#forage combine harvester

[agriculturalmachinerys-blog]

Midwest Fabrication Agriculture Machinery Suppler

A location in The Gums, Queensland, served as the starting point for Martin's pursuits. With his acquisition of a combine harvester, Martin aspired to establish himself, even with the knowledge of the unpredictable terrain he would have to navigate while operating it. Martin's persistent nature allowed for the development of the first-ever front, and this subsequently enabled him to gain recognition on a global scale while also expanding the operations of his family business.

PRODUCT

Harvester

ForageAgriculture

ToolsAccessories

Canola Harvester

Combine Harvester

[catscraftsandcommentary]

Okay, continuing the idea from this post... (Basically, that the witchers from each school can shift into the animal that their school is named after, but also get some comical/cute traits of that animal.)

The mages didn't intend to create shapeshifters originally, they were mostly just fooling around and seeing what would happen. (With real children, yes they are horrible people.) But then someone found a combination of chaos and genetics that allowed a subject to shapeshift into an animal under certain circumstances. So they went "hey, what else can we do with this?" and on the testing went.

Eventually they thought to send their new experiments up against actual monsters and realized that they had the potential for a magnificent warrior...or minion. Same thing.

Over time, they realized some drawbacks:

The new creatures - dubbed "witchers" and further divided by which creature they could shift into - would first shift into a baby of their species. Not terribly useful.

As the witcher grew in age and chaos ability, so did their animal form...and never seemed to STOP growing. (There was a long argument over whether this was beneficial or not.)

When terribly wounded, the witcher would often change into their animal form, seeming unable to control the change until they healed most of their wounds.

Shifted witchers required both food and magical energy to sustain themselves and their abilities. This made them ferocious against chaos-fueled monsters, as they could absorb the chaos from those they killed, but proved a weakness if they absorbed less chaos than they needed to heal the wounds they had taken.

The full moon, which raised the ambient level of chaos in the world, would force a shift unless the witcher had impeccable control. Even then, it was so-so.

Once shifted, the animal instincts easily overpowered the witcher's conscious mind - at least until they had long practice in controlling themselves. Young cats got the zoomies and old ones took long naps. Wolves played. Vipers sunned themselves. Bears foraged for food or - if it was cold - hibernated.

The mages attempted creating a female bear ONCE. It proved to be their downfall - mama bears do not suffer threats to their cubs.

Now please imagine:

Teeny tiny wolf cubs chasing each other around the training grounds, biting each other's tails and tripping over their new paws.

Master trainers scruffing them and carrying them in an elbow or over a shoulder, while the tiny puppy tail wagged uncontrollably. Teaching them what their new bodies could do, with the teacher the size of a wagon and the students not yet knee high.

Puppies trying to scratch an itch and slowly tipping over.

Adult witchers shifting and cuddling with the students, carrying several on their back.

Ivar, oldest and most powerful of the vipers, is as large as a barn and can hold his entire school in his coiled form - and can swallow most monsters whole.

Vesemir is the size of a shed, and Geralt (twice grassed) and Eskel (incredible chaos) are not much smaller. Lambert is a perfectly normal size, thank you very much...he just looks tiny next to them.

Clothing, armor, and weapons which are crafted from the remains of chaos-fueled monsters (ie, they are inherently magical) CAN shapeshift with the witcher. Mundane items (cotton or wool, iron and plain steel) cannot. They lose more knives that way...

Young witchers learning how to harvest, process, and use various monster bits so they don't shift, shift back, and end up naked or in ruined clothing. (Yes, even the THREAD used to sew the clothing together must come from monsters. It's a pain.)

An old witcher taking the time to relax in their shifted form in the woods and being mistaken for a monster, so a nearby town hires a SECOND witcher to hunt them...bonus points if the second witcher is a friend or lover of the first, who came looking for them. Just walking into a clearing going "really? You know that town is going crazy over a huge monster that's moved in, and here I find you lying around."

(It's Ivar and Keldar. Ivar just laughs. "I ate the only monster last week, while I waited for you." And then he snatches Keldar up and wraps him in his coils.)

@everything-but-the-not-natural I know you were excited about this AU!

[alexanderwales]

Alright, here's my dream Stardew Valley style game, designed for my own tastes.

You come to a small town with the usual twenty to thirty people. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's a fantasy town, and no one actually farms anymore, partly because it's only questionably profitable, partly because a lot of the knowledge has been lost. Instead, everyone uses these magic doodads which are very powerful but also very limited. The tavernkeeper has a doodad that makes him a single kind of weak ale and a single variety of off-tasting wine. The clothier has basically a square mile of linen to work with, and everyone wears her drab clothes. Tools are made from a doodad that the blacksmith owns, not even made of any actual metal, just a material that wears away after a month and needs to be replaced by a new copy from the blacksmith's doodad. People get their meals from the doodads. They get their medical checkups. It's all a bit shit.

Because I'm a worldbuilder at heart, I would have this all exist in the wake of a large-scale war that depleted the town of its fighting-age population, with the doodads being a sort of government program to ensure that more of the lifeblood of the town could be drained away. And for there to be some reason for the town to continue existing, perhaps the government is harvesting some resources necessary in the creation of doodads. That's enough for a pro-doodad faction and maybe some minor drama with them, though I do like the idea that the only reason things are Like This is because there was a war and things got bad. It's not necessarily a bleak town, but there's definitely a listlessness to it, a "what's the point".

So you're a farmer, but no one is really a farmer anymore. Maybe there are a few books, but you don't learn farming from books, you learn it from practical experience; that's a lot of what this game is about. When you start, there's no one to buy seeds from, there's just a bunch of wilderness where farms once stood, now all long overgrown.

So you go out and forage, for a start, and you clear the land, and you pay attention to the plants and how they can be used, and you start in on making recipes with them, maybe with the help of your grandfather's old, partially incomplete books. You find some wild corn that's a descendant of the old times. You find some tomato seeds in an urn. You discover potatoes because you see them dug up by a wild boar, which itself was once a domesticated animal.

In my ideal game, you need to pay attention to the soil quality, to how far apart things are planted, to what crops work well together. Farming is a matter of companion planting and polycultures. You get some chickens by giving them consistent feed, and you keep them around because they're natural pest control. Your climbing beans climb the stalks of your maize. You're attracting pollinators. (From a gameplay perspective, yeah, we probably put this all into a grid, and you have crop bonuses from adjacencies, and emergent gameplay that comes from all that, some plants providing shade, others providing nitrogen fixing.) You're a scientist making observations about the plants, maybe with your incomplete book giving you confirmation on the nature of all your crops once you hit certain production goals or a perfect specimen or whatever.

Cooking is the same. There has got to be a system that I like better than just "combine tomato with bread to get tomato bread". I'm pretty sure that it's some variant of the actual process I use when cooking, which is making sure that things are properly cooked, balancing flavors against each other, adding in a little salt or acidity or umami or whatever. Time in the kitchen, in this game, is often about making meals, ensuring that if you have a fatty piece of meat you have some asparagus that's coated with lemon to go with it. (From a gameplay perspective, I think building the dish once is probably sufficient and it can be automated after that, and building the meal is the same. I don't want to play this minigame every time I'm cooking a dish, I just want to play it a single time until I have good knowledge of the best way to grill a BBQ chicken breast with a homemade sauce.)

But if we're having a little minigame here where we pay attention to how long we're cooking the kale to make sure that it's the right texture, and we're paying attention to abstractified mouthfeel and palette, then we can get something else for free: variation. See, you're not just cooking to get an S grade, you're cooking for people with different tastes. The cobbler has a sweet tooth, the librarian loves fruity things, the mayor cannot stand fish, that sort of thing. From a gameplay perspective, maybe we represent this with a radar graph with some specific favorite and least favorite individual flavors, and maybe it's visible to the player, but the important thing is that player gets feedback and have a reason to strive for both "good" and "perfection" and some of this is going to depend on the quality of the ingredients.

And this is, gradually, how the town is brought back into the fullness of life. You're not just cooking for these people, you're also selling them food, and they're making their own recipes, and all the stuff that's not food is making their businesses not suck anymore. After the first test keg of ale goes swimmingly, the tavernkeeper wants more, a lot more, and puts in an order for hops, wheat, grapes, anything he can use to make things that will improve nights at the tavern. The clothier will skeptically take in wool and spin her own yarn, and then eagerly want more, because how awesome is it to have a new textile? There's a chemist who is extremely interested in dyes and paints, and wants you to bring him all kinds of things to see what might be viable for going beyond the ~3 colors that the doodads can provide.

So by year two, if you're doing things right, you're the lynchpin of the revivalist movement. People are now moving to the town, for the first time in decades, because they hear that you're there and doing interesting things with the wilderness. Maybe there are other farmers following in your wake, but maybe it's just new characters who are specifically coming because a crate of wine was shipped to the capital city. Maybe some of them bring new techniques for you, or a handful of plants from a botanical garden, and there are new elements for the minigames, or maybe some automation for the stuff that's old hat.

I think something that's important to me is that there's a reason for the crops you plant and the things you do. I always like these games best when it feels like I'm doing something for someone, when I can look at a plot of cabbages and think "ah, those are the cabbages I owe to Leon". Where these games are at their worst, everything is entirely fungible and I've planted eight million blueberries because they have the highest ROI.

And yeah, in most of these games, there are other minigames like fishing and mining and logging and crafting, and since this is just a blog post and not a game, I definitely could massively expand an already sizeable scope.

I think for mining the player would use doodads of their own, and maybe you could make a mining minigame out of that, using the same planting tile system to instead create an automated ore harvesting machine that plumbs the depths of the earth (possibly dealing with rocks of different hardness, the water table, and other challenges along the way).

Fishing is a question of understanding the different fish species, what they eat, where they congregate, and then setting nets or lines, since I have never met a fishing minigame I really enjoyed. Again, there's some idea that the player is gaining information over time, building up a profile of these fish, noticing that some of them go nuts when it rains, understanding the spawning season, that they go to deeper water when it's cold, etc.

Crafting really depends on what you're crafting, but if you're reintroducing traditional artisan processes to this town, then people are going to need tools and machines and things. I'm not sure I know what a proper crafting game looks like. The only experience I have to draw on is wood shop, where I made wooden boxes, cutting boards, and picture frames. Since this is an engineering-lite puzzle-lite game, you could maybe do something in that vein, e.g. defining a number of steps that get you the correct thing you're trying to make, but ... eh. I love the idea of designing a chicken coop, for example, or building a trellis if I want my climbing beans to not need maize, or whatever, but I don't know how you actually implement that. There are definitely voxel-based and snap-to-grid games where you build bases, and I tend to find that fun ... but it's mostly cosmetic, for the obvious reason that doing it any other way than cosmetic requires programmatic evaluation, which is difficult and maybe unintuitive. The closest I think I've seen is ... maybe Tears of the Kingdom? Contraption building? But I don't know how you translate that to a farming game. Maybe I should ask my wife about this, because she's always doing little projects around the house (an outdoor enclosure for our cats, a 3D-printed holder for our living room keyboard, a mounting for our TV).

Making an interesting crafting system is difficult, which is why pretty much no one has done it.

And if I'm talking pie in the sky, without concern for budget or scope, I want the villagers to all have a mammoth amount of writing for them. I want petty little dramas and weird obsessions, lives that evolve with or without my input, rudimentary dialog trees that let me nudge things in different directions. This is just an unbelievable amount of work on its own, it would be crazy, but I would love having a tiny little town game where sometimes other people would fall in love. I would like to be invited to a wedding, maybe one that happened because I encouraged the chemist to hang out with the clothier, and in the course of working together on dyes, they fell in love. With twenty people in town and another ten that come in over the course of the game if you hit the right triggers, I do think this is just a matter of having a ton of time/budget. You write tons and tons of dialogue so there's not much that's repeated, you have some lines of conversation between characters that are progressed through, you have others that trigger off of events, and then you have personal relationships between NPCs that can be progressed through time or with player intervention. Give single characters a pool of love interests, have their affections depend on their routine which depends on what's changed in town ... very difficult to do without spending loads and loads of time on it though.

Anyway, that's one of my dream games. No one is ever going to make it, it would be a niche of a niche, and as scoped here, is too much for a small team to ever actually finish, let alone polish. But it's the sort of thing I'm imagining in my head when I think about playing Stardew Valley and its successors.

[ataraxiaspainting]

Where Did The Years Go?

Yan Scaramouche x GN Reader.

Synopsis: You said you understood him. So why do you plan to leave him too?

Warnings: Yandere themes, manipulation, Scara is in his Kabukimono era, thoughts of murdering the Reader, and unhealthy relationships.

Word Count: 800.

*~*~*~*

Dendrobium could only grow in areas where Celestia is blind. Kabukimono knew that, almost more than he knew anything else. The Dendrobium blooming next to a grave long since abandoned, much like the rest of this island, has no one to watch over it, no one aside from you and him. The seven red flowers sprouting in the tomb were unloved by this world, much like Kabukimono once used to be before he found a home within you, his beloved. 

The flower had many names, unlike the unmarked, broken stone that hid some sort of rotting human beneath the soil. The Flower of Poison because of the stamens which are indeed poisonous to mortals unlike himself, intended to keep pests like mice away from the inner parts. The Flower of Death was another ominous title since the flowers are said to bloom only when an Inazuman is said to cross over to the other side after passing on, be it from old age, disease, or some slow and painful death they either did or did not deserve. Sometimes, when you are feeling guilty enough, you visit this grave too, and sit down to meditate, contemplating what your mother is doing in the afterlife if it even existed. Perhaps this was why you were given a Vision, the shade of that of the tea you often brewed for both Kabikumono and yourself, a bright green color that dared not dwindle. The Flower of The Other Shore is also a common label for Dendrobium because when a soul passes the river they are said to be greeted by a field of them. Kabukimono ponders for a moment, leaning down to pick out a petal, playing with it between his thumb and pointer finger, stopping when he hears you call out his name, followed by the slightly loud note of a bell. He leans back down and buries the petal within the soil of the grave, bowing before hurrying off in the direction of your home.

Today’s dinner is a combination of what you both managed to gather. Kabukimono gathered the fish and seaweed, while you cooked the rice from the small field outside your home, along with some Lavender Melon. Your meals are often like this, Kabukimono found out a few days into him becoming a resident here for the time being, that what you ate depended heavily on the weather and the harvest. He promises himself that one day he will treat you to a meal and life so grand that you will never go back to foraging all day to just be barely given enough to scrape by. 

Seven months have passed since he first arrived here, according to you. He hopes that this life will continue to get better and that he will be able to give you the life you deserve.

“Kabukimono,” The saying of your name is unusually deflated like it has been the past week or so. “I… have to tell you something, alright?”

“Absolutely! Tell me anything, anything at all.”

What comes out of your mouth is not what he wanted to hear at all. “I… I’m leaving Yashiori Island.”

“...Huh?” He looks down at the small bowls that are in the center of the two of you. His side, as usual, has more food than yours, because you keep saying you cannot bear to see him go hungry. “Why?”

“There is not enough food. Not enough… anything. The thunderstorms are getting much worse too… I can’t live here anymore.”

You think this is the first time you have been scared of Kabukimono, because that new expression he is wearing is utterly terrifying.

“I… I’m sorry, Kabukimono. I’m… leaving for Inazuma City soon.”

He smiles, and in the blink of an eye, he is standing up and then your foreheads are touching, his hands grabbing your shoulders so tightly you could feel them almost dislocate. 

“No, you’re not, because that’s awfully selfish of you! My [First] would never do such a thing, right? They wouldn’t leave me alone to starve and cry and be covered in filth.”

Being aware that you are unaware of his non-human nature, yet acknowledging your uncontainable empathy, makes employing this strategy even simpler. It works every time you want to leave.

“Here, you can have my portion for tonight, alright? Just… Just don’t leave me. Please?” After a moment of silence, along with the tears that trickle down your cheeks, he knows he has one, at least for now. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me, [First].”

When you don’t answer again, looking to the side, to the bag of your essentials, Kabukimono wonders if that grave would have enough room for two and not just one.

But he dismisses it because surely, you’ll be with him forever, right?

[dailyanarchistposts]

I

“Today we are still preoccupied with creating gardens.Why? To not suffer from hunger. Because having rice, beans, fava beans, maize, peanut — then one can survive.” — Renato, of the Canela community[1]

“The development of what we know as agriculture was not an overnight phenomenon, but rather a several thousand year-long project. In some places in the world, the earliest stages of cultivation were never surpassed, and remain sustainable today. In many more places, the pressures of the global economy have corrupted these practices just in this last century. But in most of the world today, we are witnessing the full-blown colonization of native foodways, and a nearly complete dependence on western industrial practices. To trace this “biodevestation” directly back to cultivation itself, is to ignore the history of conquest and land displacement that pushed the food systems of subsistence cultures to the brink, where they now teeter on the edge of extinction.” — Witch Hazel, Against agriculture & in defense of cultivation

Situated in dense forests and savanna of the Brazilian state of Maranhão lives the indigenous Canela people. In the past they lived from hunting, gathering and gardening but starting from 200 years ago as they were pushed from their traditional territory as settler farmers occupied the land bit by bit. The lush forests are being replaced by industrial eucalyptus and soy plantations, and cattle ranches. They now inhabit an area 5 to 10 percent of their original territory. Traditionally the Canela travelled from place to place as the seasons changed but now adopt a more sedentary lifestyle living in bigger permanent villages. Although the Canela still depend on hunting and foraging they don’t have access to a big enough land base to cover all their needs so they increasingly depend on gardening to meet their needs.

For the Canela gardening is not just to meet their subsistence needs but also a means of resistance against being assimilated into the structures, networks, dependency and the institutional inequality of the Brazilian state, religious institutions, and multinational corporations who are constantly trying to infringe and occupy the Canela’s home.

Other threats to the Canelas way of life are from the environmental effects from the industrialized agriculture of soy and eucalyptus production that causes water depletion which exacerbates drought and soil erosion. The overuse of fertilizers and agrochemicals annihilates plant biodiversity and pollutes the local rivers and waterways with high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus which in turn causes algal blooms which can produce toxins that are harmful to animals and cause dead zones from the reduction of oxygen in the water starving fish and plants. So any flora or fauna living near a eucalyptus or soy plantation is at risk.

The Canela’s subsistence gardening approach is totally different from monocrop agriculture. They work with nature using a conscious ecological and more biodiverse method.Typically in agriculture only a small variety of cash crops are grown in large fields covering acres upon acres of land where in the Amazon large sections of jungle are destroyed. For the Canela gardners instead of being dependent on a small variety of cash crops they cultivate over 300 varieties of plants to meet their subsistence needs. Instead of using destructive hellish machines like bulldozers, ploughs, and combine harvesters they use a slash and burn method to clear small patches just enough for them to use and their tools consist of a digging stick and woven baskets. They only use the same garden for two years and then not use the same area for at least eight years to allow the forest to regrow and return fertility to the soil.

The Canela’s vast knowledge of plants helps them determine which ones make good companions that will help each other grow, which ones are natural repellents to predatory insects that will attack the plants, and which plants to grow which will attract beneficial insects such as pollinizers. And likewise their vast knowledge of soil helps them to consciously plant to suit the 10 different soil groups in their area which will help prevent soil erosion, nutrients depletion, and combat against other harmful effects that are typical of agriculture. Their focus is for caring for the well-being of local biodiversity and the nonhuman inhabitants.

The Canel don’t see themselves as farmers but parents looking after their plant kin viewing their saved seeds and cuttings as their babies and their growing crops as their infants, genuinely loving them in the same way as if they were their human children caring for the plants as the plants care for them. They view the environment as consisting of human and nonhuman “selves”, and gardening as caretaking for themselves and their plant and human families.

[meowcats734]

(prompt response) A girl grows up thinking that all doors are automatic, but it's actually the work of a polite ghost.

I'd thought the four of us had gotten to know each other pretty well at the Silent Academy. At the very least, Lucet, Meloai, and I hung out together for pretty much every waking moment we had, and it was a rare week that didn't see Sansen and I sipping slurry and brandy together in his comfortable, hand-built home. 

But as it turned out, hanging out together in the controlled environment of school was one thing. Trekking across the country and sleeping in the same camp for weeks was an entirely different level of intimacy that I didn't expect. In the first week alone, I learned that Lucet snored, Sansen liked staying up late humming to himself, and Meloai just flat-out didn't sleep at all, instead electing to keep watch for us as we rested. 

I learned other things, too. As the food supplies we'd brought with us from the Peaks ran low and I had to fall back on the foraging skills I'd learned as a child, I found out that Lucet was a surprisingly picky eater. I, personally, saw nothing wrong with the meat slurries that were a staple food of the Redlands, and the only thing Meloai ate was a couple soul fragments harvested from the gremsquirrels we hunted, but for some reason, Lucet didn't seem to be a big fan of the ground-up meat powder that I'd grown up on.

Explaining that the meat grinder was a metaphor for the constant violence in the Redlands didn't seem to do much for her appetite, either.

Things got even weirder when we started reaching villages. The first one we found—Hatebroke, according to the lonely entrance sign—was entirely abandoned, and stripped clean of anything remotely perishable. I was just getting comfortable with the empty village when a door suddenly swung open as Meloai walked past.

"Rifts!" I swore.

"Where?" Meloai asked, gaze swiveling.

"What? No, it's an expression—the door, Meloai. Did—you have to have to have seen that, right?"

"Uh, sure? But don't all doors do that?" Meloai asked, taking a step towards the abandoned cabin. The wooden door swung open with impeccable precision, and I could have sworn the hinges even oiled themselves as they moved.

"...No, Meloai," I said. "Doors do not normally open themselves as people pass."

"Really?" Meloai frowned. "They did all the time when I grew up."

"No offense, Meloai, but you grew up in a dead nobleman's creepy-ass extradimensional basement," I said. "I'm pretty sure that your definition of 'normal' is pretty different from human standard."

Lucet kicked me in the shin. "Hey. Be nice, Cienne."

"Sorry, sorry, I'm just a little bit stressed from... I dunno... getting chased out of the only home I had left by a fucking eldritch abomination? If this is Iola messing with us..." I took a step forwards and shut the door; it didn't open again.

"I don't think this is Iola," Sansen said, frowning at the door. "This... I think it's a different soulspace entity. And if my guess is right, it's one that probably decided to follow Meloai around ever since she left the Plane of Elemental Insecurity."

"Wait, so we've been stalked by some invisible soulspace entity for months now? How come we haven't noticed?" Lucet said.

"Say the part about it being invisible again," I said, "but slowly."

Lucet flicked my forehead. Ow, but I guess I deserved that. "You know what I mean. Meloai, does this door-opening thing happen all the time?"

"Yes," Meloai said, grumbling. "Not like it mattered much at the Silent Academy, since there were always so many people moving around that the doors were always open anyway. Look, I obviously turned out okay, and I spent twenty years with this kind of thing happening. Don't we have more important things to worry about? Like, uh, getting enough food for you guys to eat?"

"Well, hang on, maybe one of those problems can be a solution to the other." Sansen, by virtue of being older than Meloai, Lucet, and I combined, was the de facto leader of our little group of adventurers. "I've seen people come and go in my time, and I've even encountered the soulspace entities they've left behind. If this soulspace entity is formed from the soul fragments of who I think it is, then he's not going to be hostile."

"Didn't you just say it was something from Lord Tanryn's vault?" I asked. 

"Yes, but I don't think it's that puffed-up nobleman himself. He wouldn't stoop so low as to open doors for some commoner."

"Then... who is it?" I turned to Sansen, frowning. The old man had forgotten more than I'd ever know, and I trusted his judgement.

A faint smile spread across Sansen's face. "I think it's his old butler." He cleared his throat. "Meloai. Did the soulspace entity ever set tables for you?"

Meloai gave him an uncertain nod. "I... think? That's the thing where all the silverware flies into place, and the tablecloth straightens itself out with a whoomph, right?"

"...In this context, sure," Sansen said. "Did he—did the entity do the little thing with the three types of forks? The one with two little tines on the left, the bigger one in the middle, and that delicate, long, pointy one on the right?"

Meloai nodded enthusiastically. "See? It is normal for tables to do that."

"Oi," I muttered. "Well, I guess it's not the weirdest thing we consider normal nowadays."

"Yeah, that's ol' Mairel alright." Sansen's old gaze stared into the distance as he remembered. "He was my first crush, back in the day. If there's still enough of him left to remember how to wait tables and grease doors... well. Indulge an old man for a moment, will you?"

The three of us traded looks, then nodded at once. We may have been an eccentric little group, but we were tight-knit. We trusted each other. "Whatcha need, Sansen?" I asked.

His requests were fairly simple. We cleared out the front yard of the abandoned shack, smoothing over the dirt with our feet and hands—and as we did, something... else... joined us. Something that barely remembered how to speak or think, but still knew how to set a dance floor. Within minutes, we'd cleared a square of land, with Sansen standing in the middle.

And the old man began to dance.

Wordlessly at first, the waltz was an invitation. He took the lead, and empty air followed. And then, all at once, the air wasn't empty anymore. There was no flash of light, no thunderous miracles, but Sansen's steps became more sure, his weight more freely shifted, as he leaned on a partner who wasn't there but had been, once, long ago.

Meloai began to hum to herself, a wordless childhood lullaby that she must have heard when she was growing up, and the cadence of the tune matched the waltz to perfection.

The old man and the ghost finished their dance, and I felt a whisper of wind rustle around the impromptu dance floor.

Then the miracle was over, and suddenly, Sansen was holding nothing but empty air. He let out a long, contented sigh, memory coursing through him.

Then he opened his eyes, smiling.

"You wanted food, kids?" He stepped forwards, opening the door to the abandoned shack. Behind it, impossibly, incongruously, was a fully-set banquet table, resplendent with rich foods from an era long past, with three delicate forks set precisely by each setting. "Seems like there's something left of Mairel after all."

And the four of us ate gratefully, sustained by the memory of a ghost of an old man's friend.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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[noodlebelli]

Sims 2 Stardew Valley Challenge

Toshiro Sim's Pelican Town from Stardew Valley as a neighborhood combined with the Planting Overhaul I came up with some gameplay rules to somewhat simulate playing Stardew Valley in the Sims 2.

(I'm also playing it Tues and Thurs over on https://www.twitch.tv/noodlebelli)

Rules

Your sim cannot stay up past 2am. Once your sim is in bed, they cannot wake up until 6am.

If they happen to wake up for puke or pee or something and they are too awake to sleep, have them relax and not do anything until 6am.

If you need to do any maintenance on other households because of story progression, you can do it while your farmer is asleep, until 6am.

No Job! You left that life to connect with nature. Sources of income include:

Fishing 

Harvested produce

Found beach treasures

Digging for treasure. 

Any other crafts that you can get your hands on. 

You can sell the rocks and trees on your land for some cash in a pinch, but foraging and farming should be the primary sources of income.

After every season, at the beginning of the next, delete all current crops still in growing stages. . 

If there are some in harvest state you can still sell them.

Note down which seeds you still have left in your inventory. 

Save your game and switch out the seed folder for the current season folder.

Put a copy of the extra seed packages you noted down from the old season folder to the Winter folder. 

Put the winter folder in your Downloads so that your sim keeps their extra seeds.  

Sprinklers and ladybug houses are allowed if you can afford them. The greenhouse is not allowed to be used until Winter. 

The winter folder should have all the extra seeds that you noted down in rule 13. You can use those seeds in the greenhouse, but you are not allowed to buy more!

Once Winter is over, sell any un-used seeds and when you are switching out the seed folders delete all seeds in the Winter folder. 

No Gardener! Unless there is a default replacement that turns them into a Junimo blob, you don’t get help from a gardener. 

Romance whoever you want, Heck even WooHoo. But NO Try for Baby until the Level 3 milestone.

Read the full article which includes recommended mods and milestones on https://noodlebellisimsandthings.blogspot.com/2024/02/sims-2-stardew-valley-challenge.html

This challenge is bound to grow and change, so I'll try to update the blog post and rules as I go.

[guided-by-the-skies]

Autumn Equinox Observations | Dark Academia 🌾 MBTI | Earth Signs

When the days and nights are the same length the symbolism in the collective unconscious is especially significant. Here are some observations for 🍂 Earth Signs 🍁 In some ways naturalled attuned to this time of year.

🐌 As always, take what resonates and leave the rest! 🌬

🍊 this time of year can have a sense of 'all will be revealed' and 'how the tables have turned. For Taurus, ruled by venus, themes of fertility and harvest are yours, whatever energy is coming your way, is coming in abundance. Think of a writers block freeing up, or waiting ages for a job offer and 3 come along at once

🍎 the traditional tendencies of capricorn can be felt early even though we are three signs away in libra. Yet this time is all to do with the earth and you may feel like you cannot wait for your sign to come around. might want winter or the rest of autumn to come faster. remedy the blues by curling up with a good book

🍐 this is a time of exchange, thus this can even manifest emotionally. you may be exchanging one bad mindset for a better one. this can also be a time of travels, literal exchanges of goods or services, or switching one group of people for another.

🍓 for virgo - this exchange is MOST likely to be practical for you of all the signs. for you it is MOST likely to involve physical goods or services. this year you may find your brain freeing up as Mercury finally leaves all vestiges of retrograde energy aside on the 22nd when it reaches it's furthest elongation at the end of the Mercury Max cycle

🍍 of all the earth signs it's Capricorn who may have the most difficult time as this is a time of change which confronts your need for tradition. you can mark the occasion by investing in a new aesthetic, whether that means a desk tidy, new pair of glasses or so on. You are one of the signs who suits the dark academia aesthetic best and doing something like this can make any life changes easier

🍏 all signs - you may have a tendency to intellectualise and overanalyse any changes or life events that happen at this time, but you can combat this by going with your gut and feelings as opposed to what is practical. this can be harder for you than for water signs but shadow work on the upcoming Harvest Full Moon can make things easier 🌚

🍄 most likely to embrace the change are perceiving types ESXP ISXP INFP and ENFP 🦝

🌽 SJ types have a tendency to enjoy this time of year as there is a lot to keep busy with in terms of new school terms, foraging and preserving wild food, or whatever floats your boat

🌰 INFJ and ENFJ have a tendency to be in their element around this time of year as life tends to throw them the perfect combination of variety and routine. Taurus XNFJ may have the urge to buy new clothes. Virgo INFJ may enjoy a new venture and Capricorn ENFJ tends to indulge themselves around this time 🪶

Archetypes you may attract:

At times like this our ability to tap into the collective unconscious is particularly strong. Thus there may be a mythological element to the people we attract. This can look like:

🍁 People showing up that mimic patterns found in myth and legend (e.g. A relationship dynamic mimics, say, Orpheus and Eurydice)

🍁 Notable archetypes from the tarot around this time are The Empress (harvest), Justice (balance), Judgement, The Moon Reversed, The Emperor, and any of the Kings and Queens

🍁Several comets will be nearing earth in the period after the equinox and into october. These can signify temporal archetypes such as change, destruction/creation, karma, lessons learned etc. I will do another post on these in more detail.

🍁Virgo and Taurus, if your luck has been looking down you may attract the mentor archetype (from Joseph Campbell's hero's journey) around this time as your energy is in the right place and those well suited to you can tell when you need an extra hand.

🍁Capricorn, you may be in the return home stage of the hero's journey. As the year reaches it's final quarter your sign approaches (although it is not there yet!) however, Saturn, your ruling planet, governs some of the themes of reaping and sowing associated with the Equinox. Thus, you may be returning to stage one, the drawing board, or the start of a cycle.

If you found this interesting (especially the archetypes bit) I am offering free readings on my Etsy Store for the Tarot of Archetypes which looks at this kinda stuff in more detail. Use the code GIVEAWAY1234 for 100% off (Tarot of Archetypes only)

Alternatively DM me to suggest future topics if you want to see more of this kinda Jungian Archetypal spin on them - we have some pretty neat comets coming up, stuff on Ophiuchus, plus the Harvest Moon and Draconids meteor shower in October HOWEVER I am always open to suggestions and challenges

[outofangband]

Collection of Nargothrond headcanons for @eilinelsghost. Working on updating my two larger Nargothrond world building post

Nargothrond has a variety of languages spoken! Noldorin Quenya and the Falathrim dialect of Sindarin are the most common. Telerin is spoken to a much lesser extent by elves like Finrod who have Telerin family but does become more common. As I’ve spoken about here, Telerin and Quenya actually have more similarities than Telerin and many of the Sindarin dialects in Beleriand do The Mithrim dialect of Sindarin is also spoken to a lesser extent. Of course phrases are traded and after awhile most residents speak at least two languages, similar to other large elven strongholds.

The Beleriand and traditional Sindarin modes of Tengwar as well as earlier Sindarin writing systems are used with the Beleriand mode becoming most common. There is also a system of pictographs invented by the Falathrim which is used primarily for recording weather, sea conditions and other natural phenomena as well as directions and travel instructions. There are a small number of dwarves who speak their own language, specifically a dialect of two groups in the Ered Luin and surrounding communities to the East.

Food is typically served on ceramic plates. The River Narog is rich in clay deposits and both Noldor and Sindar craftspeople in Nargothrond are highly talented potters working with red clay. Orange from alder bark, yellow from dyers greenweed for yellow, and woad for greens and blues along with imported dyes and pigments were used to decorate dishes, often with scenes and stories. The woods around Nargothrond was called the forest of the hunters and presumably hunting was practiced especially as we know Finrod took place in hunts before its founding. Most if not all meat in Nargothrond comes from hunting, likely primarily venison, rabbits and game birds such as pheasants. The woods and fields also provided the opportunity for foraging and the cultivation of edible plants including daylilies, stinging nettle, wild spinach, juneberry, chestnut, hazel, and wild garlic. Rowan berries which we know are canonically found in the region are made into jellies.

The architecture of Nargothrond is a combination of inspiration from Menengroth with input from Finrod’s dwarven allies who helped build it. Finrod was also inspired by his memories of the spacious, often communal homes of the Teleri, though the landscape was quite different, similar materials were used including clay and limestone. (In Valinor the clay was an import from the mountains though by Nargothrond it was collected from the river)

One favored tradition in Nargothrond was the annual hunting trip taken in the wooded hills outside the fortress itself. Dwarves who had aided in the building often traveled back for this event and feast. Trade was discussed and gifts exchanged. The event is in late autumn and corresponds with both a Noldor harvest festival and dwarven celebration of the full moon which began shortly after the first moonrise.

[itzjustmonikas]

A Joyous Discovery

(Jade x reader with no specified gender)

-Due to Jades love for different unique plants, and him being apart of the mountain appreciation club, he often encounters many rare herbs, fruits, and vegetables growing in the areas he searches for different types of mushrooms. If he ever feels like it, he would sometimes bring home some of the side discoveries he makes and show it to you and Floyd. He would usually try to search it up and learn more about the plant, jotting key things he needs to remember such as the leaf shape and it's properties to remind himself of it's uses and learn to identify it if he ever comes across it again. If he finds out it's edible he would try to look for a recipe including the ingredient and make it, inviting you to join him from time to time and sharing the end product with you, Floyd, and Azul. As time goes on he begins to find joy in foraging for wild edible plants and begins creatively incorporating it into different recipes of his, branching out from following others's recipes. He finds it amusing to see the reaction of people being suspicious of him while trying out his original creations and end up loving it and wanting more. This one time he invited you over to the dorm and wanted to try out making a pastry out of Ramps and Ramsons (wild onion and garlic), it took a lot of trial and error to get the right ratio of ingredients and temperature for perfect flakiness and ideal flavor but you guys did it in the end. It was a hit with the others and Azul suggested on putting it as a seasonal item on the Mostro Lounge menu. You all thought it was a good idea as it was pretty cost efficient with the fact that the main ingredients are free and there is a surplus amount of it each year left unharvested. You guys all work together and harvested lots of Ramps and Ramsons and started prepping all of them for cooking while freezing out the extras that might not last long enough for the next restock. The pastry was an instant hit on campus, almost everyone rushed to the Mostro Lounge during lunch and there was barely anyone at the school cafeteria. The lines were so long that you guys could barely keep up so some students offered to help just to get a taste of the delicacy. It was so good to the point that even NRC staff members tried getting their hands on it. In the end, it made a lot of money and has become a staple item that students all know about and aims to have the next time it is available. After a longgggg day of working, all the other staff has already left and went to bed while you and Jade find yourselves sitting and enjoying dinner together. You guys finally get time to relax and chat together, talking about funny instances that happened throughout the day and sharing a laugh at some extra outrageous things. You both seem to have neverending topics to talk about together, ranging from schoolwork to close friends to future recipes and looking back on how you guys spend hours in the kitchen working together. Even though you were both physically and mentally tired, it was still a joyous moment that brought happiness and pulled you guys closer. Jade would definitely not mind working extra hard and being tired, as long as he gets to do it with you and enjoy moments like these to cherish forever.

I think this fic can also work with characters like Trey and Ruggie as Trey is good at baking and Ruggie knows a lot about foraging loll

I really hope you guys like this 💖 please let me know if there are any ways in which I could improve!My next post will be an Azul fic that I hope will be to you guys's liking :)

I chose to write about Jade because he is usually stationed in Mostro Lounges kitchen and most likely is tasked with finding new recipes, combining that with his special interest is this imagine~

[yuespropagandablog]

Hello esteemed mutual. If you are reading this, then that means my propaganda is working. But you might still have questions, so I am here to answer them. This one is a bit different from others, since it's about a genre and I will just give some recommendations without getting too deep into it. If you want more information, tell me and, well, then expect another Captain America meme.

What is a farming sim?

As the name suggests, it's a simulation game where you farm. Yes, that's it. It sounds like nothing, which is exactly why people were sceptical when Harvest Moon first came out, *Holster voice* but it's all about the gratifications, bro. The gratifications.

It's a satisfying gameplay loop where you make your little farm thrive. Common elements of farmings sims are farming (wow!), loving animals, caring for the land, getting to know citizens of a little town, fishing, gathering materials through foraging or mining, attending festivals in town, and marrying someone to have kids with.

The idea is that you can basically do what you want. Many farming sims have quests/a questline, and some function as tutorials, whereas others truly try to tell a cohesive story. It's all about taking the time. You can try to be the most profitable farmer as possible, or you can just vibe. I also like that many of these games have a lot of hours of gameplay, so you can really go into it, and it often makes the price more appealing (although the latter still depends on the price, cause some farming sims are €5, others €50).

What are your favourite farming sims?

Stardew Valley

This one is often seen as a God tier standard farming sim, following the footsteps of (and dethroning) Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons. I have an entire propaganda post about it here. You are not immune to Stardew Valley propaganda.

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

Yet another classic "you move to Olive Town to become a farmer, carrying on your grandpa's legacy" game. For some reason, people actually seem to dislike Olive Town, as in, I have heard people say it misses something. And it's true that this doesn't have the most memorable story (after all, I can't remember it while writing this!), I liked it a lot. It was a satisfying gameplay loop. This installment of the series also put more focus on the processing of (artisan) goods, which might not be everyone's vibe, but I vibed with it.

Fae Farm

The big selling point of Fae Farm is the magic. There are fairies here with fairy crops, potions, wings and what not. The story isn't groundbreaking, but the thing I love the most about this game is the gameplay itself. It's very polished and it has some quality of life features that I honestly wish more games would implement. The decorating and customisation in this game also works really, really well and also, the game looks stunning.

The social aspect of this game is, unfortunately, the absolute worst I have ever seen in a farming game. It's honestly remarkable how they managed to get so many things right, and yet fuck this up in such a spectacular way. But in some way, the fact that the characters were as uninteresting as a wet newspaper gave me more time to do other things, since I didn't see the need to socialise. Also, don't buy the DLC, it isn't worth it.

Ooblets

Ooblets is a combination of a farming sim and a critter collection game. You farm crops and forage for stuff in order to catch Ooblets. But Ooblets are also grown on your farm, so yay, more farming! There's also a story in the background, but again, the point is that you need to grow your farm and unlock stuff in order to get more and more Ooblets. This game doesn't really have a livestock element (unless you count the Ooblets), and the social aspect is just dece. It also has no combat and mining, which is something people prefer. Instead of fighting, you have dance battles!

Eastward: Octopia!

This one is a difficult one to recommend, even though I loved it, because it's a DLC! The base game Eastward is not a farming sim! Eastward is an RPG where John and Sam have to uncover the secrets of the world and fight baddies and explore dungeons, yada, yada, you get the drill. Eastward: Octopia! is a completely separate mode that can be accessed from the game's menu, and yeah, it's a farming sim. It takes place in a parallel universe where John and Sam start a new life as farmers in Octopia, and together with other Eastward NPCs, they decided to rebuild the town.

It's honestly good DLC, especially since it's only €5 or something. In fact, I spent more hours in Octopia than in the base game, and the DLC is way more up my alley. But you NEED to have bought the base game, obviously, which raises the price, and even though it takes place in a parallel universe, a lot of joy comes from seeing the Eastward characters in this new setting. And somewhere mid-game, it does actually connect to the story of the base game. But gameplay wise, it is a solid farming sim for €5, even though in late-game it turns into a sleeping simulator. But it's still nice, it's simple, and I never had a farming sim stop me in the evening to have dinner with my kid.

Are there also games that aren't technically farming sims but have similar elements AND allow you to grow crops at one point?

Yes, and if you like farming sims, you'll probably like these too. Behold, games that aren't technically farming sims but have similar elements AND allow you to grow crops at one point:

Potion Permit

Instead of a farmer, you're an chemist moving to a quaint town called Moonbury. It's up to you to cure illnesses, using handcrafted potions. The townsfolk don't trust you, though, after an incident with the previous chemist. This game focuses more on the foraging: you got to gather ingedients for your potions. This did lead to a lot of grinding and during the foraging, you will encounter overworld enemies. But there's still some planting, and other elements like the social aspect, the fishing and working your way up are part of this game.

My Time at Portia

I mistakenly thought this was a farming sim when I bought it, but in my defense, look at the trailer: they're leaning hard on the farming, whereas that is a small part of the game. You're not a farmer, you're a builder! You inherit your pa's old workplace in Portia and decide to move there. It has all the traits from a farming sim, except for the fact that you build stuff instead of farm. And honestly, it's really satisfying, because the stuff you built for quests has a direct impact on the environment.

Oh yeah, quests. Probably the biggest difference between this and traditional farming sims (apart from the building) is that this game has a LONG, LONG cohesive storyline. As in, 100+ hours of story long. It beat Persona 3 and 4 in hours. And that story also puts focus on combat. The Portia world has overworld enemies and hazardous dungeons that you need to clear. That might disqualify it from being "cosy" but damnit, I loved this game.

My Time at Sandrock

The sequel to My Time at Sandrock. Honestly, everything that I've said about Portia applies here as well. Sandrock is newer, so it looks better, is more polished and has better quality of life elements. You don't need to have played Portia to play Sandrock, so if you only want to play one, I recommend Sandrock, but the Sandrock storyline runs parallel to Portia's, so it's fun as a Portia-fan to see it unravel as an addition to Portia's story.

And do Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Cozy Grove and Spiritfarer count? I don't think so. The basics of these games are still so different from this genre, but hey, a lot of people who like farming sims also like these.

What are farming sims you would like to play?

Oh, multiple. There are a lot of them coming out and there have been a lot of new ones. Honestly, there is almost a farming sim fatigue, but there are great ideas on the market: prehistoric farming sims, vampiric farming sims, farming sims with witches or other magic, farming sims with dinosaurs, farming sims that take place underwater and have merfolk, farming sims in the sky, farming sims that focus more on building up the town... etc.

... Are there farming sims you didn't like?

Yea, lol. Sprout Valley, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life and Harvest Moon. Sprout Valley was too repetitive and grindy, which is saying something, since the genre is supposed to have a repetitive loop and you need to grind, but this was just... bad. SoS: AWL is a nostalgia bait and I never played the original one, so I have been stuck on it for over a year, because this game bored me to no end. Same goes for Harvest Moon, which, yea, respect your elders and all that, but man, it is indeed old and I noticed.

Cattails is a game that isn't technically a farming sim but it has similar elements AND it allows you to grow crops at one point. It was just fine. Nothing to write home about, so I also think you can skip it.

Are there German characters in any of these games?

The better question is if Germany even exists in those games.

[toadstoolgardens]

Foraging for Goldenrod (Solidago)

Goldenrod or Solidago blooms in late summer/early fall across much of North America. It's beautiful golden flowers reflect the golden sun of late summer. Goldenrod is edible and medicinal and can be used as a natural dye!!

Identifying Goldenrod

Goldenrod is a member of the Asteraceae or sunflower family and likes open sunny areas like meadows, fields, and forest openings. The stems are tall and stiff with tiny golden-yellow flowers in a dense, pyramid-shaped, pluming cluster. It's a prolific perennial and can grow 0.5-2m tall.

The leaves vary slightly depending on the species of goldenrod, but they're long, narrow, and taper to a point. The edges can be smooth or slightly toothed, or slightly hairy on the underside depending on species.

Goldenrod in my area likes to grow alongside New England Aster. They make such a beautiful combination of purple and yellow and can aid in identification. If you see one you just might see the other!

Look-Alikes

Goldenrod can sometimes be mistaken for Senecio species like ragwort (left) and groundsel (right). Some Senecio species contain TOXIC pyrrolizidine alkaloids that can cause liver damage. As always please be 100% certain of your identification before harvesting!! That said, senecio's flowers are generally much larger and much fewer than goldenrod's many tiny flowers. They also tend to bloom earlier in the season than goldenrod.

Harvesting Goldenrod

All of the above-ground parts of goldenrod are edible! Harvest by snipping the top of the stems, leaves, and flower heads with scissors (about the top 1/3rd of the plant). The earlier in the blooming season the better! The later blooms tend to be more bitter and can fluff up like dandelions if you want to dry them.

If you're worried about seasonal allergies you should be safe with goldenrod! Goldenrod is insect pollinated so it doesn't need to release pollen into the air.

Whatever you do DO NOT pull up entire goldenrod plants!!! Goldenrod is a massively important plant for hundreds of pollinators including bees, butterflies, beetles, and wasps. Harvest sustainably, no pulling up by the roots, and only snip the tops you'll use!!

You can use goldenrod fresh or dry it by hanging it upside down for about a week (spread it out for adequate airflow!) or in your kitchen oven by spreading in a single layer on baking sheets and baking 4-5 hours at 170F/76C. Store dried goldenrod in an airtight container.

Goldenrod Uses & Benefits

Goldenrod as an herbal remedy is highly anti-inflammatory, great for the kidneys (prevents and flushes kidney stones, helps relieve minor bladder infections), helpful for minor respiratory issues like seasonal allergies and colds, and helps heal minor wounds and swelling when used externally. It's also edible raw or cooked! The leaves can be cooked like spinach or used in lots of tasty fall recipes like this goldenrod cornbread?!? I need it.

Safety Note: Goldenrod has been traditionally used as medicine and is regarded as very safe. That said, goldenrod taken internally has a diuretic effect. If you have any problems with the urinary system or take a diuretic already, PLEASE ask a medical professional before using. Don't use herbal medicines to treat serious health issues or in fragile populations like babies or the elderly without consulting a doctor. I AM NOT A DOCTOR I JUST LIKE PLANTS.

To use your goldenrod medicinally you can make it into tea, tincture, or infused oil. You can also make a goldenrod salve to apply externally!

Goldenrod Tea:

Add 2tbsp of fresh flowers OR 1tbsp of dried flowers to 8oz hot water.

Cover and steep 15-20 minutes before straining.

This tea can be slightly bitter with a sort of anise/licorice flavor. It's great sweetened with a little honey!

Goldenrod Tincture:

Fill a small jar 1/3 - 3/4 full with chopped fresh goldenrod flowers OR 1/4 - 1/2 full with dried goldenrod flowers.

Fill jar with high-proof (40-60%) alcohol like vodka or brandy.

Cap, label, and store out of direct sunlight at least 4-6 weeks. Strain before using.

Your tincture should be good for a year or more. Take a few drops mixed with a spoonful of honey or water. Can be taken up to 3-5 times daily or as needed.

Goldenrod Infused Oil:

Fill a jar 1/4 - 1/2 full with dried goldenrod flowers.

Pour an oil (sunflower, sweet almond, or olive are good options) over the flowers until the jar is full.

Infuse one of 3 ways:

Slow Way - cap jar and place in a dark, cool spot like a cabinet for 4-6 weeks. Strain.

Solar Way - instead of capping the jar cover it with a piece of cheesecloth or scrap of old t-shirt. Set your jar in a sunny window for a few days up to a few weeks. The sun's heat infuses your oil faster! Strain.

Speedy Way - don't cap your jar and set it uncovered in a saucepan containing a few inches of water. Heat on low for 2-3 hours, watching it carefully!! Strain.

Goldenrod Salve: if you made infused oil you can easily make it into a salve!

Add 3.5oz (100g) of your infused oil and 0.5oz (14g) beeswax to a small jar.

Place the jar into a saucepan containing a few inches of water. Heat over medium low until the beeswax melts.

Let cool and apply to minor wounds, sores, swelling, aches & pains.

You can also make a gorgeous yellow or green natural fabric dye from goldenrod!

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

[lilietsblog]

Stardew Valley mod rec compilation

this is a regular question asked on the discord so I wanted to put together my own constant pack to link.

These are NOT all mods I use. These are the mods I’m **completely confident **in recommending together, that definitely work well, combine well and won’t create any cognitive dissonance.

(Note that I’m not listing any prerequisites. Whichever mod you’re installing, you obviously need to install its prerequisites too)

(Most of these are on Nexus, but not all. MARGO is on GitHub, for example. Search on Nexus first, then duckduckgo or google it if it’s not there)

Utility if-you’re-modding: (mods that maybe won’t improve your game per se and you don’t want to install Just Them if you’re picking and choosing, but if you’re already using other mods, you want to look at these)

Advanced Save Backup (obvious function is obvious, don’t let mod fuckups permanently ruin your save)

Generic Mod Config Menu (absolutely mandatory if you’re installing like… >1 other mod)

CJB Cheats Menu + CJB Item Spawner (the more mods you have the more likely you’ll need this to recover after glitches. There are vanilla bugs you might want this to help you with too)

Jump Over (or noclip, in case you get stuck somewhere)

Mod Update Menu (fully optional, but might be nice)

Quality of Life (mods that I’m completely confident work well together and will improve your game withough particularly changing it. You do want to meddle in config for many of these though. Increase complexity at your own pace)

Action Sitting

After Midnight Speed Buff

Easy Coal

Balanced Quarry

Better Artisan Good Icons

Better Beehouses

Better Chests

Better Ranching (turn off “prevent failed harvesting” in config, add Fix Animal Tool Animations for that functionality instead)

Bigger Backpack

Collapse on Farm Fix

Destroyable Bushes

Gift Rejection

Grass Growth

Horse Overhaul - Immersive Scarecrows

Immersive Sprinklers

Lucky Rabbit’s Foot

Mail Services Mod

MARGO - Tweex, Tools and Ponds modules

Remember Birthdays

Robin Work Hours

Expanded Big Shed

Sturdier Saplings

Time Speed

Zoom Level

Friendship QoL: (I’m putting these into a separate category because they specifically make one thing easier and might be unbalanced together - but if you want lots of custom NPCs they might be necessary as a breath of air)

Part of the Community

Passive Friendship

Friend of a Friend

Visual (This is specifically the combination I use, that I know for a fact works well and looks good together. These are mods that don’t alter any mechanics or add any content and mostly don’t impact balance, they’re purely to make the game look better)

Custom Menu Background

Better Water

Cuter Coops and Better Barns or Coop and Barn Facelift

Darker Vanilla Crops

Darker Vanilla Forage

Dynamic Night Time

Dynamic Reflections

Happy Fish Jump

Iridium Sprinkler Desaturated or Burnished Bronze Iridium Sprinkler

Less Ugly Spouse Rooms

Medieval Buildings

Simple Foliage

Skell’s Flowery Tools

Starry Night Interface (deleted from Nexus)

Vintage Interface (and this if you’re using Bigger Backpack)

Vibrant Pastoral Recolor

Way Back Pelican Town

Wind Effects

Yri’s Modular Flowers

Eemie’s Dark Wood and Gold Craftables - Scarecrow and Rarecrow Recolors - Climates of Ferngill

Swimsuit Selection

Spritemaster, and you can turn off the smoothing just for faster rendering everywhere with no visual changes

Dialogue + NPCs (Thoroughly vetted - exclusively the mods that don’t create any contradictory lore, fit fully with vanilla, and might make you feel like vanilla was always intended to be this way)

Dusty Overhaul

Community Wednesdays and Community Center Reimagined

David the Hamster

Demetrius Visits Farm Cave Redux

Diverse Stardew Valley

the ethnic wedding outfit collection (Emily Ukrainian Wedding Dress and others with the same naming scheme, entering “wedding” into search is a good way to find these)

Haley Reads Magazines (plug of my own mod)

Immersive Spouses

Jean and Jorts

Social Haley

Unlikely Friends

Immersive Sandy

Make the game more fun (This is a fairly diverse category - these are the mods that will substantially alter the game and give it a decidedly non-vanilla feel and balance, but that I’m willing to vouch for as fun, non-conflicting, non-glitchy and not making your life harder. Some of them are smaller than others)

Walk to Desert Redux

Archery + Archery starter pack

Artista

Cape Stardew

Cat gifts

Deep Woods

Farmhouse visits

Festival of the Mundane

Hot Spring Farm Cave (or another farm cave mod)

If It Fits I Sits

Improved Cindersap Forest (plug of my own mod)

Like a Duck to Water

Lost in the Mountains (or another custom farm map mod) (plug of my own mod)

MARGO - Combat, Professions and Taxes modules

Stardew Druid

Swim Mod

Wren’s Expanded Greenhouse (or another greenhouse mod)

Animals Need Water

Even More Secret Woods

NPC Adventures (and content packs for it)

Map Editor Extended

Free Love pack (This is for the people who think SV is nice in allowing the player to date multiple people, but unnecessarily restrictive in allowing them to only marry one of them. I’m putting other romance/marriage/parenthood mods in this category also) necessary: (these are the mods you need to make a multi-spouse household function smoothly, period. Need extensive configuring, usually, so pay attention when you install them)

Bed Tweaks

Custom Spouse Patio Redux (this one can glitch, but Map Editor Extended has fixed it for me fine every time)

Custom Spouse Rooms

Free Love

Wedding Tweaks optional: (these are the mods that can substantially improve your personal life if you’re into them, but Free Love functions fine without them)

Platonic Partners and Friendships

Bachelors and Bachelorettes stay friends

Fourteen Heart Events for All

Gender Neutrality Mod

Not In Here By Yourself (plug of my own mod)

Hugs and Kisses

Multiple Spouse Dialogs (+Tia’s and Liliet’s packs for it) (plug of my own mod uwu)

Planned Parenthood

Swimsuit Selection

Unique Children

Unique Children Talk - T’s Spouse Room

[midwestbramble]

The Harvest Moon

The Harvest moon is the full moon closest to the autumn equinox. All over the world, different cultures have celebrations for this full moon. It takes on this name because at this time (for the three days it is full) the moon rises soon after sunset, allowing farmers a longer period of light while harvesting their crop. Something to truly be thankful for right before the frost.

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Content:

Full Moon in Pisces

Working with the Harvest

Putting it All Together

Conclusion

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Full Moon in Pisces

Last month I talked about looking to see how the full moon lines up with your natal chart for extra information on the energies it is bringing. This Pisces full moon is trine my natal Pluto, meaning there will be some clearing of emotional air to help us get through the rest of this lunar cycle. Pisces moons always require some self-care so it will be good to have that on the agenda to help deal with any emotional upheaval.

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Working with the Harvest

For me the harvest is very literal. I garden and forage to help sustain my family. Someday I would like to expand into keeping animals. That is neither here nor there for this post however. The harvest moon is a time to really look at the garden. I do keep some fall plants going until it gets too cold, however most of the garden is done. I will chop and drop plants that have already died, leaving them to compost in place. Clean up anything that has begun to weave its way into neighbors yards (sorry neighbors!) and bring in fresh compost to renew the depleted soil. If there's enough leaves already on the ground, I will use them as mulch (and the neighbors don't mind if I do some leaf cleanup for them). The strawberries in pots are mulched heavily and brought into the garage where they can overwinter. The last of what I harvest gets preserved over the coming days.

At night I'll hold a housel for the garden spirits. One last hurrah before most of them bed down for the winter.

You don't need a garden to work with the harvest season though. There is plenty out there plant-wise to honor even in a dense city. This may be a good time for you to give honor to the tree outside your apartment building, the bush you've watched flower and then fruit on your walk, or even the dandelion that has stubbornly fought through herbicide and mowing. Look at what's around you, you may find that the Harvest moon doesn't make sense where you are, and if not, what does?

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Putting it All Together

There's so much to do for this full moon it's hard to see how I can combine these two energies together. How can I do so much work and also focus on self-care? I still have basil, sage, lavender, and rosemary growing in the garden. Harvesting the ones with calming properties and asking them to help in a tea or incense while going about my work could be restorative. There's also the fact that working in the garden always helps to my mind to set aside any problems and decompress with my hands in the soil. I can imagine what the situation around the emotional clearing will be, as my family is going through a tough time at the moment. Getting the most out of the garden is essential right now, and should help alleviate some of the worries we have going forward.

This may be a good time for me, personally, to talk to my husband about what we need to focus on. We know when the troubles will end, we just need to get to that point. I could then do some workings to help boost us in those areas. Just one last ask of the garden.

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Conclusion

This post ended up being more of a dump on what is vaguely going on in my own life. Hopefully there was something helpful in there to inspire you. I hope everyone has a wonderful harvest season. I can't wait to see what other's here post about for their own practices.

References:

What is the Harvest Moon? - Farmer's Almanac

[cedarbeing]

Unconventional Plants and Herbs in Witchcraft:

Entry No. 2

Self-Heal (Prunella Vulgaris)

General Information and History:

General info:

Self-heal is common in most temperate climates, Native to North America, Asia, Africa and Europe. 

Grows readily in damp soils: roadsides, clearings, fields, lawns, forest edges. Common at low to middle elevations.

Suitable for use as a pot herb.

harvest young plants for eating, generally before flowering (unless planning to use for medicinal purposes).

Is a member of the mint family.

History:

The common name(s) Self-heal and Heal-all come from the plants medicinal use for a wide variety of ailments.

Different indigenous groups had varying uses for the plant. One example is: The Nuxalk, who boiled the entire plant and drank as a tea to ease heart related ailments.

Medicinal Information:

Note: use at your own risk. If pregnant/nursing, taking medications, or have medical conditions, contact a physician prior to use. Please be aware that medicinal herbs are meant to be used in moderation. This is NOT a guide to usage.

Possible Properties: Astringent, diuretic, antioxidant, anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory, mild antiseptic, antiviral.

Traditional methods of use: Tea, poultice.

Used to treat: Sore throat, fevers, superficial wounds, gastrointestinal issues, colds, and much more!

Usage in Witchcraft:

Now, as for the usage in witchcraft there obviously isn’t much widespread information, in cases such as this I like to follow the lead from other information on the plant (name, medicinal properties, factors of growth, history, personal experience, etc). as well as combine with other practices, such as colour magic. This is why other information on the plant is important to know, even if it’s not directly related to witchcraft.

Please note: that this is a personal correspondence. As such, you may see it differently or have different ideas. That’s okay too! Your practice is yours alone, feel free to share your ideas :)

Correspondences: Healing, Protection, Spiritual growth.

I feel that prunella vulgaris would be a great addition to baneful work as a sort of “all over, encompassing” attack, specifically if it was rotted/molded first.

Other very important information

Some information is derived or cross referenced from: PLANTS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST COAST Washington, Oregon, British Columbia & Alaska. (Paul B. Alaback)

This is a SUPERB field guide if you live in the area(s) mentioned and it carries a wealth of information. I HIGHLY recommend it!

In regards to foraging:

Be safe, sustainable, and ethical when foraging.  (Click the link)

ALWAYS positively identify before use. If you’re not 100% sure, don’t use it!

Be prepared for a possible negative reaction or allergy. When trying new things, try a small amount first.

Know the local area/the dangers (terrain, wild animals, incoming weather, etc) be prepared!

DO NOT take more than you need/can use. (This does not apply to invasive species)

Harvest from different locations if possible.

Do as little damage to the plant and grounds.

Use a mesh bag to collect in the case of mushrooms.

Make an effort to spread seeds from plants when harvesting if possible. (This does not apply to invasive species)

This post is not a comprehensive guide to Self-Heal and it’s usage, it is a general overview of information that I have compiled, and not necessarily beginner friendly. Please treat it as such. Happy spell crafting! :)

[meowcats734]

(prompt response) A tiny dragon and a crow fight over a gold coin. They’re both equally strong, and both can fly. The crow is smart enough to dodge the fire, and the dragon is trying not to melt the coin. They tussle on the street.

We were set for shelter thanks to the Redlands' forgiving climate, and Mairel's ghost combined with my foraging skills meant we were good for food and water. I wasn't exactly sure what the limitations of the ghost were, but Sansen assured me that the soulspace entity from the Plane of Nostalgia was limited in what it could do—mostly, bringing memories from its past to life, spending them one by one.

I felt a little sad taking advantage of the ghost of Sansen's old crush like that, but it was clear from experimentation that the clump of soul fragments that made up Mairel's ghost wasn't sentient, and was perfectly happy to help us in any way it could. If we could have a slightly higher chance of not dying before we found Jiaola and got the hell away from this nightmare war, I'd gladly sacrifice a hundred ghosts and memories to save one living person. 

"So how come it's not sentient, but people like Odin and I am?" Meloai asked. I had no idea how her clockwork body repaired itself, but she seemed to have recovered from her flight through the Plane of Elemental Cold, because she could walk longer than any of us—and for the entire day, too. She offered to shapeshift into a horse and give us all a ride, but... something about that just felt sleazy, and it was pretty clear that she had no idea how to control a horse's body anyway, so we all walked for now until we could think up a faster method of transport.

"I think it has something to do with the number of memories that happened to agglutinate at that point in soulspace," Sansen said. "Or maybe the diversity of memories? I could tell that Mairel's ghost was... well, Mairel's. There weren't any elements from other people's minds, as far as I can tell."

"Hey, yeah. And that creepy little mimic I, er, threw into the void way back when—the only soul fragment that came out of that was my mother's. And it sure as hell wasn't sentient."

"That reminds me—what were you doing in the Plane of Elemental Falsehood in the first place?" Lucet asked, tilting her head towards me.

"Odin was fucking with me," I said. It was the safe response. Liquid metal flushed through my soul, but I ignored it. "So, wait, Meloai, when we're feeding you the soul fragments from the animals we hunt, is that making you... smarter, or something?"

Meloai giggled awkwardly. "Sort of? But not in the way you think! I have to, uh, consume a certain amount of memories per day. In theory, I could survive indefinitely by consuming my memories as quickly as I produced them—that's how most soulspace entities just sort of keep existing—but then I wouldn't get to form new memories with you guys, having a good time and learning about the world. So... I consume other things' memories, instead." She paused, frowning. "It's not very efficient, though. I need to eat the right... kind... of memories. Ones charged with insecurity."

"Huh." Lucet turned to Sansen. "Hey, speaking of which, do you have any idea where memories that get eaten by soulspace entities... go? Our old teacher sort of stonewalled us on the topic."

Sansen shrugged. "Too theoretical for my tastes. Wouldn't they just get destroyed?"

"Soul fragments can't get destroyed, only transformed," Meloai said. 

"According to the Academy," I added.

"Okay, yeah, but if there's one place where we'd expect a little less propaganda, it'd be the realm of science, no? It's an empirically observed fact, and we ran some experiments to confirm it."

"Yes, true, cool—counterpoint: the Academy harvested our fucking emotions to power their war machine. I'm not trusting anything that came out of that 'education' that I can't verify with my own two hands."

"Hey, uh, guys?" Lucet said. "I hate to interrupt, but... are you three seeing this?"

Sansen muttered something about poor old eyes, but Meloai and I stopped in our banter, turning to face the end of the dirt road we'd been following for the past week.

The village was utterly and clearly ruined, even from this distance. The sky was scribbled over with slashes of darkness, and there wasn't a building taller than an outhouse left standing. 

"What is it?" Sansen asked, squinting at the horizon.

Nobody wanted to say "probably a massacre," but I was a Redlander. I was used to it. "Probably a massacre," I said, and my voice was surprisingly calm. It was only the third village I'd seen this way, but it already felt... familiar. Like slipping into an old torture rack, made comfortable from years of use. "It's a standard Redlands tactic. There's some valuable piece of land that everyone wants—a particularly fertile field, a really good aquifer, whatever—but nobody's able to hold it for long. So someone who knows they can't have it decides nobody else can, either, and tears open rifts until the place is uninhabitable. Then they move on to go fight over some other piece of land and forget about it until a year or two have passed and the rifts have mostly closed over. And the next batch of villagers settle in, name the place after the rifts that killed the last group of poor bastards to live there, and hope they have a decade or so before the cycle repeats itself all over again."

"Fuck," Lucet murmured. "I'm sorry, Cienne."

I shook my head. "It's... it's just the way things are. Come on. These rifts don't look as bad as they could be—let's check for survivors."

"What kind of rifts are we walking into?" Sansen absently asked.

"Darkness," I said. "If we encounter a shadow, we should probably just run. Demons of Fear can be fucking terrifying, and I don't... there's nothing here to be happy about. I can't use joy right now."

"Let me see," Sansen said, and two lenses of possibility swirled into existence around his eyes. He shook his head. "Very unlikely for there to be demons in the near future. Best bet is that the forces that clashed here—and let's be real, this was the Silent Peaks against the Order of Valhalla—already dealt with them, one way or another."

"Then let's get going."

Grimly, the four of us marched towards the ruined village, three of us keeping a lookout in space, one of us keeping a lookout in time. Nobody detected any threats, but I was still jumpy for the entire journey.

Meloai and Lucet seemed like they had a pretty good coverage of realspace, so I closed my eyes and looked into soulspace. The cluster of memories that made up Meloai was beginning to grow into visibility, although it was still small in comparison to the souls of the three humans in the party. Aside from us, though, there weren't many lifeforms in the village, and those that were seemed to mostly be dumb animals. I could tell from the emotions—mostly monotone, tiny drops of joy or crystals of sorrow...

...except, wait, I'd nearly overlooked it, since its soul was so small, but there was a more complex soul. It had the simple emotions like sorrow and fear, yes, but there were glass shards of shame and sticky black thorns of self-hatred, and those were emotions I uniquely associated with what it meant to be human.

"Hold on," I said, eyes still closed. "I think I found something. A sapient soul, this way." I pointed towards where the soul would have corresponded to in realspace. Nobody questioned me—with my nine attunements, I had by far the broadest range of emotions I could see with my soulsight, and even though it didn't make me a master witch by any means, it gave me an edge in situations like this.

Even as the four of us inched closer to the broken rubble that I'd sensed the soul in, in my soulsight I felt the soul breaking apart. Fuck, the only person who could tell us what had happened here was already dying. "Quickly," I said, kneeling down to excavate the rubble.

Meloai pushed me aside without even thinking and hefted, clockwork tick-tick-ticking as strength a dozen times more than I could possibly output lifted a massive wooden beam off the ground.

At what she saw beneath, Meloai froze—not in the living, breathing way a human might, but in the perfect form of a statue that reminded me of her home in endless halls of oil and clockwork.

The girl who'd been crushed beneath the falling beam was undeniably dead. Nobody could survive watering the grass like that.

But the soul I had sensed stirred, and I knelt down, lifting up the girl's hand to reveal... a crow. Jet-black, beautiful, bloodied, and broken. But still alive, for now.

"Can you—" Lucet began.

"I never attuned forgiveness," I said, and it was disgusting how level my voice was. "It's not an emotion for me."

"Fuck," Lucet whispered. "And there aren't any other sapient souls in the village?"

"Not that I can sense," I said. Calm, sorrow, passion, insecurity, joy, fear, spite, guilt, self-hatred—even with the nine fields of magic I could now touch, I couldn't even save a fucking crow.

Well. At the very least, my oldest attunement was in perfect working order.

The crow shifted in my hands, letting out a faint wheeze. For a moment, I could have sworn it was trying to tell me something.

And then, in a flash of insight, I realized that it still could.

"You two. Choose an emotion," I said, "and I'll open up a rift. Meloai, you just do what you do."

Lucet blinked, uncomprehending, but Meloai got it immediately. "What?" Lucet asked.

"We've got exactly one witness to what happened here," I explained, "and their memories are about to be scattered throughout thoughtspace. Maybe if we're lucky, we can catch them as they go."

"Worth a shot," Sansen said. "I'll take care of my own rift, thank you."

"I'm... comfortable with the Plane of Sorrow," Lucet said. "You just focus on yourself."

I nodded, oil welling up from my soul as I let my passion swell. The dying crow almost seemed to nod at me as three witches and one demon prepared to dive into the crow's memories.

Then the crow's soul shattered, and I slashed my way between realities to try and catch a shard before it was lost forever.

And I was no longer Cienne, the helpless little boy who was still hopelessly in over his head.

I was the crow. I liked shiny things and eating clams. I disliked fire and pointy knives. I was the crow. I was the crow—

###

Astrenn needed the Shiny. Even though my feathers were singed, even when the Angry Thing swiped at me with its claws, Astrenn needed the Shiny. And so I would get the Shiny. It didn't matter how long it took, it didn't matter how distracting the village was (ooh! Is that tinsel? I love tinsel. No. No, focus. Astrenn needed the Shiny.) The Angry Thing was dumb, and even though it was strong and magical, I was clever-clever, fast-fast. I would win eventually.

The first thing to do was to get to a friendly nest. Right now, we were near the nest of the Large Baker—who used the Angry Things for cook-fires and shooed away me from the Delicious Breads. If the Large Baker came out on the street to investigate, Astrenn would never get the Shiny. So I flew to a nearby bin of Smelly Rotten Mush and tipped it over with a wingflap.

I knew this much about the Angry Things: they had a powerful sense of smell. And so as soon as the Smelly Rotten Mush poured out onto the street (to the dismay of the Large Baker), the Angry Thing awkwardly flapped away, the Shiny in its claws. I grabbed a small pebble (and a tinsel, for later), and shot into the sky, my feather-silent wings swift where the clunky, impossible weight of the Angry Thing farted along on inelegant wind magic.

"Caw," I said, and released the stone.

The Angry Thing must have been stupid, because it didn't even try to dodge the stone that thunked on its head. Unfortunately, the Angry Thing was a big ball of scales (shiny? No, not Shiny. Focus. Astrenn needed the Shiny) and probably wasn't even hurt by the rock. Which was no fair. Even the hard-hard-hard clams from the market got split open by a high-heavy-dropped rock. But at the very least, the Angry Thing dropped the Shiny, letting it twinkle to the ground like a wish upon a star.

Astrenn would get the Shiny. Astrenn had to get the Shiny.

I dove down, folding my wings tight and close to my body like how I'd seen the swooping-fast-kill-above birds do, and snatched the Shiny out of the air. The Angry Thing dove after me, but it had fallen into my trap.

For these fields of amber grain were the nests of the Old Farmer, and they appreciated me for my ability to hunt-find-eat mice more than the Angry Things that set their barns and crops on fire.

The Angry Thing dove after me, heat lighting up in its maw as I settled on the ground, and I knew the Angry Thing thought it had victory in its stupid little claws.

But then, like a thunderbolt, a broom head slapped the Angry Thing out of the sky as the Old Farmer scolded it.

"Back, you silly little dragon! I won't have you burning the barn down today!" The Old Farmer had skin like wrinkle-walnuts, and he was unamused by the Angry Thing's presence in his nest. Another two broom slaps swept the defeated Angry Thing away, and the Old Farmer gave me a piercing look.

"Say... you're my daughter's friend, aren't you?" The Old Farmer chuckled to himself. "You clever little thing. Well, go on. She's waiting for you where we buried... oh, why am I bothering? You can't understand me; you're just a crow. Astrenn! Your crow's here to visit!"

I flapped towards the barn, where Astrenn was waiting. The little girl who'd once taken me in, feeding me, and keeping me warm when the nights grew cold. Astrenn had saved my life when she was a hatchling, and I would do anything for Astrenn in return.

Astrenn needed the Shiny. And finally, I had delivered.

Astrenn looked up from the small lump of freshly-turned earth, the small, carved rock that stood where a mother should have been. Her cheeks glistened with sparkling droplets of water, but for once, I only wanted to wipe these shinies away.

"There you are, you silly lump of feathers." Astrenn sniffled and held out her arm; I hopped on and nuzzled her cheek. "What've you got for me today?"

I said, "Caw," and relinquished my treasures. A single gold coin for Astrenn, and a bit of tinsel for me.

Astrenn giggled. "You crazy crow—where'd you get this? Mother would have fed you plump for days. Come on—we can still send her off, if we hurry."

Astrenn pocketed the Shiny and hurried into the market, exchanging the Shiny for some smaller sparkles and a bouquet of fresh flowers.

Then Astrenn and I returned to Astrenn's mother's grave, placing the flowers in the center. After a moment of thought, I delicately balanced my tinsel on top, and Astrenn closed her eyes that shone like stars.

"She would have loved you, you pretty little girl."

"Caw," I said, perhaps agreeing, perhaps simply being there for my friend.

And Astrenn and I knelt there in mourning, until the sun bled red and the greatest shinies of all twinkled in the night sky above.

###

Time flickered, stepped, and jumped, and I was back in my body. Back in realspace. Back in the ruined, darksky village.

Back by the corpse of a girl named Astrenn who loved to feed crows.

"It was them," Lucet whispered by my side. "The Order and the Peaks. They fought here."

"Yeah." The words came out of my mouth. "I get that."

My friends gave me odd looks, but I couldn't hear what they said next over the sudden rush of my heartbeat in my ears. Worried, Lucet stood to put a hand on my shoulder, but as if I was in a dream, I walked forwards and my friends fell away.

"You guys keep looking," I managed to say. "I'll be right back."

"Cienne, where are you—" Lucet started to say, before someone cut her off. Probably Sansen. I loved Meloai, but... it would be Sansen who stopped her. 

I stepped into the middle of a blackened, ruined field. Now that I knew what to look for, it was obvious that this was where the Peaks had called down one of their devastating strikes of pure light. The crops here had been burnt to ash, but that was okay. The bodies, the blood, the ruins—they would just make more fertile soil, more desirable targets for the next time war came to this horrible, beautiful place that I called home.

This coming spring harvest we'll do it again

From the first bitter dawn to the pitiful end.

My heart thumped to the mournful tune of the Redlands Anthem, and I clenched my fists and my jaw and my soul and my everything, everything was dense and hot and furious—

So lift up a glass for the heroes who fell

And the bastards that got them, we'll see them in—

I let loose a wordless, bloody, guttural shriek, and a torrent of fury and sorrow and self-hatred screamed out with it, heat that warped the air as much as my tears, frost that numbed my flesh as deep as my soul, and I was falling, shrinking, fading into nothingness as the storm of ice and fire that was my love and loss reached so high it nearly split the sky in two.

When it was over, I was curled up in a patch of melting frost, surrounded by ruined, incinerated earth. My soul was empty. I was empty. I was so, so weak, and if a gust of wind so much as touched me, I would blow away into dust.

From behind me, I heard the frost crunch as someone stepped up to me, waited, then laid down by my side. Reaching out to loop one arm around my chest, holding me tight and close. 

I closed my eyes and let Lucet hold me, the anthem of the Redlands echoing in my ears as my soul went quiet and still, falling asleep in a cradle of frost and flame.

A.N.

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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