait.

She would wait for his return.

The future awaited them all and she would meet it with eyes turned always to the East and a mind in-tune with her husband's.

Elwing would be the first at the docks of the Swanhaven to welcome her son to Dor-Rodyn. But she would graciously accept second-best only to Eärendil.

Elrond would come and their home would no longer be quite so empty.

Yes. Elwing would await that day eagerly with her heart in her throat and her eyes fixed upon the clear blue skies and the trembling blue waters of the sea by her home.

[mountainpoem]

The Lotos-Eaters by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"Courage!" he said, and pointed toward the land, "This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon." In the afternoon they came unto a land In which it seemed always afternoon. All round the coast the languid air did swoon, Breathing like one that hath a weary dream. Full-faced above the valley stood the moon; And like a downward smoke, the slender stream Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of aged snow, Stood sunset-flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. The charmed sunset linger'd low adown In the red West: thro' mountain clefts the dale Was seen far inland, and the yellow down Border'd with palm, and many a winding vale And meadow, set with slender galingale; A land where all things always seem'd the same! And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came. Branches they bore of that enchanted stem, Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave To each, but whoso did receive of them, And taste, to him the gushing of the wave Far far away did seem to mourn and rave On alien shores; and if his fellow spake, His voice was thin, as voices from the grave; And deep-asleep he seem'd, yet all awake, And music in his ears his beating heart did make. They sat them down upon the yellow sand, Between the sun and moon upon the shore; And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland, Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam. Then some one said, "We will return no more"; And all at once they sang, "Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam." CHORIC SONG I There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the grass, Or night-dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass; Music that gentlier on the spirit lies, Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies. Here are cool mosses deep, And thro' the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep." II Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, "There is no joy but calm!" Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? III Lo! in the middle of the wood, The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud With winds upon the branch, and there Grows green and broad, and takes no care, Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow Falls, and floats adown the air. Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light, The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow, Drops in a silent autumn night. All its allotted length of days The flower ripens in its place, Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil, Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil. IV Hateful is the dark-blue sky, Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea. Death is the end of life; ah, why Should life all labour be? Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast, And in a little while our lips are dumb. Let us alone. What is it that will last? All things are taken from us, and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past. Let us alone. What pleasure can we have To war with evil? Is there any peace In ever climbing up the climbing wave? All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave In silence; ripen, fall and cease: Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease. V How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream, With half-shut eyes ever to seem Falling asleep in a half-dream! To dream and dream, like yonder amber light, Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height; To hear each other's whisper'd speech; Eating the Lotos day by day, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray; To lend our hearts and spirits wholly To the influence of mild-minded melancholy; To muse and brood and live again in memory, With those old faces of our infancy Heap'd over with a mound of grass, Two handfuls of white dust, shut in an urn of brass! VI Dear is the memory of our wedded lives, And dear the last embraces of our wives And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change: For surely now our household hearths are cold, Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange: And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy. Or else the island princes over-bold Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings Before them of the ten years' war in Troy, And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things. Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile: 'Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labour unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars. VII But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly, How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly) With half-dropt eyelid still, Beneath a heaven dark and holy, To watch the long bright river drawing slowly His waters from the purple hill— To hear the dewy echoes calling From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine— To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine! Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine, Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine. VIII The Lotos blooms below the barren peak: The Lotos blows by every winding creek: All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone: Thro' every hollow cave and alley lone Round and round the spicy downs the yellow Lotos-dust is blown. We have had enough of action, and of motion we, Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free, Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea. Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind, In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurl'd Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curl'd Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world: Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands, Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands, Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and praying hands. But they smile, they find a music centred in a doleful song Steaming up, a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong, Like a tale of little meaning tho' the words are strong; Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil, Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil, Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil; Till they perish and they suffer—some, 'tis whisper'd—down in hell Suffer endless anguish, others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel. Surely, surely, slumber is more sweet than toil, the shore Than labour in the deep mid-ocean, wind and wave and oar; O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.

[laurelsofhighever]

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 37 - Water, Blood, and Bone

Chapter 1 on AO3 This chapter on AO3 Masterpost here

Rosslyn watched the rising tide, knuckles white on the folded edges of her cloak as spray plumed against the cliffs. The black water behind it echoed a dull roar as it crept over the lip of the pool and sent waves skimming across the surface, white sickle curves that hissed as they died on the rock beneath her feet. On the far side, they sieged the mouth of the cave that had swallowed Alistair; each one was a breath that counted down what remained of his time. 

“Come away, Cuilean,” the Storm Giant murmured in Clayne at her side. “Ye’ll catch your death.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” The sharp edge of Alistair’s amulet cut into her fingers where she gripped it.

“It’s in the gods’ hands now, and his. There’s nothing ye can do.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she growled. “He’ll make it. He’ll come back, and he’ll have your dragon bone.” She lifted her chin. “But I’m not leaving.”

The Storm Giant huffed a sigh and ambled away with a curse. For all the heed she paid, she might be made of stone, just another pillar of basalt daring the world to weather it. Her mind ran in circles, frantic over the scraps of information she had spoken to Tabris, wondering which parts the elf had been able to remember, wondering if those would be enough.

The rain began again. 

The creatures standing between Alistair and the cave mouth watched him carefully, twisting their heads to the side like birds gauging the edibility of a worm. In the gloom, their eyes glittered with reflected light, their odd, slender forms looming silhouettes against the rapidly fading light. They stood taut, expectant, with only the barest flicker of a tail.  

Waiting for him to move. 

“Get away!” he yelled.  

He kicked the water, waved his arms, but the creatures only chirruped at him, as if politely amused by his antics. Behind them, the water retreated and offered a brief glimpse outside, before the next wave surged in and again cut off the light with a gurgle. Darkness fell, and feathers rustled. Alistair tried not to shiver as he marked them all, careful not to focus on any individual for too long in case the others decided to surround him. The lead animal, slightly bigger than the others, lowered its gaze and snarled when he wrapped his hands around the dagger’s hilt. 

“So, you don’t like that, huh?” he muttered, backing away. ”I don’t know if it’s better or worse that you know what this is.” 

He had to think. No way around them; not enough time to wait for them to get bored. The goose fat that had shielded him so far from the cold had all but washed away, and his body had chilled so far the shivering had stopped. He knew about hypothermia, knew that the next stage would bring delirium and a slow sensation of warmth throughout his body as his blood stopped flowing to his brain. And even assuming the creatures hadn’t already absconded with the dragon’s smaller parts, he couldn’t turn his attention away from them to look. 

He stared the lead creature in the eye and drew the blade, hating how his cold hands fumbled on the grip. ”Come on then - have at it!” 

He lunged. The creatures saw him coming and scattered out of the way in a cacophony of outraged shrieks. One, bolder than the rest or maybe just less experienced, pivoted and launched for his back, but he had expected the movement. He twisted, foot planted, and brought the dagger up in a bright arc that opened it along the belly. Foul-smelling blood splashed across his face and its howl set the hairs on the back of his neck, but he dismissed the sensation, turned, and looked around for the others. The leader had retreated with its fellows to the safety of the dragon’s ribcage, out of reach for now but still close enough that they would be on him if he tried to leave the pool. One tripped over the dragon’s hind leg as it skipped to safety, and the movement enough to jostle the disarticulated bones and send them rolling into the water. They sank, slowly enough to make Alistair realise his mistake. 

I’ve been looking in the wrong place. 

Let the creatures watch him, then; they were content enough to leave him to wear himself down, and as long as he remained in the water where his longer legs gave him an advantage, he would be safe enough. He wiped the dagger on his breeches but kept it in hand as he pushed his way past the floating carcass of the creature that attacked him and toed his way to the centre of the pool. There, the water reached above his knees and the bottom lay under a deeper layer of sand, where two ages of indifferent tides might easily bury something even as big as a dragon. He pushed his numb feet down into the sand, peering through the clouds of grit for a hopeful flash of that same pearlescent sheen that now provided most of the rapidly dwindling light. 

“Should’ve brought a glowstone,” he grunted as the feel of his footing changed. Bare rock. 

On the far shore, his macabre audience trilled what almost sounded like encouragement as he felt his way further along, more confident now that he knew there was less than five inches of sand through which to search. Every step left fewer places to look, made him more desperate to risk another one instead of facing the prospect of returning empty-handed after coming so close. When something hard knocked against his ankle, he stopped, breath short, and sent a prayer to the gods he was meant to be appeasing. Grimacing at the cold, he crouched and felt for the object with his fingers, which to his touch had the same alien smoothness as the skull. He grasped the knobbled end and pulled. It was still too far buried. With a curse, he shoved the dagger back in its sheath and dug with both hands. The glug of water at the cave mouth was a rush in his ears, a steady echo to the harsh saw of his own breath through his teeth. It was only with the first loosening jiggle of the bone that he realised the creatures had fallen silent. 

“Where –” 

Something heavy landed on his back. Startled, he tried to twist away, but razor claws dug into his shoulders and into the soft flesh just above his kidneys. The creature screeched in triumph and bit down. Alistair screamed. 

Another leaped for him, and a third latched on to his side, but he caught it with his elbow then kicked out savagely and heard a splintering of ribs from the second. He snarled as he fended them off, grabbing for the neck of the one trying to tear out his throat. By now he had the dagger in hand. The creature struggled. He stabbed out in a wild arc behind his head, felt the blade sink through gristle and bone into the sudden softness of the chest cavity. It fell from his back, limp and twitching, and the rest retreated again, but only so far as the lip of the pool. Gone was the casual inquisitiveness of before; they scented blood, and despite losing another two of their own it was goading them into a frenzy.  

Alistair cursed again. In the struggle he had lost sight of the bone, and with the cave now darker than ever, the water marred with viscera, his hope of finding it sank like a plumb-line. And worse, the creatures must have had some kind of venom in their bite because his legs felt weaker than before, off-balance in a way that couldn’t be attributed to the warm trickle seeping from his shoulder.  

Just come back. 

He straightened. He needed to leave, to return and admit defeat before the Storm Giant and beg Rosslyn’s forgiveness for having come so close. He rolled her name off his tongue, half apology and half prayer as he turned.  His grip on the dagger tightened.  

“You things had better get out of my way.”  

And then he saw it, at the corner of his eye, a knob of white bone poking up amidst the settling sand. The creatures looked at him suspiciously, perplexed by the intentions of a quarry that should be charging towards them, not sloshing away back to the centre of the pool. This time, he kept his eyes on them, and kept the dagger glinting between them as he worked the bone all too slowly out of its bed. 

Finally, with a low sucking noise, it pulled free, a pale, slightly curved tarsal bone longer than Alistair’s thigh, surprisingly heavy for its size, and gleaming with the same faint opalescence as the rest of the skeleton. At the sight of it, the creatures drew back with a chorus of alarmed chitters, opening a gap for him to squeeze through before they could regroup. The leader snarled as he approached, but the rest only backed away further, already cowed by the loss of three of their number and wary now that he had a weapon with enough reach to keep them at a distance. 

They let him go, following on his heels as he backed away, eager for a slip or a stumble to tip the odds back in their favour. A wave washed against his calves and nearly gave them their chance, but he steadied himself against the wall and felt for the opening that would take him back towards the outside world. His legs wobbled like a colt’s, and whatever was in the creatures’ venom dulled his vision so he could hardly pick them out of the gloom, but at last he found the crevice that marked the way out, and slid through into the darkness with a dozen angry screeches echoing behind him. 

Water dragged at his ankles as he stumbled forward, waves stinging with flecks of sand that cascaded down the sloping floor of the tunnel, only to churn winter-white as it met the tide rising in the gorge. The cave floor was drowned, with only the rise nearest the seaward side peeking above the water to offer a small glimmer of hope that he might make it back. Fatigue gnawed at him, wound deep into his flesh with the bite of salt and the creatures’ poison until his arms felt like lead and his lungs began to constrict.

“Nearly there,” he panted as he sheathed the dagger again and shoved the dragon bone through his belt. “Just keep walking.”

“Alistair.”

Rosslyn stood in the water. Her cloak was missing, her hair awry and loose from the braid she had worn on the shore, but everything else was the same. It must be his tiredness that drew his gaze to the pouted shape of her mouth and the open line of her collar, the way the fabric of her shirt pulled taut across her breasts. He staggered towards her with his heart striking in his throat, confused, relieved, urged on by the current tugging at his legs.

“What – how –?” he tried. His throat was cracked and dried with salt.

She shook her head and wrapped her arms around his neck. He caught the scent of jasmine again as he held her, though he hadn’t noticed it when they stood together outside the cave.

“We have to hurry.”

“I know,” he answered. “It’s alright, I have the bone. It was a close call, but I can tell you everything when we get back.”

“No.” Her expression softened. “You don’t understand. I was wrong, this isn’t a test, it’s a sacrifice. The Storm Giant means to have you killed to appease the gods, one way or the other. I came to save you.”

He pulled back from the embrace. “But I have it. Rosslyn, I got it. Why would he –?”

“They lied to us.” Her fingers stroked along his cheek, warm against his chilled skin. “It doesn’t matter if you succeed, they never meant to help us.”

The grey of her eyes darkened, flickered to his mouth, and he found himself leaning forward.

“You have to come with me. Let me save you.”

She twined their fingers and stepped away, but he hesitated. Something in her touch felt… off. Wrong. The cold and the blood loss toyed with his mind.

“What is it?” she asked.

“How did you get here?”

A smile. “There’s a path around the outside. I climbed it – I can show you.”

He shook his head again when she tried to pull him after her, stepped back. The next wave rolled in above his knees. “What about the ships?” 

“They don’t matter anymore. The only thing that matters is us.” When he still didn’t move, she came forward again, with a wounded look in her eyes that didn’t quite belong there. “Don’t you want to be with me?”

“You’re dry.”

“What do you mean?”

He pulled away from her, from the snarl kept hidden just behind her features. “All these waves – the spray – you should be soaked to the skin.”

The not-Rosslyn shrugged, waved away his concern with a laugh. “I told you, I climbed in from outside. The water’s rising – please, you must come with me.”

“I don’t know what you are,” he growled. “But you’re not her. Get out of my way.”

“You’re a clever boy, aren’t you?” it crooned. “For a mortal, at least. Most who come here are all too happy to follow me, all too ready to believe the duplicity of those who wait beyond. But you are very foolish if you think I’ll just let you go.”

It paced towards him, no longer pretending to struggle against the current, its hands spreading wide fingers suddenly tipped with claws. Instinctively, Alistair groped at his side for a sword that wasn’t there, and instead, his hand clasped the broad edge of the bone. Perhaps it expected him to hesitate, to let himself be driven into the sea rather than strike at something wearing Rosslyn’s face like a shield, but the real Rosslyn was waiting for him, relying on him, trusting him to come back. So he smashed the improvised weapon into the demon’s grinning face.

It fell with a shriek and thrashed, trying to get its feet under it again, but by that time he was past, labouring against the pull of the water to where the cave floor was still dry, solid stone above a boiling sea. His numb feet tripped and scraped against the rock but he kept going, grip tight on the bone and eyes focussed on the opposite side of the gorge as he gathered his legs to jump. The shrill rage of the demon followed him. A wave washed in and threw up white spray to catch him – but his leap carried him over, and if he turned his ankle and sprawled on the landing, then he took the aching to mean he was still alive. When he looked back, he was entirely alone.

Grunting at the new, dull spots of pain that flared along his legs and back, he pushed himself up and limped along the wall. The water came up to mid-thigh now. Somewhere beneath the buffeting current lay the entrance to the final tunnel, the last stretch back to dry land, and he had to find it soon, or else fall to the cold and the venom coursing through his bloodstream.

“Come on, come on.”

He had to bend down to feel for the hollow with his fingers, hoping that he was in the right place, and all the while the water dragged at him until he ripped his own fingernails trying to hang on. When the next wave roared in, its foaming crest reached higher than his head. It closed over him in a wash of white foam, and whatever air he had managed to gulp down was knocked out of him as his skull was smashed against the rock.

There were doubtful murmurs from the council as the water finally closed over the notch on the wall below the Swallow’s mouth. It marked the longest anyone had ever survived in the challenge, the point beyond which all reasonable hope faded, and Rosslyn watched it disappear with every nerve shivering, her breath halted in her chest to prevent it emerging as a sob.

“I’m not leaving,” she repeated as the Storm Giant’s footsteps approached. Her mind had long since gone blank, spiralled down into the dark, with roiling water, and ice, and the sting of grit across the face. The stiffness in her shoulders made her neck ache, and her vision blurred with how intently she stared at the cave mouth, but her only conscious thought was the memory of West Roth, how she had found him lying like one dead under his blankets, and how she had all but run from him when he touched her. How much time had they wasted, only to come to this?

What would she tell Cailan?

“Cuilean…” The old man sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s still time.”

“Lass, he’s –”

“Was it worth it?” she demanded, rounding on him. “You did this. You and the rest of them, sending a good man a fool’s errand, betting the freedom of thousands on one life because you couldn’t just help. You risked war with Ferelden, and now –”

A yell interrupted her. She swung towards it, saw Misyluinan pointing, and the breath rushed from her lungs as she followed the line of the elf lord’s finger to the mouth of the Swallow, where a pale figure crawled into sight and collapsed motionless against the stone.

She was in the water before she realised she was moving. The Storm Giant’s shout rang in her ears, but she ignored the command. Water swamped her boots, each wave a cold lap against her thighs that pushed her back towards the shore, but every cruel burst of her heart against her ribs drove her onward, desperate to reach Alistair and yet terrified of what she might find when she did. When she called his name he groaned, and she breathed again. He was pale, beyond shivering, his body dotted with wounds and his eyes rimmed red from the salt. When he looked up, he didn’t see her.

“The demon…”

She touched him. “You’re like ice.”

“You –”

“Take it easy.” She hauled him into a sitting position and threw her cloak around his shoulders. It would do little good, but to leave him without any protection against the wind made bile rise in the back of her throat. “Can you stand?”

“They…” he mumbled something. “There were so many of them…”

“Alistair.”

His eyes snapped to her, feverish. “Rosslyn? Is it… really you?”

“It’s me,” she assured him. “You made it –”

The rest of her words were cut off as he lunged forward and kissed her. His lips were freezing, cracked so deeply they bled, but she pressed back all the same, until her need for breath became greater than her need for him and she had to pull away.

“Can you stand?” she repeated, brushing a careful hand over his shoulder. “We need to get you back so we can see to these injuries.”

He sagged against her and closed his eyes. “Let’s just stay here.”

“Alistair –”

“Maker, you’re warm…”

Fear gripped her. She knew the effects of cold well enough, that insidious desire to lay down and let it lead you away, and she would not let it overtake him, not when he had made it all the way back, even if she had to throw him over her shoulder and carry him across the water like a sack of flour. With a huff, she rose and hauled him up next to her, bracing herself under his shoulder as she led him towards the water, while he muttered and stared like a fish at the world around him, delirious. His fingers wound into her hair and anchored there hard enough that she winced.

“Just hold on,” she muttered. “If you give up now I swear I’m going into the Fade after you.”

“Don’t want – that,” he managed, grinning weakly.

“Then don’t die,” she answered.

Figures were already gathering to help them out of the water, Wynne and the mage lord with healing spells sparking green between their fingers.

“These look like deepstalker bites,” the Clayne woman tutted as she lifted back the cloak to inspect Alistair’s neck.

Rosslyn frowned. “Deepstalker?”

“We have te get him somewhere warm immediately.”

“Wait.” The growing number of people seemed to lift Alistair from his trance. Smiling a grim sort of reassurance at Rosslyn, he straightened and led her over towards the Storm Giant and Mac Cinaed, who with little else to do had stood back from the fuss to keep out of the way. With trembling hands, he drew the dragon bone from his belt and held it out flat so they could take it from him.

“I hope this one is big enough?” he asked.

The Storm Giant glanced at the man next to him, and then at Rosslyn, who glared sullenly back. “Aye, it’ll do. And ye’ll get ye ships.”