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sansaorgana · 5 months ago

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— FARE THEE WELL

PAIRING — Ser Gwayne Hightower x fem!Reader

SUMMARY — You're a barmaid who had a fling with a noble knight a few moons ago. Now he comes back for one more night to spend with you before he leaves to join the war.

AUTHOR’S NOTE — It’s based on the idea for a fic by @peachysunrize that I really liked and since I usually write wife!Readers and noble born Readers in this Universe, it felt nice to explore a new trope. I couldn't help myself to make it a bit angsty as well, for which I am sorry... 🙈

WARNINGS — angsty ending, SMUT, bath sex, slight choking

WORD COUNT — 5,420

🔞 THIS FIC IS 18+ 🔞

ENGLISH IS MY SECOND LANGUAGE.

FARE THEE WELL

It was a nice and peaceful afternoon at the Tavern where you worked. The sky was blue and clear with only a few clouds and a slight wind was messing with the reckless strands of your braided hair whenever you went outside with the mugs full of beer and bowls full of food for your customers.

“There are men coming,” your boss told you after walking downstairs. “I saw ‘em from the window. A few knights on the horses that will need water and hay. They have King Aegon’s banners,” he rubbed his hands together. “This war’s good for business,” he hummed to himself.

You only nodded at that and wiped your hands in your dirty apron. The war could be good for business indeed but it also meant lots of work with demanding knights and noblemen although you hoped for some generous tips if only you acted nice enough.

“Make it look presentable, will ya?” Your boss barked at you at the sight of the counter. The crumbs were scattered all over the surface and it was sticky from the beer.

You nodded obediently and cursed under your breath when he turned around. You collected all the crumbs with the side of your hand and threw them away into the bin nearby where you kept your waste before taking it out. Then, you began to clean the counter with the damp cloth.

Busy on taking care of every little sticky spot because your boss tended to be a perfectionist, you forgot about the men coming to the Tavern already. Therefore, when the doors opened loudly, you got startled and jumped in your spot before looking up.

Your eyes widened at the sight of the familiar looking armours. You had known once a man who was wearing armour like that – green and silver with golden ornaments and a symbol of the lighthouse on his chest. You had to blink a few times to snap back to reality.

“It is my favourite Tavern in these parts,” one of the men announced and your heart skipped a beat. Oh, you knew that voice but… Was it possible that it was your mind playing tricks on you?

He took his helmet off and rested it on his hip, holding it with his left hand as he ran his right hand through his auburn hair and you gasped.

Ser Gwayne Hightower. Oh, you knew that man.

It had been a few moons ago when you had met him. He had been staying with a Lord living nearby, discussing the matters such noble men usually discussed. He had been trying to explain it to you on those nights spent together in one of the rooms upstairs but you had never fully grasped it.

What you had understood from his story was that he was the eldest son of Otto Hightower who had been King Viserys’ Lord Hand at that time. He was running Oldtown in his father’s name and sometimes he travelled to different parts of Westeros to meet with the vassals and to make the new ones. You remembered that you had asked him about his wife but he had assured you of having none.

You could feel your cheeks heating up at all the shared memories from all those moons ago. You hadn’t expected to see him again ever in your life.

It was not like you were sharing bed with every man visiting your workplace. It was a Tavern, not a brothel and you were only a barmaid, not a whore. But Ser Gwayne was different. From the moment you had seen him, you had known he was special. Something about him was making you feel the way no other man had ever been able to make you feel. He was worth risking everything.

And to him you had been only another adventure, a girl to warm his bed while he was away from home. At least in the beginning. With time, after many nights spent together on talking and fucking, he had started to grow fond of you. He had admitted that himself. He had been confused by what he was capable of feeling towards a common barmaid. And you had been surprised by that as well.

His blue eyes searched the room and then he spotted you, right behind the counter. He smiled at you and walked up as you straightened your back, with the damp cloth still in your hand.

“Well, well, well, and look who’s here,” he looked you up and down with a smug smile. You furrowed your brow, a little confused by his approach. Not that you expected him to pick you up and spin you round. After all, you were no Lady, you were no Princess. “Cole?” He beckoned over another knight.

His armour was not a Hightower one but it was also grand. He had short black hair and big, brown eyes.

“That’s our new Hand of The King, Ser Criston Cole,” Ser Gwayne introduced you and you panicked at first. You had no idea if it was some jestering or was he serious, so you decided to bow down slightly and Ser Gwayne chuckled at you. “And that is my favourite… barmaid,” he introduced you and you swallowed a lump in your throat.

His arrival was not as sweet as his departure all those moons ago when he had nearly had tears in his eyes while kissing your hand goodbye. He had made you feel like a Lady then.

Now, he made you feel like a common whore. And that had to be what The Hand thought as well when he was nodding his head at you. Ser Cole didn’t spare you any more glance and he walked away to sit by one of the tables with other men.

“We shall stay here for the night,” Ser Gwayne informed you and your boss standing behind you.

“That is an honour, Ser,” your boss nodded. “What are you in need of?”

“We want food, beer, baths and rooms to sleep in,” Ser Gwayne threw a few coins on the counter carelessly. “Our horses require tending as well.”

“I’ll fetch them some water and hay,” you cleared your throat and put the cloth down before fixing the reckless hair strands on your hair and walking out as quickly as possible.

Ser Gwayne’s confused eyes followed you but you didn’t look back since you already had tears in your own. All those moons of remembering a sweet, chivalrous knight who had stolen your heart… All those moons of dreaming about him and missing him… The fantasies and memories had all been based on an illusion. It did not feel nice to realise that.

You entered the stables and saw beautiful, armoured horses. They looked very elegant and you were taking your time with petting and feeding them. You wanted to spend as much time in the stables as possible. It was quiet there and the horses would never hurt you the way certain humans would.

As you were caressing one of the horses gently with your hand and watching him eat with a soft smile upon your face, you heard footsteps behind you. You sighed, assuming it would be your boss or another barmaid he had sent after you. But no, when you turned around, you saw Ser Gwayne himself; his face lit up just slightly from all the candles inside the Tavern next to the stables. The sun had set already while you were with the horses.

“Do forgive my tardiness, good Ser,” you cracked a smile at him.

“Sweet darling, why are you addressing me like that?” He approached you and stood right behind you. His hands touched your arms as he breathed in your scent. You were confused.

“Me, Ser Gwayne? Hasn’t it been you treating me like a common whore? Why are you back here, Ser, by the way? Were the brothels all busy or perhaps is our King Aegon running out of coins in his treasure, so you wanted to go back to a silly barmaid who is giving herself to you willingly, free of charge?” You asked but it was not asked with anger – your voice was filled with hurt as you looked down.

“Aren’t you adorable,”Ser Gwayne only chuckled before leaning in to cup your chin and force your head to turn around, gently. You looked up at him and he joined your lips together in a sweet kiss.

You gave in immediately and you hated yourself for it but there was something so charming and alluring about that man… You couldn’t deny yourself a gentle kiss from his lips.

“My sweet,” he cooed to you, looking intensely at your face with so much adoration that you couldn’t believe that a man as noble as him was capable of it. Such a look on his face should be reserved for the Princesses or pretty Ladies he would win tournaments for. Certainly not for you. “I couldn’t possibly reveal how much you mean to me in front of everybody, could I?” He explained to you. “There has been no day for me without remembering you, sweet (Y/N),” he whispered and your name had never sounded so pretty in anyone’s lips.

Your name was usually shouted by men rushing you to bring them their orders faster or by your angry boss. You had never expected to actually get a taste of what it would be like to be a real Lady. But when Ser Gwayne was whispering your name in such a delicate manner, you suddenly were a noble woman and your heart was at peace.

It brought heat to your cheeks immediately and you looked away since his gaze was getting too intense.

“I have been thinking of you, too, Ser Gwayne,” you confessed. “I have been praying to the Warrior for you and… to the Maiden… for myself.”

“Oh, have you?” Ser Gwayne chuckled and bit on his lower lip. “If I removed your skirts, I would find your knees scratched then?” He teased you.

You were taken away by his straightforward words and you walked away from him to finish your work with the horses but he kept standing there and observing you.

“I am on my way to war. A real one like I have never experienced before,” he confessed. “A real one like I have been trained to take my part in ever since I was a child, wielding a wooden practice sword.”

“It is a dangerous war coming, Ser,” you nodded, focusing on pouring the water for the horses. You didn’t want to look up and meet his gaze because you would burst out in tears if you saw his face now. “People talk that the dragons shall dance in the sky and it will be nothing but blood and fire,” you mumbled out. You didn’t want Ser Gwayne to leave for such an awful, horrible war.

“You do realise then that simple men like me do not stand a chance,” he tried to be playful about it.

“I do not wish to speak of it, Ser,” you interrupted him and shook your head, sniffling your tears back.

“Me neither, sweet (Y/N). I want my one last night of peace… Or at least an illusion of it. And I couldn’t imagine it anywhere else other than here. With you,” he informed you and nodded his head before walking out of the stables.

This time you hurried with the horses and you came back inside the Tavern as fast as possible. Your boss gave you an unpleasant look.

“What has taken you so long?”

“They’re no common horses. They’re fancy,” you rolled your eyes at him, coming up with excuses. “They demand special treatment,” you chuckled.

Your eyes sparkled while letting out that laughter and you spotted Ser Gwayne by one of the tables. Your gaze met with his for a brief moment and your whole body filled with so much warmth and nostalgia that you nearly exploded right there, in the middle of that awful Tavern.

Ser Gwayne would forever remain your what if. What if you had been born a Lady. What if he had been born a peasant. You would still love him, of that you were sure. If he was a miller, a smith or a carpenter, you would marry him in a heartbeat and perhaps your lives would be much simpler than as a Lord and a Lady.

Ser Gwayne beckoned you over with a wave of his hand and you fixed your skirts before approaching him. Some of his men were staring at you as well but you only cared for his blue eyes. Here, in the light of the Tavern, he looked even better than in the stables.

“Are you busy mayhaps, fair maiden?” He winked at you and you were trying very hard not to roll your eyes at the question.

“Depends on what you’re asking of me, kind Ser,” you bowed your head slightly.

“We have a long road ahead of us,” he answered. “I would love a long and relaxing bath.”

From the corner of your eye, you saw some of his men smirking. You just nodded your head at his words.

“I shall ask one of the girls to prepare it for you, Ser,” you teased him, pretending to sound as serious and professional as possible.

“Oh, no, no, my sweetling,” Ser Gwayne reached his hand out to squeeze yours. “You shall go upstairs now and prepare me one,” he told you.

“If you insist, Ser,” you bowed your head and turned around with a soft smile to approach your boss who was busy counting money at the moment.

“Ser Gwayne asked me for a bath,” you informed him and he only nodded without even looking up at you as he dismissed you with a wave of his hand.

You grabbed your skirts in your hands and rushed upstairs where some other girls working at the Tavern were busy with preparing the rooms for the knights.

“Which chambers are Ser Gwayne’s?” You asked and one of them pointed at the ajar door at the other side of the corridor.

“I’ve just finished preparin’ it,” she informed you and you smiled at her.

“Ser Gwayne wants a bath,” you told her. “Go to the kitchen and bring me buckets with warm water.”

She nodded and hurried downstairs as you entered the chambers that were prepared for Ser Gwayne. They were one of the nicest ones that the Tavern had for the guests but you knew it had to be nothing compared to his chambers in Oldtown.

However, walking around those chambers was bringing memories to you as you smiled to yourself. All those moons ago he had been staying in these chambers as well for some nights. And perhaps for him those were just dirty rooms at some common Tavern but to you those were the fanciest chambers you had ever slept in.

Your dreamy pacing around was interrupted by the arrival of a few girls carrying buckets with warm water. They placed it on the floor and went back to their other duties as you approached the bathtub and began filling it. You sat on the edge and took your time with it like you had before with the horses. You wanted to cherish every moment of that sweet gesture you were doing – taking care of Ser Gwayne. Like a wife would.

Well, perhaps noble wives were not known for such activities. But if you were peasants like you had imagined before, you would be the one responsible for preparing his baths every other day. And you would do it gladly, without complaints. You would love to take care of him when he’d be back from work, dirty and tired. But none of that would matter since you would have him for yourself and you would have him every day, falling asleep in his arms and waking up in them.

The door opened slightly with a squeak and you looked up to see Ser Gwayne himself walking inside with a loving smile.

“You look really domestic like that,” he told you before closing the door behind him.

“Do I, good Ser?” You asked with a sad smile as you dipped your fingers in the water to check its temperature.

“Will you help me to undress?” He asked of you and you nodded, although awkwardly.

You were not familiar with all those armour pieces, however you had a small experience in taking them off of him already. You approached him and started to work on his armour piece by piece, painfully slowly. You were glad the water your friends had brought was boiling hot because you didn’t want him to whine about it being too cold later but you also didn’t want to rush this moment.

“Your fingers are so soft,” Ser Gwayne pointed out when you were working on a chest piece. “Softer than my squire’s for sure,” he chuckled.

“I know it is surprising for a commoner to have soft hands, Ser, but I work a lot in the kitchen and the butter tends to soften the skin,” you explained.

“You must look pretty in the kitchen,” Ser Gwayne pointed out and you looked up at him, questioningly. “With flour on your cheeks and nose, busy little bee,” he explained.

“Who would have thought that a noble knight would be into that,” you commented with a smirk.

“There is still a lot you ought to learn about me, (Y/N),” he whispered. “Would you cook or bake something for me if I asked you to?”

“I would bake you bread and those cakes you liked so much the last time you were here,” you looked up to meet his gaze. He blushed a little at the remark about cakes. “What? You are spoiled, kind Ser, that is not a secret. But I would happily spoil you myself, too.”

“Perhaps I should take you with me to Oldtown and hire you in The Hightower. I think you would like it there, my sweet,” he teased but his voice was more serious than you expected. “Perhaps I shall fetch you on my way back home after the war is won.”

“Perhaps,” you shrugged your arms. “My whole family lives here, however, and Oldtown is far away.”

In fact, Oldtown was like a place from the fairytales to you. It was far, far away and you would never really go there, realistically speaking. And it was a place where your Ser lived and in your imagination it had to be a beautiful and lively place… It was out of your reach in many ways.

A short, awkward silence occurred after that as you worked on the last pieces of his armour and there he stood, only in his underwear. You bowed your head at him.

“I believe my work here is done, Ser. I would recommend getting into that bathtub before the water gets cold,” you advised him.

“Oh, my sweet, won’t you stay to help me wash my back?” He grinned at you and you cracked a smile.

You were hoping for such words. So, you did not leave but stayed, with your hands clasped in front of you as you watched him get undressed completely. You tried not to give any reaction to his naked body while you watched him get inside the bathtub and let out a groan of pleasure at the feeling.

“Come here, sweet little thing,” he beckoned you over and you approached the bathtub slowly. “Join me,” he encouraged.

You hesitated but only for a second and you began to undress as he watched. His eyes were looking you up and down and you started with the apron. You wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible because it was the worst piece of your clothing, an awful reminder of your low status.

The blouse was next and then your skirts. Your corset was loosened from the whole day at work so it slipped off very easily. You were left in your underdress only but you untied your braid before taking it off as well and there you stood, naked and with your hair down as your eyes boldly met his. He had a smug smile on his face.

“You’re still as beautiful as I remembered,” Ser Gwayne remarked and reached his hand out to brush your knee with his fingers. “Come to me,” he invited you.

You joined him in the bathtub very slowly, starting with your right foot and then the left one before lowering yourself and sitting on the opposite side of Ser Gwayne.

“Your knees are scratched indeed,” he pointed out and you chuckled.

“They always are, Ser, for I am a barmaid. I spend half of my days on my knees, washing the floors,” you explained.

“Those pretty knees were made for different things, my sweet,” he assured you with a smirk as he moved a little closer to you.

He grabbed your knees softly and then he pulled you closer to him as you yelped and some of the water splashed out on the floor. You giggled and threw your hands around him to clasp them behind his neck as your faces were so close now that your noses brushed.

“And what have you been up to, kind Ser? Have you gotten married? Fathered a son?” You teased and he rolled his eyes.

“All my thoughts have been occupied by a pretty barmaid,” he confessed and caressed your thighs while you hummed to yourself.

“Oh, have they? And who is she? Is she prettier than me? Is she lovelier than me?” You rubbed your nose with his as you asked, playfully.

“She is exactly as pretty as you. Exactly as lovely as you and she even has your name,” Ser Gwayne answered before stealing a kiss from your lips.

The kiss started nearly innocently but it quickly turned into a more passionate one. It didn’t want to end and you turned out to be gasping into each other’s mouths as your hands tugged onto his hair and his fingers squeezed the soft flesh of your hips, pulling them as close to his body as possible.

“I’ve missed you,” he breathed out and moved his hands up to cup your breasts. “I’ve missed all of you. Your body, your voice, your smile, your cunt,” he confessed and his obscene words made your cheeks heat up.

And not only your cheeks. Your whole body was on fire now. To have him so close and to feel his hands on your skin was enough to make you feel dizzy. You let go of his hair and you placed your hands on his chest to push him gently. Ser Gwayne leaned back and you sat astride him, making sure that his hardening cock was brushing your soft thighs.

“My cunt’s been missing you, too,” you whispered before joining your lips together once more.

You kissed him sloppily, with your tongue and teeth clashing. One of your hands was placed upon his chest for balance and the other you moved down to grab his cock. He let out a moan into your mouth when you started to pump his length. You could feel it growing harder and harder.

Ser Gwayne kept his hands on your back but now he let them run freely all the way down as he cupped your ass and squeezed the soft flesh. His fingers wandered all the way down and brushed your folds, teasing your entrance in a way that was making your pussy throb in anticipation already.

“Have you taken another cock since our last time?” Ser Gwayne asked you and you sincerely shook your head. “Aw, my sweetling, you must be so eager,” he teased.

“And what about you, Ser? Have you been good?” You smirked at him.

You knew already that in the intimate moments the power difference between you two due to your birth status did not matter anymore. In fact, Ser Gwayne liked it when you challenged him.

“There is a brothel in Oldtown I find very enjoyable,” he confessed and bucked his hips slightly when you picked up the pace of your hand wrapped around his cock. “But none of these women could give me what my sweet little barmaid had given to me,” he added.

“Your sweet little barmaid would not be as special as you claim her to be if any common whore would give you what only she can give you, Ser,” you raised an eyebrow at him.

“I even chose the ones who looked like you – who reminded me of you – but they were doing nothing to me,” he breathed out and you leaned in, pressing your forehead to his.

“Aw, you must be so eager,” you teased him with his own words and a smirk as you guided his cock to your cunt.

You both gasped in unison at the feeling you had been missing for so long. His cock twitched inside of your wet, warm pussy that welcomed him with spazmatic throbs. You threw your head back and dug your fingernails into his shoulders, savouring the feeling of fullness.

“Fuck, my sweetling, aren’t you perfect,” Ser Gwayne mumbled out and you looked down at his face through your lashes. Your eyes were hazy from lust and the look you gave him had to be as sultry as if you were one of the whores who had only been pretending to be you in those past few moons.

Keeping your intense gaze on him, you began to move your hips up and down until you found your steady pace and continued to bounce on his cock as the water splashed. Ser Gwayne helped you to ride him with his hands on your hips but he quickly got distracted with your breasts that were right in front of his face. He moved his hands up to cup and squeeze them while you hissed at the feeling.

Feeling confident in your pace and rhythm, you let go of his shoulders and moved your hands to his neck. You looked into his eyes, searching for the confirmation and he nodded at you slightly, so you squeezed your hands a bit. He had taught you all those moons ago how such a simple action would increase the pleasure. You watched with satisfaction as his eyelids fluttered before his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he let out a deep groan.

Your back arched as if you were a cat when you lowered yourself onto his body to feel more of him and to allow his cock reach deeper inside of you, brushing your sweet spot with each thrust. Your breaths were nothing but gasps now, accompanied with soft moans coming out of your parted lips. Riding him in that bathtub, with your hands around his throat and his pretty, flushed face right in front of yours, suddenly nothing else mattered – this Tavern did not, these chambers did not either and certainly all his titles mattered the least. This life and the world were so complicated sometimes but at the end of the day all that mattered was this – two people being close with each other, intimate, sharing pleasure.

“Gods,” you let out a shaky whisper when you felt a knot forming in your abdomen. Your sweet release was close after all those moons of missing him with every fibre of your being.

“Let go for me, my sweetling,” Ser Gwayne encouraged you, his voice was raspy from your choking as he forced his hazy eyes to open and watch you coming undone for him with a loud moan.

You threw your head back and kept riding him while your cunt clenched around his cock and your hands squeezed his throat even tighter. That sensation and the sight of your face was enough to make him reach his high, too. He spilled himself inside of you and your cunt milked him eagerly, taking in every single drop.

The movements of your hips slowed down gradually and Ser Gwayne’s cock softened inside of you but you had no strength to move. You laid down on his chest and tried to catch your breath, still shaking slightly. He wrapped his strong arms around you and caressed your back, letting his rough fingertips wander up and down your spine.

“The water’s getting cold, my sweet,” he pointed out after a while.

You raised your chin up to meet his gaze with a delicate smile.

“You are so spoiled, Ser,” you remarked. “I believe you have never taken a cold bath.”

He winced at that and you chuckled before placing a kiss on his throat, where your fingers had been pressing not so long ago. After that, you moved up and left the bathtub although your legs remained pretty shaky.

You leaned down to pick up your underdress but Ser Gwayne stopped you.

“Don’t,” he said, getting out of the bathtub himself. “You shall stay here for the night. I am not yet done with you.”

It was early morning and you were feeding the horses in the stables. The sun was barely up but the knights had to come back to their camp before leaving with the rest of the men and continuing their march. You had barely had any sleep on the previous night but you did not complain about it.

“I knew I would find you here,” Ser Gwayne walked inside when you were caressing one of the stallions. “I wanted to give you a proper goodbye,” he walked up to you.

You looked up at his face and you smiled to yourself. He looked pretty tired himself and you knew the reason behind that. But the exhaustion was not making him any less handsome.

“Fare thee well, my kind Ser,” you turned around to squeeze his hands that he had reached out for you.

“Can you give me your blessing before I leave?” He asked and there was surprisingly no teasing in his voice.

“I’m no Princess nor a Lady,” you looked down slightly as your cheeks heated up.

“I do not care. I will not be at peace without your blessing, my sweet,” he insisted.

“I do not have a handkerchief to give you, Ser,” you looked up again as you confessed and stood on your tiptoes to press a kiss to his forehead. “That is all I can offer.”

“That is more than enough,” Ser Gwayne smiled sadly at you. He let go of your hands and reached to his chest. He took off a necklace that he was wearing – a small ring on a chain. You had asked about it all those moons ago and he had confessed then that it had belonged to his Lady Mother once. “I want you to have it,” he gave it to you and you froze.

“I… I cannot accept it, Ser,” your eyes widened.

“You must for I insist,” he closed your hands around it and squeezed them. “You shall give it back to me when I visit you after the war,” he bit on his lower lip as he looked at your face in anticipation, curious of your reaction.

“That is… The most generous,” your eyes filled with tears. “I shall keep it safe for you, Ser,” you promised.

He nodded at that and watched you put the necklace around your neck before he took your hand and placed a soft kiss upon it as if it was a hand of a Princess or a Lady and not a common barmaid.

“Farewell, my sweetling,” he whispered.

“Farewell, Ser Gwayne,” you whispered back.

You stared into each other’s eyes for a while and then he nodded at you again and moved away at the sound of other men walking inside the stables.

You watched them mount their horses but your eyes were truly only on him and he kept watching you from the corner of his eye, too. You walked outside to observe them as they rode away and Ser Gwayne turned around one last time before disappearing down the road. You squeezed the ring on the necklace in your hand and your heart moved all the way up to your throat, forming a lump that was hard to swallow.

A few years later you would give the necklace to your son – alongside with the tale of his brave and noble father from Oldtown.

MASTERLIST

#gwayne hightower x reader #lilysfiction

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reasonsforhope · 11 months ago

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The new 'compost obligatoire' rules came into force on 1 January 2024. Here's what they entail.

As of 1 January 2024, organic waste recycling is mandatory in France under new 'compost obligatoire' rules.

With support from the government’s Green Fund, municipalities must provide residents with ways to sort bio-waste, which includes food scraps, vegetable peels, expired food and garden waste.

Households and businesses are required to dispose of organic matter either in a dedicated small bin for home collection or at a municipal collection point. Previously, only those who generated over five tonnes of organic waste per year were required to separate it.

The waste will then be turned into biogas or compost to replace chemical fertilisers. Alternatively, it can be composted at home.

The obligation is currently on local authorities to provide an easy means for households to compost or separate organic waste.

While facilities are rolled out, there will not be fines imposed for non-compliance. It is yet to be seen whether stricter rules will be imposed in future.

One-third of household waste is bio-waste

Organic waste from food and gardens accounts for almost one-third of household waste. When it is mixed with other rubbish, it typically ends up in landfills or incinerators, where it produces heat-trapping greenhouse gases like methane and CO2.

Food waste is responsible for about 16 per cent of the total emissions from the EU food system, according to the European Commission. Globally, food loss and waste generates around 8 per cent of all human-caused emissions annually, the UN says.

It can also contaminate packaging destined for recycling like paper, plastic and glass.

In 2018, only 34 per cent of the EU’s total bio-waste was collected, leaving 40 million tonnes of potential soil nutrients to be discarded, according to NGO Zero Waste Europe.

In France, an estimated 82 kg of compostable waste per person is thrown away each year.

Is bio-waste separation mandatory in other European countries?

Under the EU’s Waste Framework Directive, bio-waste collection is being encouraged this year, but it stops short of setting mandatory targets.

In many European countries, organic waste separation has already been implemented at the municipal level.

Milan in Italy has been running a residential food waste collection programme since 2014. Households were given dedicated bins and compostable bags to kick off the scheme.

Elsewhere, taxes or bans on incinerating bio-waste have encouraged similar schemes, with separate bins and home composting widespread in Austria, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The UK announced plans to roll out separate food waste collection in 2023. It remains voluntary for households in England, but is more strictly enforced in Wales and for business owners.

How to sort your bio-waste

Ideally, all waste - including organic matter - should be kept to a minimum.

This can be achieved through careful meal planning. Consuming, freezing or preserving food before it expires along with using every part of an ingredient also help to reduce waste. Some food waste can even be repurposed into animal feed.

Any food waste that cannot be saved or repurposed should be either composted or separated for collection. This includes uneaten food scraps, baked goods, dairy products, eggshells, fruit and vegetables and their peels, mouldy food, pet food, raw and cooked meat and fish, bones, tea and coffee grounds.

Liquids, non-food products and packaging should not be placed in bio-waste bins.

-via EuroNews.Green, January 2, 2024

#france #composting #eu #european union #organic waste #biofuels #recycling #sustainability #food #food waste #compost #carbon dioxide #carbon emissions #sustainable living #good news #hope

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zuffer-weird-girl · 2 years ago

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Babe I hope your doing well can I request Kai and Angel in bed with their clothes all over the floor after doing their sexy things Angel wakes up and Angel gets hungry so thinking Kai lives alone she gets his iconic jacket with just her bra and underwear and goes to the kitchen to make breakfast as she’s making breakfast chrono comes to make coffee and he’s surprised about a random female in the yakuza house as both of them are asking each other questions Kai walks in still sleepy grabs Angel by her waste and pulls her towards him as he kisses her cheek until he notices chrono is there too

I don't know if reader is just obvious or just ignored all the bodyguards but oh well is funny-

The morning came and you could only groan at the feeling of the sunshine blinding lights hitted you directly on your eyesight.

Keeping your complain at bay you sat up carefully while rubbing your face a bit... exhaustion still clearly present as a certain pain on your legs made its appearance.

When you were about to question why you were with that pain you froze at the bed shifting the slightest bit... turning your head to your side you watched the man who made love to you last night completely out like a light despite the time of the morning.

His usual covered lips were now in display, slightly parted as now at then some very quiet snore escaped him... a mess of a brown hair all around the pillow and his golden eyes now closed in total peace on his slumber...

You smiled and carefully pulled the covers up to his naked shoulders... fully knowing that asides from a pair of black boxers he wore nothing. A sight you could admire all day if it wasn't for the sudden rumble of your stomach.

Brushing his bangs away a bit to kiss his forehead, a action it would prompted your boyfriend to scowl if he was awake, you carefully slipped out of bed... hoping and praying that he wouldn't wake up just yet since you wanted him to rest a bit longer.

Looking at all the clothes on the floor you mentally cringed at only imagining Kai's reaction to it as you started to collect to put all of them on the wash bin that was on his bathroom.

While doing that you spotted his iconic green purple feathered jacket, the past item you were suppose to put to wash later, as you holded at arm's length only to snort at your boyfriend's awfully choice of clothing.... he usually wore things so pretty but this jacket of his was a true exception.

Despite your thoughts, you couldn't help but to bring the jacket close to you.. inhaling the natural scent of your partner made you smile instantly.

Another rumble of your stomach interrupted once again your actions and you didn't even think before putting the jacket on and leaving the bedroom.

It was tough to discover where the hell was a kitchen on that house... it was so big it was quite was hard to believe that Kai lived alone on this place.

"Finally..." You breathed in relief at finding the kitchen and you immediately get to work to make one of your favorite things to eat for breakfast.

While you were about to start, after finally a managing to finding the ingredients, you yelped at the sound of something breaking behind you and you almost screamed at the sigh of a total white haired stranger staring at you with wide Grey eyes.

"Who the fuck are you?!" The male almost screamed before he gasped and looked away from you when you turned over to him, blushing crimson red.

... oh shit you were only wearing Kai's jacket and your underwear...

You quickly zipped the jacket to hide your body with a blush as well.

"Who am I?! Who are you?! I'm calling the cops!" You exclaimed as the male covered his eyes the best he could with his hands.

"Cops? You are inside a yakuza house, practically trespassing and basically almost naked and your first thought is calling the cops on someone that lives here?!"

"Wait, you live here?" You asked in astonished while the guy finally could look at you but still with red cheeks.

"I do, how did you even get in without the security spotting you and.... where the fuck did you got that?" He pointed at the jacket you were wearing.

"I... oh come on don't judge a woman for stealing her boyfriend's clothes!" You huffed and the guy only widened his eyes more.

"Boyfriend?"

"Yeah! I thought he lived alone here! I didn't even thought he would have a roommate considering how he is!"

"Roommate...? Wait, hold on, so you're telling me that you got in without a trouble because you-" before he could finish his question a yawn interrupted him and both of you were turning heads at the man who just casually walked in to stand by your side to give your cheek a kiss like there wasn't anyone else in the room.

He merely blinked the sleep out of his eyes before boticing what you were wearing before scoffing, a dust oubj covering his pale face as he nuzzle his nose on the top of your hair.

"Thief... what are you even doing out of bed..?" He mumbled as his hands lowered a bit before groaning when you pushed them away "What?"

"Kai.." You almost growled too while pointing with your eyes at the astonished white haired dude that looked like he was about to faint.

When Chisaki finally looked up his sleepy golden eyes widened and he immediately pulled you to stay behind him.

"GET OUT OF HERE NOW! AVERT YOUR EYES THIS INSTANT YOU SCUMBAG!"

" WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING OVERHAUL?!"

"I thought that when you told me and the old man you were dating it was just bluff for him to get off your back in my defense." The man, now you knew as Kurono, mumbled as Kai glared daggers at him while you couldn't help but snort.

"I should take your eyes out for looking at her." He growled, a dark area manifesting around him and Chrono visibly flinched before his eyes widened at you placing a gently hand on Chisaki's shoulder.

"Now it wasn't his fault, you didn't told me you lived with other people." He watched in amusement that instead of getting yourself overhauled by your actions and words, you only received a click of the young man's tongue as he crossed his arms over his chest with the tip of his ears burning red.

"... I already like you. Kurono Hari." He bowed in respect as you laughed while your boyfriend only glared even more at his subordinate.

#overhaul x reader #chisaki kai x reader #overhaul #chisaki kai #bnha villains x reader #bnha villains #zuffer writings

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lpmurphy · 5 months ago

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Spring in Tchakova Park

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Summary: Green was the color of the grass where he used to walk in Tchakova Park.

In which John meets a stranger in the park, Violet learns of the care and keeping of Spartans, and Cortana offers dating advice. (Complete 5/7/24)

Chapter Summary: Violet's dating history is exposed to the team. John, Violet and the team arrive at the Demeter Project, and John has a realization.

Chapter Twenty Eight: Sunshine

The two nights leading up to their shared mission were, if he was putting it lightly, chaotic. Violet filled each moment they were home with last minute planning and tasks. John had been exposed to the full scope of Violet’s disorganization that he had only seen glimpses of as they prepared for their trip into the mountains with her family. With the distraction of the inoperable system, she had become far more scattered than he knew her to be. Storage bins that contained a staggering amount of clothing were emptied onto their bed after returning home from work on Monday night. The better part of the evening was spent with her digging through the piles in search of her field clothing that she stuffed haphazardly into her duffle bag. He trailed behind her all night, silently cleaning up the mess she left in her wake as she tore through the apartment like a windstorm. He had been grateful when she left for a third time to run to the retail center for another item she had forgotten to purchase and left him to fold and tuck away the clothing that had accumulated on the bed in a silent house.

For their final night at home, Violet decided to invite the team over for one last dinner before they departed Reach for the foreseeable future. She had grocery shopped Sunday before returning to work and grumbled all Monday evening about food waste as she cooked dinner for the two of them, barely making a dent in the full fridge. He had received a message the next morning from Violet announcing that she needed help clearing out the fridge and requesting that the team join them at the apartment. Much to his annoyance, he found that she had put them all into a group thread together that she, Riz, and Kai communicated solely on for the remainder of the day as his pad buzzed every few minutes when Kai changed the name of the group to fit her current liking and Riz fed Violet the latest base gossip she had overheard.

He took Sadie to her parents’ home once they arrived home that evening and left Violet to finish her last minute packing before the team arrived. Jane sent him home with even more food that he had attempted to politely decline until she met him with that hard stare that Violet had replicated when he came back through the door with arms full of dishes. Kai, Riz, and Vannak were all perched in their usual places when he came home like they were integral to the structure of the apartment when he returned home and leaned down to kiss Violet’s cheek apologetically as she took the dishes from him with a sigh. Kai and Vannak were both vocal in their disapproval of Sadie’s absence throughout the evening as they all picked at the contents of the refrigerator that Violet had prepared and set out on the island. It hadn’t taken long for the four Spartans to make quick work of the odds and ends, leaving a collection of empty dishes on the island as they sat around and talked. John stood in the kitchen with Vannak, both collecting dishes and trash as the three women sat huddled on the sofa. Riz announced after dinner that she and Violet had been on kitchen duty the last time they had all gathered and both women were all too happy to send their men back into the kitchen with pleased smiles. They knew better than to argue.

“I have found four local carpenters that can reinforce furniture. Would you like me to send their information over to Doctor Harris’ pad?”

John looked over to where Violet sat between Riz and Kai on the sofa, the frame groaning under each shift of their weight. His team had spent nearly every other night since their return from the mountains in their apartment and Violet’s furniture had begun to protest each time he or a member of his team lowered themselves into it. He watched Violet tilt her head back to laugh at something Kai said. The blonde lowered herself off of the sofa as it groaned again to lay on the living room floor and kick her feet up into Violet’s lap.

“Get quotes from each. Send them over to mine once you have them.”

“You got it, Chief.”

Violet rose from the sofa as Riz and Kai turned their conversation to one another and crossed the living room to where he stood at the island. John lowered his cheek to her as she popped up onto her toes. Soft lips brushed against his jaw, her hand on his arm as he wrapped his own around her waist. His fingers brushed against the soft fabric of her sweater and she rested her head on his arm, “Want to swap out for a bit?”

He pressed his lips to her head in response, “I’m fine. Go sit.”

“You sure? I feel bad; we’ve only been home from vacation for a few days and we’ve done nothing but get ready for the next one. You’re spoiling me with all this vacation time, I might start expecting it.”

He rolled his eyes at the tired joke she had been using since she received the news of their now shared assignment. “It’s not a vacation, Goose,” he sighed. “It’s a humanitarian mission.”

“It’s a fucking babysitting job is what it is,” Vannak grumbled as he passed by her to settle beside Riz on the sofa.

Violet smirked at his crotchety tone while John watched as he sat and threw his arm over the back of the sofa behind Riz. Since their discovery in the words, the two had been far less secretive. Still quite private, but John found that the gazes they had held from across the room since they were teenagers had given away to gentle touches when they thought no one was looking. He always pretended not to notice.

Violet followed him back to the living room to sit beside their friends again. “You don’t want to hang out with me? That hurts my feelings, Vannak. I thought we were friends. I’m sad now.”

“Fuck off, Harris.”

“Ouch,” she pressed a hand to her chest in mock offense. “And you kiss Riz with that mouth? Shame on you.”

Riz laughed from beside her as Vannak rolled her eyes and tucked her legs under herself, “So, tell us about this installation of yours?”

John watched Violet toss the blanket off of her lap and stand up to cross to the bookshelves as she excitedly explained the mission of the project he knew she held so dearly. She plucked a frame from the shelf below where their picture sat and turned to hold it out to Kai and Riz. He had seen the picture before; Violet standing with the Demeter team in front of one of the greenhouses, all smiling proudly with arms around one another. It was framed in her mother’s home as well. She tapped on the face of each of her companions as she spoke.

“There were nine of us in total before I left,” she explained, smiling as she looked over the faces of her team, “The research team was made up of myself, Meredith, and Devrin. Saul is our ionic physicist, Jin is a biochemist and the smartest woman I’ve ever met. Leif and Bastian are our horticulturists, and Derek and Corey are the project engineers. They’re all exceptional.”

Kai pointed beyond her to the shelves, her augmented vision honed in on another frame, “Who’s the Ranger?”

John knew exactly what picture Kai referenced. He had noticed it himself shortly after he started spending time in her apartment; Violet standing shoulder to shoulder with a dark haired Ranger, his arm around her as they laughed. It had been an innocent enough image tucked between pictures of Violet with other friends that he hadn’t thought anything of it. He picked up Vannak’s plate off the island and set it into the sink with a smirk as Violet started to blush.

“Oh that? He’s just an old friend. He was stationed at the same base.”

John couldn’t help the chuckle that barked out of him, “Oh, ‘an old friend’? That’s what we’re calling him now?”

She sighed as she set the frame back down on the shelf, cheeks still red as she returned to her spot on the sofa, “Oh my god, stop. We’ve been over this.”

Riz and Kai looked to him quizzically as he continued to collect dishes. “They dated,” he explained, both redhead and blonde nodding in acknowledgement.

Riz looked back to Violet, “I thought Dev was a scientist?”

“He is…Greg is a Ranger, though.”

“Violet Harris, you little harlot,” Kai laughed. She raised a foot to gently kick Violet’s knee in jest from where she lay on her back on the living room floor, turning her head to look up at Violet, “Two exes at the same base?”

Violet scoffed and kicked Kai’s knee in return, her touch doing nothing to move the larger woman. Her cheeks remained red, and John smirked as she sputtered and pointed across the living room to where he stood. “John fucked a POW. Why don’t we talk more about that? Why is my dating history suddenly under scrutiny?”

Vannak, Kai and Riz all let out a collective groan at the statement. “Old news, Harris,” Riz said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “We all know about that. This is far more interesting. Tell us; many broken hearts did you leave in your wake? How many men are there?”

Violet rubbed her face with a groan and shot him a dirty look over her shoulder, “He’s making it sound far more exciting of a story than it is; we were close friends, we both were interested but never acted on it until Dev and I broke up. We dated for a few months before I left for Reach. We both knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere. We were just enjoying one another’s company. We’re friends. That’s all.”

“I remember there being more to the story than just that.” Cortana smirked.

John rolled his eyes at the single detail she had chosen to omit. Violet had shared the story with him weeks ago, claiming full honesty in one another’s lives after the night he left. She had told him of her ‘old friend’ one night as she nervously shared each detail. He found it comically hypocritical that his botanist now withheld information as she spoke of it to them. He leaned his elbows against the island, “Is that why you made a marriage pact, then?”

“John,” she sighed. Four pairs of eyes fixed upon her as she dropped her head into her hands.

“A what?” Kai laughed.

Violet lifted her head and held her hands out in defeat, flashing a tight, embarrassed smile, “I had just turned thirty, I was freaking about about getting older, he’s four years older than me, we both want kids. We agreed that if we both were still single when I turned thirty two that we would get married. Obviously, we aren’t, because look at where you are all currently sitting. I love John very much. Everyone shut up and drop it.”

John relented at the tight-smiled glare he caught from across the room, recognizing impending trouble for himself when he could see it. Ignoring Riz’s warning taps on his knee, Vannak continued to chuckle, “Are you going to kick his ass too, Chief?”

“No one is kicking anyone’s ass,” Violet groaned, pressing her hands to her flushed cheeks. “We’re going to go, we’re going to do what we need to do, and everyone is going to be cool about it. Got it?”

Kai raised her hand from where she laid on the floor, “What about Dev? Am I allowed to kick his ass?”

Biting back his permission to use Johal for target practice if Kai so desired, John looked to Violet for her reply. Violet sighed and turned back to the woman beside her.

“I said… Do not… You-,” she stopped and sighed again, clapping her hands together and bringing them to her chin. She pondered for a moment before nodding in approval, “That’s fine. You can kick his ass. But just him, no one else, Kai. And only with good reason. Understood?”

Kai laughed and nodded, “You never let us have any fun, Harris.”

Riz shook her head and glanced over at the late evening hour on the chrono, announcing that it was time for the three to return to the base. The three rose in a chorus of chatter as Violet hugged both women goodbye, ignoring Vannak’s begrudging protests as she wrapped her arms around him in a tight squeeze. John and Riz exchanged a sympathetic look with one another at the realization that they were stuck playing audience to their antics until the repairs were completed. Something about the sight of them all in the apartment together, Violet hugging and laughing with his sisters and bantering with his brother, felt right to him. As if it should have always been that way. John had only known a few places he had considered home in his lifetime, yet all of them had lacked the feeling he felt now as he stood in their kitchen and watched her wish their family a goodnight in the home she gave him. It was the same feeling he had felt every time he sat under the Harris’ backyard lights. The same feeling he had felt watching them all swim in that cold lake. The same feeling he had felt as they laid around the dying fire beside the oak listening to them swap stories while Violet slept on his chest. It was a wholeness that filled him up; a warm heaviness that crawled over him like he was standing in the sun. He hoped it would never leave.

The lock rolled in the tumbler as Violet turned from the door, crossed the apartment to the bedroom door, and disappeared inside. “I’m going to change and then I’ll come help you finish up,” she called behind her.

“Already done,” he called back. He left the kitchen and crossed to the balcony windows. The park laid below him, illuminated in the dusky glow of the lamp posts. His eyes fell to the pricks of light on the water to find the yellow glow of where he stood.

“Okay, can you come help me double check my bag then? I feel like I forgot something.”

John glanced over to where she had returned to the doorway. His response caught in his throat as he realized that she had not been dressed in the pullover and sweatpants she had worn the night before to be. He raked his eyes over the garment she wore instead; all sheer black lace that did little to cover her. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders, Violet smirking up at him from where she leaned against the doorframe. John forgot what he had been doing, nor could he remember what they had been discussing as his eyes rolled over her again and he matched the playful look on her face.

“What’s this?”

“Oh, this? I picked it up one of the times I went out last night. I felt bad for being such a pain this week. And, you were clear that we’re not allowed to be ‘inappropriate’ with one another while we’re away,” she smiled. John recalled the conversation regarding the profession courtesies to be expected on this joint deployment they engaged in night before, “So, I figured since it’s our last night at home, and we don’t have a dog to share a bed with, we might as well get our fill of each other.”

“Might as well.”

“But,” she sighed the word out in a playful singsong. “You did just make me look like a total skank in front of our friends.”

She clicked her tongue and shrugged. Pushing herself off of the wall, she turned her back to him to reveal how deliciously little the garment covered as she began to push the bedroom door shut behind her, “So, I think I’m going to change and go to bed instead. Goodnight!”

John crossed the room in a matter of steps to press his hand against the door as she giggled from behind it. Violet met him with a smirk as he started to remove his shirt.

“On the bed, Goose.”

She smiled that Violet smile, her eyes burning as she looked up at him. She stepped back against the bed and perched herself on the edge of it to watch as he began to work off his pants.

“That’s naked enough for me to know it’s time to abide by Rule #1,” Cortana sighed. “Goodnight, Chief.”

---

John couldn’t think of a place less fitting for Violet as he looked over the base.

“Cortana?”

Cortana stood beside him in the cockpit as the ship lowered onto the tarmac with a lurch, blue light glowing on the walls around him as she briefed him.

“Forward Operating Base Nomad,” Cortana chirped. “Located 30 klicks east of a small civilian settlement. The locals are of Cambodian descent and speak primarily Khmer. Several insurgent cells populate the area. The primary function of the base had been to engage with the local population to gather intelligence, build relationships, and conduct civil-military operations. The Ranger team assigned to the base has worked with the locals to form and train a small militia, along with conducting operations out of the base.”

“And it houses a badass scientific project,” Violet called. John turned over his shoulder to her. Violet braided her still shower-damp hair as she approached the cockpit. “Can’t forget about that, Cortana.”

She had changed into cargo pants and a thin long sleeve embellished with the project’s insignia since emerging from cryosleep. She had spent the better part of the past half hour in the showers, her and Vannak tossing back insults as she still retched and gagged on the taste of the suppressant that had filled her lungs over the past three weeks of travel. Cortana had been there when Violet woke to remind her to sit up and cough, speaking gently to Violet as she turned and vomited directly onto the floor, and continued to spit up bile and the mucus-like suppressant for several minutes after.

She was still slightly green as she stepped into the cockpit to stand beside him and press a kiss to his jaw. John noticed the length of tawny brown fabric she wore loosely wrapped around her neck. She had fished it out of a box in her closet while packing at the apartment and he didn’t ask how a civilian contractor had ended up with a tactical scarf that looked like it had made it through several missions. He hadn’t been sure he wanted the answer as he watched the determined way she had stuffed it into her rucksack.

“That as well, Doctor Harris,” Cortana agreed with a smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better. Thank you, Cortana. Again, I’m so sorry for throwing up on you.”

“Well, being that you vomited through me, as it would be impossible for you to vomit on me, I assume all is forgiven.”

Violet laughed that musical laugh and nodded before turning green eyes up to John, “One last kiss before the helmet goes on and I’m not allowed to touch you? I brushed my teeth twice, I promise.”

John chuckled and lowered his lips to hers, Violet taking his face in her hands. Cortana excused herself in a flurry of blue light to leave them alone. John was grateful for the moment together, her lips on his and his hand on her back. She released his face with a final peck on the cheek and smiled at him before turning out of the cockpit.

“Come on,” she called. “Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”

A team was waiting on the tarmac as they arrived, the engines kicking up swirls of dust as they stepped off into the heat. Violet blocked the bright sunlight that flooded into the cargo bay with a raised hand as the ramp dropped. John had seen dozens of FOBs just like the one that laid beyond the tarmac; command center surrounded by several different semi-permanent structures, a small field hospital, and CHU housing. A perimeter wall surrounded the base, fortified with a handful of guard towers, concertina wire, and surveillance equipment to monitor and defend against potential threats. The small base sat in the foreground of jagged mountains dotted with skeletal trees. He couldn’t picture Violet in a place with such little green. Much less being there for four years.

Three greenhouses sat on the far side of the base beside a low building. They were much less grandiose versions of the ones Violet occupied back at FLEETCOM, smaller and dingier with panes covered in the dust that seemed to cling to everything. Each bore the same insignia on the polycarbonate roofs that Violet wore on the pocket of her shirt; an overflowing cornucopia ringed with laurel leaves. He’d seen the same insignia on a few of the pullovers she would slip into after their evening runs; The Demeter Project.

He watched Violet descend the ramp as it touched down on the tarmac, pulling the scarf over her mouth and nose as she stepped down into the still swirling grime. John found that their welcome committee didn’t consist of just the team sent out to retrieve supplies as his heavy footsteps thudded against the ramp. He recognized the Ranger whose picture sat in their apartment at the base of the ramp, the name of his uniform confirming his identity to John. He stood straight, his hands clasped behind his back as Violet continued down the ramp and pulled the scarf over her head. The thick deployment beard did nothing to hide the smile that the dark haired man tried to suppress at the sight of Violet.

“Captain Mullins,” Violet called over the quieting engines, continuing down the ramp to him.

“Welcome back, Doctor Harris. Wonderful to see you, as always,” he nodded. John stayed behind her, watching as the man’s eyes darted to him behind the lenses of his sunglasses. “Master Chief. Welcome to Nomad.”

Violet smiled, her hand still raised as she spoke, “They still have you at this shithole?”

“Some of us call this shithole home, Doctor. You did not too long ago. Not all of us get to waltz off to a corner office.”

She laughed that musical laugh as she stepped in front of him on the tarmac, and the man’s smile only grew. John’s jaw tightened as Mullins reached a hand to Violet’s face and tugged at the scarf, adjusting it so that it blocked the sun from her eyes.

“It’s hardly a corner office,” she laughed. “More of a supply closet with some leg room.”

“Just a friendly reminder that breaking his wrist would most likely result in a court-martial. Do with that information what you will, Chief.”

“Noted.”

“Sounds like leaving wasn’t as much of an adventure as you hoped for, then.”

“It was, actually,” Violet responded, her nose crinkling slightly. “In other ways. I’ll fill you in later when we get some free time.”

“I’d like that.”

“I’m sure he would,” Cortana grumbled, “On second thought, I could make revisions to reports to make any injuries seem like a terrible accident. Just give me the word, Chief. I’m ready when you are.”

John ignored Cortana’s tight tone and watched as Violet pulled Mullins in for a hug. It was a friendly gesture, the same way he had seen her force hugs upon Vannak. But Mullins leaned into her in the same way John would when Violet would snake her arms around him. Mullins laughed as he pulled Violet to him.

“It’s nice to see you, Greg,” she smiled.

“Hey, Sunshine,” John stiffened even further. “Good to have you home.”

“Excuse me? Her name is Goose. Seriously, Chief. On your signal.”

“Quiet.”

The man released Violet from the bear hug he had wrapped her into and readjusted the shifted scarf with a smile of his own. “Your team set your room back up at the Garden Center- no one’s been in there since you left. You’re welcome to stay there, but I heard rumors that Saul and Leif may have turned it into a gaming room so you may have to evict a few squatters.”

She rolled her eyes with an amused sigh, “Still acting like a couple of fifteen year olds?”

“You thought they would magically grow up in the eight months you’ve been gone?”

She scoffed, still shaking her head as Mullins turned to address John again. “I apologize, Master Chief, but we are short on housing. We are happy to see what temporary accommodations we can make for your team until we are able to find something more long-term.”

“Ooo, offer to bunk with Doctor Harris,” Cortana offered, tone dripping with mischief. “That may be enough for him to pick up on.”

John rolled his eyes, “We will be fine on the Condor, Captain.”

Mullins nodded and went on to ask about unloading the supplies. Violet jumped in to answer before John could speak, “The three over there are mine. It’s expensive equipment, Greg. Like, lose my job if it’s broken kind-of expensive. Make sure it’s handled appropriately, please.”

“Have I ever let you down?”

“I don’t know,” she crossed her arms, shifting her weight onto her hip as she stared back at him with a hard glare. “Do I need to remind you of Wendell’s little accident with my herbarium cabinets?”

“Oh good, still holding that grudge,” Mullins muttered. He turned from the ramp, “Message received, Vi.”

Violet nodded and turned back up the ramp, calling that she should get her things before the unloading team came up to retrieve cargo and load it onto the small convoy that sat on the tarmac. John turned to follow her into the cargo bay, the neat end of her braid swaying with each step she took. He watched as she looked around and mumbled to herself as she tried to remember where she had stowed away her things in the week prior, fingers fidgeting with the fraying edge of the scarf.

Wordlessly, John pointed to the far side of the cargo bay to where her bags sat. Violet muttered out a triumphant noise as she wove through the crates to her things. John followed behind, “Sunshine, huh?”

“Oh, please,” she groaned. She adjusted her braid as she slung her rucksack over her shoulders. “Don’t start. We’ve gone over this; we dated for a few months. I lived here for four years, mind you. I had a life before I met you. You do remember that we practically live together, right?”

“I’m aware.”

Violet huffed out a laugh and shook her head, “You’re so jealous.”

“I’m not.”

“You so are,” she laughed, pulling her eyes from his to continue to look for her bag. He reached to her face, tucking a finger up her chin and lifting her face to make her eyes meet his again. Green looked up at him from under thick lashes, her lips parted slightly in surprise.

“I’m not jealous,” his voice was low as he spoke. Violet’s eyes never left his as he held her chin in gauntleted hand. “That would mean I want something I can’t have. I’m protecting what belongs to me.”

Violet eyes darkened slightly at his statement as she smiled up at him, taking his wrist in her hand and pressing her lips to her palm. “All yours, big guy,” she murmured, “Now can you please be nice?”

John brought his hand to her face and brushed his thumb along her cheek. Professional courtesies were all but forgotten when Violet looked up at him from under the edge of that scarf in a way that was so different from the way she had looked at Mullins on the tarmac; in a way he knew belonged only to him in all of that warmth and loveliness. He traced his thumb along the curve of her lips and she pressed a kiss to the pad of it as she watched her reflection in the visor of his helmet. All yours, she had said. He was all hers as well. Every piece and part and dent belonged to her.

“Whatever you say, Goose.”

Those eyes that belonged to only him were pulled away at the sound of Mullins’ voice on the ramp. John dropped his hand as Violet reached down to pick up her duffle bag.

“Hey, Harris! You headed to the labs? I can have a couple of guys take your equipment over before we head out with supplies.”

Violet’s footsteps thudded against the ramp as she walked towards where Mullins stood beside the crates that held her equipment. She tossed her bags atop one of them. “You think I’m going to miss out on a trip into town? Yeah, right. You know me better than that, Greg. I’m coming with you. You can have them take my things there. I’ll head that way when we get back.”

Mullins nodded and called out orders to the unloading team. A small group of men greeted Violet as they came to collect her supplies and she greeted each by name with bright smiles. Mullins nodded towards the installation and John followed his gesture to the group of people that approached, all but one waving excitedly at Violet as they neared. “Geek Squad is out here to see you.”

John recognized the bounce of Meredith Powell’s hair as she sprinted at Violet and tackled her to the ground in a tight hug. Violet yelped as she was knocked to the ground with a puff of red dirt, the sound immediately replaced by that musical laughter as she clung to her friend. The rest of the team lingered behind, all stepping forward to hug his botanist after Meredith helped her back to her feet. They watched him with wide eyes as he stood behind her, but the moment of wonder was lost to Violet as she pulled them all in with happy laughter. John noticed that Devrin stayed back, arms crossed tightly against his chest as he nodded to Violet.

“Doctor Harris.”

“Doctor Johal.”

Dev regarded John with a curt nod. A flicker of fear flashed in the scientist’s eyes before he turned to head back to the installation. Mullins called out to Violet again with that nickname that made John grit his teeth from where the convoy sat. Violet turned away from her team to where Mullins stood and waved her over, “We’re ready when you are, kid!”

Violet squeezed the shoulders of the large Black man she hugged- John recognized him as Saul from her picture- and turned away with promises to catch up with all of them later as she crossed to where Mullins waited for her.

“You’re all with me,” John said. The team’s acknowledgement lights flashed on his HUD as they all started down the ramp towards the convoy. “Looks like we’re taking a drive.”

Violet smiled at him over her shoulder as she talked to Mullins, watching as soldiers loaded into the convoy behind them. Mullins tore his eyes away from the botanist to acknowledge Silver Team as they approached before returning his attention to Violet, “Insurgent groups have been active again since the famine. We’ve been working with the local militia to keep it at bay, but it’s not like you remember it. It’s best if you stick with an armed escort, Sunshine.”

John stepped behind Violet, subtly tapping his hand against her back. He was sure he would get an earful from her about breaking his own rules when they got a moment together. She leaned into the touch, looking over to where Kai, Riz, and Vannak stepped beside him with one of those bright smiles before turning back with Mullins.

“Well, I was sent with four. I think I’ll be alright, don’t you?”

---

Violet jumped into action as soon as they arrived in the village. John watched as she interacted with the crowd of villagers that met the convoy and chatted with each soldier in that same warm way; asking of spouses and parents and children as she greeted each. Each seemed to meet Violet with that same warmth, her brightness touching all those around her even in the bleak village. John watched as she reached into the crates to pass out rations and supplies to villagers that she greeted in their native tongue, chatting with each in Khmer as they approached her. Pride settled into him as he watched her goodness translate into the sense of gentle authority that had come over her since they arrived.

John watched as a young girl ran up to Violet and threw her arms around her middle. Violet wrapped her arms around the child without looking down to identify her first, but John watched her face light up in happy recognition as she did. Violet took the girl’s face in her hands as she spoke excitedly to the girl in the tonal language. John leaned over to where Riz stood beside him watching the distribution, Violet still smiling as she brushed the girl’s hair out of her face.

“What’s she saying?”

Riz listened for a moment as Violet spoke to the girl. “She’s telling her how tall and beautiful she’s gotten.”

Cortana continued to translate for him long after Riz did. She buzzed between his ears as she relayed each side of the villagers’ conversations with Violet. She spoke to each one with nothing but softness; her voice kind and gentle. Each villager regarded her as one would welcome home an old friend with wide smiles passed between each party. Violet reached out and grasped the hand of a woman who welcomed her in greeting, asking the woman how her mother had been and if her sister had delivered her baby. She told another little boy how much he looked like his older brother as she hugged him tightly. She asked another man about his wife, and when he replied that she was with child, Violet looked around to make sure no one had been watching before she snuck the man a few extra rations with that kind smile. It went on like that for some time. John watched as the goodness that she radiated like sunbeams touched everyone she surrounded in her. Sunshine, Mullins had called her. The captain hadn’t been too far off.

He looked from Violet to where the captain stood with members of his team, turned at his fellow Ranger’s side so that he could both speak to the man and still assess the crowd. Mullins watched beyond where villagers gathered at the convoy to where Violet stood, the captain watching her with the same soft smile that was hidden behind his helmet. John had never been the most adept with social queues, but he recognized the man’s look immediately; John had looked at Violet that same way since that evening he met her in the park. He had seen other men look at her that way before; MPs she’d become friendly with at the gates back home, horticulturalists on her team, damn near every man she had walked past on that base just today. He found with each of their stares that the fear he had once felt did not come. It did not creep in like a frost and chill him until he could no longer move. He did not fear and lament the man who would come after him and someday deserve Violet Harris, or the men who had come before. He simply knew there would never be another man. He was the only one she looked back at the same way.

Violet looked up at the sound of a dog’s bark. John found the pitch of it familiar. Her eyes fell on the source; a small pack of dogs that lay panting in the shade of a building. He had noticed the population of strays that roamed the village when they arrived. A smile crept across her face at the sight and she stepped to the edge of the vehicle’s cargo bed to lower herself to the ground. Mullins was on her in an instant, offering his hand for balance with another grin. Violet took his hand with an appreciative smile and hopped down with a puff of dirt before returning her focus to the dogs. She slowly approached the dogs, their eyes watching and ears twitching as she approached them with a series of soft whistles followed by calm whispers.

The dog in the center sat up, a black and white collie with a graying snout, and whined happily as Violet padded near them. John watched the dog’s tail start to sway as Violet approached. The excited way it wiggled reminded him of the way Sadie greeted him at the door every evening. Violet crouched down beside it, speaking softly to the pup as she started to scratch its ears and it rolled onto its back to expose its belly to her. John noticed a shepard sitting beside the collie in the shade, his bright white fur dull and dirty. He watched Violet cautiously as she pet the collie, protective of the dog that licked at the botanist’s hands. It reminded him of the dog he saw in his memories.

“Captain!” Kai called.

Mullins looked up and crossed from where he stood supervising the distribution as Kai waved him over. She gestured to where Violet sat with the grouping of dogs, giggling as the collie licked her face. “What’s with the wildlife?”

“It’s a part of the local charm. The locals stopped keeping them as pets years ago because they couldn’t feed them. They formed packs and started finding their own food sources. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Doctor Harris’ dog, but she adopted Sadie from the streets about two years ago. See that one she’s petting? That’s Sadie’s momma. Doctor Harris always makes sure to say hello. No animals on base, but Violet hid her for about three months before command found out. She found some loophole about installation rules over base rules, so Sadie became somewhat of a mascot for the project. She loves that dog something fierce. I’m surprised she was willing to leave her behind. I wonder who she trusted enough with her baby while she’s here.”

“Yeah, Chief,” John could hear the grin masked by Kai’s helmet in her voice as she looked over to him. “Who is watching your dog while you and Doctor Harris are here?”

Mullins straightened up and pulled his eyes from Violet to look up at the Master Chief, realization washing over his face at Kai’s question. Violet looked up from the old dog to glance over at John and offer him one of those bright Violet smiles. He couldn’t blame the captain for staring; John could understand every look she got. But those green eyes never left him, even as Mullins’ eyes returned to her a little bit more forlorn this time.

John watched as Violet stroked the dog’s back again and gave her rear a pat before standing up. She dusted off her hands on her pants, her eyes finding him again from where she stood in the shade. Violet brought her hand up again to block the dropping sun from her eyes as she gave him a small wave, the warmth in her eyes rivaling the blistering air around him and John found himself caught in the gaze that belonged to only him.

#halo fanfic #halo tv show #master chief #master chief/oc #romance #romcom in space #au #halo fanfiction #not canon compliant #silver timeline #halo series #halo #john 117/oc #john 117 #spring in tchakova park

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notwiselybuttoowell · 1 year ago

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The hair that drops in clumps on the floors of some salons in Kiel, a port city in northern Germany, is swept up to be turned into fabrics that filter oil from water. Parents who want to buy their children cloth nappies instead of disposable ones can apply for grants of up to €200 from the local authorities. At the city’s biggest festival last year, the organisers got rid of single-use cutlery and replaced it with a deposit system.

Germany is famed as a world leader in recycling – and Kiel, as I found out during a visit this summer, has some of the most weird and workable plans in the country to deal with its trash. It is the first German city to be declared “zero waste” by the environmental campaign group Zero Waste Europe. The certificate does not mean it has already stopped throwing things away – far from it – but rather that it has a concrete plan for how to do better.

“It’s one step in the right direction,” says Bettina Aust – a Green party politician who was elected president of Kiel city council in June – over a glass of juice made from apples that had been saved from landing in a supermarket bin. “You have to keep thinking further … You cannot stay still.”

Germany has a complicated relationship with waste. Despite its status as a world leader in recycling, Europe’s biggest economy is also one of its dirtiest. In 2021, the average German generated 646kg of waste, while the average EU citizen generated 530kg. Only in four EU countries – Austria, Luxembourg, Denmark and Belgium – did people throw away more.

Dino Klösen, a manager at Kiel’s waste management company ABK, says trends in the country’s consumption can be seen in its bins. Paper recycling bins that would have once been full of newspapers are now bursting with cardboard from delivery packages. “The weight of paper waste has dropped but the volume keeps rising from online shopping,” he says.

Awash with waste, cities like Kiel are exploring ways to throw away less and recycle more of what it does chuck. The city council has announced projects ranging from a ban on single-use items in public institutions, to installing more public drinking fountains, to teaching schoolchildren about waste. It is also encouraging people to make simple changes to their behaviour such as using solid bars of soap instead of buying plastic bottles of the stuff.

Other proposals are more systemic. The city is trialling a “pay as you throw” system where people are charged only for the rubbish they throw in the mixed waste bin. A report from the European Environment Agency last year found only about 30% of Germany is covered by such a scheme, even though areas that were covered saw an average drop in mixed waste of 25%.

“General waste is the most expensive form of rubbish there is,” says Klösen. “We are trying to motivate citizens to throw less waste in the bin by making them pay less for doing so.”

Even though waste-cutting efforts like Kiel’s are fairly novel in Germany, recycling is firmly rooted in the culture. In 2021, Germans collected more than two-thirds of their municipal solid waste to be repurposed – more than any other country in Europe. They burned most of the rest for energy, and dumped just 1% in landfills (the EU average is 16%).

#kiel #germany #europe #waste #recycling #circular economy #zero-waste

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seps-travel-blog · 1 month ago

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Hello

I know it's been a while since my last update. Almost two months and yes, I'm still alive and out here. And a lot has happened. First of all, I moved twice. I moved from my World Unite ShareHouse in Shiohama to the second World Unite ShareHouse in Warabi.

Warabi was very different from Shiohama. First of all, the buildings were smaller. It was more like a suburb, but without a single piece of green. There was only one park, which was not very big, and that was it.

I was only there for the weekend and didn't do much. I talked to the people in the house a bit and walked around. I was also gaming with friends in the gaming cafe. On the 14th of October I moved into my new ShareHouse, where I'm currently staying.

This is my room for the rest of my stay. The only things in the room were the bed, which was badly damaged when I moved in and which the ShareHouse owner replaced, the fridge, the white table and the TV. So I bought a wardrobe and a shelf. The shelf is made of solid steal and is very heavy, but the wardrobe is a camping wardrobe and is very light but also very sturdy. I also bought a second futon and a slatted frame so I can sleep a bit better. I have also rearranged the furniture since I moved in, changing the table and the shelf. Although the room is not very big, I think it is very cosy. It was a triumph.

I just thought it was funny, and it was the first time I had seen someone use the 24 as a time format.

In the whole time since my last post I didn't do that much. Most of the time I just walked around Katsushika, this is the ward I'm currently living in. The one big thing I did was going to Team Labs Planets with friends.

That was very cool. This team lab, as the name suggests, is all about the universe. But only half the time. There are two routes you can take, the water route and the garden route. The water route starts with a small climb, there is a slope with water running down it and at the end there is a waterfall. The waterfall is lit with a bright white light. Then you walk through a large room with bouncy walls. The third room is the one in the first picture. There are hundreds of LED strips hanging from the ceiling. You walk along a path through the room. There are two large areas where you can sit down. In one of them you can choose which colour patterns you want to see next. The colour patterns are called stars. The next room is a floor filled with water on which fish are projected. When you touch the fishes they explode into flower petals and you can twirl them around when you touch the water. Room 5 is filled with giant balls and mirrors, but there is not much you can do with them. I think the last room was the best. The room was shaped like a half sphere with you lying on your back in the middle. There are different flowers projected on the walls/ceiling. And all the time it feels like the room or the ceiling is spinning, but the only thing spinning are the flowers. The garden route is just two rooms. One outside with glowing rocks and one inside where you can lie under flowers. And the flowers go up when there's a person underneath them, and down when there isn't. You can see the flowers in the third picture.

Waste separation is very different from Germany. There are no real rubbish bins at the houses, but the rubbish is always collected at rubbish dumps. There are one or more per cadastral area. Here you can see how the rubbish is separated:

I've been working at a gluten-free restaurant in Roppongi since the 24th of October.

I work four days a week as a waiter or sous-chef. I really enjoy the work and it is a nice change from my normal job in Germany.

Since I started working I have met and talked to so many people from different backgrounds. It's very interesting where people come from and why they are in Japan. Talking to my colleagues is always fun too. They are all so friendly and heartwarming. I usually start work at 10.30am and finish around 10.30pm if I'm doing a full day shift. At the moment I'm doing more half-day shifts, so lunch or dinner shifts, because my right arm hurts. The same shitty thing I have had for years. I hope it gets better soon. The menu at the restaurant is a mix of traditional Japanese dishes and modern Western dishes. We serve ramen, okonimiyaki and the like, but we also have various pasta dishes, pancakes or fries. The preparation is mostly cutting vegetables or chicken. The only downside to this restaurant is that it's a real traditional Japanese restaurant in the sense that the kitchen is old, very old, and so is the whole restaurant. But I really like the work. Last Saturday I met a colleague from work and his wife. We had lunch and then went to karaoke.

Outside of work, I often go for walks. Once I saw a small river-like thing.

I also started dancing last week. It's a group jazz dance class. And the last time I met the friends from the first ShareHouse, we went to Asakusa and bought some yukatas. And the time before that we went to Shinjuku and did karaoke. We met every two weeks. Mostly because we all started working and have very different schedules.

Yeah, that's it. My life in the last two months. I would say I update more regularly, but that would be a lie. I am trying to remember to post more stuff. I've also been told that I shouldn't just post about the big events or things I go to, but also about my life in general. So I am trying to remember that too.

I wish you'll a wonderful day.

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chadanthonyperrino · 6 days ago

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A Comprehensive Guide to Making Composed Fertilizer

Fertilizers play a crucial role in agriculture, gardening, and landscaping by enhancing soil fertility and promoting plant growth. While synthetic fertilizers are widely used, their environmental impacts and cost have led many to explore more sustainable options. Composed fertilizer, often made from organic waste, offers an eco-friendly alternative that enriches soil health while reducing waste. In this detailed guide, we will explore everything you need to know about making composed fertilizer, from the materials required to the step-by-step process and tips for successful composting.

What Is Composed Fertilizer?

Composed fertilizer, commonly referred to as compost, is a nutrient-rich material created through the natural decomposition of organic matter. It serves as a soil conditioner, enriching it with essential nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, while also improving its structure and water retention capabilities.

The process of composting involves the breakdown of organic waste by microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi under controlled conditions. The resulting compost can be used in gardens, farms, and landscapes to promote healthier plants and sustainable agricultural practices.

Benefits of Composed Fertilizer

Before diving into the process of making compost, let’s understand the key benefits it offers:

Nutrient Enrichment: Compost contains vital nutrients that support plant growth.

Soil Improvement: It enhances soil structure, promoting better aeration and water retention.

Waste Reduction: Composting reduces the amount of organic waste sent to landfills.

Eco-Friendly: Unlike synthetic fertilizers, compost does not harm the environment or contribute to water pollution.

Cost-Effective: Making your own compost saves money on store-bought fertilizers.

Supports Biodiversity: Composting fosters beneficial microorganisms that contribute to soil health.

Materials Needed for Composing Fertilizer

Creating a balanced compost requires a mix of two primary components: greens and browns. These materials provide the nitrogen and carbon needed for decomposition.

Greens (Nitrogen-Rich Materials)

Fruit and vegetable scraps

Coffee grounds and tea leaves

Grass clippings

Fresh garden waste

Manure (from herbivores like cows, horses, or chickens)

Browns (Carbon-Rich Materials)

Dry leaves

Straw or hay

Shredded paper or cardboard

Wood chips and sawdust

Corn stalks

Other Essential Materials

Water: To maintain the right moisture level.

Air: For aeration to support microbial activity.

Compost Bin or Pile: A designated space to collect and manage the composting process.

Step-by-Step Process for Making Composed Fertilizer

Creating composed fertilizer involves several stages, from gathering materials to the final product. Follow these steps to ensure a successful composting process:

1. Choose a Composting Method

There are several methods to compost organic waste. Select one that suits your needs and available resources:

Hot Composting: Requires frequent turning and produces compost quickly (4-8 weeks).

Cold Composting: A slower method (6-12 months) with less maintenance.

Vermicomposting: Uses worms to decompose organic matter, ideal for small-scale composting.

2. Set Up Your Composting Area

Location: Choose a well-drained spot with partial shade.

Bin or Pile: Use a compost bin, tumbler, or create a simple open pile.

3. Collect and Prepare Materials

Chop large items like branches or vegetable scraps into smaller pieces to speed up decomposition.

Mix greens and browns in a ratio of approximately 1:2 for optimal results.

4. Build the Compost Pile

Layer the materials as follows:

Start with a layer of coarse browns like wood chips for aeration.

Add a layer of greens.

Alternate layers of greens and browns, moistening each layer lightly with water.

5. Monitor and Maintain the Pile

Moisture: The pile should be as damp as a wrung-out sponge. Add water if it’s too dry or browns if it’s too wet.

Aeration: Turn the pile every 1-2 weeks to provide oxygen and speed up decomposition.

Temperature: Use a compost thermometer to ensure the pile reaches 135-160°F (57-71°C) for effective decomposition and pathogen elimination.

6. Decomposition Process

Microorganisms will break down the materials over time. You may notice heat, steam, or a slight earthy smell as the pile matures.

7. Harvest the Compost

After 2-6 months (depending on the method used), the compost will be ready when it is dark, crumbly, and has an earthy smell. Sift out any undecomposed materials to add back into a new batch.

Common Composting Mistakes to Avoid

Imbalance of Greens and Browns: Too much of one can lead to slow decomposition or unpleasant odors.

Overwatering: Excess moisture can cause anaerobic conditions, leading to a foul smell.

Underaeration: Lack of oxygen slows down decomposition and causes a compacted pile.

Adding Non-Compostable Items: Avoid meat, dairy, oily foods, or pet waste, which can attract pests or create harmful bacteria.

Tips for Successful Composting

Shred Larger Items: Smaller pieces decompose faster.

Maintain the Right Ratio: Aim for a balanced mix of greens and browns.

Turn the Pile Regularly: This ensures even decomposition and aeration.

Monitor Odor: A healthy compost pile smells earthy, not foul.

Protect Against Pests: Cover food scraps with a layer of browns or use a secured bin.

Applications of Composed Fertilizer

Composed fertilizer has numerous applications across different fields:

Gardening: Mix compost into garden beds to enrich soil.

Lawns: Spread a thin layer over your lawn to improve soil health and grass growth.

Agriculture: Use compost to enhance crop yields sustainably.

Potting Soil: Combine compost with other materials for nutrient-rich potting mixes.

Erosion Control: Compost helps retain soil and prevent erosion in landscaping projects.

Environmental Impact of Composting

Composting has significant positive effects on the environment:

Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by diverting organic waste from landfills.

Promotes sustainable agriculture by reducing reliance on synthetic fertilizers.

Enhances soil health, leading to better water retention and reduced runoff.

Conclusion

Making composed fertilizer is a rewarding process that benefits both the environment and your plants. By recycling organic waste into nutrient-rich compost, you can reduce your environmental footprint, save money, and promote sustainable practices. Whether you’re a home gardener or a farmer, composting is an essential skill that contributes to a healthier planet and more productive soil.

Start your composting journey today and experience the transformative power of composed fertilizer. With patience and the right techniques, you’ll create a sustainable resource that supports thriving plants and ecosystems for years to come. Brian Chapman Portadown

#farming #agriculture #environment #forest #gardening #lifestyle #flowers #plants

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trivialbob · 1 year ago

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This is a pleasant time of year.

Leaves have started to fall. That feature of nature I could easily live without. However, it gets me outside and moving. Collecting the leaves brings me satisfaction. Seeing the green grass appear again... ahhhhhh.

Of course tomorrow afternoon little evidence of my work will remain.

It's mostly a Wednesday routine. Trash and yard waste collection here is on Thursdays. The day before I get out my Toro Super Recycler Muncher Shredder mower. I mulch and collect leaves in the mower's bag, then fill the large plastic yard waste container to the brim.

If I skip no more than one or two Wednesdays each fall I can get a full season's worth of leaves in that container before weekly service ceases for winter. It gives me joy if I don't end up putting excess leaves in those heavy paper bags we have to use nowadays. (You have to buy those things!)

Today's yard work is now done. The mower has been cleaned of dust. The big bin is down at the curb. My step count is up. The hot shower I'll soon take will feel well deserved, much nicer than a "just getting ready for office work" shower.

Not coincidentally, this is also the beginning of the Wednesday evening martini--eventually changing to Manhattan--season

#Things that make me feel good #I remember years ago seeing people put 20-40 lightly packed plastic garbage bags of leaves at the curb #I prefer the mulching and plastic bin collection much more #Someday I would not mind having a smaller lawn and a larger bit of land where I could just dump leaves #Or live in a condo

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theclassclone · 18 days ago

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Walk a Mile in Someone's Shoes They Said...

Chapter 2

Word Count: 8,156 TW: Canon-Typical Master List || Previous || Next

Abe cleared his throat, “On a very special Clone High, the clones will be forced to socialized.” He paused. “That’s it. You can go now, that’s really all they’re doing. It’s one of the Unity Week events.”

CJ had her back to her 17th (or so) toxin; the lime green liquid dripping into the test tube as she replaced the European Yew on the shelf of over 25 different species of toxic plants that she hoards on school grounds. European Yew is obviously one of them, Nerium Oleander is another—in fact she had used that one in the same little witches brew she had strumming along—and, of course, the diverse collection wouldn’t be complete without the most basic toxic plant somewhere on the shelving unit: Deadly Nightshade (or more beautifully referred to as Belladonna). She walked away from her well cared for collection of harmful plants and peeled her gloves off of her hands; she dropped the gloves in the biohazard bin beneath the whiteboard and walked toward the large cabinet that was tucked away in the back corner of the room.

She pulled the cabinet doors open and slowly pulled a sheet of paper out from beneath one of her trays of test tubes and assorted vials. She shut the cabinet and froze upon seeing the bright yellow light of the school hallway begin to leak into her dimly light, though cool-toned lab. Her head turned toward the door like a camera shutter; her eyes were open wide, and her pupils and irises shrunk with a sense of rage before she was even bothered. She drew her eyebrows together and watched Mr. B enter the lab she had claimed from the school. His wheels, mostly, gave him away; uninvited. They squeaked with every turn and desperately needed some oil or something to fix that dreadful squealing sound.

Mr. B regretfully shut the door behind him when his occipital units met hers. “Aren’t you supposed to be heading to the courtyard? The Unity Week Mile Walk is about to begin.” He asked.

CJ hummed. She pulled her hands away from the metal handles that she had warmed beneath her grip. She strode back to the table in the center of the room and placed the paper down beside her notebook. She slipped back onto the stool and started scratching little notes in the notebook again—she was gearing up to pray to a God that she never even believed in because she wanted this stupid lime green liquid to be the one. That was already 32 pages of this notebook wasted, she wasn’t looking forward to 34 pages being wasted.

“CJ.” Mr. B seldom used her name—rather nickname—he typically opted to call everyone Wesley, for undisclosed reasons.

She hummed again—technically she was responding to him, just not in the way that he would prefer her to. She knew Mr. B in the same way that she knew the lore to Intergalactic Journey: Subsequent Cohort. He took her hums as her ignoring his efforts to communicate with her, while, again, she was technically responding to him.

She was not very hyper-focused on this little project as she had been playing this cat and mouse game for the last eight years and to no avail. He always walked away unscathed, even when she tried her hardest to maim him; she couldn’t understand how he was so cartoonishly invincible. She had done everything from mimicked the tactics from Skunky-Poo, to copying literal cartoons just to see if ‘cartoon logic’ would harm him (it, in fact, did not), to actually stabbing him with a kitchen knife (although, that one was actually an accident).

But she spent nights up in her room with more receipts for gauze than there are numbers in pi. She doesn’t have this strange cartoonish ability to heal within an instant and she can’t fathom why. Her closet looks like a hospital storage room.

She grabbed a new set of flimsy latex gloves from the box at the edge of her table and pulled them over her hands. She grimaced at the friction and paused with only her left hand gloved.

“Still?” Mr. B spoke up from beside her.

“It feels like my hands are being constricted. Luckily, I don’t plan on being a surgeon where I would have to live in these sort of gloves.” She affirmed. She wrinkled her nose and turned her head toward her liquid toxin. She reluctantly slipped her other hand into the glove and reached over the table; she stopped the flow of the liquid and removed the vial from the contraption.

“Are you going to participate in any of the Unity Week activities?” Mr. B asked.

She turned on the stool and held the vial between her index finger and thumb of her left hand; she rested her elbow on the table and looked down at the robot. “You do realize I didn’t answer the initial question for a reason, right?” She tipped her head toward the left and drew the corners of her lips back.

“Answer the question.” Mr. B tried his hardest not to sound demanding.

CJ turned back toward the table and grabbed the little cork she wedged in the spiral of her notebook as to not lose it (from experience… she lost many before she figured out this little trick and she often struggled to keep her grip on the corks); she slowly tried to twirl the cork between her fingers to get it near the correct orientation. She used the vial to aid her with sealing it and she pressed the cork firmly into the vial. She swirled the liquid around, activating specific ingredients. The liquid inside began to illuminate a very pungent, but bright green color.

“Answer the question, CJ.” He repeated, once again, using her name instead of calling her Wesley.

She placed the vial down between the spirals in her notebook so that it doesn’t roll away from her. “Do you want the truth or the sugar-coated lie that I tell my fellow students?” She swiveled in the stool again.

“The truth.”

“It’s just an idiotic excuse to exploit weakness and deep-rooted feelings from first- and second-generation clones. Scudworth, if there were a brain in that ancient noggin’ of his, should be taking notes and using this against the clones to gather them for his silly Cloney Island scheme—that may or may never come to fruition for obvious reasons.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head away from the table. “On the flip side of things, if Scudworth doesn’t use what they say against them, we can always just use it against each other under the guise of ‘cancel culture’—back in the day, you guys called it bullying, which is what we still do, but we don’t have the balls to call it bullying anymore.” She rolled her eyes around her eye sockets and scoffed at the absurdity of what her generation—not limited to the clones—has cultivated.

“I’m sure all of that nonsense is just in your head.” He told her. “You automatically assume the worst in people, and you never give anyone a chance. You should be taking these activities as opportunities to get to know your classmates and see how wrong you are about them.” Mr. B tried to reason with her.

CJ stared down her nose at the robot. “You do know that I cannot create nor maintain friendships, right?” She furrowed her eyebrows and pointed at him.

“I still think you’re holding yourself back or doing it on purpose.”

“I’m not understanding what wires you might have gotten crossed then. I’ve never brought home a friend from elementary school, nor middle school for that matter. I’ve never spoken of having friends.” She crossed her arms again and hunched over. “It’s easier to be a massive bitch because everyone from my generation of clones was already uncomfortable with me to begin with.” She frowned.

“That’s not true.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Name one clone that likes me as a person.”

Mr. B remained silent. His pupils darted around.

CJ pursed her lips and nodded. “Point proven, don’t need a research article for that one, huh?”

“I—.”

“Save your battery, Uncle B.” She clenched her jaw. “I made a fool of myself in front of the first-generation clones because as Vice President I have to speak publicly, I have to attend these stupid events, I have to be involved. It’s part of the ‘job duties’, whether I like it or not. And I don’t like it.”

Mr. B’s eyebrows lowered. “You didn’t even try to have a good time. You’re blaming them when it was actually your fault. You can’t keep blaming people for your problems.” He tried to explain despite his robotic voice. “Your peers have changed; you have new peers. The clones we brought back aren’t as bad as you think, you just need to give them a chance.” His voice rose two or three octaves above what was typical for him; it seemed as though he was trying to yell at her.

She inhaled deeply and straightened her posture; she grabbed the vial and twirled it between her index fingers and thumbs. “For some reason, I don’t believe you. Crazy, isn’t it?” She stared at the vial and swallowed. “I can always continue to make enemies, those are the closest to you, right? I can continue to make Scudworth’s,” she began speaking through clenched teeth, “pathetic life even more miserable than it already is.” She lowered the vial and glanced at Mr. B’s barely expressive face. “I can slowly drive him to the point of insanity and make him suffer until the day he finally dies.”

Mr. B rolled his pupils toward the door. “Whatever you say, Wesley…”

Her demeaner changed; her eyes widened with a false sense of childlike innocence, and her eyebrows raised. “Can I ask you for a favor, Uncle B?”

“I’m not going to poison your father for you.” Mr. B told her having anticipated her favor (as she had asked 16 previous times).

She groaned and swung her legs back under the table. “You don’t do anything I ask, but when that Wack-job asks you to do something you kiss the ground he walks on.” She slammed her elbows against the table and pressed her hands against her cheeks; the cork of the vial pressed against her right cheek. “And you wonder why I’m angry with you, too. You’d be able to change that if you would just help me.”

“Not when you ask me to harm him.” Mr. B told her.

She puffed out her cheeks. “You stand idly and watch us fight and harm each other. You can’t even lend a hand?”

“No.”

“No matter. I’ve got, what? 20 minutes before this shitty walk starts?” She slid off of the stool and pushed Mr. B out of her way with her leg as she stood up. “I’ll do it myself again and watch my own failure again. Or, who knows, this might be the one that does him in.”

“Is that really what you want?” Mr. B asked.

CJ tucked her chin to her neck and swallowed hard. She looked away from Mr. B and slipped the little vial into the breast pocket of her lab coat. She peeled her gloves off of her hands slowly; she felt the muscles in her right hand move without her brain actually meaning to sending the signals to do so. She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly as she just waited for the involuntary twitch to stop. She knitted her eyebrows together between the aggravation of Mr. B’s question and the unknown cause of this annoying little twitch.

“When did that—WESLEY!?!” Mr. B tried to ask her a question. He was interrupted by her conscious decision to kick his short robotic body toward the wall.

She slammed her hand down on the desk and rolled the latex beneath her hand. “I’m going to kick you a lot harder the next time you ask a stupid question, I’m not discussing that with you, and I never will, capisci? That’s Italian for you understand. I’m going to poison Scudworth now.” She pointed an arthritic finger at Mr. B and tensed her shoulders to her ears.

“You need to tell me—. What is that from?” He rolled himself away from the wall.

“What part of ‘I’m not discussing that with you’ did you not get?” She gritted her teeth.

“Does he know?”

“No.”

“Can’t you two just get along? He needs to know—.”

“Puh, right, like telling him anything is conducive to the situation.” She rotated her eyes. “He won’t listen, he won’t care, he won’t do anything, it won’t help.” She walked toward the door of the lab. She paused and rested her hand on the doorknob and looked over at Mr. B. “You both made your choices before I ever made mine.” She swung the door open and slammed it behind her.

CJ marched through the school pushing first- and second-generation clones out of her way, some of which saw her actions from the other end of the hallway and had moved themselves out of her way. She was on a mission, one of malice and ill intent. One of anger. The voices of her fellow students sounded more like underwater warbles to her eardrums, their gazes felt like camera lenses in this cancel culture era and navigating the stupid hallway full of twice as many students as usual felt like fighting against the undertow. She moved briskly, not yet running, and still too slow to be considered jogging.

“CJ, are you ready for the mile—.” Confucius tried to ask her, to his dismay, she had pushed him directly into his locker instead of letting him finish asking his question. “Oh, alright, that’s cool… I guess…” He waved his goodbye to her by using the hand with his phone in it as that was the hand stuck outside of his locker.

She pressed her hand to another student’s face and pushed them to the ground as she turned the corner to continue down the hallway all because she couldn’t be bothered to move to the side. Her pace began to slow down as she neared the principal’s office. She grabbed the vial out of her pocket and glanced down at it.

Maybe Uncle B had a point, is this really what I want?

She sauntered up to the door, slowly letting her newfound (maybe it has just been festering in the back of her mind, who knows) uncertainty cloud her mind. She pushed the door open, but she began to feel as though she were watching the situation from an arial view. Like she was no longer in her own body—dissociation was the word she was looking for, maybe, dissociation sounded right, but she only knew the words. She was never good at matching words to their descriptions. She started to feel that she was living in third person as a set of eyes almost atop her own head. She could see everything from her mid-scalp and forward. As if she were living through a drone with a camera! Her breathing changed when she had this shift in point of view; she controlled her breathing manually, taking deeper and longer breaths. Her autonomic nervous system seemed to have stopped working and shifted its controls into manual.

She stood in front of Scudworth’s desk and looked down at him.

He looked up from his paperwork—not that he was actually doing it, he just looked up from it. “Ah, CJ, what a surprise!” He spoke as if she doesn’t regularly come into his office to try to ruin his workday. “Is Mister B with you? I need him to do something for me.” He looked around his desk and peered around CJ looking for his long-time friend.

“He might be trying to get through your overabundance of students.” She studied the objects on his desk—picture frame (boring), stack of papers and file folders (boring), coffee pot (better), mug full of coffee or bad water (that’s what she needs), a desk organizer filled with who knows what (yikes), and other miscellaneous objects. “Of course, he’s able to help you—when I need help, he always refuses because it’s ‘dangerous’ or ‘concerning’ or he ‘doesn’t know where it’s been’,” she crossed her arms. “It’s like he doesn’t want me to have fun.” Her voice followed Scudworth’s typical speech pattern. “I need an unwilling victim—willing participant—for a little culinary science I’ve whipped up for no reason other than to broaden my horizons… whatever that means.” She gripped the right side of her lab coat with her left hand and tapped her right cheek with the top of the vial. She shifted all of her weight to her right side and glanced toward the ceiling. “Don’t have any friends to torture—I mean ask—either.”

“No,” he said. “The last time you gave me something I started foaming at the mouth.”

“Minor inconvenience. Part of the process.”

“Still no, I’m busy right now.”

She tensed her shoulders and gripped the vial between her index finger and middle finger and pointed it toward the ceiling. “Busy, doing what?! You don’t even do your job half the time! And your idiotic students don’t even know the basic definition of science. Nor do any of them know what the definition of culinary is.”

Scudworth narrowed his eyes at the vial between her fingers. “Why is it glowing?”

“Preparing for Halloween.” She said, she held her arm out and waved the vial in his face. “Fluorescent Halloween bullshit.”

Scudworth snatched the vial out of her hands. “Give me that.”

She withdrew her hand from his personal space. “It’s a cute little glow-y, flavor enhancing liquid. If it works as intended, it’d be great for… I don’t know… Homecoming. Or if one of these assclown students plans on throwing a Halloween party, I could scam them because I enjoy scamming my peers for money. Obviously. Haven’t decided. Anyway, I need someone to try this.”

Scudworth tore his eyes away from the vial and looked at her. “I won’t start foaming at the mouth, will I? This isn’t another trick?”

She closed her eyes, bit the insides of her cheeks, and scrunched her nose. “I’m going to kill you with my bare hands, old man.” She opened her eyes and relaxed the muscles in her face. “Tricks are reserved for Halloween—you know, ‘trick or treat’. You’re usually aware of the attempts I’m making on your life otherwise.”

“No, I’m not!”

She reached over his desk and curled her fingers around his wrist. “If you don’t try this stupid glowing bullshit, I will dump it down your throat myself.” She pressed her right palm into the desk and started to pull him toward her. “Let. Go.”

He resisted her efforts to pull him toward her so she could pry the vial out of his hand once he was as close as she wanted him to be. “I am an adult! I don’t need your help, let go of me!” He pushed a hand against her face in an attempt to make her let go of him.

“Augh!” CJ quickly released her grip on his wrist.

Scudworth fell back into his desk chair, nearly toppling over. He spun his chair to face away from her, tantrum-like. She waited; she stared at the back of the desk chair in silence, listening to him grunt and struggle to pull the itty-bitty cork off of the itty-bitty vial. She tapped the tips of her fingers together rhythmically. She watched Scudworth slowly turn back around to face her, defeated by a little vial and its cork. He held the vial out to her.

“You’re an unethical geneticist and you don’t think to use your playing god prowess to just fix your arthritis or some shit.” She swiped the vial from his hands and fiddled with the vial, trying to pull the cork out.

“You must have me confused with someone who is fucking insane—I’m not going to argue with you about this again. Especially because you can’t open it either!” He grabbed his mug and leaned back in his desk chair.

“Hmph, technical difficulties!” She insisted; she twisted the cork haphazardly and nearly dropped her vial. She pushed the vial into Scudworth’s gloved hand.

He, to her slight surprise, willingly poured quite a bit of the toxin into his mug. “That seems like enough. Take your little science fair project back.” He handed the vial back to her.

She pressed the cork into the top of the vial and stared at Scudworth with drooping eyes. “Little science fair project.” She mumbled through a tight jaw. “Right.” She slipped the vial back into her lab coat. Her gaze remained on Scudworth, waiting for the fool to actually take a sip of his beverage.

He slowly sipped his now poisoned coffee. “Delightful. You said this was supposed to enhance flavor?”

She hummed. “Unfortunately, that is what I said.” She forced a smile upon her face. Her shaky grin continued to falter the longer he remained stable and conscious in front of her—she saw no tremors, no twists or twitches in his face, he didn’t start convulsing, he was not frothing at the mouth. Once again, his cartoonish ability to survive had defeated her. Her pupils shook as she tried to focus on her through her growing fury. Just once she’d like to get her point across, but as luck or fate or the God she doesn’t even believe in would have it, she would not be getting her point across.

“You should consider going into the culinary sciences; you’d make a killing.” He beamed.

Her eye lid twitched at his expression—just how disgustingly genuine he tried to make it seem. “I’ll consider it.”

“It’s not every day that you make me proud—well that’s an understatement—but this?” He continued the one-sided conversation, holding his mug in one hand and flailing the other as he spoke to her, completely unaware that she had stopped listening to his chaotic ramblings.

CJ inhaled deeply and sat down in the old, fairly taken care of chair that usually remained in front of Scudworth’s desk. She hung her harm over the upholstered arm and rested her cheek on her arm as she wished her clonefather would just start frothing at the mouth or something other than ramble in her presence—even if she wasn’t listening, the thought of him rambling was enough to make her lose her mind. She traced her finger around the upholstery, swirling it around the fabric, and giving herself the sensation of a ‘store-bought numbness’ (as she called it) in the tip of her finger.

She began to wander through the cubicles of her mind, poking her inner self between each opening, looking for some sort of excuse as to why she was a failure or as to why he just remained unaffected. Her inner self collected little scraps of theories and ideas behind her misfortunes: there could be some kind of genetic component that was keeping him alive that she was simply lacking by some freak mistake, he could have built a tolerance to poisonous concoctions in his youth to avoid being poisoned to death as an adult (but that didn’t explain anything else; but that did aid in the substance abuse theory she had about him so…), well, he could simply just have drug strength because that has enough research to back up that claim. Regardless, it was back to the drawing board for her. Her inner self dropped the scraps of ideas at her feet and walked over them, trying not to get her shoes wet. She fell forward into the soft, mauve-pink grounds of her own mind.

CJ sat up straight in the chair with quite the start. She had nearly dozed off, or perhaps she did doze off, she wasn’t entirely sure. She looked up at Scudworth and leaned toward the right side of her chair to get a better view of him. She slowly slid forward in the chair and her hands gripped the ends of the armrests. Her eyes wandered the desk—no mug, head was on the desk, movements that appeared to be convulsions, foaming at the mouth. She stood up from the chair and crept around the desk. She stopped upon a simple crunch of bits of ceramic beneath her foot; she lifted her foot and took a step back. She bent down to look at the broken mug and the puddle left behind by the liquid that remained. She slowly lifted her head and watched her clonefather continue to twitch, barely holding onto that sliver of consciousness behind those thoughtless eyes. He tried, with that last bit of energy, to reach for her. CJ’s honeydew eyes failed to show an inkling of delight with her success. For a moment, Mr. B’s words rattled around in her brain again. She wasn’t sure if this was what she wanted. The years of effort into what might be the very moment she tried to get to. She pressed her hand against his desk to keep herself steady; she poked at him, lightly, with her other hand. She quickly pulled her hand away and stumbled backward.

She straightened her postured and stared down at her clonefather. She thought this would feel more exciting. She thought she would be grinning from ear to ear, skipping out of his office with glee—maybe even break into song and a well-choreographed dance. But she didn’t feel excited, nor did she have the urge to sing and dance her way out of the office. Actually, staring at what could potentially be her clonefather’s corpse left a strange and pretty indescribable feeling—no, not necessarily indescribable, more like a void had opened up in her chest and slowly began to consume her the longer she stood before Scudworth, uncertain with his state of being. She had created that void herself. But rather than a void, because it wasn’t so much as a void that she had created—because logically, to her, voids aren’t created like this—she more than likely drove a stake through her own chest and continued to widen the wound throughout the years with her own two hands and tried to pretend that she didn’t know what she was doing to herself.

How unfortunate that she might have won but felt no satisfaction, instead felt quite the opposite.

Confucius blared his upbeat music and airhorn sound effects in the courtyard to grab first- and second-generation students’ attentions. He kept the beats going, raised his hands and climbed on the cement planter to keep the energy high. The student body mindlessly gravitated toward him, his activity co-host, and his large collection of speakers that drowned out the sound of his voice.

He lowered the volume of his music and silenced his airhorn effects. “Happy first day of Unity Week! Pew, pew, pew!” Confucius pointed at the first row of students. He jumped down from the cement planter. “It’s ya boy, Co-Co-Confucius!” He introduced himself with an upbeat, DJ-esque persona. “Our first Unity Week activity is to ‘walk a mile in someone else’s shoes’! Tell ‘em how it works, Sacagawea!” He pointed at his co-host and turned the attention toward her.

Sacagawea clasped her hands together. “Okay, we are going super literal on this one. You’re going to swap shoes with someone you don’t know and literally walk a mile together! Make new a new best friend and turn on your smart watches, because you’re about to get those steps!” She fist-pumped the air, exaggerating her words to keep the energy high, to ensure that the student body remained engaged and excited.

CJ kept herself close to the doors of the school in case she needed to make a speedy escape—she found it to be sickening that Confucius and his peers (her peers as well) were such people-persons, and that Confucius was able to keep such a large crowd engaged by fluctuating his voice and moving his hands in specific directions and in specific motions. She didn’t quite understand the charisma behind it—it was, dare she admit it, enchanting when specific individuals held that sort of charismatic power, and disgusting when others tried their hand at it. Some people just lacked charisma and fluid bodily movements to be able to engage with a crowd—CJ was one of those individuals that was unable to be charismatic and move fluidly.

She hoped that neither generation of clones would approach her for this idiotic idea of a unity activity. In all honesty—walk aside—she thought the concept of the Unity Week was rather… counterproductive… but not a single member of the student body council listened to her. She was convinced that no sound came out of her vocal cords when she so much as suggested that Unity Week was a bad idea. That, right there, had her wondering why she was still VP. Sure, Scudworth had rigged to votes to put her in this position because he thought she needed it, to get her to socialize, to have her make friends, to let her voice be heard because his never was (hence his situation with John Stamos). But she still didn’t socialize, she still had no friends, and she still wasn’t heard. As the VP of the student body, arguing her points, she stood in the middle of cubical brick formation, screaming at no one, listening to the own sound of her voice ricochet of each and every brick, going nowhere else.

First- and second-generation clones continued to pair up creating a muddled mess of humans mingling and pushing between each other to wear someone else’s bacteria infested footwear. Somewhere across the courtyard, CJ can only assume a first-generation clone said something that her generation has dubbed a ‘canceled’ word as all of her generation (excluding herself) gasped and gawked in a specific direction. And in order to seem cool and in the loop part of the first-generation clone followed in suit and gasped and gawked at the clone who seemingly offended everyone.

She crossed her arms and scanned the courtyard; a short—very short—redheaded clone appeared to be approaching her. She ignored his gaze and hoped that he was actually headed toward someone else. To her dismay, he actually got closer to her. He appeared to have been mustering up all of the courage in the world to ask to her walk this mile with him because he seemed just as unenthused with the event as she did. She inhaled deeply at the short, blue coated clone and considered just slipping back into the building and calling herself a visual hallucination or a ghost or something of the sort.

But… she stopped herself. Between feeling the watchful occipital units of Mr. B from the window of Scudworth’s office and this short clone now standing right in front of her, it was pointless for the VP to run away and call herself a figment of someone’s imagination.

“You don’t seem to have a partner.” He told her.

“Well, thank you, Captain Obvious,” she snapped at the redhead. “I don’t even want to be here.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I figured as much. Brooding teenager, far away from everyone.” He held his hand out for her to shake. “Vincent. Vincent van Gogh is my clonefather.”

She stared down her nose at the redheaded clone and took in as many details as she could stand to remember. His head was wrapped with a bandage—probably from a self-mutilation attempt, much like his clone father—and his coat dropped to his knees. He looked pathetic. She touched her index finger to his hand and pushed his hand away from her. “My given name is CJ; I try to go by my middle name Adair.”

“CJ is easier to remember.” He commented; he slipped his shoes off and pushed them toward her.

“Are you trying to ask me to be your partner for this stupid walk?” She asked.

He simply nodded.

She bent over and pulled at the laces of her boots and slipped her feet out of her boots and kicked them toward Vincent. She pulled Vincent’s shoes toward her and slipped her feet into his loafers. “I’m surprised your loafers fit.”

Vincent secured the laces of CJ’s boots. “You could kill someone in these.” He pointed the toe of one of the boots toward her.

CJ hummed. “Technically, disguise yourself as Keanu Reeves and anything can be a weapon.” She stood up straight and shrugged her shoulders. She bounced on her toes and felt the uneven grass beneath her feet. “I cannot stand flat soles. They’re so… flat.”

Vicent shook his head at her comment. “I’m so sorry.” He turned away from her and began following the crowd of students as they began walking away from the courtyard.

CJ reluctantly followed him; her strides were longer than his, so it didn’t take much time or effort for her to be able to catch up to him. His strides were small and quick, almost as if he spent his entire life running because of the length of his legs. She, however, had no choice but to control her speed to walk beside him to honor the ‘rules’ of the walk—mostly because she could now feel Harriet glaring at her from the front of the hoard. And if she didn’t honor the rules of the walk, Harriet would soon be out for blood. As innocent as Harriet seemed, she was chaotic, unpredictable, and could hurt someone if she pleased to. She was very serious about her Unity Week and wanted everything to be perfect by her own standards—which were vastly different from CJ’s.

“Are you as much of an artist as your clonefather?” She asked.

Vincent weaved through the sea of students with his small hand gripping the sleeve of her lab coat. “Well, I’d like to think so. I’m sure some of my murals—and graffiti—are still around. And if not, you’re welcome to come over to my house so I can show you some of my art pieces and works in progress.” He offered. “If you’re interested.”

CJ stumbled behind him as he dragged her toward her fellow student body council members. “Obviously; perhaps I should have prefaced my question with my interest in the arts. I’m no artist myself, but I’ve always envisioned my future home being filled with renaissance portraits or Dali or van Gogh.” She started to resist his efforts to drag her through the crowd. “I enjoy the works of van Gogh, Dali, M. C. Escher, da Vinci, so on and so forth. Names are not my strong suit, but I can honestly say that I don’t like modern art.”

Vincent smirked and slowed his pace. “You have quite the list though; I don’t often hear someone mention M. C. Escher, if I’m being honest.”

“He’s highly regarded in art class, I still consider him part of a basic list of artists.”

Silence grew between Vincent and CJ, and they trailed behind CJ’s fellow council members and their partners—they weren’t close enough to be included in their conversations, but they weren’t far enough for CJ and Vincent to get themselves put on Harriet’s shitlist. CJ was uncomfortable with the silence because she was unfamiliar with Vincent, and she did not want to be in this situation; she felt like a hostage to Harriet’s event. Chained to Vincent by wearing his worn, bacteria filled shoes and forced to converse with him through stale conversation questions. She didn’t see the appeal in being forced to make a best friend by wearing their shoes and walking with them.

Vincent glanced up at CJ and finally broke through the silence that became unbearable for him. “Who’s your cloneparent?”

She glanced toward the ground upon hearing the question—if she were being honest, she had never told anyone who her cloneparent was, nor who she lived with, which may have earned her the title of one of the most mysterious students at school and one of the best at keeping secrets. Her pace slowed as she considered the various ways she could answer Vincent’s question. She had never been asked before, so she had never had a reason to figure out how to answer the one thing she never wanted to talk about. The walk continued without her; students pushed past her, some even walked into her once she stopped walking altogether. She stood in the middle of the trail Harriet had picked out and watched the sea of students move forward without her. She kept her gaze toward Vincent, not necessarily staring at him but staring in that general direction. The scene surrounding her soon became a mess of blurred student-shaped colors and a blurred background.

Vincent had, unfortunately for her, noticed that he had lost her several steps ago. He turned around and studied her like she was one of his own paintings. His question had made her eyebrows come together, she appeared to be frowning, and she was picking at her nails. Vincent walked against the grain and reapproached CJ; he lightly tugged at the sleeve of her white lab coat to try to bring her back into reality.

She pulled her arm away from him and stared down her nose at him. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine—I don’t talk about my cloneparent.” She stated. “And I don’t plan on starting.” She began walking again and sped back toward the front of the group.

Vincent jogged after her, barely able to keep up with her in her own shoes. “I didn’t know—.”

“I’m well aware of that fact, that’s why we’re getting that out of the way now, right?” She inhaled deeply. “But,” she tilted her head toward her right shoulder, “I will tell you that my cloneparent was a scientist—and not a very good or famous one. You won’t really learn much about their contributions to society, they’ve been wiped from our history because they don’t really matter.”

Vincent huffed; he slowed his pace as he approached her side. “I see. Do you think you’re doing better than them?”

She laughed dryly and abruptly stopped making any such sounds. “As far as academia, I’m a certified genius, it’s just far easier to accept my fate as a high school student than to jump through the several thousand hoops to skip all this nonsense. But I have college-level research grants, an honorary degree, and all that fun stuff.” She listed. She crossed her arms and slouched slightly. She tensed her shoulders and glanced down at Vincent. “But I’ve got enough balls to admit that I have about as many deficits as I do scientific achievements. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows—in fact, I legitimately loathe sunshine and rainbows.”

Vincent chuckled. “So, you didn’t draw little suns with smiles on your kindergarten drawings?”

CJ smirked. “I drew little cauldrons with puffs of smoke in the shape of a skull like every cult classic.”

“Calm down, Sally, Dr. Finkelstein isn’t here.”

They fell silent again—this time, it was a silence that Vincent was able to stand for a bit longer after their little bit of small talk—even their small talk was hard to get through at first. CJ was able to walk side-by-side with Vincent without having a single thought that complained about having to walk next to someone—they had begun to walk side-by-side, in sync, as if they had practiced this their entire lives. Vincent tapped CJ’s arm and pointed toward a clone from his own generation—who he identified as the clone of Abraham Lincoln—and the clone beside him—who CJ identified as the clone of Christopher Colombus, who goes by Topher Bus. They chuckled at Abe walking in shoes that were way too small for his feet. They chuckled at the way Abe crouched to talk to Topher, and at the way Abe had to limp and walk in such robotic and meticulous movements because of the immense amount of pain he was feeling from Topher’s shoes. CJ accidentally locked eyes with Topher for a moment. It was tragic, but she couldn’t help but take the blame for the tragedy that weaved itself through those honey-colored eyes. His eyes never used to remind her of the dirt. But they do now. She looked away but she could still feel his sticky gaze on her.

As they approached the end of the mile, Vincent was laughing at the absurdity of Clone High and its principal. CJ, on the other hand, was not laughing despite the fact that she found the same amusement in the absurdity. They compared generations; Vincent had a fairly neutral view of his generation because he had a few friends (two of which were Julius Caeser and Cathrine the Great—who had joined them at one point during their walk and have been in and out of their conversation) and had sweet revenge on a fellow short statured clone. CJ, on the other hand, had a poorer view of her generation between her own personal outlook on life (extremely negative) and because she was raise by someone who thought he was raising an early 2000s child or even a child in the 1990s or earlier (this diluted her humor and made her have a particularly negative view of woke culture, in fact, it made her a little more like the person that raised her). That and her deep-rooted hatred for their principal drove her to be a better scientist than him.

“Wait, wait, wait—you have tried to kill him?” Vincent asked for clarification.

She crossed her arms and felt herself come back down to Earth after having a relatively good conversation with Vincent. “It’ll be a successful kill if he doesn’t wake up.”

“What did he ever do to you?” He asked with some semblance of horror written all over his face.

The corners of CJ’s lips twitched into a small smile. “He made the first-generation of clones for profit and he made the second-generation for shits and giggles. As a second-generation clone, I thought it would be hilarious to be a cliché—a creation turns on its creator.” CJ justified her reasoning. “In all honesty it’s kind of fun.”

Vincent nodded slowly. “You have problems.”

“I sure do.”

The mile walk came to a complete end as the students filed back into the school’s courtyard; Frida and Harriet pulled CJ and Vincent over toward the entrance to the building. Behind them, the rest of the clones gathered around and started returning shoes to their original owners.

Frida and Harriet stood on either side of CJ and smile as all of the clones—at least the ones that were paying attention to them—gathered around them. Namely the first-generation clones that were their partners, but there were a handful of others that gathered around Frida, Harriet, and CJ purely to see the stark contract between CJ (grumpy) and Frida and Harriet (not grumpy).

“We are so excited to announce that we are inviting the coolest of you frozen to join us. Every day. At lunch!” Harriet gripped CJ’s arm and leaned into her.

Frida leaned into CJ and threw up a peace sign and grinned; she chuckled and pointed toward the crowd of students.

CJ grimaced.

Harriet pulled CJ down to her height and giggled slightly. “Hopefully this inclusivity will help you guys because we look forward to representing you on the student body council! Right?”

“No.”

“Duh,” Frida pointed a finger gun at Harriet.

“We’ve decided to throw together a super exclusive Inclusivity Committee for you frozens! It’s totally exclusive!” Harriet said.

CJ weaseled her way out from between Frida and Harriet; she grimaced. “Right. And what wonderful first-generation clones did you pick without consulting me for this wonderful committee that you also made without consulting me?” She asked, angrily.

“Whaaaat?” Harriet laughed nervously and glanced between Frida and all of their first-generation partners. “I didn’t! We didn’t! Puh—no one excluded you from the decision-making process.”

“Okay, so then I get to pick?” CJ asked.

“Nah, girl, we already picked.” Frida stepped forward and pulled and lanyard out of the pocket of her cargo jeans. “So, what do you say, Cleo,” she paused.

“Finally!” Cleo held her hand out for the lanyard.

“Good pick, girls.” CJ crossed her arms and smirked, approvingly, at the choice.

“Could you step out of the way so we can give this to Joan of Arc?” Frida held up the end of the lanyard to show an image of Joan on the Inclusivity Committee badge.

“Just kidding.” CJ sighed.

Joan and Cleo gasped at the revelation—apparently the future seems to love people like Joan more than to do people like Cleo (save for CJ, who liked Cleo). CJ remained unsurprised that she was uninvolved in the decision-making process and was further unsurprised that Harriet and Frida had chosen to admit Joan to their strange exclusive Inclusive Committee. CJ and Vincent stood behind the members of the Inclusivity Committee and were immediately left to their own devices, so they switched their shoes back. Vincent, once again, felt more like himself, short, depressed, and Dutch. CJ felt like herself again as well, empowered and about 5’8” after the heel. She clenched her jaw as Frida and Harriet dragged on the entire lanyard ordeal in front of them.

Joan swiped the lanyard from Frida. “Oh, wow.”

“WHAT?!” Cleo raised her voice, her eyes bulged out of her eye sockets. “Just hold on a second for me. You’re the hottest girl in school,” she pointed at Frida, “and Joan is considered cool?” She pointed at Joan, “oh, my God, this is such a nightmare. I have to be dreaming, right? Someone needs to wake me up!” She pinched herself, and when pinching herself did not wake her up, she resorted to using various objects, including a bear trap and a bag of rat traps that CJ had handed her. Cleo continued to batter herself bloody in disbelief of the future that she was currently living in.

“Is she good?” Frida asked.

Joan shrugged her shoulders. “I have no idea.” She looked back at the lanyard in her hands. “Wow, I don’t even remember this photo, is this a yearbook photo of me? Why is it so crystal clear?”

“Technology.” Frida said.

CJ rested her arm on Vincent’s head and turned her attention to him, rather than continuing to listen to Frida, Harriet, and Joan. “And I’m done here, obviously.”

Vincent immediately pushed her arm off of his head. “That was very painful to watch.”

She stood with her shoulders back, arms crossed over her chest and her feet were shoulder width apart. She hummed, “which part, because I think the entire thing was painful.” CJ raised an eyebrow and looked down at Vincent.

“Aren’t you the VP? You didn’t get a choice in the committee member.” Vincent said.

“I like Cleopatra.” CJ deadpanned.

“Why?”

“She’s practical.”

Vincent nodded slowly. “Right… If that’s what you want to call it.” He looked away from her. “Your council buddies’ kind of ruined your mood, didn’t they?”

“We’re not buddies.” She told him harshly. “It disgusts me—their attitudes about the whole thing and calling you ‘frozens’ sounds like the next racial slur.”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to say anything.” He glanced up at her. “I wasn’t sure if that was just me.”

CJ bent down to Vincent’s height and pointed at Joan’s boyfriend. “Don’t want to interrupt our race and ethics class, but is that boy in the red shirt always that weird?”

Joan’s boyfriend—the boy in the red shirt that CJ referred to-threw his new lanyard around his neck. “Hot, uh, dog, Joanie! Wouldya look at that, we’re in the club together!” He happily skipped toward Joan and grabbed her shoulders. He quickly grabbed her waist and picked her up; he spun her around and began singing. “Me an’ Joanie sittin’ in a tree! Bangin’ in the Inclusivity Committee!”

“JFK stop it!” Joan giggled.

“So-so.” Vincent confirmed.

“Does your lunch table have an open seat?” She whispered. “Because I don’t think I can deal with these fucking assclowns.”

Vincent nodded. “Yeah, join us whenever you want—hey, do you want to come to the Grassy Knoll?” He asked with a lopsided grin.

“Eugh, I just walked a mile with you.” She straightened her posture and peered down at him. “No offense.” “It’ll be fun, we won’t stay there all night.” Vincent tried to convince her.

#oc: cj scudworth #cinnamon j scudworth fanfiction #clone high x oc #clone high x oc fanfiction #principal scudworth fanfiction #the genetic puzzle #the genetic puzzle chapter 2

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