#good lord aly. land the plane

[alygator77]

Hi!! I just discovered your blog recently but i wanted to say i love your writing!! I especially love the AU drabbles you put out about characters bc i get to know SO much about them in the AU even if it’s just from snippets!! Keep doing what you’re doing!! :)

hi lovely!!

omggg tysm you are so sweet 😭 ty for reading my work and your kind words 💕 glad you've enjoyed the drabbles, and that is honestly super reassuring to hear—sometimes i'm like "is this too much?" 🤨 and other times i'm like "is this not enough...?" 😅 appreciate ya darlin'

-aly 🫶🏻

[smallerinfinities]

mad woman (nessian)

a/n: In which Nesta copes and Feyre interjects

hello! again, new here ☺️ this kind of just...happened? the idea came upon me late talking with @harryandmolly​ idk anyways hope you enjoy! if you don’t like modern AUs then this probably isn’t for you, but if you’re into that sort of thing and all the warnings that go with it then I would love to hear what you think!

tw: angst, coping with death, sex work, language

original art by the incomparable charlie bowater

Things were great until they weren’t. 

Nesta Archeron had been engaged. She had a father who loved her and a sister she adored. Until the plane crash. Until a faulty navigational system sent her fiancé, her father, and her sister into the side of a mountain on the way to her destination wedding.

She had gone to Hybern early, to get settled and calm her nerves, to plan around the security that Feyre had hired so that Rhys could attend the wedding. Nesta had told her not to bother, Rhys could stay in Velaris for all she cared. She’d gone and set it all up anyway. But it had all exploded when Nesta got the call that her world had ended and all she had left was a sister she resented and a brother-in-law with too high a profile. She was a tragic headline. A fucking media circus. 

High Lord Rhysand’s sister-in-law left at the altar in tragic plane crash. 

The press camped outside her Velaris studio for weeks. They’d only left when she had thrown a maelstrom of empty glass bottles out of her windows at them. Empty because she’d come back to Velaris and crawled inside a whiskey bottle and stayed there. She might be more whiskey than person now. The days were passing at a rate she couldn’t gauge anymore. Had it been hours or days or months since she’d picked up the phone in the middle of placing name cards on tables in the reception hall? She didn’t particularly care. Everyone who mattered was dead and being drunk was better than counting the minutes since her future had evaporated. 

A knock sounded at the door. 

Nesta removed the eye mask she was wearing and squinted at her phone. 7:15 AM. She’d been up all night again, had just laid down to try and sleep. Who the fuck was at her door at this hour?

She knew but she opened the door anyway. 

Feyre Archeron, High Lady of the Night Court, was in the hallway looking worried. Well, Nesta assumed she was looking worried. She could only see Feyre’s furrowed eyebrows between the oversized sunglasses and the wide-brimmed sun hat. She had wrapped her red-gold hair, twin to Nesta’s own color, into a low chignon to hide it away from prying eyes. A disguise. Nesta snorted. Feyre Archeron could be noticed in this city by a blind man a hundred yards down a busy avenue. It was the way she carried herself, the easy confidence. No one could mistake her for anyone but their High Lady. 

“What do you want?” Nesta crossed her arms over her chest, blocking the view into her apartment.

“Well, to start, a little respect for the person who has been footing your liquor bill for the last eight months.” Her red lips were turned down at the corners, tight. She angled her head past Nesta’s shoulder and crinkled her nose, “God, I don’t even need to see in there to know what it must look like. I can smell it from here. And I can see you.” 

Nesta kept her face a mask of annoyance but considered how she must look. Compared to Feyre’s heavy cream sweater and perfectly tailored tan pants, anyone would look slovenly but Nesta knew she'd let herself go.

A while ago, she’d taken to wearing Tomas’ shirts to bed. Then eventually she wasn’t getting out of bed so it was all the time, changing only when she found the strength to shower. Today’s shirt—more like this week’s shirt if she was being honest with herself—was an old striped dress shirt, one Tomas had maybe worn twice with a suit. It now had several stains from whiskey and whatever takeout she had ordered last night. She couldn’t quite remember. Chinese? Greek? 

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Her marriage was supposed to be one of convenience. They had been friends, had both gotten older and then tossed in the towel on dating. Tomas needed a cover for a lifestyle his parents forbade and Nesta...well Nesta wanted to be comfortable. Nesta wanted her sister to stop meddling and leave her alone. At least, she thought she did. 

But, no one had known. No one except Elain.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. 

Her hair hadn’t been washed in days, it was matted in some places, stuck to her face in others. She knew her eyes were hollow, sunken in and lacking that fire people saw when they looked at her. She’d been avoiding her own reflection for weeks, had even covered the mirror by the door. Months ago, apparently. Eight months. 

Had it really been that long? Had she really been moving from bottle to bottle, takeout container to takeout container, for eight whole months? She’d barely left the apartment, had lost her job, happy to exploit Feyre’s seemingly unending pity. Pity she guessed had run out. 

Today. 

She didn’t care about that either.

“Come all this way to chide me, dear sister?” Nesta curled her lips as she moved aside to let Feyre through. Might as well let her see. 

“Thank you.” Her sister breezed into the little sitting area and stopped dead.

Her eyes scanned the room, marking the recycling bin first, overflowing with empty glass bottles. All different labels. Whatever Nesta could find quickest. Then the kitchen counters, filled with boxes of crackers and empty ramen noodle packages, cans of tuna and an open jar of peanut butter, anything that could be quickly consumed with minimal effort. She didn’t want to die, but she hadn’t exactly been concerned with living either. 

At last her eyes darted to the corner, over by the window, where a white dress hung from a hunting knife that had been punched through the wall. Straight through the center of the sweetheart neckline. Nesta had lost count of the weeks it had been there. A reminder. A memorial. Little circular burns littered the fishtail skirt, remnants of late nights with too much booze and an ashtray full of half-smoked blunts still on the windowsill. 

“Oh, Nesta.” Feyre’s hand came up to cup her mouth. Nesta raised her chin, refusing to feel reprimanded. “I’m sending Alis this afternoon.” 

“I can look after myself,” Nesta hissed through her teeth. 

��Clearly,” Feyre threw her arms wide and turned in a circle, “you cannot. You know I came here hoping you were getting better. I gave you space, knew you blamed me for what happened. At least partially. But it’s time, Nesta. I lost them too. But I don’t have the luxury of drinking and smoking my way into oblivion on my sister’s dime.” 

“Is this just about the money?” Nesta asked incredulously, “I’ll fucking pay you back if that’s what you’re worried about.” 

“No, no,” Feyre brushed a lock of hair out of her face, frustrated, “it’s not the money. I don’t care about the money. Neither does Rhys. We just want you to come back to the land of the living.” 

“Ah, yes. The royal We.” Nesta sat abruptly on her sunken couch and leaned forward, not caring that she was just wearing a pair of underwear beneath the oversized shirt, “how is dearest Rhys? High Lording as well as ever I presume. Now with better reasons than ever to hate me.” 

“He doesn’t hate you,” she said too quickly, wringing her fingers for a moment before she whispered, “we...we missed you at the funerals.” 

Nesta’s blood ran cold. Her eyes swam with tears that wouldn’t fall.

“I know why you didn’t show,” Feyre couldn’t look at her, “I almost understand it...but we still missed you. Father was interred with full honors of the Night Court. I’m having a garden planted for Elain up at the estate. You should come see it when you’re ready.” 

Nesta really needed a drink. Feyre needed to leave. She couldn’t do this. Not now. Not today. Not ever. 

“Get out.” 

“Nesta—”

“Get out.” Nesta’s voice was low, lethal. 

“Fine,” the High Lady voice was back in full force, “I only really came to give you this.” She pulled out what looked like a business card from her freshly pressed pant pocket, “this might seem...forward. But, I think it might help you. Rhys and I use the service sometimes when we’re looking for something different. I know you won’t go see someone. This might be a different kind of therapy. Tell her I sent you, she’ll know what to do.”

“Fine, fine,” Nesta took the card from her, hoping it would get her to leave faster, “get out.” 

“Nesta,” Feyre stopped and took a breath, her hand wrapped around the doorknob, “please do be discrete.” 

Nesta furrowed her brow, but nodded. She had been, for the most part. Except on nights she was too blitzed to remember her own name, let alone that her sister was High Lady of this region. 

“I’m still sending Alis,” Feyre wrinkled her nose again as she opened the door and strolled out. And that was that. No goodbye. They hadn’t ever been good at those. 

Nesta blinked at the door, the apartment suddenly feeling small and cramped. She turned over the card in her hand. It had only a name and a number. AMREN. 202-555-0187. She flicked it onto the table. Whatever, she thought as she sauntered over to the kitchen and took a swig from the nearest whiskey bottle. 

↞↠

“Ms. Archeron.”

“Yes?” The tone of the man’s voice made her drop the place card she had been holding. 

“There’s been an accident. A plane crash,” he hesitated. Her eyes stopped seeing. Her body shivered with a bone-rattling chill despite the summer sun streaming into the room through the open windows. They couldn’t be—

“Say it.” Her voice was a breath on the wind. 

“There were no survivors.”

She didn’t hear the rest. Someone was screaming. A crash, glass breaking, warmth sliding down her leg. A sharp, metallic smell in the air. She couldn’t hear them calling her name, couldn’t feel their fingers gripping her skin, feel the pressure of the towel collecting the blood from the gash in her leg. 

A plane crash, he’d said. No survivors. 

Tomas was dead. 

Her father was dead.

Elain…she had just planted flowers for spring. 

A fresh scream ripped from her throat.

↞↠

She woke up with it echoing in her ears, heart pounding. Wrenching the fresh sheets off her clammy skin, she felt for the scar on her thigh, catapulting her back into the present. Nesta hadn’t let them stitch it for days, had wanted to remember. It had almost festered. Feyre had held her down while they numbed and sutured. Most of those days were lost now, either to shock or sleep, she didn’t know. It hadn’t taken long for the drinking to start. 

Her head was pounding. Alis had stormed the apartment hours earlier, tut-tutting about the stale stench, throwing open every window. Nesta actually appreciated the fresh air. She didn’t appreciate the old woman’s silent appraisal of her ruined wedding dress. 

“Don’t touch it,” Nesta had snapped. Alis had tut-tutted some more, cleaning as she went, but she left the dress alone. 

Now, with a clean apartment and nothing to keep her company but her own self-pity, she laid spread-eagle in her bed that felt too big in clothes that felt too clean. Nothing matched her insides anymore. The small, decrepit thing inside of her that shrivelled that day and rejected everything still living. Even herself. She had never been a particularly warm person, but Elain, sweet and beautiful Elain, had made her care about something outside of herself.

She got up to find something to dull her head. A bottle of ibuprofen sat on the coffee table, next to a decanter of scotch. She washed the pills down with the brown liquor and sat on the edge of the sofa, her head in her hands.

The silence pressed her on her eardrums. An oppressive lack of sound, only the barest of sounds audible on the street. Too quiet. For the first time in months it was too quiet. Her head shot up and focused, eyes darting to the card neatly placed in the corner of the table. 

Amren. 

What had Feyre meant, “a different kind of therapy”? Hell would have to freeze over before Nesta crawled onto a couch to talk about her feelings, Feyre had admitted as much. So what was this? 

She picked up the card and flipped it over. Simple, white, just the number in embossed black. The curiosity was going to kill her if she didn’t just call the number. She reached for her phone, hauled out from between the couch cushions by Alis earlier. It had been dead for weeks. She’d given up on ignoring the condolences calls and just let the battery drain. Probably why Feyre had shown up yesterday unannounced. She swiped past all of the missed call and voicemail notifications and pulled up the keypad. 

It only rang once. 

“Yes?” A clipped, cold voice answered the phone. 

“Uhh, is this Amren?” 

“Speaking,” her voice didn’t soften, “can I help you?” 

“My sister gave me your card,” Nesta didn’t like this woman. She wracked her brain to think of how this person could help her, especially when she didn’t particularly want anyone’s help. 

“And who, my dear,” Nesta could hear the snide smile in Amren’s voice, “is your sister?”

“Feyre,” Nesta huffed, “Feyre Archeron.” 

“Oh, Feyre darling! Why didn’t you say so?” Amren warmed immediately. Well, at least to a level above stone cold. “Yes, Feyre told me about you.”

“You must have read—”

“I don't read the news, dear girl,” Amren said, flippant. “I have someone perfect for you. I will send him. Already have your address.” 

God, she really needed to have a conversation with Feyre about boundaries. Who is she sending?

“Who are you sending?” Nesta had not been sober long enough for this. Her brain wasn’t firing quick enough to deal with whoever this person was sending to her apartment. 

“His name is Cassian. He’ll be at your apartment in two hours.” 

Two hours?!

“I can’t have anyone in my apartment in two hours! What is this??” 

“We call it therapy,” just like Feyre had, “you don’t need to do anything to prepare.” 

“But I don’t even—” The line went dead. 

Nesta stared at her phone. How could I prepare if I don’t know what to prepare for?

↞↠

Two hours later, Nesta was pacing. Nervous. She was rarely nervous but she was also rarely unprepared. This felt like a bad omen, like suspense in a horror film. Like this Cassian might jump out of the shadows at any moment from some secret portal. 

She had washed her hair but no makeup. She had put on leggings but no real pants. There were concessions she was willing to make and others she wasn’t. It didn’t matter that they were only concessions to her own pride. Feyre got one opportunity to meddle in Nesta’s life, one opportunity to try and control how she coped with losing everything. Nesta would endure it in her own home, in her bare feet, or she wouldn’t endure it at all. 

An assertive knock at the door made her jump. 

Her heart thundered. She hadn’t talked to a man in months, let alone been in a small space with one. Now there was one at her door. She padded across her expensive rug, smoothing her hair as she went. Her hand gripped the doorknob, giving herself a second to stop shaking. Breathe in, breathe out. She jerked the door open only to be left utterly speechless. 

The most beautiful man she’d ever seen was leaning on the door frame, forearms crossed over his massive chest. 

“Nesta?” one corner of his full mouth curved upward. He inclined his head behind her left shoulder after she nodded. “Gonna let me in?” 

“Why should I?” She challenged, angling her chin up at him. 

“Because,” his shoulder length black hair slid into his face as his towering frame looked down at her. He came closer and held her chin between his rough fingers, “you’re at least a little curious about what I’m doing here.” 

Nesta ripped her face from his hands and took a step away from him. His hazel eyes stripped her bare. How does he do that? He appraised her frankly, taking in her sloppily thrown together appearance. The baby hairs that clung to the side of her face, unable to stay in her top knot. Her soft curves that the oversized t-shirt she wore only hinted at. All the way down to her toes, the cracked polish left over from her wedding manicure, just a couple of splotches of color left. 

His gaze sent a warmth through her. She tried to will it away, send it back to the hell she belonged in. Shaking her head, she stuck him with a glare. 

“Fine,” she stepped aside, “come in and tell me what you’re doing here so I can tell you to get out.” 

He walked in smoothly, his gray slacks gripping his toned thighs with each stride. Too casual, Nesta thought, for a therapist, especially with his white shirt open at the collar and rolled to his elbows. Not that she actually believed whatever this was even approached therapy.

He stopped in the center of Nesta’s living room and turned, giving the place as detailed a once-over as he had given her. His eyes only paused briefly on the wedding dress still hanging in the corner, but he faced her again as if nothing were out of the ordinary. 

“So,” he took up so much space as he spoke, too big, too much life for this apartment that had only contained her hollow soul for so long, “everyone up to this point has referred to this appointment as therapy, correct?” 

“Yes,” Nesta replied, curt. “But you’re no therapist, are you, Cassian?”

He snorted, a challenge to her fire temper. She didn’t like to be mocked and somehow he knew that. “No, I’m no therapist.” 

“I’m what is referred to in the circles you run in as an escort, a friend, of sorts.” He looked her dead in the eye. No shame, no fear. Just a professional. “We call it therapy, first and foremost for discretion, but also because I’m here to make you feel better. Feel alive again. In whatever form that might take.”

Nesta stiffened. Her mouth dropped open. No. “My sister sent me a hooker? You’re telling me that, my sister, the High Lady of the Night Court, sent me a hooker?!” 

She could barely keep up with the 100 mile an hour thoughts racing through her head. It wasn’t long before the pacing started again. Feyre said she uses the service sometimes...with Rhys?! She maybe could have guessed that her sister and her ass of a husband were freaky but prostitutes?! Couldn’t they just ask someone? 

Nesta, please do be discrete, she’d said as she walked out the door. She guessed paying for silence was easier than risking a secret. Money is always the best form of currency. 

Well, I guess I fucking know why. And she set this up for me?! What in hell’s fire did she think she was doing?

Cassian just stood there while her brain worked, while it exploded with all of this new information. So still, a statue compared to her frantic pacing. He must deal with this a lot. But wait, don’t people usually know what they’re asking for?! 

“You’ve never–“ she couldn’t finish the question out loud. Sharing was something foreign to Nesta even when she wasn’t talking about sexual partners. 

“No,” he shook his head, “Amren wouldn’t have sent me here if I had. She just told me the context of the visit.”

“So, you’re here,” Nesta stopped in front of him, “to have sex with me?” The words came out a whisper. They sounded so foreign, so ridiculous. 

“I’m here to help you.” He took a step toward her. The walls came down fast.

“And why do you think you can help me?” The words cut through the space like a knife. Accusatory, incredulous, they almost stung passing over her vocal cords. 

“Because, dear Nesta,” he took another step toward her, and another, “I’m very good at helping people.” 

The warmth in her blood returned and warred with the acid coursing through her veins, the hate. It came raging back from this morning, from the past months, from ten minutes ago when this cocky prick knocked on her door. He was staring again, close enough to have to look down at her, just an inch or two from touching. 

“I don’t need help from a high-dollar whore,” she spat. The only sign that she’d hit her mark was a faint twitch in his eyebrow. 

“I’ve been called worse, sweetheart,” he drawled. “But let’s get one thing straight. I think you need help more than you’d ever admit. I don’t think you’ve taken a breath since then. I read the papers. A beloved dead sister. Absent from the funerals. You blame yourself for not being there, for not dying with them. The guilt warms your bed at night while you lie awake, as much a part of you as the alcohol that twinges your breath. It’s become so familiar you don’t remember what it’s like without it. Who would Nesta Archeron be without that dark stain on her conscience following her like a storm cloud? Will all those liquor bottles I saw outside answer that question for you? Will that tattered wedding dress?”

“How dare–“ she felt the door press against her back, unconsciously moving with him while he lashed at her burning soul, fire for fire. 

“Oh, I dare,” he continued, planting his hands on the door behind her, trapping her with his eyes. “Because take it from someone who knows, when you decide to wake up and live with what you have left instead of existing with everything you’ve lost, there may not be anything left to live with. And trust me, guilt makes a very lonely bedfellow.”

Nesta had barely blinked this whole time, refusing to let him have that victory. Even if everything he’d said had hit home. Even if everything he’d said had flayed her open and raked her insides across the coals. She still burned with that unyielding rage. 

“Is that what you say to all the girls that pay for your time?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. She was close enough to smell him, the warm spice of clove and sandalwood with a distinctly male musk. It was intoxicating. It was infuriating. 

“Some. Some of the men, too. I’m an equal opportunity tough lover.” 

She swallowed hard. He was close enough that if she moved an inch his hair might brush her cheek. “Is that what this is? Tough love? For someone you just met?”

“It’s the truth,” his breath tickled her face, the tension crackling like static electricity around them, “isn’t it?”

He sounded tentative for the first time, like maybe he’d overstepped. Is it really so obvious?

“Did Feyre pay you to say those things?” Or were they just written so plainly on her face?

“Nooo,” he said, lower than before, gentler, raising one of his hands like he might stroke her cheek. She cursed herself silently for hoping. He came closer then, his lips a hair’s breadth away from her ear, “Feyre paid me to fuck you senseless.” 

Goddamn him. Fire shot into her veins. Not the simmering fury of her anger but something deeper, hotter, pooling in her core. Her breath caught in a little gasp and he smiled. A wide, full grin with teeth that made him look more predator than man.

Her body was a traitor, but it made no difference. She was already burning in hell.

Cassian held still, letting her make the next move. Part of her wanted to make him stand there forever, punish him for what he said, what he knew about her, daring to say what no one else would with just one look. A different part of her wanted to rip him apart. 

“Come on, Nesta,” a prince of cats toying with his prey, “show me that fi–“

Her lips crashed against his. God, he was big. She reached around him, fingers tensed to claw at his back, and savored the muscles and sinews that made up the terrain. He pressed her into the door. His hands cupped her face, so gentle for a kiss that was anything but. Flames licked her skin everywhere he touched, at every point their bodies connected through clothing.

He leaned and gripped and suddenly she was taller than him, her legs wrapped around his middle, his fingers pressed into the curve of her ass. She gripped the sides of his face and guided him to the side, forcing herself deeper, her tongue brazenly exploring his mouth. He even tasted wild, like fresh mint and adrenaline. Her heart beat in her ears, deafening over the silence of the apartment. He moaned, so deep it vibrated in her chest.

Nesta broke first, pupils blown and breath ragged.

“Finally shut you up?” she asked, sagging back against the door, her head falling against the wood with a low thud. 

He….well, he growled. There was no other word for the sound that rippled through his whole body and found a home between her legs. Her toes curled and she thanked every god that he couldn’t see. 

“Pretty little acid tongue,” he pushed them off the door and walked her toward the bed, almost tripping twice over the plush rug. Nesta didn’t notice. She was too busy tearing at the buttons down Cassian’s chest. Each one revealed inch after inch of smooth golden skin. Licks of black ink stretched from his shoulders, mostly hidden by more shirt. She huffed, trying to shove it off, but instead caught his nipple by accident with her nails. 

His nostrils flared as he hissed and dropped her unceremoniously on the mattress. She bounced, breathless. Dangerously close to a giggle. Traitor. She schooled her features back to bored disdain. The only hint of lust was the glassy haze in her vision, honed in on Cassian’s bare chest. 

He had removed his shirt while she had been distracted by her traitorous body, discarded it somewhere above her. The black inked lines Nesta had seen stretched around his shoulders and down his arms in dark whorls and spirals. The tattoo was almost feminine in its pure decoration, a stark contrast to his cut biceps. It was beautiful. 

He was beautiful. 

“Careful, Nesta,” he chided, “someone might think you like what you see.” 

She gave him a filthy gesture. A deep, rumbling laugh escaped him as he took a step closer, his fingers grazing the outer seams of her leggings. From her ankle to her knee, where he stopped to make circles. He curved around her knee and gripped her legs, tugging her to the edge of the bed. The palms of his hands burned her skin straight through her leggings. He hadn’t tried to remove her clothes. She couldn’t decide if it was a tease or an insult. Probably both. 

“Are you just going to talk?” she cocked an eyebrow at him, “or are you going to do something productive with that mouth?” 

His eyes narrowed, “are you sure that’s what you want?” 

She wanted him. Damn her, she wanted him so bad she could barely stand to look at him. The guilt roiled in her stomach, that she should take pleasure while everyone she’d loved could no longer. He’d offered her help, but it would be her damnation. No, this was just a distraction. No amount of distraction could bring back Tomas, or her father, or Elain. 

Light from the city outside shifted and spread into the corner drawing her eye. The dress. Her wedding dress. In the night shadows, the blunt burns looked like angry, gaping voids. They whispered to her as she stared. Traitor, traitor, traitor. 

I’m here to help you. His words were poison. Bred from a kind of hope only Feyre, with her perfect life, could ever have again after what they had lost. Her want for Cassian’s body burned her from the inside, stoked the fires of the self-inflicted hell she’d cast herself into. Nothing more than a catalyst. She could take his body and burn for doing so, but she would not accept his help. 

“Cassian,” Nesta’s voice didn’t belong to her. She pulled her t-shirt up to just below her breasts, exposing her flat stomach and drawing his eyes to her waistband. “just do what you came to do.” 

The air chilled as he stiffened. Her heart raced, waiting for him, fingers teasing her bare skin. He didn’t move. She lifted a bare foot and ran it along his pant leg, coaxing him to touch her. He nodded, as if making some decision Nesta wasn’t privy to. His face, lit so beautifully by the moonlight, hardened into a mask. A smooth, smiling mask. Prince of cats no more. 

“Cassian?” 

“Dear Nesta, I do believe our time is up,” he leaned down and reached over her, his chest just grazing her belly, the only skin to skin contact they’d had. She swore she felt him shudder, but it was over in an instant. He quickly retrieved his shirt from behind her and pulled it on. 

She gaped at him, “what do you mean our time is up?” 

“I mean,” his eyes shot right through her with cool confidence, “it’s getting late and I do need my beauty sleep. I must be going.” 

“But–“ she didn’t understand. Isn’t this what he wanted? Isn’t this how he gets paid? How can he leave? 

He buttoned up his shirt, swift and efficient. Little feeling or warmth. Nesta wasn’t sure what to do. Confusion quickly gave way to anger, boiling in her veins, flushing her skin.

“So, you’re not just a whore,” she hissed, “you’re a bastard whore that can’t even finish the job.” 

“So lovely meeting you, dear Nesta,” he turned with a sweet smile and opened the door, sending any tension between them out into the hallway. He breezed through the door, clicking it shut behind him so gently he might have been a phantom. 

Nesta slammed her head against the mattress and let out a frustrated scream so loud she had no doubt the bastard whore heard it.

taglist: @sleeping-and-books @greerlunna @sjmships @cupcakey00 @queenestarcheron

Cassian’s POV is next ❤️

[goldeneyedgirl]

JALICEWEEK20 DAY 6

The Way of Things

JaliceWeek20 Day 6: Reincarnation

Notes: I... don’t know. It just sort of happened? This wrote itself. There were a few more lifetimes I thought about including (there was a Jessamine and Alice ‘life’ that I really wanted to include but it’ll be a standalone fic once I’ve done a bunch of research) but I think I’m happy with it? 

This was absolutely inspired by a gorgeous Thor fic I read a few years ago based in Norse mythology and the creation of Yggdrasil; if I can find it, I will absolutely link it because it was an incredible piece of writing. 

Also go me! I’m kind of getting a hang of writing sex adjacent scenes! I remember not being able to look directly at my cursor when I implied a blow job in Shadow to Light, I’m oddly proud!

Now, just the second part to Against a Wall. 

Word Count: 4,322

NSFW - not graphic but yeah. 

--

Soulmates are funny things. They do not start out existence together; they must find each other - it might take one life time, it might take ten. It is important they undergo this struggle; some souls are not meant for regeneration - they shine and burn out within a lifetime or two. But others get stronger, more powerful, during those early searching years.

And one they find one another, they are forever more entangled. The oldest and strongest eventually fuse, unable to be separated in life or death.

Of course, eventually they burn out. But not in a tragic way; more like in a way that is last page of a very good book; the wilting of a final flower in autumn; the way snow melts in early spring, with sense of peace and satisfaction, and utter tranquility. And as they dissolve into starlight and dust, they begin the cycle anew. It is neither good nor bad or anything in between.

It is simply the way of things.

—

When they meet the first time they are vampires in Dacia - the land that will become Romania. It is an era of indulgence for vampires in that region, and if any records had been kept, it would have declared nearly dangerous levels of changes.

She is Alis, a peasant girl changed by a careless vampire who fed and left her in a ditch. She’s a gentle beauty, with long dark hair, sharp and cunning eyes, and even after the change, her skin maintains a slightly golden tint of someone who spent their life in the sun.

He is Jesper, who mentions nothing of where he came from or what he was before he arrived to hover at the fringes of the Romanian court. He has a reputation in the court, with the ladies and the men both, and Alis is entirely aware and slightly amused by that. She catches his eye more than once, but is illusive like a quicksilver, unbent and unbowed.

Until she isn’t.

It’s been a good hunt, blood soaked through their clothes to their skin that they lick off each other in their frenzy, and she learns exactly how he developed such a reputation. He learns exactly what he was looking for as he finds himself skin to skin with the spirited girl that has always seen him coming before he could catch her. But he has her now, and he’s not letting go.

She doesn’t seem to mind. They become a common sight, as a pair, their hands constantly entangled. They are not at court to curry favour or power or anything more than their next meal, but their relationship is magnetic, and more than one jealous or yearning gaze falls upon them as he presses hot kisses to her neck as he ties a choker of sapphires or diamonds around her pale throat.

The Volturi attack a century or so later, and they stand with the Romanians, their leaders and their friends. He remembers thinking they cannot possibly fail; they are the side of the kings, of the angels. He remembers admiring her as they lined up; the way she had pinned her hair with the silver clasp he’d given her, the way her dress fit her and the smirk on her lips that promised something to look forward to in their personal victory celebrations.

They don’t survive. In the chaos of the battle, it is hard to say how they each fell - the Volturi take no prisoners anyway, so a quick death in battle is preferable to an execution. But they fall and they are burnt, and their ashes mingle in the purple-grey smoke that fills the field.

When Lord Aro finds a silver hair clasp discarded on the battlefield, still clinging to a clump of dark hair, he pockets it and later presents it to Sulpicia, polished to shine and on a bed of velvet. It is a curious and beautiful piece, the shape of a raven’s wing, and it quickly joins the Volturi’s treasury without a single thought given to its origins.

—

In whatever counts as the afterlife for souls and spirits, they reunite. It will take more than one life to work out their powers, the boundaries, of this resting place - how to shape it to their preferences, how to give themselves form. For now, it is just a long horizon of contrasting light, and they are little more than sentient energy, mingling and expressing regret and pain at the demise of the other, of relief of being reunited, of contentedness being once again with the other.

Time is not something that exists on this plane, and soon they learn how to change what is around them; a swathe of sandy beach that meets perfectly clear water, expansive grassy plains that fit between quiet, looming forests that are quiet and cool. They are no more fixed than any other aspect of this space, but it remains unexpectedly consistent.

Sometimes, there is a house. It’s immediate form never changes, but the outside facade does, as the lifetimes pass them by. Somethings a log cabin, other times an English cottage, or a farmhouse, or a bamboo hut. It is their every-changing, ever-evolving desires, a nod to their shared past and their hopes for the future. It is their reward, their sanctuary.  

They learn how to shape themselves as well. She fluctuates a little more than him, but she is always small, always naturally dark-haired, always cunning but sweet. He is always tall and always blonde and too charming for his own good, and sometimes not he is she, blonde and tall and could charm birds from the trees. It doesn’t matter either way; the small one greets them just the same, with enthusiasm and passion and sweet sadness at their demise but always joy at their return.

And that is where they are together until the next life.

—

The next life is simpler; a part of a nomadic tribe. She is married, in their customs, to him when she is little more than a child and he just barely a man. And despite how they were raised, he is kind and gentle to her and has no interest in her as a wife before she becomes a woman.

It is a hard year, a bad year, as they travel the mountains and ridges, the snow sharp against their faces. Few of the tribe have born children that year, and less still have lived through the winter; when food is so scarce, the dying are calmly let go so that the rest might survive. There is an undercurrent of resentment when he hoists his child-bride onto his back so that she might make the climb; that he, young and strong and likely to live long and hardy, gives his share of food and water to the bony waif he is bound to.

But she lives through that year, and the next. She lives enough years that they are both ready for her to become a wife, and everyone who scorned her frailness, her smallness, the waste of a strong husband on such a girl, is shocked when she conceives and carries his child so easily. First a son, then two daughters, all born close enough together that the old women of the tribe mutter.

The tribe becomes stronger, settles in one place for longer and longer periods of time - where food and water are plentiful and they are safe from predators and other threats.

She dies during her fourth pregnancy, slipping away in an ocean of blood no one could have prevented. Her eyes are wild and frightened, and he promises that he’ll watch over their children and see them safe, and weeps openly over her body and that of his second son.

He dies after his second daughter is married to a neighbouring tribe, to a boy who looks at her like she is a miracle, and he knows his job is done. The death is quiet, in the still of the night, in the shelter that he once shared with her. As he passes from the world, he remembers the nights when it was him and her amongst the furs, and then their children pressed between them, and then the  firm bulge of the child who would ultimately kill her. He holds no resentment for the cause of her death, just a faint and worn sadness, and as he drifts away, he is certain he can hear her laughing.

—

He is a soldier, to protect his family, for a cause he finds entirely repulsive. But he mouths the words and holds the gun, and does not recognise her when he is ordered to shoot. Why would he? They’ve never met. She dies in the mud, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because they end up naming him a traitor and he dies in prison heavy with regrets.

In their sanctuary, they reunite in silence, with sad eyes and gentle embraces. Whatever powers above govern creation, they still send the souls and soulmates to earth, to be swallowed up and spat back out by human machinations, human fears and flaws and greed.

It is simply the way of things.

—

She is a barefoot thief in the streets of Paris, dangerously fast, and subtle of hand. She tells no one her story, or at least, no one her truth. Ragged and smirking, people mistake her for a child, and so there is little trouble to be had - if she’s caught at all.

She runs into him, lounging in an alleyway, tricking lords and ladies out of coins wiht sleight of hand, and is delighted with their potential. She’s old enough to be charmed by sharp green eyes and a lazy grin, and young enough to contemplate the sheer levels of chaos they can cause.

They live like kings those next few years, pinching pearls and purses, watches and rubies, and living in an icy dormer room wearing stolen rings to convince others of things they’ll get around to eventually. It’s really not much - a narrow bed with wafer thin blankets and a shared pillow; water that runs cold and brown into a bucket; pigeons that nest in the rafters and shit all over their clothing.

Doesn’t seem to matter, though, when she welcomes his kiss and sleepily encourages him when he rolls on top of her during the late night hours, frost forming on the weave and weft of their clothes. When their work is good, he brings her flowers from the seller on the corner, and she tucks her pockets full of cakes for them to share, and really, neither could imagine a finer life than together in their little tower.

But time marches on, and soon they recognise that the tricks that have gotten them this far in life aren’t going to be overlooked forever. There are less nobles on the street, less coin and jewellery to be fleeced, and so they decide to leave for the country - he’s not afraid of dirty work, and she’s not afraid of anything.

The journey will be long, and she steals a book for him on their way - he’s determined to teach her to read. It’s a neat little Bible with a smart green cover with the name ‘C-a-r-l-i-s-l-e C-u-l-l-e-n’ written in neat script on the front page.

They settle in a village, where she becomes a laundress, then a seamstress, and he finds work with horses. They marry in the village parish, where the kind priest is happy to absolve them of the sin of living as man and wife before their vows, and keep their secret. They exchange stolen rings for ones of brass, from a jar the priest keeps for that purpose.

There’s a tiny two-room cottage they occupy; those early years of hunger and neglect have left their mark on them both, and so there are no children in this life. But there is an endless parade of animals that he brings home tucked under his jacket; wounded or lost or discarded, and she finds that she doesn’t so much mind waking up to a blind duck on their bed or a sickly fox on the pillow next to her, when he is always so pleased with their progress, with their improving health. He saves more than he loses, and he takes pride in that. Some are set free and returned to the wild, but others linger until they are something of a spectacle in town - the house with all the animals.

They live a long life, a good one, and it ends peacefully. They are buried side by side in the village cemetery, with wooden crosses that bare their names, and prayers muttered in their honour.

But one Carlisle Cullen never gets his Bible back.

—

The good lives give them less time together in the in-between, if such a thing could be accurately measured. They wade, knee-deep into that perfect ocean that stretches out to their infinite horizon, hand-in-hand, and then they both feel it; that fizzing, tingling feeling as whatever oversees them pulls them back; back into bodies and minds, back into lives and places, and they once again have to go through the push and pull of finding the other and crossing their fingers it’ll happen sooner rather than later.

As he becomes nothing again, he holds her smile tight in his mind with a prayer that this will be the time, this will be the life, that he’ll recognise her for who she is to him as soon as he sees her.

She hopes its a long life, a good one, with his hand in hers always.

—

He’s reborn in Texas in 1863 and dies nineteen years later, only to rise again.

She’s born in Mississippi in 1901 and dies nineteen years later, only to rise again.

They meet in 1948, and if he knew any better, he’d tease her about keeping him waiting for thirty-seven years, six months, and three weeks. But it will be a while more before they both remember things like that, so he can’t. Instead, he falls completely and utterly in love with her, in a way that echoes right back through to that very first meeting in Dacia.

He wonders if its possible to miss someone he’d never met before, when he takes her hand. She wonders if he’s going to disappear, to startle and panic about the future that lies before them and leave her behind.

He kisses her like a starving man, and she almost immediately drags him - a willing supplicant - into her bed because it doesn’t matter what life they’re living, she’s never been particularly subtle. He knows exactly what to do to make her scream indecently, and she puts her mouth to every single one of his scars, and he wishes he could weep - with relief and guilt and a million other things that are knotted up inside his head.

And she will untangle each and every single one with enough time.

They unknowingly draw from each of the lives that have come before - they are nomadic for more than two years, criss-crossing across the country. He is no less fixated on animals - as a human, it was the training of them; as a vampire, they are his salvation. Their hands are always entangled, their gazes always on the other.

This time, they find a family, and some quiet, subconscious little corner of her mind decides she likes that they aren’t alone this time. There’s a small joy in the memory of a ‘family’, and a warm feeling - one that she doesn’t know originated from a long-ago life where they were the ones welcoming new children into their heart and home, one she doesn’t quite recognise. But families are shaped so many different ways, and the Cullens are just another way to fit together, and so they stay.

It’s a good life, an untroubled life - at least until Edward gets tangled up with a human girl and the cursed Volturi. Somewhere, the great puppet master jerks the strings and decides that if history is so desperate to repeat itself, well, it might as well put on a show.

They escape the Volturi once (a flight to Italy to save an idiot brother), and twice (Renesmee shall live, Joham shall die, and Aro leaves without any new amusements and deeply, infinitely disappointed in his beloved Carlisle).

Third time’s a charm.

—

Aro’s great error shall go down in history as underestimating the damage he has done assembling his collection, the rage and resentment that boils like an undercurrent in the vampire world. He is not a beloved leader, but a feared one.

In truth, which will be lost to both time and the fact that the powers above don’t keep written or oral histories as humans comprehend them, his undoing is two things: the fact that in all things there must be balance.

And an ancient silver hair clasp shaped like a raven’s wing, that his Sulpicia wears in her hair as they arrive at the battlefield, cloaked and over-confident.

The battle is ugly and fatal and messy and all those things wars usually are, and there is no certainty in their victory, not with the wolves involved, with the shifters and the cryptids that have crawled out of every shadow and space to be done with Aro and Caius forever.

(Stefan and Vladimir are naive if they think they will fill the vacuum left behind in Aro’s wake; Jasper takes them both out quietly on the battlefield, when neither of them can call out the betrayal or identify their killer. Sometimes ugly things need to be done, and he’s not above getting his hands dirty.)

The battleground is smokey and even her supernatural eyes struggle to see through the gloam; her dead heart heavy as she looks for him. Voices call for help; for missing limbs, for injuries, for protection and she ignores each and every one.

She doesn’t know why she stops at the sight of a silver hair clasp, ancient and lost in the mud. Or why she reaches for her own hair, cut short.

Or why she picks it up and unlocks something inside her own mind. It is not an explosion of information, a supernova of memory. It is simply an intense awareness of who she is and who she was and who she will be. It is a confidence in her stride as she moves through the battlefield with a sense of self she has not known since before her home was known as ‘Romania’.

Jasper is bent and twisted, Rosalie limp on the ground, and those vicious, hideous twins hold them captive, like fish twitching on the line. Their deaths are not imminent, because who could take down the little vipers and stop their little game?

Jane’s head is off her body, and Alec’s too, before Jasper has shaken off the pain, expecting Peter or Maria or Emmett to have gotten a lucky shot and dismembered Aro’s little favourites.

Instead, it is his mud-streaked wife with a strange look in her eyes and emotions skittering over her skin like static. A battlefield is no place for a lover’s reunion, but she still bestows a kiss on his kneeling form (so ready for his own execution) that is so positively lascivious that it takes him a minute to remember himself.

And then he remembers himself.

The scales have been rebalanced, and the fight is won by a toss of a coin that finds Aro, Caius, and Marcus on their knees in the mud, waiting for their own trial. The oldest of the gathered line up - Carlisle, Amun, Maria, the Chinese coven - to pass their judgement, but the memories that press on both of them demand their pound of flesh, and Edward eyes them both uneasily.

Instead of violence, of sliding down a slope that turns them back into the monsters of old, into the truest of nightmares, Alice crouches in front of Aro with her wide dark gold eyes, and pulls the hair clasp from her pocket.

Aro’s rage is cold, at the few strands of Sulpicia’s hair that are still trapped in the metal, and if he could, he’d shred her to pieces in that moment, gift be damn. But she smiles sweetly, and strokes the etched feathers.

“Did you know?” she asks quietly, only loud enough for the fallen Volturi kings to hear, and Edward who hovers in case this spirals into a cataclysm, “When he gave me this, I mean?”

Aro stares at her, straining to touch her and understand, but his guard holds him tight and all he can do is sneer at her.

“The night before you brought your army,” Alice plucks the strawberry-blonde hairs from the fixture and tosses them into the mud. “He pinned this in my hair and we danced; we thought we’d win. And I suppose we did.”

Aro gapes at her, Caius is spitting curses, and Marcus is just pleading for his peaceful death - and how many lifetimes has he lived without Didyme, has he wanted to return to that in-between space?

She sees the scar on Esme’s face and finds it hard to care.

Edward is backing away in horror from whatever he sees in her mind, and Jasper is helping her stand, returning to their place amongst the very confused witnesses - what could the diminutive vampire say to the Lords of Volterra that would inspire such a response. The three are summarily executed without ceremony, and they are scattered over the fire without reverence.

Alice tosses the hair clasp in, too. It is better to be burnt to nothing, to be forgotten and buried by dirt and ash. It is too close to becoming a cursed object, one that will follow them, if they place too much belief and trust and hope into it. It has witnessed two downfalls, and it will never witness another.

He holds her tight in the aftermath, as they count their dead and make their plans. Edward is already whispering warnings into Carlisle’s ear, of the shape their thoughts and memories take. But they are family, and that comes before everything else.

(It’s not exactly their fault that Edward is a shiny new soul, and it’s going to take him a few lifetimes to understand what he’s seeing and hearing. Harder especially for him, with his gift so strong so early in the cycle. But everything happens for a reason.)

Despite the curiosity wafting off everyone, they say nothing and they go… well, not home, but to the closest residence, the headquarters of this war. A sprawling property with enough beds for the wounded, the wolves, and the lovers.

That’s where she makes good on her unspoken promises from eons again, of their private victory celebration. She sits astride him, her hips rolling hard against his, drawing out his groans and growls as he grips her thighs almost tight enough to crack. Their gazes are locked the entire time, her tongue skimming over her lips, as she lets her emotions tell him everything that she wants and everything she plans to take.

He remembers fucking her in the dirt in Dacia; his mouth between her legs as she hollered obscenities in a Paris attic; and the urgent, passionate loving-making of a marriage finally consummated.

She remembers bloody emeralds looped around her throat and resting between her breasts as she gets down on her knees and takes him into her mouth, his fingers tangled in her hair; the delicious weight of him on top of her, their sweat mingling and cooling in the frozen night as their flimsy bed creaked against the wall; and his soft encouragement in her ear as he grasps her around the waist, their hands resting together on the gentle swell of her stomach.

It is times like this that their talents are burdens and gifts both because it is so much, so very much, and in all that passion and true love, there is also loss and regret.

But they have each other, and they will weather this new storm together.

—

They are hardly the only couple to spend the night tumbling together, but they must be the loudest, because when they reappear the next morning with darkened eyes and clean clothes, Jacob and Emmett are looking at Jasper with a new and very specific kind of respect, and if she flips both of them off behind Esme’s back, no one has any proof.

They don’t talk about what they’ve learnt, because it probably wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else. It doesn’t make sense, doesn’t matter, until the mantle of it settles upon you. And then it is everything.

Instead, they hunt. They have won the battle, won the war, and whilst rebuilding will take time, they can take this small moment to feast with their family and relish freedom from fear.

She truly doesn’t know what comes next. He truly doesn’t know if it will be good or bad. They will live this life for as long as it lasts, long may it last, surrounded by the people they love and trust.

And then they will die.

And then they will live again. Maybe they will live another ten lives, maybe another one hundred. Maybe one day they will cross paths with their family again, or they will choose to have children again. Maybe they will be long lives full of joy and laughter, maybe they will burn out fast and hard, but full of feeling.

But the thing they are now both and utterly certain of, above all else, is that they will walk each step hand-in-hand.

It is simply the way of things.

[mrcurrygoestospain]

Camino De Santiago - Round 5

Spain travel log, 2021…

Day One:

September 20 - Depart Seattle for Madrid, by way of London. There were plenty of issues just getting to this point. In addition to the ongoing concerns over COVID-19, or perhaps because of them, I had some serious concerns about whether I could and whether I should do this trip at all. In the end, I think I simply realized that it was totally appropriate for me to go on this trip: I’ve been “responsible” and taken the full round of vaccinations, generally avoided social contacts with people and been diligent about the masks. So I made my reservations and thought everything was fine. About 2 weeks before takeoff, I got an email from Iberia that one of my flights had been changed. When I looked into it, I found that it was the connecting flight from London to Madrid and the schedule had been bumped up by about 6 hours taking me from having a 2 hour layover in Heathrow to needing to be on a plane for Madrid 4 hours before I actually landed in London and would be able to board it… It took attempts at phone calls over several days to get this corrected. Finally, I tried while I was at top work one morning around 5:00 am. I finally got through and a nice lady helped rebook my connecting flight. She found the only available flight on that day that would work; now I have a seven hour layover.

I prepped for my trip, checklists and routes planned. I arrived at the airport 3 hours early, just in case. Although I booked with Iberia, it was a British flight. So standing in line at the BA counter in SeaTac, I saw the sign: “All passengers must show proof of a negative COVID test.” What? I’d already checked multiple times; I only need proof of vaccination to get into Spain. I check the internet. Sure enough, if you’re on a layover in England, you need a negative test…A quick Google search helped me find a testing center at SeaTac airport, so I rushed down to baggage claim number nine to see if I could get a test in time. In all honesty, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it and I’d have to try to contact the airline again to find a way to reschedule my flight. I stood in the line for what seemed like forever, but finally had the privilege of paying $250 for a rapid COVID test. T- minus 2 hours 30 minutes to departure and they promised results in 1-1.5 hours. The test itself was relatively painless. After all of the horror stories I’d heard about the nasal swabs, I was a bit worried. But it didn’t hurt, it just tickled a little bit. I waited, and waited…it seemed like they would never have my results. While I waited, I heard stories from other travelers who had missed flights or rebooking because of these ridiculous COVID-related requirements. One young Canadian lady I spoke to shared that she’d spent over $1000 on COVID tests in the last month due to traveling. I guess my $250 wasn’t so much.

I finally got my negative test results and rushed back to the check in counter, filled out the required government forms and headed through security. The flight was delayed.

After a nine hour flight to London, I had seven or eight hours to kill in Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5, before boarding my flight to Madrid. I shopped, I ate, I listened to podcasts. I took a few naps and generally cursed British Airways for changing my original flight. Some Italian guy made quite a scene at the boarding gate for the flight to Madrid. The gate agent handled it quite well and passive-aggressively punished him for his demeanor.

I arrived in Madrid after an easy flight on Iberia, made my way to the metro and on to my Hostel. It was a nice enough place. After 28 hours of travel, I was ready for a shower and bed.

Day 2:

On my one day in Madrid, I walked from my hostel/hotel to the Museo Nacional del Prado. It’s Spain’s greatest art museum. This was my second time there and I spent a lot more of it. There are so many amazing pieces and, for someone who used to truly despise art, it was amazing. I highly recommend it. I haven’t been to a whole lot of art museums, but it is, by far, my favorite. I followed that with a walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens. I’m sure they’re great when all of the flowers are blooming, but in early fall, it’s just a lot of green. Either way, it was still peaceful. I visited another nearby park, walked around and viewed the statues, and then made my way back towards the hotel and passed it to go to the Cathedral opposite the royal palace. It’s a much more modern cathedral than the ones I’ll see on the Camino, but still impressive.

Day 3:

On the morning of the third day, I got up early and got packed. Took the metro to the train station and purchased a ticket to Leon. After two hours on the train, I took a 20 minute walk to the hotel and dropped off my bag, and then spent the next few hours wandering the city. I found a barber and got a haircut for 9 Euro, quite a bargain. Stopped at the “Taste of America” shop to get a bottle of hot sauce (Cholula, of course), and just meandered around the city until I could get checked in at the hotel. It was a pretty uneventful day, which is just what I needed. I was still very tired from all of the traveling and trying to swap schedules.

Day 4:

I got up late, around 8:00 AM and started walking the city. I stopped for a cafe con leche and met a Scottish couple who had been walking the Camino for the last few weeks. While we waited out the rain under cover, the shared with me some of their other walking adventures, including tales of walking through the Swiss Alps on the Via Francigena, a pilgrimage route to Rome. I may have to look into that for a future trip. I also shared with them my plans/considerations of taking a walk on the “Great Glen Way” in Scotland. The wife had already done this and highly recommended it, along with the West Highland Way. Both are approximately 5-day walks through some of the wild country of Scotland. When the rain let up, we parted ways and I went to tour the Cathedral, toured the Basilica of Saint Isidore and wandered around town, shopping and eating. Inside the Saint Isidore museum and basilica, i had the opportunity to see what is referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art” as well as a gold and silver cup that some historians claim is the “holy grail.”

Day 5:

Didn’t sleep much…I forgot how much they like to party in Spain. It was LOUD all night long. Anyway, started my walk. Today was about 27 km and it rained through about 50% of the day. It was a mix of roads and dirt tracks. I only saw one other pilgrim, a Spaniard who doesn’t speak any English. I got ahead of him and had stopped for a rest at a picnics table on top of a mountain. He showed up a few minutes behind me and I tried to chat for a minute, but the language barrier…. I offered him half of my tangerine and then he took off again. I passed him up later. I had been slightly worried about where to stay for the night as the municipal albergue in this province/state are currently closed due to the ‘Rona, but when I got to town I found a pension with rooms available. The lovely lady named Susana showed me to a room and also worked tirelessly to make me a reservation for the following night. I hadn’t eaten much for the day, so I ordered big: hot dog and patatas oil bravas. Patatas bravas is a traditional dish in Spain which is made of fried potatoe cubes that are covered in a (typically) spicy tomato sauce. Potatoes Ali Oli are the same fried potatoes but with a garlic cream sauce instead of the spicy sauce. This one combined both sauces. It was nice. The inside of the restaurant/bar/cafe was very loud with a bunch of men playing a card game I’m not familiar with, so I went outside to have a beer. An older Spaniard, named Hilario, came out and started trying to talk to me. I explained that I am American and I don’t speak much Spanish, but he disagreed. So he went inside and got another man, a Hungarian who had been in Spain for the last 25 years, named Fernanco(?) who was extremely drunk, to come out and talk to me. He was so drunk, he introduced himself as “muy borracho” or “very drunk” and the proceeded to tell me that he used to be a muy Thai fighter and a coal miner and now he was just a fat drunk who collected money from the government because he got hit in the head too many times. At least I THINK that’s what they were saying…. I went to bed early to get a good rest and let my aching feet and hips recover before a long day tomorrow….from La Robla to Poladura, should be about 25km or so with some very intense climbs. We’ll see.

I’m currently on the Camino San Salvador, which is a route from Leon to Oviedo. They say “whoever goes to Santiago without visiting Oviedo, goes to the servant but not to the Lord.” This is because Oviedo is famous for having a specific relic. While most people are aware of the Shroud of Turin, which is the burial cloth of Jesus, many don’t know (including me, until recently) that traditional Jewish burial included placing a cloth over the face of the deceased immediately after death and until the body was prepared for burial. This cloth would then be removed and the full-body cloth would be applied. So anyway, this Cathedral boasts possession of the face covering that was placed over Jesus’ head, likely immediately after the spear pearled his side and before he was brought down off of the cross. Once I complete the Camino San Salvador (about 5 days, I hope), I will continue on to the Camino Primitivo, one of the many Camino’s de Santiago. So the Camino San Salvador goes to the relics of Christ and the Camino Santiago (Santiago = Saint James) goes to the resting place and remains of Saint James (the major), also known as “Santiago Matamoros” or “Saint James the Moor Slayer”, the patron saint of Spain.

[sassydaisies-blog]

OUTREACH PART 1:NEPAL

Wow I am sorry that this update is so overdue! Outreach has been absolutely insane. Very busy, very stretching and a overall very new experience. It's been a while since my last actual update so let's back track a little bit. The week before I left in Perth I found out my Grandpa Lea finished his battle with lung cancer and passed away. It was very difficult news to get but I had an amazing family with my class mates in Perth that really helped me through it. I had said good bye before I left Canada knowing it might be the last. It was a long battle for my grandpa but I'm so so happy he is no longer suffering and is now running around heaven with Jesus. About 3 days after I got that news I left Australia to head to Nepal! It was the start to a crazy new adventure! We flew from Australia to Malaysia, spent the night in the airport there (yeah I'm a real world traveller I slept on the ground) and then we headed to Nepal early in the morning the next day. The landscape of Nepal from the plane was absolutely breath taking. It is full of beautiful mountains being home to Everest and the Himalayas. As soon as we landed, to say the least I felt a little bit of culture shock. Here are a few reasons why, 1) in Asia for toilets they use these things called squatees, uhh yeah basically exactly what it sounds like you just squat so yeah that was new 2) Nepal + traffic Rules = does not exist AT ALL 3) It's very busy on the streets where ever you go and wherever you go you're drawing a lot of attention for what you look like (for me that was being a blonde white girl haha). Nepal is located in between China and India so those are its two major influences. It's a very culturally strong and religious country. Being my first time in Asia this was something very very new to me. I definitely had a lot of adjusting to do when we arrived but I was eager to see what God had in store for us all! We went from Kathmandu to Ilam where we would be staying. It was about 14 hour drive on a lot of twisting roads up and down the mountains (yes I puked twice wooooooooo hooooo). In Ilam we were staying at a YWAM base/Christian school. The first week our ministry was done painting the school and helping out where we could along with also playing with the local village kids. For about 3-4 days during the first week I was stuck in bed with a fever and feeling pretty rough. But after a few days I was all good and was able to join up with everyone again. Praise God! As ministry continued we started to do a lot of hiking! Nepal is a fairly small country so most of it is remote and spread out. For us to get to the next village it was usually at least a 1 1/2 hour hike. I learnt something very quickly, I suck at hiking haha BUT THATS OKAY, i kept on pushing. One of my team mates Peyton and I were always happy to take up the back of the group haha. When we would arrive in a village we would do this thing called an open air. Basically it is a time where we gather a group of people and share the gospel with them. We do some skits, sing some songs, usually talk with people if they have any question and pray for people. After an open air we'd often get invited to a house for tea. Now let me tell you, I'm almost positive I drank my body weight in tea at least twice while in Nepal. Every where we went and I mean every where we would have tea. I am not complaining because all of it was usually home made so I was blessed by some really good tea about 5 times a day for a month! Generally our time in Nepal was doing a lot of discipleship with Christians in the country. Although we were expecting something different from Nepal, meeting many Christians in the nation was very encouraging. Nepal is an insanely Hindu/Buddhist country. It took me by surprise since I've only ever really experience catholic or Christian nations. Seeing people stand up for their belief in Jesus was very very encouraging when there was so much going against them. It made me so grateful for where I am from and also my family. It is so common in Nepal for people to be disowned by their families, friends and even from their village when they choose to be a Christian. Those who we met though, despite some experiences and circumstances were very full of joy. When they spoke of the blessing that had come into their lives since they had given it to God, it was very obvious how he had been working. We made amazing relationships with many of our contacts in Nepal as well! Our translator that was always with us is named BM. He was our honorary 10th team member and boy did we love him. He was a Christian who was constantly full of both joy and wisdom. We had the privilege to stay with some students from the school as well. There was a group of 8 students that were going to be travelling to the USA in May to study for a year. They wanted to practice their English so they stayed with us! The girls in my room were 13 and 14. They were both such sweet hearts. It was a huge blessing to get to know them both. As I said before it is very shameful for your family if you become Christian so these girls were Buddhist but also Christians. (Side note the really big issue in Nepal is not that they don't believe in Jesus they do but then they believe in 1000s of other gods as well.) When I asked the girls why they were Buddhist the only reason they had was because their parents were. With that being said it was really amazing to be able to spend time with them talking about Jesus and what their beliefs were. Now that was kind of a general over view of Nepal, here's some of the high lights for me! One day we did a 9 1/2 hour hike (all up hill, I basically died) to a village to visit a new church there. This was probably on of the most difficult things I've ever done, the amazing thing was that I really REALLY had to depend on God for my strength. It was a cool opportunity and experience, defiantly one I'll never forget. Near the end of our time in Nepal we hosted a youth conference with local Pastors and alongside the other Nepal team from my DTS. I loved getting to spend time with the other team and also seeing so many Christian youth come together to learn about God and have a great time! There was about 300 youth that showed up! After the three days of the conference we had three days of bible distribution through out the foot hill of the Himalayas! Again haha really really difficult but also really incredible. Through out our three days of bible distribution we would do about 6-8 hours of hiking a day. In this time I found strength physically and mentally in Jesus like I had never before. The Joy of the Lord had evidently shown up because I was happier than ever through out those days even though I was being pushed harder than ever. For bible distribution what we did was basically take up a back pack full of bible in the language of Nepali and hike everywhere and hand them out to everyone we saw or drop them off at every house. At the end of the month we headed back to Kathmandu before leaving for the Philippines. On our very last day we went and visited an organization called Dinadi. Dinadi was a beautiful organization ran by a Christian family. What they do is employ women from off the streets or who can't easily find work, to knit toques, mittens and scarfs. The work they do it absolutely beautiful. The products are then sold and the women are able to support themselves and their family's. I was very inspired and encouraged by their work. It was a very practical and beautiful way to support the women of Nepal and show Jesus love for them. Well that was Nepal! I've now been in the Philippines for a month and I promise that update will be here soon! Thank you so much for the continual love and support through this journey. I love and appreciate you all. ❤️❤️ All the love Ali 😊❤️

[parapluiepliant]

Thelonious Jaha and his role as mentor - The Four Horsemen (4x03)

Another thought in regard to the revealed episode titles and synopsis:

TENSIONS RISE – Jaha leads Clarke and Bellamy down a road to possible salvation while tension rise in Arkadia and Polis.

Some of us were wondering for quite a while what Jaha’s story arc in season 4 will have in store. Intriguing in that regard has been the season 2 finale to me. Jaha meets A.L.I.E for the first time and she remarks:

Thelonious. It’s a good name. It has a double meaning. To the Greeks, Thelonious meant lord or ruler. To the Germans, it meant tiller of the earth. Which are you, I wonder. (2x16 - Blood Must Have Blood, Part 2)

The lord/ruler aspect of his name has been proven true in season 1 (Jaha as Chancellor “rules” over the people on the Ark) and he tried to gain that position back in season 2. To some extent, he also ruled over those who came with him on his Promised Land trip and reigned like an Absolute (offering the young boy to the sea monster and decided who lives aka useful and who dies aka unuseful). In season 3, he became the right hand man of A.L.I.E and could be seen as a leader surrogate for the CoL. (Not a real co-leader position imo)

With the synopsis from 4x03 to be seen above and the remaining second meaning, I suppose that Jaha will take on the role of ‘tiller of the earth’ in season 4.

Infected by the famous meta fever, I had to research the German meaning of Thelonious. Wikipedia only lists a jazz musicer with that name and a hunchman in one of the Shrek films which is funny because that character later on actually changes to good. Maybe a hint? ;)

Anyway, I had to take a look at different babyname websites of which one says that Thelonious is a variant of the german name ‘Till’.

‘Till’ originates from Old High German ‘diot, diet’ meaning “people”. The name itself developed into different other names as for example ‘Thilio’ (which is much closer to Thelonious). Still, I cannot explain how they got to the meaning “tiller of the earth” except that ‘tiller’ has a ‘till’ in it. Let’s go back to Alie’s words and examine them a bit further.

I have to admit that I have never heard of the word 'tiller’ before, so I had to look it up. That’s the part where it becomes interesting again.

‘tiller’ can either mean a) any form of steering device b) someone who uses a rotary tiller to turn soil c) a shoot from seeds (grass plants) or d) the stock of a crossbow.

In German, the word “tillern” also means to give a bow its finishing touch by readjusting parts or planeing the wooden parts until it’s balanced enough for shooting as well as to handle the tensile force.

What does that leave us with?

About a): Jaha, take the wheel! It’s funny that Jaha, a prophet like figure in season 2, actually used a steering device. Remember the boat on which he and Murphy got to 'Alie Island’? He literally had a tiller in his hands and was thus leading the way by giving the direction. What are we going to have in season 4: life boats. Coincidence? Maybe….not. “Not enough life boats to save the people” = not enough people working together to save the rest? Jaha seems to be crucial when it comes to leadership advice for Bellamy and Clarke. Does he become Campbell’s notion of the Old Wise? At least, he might hold them on the right course.

About b) Jaha, the gardener. With a rotary tiller, people smooth the seedbed to reduce weeds and to create the best circumstance for their plants to grow. I wonder if he really achieved this with his actions but it’s undeniable that gardeners lavishe care and attention to their plants. This leads me to talk….

About c) Jaha as a shoot or in regard to the gardener/tiller connotation someone who is the producer of a shoot which he tries to nurture. Our delinquents build the generation to take over. If I remember correctly, in early season 1 Jaha even mentions that their generation was only meant to be an in-between for those who would have the chance to go back to Earth.

More specificially, Bellamy and Clarke as little shoots will be guided by Jaha to become true leaders.

On another note: “tiller of earth” seems to be a specific label for Cain in the Bible. He had been chosen to work as a crop farmer in contrast to Abel. Cain was also the first born. With the approaching apocalypse and the seven plagues, I was reminded of the saying that exactly those will have to die. Do you remember Murphy’s warning to Wells who could be seen as the son of the tiller? “FIRST SON FIRST TO DYE” Maybe Jaha is not as safe as we thought.

Yet, we have 'My Brother’s Keeper’ (again alludes to Bellamy with the episode 'His Sister’s Keeper’) Wikipedia states the following: Later in the narrative, God asks Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” Cain replies, “I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?” And he said, “What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now [art] thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” (Genesis 4:10–12, King James Version)

Later, the article adds that “Interpretations extend Cain’s curse to his descendants, (…). Cain’s curse involves receiving a mark from God, commonly referred to as the mark of Cain. This mark serves as God’s promise to Cain for divine protection from premature death, with the stated purpose to prevent anyone from killing him.” And “Caine is also described as a city-builder, Caine then establishes the first city, naming it after his son, builds a house, and lives there until it collapses on him, killing him.”

I start to believe that the mark of Cain is that weird goatee he fancies. Anyway, Jaha will be safe until the survivors will have a real city which might hopefully be named after Wells ('wealth’ is something to wish them and leads to thriving *wink*).

What I am unhappy about is the Kane/Cain telling name but I cannot make a connection whatsoever. Anybody wanna help me here?

Back to the last meaning. About d) Without a stock, the bow wouldn’t be complete, not to say wouldn’t function properly at all. Maybe Jaha ‘completes’ the bow of Arkadia? The bow aka those who will tackle the problems? I don’t have to name them again, do I? Greek gods with bow and arrow are for example Artemis and Eros and in Germanic mythology we would have Odin. Annother interesting thought: as @jontyaxefive has pointed out in the analysis about the Four Horsemen (the circle close/we come back at the beginning), the White Rider aka Conquest/Victory/Pestilence has bow and arrow, too. And it was pointed out that Jaha could be a false prophet.

Thank you for reading so far.

I am going to stop myself here and invite @rosymamacita @insufficient-earth-skills @forgivenessishardforus @abazethe100 @jontyaxefive @head-and-heart @the-ships-to-rule-them-all and whoever might be interested in this little spec party. Be my guest and feel free to add something or to criticize me. :)

PS: A little fun info about “Echoes” (4x01):

A certain internet searching engine informed me that there is a Stargate Atlantis episode of the same name which states that: Everyone starts to see ghosts of Lanteans, caused by echoes being emitted by whale-like creatures converging on the city from the planet’s ocean. When side effects begin to occur, McKay discovers that the Ancients tried to teach the whales their language, and that the whales are trying to warn them about a natural disaster that endangers all life on the planet.

-> The effects of A.L.I.E.’s chips will certainly have an effect on those who took the key. And we know that Raven was taught a gew tricks that might help them in their further proceedings.

There is also another episode called 'The Ark’ in which “Colonel Sheppard’s team discovers a space station where the last of a race of humans remain. They soon discover, however, the entire population is in danger when the station is damaged through the suicide of a recently awoken resident.”

[mulliganisms]

Himself Alone 1970

In the thin air of the Azteca Stadium in the 1970 World Cup Final Pele hovers majestically over his Italian prey - Himself is similarly airborne as his ten year old derriere has been launched towards a Western Irish sky by a bolting horse.

In the next few moments gravity will work on both and Himself will attempt to match the cacophony of 107,412 and will come pretty close. Life is flashing before him, At ten his life is as watchable as a reality TV spin off on a cable channel  - thin content which Himself tries to stretch out by endless previously ons recaps and in next week’s show...He had recently sat through Love Story - will he die before his own has ever tasted love? Never to skate in Central Park? Never having to say sorry - and not even the drawn out death where Ali Mcgraw looks more glamorous as the end nears but an instant hit of body on Connemara marble. At least he would die with as clean a conscience as Bobby Moore post diamond necklace scandal.

The nag that had inched forward like a non league crowd following a triumphant cup tie vs higher placed opposition who wanted to savour the relative luxury of the away ground now moves with energy and purpose as speedily and unexpectedly as the appearance of the roundel insignia on Japanese fighter planes over the Pearl Harbour skies.  Not like in the Michael Bay travesty but as in the epic war fillum he's just seen at the ABC Essex Rd: Tora Tora Tora - surprise surprise surprise - like all 70s boys he was multilingual - provided there was a war on.  feuer achtung Banzai hande hoch. And this is war: man vs horse - all about personal survival.

Fortunately Himself had bronze, silver and gold badges acquired thro many hours of perspiration starting with Mum’s dexterous use of a safety pin when she somehow retrieved the elastic swimming trunk cord - as much a wonder to Himself as the third of the working class consistently voting against their own interests or the touting  of £100k Peter Marinello as the next George Best. The swimming lessons in the Tibberton Rd Public baths - always busy as very few folk had bathrooms at home relying on the Saturday night tin bath. That would be followed by climbing into the blue and white cotton pyjamas warmed in front of the coal fire in readiness for the Andy Williams Xmas snowbound belatedly screened in April.

Finally the inflating and tying off of said blue and white cotton sleepwear and the desperate drying of them with dressing room hairdryer which had been recently installed owing to demand from men growing their hair longer. This had resulted in the wolf whistling of certain players at football grounds- obviously only visiting or especially former heroes especially Jimmy Robertson  at the Lanewhen he scored for Arsenal. The skills  these medals acknowledged were of no use on land.  If only his bolting mount had been a giant sea horse... 

Himself has never ridden before but he has seen the Grand National on the telly so The pose is pure Pat Taafe - Mum’s fave Irish jockey who won the grand national that year  resulting in her annual bet paying off with jubblies all round.The horse is no Arkle the champion horse much less Champion the Wonder Horse star of Saturday Morning Pictures - a communal cinema going experience where the largely junior crowd heckled the Government Information films watched rapt at key moments in Z for Zorro and cheered at Flash Gordon - all behaviours far more endurable than the Vue/Cineworld going adult munching supersize tacos swimming in collagenous red , loudly predicting plot outcomes and turning their phone screens up just in case they miss an update from their co-worshippers of WKD, Lynx and cuffed sweatpants who style themselves as the whatsapp group lethal banter squad

The horse is one of a team too - some of his mates bearing  Aulfella and da brudders others pulling a trap navigated by Mam with dasisters. They have names tho none as resonant as 

Tostao, Gerson, Jairzinho - Brazil 1970 the greatest team ever - and the highlight of their play wasn’t even a goal but an outrageous dummy and miss vs Uruguay by the totemic Pele. Pele’s opening goal and Carlos Alberto’s clinching fourth meant  Brazil won Jules Rimet three times and got to keep the trophy. Perhaps that’s what drives Mark Francois and Rees Mogg towards urging constant war on Germany - a hat trick of victories would give them world domination in perpetuity - the natural order of things. 

The rarity of sightings of these yellow and green shirts enhanced their allure. They were only glimpsed every four years and the white clad Germans and Orange dutch every two. Contrast that with the attention mega trawler supernet net of todays’ neverending news  - transfer deadline day is more exciting than most games. No such problem in 1970 midweek - we got Sportsnight with Coleman - which did feature football but only after you had sat through all sorts of things boxing, figure skating but the one most pertinent to the crisis - showjumping

 Following exposure on the telly kids would head to the park to attempt to copy their newfound Gods - the Willie Carr  flick, the Best robbing of Banks at wembley - scandalously ruled out for ungentlemanly conduct, The Denis Law sleeve grab (does anyone still make long sleeve shirts?). 

Rosemary Gardens cinder pitch was their Highbury, their Lords (with matting rolled out and stumps on springs) even their Wimbledon when anyone cared to play (two weeks in June) but it was never our Hickstead-  our Wembley stadium never the Empire Pool Wembley

The only pools that mattered were the centrepiece of early Saturday night ritual. The football results delivered to kitchens steaming with anticipation of life changing news and perfectly cooked potato flesh - invariably just like the clocks that year of nothing in our lives and others changed. However, one of Aulfella’s friends, Old Docherty, actually won the pools and grew beardier, scroogier and unhappier with each occasional visit -never once bringing anything with him. For Irish kids the visitors from Home - and most of them were in the same boat as us, ie a barely afloat dinghy - were always good for a few bob. It was considered good luck to give the kid some silver. Yet this man whom fortune had shone on never once shelled out to us. In fact he spent one whole day complaining that the imminent decimalisation of the currency meant penny for the guy was now  prone to hyper inflation and nothing but a profiteering shameful scam perpetrated on the unknowing  and donors should be handing over 0.471new pence. God knows what he did during bob a job week. Bob a job week was where uniformed kids washed cars, cleaned windows, ran errands - known collectively as odd jobs. They ain’t odd tho are they? Night time Czar is an odd job as is innovation sherpa at Microsoft and eBay curator - here is a Crying Boy print in cracked frame contrasted with a chipped babycham glass tight against the cracked  soda stream  bottle - and they all earn more than a few bob.

Being Catholics Himself and crowd were always a bit self conscious during bonfire night possibly cos of the burning of effigies. Anyway he had All Souls day - Halloween - then to Church all souls - Old Docherty cme  one year and the highlight was his reaction to the  collection plate: a dummy worthy of Pele followed by a Barry John pass or if the row was very empty - he demonstrated real potential in the new sport of Frisby. 

Always happier as player than spectator, Himself enjoyed the privilege of altar serving which often yielded significant coinage. The tariff was clearly signposted -  weddings, baptisms - then the biggest payers:  mourners.  We used to pray for  for a big funeral not the old miser Docherty of course - even tho he had promised Aulfella he’d get his newish telly in the will

Telly was the talk of the summer for the cinder pitch in the park was also the scene of filming the TV show Budgie. This starred Adam Faith who was an actor/ pop star and managed his own career as well as other artists. It’s not easy doing that - only Louis CK really handles himself and look where that’s got him. When the show was aired one local geezer was rechristened as Budgie because of his feathered cut - the Rachel of its time. Until the 90s such references were pretty universal but the market led fragmentation of broadcasting reflected the times of greater social inequality especially in broadcasting. Food banks remain a shock to us children of the 1970s - then we had Adam Faith, Bob Hope but no Charity - too much Charley Pride. Thanks to the proliferation of channels TV has lost its role as cultural glue. Back then Cultural glue was, well, glue - sniffed from a crisp packet. Now football is the cultural glue though it seems far more one way than in the past

Old stadiums are demolished to be replaced by what look like PFI prisons  - do you think real supporters care about their new stadia? If they did you’d hear new songs - we have a craft beer concession in our stand/ we followed carbon neutral building practices/ four figure sums our tickets cost four figure sums.

He  pines for the old Highbury, the Lane , the Den. There used to be alphabetically ordered boards on the side of the pitch with a key to the code supplied in the programme  intended for half time scores - Himself’s crowd always bet upon the initial of which of the neighbours teen sons would be turfed out. In their flared wrangler belt loop they wore their red and white wool scarf knitted by loving aunties (no doubt she’d be sued for copyright by the club now). The offender would be escorted out by a hopefully helmet free copper- if there’d been a pitch invasion - their perp walk taking them past a raucously cheering Northbank to a warholian fifteen minutes - of fame not that is not the wait for VAR. 

As football grew into the monolith it is today other sports were forced into the shadows - after all you can recreate the epic Celtic vs Leeds European Cup Semi -Final the two legged Battle of Britain - see it wasn’t just kids who were obsessed by war tho even the ten year olds knew the actual Battle did not feature Scottish pilots in Mescherschmidts.  You could even recreate speedway in the bombed out church with some soil at the corner and the bike - the Ivan Mauger skiddy turn at corner. But showjumping ?

Its rural and/ or upper class credentials meant it never really caught on in London as a participation sport - how could it? The  horses in the area were  totter or rag and bone man and the coal carthorse.  Undeterred Himself devised a game where he would jump over paving stones which hosted street furniture - lamp posts, beacons - obviously  any failure to clear the slab would deduct faults. In truth this was the  steeplechase a la Alf Tupper in the Victor whose every win would see his thought bubble read “I’ve run him” sparking huge moral panics about comics ruining kids English - 

So as his mount charges towards a Dry stone wall Himself searches for showjumping knowledge that might help - Princess Anne who went on to winning medal in 1976 - only athlete not required to undergo a sex test - typical class privilege; David Broome; Lucinda Prior Palmer - just one person - the only double barrelled name Himself knew was Ian Storey Moore-  who kept winning at  Badminton -now he’s really getting lost...Himself suddenly knew he could be  saved and weirdly his Gordon Banks turned out to be Hughie Greene.

In those days beer was delivered by horse - called dray carts  On Opportunity Knocks that year the Dray King for Thwaites Star brewery had been declared Britain's champion beer drinker. Using the technique he’d seen Tonto use Himself directs the horse towards the stream. It stops to drink and he dismounts and does the full Harvey Smith  - futile but made me feel better - gesture politics they call that now. Himself recreates the Central Park scene from Love Story there is no snow but sweet connemara rain turning the earth into mud…(falling up/ snow angels / eating snow build snowman) 

No horses were harmed in the making of this story...

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.18

AD 96 – Nerva is proclaimed Roman emperor after Domitian is assassinated. 324 – Constantine the Great decisively defeats Licinius in the Battle of Chrysopolis, establishing Constantine's sole control over the Roman Empire. 1066 – Norwegian king Harald Hardrada lands on the beaches of Scarborough and begins his invasion of England. 1180 – Philip Augustus becomes king of France. 1454 – In the Battle of Chojnice, the Polish army is defeated by the Teutonic army during the Thirteen Years' War. 1502 – Christopher Columbus lands at Honduras on his fourth, and final, voyage. 1618 – The twelfth Baktun in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar begins. 1635 – Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II of Austria declares war on France. 1679 – New Hampshire becomes a county of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 1714 – George I, the first Hanoverian king, arrives in Great Britain after becoming king on August 1st. 1739 – The Treaty of Belgrade is signed, ceding Belgrade to the Ottoman Empire. 1759 – Seven Years' War: The British capture Quebec City. 1793 – The first cornerstone of the Capitol building is laid by George Washington. 1809 – The Royal Opera House in London opens. 1810 – First Government Junta in Chile. Though supposed to rule only in the absence of the king, it is in fact the first step towards independence from Spain, and is commemorated as such. 1812 – The 1812 Fire of Moscow dies down after destroying more than three-quarters of the city. Napoleon returns from the Petrovsky Palace to the Moscow Kremlin, spared from the fire. 1837 – Tiffany and Co. (first named Tiffany & Young) is founded by Charles Lewis Tiffany and Teddy Young in New York City. The store is called a "stationery and fancy goods emporium". 1838 – The Anti-Corn Law League is established by Richard Cobden. 1850 – The U.S. Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. 1851 – First publication of The New-York Daily Times, which later becomes The New York Times. 1870 – Old Faithful Geyser is observed and named by Henry D. Washburn during the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition to Yellowstone. 1872 – King Oscar II accedes to the throne of Sweden–Norway. 1873 – Panic of 1873: The U.S. bank Jay Cooke & Company declares bankruptcy, triggering a series of bank failures. 1882 – The Pacific Stock Exchange opens. 1895 – Booker T. Washington delivers the "Atlanta compromise" address. 1898 – Fashoda Incident: Lord Kitchener's ships reach Fashoda, Sudan. 1906 – A typhoon with tsunami kills an estimated 10,000 people in Hong Kong. 1910 – In Amsterdam, 25,000 demonstrate for general suffrage. 1911 – Russian Premier Pyotr Stolypin is shot at the Kiev Opera House. 1914 – The Irish Home Rule Act becomes law, but is delayed until after World War I. 1914 – World War I: South African troops land in German South-West Africa. 1919 – The Netherlands gives women the right to vote. 1919 – Fritz Pollard becomes the first African American to play professional football for a major team, the Akron Pros. 1922 – Hungary is admitted to the League of Nations. 1927 – The Columbia Broadcasting System goes on the air. 1928 – Juan de la Cierva makes the first autogyro crossing of the English Channel. 1931 – The Mukden Incident gives Japan a pretext to invade and occupy Manchuria. 1934 – The USSR is admitted to the League of Nations. 1939 – World War II: Polish government of Ignacy Mościcki flees to Romania. 1939 – Lord Haw-Haw begins transmitting pro-Nazi/anti-Allied propaganda. 1940 – The British liner SS City of Benares is sunk by German submarine U-48; those killed include 77 child refugees. 1943 – World War II: The Jews of Minsk are massacred at Sobibór. 1943 – World War II: Adolf Hitler orders the deportation of Danish Jews. 1944 – World War II: The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Jun'yō Maru, 5,600 killed. 1945 – General Douglas MacArthur moves his command headquarters to Tokyo. 1947 – The United States Air Force becomes an independent branch of the United States Armed Forces. 1947 – The National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency are established in the United States under the National Security Act. 1948 – Operation Polo is terminated after the Indian Army accepts the surrender of the army of Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII, Nizam of Hyderabad. 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith of Maine becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate without completing another senator's term, when she defeats Democratic opponent Adrian Scolten. 1948 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 57 relating to Palestinian question is adopted. 1959 – Vanguard 3 is launched into Earth orbit. 1960 – Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. 1961 – U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash while attempting to negotiate peace in the war-torn Katanga region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 1961 – The NAFC and CCCF merge into CONCACAF. 1962 – Burundi, Jamaica, Rwanda and Trinidad and Tobago are admitted to the United Nations. 1964 – North Vietnamese Army begins infiltration of South Vietnam. 1973 – The Bahamas, East Germany and West Germany are admitted to the United Nations. 1974 – Hurricane Fifi strikes Honduras with 110 mph winds, killing 5,000 people. 1977 – Voyager I takes first photograph of the Earth and the Moon together. 1980 – Soyuz 38 carries two cosmonauts (including one Cuban) to Salyut 6 space station. 1981 – Assemblée Nationale votes to abolish capital punishment in France. 1982 – Christian militia begin killing 600 Palestinians in Lebanon. 1984 – Joe Kittinger completes the first solo balloon crossing of the Atlantic. 1988 – End of pro-democracy uprisings in Myanmar after a bloody military coup by the State Law and Order Restoration Council. Thousands, mostly monks and civilians (primarily students), are killed by the Tatmadaw. 1990 – Liechtenstein becomes a member of the United Nations. 1991 – Yugoslavia begins a naval blockade of seven Adriatic port cities. 1992 – An explosion rocks Giant Mine at the height of a labor dispute, killing nine replacement workers. 1997 – United States media magnate Ted Turner donates US$1 billion to the United Nations. 1997 – Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention is adopted. 2001 – First mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks. 2007 – Pervez Musharraf announces that he will step down as army chief and restore civilian rule to Pakistan, but only after he is re-elected president. 2007 – Buddhist monks join anti-government protesters in Myanmar, starting what some call the Saffron Revolution. 2011 – The 2011 Sikkim earthquake was felt across northeastern India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and southern Tibet. 2012 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 2067 relating to Somalia is adopted. 2014 – Scotland votes against independence from the United Kingdom. 2015 – Two security personnel, 17 worshippers in a mosque, and 13 militants are killed following a Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan attack on a Pakistan Air Force base on the outskirts of Peshawar. 2016 – Seventeen Indian Army security personnel killed in the Indian Administrated Kashmir by anti-government militants.