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you ever do that thing where you assign stuff to people for fun
Jessabell is a cup of Moonlight white with a pinch of sugar Corpses is one of those questionable black and white bubble teas, specifically a medium size with 50% ice and extra sugar Athanasius is a cup of cream of earl grey with a half a teaspoon worth of sugar and a tablespoon worth of milk Fox is a lychee milk foam bubble tea, with extra sugar and regular pearls Iscariot is a medium strawberry milk bubble tea with strawberry pearls Walker is a cup of pu’er with a spoonful of milk X is a cup of English Breakfast, with 2 spoonfuls and a half of milk and a teaspoon of sugar Feathers is a cup of Irish Breakfast, with a dash of lemon and a teaspoon of sugar
#dark raven feathers#plague doctor#plague doctors#plaguesona#plaguecore#bird doctor#idk y’all give off vibes#By questionable I mean like#It looks good but also looks like it’d taste bad#tea#Athanasius is also a medium milk tea with oolong and pearls with half sugar#Corpses is also a cup of Earl Grey with no milk and a tablespoon and a half of sugar#Walker is also just straight up alcohol
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Lute x fallen angel! Reader: Fallen
Short fic- tell me what you think! Hope you all enjoy it-!
Summary" lute SHOULD hate you. But. How can she?
HEAVY SPOILERS MENTIONED LIKE AKL OVER(in this like one?) IDK PLEASE. ALL HAZBIN FICS I WRITE ARENT SPOILER FREE UNLESS I STATE THAT IT IS. YOUVE BEEN WARNED
Warning(s): blood/fights, love at first sight, maybe ooc lute? Idk yoy tell me I never wrote her, heartbreak, also from my knowledge? Wing movements(from birds please correct me on the info if I do it wrong I do not own birds) in denial, Adam and his vulgur language
Ngl I love lute-
Lute a cruel sadistic woman. Odd place for a woman in heaven. But given her status as the leader of the executioners. The one who leads the battles against those vile sinners. Who trains the angels picked to fight herself. The woman second in command to Adam himself.
It's a fitting role.
Never in a million years(and she HAS been around for that long. Or so she lost track of such a useless thing) would she? A ruthless exterminator encounter this thing other fully pure angels speak of.
Love
Why would she? Lute is a fighter. A warrior. The one who Adam HIMSELF entrusts his life too. Why would she fall for anyone? She doesn't even know if she CAN feel such a thing.
But as always- Life(or afterlife?) Is full of surprises. She was well aware of a new angel coming in. Recently passed in some horrific accident she doesn't care for the details just knows- need to pick them apart see if their ruthless enough to fight. But the second she went into the room her eyes widden- an odd feeling in her chest as If her heart- her cold heart was heating up.
"Hello~ are you uh Lute?" You asked shyly- which given the situation even the most outgoing would be just as shy. She blinked, glad for the mask to hide the flushed expression - the confusion on it.
Clearing her throat, she nods slowly, ensuring you saw "I am. Welcome to Heaven, " she greeted uncharacteristically polite- gentle. If you were to be mistaken, she ignored the odd look Adam gave her, looking at the name tag, even your name is pretty- she blinked.
What?
She did NOT just think that. She did NOT Find you pretty. Gorgeous. She does NOT notice how your eyes sparkle how friendly your smile is as you both talked. She most certainly doesn't notice how your wings are the single most gorgeous pair she's ever seen. How white it is- signaling how pure you are. How the gold etched into it- putting to shame her grey and black wings- smiling soft behind her mask. How how she wishes to touch the- she stops she will NOT think that
-
It became as clear as day to her and anyone else. Lute? Is inlove. And not just anyone. The new angel- the kind soul who? Adam states follows her around like a lost puppy or in Adam's kind words "Hey look. It's lutes bitch!" Oh how she wishes to punch him everytime- hit that smug look off. But she won't. Not yet.
A common tradition in heaven- like the birds in the human realm(maybe a odd similarity she presumed. She doesn't care for the human realm after all) finding a mate, a lover with the most gorgeous wings. It was no surprise you gained such attention
Much to her displeasure.
Grumbling watching as how you yet again were surrounded by angels around you- and ad always rejecting them before that smile she oh so adored. Yet would never state aloud was sent her way- making her scowl darkly(but on the inside? She was warm) quickly making your way to her she noticed how you fidgeted. How red you were "out with it. What is it?" She grumbled out no matter how warm and soft she was on the inside? Her words on the outside could never match. No matter how she wished it
White cleared her vision making her back up scrunching her nose before finally realizing what it was- a feather. Not just any old feather. Your feather "i.. i want you to have it.. I know the meaning bur when I was preening my wings u couldn't help it.. I want you to have my feather" they whispered watching as she gently took the feather.
Silently accepting them courting her with a soft smile. Maybe she can make it a necklace?
-
As great as it was up there. There were rules. Easy to forget. Easy to break. But rules nonetheless. Once Adam instructed her to strip a betrayers wings, Lute sighed. Grumbling loudly going to the room. Ignoring the odd almost somber pitiful look Adam gave her. Hiding the feather in her shirt tucked safe near her heart, she hummed, stepping inside fixing her helmet before freezing
"No-"
Her heart dropped paling more then she was already at the bloodied sight
"NO WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!"
She roared storming to your bloodied frame she couldn't help but break her never-ending composure for the first time, kneeling to your side "do you HAVE ANY FUCKING IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS?" She snarled ripping her mask off showing her teary face. Knowing her counter was now a sinner. Her angel was a traitor. A million emotions went through her head glaring down at you with every emotion but the one she should feel.
It wasn't hate.
She ignored her feelings, swallowing it down she ignored the reasoning of what you did. Of what you SAID. putting her mask on, she steeled herself. She was an executioner. A peacemaker. She takes care of the issue. So she pushed you down with her foot grabbing your once gorgeous wings now bloodied gold- in her one hand grabbing her spear she sliced. Ignoring how she was covered in your blood. The deafening screams of pain. Of agony. How you begged for her. She took a sigh taking her mask off giving you the chance to se her one last time. Without the mask. How she stared cold at you.
Before the ground opened up, "lute. Before I go- please I lo-" she cut you off, kicking you in. Closing her eyes as the ground closed. For the first time ever. She fell to her knees, holding the now broken wings sobbing out for a sinner. How was she not a sinner to for showing the regret. Showing the selfishness in this?
~~
It wasn't long before she saw you again. Traveling down with Adam to meet with Charlie and her girlfriend- to Lute it was a vile relationship. Not because of the sex- no- because of the liar Vaggie is. How that bitch betrayed her kind and then fell for the ruler of hells daughter. She could almost laugh.
Blinking, ignoring the yelling match of Adam and Charlie. Looking out the window, she froze mouth wide open- even though the demons back was turned. No wings but a tail and horns. She knew that laugh. She knew that smell. No matter how different you looked. Eyes soft watching you turn. Even as a demon. You truly are a beautiful creature. She softened her gaze behind her mask before looking away in disgust. Not with you.
But herself.
Lute a angel? Finds a demon attractive. Sure it's you but. Your a demon. A angel and demon together is vile. Disgusting in all sense of the worse.
But even now. She can't help but still long for you. Long for the almost relationship. Frowning, she looked back at Adam, who watched her with a frown. She knew they'd have a talk. Sighing, she followed after him with a deep sigh
She truly wished this outcome was different. How she longs to see you once more. Touching the feather on her chest she sighs
The only way she would be with you. Is if she was fallen as well. What a cruel irony.
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oh daydreams, please bless us with your opinion of what kind of Hybrid the JJK men would be
my takes are hot and controversial. y'all will never know how much self-restraint it took not to pull an 'oops all catboys' and actually give this list a little genome variety.
gojo satoru would be a gyrfalcon. he's an absolutely huge, constantly looming bird of prey with grey-speckled feathers and a wings so long, it only takes one to wrap around you entirely. most hybrids hybrids are at least a little stand-offish, but he's laid across your lap nearly every night, clicking happily while you preen him. if it wasn't for his wings, his piercing eyes, you'd think he was a canine-hybrid - just based on how unwilling he is to ever leave your side.
geto suguru would be a black panther. graceful, elegant, stronger than he has any right to be - ironically, the only things that don't add to his air of mystique are the rounded, twitching ears on top of his head and the sleek, black tail that's almost always brushing against your legs. he's not as clingy as gojo, but if you ask politely, he might let you comb your fingers through his hair (you're dead if you ever try to call it 'petting') as he purrs and kneads at your chest. there's a good chance you'll be left with more than a house-cat's worth of scratches after your informal grooming session, but don't worry, he'll be more than happy do run his rough tongue over your injuries and pretend he doesn't notice that his pointed teeth are just making the damage worse </3
fushiguro toji would be a grizzly bear. his coat is much darker than that of the standard bear hybrid, but once he stands to his full height and throws you over his shoulder with all the effort it would've taken to lift an empty cardboard box, your doubts are miraculously cleared away. he's got hands that can wrap around your head and a jaw that can bite through through steel and he's going to take every possible opportunity to drape himself over you and wonder allowed just how good you'd taste if he ever decided to take a bite. his bark is worse than his bite, though. scratch his adorable ears for a few seconds, and he'll be roughly five-hundred pounds of putty in your hands.
nanami kento would be a spotted jaguar. he'd prefer to be something plainer, like a panther or a cougar, but he wears his spots well. jaguars are largely solitary animals with little need for socialization or companionship, but with enough pestering, he might let you hover around him and fawn over his vibrant coat and extremely kissable pink nose. he's more reserved than most of the other hybrids on this lips, but he'll show his affection through the occasional grooming session and, if you're lucky, the occasional slab of (store bought, thankfully) meat left where he knows you'll find it. he says he prefers to be alone, and yet, he's stilled curled around you every night, purring happily and nuzzling into your neck. he's just a big softie, at heart.
sukuna would be a red fox. it's not enough for him to be a predator - he has to be the one predator known for its intelligence. he's got an ever-present kitsune's smile, his white-tipped tail constantly curling and swaying as he flaunts his strength, and he's got no shame when it comes to unabashedly proclaiming himself your superior while you comb out his thick fur for the nth time that day. he's cockier than gojo (somehow) and obsessed with the idea of proving himself as a mate (without ever admitting he'd want a worthless human as his mate, of course), which means you're going to have a very jealous, very smug fox at your side at all times, no matter how difficult that might make your daily, probably not extremely fox-centric life. try not to hold it against him, he's just trying to impress his future mate <3
#jujutsu kaisen#jujutsu kaisen x reader#jjk x reader#jjk#jujutsu kaisen imagines#jjk imagines#gojo x reader#geto x reader#toji x reader#nanami x reader#personal#anon ask#sukuna x reader
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How to react to you longtime girlfriend regaining her angelic wings: a guide by Charlie Morningstar, proud girlfriend of said girlfriend.
Things you SHOULD do with her new wings!
Notice them! (this is easy bc they are BIG and BEAUTIFUL with the soft grey faded colors of an overcast sky right before it rains and gives you an excuse to stay indoors snuggled in soft blankets drinking hot coco together back when everything was simpler and safe which is exactly what getting folded up in them will feel like later and- what? oh right! The list thing, um-)
Complement your girlfriend's wings! Maybe don't overwhelm her with a whole paragraph just yet though. Saying "They look nice!" works perfectly good. (waxing poetic can wait until Alone Time)
GENTLY touch the wings. But not too gently!!! Maybe hold the upper joint place, like a little handshake hello. (the feathers are attached to very VERY sensitive bundles of nerves for feeling out air pressure and drafts and stuff, Vaggie says, but they are TOTALLY NOT TICKLISH supposedly and the reason you shouldn't run your hands across them all nilly-willy whenever you get caught up in how pretty and soft they are is it messes them up and means they need preening again to make flying work right, and THAT'S why she jumps and squeaks about it. She likes keeping things tidy! That's all! No other reason. Noooope)
Things you should NOT do with her new wings!!!!!
Blow a giant raspberry right between them, where the feathers get all small and super extra downy soft, just to see what will happen.
Do the above in the middle of maybe KINDA making out....?
Tell absolutely everyone in the hotel about it directly afterwards.
Thing you WILL end up doing if you complete the above list
Spend the night on the bedroom couch: because you keep remembering the noise she made during the raspberry blowing incident, and giggling yourself and her awake about it.
Wake up in bed anyway: snuggled in your girlfriend's arms the same way you do any time you fall asleep in the wrong place and she has to come find you and carry you back with her so SHE can get some sleep too- only this time she also has WINGS!!! And her wings tuck around you so warm and strong, you'd swear you've felt this every time waking up with her before- only now the feeling is all around you, instead of just wrapped around your heart <3
You're still sleeping on the couch tomorrow though: At LEAST for the first part of the night. Or however long it takes before you stop giggling over hearing your totally an angel very serious former solider and absolutely Not a BIRD girlfriend Squawk.
Things to KEEP doing now your girlfriend has wings again!
Try better next time with the rule following??
Hope you're doing okay so far????
Help her with the preening!!
Stop giggling. Somehow.
Staring at them and spacing out is also okay as long as you say you're "acclimating" yourself to the "sudden change in a core aspect" of your life when someone catches you at it. They won't believe you- But! They'll probably just roll their eyes and let you get back to the staring. Acclimating. Whatever!
Anyway, good luck to whoever needs this! Hope this helps things go smoothly for you, Cherri Bomb!!
Also- Angel Dust, if you've read this far, then PLEASE don't tell Husk. Me and Vaggie PROMISED him not to give you ideas, and we don't wanna get banned from the bar again :(
Sincerely, Charlie Morningstar, princess of Hell, Vaggie's girlfriend (!!!)
Note from Vaggie: You're doing great sweetie. And you're lucky you're cute when you laugh, even in your sleep. P.S. There's no 'supposedly' about it, my wings are NOT ticklshkSkk .... P.P.S. from Charlie: are you suuuure? <3 <3 <3
#hazbin hotel#charlie morningstar#vaggie#chaggie#silly headcanons#silly ideas#no greater battle has vaggie faced#than charlie's realization she can get Funny Noises out of vaggie by messing with her wings#rest in gay pieces vaggie
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who's that girl?
Warnings: this fic will include elements, some dark, such as possible cheating, low self-esteem, noncon/dubcon, and other untagged triggers. Please take this into account before proceeding. It is up to curate your online consumption safely.
Summary: you neighbour is too helpful, and too nosy, for your liking, but he's not your only problem.
Characters: Tommy Miller, Joel Miller
Author’s Note: Please feel free to leave some feedback, reblog, and jump into my asks. I’m always happy to discuss with you and riff on idea. As always, you are cherished and adored! Stay safe, be kind, and treat yourself💜
“You fixed it,” you say bluntly as you approach the fence.
Tommy looks up from his knees, yanking out the deep roots of a weeds as his hair falls forward over his shining forehead. He quorks his head and narrows his eyes with a grin. He does that a lot. Smile. Especially when there’s no reason for it.
“Fixed what? The hole in your life?” He winks.
You don’t know what that means. You frown.
“The birdhouse. My birdhouse,” you say.
“Oh, uh, yeah. Saw that squirrel messing around the other day,” he shrugs and tosses the weed into the open compost bag. “What’s a nail or two and some paint?”
“How much?” You ask.
“What?” Now he looks confused.
“For the work. Twenty? Fifty?” You offer.
“Nothing. I’m being neighbourly,” he insists.
You stare at him. Neighbourly. That’s what he calls all the unnecessary things he does. Like when he mows your lawn before you can or greased the rust hinge on your gate. Can’t he ask like a normal person?
“I didn’t ask for it.”
“I know,” he blows out between his lips, “it’s just a nice thing to do.”
“But why?” You press.
“Because I’m nice? I don’t know,” he’s further perplexed as he swoops back his hair. “You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Thanks,” you take the prompt, “but I still never asked you to do that.”
“Uh huh,” he nods as he raises one brow. “Well, if it’s better, I can go back and break it again.”
You consider the offer, “no, that’s fine. The birds need to eat.”
“Right,” his eyes search you and he smiles again. “Next time I promise, I’ll be sure to ask.”
You back away and go back to your porch. You don’t get him. The worst thing about having your own place is the people. Why do they have to be so concerned with you? Why can’t they just let you be? Is the fence not a good enough signal?
You go back through the house and onto the back deck. You sit on the top step to watch the red and grey cardinal couple peck at the suet and seed. That’s your favourite thing to do. You find the feathers pretty and their songs soothing. Birds are much better than people.
As the evening wiles away, growing cooler and softer, and you mourn the waning time. Back to work tomorrow. Not that it’s very far. Just in your home office. Still, you’ll be pent up inside in front of a screen. It’s hardly stimulating.
You yawn and make yourself get up. You’ll barbeque the chicken skewers and some veggies. You go inside to get all the fixings you need. You come out and light the grill, breathing in the pollen and hint of moisture in the air.
You hear voices as the barbeque heats up. You lay the skewers and roasting pan on the grill and close the lid. The smell is comforting to you. It reminds you of your late father.
“Huh, Tommy, see you’re still crashing into things,” a gristly voice comes from the other side of the fence as the loose slat is wiggled. You grimace. Looks like your neighbour has company. “Couldn’t put a nail gun to this thing?”
“Oh yeah, the nail gun I lent to you,” Tommy chirps back. “Joel, leave it alone.”
You wiggle the long tongues in your grip. You always thought of fixing it yourself but always forget. You’re surprised your handy neighbour hasn’t already, considering he could come right through and touch your birdhouse. Now you think of it, how did he even get to it?
You glare at the loose slat. Ah. That could be the possible reason for his procrastination. The slat moves and a face appears in the space as it’s twisted on the loose nails. A man you vaguely recognises peers through. He comes to Tommy’s often.
“Smells good over there,” he comments as he peers into your lawn.
You don’t say anything. Why is he doing that? You should tell him to mind his business but that isn’t polite. Even if your father would have laughed.
He hesitates before he drops the slat straight and retreats into his brother’s yard. You hear a whistle and low grumble. You can’t make out his words.
“She don’t want you peepin’ on her,” Tommy chortles, “what? My steak isn’t good enough for ya?”
“You overcook it. No one wants your grey slabs,” the other man, Joel, rebuffs.
“Oh, is that why you drink all my beer?”
“Gotta moisten it up.”
“Whatever,” Tommy mutters.
You hear his footsteps as he climbs his deck steps. That’s another problem. After last year’s cacophonous renovation, his deck is high enough that he can see you over the top of the fence. A privacy fence!
“Hello, neighbour,” he calls over the sound of his barbecue lighting, “what’s for dinner tonight?”
You glance over at him and back to the grill. You lift the lid and turn the skewers, stirring around the veggies on the pan. You close it and hang the tongues as you look out at the bird feeder. They’ve scared them all away.
“Ha, looks like I’m not the only one she wants nothing to do with,” Joel remarks as the tab of a can cracks, “you ever get anything good? These craft beers taste like scum.”
“You didn’t complain last week,” Tommy grumbles and shakes his head, approaching the rail of his deck, “smells like chicken.”
You roll your eyes. You really don’t want to be rude. You just want to enjoy your time alone.
“Yep, chicken,” you confirm as you sit on the chair against the house siding and put your sunglasses on. You can feel him watching you.
“Delicious, you know, I make this Mexican chicken--”
“Ah, Tommy, lay it on thicker,” Joel snorts, “look at her. She’s tryna block you out. The sun’s gone.”
Is it that obvious? You turn your face away, embarrassed. Tommy sniffs and clacks his own pair of tongues, “uh, anyway, have a good night, neighbour.”
“We’ll try to keep it down,” Joel adds dryly as he pulls Tommy back by his arm.
You chew your lip and stare through the dark lenses. You wonder if you could get a bigger awning to block him out or something. You’ve dealt with mice and ants and wasps, but you still can’t get rid of that one pest. Just like the others, he only seems to multiply.
#tommy miller#joel miller#dark tommy miller#dark!tommy miller#dark joel miller#dark!joel miller#the last of us#au#who's that girl?#drabble#series#tommy miller x reader#joel miller x reader
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me describing any ship in my MD fanfiction: These fucking idiots are married in a four way polycule, now fight you dumbasses
me describing Tessas & Js relationship in my MD fanfiction:
Cradling one another like birds in their down, spindly legs entangled, fangs hooked in one another as the Bluejay and the Dove closed their eyes to rest in eternity; sun beams warming their dresses made of blue and grey, of shillering feathers intertwined with those of black and white coloring.
Sleeping soundly feeling one anothers essence, another soul and beating heart close to the others surrounded by the comfort of the nest they called home. It was a form of intimacy few could share without understanding the deeper meaning. Longing? There was none. They had each other to protect, to be protected, to feel like the world didn’t truely matter whenever their gazes met in the middle.
#murder drones#my ramblings#fanfiction#md fanfiction#ripping royals#jessa#serial designation J#Tessa James Elliott#murder drones fanfiction#a bluejays feather#can you tell that I love drawing queer women#aughhhh#my favourite lebanese...
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Entangled Branches - Queqiao
Jingyuan x Reader
Courting is a matter that requires the utmost tact, though exceptions can be made when you're just that old
//I think this just turned into me dumping about ancient Chinese courting gifts. Poem is 秋夕 by 杜牧.
Holding a needle between your deft fingers, you embroider brilliant thread through the plain fabric, eyes focused on the prick of metal weaving in and out as the image of mandarin ducks slowly forms. One much more colourful than the other, thread of ochre and cerulean decorating the foremost bird’s feathers, the second adorned with milder shades of greys and sepias. Cyan lotus pads scattered around the two birds provide some sense of atmosphere, accompanied by scant petals, all that is left for you to do is to tidy up your ducks and add additional ripples of water.
A hand reaches to grab your scissors, snipping away the last remaining bits of orange thread that now finished the last duck. You mindlessly thread grey string through your needle, piercing through the white fabric to sew wavelets around your ducks. Your fingers ghost over each hill and ridge, feeling for imperfections that might snag. You are well aware that what you make does not have to be perfect, but your pride would not let you give someone anything less than your utmost.
It is perfect, more than perfect. You cannot help the tightness in your chest and the soft smile that creeps up your lips, thoughts not quite racing but on the verge of. Still, you must calm your thudding heart as your hands meticulously free your fabric from its wooden confines, spreading it smooth against the wooden table. Sunlight peaks through the window by your side, verdant leaves just visible behind the elaborate frame, illuminating your work properly, you take a moment to merely let your thoughts wander.
Spice sachets are by no means some modern gift to give your lover, perhaps more common in the days of your youth but surely not now. Back then, they were used as insect-repellent or air fresheners, some people also believed that they protected the wearer against evil spirits. Truthfully, he would have no need for it, but call you an old sentimental coot, you just could not help yourself from wanting to protect him, even in your own silly antiquated way.
Before the thought of actually sewing the pouch comes to mind, your head immediately jumps to the basket weave of herbs long sun-dried for use. It had taken a bit of time to get them, seeing as the alchemy commission was being quite nosey about their use and you had not the heart to tell them. So you did the next best thing and lied, citing that you needed them for cooking. Of course, it was only then that they lightened up, but that did not mean that you could not feel their stares as you scurried away.
The herbs, shrivelled and colours dulled, provide an ever so slightly scent that floated lightly through the air. A pleasant smell, one that relaxed without being excessively heady or strong. Though you had worried that such a gift would only worsen your lover’s sleeping habits, your concern for him won out in the end.
Still, you turn away from them to work on sewing the satchel together, far easier work compared to the actual momentous task of embroidery. It goes by much faster than you expect it to, with your mind drifting to familiar faces and that even more familiar emotion. Before you know it, the satchel has taken on the shape of a lotus pouch, drawstrings and all. You attach the beads onto the strings and all that is left to do is to place your herbs in. With a delicate hand, you slowly stuff them in, layering them as if anyone would even open the pouch.
Tugging on the drawstrings, you hold it to your chest for a moment, your eyes fluttering close and imbuing your prayers for him. To be safe and prosperous, able to do as he wishes without fear or shame, and most importantly for him, for his workload to decrease. A soft sigh escapes you, though it is not one of resignation or annoyance but rather fondness, horrid fondness.
You will find some way to slip this into his office, granted that would not be some hard act with how often he is not in. Still, there had to be some subtlety to your actions, you would ruin all the fun if you refrained from such. Of course, finishing one just means you will have to start the other. You could not possibly think of not making one for that disciple of his, especially when he just keeps getting himself in some kind of trouble.
You shake your head as a soft smile tugs at your lips. Truly, you must have been some saviour to be granted such people.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
银烛秋光冷画屏,轻罗小扇扑流萤。
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
He holds up the wooden comb up to the light, keen eyes pouring over every aspect of the humble item. Dark wood carved into elegant depictions of verdant bamboo and a crane, the tines were slender yet sturdy, spaced perfectly to glide through hair. Before him were many more options of such, each comb’s design more elaborate than the last.
The thought of seeing any of them in your hand, fingers wrapped around the wood as you detangle your hair, works oils with that sweet scent that seems to always coax him closer, it sends a soft warmth to his limbs. He does not quite know how to explain it, a rather pitiful situation for someone known for his flattery and skillful words, but he finds that even when you are doing the most mundane things, he loves you just a little bit more. Perhaps others may call him love-addled in the head, but under soft moonlight, in nothing but your sleeping garments with your hair let down, he imagines that fond glint in your eyes and just cannot help himself but yearn to bear witness to such a sight for the rest of time.
The idea of gifting you a comb has been borne out of spontaneity, something he is not the most familiar with but still welcome. It had been custom for combs to be gifted between lovers, a desire to grow ‘old’ with said person, and he supposes that such a sentiment is rather difficult to continue on when long-lives and mara are two very common phenomena. It is rather silly, but a comb is a practical gift and he has always believed that if given the chance, if the two of you were merely two mortals, you would be happy to watch the wrinkles appear on each other’s face and for your hair to turn grey. You would still be beautiful, aged with the years spent together and the joy evident upon your visage, crow’s feet, smile lines and all.
When he returns to his senses, his hand has rested upon another comb. A lighter shade than the first, though the quality is still just as immaculate, the spaces between the tines are much larger, not as tightly packed as the last. Though arguably a lot less intricate than many of its predecessors, there seemed to be a certain charm to it, humble jasmine flowers carved onto the main body with a care that went far beyond ornate. The very engraving of each petal laden with care, ridge and valley of complete smoothness, the simple design far conveyed to him the vision of you than the rest.
He thumbs over the engraving, smiling to himself as he imagines you once more. Again that old image of you at your night-time routine, this time with this very comb in your hand as you call for him, your voice gentle along the night wind with the smell of sandalwood in the air. It really is foolish of him to keep musing, and yet no matter how many times he says it, he truly has been reduced to a languishing simpleton of a man when it comes to you.
“I shall take this one,” He hums, cradling the comb in one hand as he hands it to the seller.
The seller takes one look at it, a contemplative look appearing on their face before their brows furrow. Taking it into their own hands, they send him a complex look, not quite judgemental but surely urging, “Ah, this plain old thing? I’m certain that we have other combs you will certainly be much more interested in.”
A soft breath escapes him, mostly out of amusement than any negative sentiment. He only nods his head, reaffirming his desire for this specific comb out of the litany he was presented.
“Apologies, but I’m quite certain.”
When the seller notes his conviction, they just accept it. They must surely still be confused at his choice but he does not see why he must explain himself, after all, when it comes to someone such as you, even he cannot explain the manner in which even the simplest things remind him of you.
“I see, of course.”
The comb is promptly wrapped up in delicate paper and fastened with string, tied in a knot you will no doubt struggle with but will admire for all of five seconds. When it is brought back to his hands, he thanks the merchant and his chest grows warm.
A comb for his beloved, jasmines adorning your head, surely he must have been some great saviour in his past life to be able to have such a sight.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
天街夜色凉如水,坐看牵牛织女星。
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦
“General, would you perchance have the time to accept this lowly one’s gift?”
Your arrival to the seat of Divine Foresight has long been announced, a notion that Qingzu and the routine cloud knights were made aware of even before you could fathom planning your next visit. After all, when the general has come to expect your presence sliding in when everyone least expects it, you gain some perks.
“You and your formalities,” He laughs, his voice dear to your ears. Jingyuan’s eyes, framed by those long lashes, focus upon you. Seated at his desk with mounds of scrolls to look upon, though he would usually be more than happy to be dozing off right this very moment, the energy at which he responds only boosts your excitement, “Of course I do, I’ll always have time if it's you.”
“Old sap.” Shaking your head, you can only let that fond smile appear across your face as you make your way to his desk.
It is by no means an arduous journey, and it is not long before you are granted a full view of a certain someone’s rather smug face, almost feline-like if you will. Furthermore, you suppose you also should have expected that he would pull you closer towards him, his head all but resting on yours if not for the fact that you still needed to give him something. Still, you ignore the way your breath hitches for just a moment, the familiar scent of sandalwood and tea that clings to his form drifting to your nose and coaxing you to relax, instead you reach for the spice sachet and place it in his waiting hands.
He accepts it readily, and it is by the slight widening of his eyes that you know he recognises exactly what you have made for him. After all, it is not like spice sachets are commonplace in this day and age.
“See, I’ve made it so you can attach it to your belt,” Your voice is low, your head leaning against his shoulder as you fiddle with the strings. You can feel his breath fanning against you, his much larger frame a steady pillar“And it's not too long so it won’t get in your way.”
He is quiet for a moment, admiring the pouch as he turns it over and finds new details to marvel upon. Then, he speaks, voice low and teasing,“My dear, are you saying your beloved stinks?”
“No, I'm saying the air around you stinks.” Huffing, you nudge him with your elbow, a notion that he also clearly finds amusing, as he makes an over-exaggerated ‘oof’ to your light tap.
Jingyuan only laughs at that comment, wrapping an arm around you so that you may be closer to one another. Still, he presses a chaste kiss to your forehead, a doting smile on his lips. He whispers, “Thank you for the gift, I’m certain your blessings will keep me safe.”
“You better, if I have to find out from Qingzu that you got some grievous injury again I think I’ll be the one going mara-struck instead.”
“Oh then whatever shall I do? I suppose I can only trouble my dear wife to take care of me so that I won’t end up in the healers again.”
At that, you barely resist the urge to butt him with your head, another overfond sound escaping his lips, sounding more like sweet birdsong to your ears that you may hear his amusement and joy so clearly. Though, it is not long until you notice the weight in your lap, some object wrapped in paper and bound in string. When you meet his gaze, he only gestures for you to open it, golden eyes glinting with some indulgent sentiment. You do so, fussing with the knot but eventually unwrapping the paper to reveal a simple wooden comb, jasmines carved onto its body.
The breath in your lungs seems to escape you, for your words get carded in your throat and all you can muster is a pathetic, “You…”
“You old coot, getting me a comb,” You chuckle, an attempt to hide how choked up you were. “We’ve already spent so many years together and you….”
Jingyuan looks to you, and you are certain that if a mirror were to be brought to both of your faces right this very moment, what would be found would be merely two senior citizens playing at youth. Though, with the many hardships that the centuries have put you through, you cannot quite say that you quite mind this kind of childish tomfoolery. Why else would you call upon childhood sentiments? Why else would he choose such a gift?
Holding up a hand to cradle his face, he leans into your touch, those soulful eyes once again meeting yours. There is such a profound affection within them that for a while, it scared you. Yet now, being the one most privy to such a sight, those eyes who hold the sun and make you yearn to protect him, it comes to you as natural as breathing.
“What do you say, my dear?” He offers, cocking his head to the side as those mellow words sink in.
You can only shake your head, an overly indulgent quirk of your lips pulls your lover closer. It is not the first kiss you shared, and it is certainly not the last, for there will be a long, long time before one of you meets your ends.
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v. another man's legacy
pairing. aemond targaryen x fem!reader synopsis. prince aemond calls all with fire in their blood forth to dragonstone with promise of a grand announcement, unawares of the king's own announcement. chapter warnings. no use of y/n, brother-in-law!aemond, stark!reader, infidelity, purity culture, extended family drama, possible spoilers for events that take place in fire & blood! smut ( unprotected piv, creampie, [redacted]'s cum used as lube, fingering, exhibitionism? possibly? maybe? if you squint? ) please kindly notify me of any warning i may have missed. word count. 13k. hyde’s input. i ideally wanted this posted a week ago but i've unexpectedly had quite a busy month, sorry besties. lowkey hate how this turned out, wrote it in a rush, but hopefully you enjoy the chapter x ( if you see a typo, no you didn't )
another man's series. feast. comfort. pleasure. pain. legacy. jealousy. ( coming october ) read on ao3. listen to the playlist.
The ravens are put to work.
Daybreak, nightfall. Sunrise, sundown. Highwinds, dry air. Blue sky, grey storms. Between man’s certainty of life and death, a new one arises: the promise of feathered wings flying high over the streets of King’s Landing. Dark wings, dark words — a phrase your late septa had sworn by, fear in her eyes everytime a bird dared arrive at Winterfell carrying a message — it does not ring true to the ink that fills the recent parchments.
The guardsmen saw me home safely through the southron sands, past the Stormlands, and alas, to King’s Landing. I pray for safety in your own travels.
You had written it in a hurry and sent it with even more haste, the innocent intentions of wishing well to a man bound to you in marriage. You had awaited no reply, in truth, yet when the raven perched itself upon your window sill at the Hour of the Wolf, you felt your heart try to flee out of your chest.
Whispers travel faster than ravens, I knew of your arrival already. It is good to read of it in your own hand. You need not fret on my safe-being, for I sit upon a mount from where no man may harm me.
No name, no signature. A rule unspoken yet well-kept. Should words be seen by unintended eyes, there is no space for errors, big nor small, for errors lead to questions, questions lead to answers, and answers lead to exposure.
It is truly a bore to attend courts as of late. No one lends me the privilege of a dance and, the few who do, seem to possess two left feet. I fear for the health of my toes, crushed under the weight of misplaced steps.
Your days in Dorne have come to mark a significant shift in your life, moulding you into a different version of a woman who always existed within you. You returned to the capital not only wearing a new dress, but a new attitude. A life divided by two key phases: Before Dorne, and After Dorne. And, yet, all that has truly changed in your life is this: the letters.
We danced this evening, when you visited my sleeping mind. Naked, sweet, pliant. It felt so real. I could taste you, smell you, feel you. I woke with a most horrible discomfort in my loins. You have ignited a longing in me befitting a petulant child, not a man of my class. How am I expected to live with never having you again?
There is a creature inside you that wishes to collect his words, like a crow collects a shiny trinket. Assign them a drawer at your bedside, a place for them to live near your resting head and hopefully whisper themselves into your dreams, the only lands you are able to get a glimpse of his blonde hair, and lean arms, and soft mouth. That would mean danger, however, a trail of evidence for someone to find. Each parchment lives on as nothing more than a pile of ash in your hearth.
There is rumour of Lohar’s death. Assassination, they say. It ripped apart the triarchy, half of them fighting, the other half fleeing. I must be honest when speaking on the swelling of my own pride. You not only heed my warnings, but also took my advice. Perhaps my next advice will be that you meet me beneath moon and sky, and let only our bodies and the gods bear witness to what we do.
Words grow bolder as minds grow desperate. You find yourself in a rut, counting days as if it does not add to your own torture. Insatiable, a term you have scarcely used to describe yourself in past times, yet it is all that feels adequate since that night upon foreign sheets. Your husband takes you, like a hound takes its bitch, and you welcome him. Close your eyes, picture that same silver hair, but another’s face, hands, voice. It ends how all couplings end between you — an unanswered prayer between your thighs, a bud on the permanent precipice of bursting into bloom, only for Aegon to rip it out by its roots and spill his own seed in its place. But for a moment, while his hips beat relentlessly against the swell of your arse and his nails dig crescents into your skin, you feel it: a subtle, low-burning pleasure. Not much, but enough, more than before.
Give me cause and I shall give you no rest, my Lady.
“Are you not enjoying the boar, wife?” Aegon’s voice cuts through the fog of your thoughts and brings your surroundings back into focus.
The King’s chambers, a table set for two, a handful of maids carrying pitchers of wine, and a nervous harpist, plucking a disjointed tune with shaky fingers. You pity the man. It is one thing to play to a court of dancing bodies and chattering mouths, it is another to play in the privacy of the King and Queen Consort as they dine in one another’s company.
You cough out a denial, shake your head as if to emphasise, “it is as tender today as it was yesterday, my King.”
“You’ve hardly touched it.”
“My thoughts feed me tonight.”
“Any that you care to share?”
No. “Of course,” Aemond takes the centre frame in your mind’s eye, not so much an image as he is a concept. You push him aside. “I attended this morning. Your dealings with the smallfolk, I watched from the balcony that sits over the throne room.”
“I saw,” he seems to light up as the topic is brought forth. Intrigued enough to lay down his cup and rest his forearms along the table, leaning closer as if awaiting some great secret to spill from your lips. You wonder if he would be half as amused if your mouth followed through on his unspoken request. “Well go on then! What did you think?”
“What did I… Think?” Your husband nods his head with enthusiasm, his unruly locks of hair shaking as he does so. It is hard to picture him any other way than this, unkept and unbothered, nothing like the rest of his Valyrian bloodline, with their meticulous braids and their well pampered image. Were it not for the striking colour that grows out his scalp, you would hardly believe Aegon is a Targaryen. His dark eyebrows shoot up expectantly. “You did well. You were cooperative and understanding. Just, too. No matter the personal issue they laid at your feet, you truly tried to solve things as best you could. You were… Aegon, you were kingly.”
“Do not sound so surprised,” rose tinted cheeks, a splash of bloodrush upon his soft skin. The wine must be getting to him and yet… And yet you wonder if it is something more, a rush of excitement at praise. He had never wanted this — the crown, the throne, you — until push came to shove and he felt the sweet weight of the Conqueror’s legacy rest upon his head and the grip of Blackfyre in his fist. Whether driven by ego or a genuine wish to do well by the people of his realm, Aegon has taken on his duties as of late with a grace no one, not even his own blood, had expected of him. A mess made in times of war, he spears ahead to clean up what rubble and ashes remain of the land. “I’m sure you’re wondering what prompted my invite to sup here, alone.”
“You are my husband, I am your wife. Who else would I share my meals with?”
“I am sure there are names ahead of mine on that list,” the smile he flashes is jaded. “Sometimes I worry you wish to forget our marriage.”
“Aegon, husband, I would never do such a thing.” And yet, you have. Naked in the Dornish heat, another name upon your tongue, another man inside your cunt.
“Leave us,” two words, enough to send the serving wenches out in a flurry of footsteps. The drag of a harp across the floor, loud and resounding as the musician slips his way out the room, closing the door behind himself. And then it is truly just the two of you, inspecting the other under a gaze cold enough it reminds you of the snow that falls over Winterfell. “The letter,” your heart leaps to your throat, blocking the space and robbing you of your breath. He knows, he knows, he knows. He knows of the letters, and the deceit, and all those complicated feelings you hold for- “That I sent to you during your time with my sister. I have not forgotten it. I expect you haven’t either.”
Air fills your lungs, your heart settles back down in the cage of your chest. The shake in your hand remains, and so you fill it with the weight of your other hand, clasp them both into stillness. “No.”
“Wonderful. Then you’ll recall my mention of a chat we’re overdue. There is no time like the present,” the little of your dinner that sits in your stomach stirs. Flips. Threatens to claw its way back up and out of you, spill itself all over the table. That would not rouse any suspicion, surely. It would be a perfectly rational response to your husband, bound to you in cloth beneath the Seven, requesting to chat with you. Aegon continues, as if unaware or simply unbothered by the distress bursting out of your seams. “It is not lost on me, you know? The looks you cast my way, the disdain that has slowly wiped itself over our union, a permanent stain that hovers over every interaction we share. I believe it is time to admit to-”
The chamber doors burst open anew.
“Your grace,” Maester Orwyle, out of breath, sweat lining his brow, and his chain hanging heavy from his neck. Never has his face been such a welcomed sight.
“I believe I ordered that my wife and I be left alone.”
“Apologies, your grace, but this is a pressing matter,” the maester holds up a scrap of paper, the edges curling in on themselves. “I carry word from the Crown Prince, Aemond Targaryen.”
You sit up a little straighter at the mention of his name. Days of private correspondence, nights of fantasised meetings, you have forgotten just how commanding his name sounds when spoken aloud.
Aegon sinks deeper into his chair, a boredom taking over his features as he waves his hand, “well then, go on, spit it out!”
“Prince Aemond has requested the presence of all members of House Targaryen at Dragonstone,” his sandal-covered feet make gentle pitter-patter against the floor as he approaches the table, laying out the note for Aegon to grab at and inspect for himself. “The letter brings promise of an announcement from the prince.”
The great Targaryen dynasty.
Built on the ashes of burnt kingdoms and the man-shaped collateral damage of one family’s lust for control. Centuries of legacy, an infinite amount of tales that better fit the stuff of legends and scriptures. Lavish castles, luxurious clothing, Valyrian steel. A puritan bloodline, a family tree that circles itself. The smell of a dragon’s breath, the shine of silver-blessed hair. And this is what it has been reduced to.
Four dragons. Two crippled by war, wings with crooked bones and punctured skin. One a mere hatchling, no older than three, with a sickly pale colour and an unhealthy disposition that keeps it curled around its bonded rider’s shoulder, unwilling to stray far. And then there is the eldest of them, unchanged by the war, already well-versed in the age-old Targaryen tradition of burning enemies to a crisp.
The Martells are the first to arrive. A small boat, with a handful of guardsmen, two ladies in waiting, a wet nurse, Princess Helaena, and her two children. The Prince of Dorne has remained at the seat of his house, unwilling to leave it defenceless in the early hours of peace.
The Hightowers arrive next. Three great ships, stuffed to the brim with armed men, and mute maids, and shy squires. Amongst them, the lowly Garmund Hightower stands at command, but it is his wife who’s presence has truly been requested: Rhaena Targaryen. The last time you had seen her, no war had transpired and she had been betrothed to another. If only Aemond had not taken to the skies that fateful night…
Above the Hightower fleet, another representative of House Targaryen flies, sat atop the blue beauty, Tessarion, the left side of her still marred with scars and puncture wounds littering her left wing from the battles she had endured during the war of kin. Daeron had insisted she fly, however, having not taken to the skies in moons, since the wedding at Winterfell.
The Velaryons do not answer the summoning. It is said Baela Targaryen, infuriated at her cousin’s request, had to be shackled to her bedpost, ranting and raving threats of greeting Aemond Targaryen in Dragonstone — with a sword down his throat.
And then, at last, the King’s fleet arrives. An outlandish six ships, with more guards than dare fit on the island, enough chamber-maids to fill the Great Hall, and the main figureheads of the Green Council. Up above flies Sunfyre, a watchful eye amid the clouds, yet his back remains riderless. The King, instead, stands at your side aboard the ship, his mother and grandsire on the opposite end of him.
At last, you step foot on Dragonstone, and that is when you notice her.
Vhagar, a mass resting atop a hill, too large to nest within the caves, too lonesome to answer the call of her kind, the excited screeches taking place on sand as Tesarion and Sunfyre circle one another, jostling against the keepers who attempt to wrangle the pair into the mouth of a cave. You watch as the giant she-dragon merely lifts her head, peering at the antics, before laying back down, uninterested in the commotion of everyone’s arrival.
To tell the truth, you are not all that interested in greeting everyone either, too many heads bowing in your direction as you smile and exchange pleasantries by your husband’s side. The commotion of an extended bloodline retracing the halls of its ancestral home, unwanted as it may have been, only makes it all the more easy to slip away once you cross the threshold of the castle, however, letting your feet sneak off to your own private summoning.
Once you arrive, I recommend you find your way to the library. Alone.
The raven had arrived hours before you departed the capital, shaking out its feathers as you awoke from your slumber. You barely had the time to read over it once before the doors to your chambers came barreling open, an army of ladies waiting to grab all your loose threads and sort them back into place. Wash your hair, scrub your skin, rouge your lips. Tighten your bodice, clasp your necklace, rest the dainty tiara atop your head.
Running your thumb over the dried ink, you trace the words he wrote to you, before tucking the note safely back into the sleeve of your dress.
The library is miniscule in comparison to the one living within the Keep, yet it still manages to steal your breath away, stumbling through the door. Rows of dark oak bookcases, stuffed full of colourful, aged, leather-bound, cloth-bound spines of books. The smell of old, the smell of history, with a hint of spice and a flare of cinnamon. Candles with their wax melting into the surfaces they rest upon. Chairs, cushioned by green leather and detailed with dragon-like carvings. A table littered with scrolls, and ink, and feather quills, signs of life having been here. But no sign of Aemond Targaryen.
Boredom brings your feet to a halt within the row of bookcases furthest from the door, curiosity leads your hand to pulling at the spine of an aged book. Dragons: A Record of the Hatched. The smell of dust infects your nostrils as you flick through the wrinkled pages, from end to beginning.
Morning has yet to be listed. You let a few pages flick past, find yourself staring at the sketch of a familiar creature. Syrax. A splotch of ink covers the name of her rider. Turn to the next page, and there sits the Blood Wyrm, with Aemon Targaryen followed by a splotch of ink listed under his riders. Page after page, dragon after dragon, sketch after sketch, the names of the Black Council sit hidden behind stains of black ink.
An uneasy feeling stirs in your stomach and a sadness burns at your eyes, staring down at how easily their existences are being erased from history. How long, you wonder, until Rhaenyra Targaryen is nothing but the beggar Queen in a folk song, another name lost to time and another life lost to the throne? How long until the stories of the Black Council are more myth than fact?
How fickle of a thing, life. Order dictates that a name promises a legacy, a memory, a marking in a family tree to be listed until the end of time. And, yet, so easily man picks and chooses the scraps of history that will remain, when time has long passed and all who lived through it have perished back into the ground.
The sickening feeling wells inside you, uncomfortable and heavy, and so you turn another page, and another, and another, until you find yourself faced with Vhagar. The sketch does no justice to her sheer size, cramped within the page, but your eyes do not linger long enough to care. Instead, they are reading over the list of riders to find the one they seek. Aemond Targaryen. You lift a hand off the edge of the book, fingers skirting forward to trace over the lustrous A of his name.
The weight of the book shifts, resting carefully in the palm of your left hand, teetering on the edge of slipping, when something grabs at you. With a great smack, the book crashes to the floor, a cloud of dust bursting out as its pages snap shut. Arms wind around your waist, loose yet firm in their hold, and a spread of warmth blankets over your back.
“They just reached the crypts. We have less time than I had hoped.”
The voice is a whisper in your ear, a fleeting kiss against your neck, the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Gentle, soothing, delicate. Something given only to you, meant only for you. It warms a chill within you, melts away the frost encasing your heart, heating you to the bone and soothing the uneasy feeling in your loins. It is the feeling of tired limbs sinking into soft sheets, it is the feeling of stepping through the familiar gates of Winterfell, it is the feeling of home. It is Aemond.
The arms that bind you to him pull a little tighter, a momentary rob of your breath. Your hands claw at his wrists, squeezing down to feel the firmness of bone beneath skin, skin beneath leather. No ink, no paper, no written promises. Tangible, tactile, sentient. Him, him, him. Firm at your back, calm in your heart, forgiving in your ear. Your tongue itches to tell him you have endured that longing, the very same he confessed to, head deep in his cups, mouth stained in the strawberry jam of your tarts.
“You erased them. Their names, they no longer exist,” the words are an accusation, your tone is not. It is just — sad, empty, disbelieving. The mourning of strangers, a family you met once upon a time, a table set in honour of a dying man, a family feud brushed falsely aside. Until the tension snapped, until Aemond raised his cup. Final tribute.
Final.
Tribute.
“Traitors have no place in our history,” fingers tug at the green velvet of your dress, moulding the golden stitching of a dragon out of shape. You resist his call to turn, not when his words feel so cold compared to his touch. “By order of the King.”
“They were your family, your blood,” you say, willing it to mean something, willing him to show a moment of vulnerability, like his confession amid tangled limbs and wrinkled sheets. A rusty chain in need of oiling, his remorse sits buried beneath layers of oxidised irony, a faux coldness the sorrowful look in his eye so often contradicts.
You turn, at your own will, and find that very look staring back at you. Momentarily, it bleeds with something, the sharpness in his stare softening as he takes in the features of your face, as if he needs reminding of how you look, to tune his imagination more deftly to your true image.
“They tried to kill you,” it is a whisper yet the prince almost seems to spit it out, as though it is a struggle to let the words form on his tongue, his eye widening as if the memories all come barreling in, the sight of blood on your skin, blood on your sleeping gown, coin beneath his table. “Do not ask me to mourn them.”
“And what of it, if I do ask it of you?” It is daring, to straighten your back and tighten your grip on his wrists, only to drop them and grab for his face, instead, as he tries to flee from your eyes. You hold him there, thumb smoothing over scarred cheek. “Would you mourn them?”
His mouth does not answer.
Instead, it kisses you.
Everything melts away under his lips, all thoughts, and questions, and pleadings. Words drift away, your mind rids itself of all the letters that do not belong to him. Aemond. Why would you ever need more than those six letters?
It is the seventh time the prince has joined his mouth to yours. You know this not because you have tried to keep count, but because each one is as striking as the last, as utterly world-bending, and fear-ending, and noteworthy.
There was the night in your chambers, from sudden kiss, to hesitant lips, to sinful tongues. Two nights later, the weight of Helaena’s teary eyes still heavy on your shoulders, you fell tangled amongst sheets with him once more. Breaths exchanged, whimpered names, a carnal hunger that only grew the more you both fed it. Twice, with no respite between, as the moon hung stars in the sky. And when the sun began to paint an orange hue, he woke you just to have you once more, eyes barely departing from sleep, bodies laying on their sides, a leg thrown over his waist, and a hand cradling your mouth against his own.
The last kiss had tasted of sorrow and longing. In the early hours of the morning, a flurry of soft knocks at a door opened to him, wide awake and dishevelled.
“I could not do it,” he had muttered, cradling you closer with each step he took into the room. “Not again.”
Though the matter of this it had never been clarified, you knew, you understood. You agreed. Not again could you see yourselves departed from another, without so much as a proper goodbye. Suddenly, that momentary longing you had to return to the Keep had been nothing but a bout of insanity, and all you wished was to fall asleep one more night in Dornish sheets. Instead, you would later count sheep whilst attempting to ignore the turning of wheels and the whinnying of tired horses.
That kiss came with no warning, his mouth on yours in one blink of a teary eye, and lingered longer than either of you dared acknowledge. Each time one seemed ready to let go, the other pulled closer, pressed harder, kissed deeper. An ending, no pause. No see you later, only goodbye. A picture-perfect ending to an affair already gone too far with, left behind by both of you as you raced to return to reality, abandoning the whispers, and the sighs, and the unspoken vows to bury themselves beneath layers of sand and silk.
But this kiss, the one that has your back pressed against the wooden bookshelves and all sense bleeding out of your ears and spilling onto stone floor, is no goodbye. It is hello. It is I missed you. It is welcome home.
It is a kiss for the simple sake of a kiss, like true lovers do, meant nothing more but to fulfil a craving for one another’s taste.
“You look lovely in green,” he brushes the compliment against your lips, eye slipping shut and unaware of how your own trace down the healing flesh atop his eyepatch, no sign of the thread of your dress still embedded in his skin. You should be happy he has healed up, yet there is a twist in your gut that longs for the return of something belonging to you being threaded into him, a physical marking of your place in his life, no matter how small a space it occupies. “Have I ever told you so?”
A sting in your eyes. You try to recollect the last time anyone had told you such a thing, paid you such an earnest compliment, and come up empty handed.
You shake your head.
“What a coward. I should have told you, everytime,” he gifts you an eighth kiss, a fleeting peck against your mouth, yet the tingly feeling lingers on, a reminder that he has touched you. “I thought it, each time I saw you wear it.” A ninth kiss. “Each time I saw you wear anything,” a tenth, eleventh, twelfth kiss. “Each time I saw you.”
“Aemond,” you pull back from him, in hope of remembering what you had been saying before he laid his mouth on you.
The brush of a hand up your thigh has you forgetting all over again, head falling back against the books with a gentle thud and a subtle sigh. If he notices the way your legs slip open with no resistance, or how the left one hooks itself so easily over his hip, the prince says nothing.
A trail of goosebumps, following the path of his palm up the length of your inner thigh, tugging at the layers of underclothing and smallclothes, meaningless scraps of cotton that only waste time.
Time.
“We don’t have much time,” you hate yourself for saying it, and even more when he reminds you of the bliss of his kiss down your neck. “You said it.”
“Then we make do and act with haste.”
It takes you longer to register what Aemond says than it does for his fingers to make good on his promise, slipping wordlessly beneath garments and meeting warm skin, wet skin, a buzzing bud of nerves that lives between the apex of your thighs.
In a pathetic display, a singular circular rub against you, followed by a gentle stroke between your lower lips, has you biting the inside of your cheek, noise stifled in the act. Satisfaction crosses through the prince’s eye, a quirk in the corner of his razor sharp lips. Teasing, playful, he is watching you writhe over his touch.
A harrowing memory dawns over you a moment too late, when Aemond has already gone and spoken his thoughts aloud.
“Eager, Lady Stark?” The tips of two fingers, long, and lithe, and a welcome intrusion in your cunt as the prince curls them, pressing against an eye-roll inducing spot within you. “Tell me, your grace, was it the taste of my tongue or the ludicrous act of sneaking off to meet me, under the very same roof as your husband, that has you soaking my fingers?”
Your lips part. You try to speak, no words are produced.
The prince must mistake it for bashfulness, a challenge to best, for he slowly thrusts his fingers, back and forth, brushing a little deeper each time, curling a little more sinfully against the soft walls of your core, the occasional brush of his thumb over the warmth of your pearl.
No longer biting your cheek, a traitor’s moan, gentile and heard only in the space between you, bursts out your mouth. You speak his name, trying to get the words right, trying to warn him of the unknown spoils he is knuckles-deep in.
Aemond mistakes it for just another call of pleasure.
And then, all by himself, the realisation seems to fall over him.
Hand slips out from under cotton smallclothes and green velvet, fingers that shine wet, shine white beneath candlelight. You stare at them in a mixture of horror, shame, and ruined dignity, apologies already rushing off your tongue before the prince can even speak a word of the seed that drips down his knuckles.
“Aegon, he- Gods, I am sorry,” his silent observation of the white fluid only makes your loins tangle in their own web, a twisted sickness creeping to the back of your throat, the blood draining from your face. “He insisted on coupling, this morning. I did not think-”
Your rambling is interrupted by the sudden intrusion of Aemond’s soiled fingers, thrust against your tongue and coating it in your husband’s flavour.
It should disgust you. It should bring a wave of shame, flooding over you and dragging you beneath its unforgiving surface, drowning you in its overwhelming currents. Remains of an act of marriage, mixed with the taste of your act of passion, and the taste of his skin, beneath it all.
But it is hard to feel shame, when Aemond looks at you with so much approval in his eye, when he’s feeding his fingers deeper, till they bump the palate of your mouth and trigger that teary-eyed effect you remember, all too well, from his chambers’ floor, your knees bruising into stone, his hips fighting against the urge to buck up into the warmth of your mouth.
“It seems I owe my brother some gratitude,” the clink of metal, a belt tugged loose. Somewhere, beneath where your eyes dare stray from his hypnotic gaze, his free hand works himself free from the confines of his breeches. Shooting under your skirts and dragging them up the length of your legs as you lick one last time at his fingers, watching how they slip out your mouth and shine once again beneath the candlelight. Not a trace of Aegon remains, except for between your thighs. “He’s gotten you prepared for me, whether he be so aware or not.”
With one leg hooked around his waist and the layers of your gown bunched around your own, the prince pins you between the bookcase and a hard place, a hard thing, notching at your centre and reminding you of the pleasures of the flesh, the pleasures of Aemond’s flesh.
With one roll, then a second, and a third, of his hips, the prince’s cock sinks slowly inside your cunt. There is a small ache, a sensitivity left behind by Aegon’s earlier frantic motions over the edge of a table, the corner of it digging into the meat of your thigh over, and over, and over again with each uncoordinated thrust. The wince escapes you before you can even try to correct it. The prince stills, instantly, a hand cupping at your cheek and a kiss pressing against the tip of your nose.
“I do not wish to hurt you,” he whispers. Gentle, earnest, reassuring. Tears well at your eyes again, you try to blink them away, and scold yourself for getting so wet in the eye, so often. A tear escapes you regardless, charting its own course down your cheek. Aemond catches it with the tip of his tongue, warm against the cold of your face. “Tell me, it will not cause me anger. Tell me if you do not want this.”
Memories of those same words, that same voice, the same body. But a different room, a different position, a different state of undress. Naked, denial, hesitation, then. Clothed, touching, anticipation, now. The prince, buried deep inside you physically, is still giving you the option of an end, of an exit, of pushing him away and repositioning your clothing and leaving, like nothing has ever happened.
It only serves to reaffirm what you do want.
Him.
Somehow, the surety of this threatens a new wave of tears that you almost shed. You want to collapse into him, sink into the vessels of his arms, let yourself be lost to eternity within his hold. You want to tell him the truth, to tell him what Aegon had wanted of you in his letter, in his chambers, to tell him what Helaena had prophesied. The Stranger. The truth feels too complicated a thing, however, and the sin of lust is a more pleasurable subject to get lost within. You do not have much time, the prince would not wish to waste it on silly things, like feelings, and fears, and where your relationship with your husband stands.
The leg at his waist holds him closer, reaffirming your grip at the first sign of him stepping back. You don’t let him, won’t let him, “it’s fine. I’m fine. Please, don’t let me go.”
The prince proves he can listen well, no more questions falling from his lips, movement resuming in his hips. Slow, smooth, back and forth gyrations, a remedy to the dull ache below your womb, the lubrication of Aegon’s seed aiding in the slide of his cock within you.
A back that digs into the surface behind it, yet you ignore it in favour of the delightful thrill of Aemond working into you each time a little faster, a little harder, a little less restrained. A hand that finds cause amidst his Targaryen tresses, tangling in the locks as the prince’s forehead lays itself to rest upon your own. A set of mouths that hover inches apart, a single breath of air exchanged back and forth in sync with the rhythm of his thrusts.
Time. Time. You do not have much time.
But who is counting the seconds while the pair of you merge into one against the spines of books carrying the words of history? It is best it all be forgotten — the duty, the King, the announcement Aemond has promised his kin — in exchange for just another moment here, pressed one to the other, forgoing titles like Prince, and Queen, remembering only the shape of mouths, and the burn of skin.
The prince’s fingerprints carve out bruises along your thigh, gripping, and pulling, and kneading at the skin, a leverage to grasp onto as he continues to fuck into you. Sweat drips down your neck like wax drips down lit candles, disappearing beneath the lace atop your dress’ bodice and slipping between the valley of your breasts. Warm all over, you crave no refuge from it, from him, tugging him closer, arching your back, losing yourself in the feeling of friction. One foot still pressed to the floor, perching on your tip-toes, your composure buckles alongside your knee and, if not for Aemond’s fast-moving hands, quick-thinking mind, you would be moments away from crashing, elbow first, down to the floor.
Instead, you feel the prince hoist your leg around his waist, ankles locking behind his back with a reinforced grip as he takes on the weight of both your bodies. The effort he puts into fucking you manifests in a series of grunts, clenched teeth that hold back words, bite back filth.
One hand still tangled in his hair, the other stretches up, reaches behind you, scrambling to find purchase on a panel of wood from the bookcase. It finds, instead, the top of a book, slipping down its leather spine. The book falls, crashing to the ground near the one you had been reading with a great sound. A domino effect, in which two, three, four more heavy, bound by string and wrapped in leather, books fall from the shelves. Thud after thud, after thud, no doubt heard from anyone passing by.
The prince does not flee. If anything, he appears almost spurred on by the scandal and mess, a hand sliding from your waist to pull and bunch the layers of your dress higher, as if wishing to unveil to the naked eye the sins transpiring beneath the green of it, the repeated plunge of his manhood into your core, soaked in a vile mixture of your own pleasure and Aegon’s spend.
“This is what you wanted, hmm? What you needed, Lady Stark,” his voice is a whisper, his teeth biting at the lobe of your ear and pulling a shocked gasp from you. “To be filled by a man’s seed, the kind that knows how to get the job done. Not the King’s poor excuse. No. No, not Aegon’s. Mine.”
Time, and how little of it you both have, feels all the more unimportant, that familiar feeling — of everything warm, and soft, and delightful — begins to tighten at your loins, poking and proding at your dizzied conscious as you feel his cock bullying itself deeper, and deeper, impossibly deeper inside of you. The end is near, within your grasp, waiting for the right thrust, or the perfect grind, or the best friction, to finally let the thread snap.
A knock, loud and forceful, at the wooden doors to the library, is followed instantly by a voice. “Is someone in there?”
Movement stops, both of you frozen, bodies tangled in a crucifiable state.
The handle turns, you gasp, Aemond slaps a hand over your mouth.
For a moment, you feel a weight fall off your shoulders, that ever-looming fear you have dragged along with you — a ball and chain attached to your heart, ever since your return to the capital — that all your guilt sits written upon your face and, soon, someone will read it and see the treason you have committed, the adultery you have engaged in. For certain, they will have your head separated from the rest of you. Perhaps, the King will find enough grace in his heart to forgive his brother. After all, what blame does he truly possess? He is a man, unmarried and unburdened by the threat of a bastard’s life ever swelling within him. At the very least, you will die swiftly and be able to put all your lamenting to rest at last.
Then, the door fails to open and the prince’s voice is in your ear.
“I locked it. Do not worry.”
Mouth still covered, all you manage is to continue staring at him, eyes wide with fear, heart beating against the confines of your ribs. As if to worsen things, you watch as something flashes behind his eye, and he pulls his hips back only to thrust right back into you, the bookcase rattling softly behind you.
“Who goes there?” Aemond calls out, voice steady, unwavering. Even as he repeats the movement, the slow pull-back of his cock, the quick refilling of your core. “Announce your intentions to your prince.”
The golden handle goes still, a throat clears, and metal clinks, as if a knight were straightening his posture. “Forgive me, Prince Aemond, I did not mean to interrupt, I know how dedicated you are to your studies,” the voice is familiar, something that strikes deeper fear within you and more daring in Aemond’s features.
“Do you think he knows,” the prince croons against your skin, a sickly sweet, well-deep sound that entices you to throw yourself, head first, into it. The dull pleasure between your thighs is slowly rebuilding itself into something monstrous, something you lost sight of at the echo of knuckles on wood, with each thrust the prince drives into you. “Just how dedicated I am to studying you?”
“I was sent in pursuit of the queen,” the man at the door continues when he receives no word from Aemond. Your nails dig scratches into the bookcase. Your heart doubles, triples in speed with each beat it takes, yet you do not push Aemond away, you do not shake your head, you do not so much as move an inch away from him. Your ankles tighten their grip on one another at his back. “Have you seen her?”
Aemond nods, a cheeky grin taking shape upon those lips. As if staring right into your soul, the prince reads you effortlessly, watching as the seconds pass by and sanity slips surely out of your reach, the haze of lust fully overtaking the fear that fights against it.
Another book falls from the case. The man outside is too consumed by the sound of his own voice to notice. At least, you hope. “I’m her sworn shield, you see. Ser Arryk Carg-”
“Have you tried any of the guest chambers?” He cuts the knight off, confident in his words, as if he does not stand mere inches from your face, manhood buried to the hilt inside of you. “Perhaps Lady Stark grew tired of our Graces’ company and desired some much needed respite?”
With a rush of flustered agreements, and a couple of apologies, Ser Arryk clinks away, a mass of metal that grows further away with each step he takes. Not a moment too soon does he leave, for at last the tension snaps and you’re crying out into the prince’s palm, eyes rolling back into your skull as you reach your peak. He follows not long after, a series of grunts that follow the pistoning of his hips before he stills, as deep within you as either of your bodies allow, spilling himself inside your walls.
A few laboured breaths pass between the culmination of your coupling. Your feet meet the ground once more, the aid of Aemond’s hands guiding them down from their pedestal. Weak in the knees, you sink forward, sink into him, hands reaching for any inch of him. The prince meets you halfway, mouth finding your own once more, lips melting together in a fleeting kiss.
Time. You don’t have much time.
“Aemond,” you whisper, half to grab his attention, half to savour the shape of his name on your tongue. Now is the time to tell him, even if it is rushed out amid heavy breathing and on shaky legs. He needs to hear of it from you, before the threat of Aegon grabs ahold of him, thrusts the news upon him off-guard. “Aemond, there is something you must know-”
He cuts you off, a chaste kiss against your forehead before hands shift your weight backwards, resting you against the bookcase. The same hands adjust the skirts of your dress.
“Turn left down the hall and up the first staircase you see. There you shall find some guest rooms,” he steps back and takes the warmth of him too, leaving goose-skin to bloom along your neck as cold air bites at sweaty skin. “You will need to move with haste, before your sworn shield reaches that wing of the castle.”
The door to the library shuts gently at his back, and there the prince leaves you, chest heaving, lips parted, heart racing. An ache blooming between your legs and the stain of his seed sliding down your thigh.
The very same state Aegon had left you in, hours earlier.
Never has the castle been so full of life.
The flicker of candlelight brightens every hall, painting shadows over slate walls. Voices of men, women, and children carry through the space, ring through every corner. It reminds him, momentarily, of hosting an army of soldiers, mind dragging him back to the dark days and darker nights lived within Harrenhall, echoes of haunted shrieks and unpleasant sleep, men huddling under the crumbling ceiling, mere leagues away from the charred bones of a House that no longer stands. Beneath the molten breath of a dragon, it truly does not matter what name a man wears, he will never be Strong enough to endure the skin-splitting, blood-boiling, eye-popping heat.
In truth, Aemond loathes the sudden company.
Moons now he has lived at peace, Lord to the island and Prince of Dragonstone, waiting idly for the day to come where his duty as heir at last calls upon him. But then he just had to go and open that damned letter, answer a call that never should have been laid at his feet, and fly out to the dusty lands of Dorne. The new warmth in the air to blame for all his impropriety, landing him tangled with you in his own muddied desires. Since then, the prince has known no peace: his bed now too quiet, his castle now too empty, his… you now too far away.
The restlessness is what drove him to act, hours spent with his nose thrust between the pages of books, wrist cramping and fingers aching as they wielded a quill, delicate swirls filling empty pages. When he ran out of things to read, and history to recount before sending it off in ravens to the maesters at Oldtown, he took to the courtyard, determined to make men out of squawking squires, so puppy-eyed and pink-cheeked, they seemed to have hardly lived a day away from their mothers’ teats. And when that became a bore, a lost cause he dumped back on the shoulders of the master of arms, the prince took to exploring. A lonesome activity, peaceful enough to find an emblem of rest for his soul in the echo of his own footsteps bouncing off cave walls. It was there, deep in the dark corners of the island, he stumbled upon a discovery, a reason to call upon the King, an excuse to see your face. After all, where the King goes, the Queen is expected to follow.
Were matters left in his hands, the only raven sent would have been the one flying out to King’s Landing. Unfortunately, the rational words of a maester had him agreeing that this was too momentous a thing to not include all those of his bloodline, no matter if that blood be thick or thin.
And here he now stands, seeking out that quiet his castle had lost the moment their ships all docked ashore. Falsely, he had believed he would find it hidden away in the hall that houses the throne of Dragonstone, away from the rapidly filling dining hall. The unwelcome sight of a crown sitting lopsided on a head of silver hair halts his step.
“Tread carefully, brother,” Aemond watches how the other man’s shoulders rise with a jump, startled by the sudden sound of his voice announcing his arrival. No guards stand nearby, no guests watch on. It is just them, the King and the Crown Prince, and the heavy presence of Dragonstone’s seat, currently being warmed beneath Aegon’s rump. “Your throne is in King’s Landing. That one belongs to your heir, to me.”
Propped upon his throne, the King swings both legs over its side. Aemond ponders over the man’s distasteful care for grace, an image that so wholly encapsulates his attitude towards ruling the Seven Kingdoms, and feels himself fighting off a frown. How can it be that the gods chose Aegon to man the task of carrying on the dragon empire?
He, a drunken fool, a boy more interested in spreading a whore’s legs than a book’s pages. He, a graceless soldier, a threat to his own safety each time he wields a blade. He, a useless husband, a leech draining the life out of a wolf-pup, locking her away in a kennel with not a lick of water nor a stroke of affection.
Aemond could recite the pages of every book, back to front.
Aemond could thrust his sword through the chest of his uncle with one hand, while the other steered Vhagar free from plummeting through the surface of the God’s Eye.
Aemond would keep the wolf at his heel — morning, noon, evening — close by and content for eternity, free to roam beyond the four walls of a castle.
“Worry not, I just wanted to make sure you’re keeping the seat warm.” As if to make matters worse, Aegon gives him one of those smiles, the kind that flashes half of his teeth and accentuates how foolish he looks, unkempt hair swaying as he rises off the seat. The crown slides a little closer to the left, his ear caught beneath the band of it.
“The others are taking their seats at the table,” he shifts his weight, one foot to another, one hand clasped over the other behind his back — just like your ankles had been. The pommel of his sword pokes out the opening of his leather coat, pointing ahead at an approaching Aegon. Strapped to his side for nothing but purely decorative reasons, the younger brother suddenly feels the hackles rising in his neck, a need to unsheath the steel itching at his palms. No one would have to know, no one would see him hold a blade to the King’s neck. “And here you are, hiding away in a damp room, sitting in my seat, and-”
“A seat I gave you,” Aegon cuts in, a smug lilt lifting his words and delivering them harshly into Aemond’s ears. Where the younger of the two delivers accusations with the seriousness they deserve, the older brother has always thrown a blanket of humour over every argument, debasing the sentiment, luring his opponent into a false sense of safety.
“You have no child to call heir. As the eldest of your male siblings, I am next in line, by right. You have given me nothing.” Nothing but a dull ache in the head.
That respite he had come searching for, now so out of reach. It has the prince longing, wishing he could travel back in time to being burrowed between the shelves of books and the warmth between your thighs. He should have stayed longer, kept the door locked and you close, for as long as you would allow him.
But he had been spooked.
First by your sworn shield, a confirmation that your absence had been noted and the two of you were far away from the lack of watchful eyes of the Water Gardens. Then, by that look that came over your face, the words that left your mouth. Hesitance, vulnerability, shame. Aemond, there is something you must know. If this something was the reason for your shift in demeanour, he did not want to know. For once, he wanted to taste just how sweet ignorance could be.
A laugh pulls him back to the present.
A cackle, in truth. Shoulders shaking, cheeks wrinkling with the stretch of Aegon’s lips, eyes reflecting the dull flames that remain on the candles. The King paints an unsettling image, the mixture of lighthearted laughter lit beneath the growing darkness of the hall, the echoes of noise bouncing off the walls, swirling atop Aemond’s head like a murder of crows, each one waiting to spot something shiny to dive down and peck at.
An arm is thrown over his shoulder, five tight fingers clamping a grip on the back of his neck. Can you feel your wife’s fingerprints, singed into the skin you are touching? His brother fortunately cannot hear his inner thoughts, too busy bending himself at an awkward angle, his shorter stature struggling to turn the prince towards the door.
“Lighten up, brother!” With a clenched fist, Aegon delivers a weightless punch into his bicep, the hand at his neck squeezing him even closer, the King’s chest pressing into the prince’s elbow. Reluctantly, he follows in the footsteps of the elder, letting himself be led over and out of the hall. The door thuds shut at their backs, neither of them sparing at it. Out in the hallway, the world seems brighter, louder, a distant hum of chattering voices coming from the left. In sync, uncomfortably close, the pair move towards the noise. “Is the lack of whores in this decrepit place leaving your cock so lonesome you now see it as a weapon? Say the word and I’ll have your favourite madame shipped over. Or better yet, come home. We’ll visit the streets together, just like when we were boys.”
Boys. The word makes Aemond feel sick, empty stomach twisting up inside him. His older brother had never grown out of that mindset — boyish, foolish, reckless. At times, Aemond had wondered if the King had robbed him of his boyhood, kept those years for himself and left the younger nothing but the misery of being a man — grown, wise, calculated.
Two sets of guards stand at either side of the double-doorway, swords hanging at their sides, armour fixed to each inch of skin, floor-length spears clenched in their right fists. One after the other, they bow their heads as the Targaryen men pass by them.
A table stands in the centre, set with the shiniest of tableware and topped by pitchers full of wines, meads, and baskets spilling fruits down their sides, and assortments of breads and cheeses. He counts a total of six birds, roasted and sitting on silver platters up the length of the table. In the very centre, an entire pig shines pink beneath the light, an apple clamped in its mouth and a bed of leaves cushioning it upon the platter. And, gathered around it all, any guest with a name worth mentioning.
Children, cousins, siblings, wives.
Martell, Hightower, Targaryen, Stark.
Across the room, standing at her husband’s side, with a stiff-lipped smile and a barely-there attempt at engaging with the woman dishing out congratulations, stands Rhaena Targaryen. Grown a head and a half taller since the cousins had last crossed paths all those years ago, sat around a table not so different from this one, her white curls cascade down the back of her black dress, denoted with the shine of red rubies and golden stitching. In a sea of Hightower green, she stands out like an aching thumb painted in colours of her dead queen. For her audacious bravery alone, Aemond feels a smirk twitch at the corner of his lips. It falters the moment you come into focus.
A vision wrapped in green, you stand before his cousin, smile a blinding light that pulls him into its vortex, numbing him to all else that surrounds him. The emerald gowns, the mustard robes, the golden chains, the auburn hairs, it all grows mute, a dull grey beside the colour you wear, possess, exude, a rainbow that strikes its mark across dark clouds.
Your lips are moving. You are talking, with both hands clasped at your front and fingers that fidget with the rings housed upon them. A pause in conversation, an exchange of laughter. There is an air of hesitance in everything you do, standing before Rhaena Targaryen and the small bump that protrudes out her midriff. The desire to swoop in by your side, to snake his hand into your own and give those nervous fingers a solid squeeze of reassurance, to watch the stress flood down the length of your spine and melt away to torment some other body, it burns at Aemond.
But, he does not move. He cannot move. And, even in a world where he can, he doubts his presence would do any good at diffusing the tension that swells in the air around his cousin. Quite the opposite, truly, his face alone may be what drives her to at last snap and drop the forced smiles.
“She’s a pretty thing, isn’t she?” Aegon’s voice cuts in, and the room bursts back into colour. The hall grows loud, a renewed noise the prince had unknowingly blocked out the moment his eye found you. The same eye he drags away to look at his brother who has just caught him unapologetically staring at you like you are the only person in the hall. Humour still dances over his features, a daring grin spread upon his mouth as he glances between you and Aemond. “She’s even prettier on her back,” the hand at Aemond’s neck slips down, a sharp smack delivering itself upon it. “Maybe someday I’ll let you try her, brother, let you get a taste of how it feels to be king for the night, between her thighs.”
Visions of you, head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, lips dropped open, burn behind Aemond’s eyelid with each blink. In the library, legs clinging to him, sweat slipping under your dress. On the bed, bare to his mouth, hands tugging him deeper by the hair. If that is what it feels to be king, he can die happily without ever knowing the weight of the Conqueror’s crown upon his head, because how could that possibly feel better?
“I was not aware you were so fond of her,” he finds himself retorting, stealing any excuse to look at you.
Helaena has reached your side, one arm linked with yours, and he can see how visibly relaxed you are in her presence, shoulders back down where they belong instead of pointing up to your ears.
“Perhaps I was not. But let’s say I’ve had a revelation of sorts.”
“Oh,” the sound escapes him dripping in… something. Envy, disappointment, confusion? He hates to give his brother any chance to pry into his own mind, if ever Aegon possessed the wits to do so, and finds himself clearing his throat, fixing his neutral expression back on, reopening his mouth. “And what would that revelation be exactly?”
Both you and Helaena part from where his cousin stands, arms still linked and eyes too caught up with one another to notice the way you both almost smack into two members of the Kingsguard, Giggling, like two young girls who share the biggest secret, you make your ways further down the length of the table, searching for the little cards that hold your names, mark your place along the table. He itches to follow after you both, to pull back your chair and offer it out to you. Maybe he could even lie, switch your card around with his brother’s to have you just that little bit closer.
“That I enjoy being king. And I want to continue being one, for as long as I like,” the reply has Aemond’s head snapping immediately back to his brother. No longer is he painted like a fool with humour, but something different. Something Aemond has never seen reflected on his features. Determination, it almost seems. “I do not want to just be king. I want to be good at it,” he continues speaking, head turning to where their grandfather stands, smiling politely back at you as he pulls out your chair. “And, if I want to be a good king, I need to be a good husband.”
Aemond wishes he never inquired about the revelation.
Is this what you had wanted to tell him? Is this what he must know? That no longer are you a pair split in two, but a union. A united force. A marriage. A good husband, and a good wife, and absolutely no one else in between. Had the only reason you had even gone to the library been to put an end to the madness transpiring between you and the prince? Aemond had given you an out, but had he given you enough time to truly think your answer through, before he put his hands on you once more?
“I do appreciate all the… kindness you have shown my wife,” your name curls over Aegon’s tongue and the sound is a poison to Aemond’s ears. Wrong, out of place, he does not deserve the grace of speaking such a pretty name. “Over the years, dancing with her at feasts, and even keeping her safe on that boat up north. I think I’ll do those things myself from now on, however, take that burden of mine off your shoulders.”
He wants to protest. Wants to say you are far from a burden. Wants to insist on his usefulness, on how he can keep you blissfully busy upon the ballroom floor while Aegon sneaks off to mess around with women of coin and drown in his cups. Wants to use Aegon’s own words against him, that a King should not waste his time travelling sea, or dirt, or anywhere else you may be, when he has the skies at his disposal.
But his tongue is made of lead and he is too weak to speak, frozen as he watches you speak across the table to his mother. Suddenly, the fact that all but himself and the King have taken their seat strikes upon his conscience. That hand claps against his back again and, though it is weaker than the last, Aemond wavers under the impact, swaying slightly.
“Come, brother,” Aegon whispers, a chuckle sneaking out. “Let us sit. Your King is eager to hear what announcement you bring.”
Seventeen.
That is the number of times your eyes have betrayed you and turned to sneak a glance at him.
He crests the top of the table, sitting by himself and staring down at his summoned guests. Power suits him, especially the kind that rolls off him in waves, pride in his eye at the way everyone is looking at him, hanging on to every last one of his words, patient anticipation for the why and the what of Aemond’s ravens. He is close. Close enough you can swell the spiced freshness you have come to recognize on his skin. All that sits between you and the prince is Aegon.
Aegon, who currently has a mouthful of pork and a hand resting, possessive, at the back of your chair. It is a distracting fact. One that robs you of the ability to pay Helaena and your good-mother the attention they deserve, only half hearing their exchanges of mutual flattery, complimentary words on dresses, and hairs, and smoothness of skins. Every so often, a young girl tugs at Helaena’s sleeve, seeking her mother’s help with cutting the food on her plate.
Otto Hightower sits across from your husband, engrossed in conversation with his three grandsons and Ser Criston, who you barely recognize out of his armour. The hand’s pendant sits pinned to the leather jerkin he doubtlessly has borrowed.
Further down the table, guests sit entranced in their own bubbles of conversation, a hollow chatter that buzzes throughout the room. The table is no longer the picture of perfection it once had been, platters of half eaten carcasses, and stains of spilled wine, and sparse grape vines housed in empty fruit-bowls.
All it takes is the clink of a knife against a glass for the bubble to burst.
Silence befalls the table as every head turns towards Aemond, expectantly, only to find him frozen and with equal question in his eye. Down the other end of the table, someone clears their throat, a chair scrapes back, and Rhaena Targaryen stands up.
Her lips are stretched wide, so far up her cheeks you can almost hear the way her skin cracks under the pressure of it. You half expect the corners of her mouth to split open. She reaches a hand down towards the table and, where you think she is going to grab at her goblet, she reaches for an empty plate and a fork.
“Pardon my intrusion,” she calls out with not a hint of apology, smug satisfaction candying her voice. All eyes follow as she steps away from her seat, yet none seem as panicked as those of her husband, who borders somewhere between scolding her and dashing after her. He remains seated, however, as the Targaryen girl travels slowly up the length of the table, plate and fork gripped tightly in her hands. “But I cannot sit still with the joy this all brings me.”
Eighteen times now.
To unsuspecting eyes, you are certain the prince appears unbothered, unshaken. The way his finger twitches over the wood beneath it tells you a different tale.
It would be so easy to reach out and intertwine your hands. Just a simple stretch of your arm, you would not even have to scoot your chair closer. If only your husband were not between you, a boulder in the shape of a man unbothered by his cousin’s display, shovelling up another mouthful of food.
“To sit here, at this table, surrounded by so much… family,” Rhaena continues her advance, coming to a halt halfway up the table. Turning her attention towards the glistening pig — or, better said, what remains of it. With no apology, she squeezes a space for herself between two seated bodies, the subtle swell of her expectant womb bumping at the shoulder of a woman you scarcely recognise — a hightower, no doubt about it, wrapped in green and the emblem of their house denoted across her left breast. “Such a beautiful site we all make. Why, I wonder, has it taken us so long to gather like this?” She pauses, only a moment, and you watch how her piercing gaze zeroes in on the man who sits at the head of the table. “Ah, that’s right. The last family feast ended in fisticuffs and.. Strong accusations. But we were just children back then, weren’t we, cousins? We have grown. I do hope so, at least. It would be such a shame to learn there is still someone among us who cannot take a mere… Joke!”
A stomach-turning noise fills the hall as you watch Rhaena stab her fork into the pig’s eye.
The left eye.
Nineteen times. Aemond’s jaw sits impossibly clenched, so much that you fear for the survival of his teeth.
Back by the pig, Rhaena raises her fork to the air in a sickening toast, eye secure in its prongs as she smiles a little wider and loudly proclaims, “To House Targaryen! Long may she reign!”
Heads shift, back and forth, no hands moving for their cups until the King himself does so, laughter bubbling out of him followed by an obnoxious, “Hear, hear!” Within an instant, glasses rise and heads tilt back, welcoming the burn of wine down their throats.
Twenty, and you see that even Aemond follows suit, though his eye remains glued on Rhaena’s back as she carries herself triumphantly to her chair.
No sooner than she scrapes herself back into place, another clink rings out. Once again, all heads turn to the prince and, once again, he greets them with his own confusion. Close by, it is Daeron who’s legs stretch to a stand, hand clasping at a goblet.
With a clearing of his throat, the youngest of the siblings commences. “I hesitated on whether I wished to deliver this news at the table, however, cousin, you have inspired me.” Ever the polite man, it would not be hard to take his words towards Rhaena as true, as honest, as appreciative. The fierce loyalty that exists for his Green family, on the contrary, has you believing it is nothing but a means for peace at the table. “After the many happy years I have spent living in Oldtown, I have decided it is time I take my leave. It is time I return home,” he pauses, glancing over at his mother. “To King’s Landing. And, if the King finds place for me, I would like to do so as a knight of the Kingsguard, under the command of the very man who taught me to wield my first blade, Ser Criston Cole.”
Without a pause for silence, Aegon is shooting out of his chair and rounding the table, pulling his brother into his side and clapping a hand over his chest, “I’m sure I’ll find a space for you! Seven hells, we can hang one of the other six and have his armour melted down and reworked to fit you. Can’t we, Ser Criston? Pick amongst yourselves, whoever’s the weakest link.” There’s an eruption of laughter, and you take it as an excuse to sneak a twenty-first look. The doubt on his face matches your own, a worry that the poor fools at the table think the King speaks in jest.
Cups raised, wine sipped, seats refilled. Aegon returns to your side a ball of energy, hands fidgeting without control. First, one lands on your thigh closest to him and clamps down on the meat of it. The same hand shoots up, fingertips brushing over your cheek, tangling in a loose thread of hair and tucking it behind your ear, pulling a little tighter than you think he intends. At last, he returns it to the spot behind your chair, fingers drumming a nervous energy into the carved wood, and a third knife meets a glass.
This time, it is Aemond, and you have your twenty-second chance to look at him.
And keep looking at him, just like everyone else is, eager ears awaiting to hear what brings them all to the island.
“I will not waste your time with unnecessary words,” but you wish he would, if only to listen to the soothing lullaby of his voice enough to memorise it a little better, refine how your sleeping mind tries replicate it when you are drowning in the waters of dreams and his is the only face you want to conjure by your side. “I have already taken enough of your time, dragging you all out here.”
Pause for laughter. And for him to shoot a pointed look down the table at his cousin and her plate-full of pig’s eye. See, he seems to be saying, I can joke.
“It is no lie that our house is half of what it used to be. War is a god, however, and it demands a sacrifice in the shape of death. The dragons we lost are not a stain on our hands, but all of those who dared mount them with treacherous intentions.”
No sound has ever haunted you as deeply as the screech of a dying dragon.
It is a memory you do best to suppress, the screech of Helaena’s she-dragon struggling to escape her attackers, horrific shrieks carried from the Dragon Pit all the way up to your window at the Keep. The momentary burst of freedom, the flash of Dreamfyre rising out the crumbling roof of the Pit, only to crash back down in one final scream, the city turning silent moments after. Your good-sister had been inconsolable for days, a mess of tears, that bond between princess and beast lost forever to the rioting of smallfolk.
“But, we can rebuild what they took from us. That is what I wish to show you all,” Aemond continues. He nods his head towards a serving wench and, with a screech, the doors of the hall open, making way for two men, a heavy chest carried between them, and a man carrying the chain of a maester around his neck. The chest travels up the hall, all the way to the prince’s side, before coming to a rest gently on the floor. With ease, he twists a key, tugs off the lock, and throws the lid open, hands disappearing within. When they emerge, it is with an oval shaped rock in each one. No, not rocks. Eggs.
The maester at Aemond’s side holds out two more eggs. Each a different colour of scaly, rough surface. There is a golden one that reminds you of Sunfyre’s own scales. A black one that, as Aemond turns it in the light, undertones of a dark green shine through, and a pale lilac egg that appears near white. The most striking of the four — and the one you feel your eyes drawn to the moment it is unveiled — a bright, sapphire blue colour.
“A clutch of four,” he says, a look of pride on his face as he stares out at expressions of amazement. “I found them in the depths of the caves. Our maester has already confirmed to me they show promise of hatching, with time and patience. We will have a new generation of dragons.”
The first to move is Alicent, who rises out of her chair, hands clasped over her heart as she makes her way over to her son. Careful of the eggs in his hands, she wraps herself around his slim waist. “Aemond,” she speaks so softly, you doubt the other end of the table hears her. Hesitant fingers reach out, halting, only to let themselves brush down the length of the golden egg at the prince’s insistence. “This is wonderful news! You have… Oh, my sweet boy, you have saved us, ensuring the future of your house.”
Those words are enough to send the room into a ruckus of applause. Voices cheer, hands bang down on the table, cups are toasted and emptied. But you pay them no mind, not even a single glance over your shoulder.
All you care to look at is Aemond, and the earnest smile that takes over his face. Happiness looks good on him. It warms the tips of his ears, the apples of his cheeks, the length of his neck, a rosy hue blooming beneath porcelain skin. He deserves to look like this all the time, radiant beneath the spotlight of people’s praise, the validation of being recognised for the things he does on behalf of his family. The rug is ripped from beneath his feet, however, with the clearing of a throat and a fourth clang of a knife.
Celebrations cease and chairs are refilled as their king comes to a stand.
“I’ve never been one for speeches. In truth, I find them to be a bore,” Aegon laughs at his own honesty, and the others are quick to follow. “But, listening to you all, well, it inspired me to give it a try. First, I want to thank all of you in this room. It’s no secret the trials and tribulations that have tested our family since my coronation. You, who fought for my claim, are the true heroes of our realm, and your king is proud of you all. If only my father were still here, I’m sure he’d feel the same, pride for those who defended the heir he chose with his dying breath,” a choked back laugh echos from down the table as Rhaena saws her steak knife through the eye. “If any doubt still remains towards my claim, I believe my dear brother’s discovery is a sign from the gods, the gift of more dragons. And, for that, I thank you, Aemond.”
“It is I who must thank you, brother,” the prince interrupts, eye looking just past where the King stands, cup in hand, and at where you sit, hand tugging at your husband’s sleeve and an unspoken pleading furrowing your brows. It seems I owe my brother some gratitude, Aemond’s voice replays in your mind, so real you can almost feel the shelves at your back, the smell of dust and books in the air, the sound of Ser Arryk knocking at the door. “For naming me as your heir and gifting me Dragonstone.”
“I’m glad you see it that way, brother. These dragon eggs are the dawn of a new era for us all, one of prosperity,” heads that nod in sync, radiant joy still beaming from Alicent’s face. The smile on Aemond’s face, however, is gone, stolen by Aegon. “But they are not the only gift the gods have favoured my reign with.”
The urge to drag your husband back down into his seat spikes at those words. You want to shovel food into his mouth, fill his stomach with wine, sew his lip shut. Anything, before he says something foolish, something he should not.
But as you tug harsher at the sleeve of his doublet, the King misunderstands. He turns to you, fingers twisting themselves in an uncomfortable grip with your own and pulling you to stand at his side, that same hand curling around your back and holding you tight against him.
“Apologies, it seems my wife wants to help me do the honours,” you shake your head, shooting Aegon a look he does not even notice, too busy smiling out at the table full of his family. Too busy pulling you that little closer, both of your sides smushed together. Too busy smoothing the hand that still houses his glass down the golden embroidery of your dress, an honour to his own dragon. Too busy bringing his hand to a stop atop your lower stomach, knuckles brushing against the green velvet. “After many years of marriage, the gods have at last blessed my wife’s womb with a child of our own. A new heir.”
If anyone cheers, if anyone raises their glass alongside the King, if anyone congratulates you, you do not hear them. You do not see them.
All you see is Aemond, frozen in his chair, face a mirror for anger, and white-knuckling his grip on his chalice, refusing to drink, refusing to toast.
Refusing to look anywhere else but your sorry eyes.
You send a letter, the eve of your return.
I did not wish for you to find out like that, from him. You must believe me.
By morning, no reply arrives. By noon, no reply arrives. By evening, no reply arrives. As a day turns to two, and two turns into a moon, no reply arrives.
The ravens no longer perch upon your window.
+ extra hyde !
this week, a new bombshell has entered the villa! so aegon bestie is trying to be a better king/husband. how are we feeling about that, chat? definitely don't see this being a point of contention.
in completely unrelated news, rumour has it that taste by sabrina carpenter can be heard on dragonstone at full volume, on repeat, 24/7. sources say the noise is coming from prince aemond targaryen's room.
my irl bestie is reading this fic on ao3 & now i'm so hyperaware of any smut i write. hopefully, i rectify my own apprehension towards writing the filth these two deserve in time for next chapter, because they're supposed to fuck, no more of the silly couplings they've done so far. thankfully my bestie and i are long distance right now so i won't have to look her in a the eye for a while.
see you next month <3
#aemond targaryen smut#ewan mitchell smut#house of the dragon smut#aemond targaryen x reader#ewan mitchell x reader#aemond targaryen fic#aemond targaryen series#aemond targaryen fanfiction#house of the dragon fanfiction
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#african gray undertones#African Grey#african grey bad behavior#African Grey behavior#african grey behavior meanings#african grey bird feathers#african grey depression#african grey happy behavior#african grey happy behaviors#african grey hates me#African Grey is unhappy#african grey noises meanings#African Grey Parrot#african grey parrot angry#african grey parrot bad behavior#african grey parrot difficulty#african grey parrot drooping wings#african grey parrot feather dust#african grey parrot feather picker#African Grey Parrot Feather plucking#african grey parrot feathers#african grey parrot feathers bleeding#african grey parrot feathers falling out#african grey parrot happy#african grey parrot losing feathers#african grey parrot puffing feathers#african grey parrot unhappy#african grey parrot upkeep#African Grey Parrots#African Grey unhappy
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escape.
— tom riddle x gender neutral ! reader
—IN WHICH, you conduct an experiment. how would it feel date everyone's ideal student? he really is a riddle (pun intended) and you mean to solve him.
— toxic and obsessive behaviour. (yandere ) .masturbation (reader's genitalia is not specified). drugging. manipulation. smutty. overly flowery writing. mutual pining ? ?. stalking. dd;dne. murder attempt (?) an open ending lol. 2.4k ish words. angst. reader is a horny shit. not proofread, i just pulled this out of my drafts.
DATING TOM RIDDLE IS STRANGE,
he scares you—he really does.but not for the reasons one would think. he is not a monster with sharp claws that will dig into your flesh or a haunting, grey ghost that will glare at you. infact, he is rather handsome with his flawless visage—with his high cheekbones, neat, precise black hair, and hazel eyes so dark that they are almost black. he is the kind of person you cannot look in the eyes—divine, pristine, unattainable, adored by the professors, and idolized by his peers.
you are sure he knows it. he knows—he knows that with perfection comes intrigue. they cannot help but sink—fall, turn into mush, drown. they might aswell have been stabbed in the chest. but even with the hot, fresh blood gushing out of them, they do not question it. who are they to question him? he is beyond perfection—he allures them in and seeps into their bones. they are fish on land and he is water.
but you are guarded. you do not melt when he smiles that smile of his. you do not blush when he gently takes your hand, his touch tender like the light caress of a feather. you do not feel warmth when his lips brush gently against yours, as if you were a fragile vase that he was trying not to break. it is a facade weaved of pure, soft silk. silk that would sharpen and snarl around you anyday he wanted.
of course, you aren't interested in being choked to death. but you are interested in him. his touches become even lighter and he looks at you so, so gently. his eyes soften when he sees you and you are not sure what he is thinking. he stares at you almost as if you are an angel— precious.
but there is not merely 'love' in those dark eyes—when you hold his hand with trembling fingers or give him a piece of your treacle tart, his grip tightens and there is something so strange about his gaze. he looks at you with syrupy longing this time. pure longing. as if you are a polished treasure. his eyes grow heavy-lidded but they never leave you; as if you are his entire world and he might aswell sink to his knees and taste and lap at your every inch. he seems to want to devour you anyway.
you do not know how you feel about that.
—
unfortunately, your layers are peeled back aswell and you slip away; you begin to smile whenever you see him—an unplanned burst, a summer flower when the sun kisses it. then, his scent of sandalwood wafts into your nostrils—a terrible, terrible thing, really.
you can smell it when you the sun's golden rays melt into your dormitory and the birds chirp.
you can smell it when the professor's words fly over your head.
you can smell it when your hands flow and you do not know what you are writing with the quill. you smell it everywhere but, it really emerges when you lay on your head on your pillow. it slips in between your legs and what can you do but kick it out with your fingers?
it is lust then; you want to fuck him. and it is mutual aswell then; he wants to fuck you too. or that is what you think.
—
it takes time to brindle up the courage but you do. maybe you shouldn't have.
"tom, would you mind fucking me?"
heat blooms in your stomach and it comes with a tight, sick knot of dread. you are scared. merlin, you will never admit it but you are scared. you scared of what he will say—you are scared of his lips curling into a scowl—you are scared to see disgust in his eyes, you are scared to never feel his soft touch again and you are so scared that you cannot speak further. how could you? your throat is a dry, parched thing. you should've never said it.
his lips part and his eyes are blown wide. it is not comforting to see him shocked. he pauses to consider and the heavy, burning knot in your stomach tightens. you have done it. you have fucking ruined it.
his expression is then still; he does not smile or scoff—impassive, flawless. but this is not the time to admire him. you've made him uncomfortable at the very least and it lodges itself between your lungs until you cannot breathe. are you so vile that you made the ultimate manipulator speechless?
"of course I will." he finally says, still unsmiling. your lips quiver and you slowly run your fingers across his face. his skin is velvet smooth, unmarred. you feel his warmth bleeding into your fingers and it's spring's kiss. the budding of plush, glistening cherries or the slick, red honeysuckles that flower when the snow softens into the soil.
again, you are a summer flower and he is the sun. he is only saying this because he doesn't want to upset you and you can't help but fall into it. he stirs your fingers away from his face and intertwines them with his own slender ones. "but," he pauses, lips brushing your fingers. "not today."
"why?" you ask. it's a stupid question. you are no one to question his autonomy but then again you do.
"because," he muses, hands slowly falling away from you. "i want our first time to be special and today is not exactly an extraordinary day, is it?".
"oh." you say. "i see."
but you don't. you don't see.
—
the days are restless. and the nights — god, the nights? they are worse. was it not bad enough already? you think. they are heavy, slick, and scorching. vicious, maybe. but that is alright. you'd love being viciously fucked — him pushing you beneath him in the bed, ignoring your soft whimpers and cries and taking what he wants. his head buried between your thighs, your hands pulling harshly on his hair as your eyes roll back and—and—
in short, you ache — ache for him and the only substitute is your hand. even that is turning meagre. you cannot be satisfied with burning, lewd fantasies and a limb. and it is not as if he'll fuck you.
the heat spreads — a blazing scorch that fries your insides and boils your cheeks when you catch a whiff of that familiar sandalwood.
but even that is rare — he avoids you, turns the other way when you're both in the same hallway, buries himself back into his studies if you ever bump into eachother in the library and pretends as though you are not there. no words are exchanged ever since that 'i see.'
it is a clever trick. and you willingly fall for it. because maybe, just, maybe, he is doing this to make you desperate with rotten, depraved longing — to make you want him back. yes, that is the case. he must doing this to make you as equally as stalker-ish as he is.
but you are not that naive. there is always a ghost that haunts your roaring masturbation. it lingers, a depraved voyeur, and snickers as you wail out his name. it curves and twists and coils and blows into your ears as you clean your mess up with a handkerchief that smells of sandalwood — when will he come back? will he even come back? did you make him uncomfortable? is he....disgusted?
and after every self-fuck, you shudder violently. how do your cheeks fare now, that his fingers don't trail across them? how are your lips now, that he does not bruise them with kisses? how is your waist, now that he does not wrap his arms around it? and how are you?. how the fuck are you?
you reach for something to hold on but there is nothing. you open your mouth to speak but there is no one. you lean in to kiss but there are no lips. how could you have ever survived his love? how could you have stood still as he gazed so, so heavily upon you? how could you have inhaled the sandalwood? merlin, you don't know because that was not you. who were you?
and, who are you? a summer flower in the sun, maybe. petals pale and withering, red leaves dull and withering — just a crunch beneath someone's feet. dancing in the autumn wind in search of that summer breeze.
—
he is excellent and you hate him for it. you hate his gleaming, polished record of perfection. you hate his poise, how he speaks so eloquently. you hate his disarming smile with dimples on the left. you hate all that because it is not yours, but it was once.
was once, you remind yourself as Slughorn partners you both in potions. does the old geezer know somehow? you think, as you make the pain-staking journey to his seat. it's in the first row, of course. goody-two shoes.
your feet are being prickled with nails, perhaps — because every other step needs another intake of breath. your chest is a heavy, taut band and it is sick — oh so sick that you do not feel your eyes sting. the air hits your cheeks like a violent punch as you sit down. fucking sandalwood.
what will you say? there is so much and yet no words form as your lips part. an apology, maybe. or a confrontation. both do not sound logical and you want something that is — you cannot afford to spill your tears infront of him.
and him? he does not look your way, no, he remains impassive; still, eyes focused on his potion, long slender fingers working with effortless grace. he is beautiful. so, so disgustingly beautiful. the perfect curve of his nose, the way he towers over you, and something else — not quite there —. the phantom of a frown that marrs his lips as you continue to glare at him.
you snap your head away and wonder if he'll grip your face and turn your gaze back towards him and then whisper into you ear that you're all his. you still remember it. that murky look of longing he gave you. it is impossible to describe wholly, too depraved, too deep for words. his eyes, narrowed with aching, never left you. almost as if he was a starved man, hungry and ready to devour.
it makes you tingle.
it will not happen again, you decide midway through mixing your ingredients. so you must do it yourself.
"riddle..?" you say, his last name an unfamiliar pang on your tongue. "did i...did I do something wrong?
he doesn't hear you — atleast that is what you think. of course he wouldn't respond — what were you thinking? there is no reason for him to. you are a stranger; a pathetic creep, a perverse fool. blind. stupid, even.
and maybe you are being a fool again but — that look could not surely not be erased in a matter of days. surely he could not have discarded you like a torn piece of parchment or, more accurately; the pulpy, rotten stem of a summer flower.
but oh he did. he did do that. he threw you away and now you want him to take you back. "...riddle?" you repeat.
he turns to you. and it is the blossoming of flowers again. the gentle rebirth of the summer flower, squashed in damp mud, slender stem sprouting out of the ground — wet. tiny. fragile. he is once again divine, pristine, unattainable.
with his flawless pale skin, jet-black hair that falls in gentle waves above in his forehead, dark eyes lightly rimmed with lashes, and a perfectly carved nose, he scares you again; how can one be so beautiful? his lips quirk but he does not smile. "no." he says. "you haven't done anything wrong, you could never."
ah.
you melt into heated goop. light, dreamy and weightless. your fingers tremble to reach out take his hand but you do not. you cannot. when was the last time you felt your cheeks burn in this way? you don't remember but honestly you do not care and besides—
Potions ends and so does your excitement.
your legs sprint on their own, perhaps, because you did not mean to bump into him in the hallway. (or perhaps you did.) huffing out for breath, you take his hand before he can turn away. his hand is so warm — long and slender. you could hold it forever and let the heat crisp you. you are surprised by your own firm grip as his eyes widen. he raises a brow but doesn't pull away.
"tom," you whisper. "please. please. don't go... don't leave me alone again. not after what you just said. for fuck's sake." you croak out. "please?"
his lips curve into a thin line and your lips are trembling already, afraid that a sob might crack through. he still does not pull away. "come here." he coos as though you are a pet. and maybe you are because you do as he says. you bury yourself into his chest and consume that sandalwood. god. you inhale it deeply until it's wafting inside your nostrils — so poignant that you're drowning.
you're drowning and his neck is the only thing you can hold on to, and hence you wrap your arms around it. his fingers trail across your hair and you shiver. it is as if you are floating now. a sob howls through and another and another — and you cry. until your cheeks are wet and slick with hot tears and the front of his robes are soaked.
"sorry." you say. "so sorry for ruining your uniform." he does not smile at the jest but he instead takes a strand of your hair and kisses it, like he always does. a sweet gesture, perhaps but there is something else. something you cannot quite put your finger on. a storm clouding his dark eyes, just like that syrupy look. except, he remains still. nobody could notice it, besides you because you know his stares.
he lowers his gaze, looking at nothing in particular. you feel his nails digging into your flesh as he leans in and whispers, his breath hitching. "you are mine." he bites your earlobe and you wince — but you do not mind the sudden pang of pain. it is, in it's own twisted way, alluring. a strange kind of allure. "all mine." he is right, you are all his and you'd be happy to be that all your life
and then you feel something prick against you. he raises his wand and presses it against your throat.
what the fuck.?
you go cold — throat parched, lips parted. your stomach squeezes uncomfortably tight and you can feel the bile splashing beneath your tongue. your ears ring with an indescribable echo. why in— no, what is he doing? "tom..? why are you-"
"shh," he murmurs, pressing his lips to your sweat-drenched hand. "be quiet." you open your mouth to speak but no words come out. no matter how much you try, it is as if there is some invisible barrier that does not allow you to speak. "do you not understand?" he asks, but it is not an question. "so desperate and blindly in love, aren't you?" he grabs your collar and a smile, if you could call it that, graces his lips. you cannot breathe.
"but I like that. it is amusing, really, to see how lonely and touch-starved you are." he muses, his hands tightening around your throat. fuck. fuck. fuck. you thrash your legs but it is of no use. how could you have ever idolized him? how? "but you are not mine. not yet, at least."
something sweet trickles down your throat, leaving fire in it's wake — you kick and silently scream as your lungs burn saccharinely with an ache. scorching to your core, lighting your heart on sizzling candy.
a love potion, you think as your eyes turn hazy and the world spins — why is everything so..far? tom himself feels as though he's miles away from you, his voice is but an echo, and his touch is numb. not there at all. so much for an experiment. why, you think. you already loved him.
even if that treacle tart you gave him had poison in it. on second thought, this love potion might aswell.
#harry potter#hp fandom#tom riddle#tom marvolo riddle#tom riddle x reader#tom riddle x y/n#tom riddle x you#yandere#smut#yandere tom riddle#obession#dead dove do not eat#lord voldemort#voldemort#wizarding world#traumatizing#verie ! [fanfic]#terrible writing#not proofread#lovesick#yanblr#yandere x reader#hp fanfic#yandere tom riddle x reader#kind of#fluffy#mutual pining#slytherin#slytherins x reader
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What if Crowley uses "bird" vocabulary like Floyd with his marine nicknames....
Yes he's a crow ... Just imagine if he sees us as biiiiird~
Of course it's just my point of view, I am not a professional in ornithology, you might have your own idea about this one and I would definitely want to hear about it!
Mostly they are birds we could see in my country...
Let's go:
Ombrorio
Grim(m) -> Grey catbird (grey like Grimm, striped wings and can make cat noise....yes)
Yuu(sona) -> Sparrow (Crowley would definitely call Yuu a little sparrow....)
Night Raven College staff
Sam -> Painted bunting (small, vibrant, colorful, a rare sight to view)
Mozus Trein -> Eurasian skylark (classy, well known literally a french song about this bird "he sung it to Lucius as a kitten")
Ashton Vargas -> Pheasant (....the irony as his Disney counterpart is an hunter, but vibrant color)
Divus Crewel -> Great spotted woodpecker (literally screaming I am Cruella, fashion red, black and white bird)
Heartslabyul
Ace Trappola -> Nothern cardinal (red... funky feather style, fights their own mirror reflection...)
Deuce Spade -> Blue slaty bunting
Riddle Roseheart -> Robin (Hi Ciel Phantomhive...I mean Kuroshitsuji ref but look that little red face)
Trey Clover -> Nightingale (sorry Trey...Crowley is implying you can either sing...or can't...but you do have a perfect voice!)
Cater Diamond -> Pyrrhula (I love this little bird too....they became very rare by now, look this tiny orange one)
(Heartslabyul are literally the birds of Aurora in 2d "Sleeping beauty")
Savannaclaw
Jack Howl -> Owl (....this one is pretty obvious)
Leona Kingscholar -> "Savanna" eagle (yes... definitely a strong bird)
Ruggie Bucchi -> Speckled mousebird (listen to that bird you'll understand, also....that feather hairstyle!)
Octavinelle
Jade Leech -> Emperor penguin (tall...classy ...can't fly pfff)
Azul Ashengrotto -> Nothern gannet (verrryyy big, analystic-smart one, can't walk on land...)
Floyd Leech -> Snare penguin (unique appareance, multiple various vocalized sounds)
Scarabia
Kalim Al Asim -> White falcon (precious, royal bird in a "maybe similar related country in our world")
Jamil Viper -> Red Parrot (or macaw) (obviously because of Iago)
Pomefiore
Epel Felmier -> Snow bunting (a "petite robuste" bird living in snow)
Vil Schoenheit -> Peacock (beautiful, handsome literally The Evil Queen's bird)
Rook Hunt -> Mallard (another irony for an hunter...but this bird is beautiful I mean it, and is found everywheerrre (like a stalker bird ha ha))
Ignihyde
Idia Shroud -> Blue jay (blue, black and blue stripes, funny enough the bird is stated to be noisy ha ha, Idia can be supah noisy sometimes too when setting his boundaries, GG Idia!)
Ortho Shroud -> Eurasian blue tit (a little fluffy bird, blue and yellow doing a very cute melodious sound, I love watching them...)
Diasomnia
Sebek Zigvolt -> Egyptian plover (yes....the bird on the crocodile's back...yes)
Malleus Draconia -> Great eared nightjar (it's a dragon bird....look at him)/I could have chosen Casoar too... but nope...
Lilia Vanrouge -> Anna's hummingbird (it's small, pink and changes color with light...like his hairs)
Silver -> Nine-primaried oscines (a cute lovely bird in our woods, pink and blue)
Thanks National Geographic....
It's just pure fanon brainstorming... I'm sorry...
bird photos were mostly took from "Wikipedia"
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Tokoyami Fumikage x Reader Fic Recs!!(Tumblr/Ao3/Wattpad)
My Hero Academia Fic Rec Masterlist
Advice✨ by @bnhascribbles /ScatteredScribbles (oneshot, fluff)“Your feathers look dull,” you say, a little too fast, “And frayed. That means you don’t get enough Vitamin D.”[COMPLETED]
The Courtship Rituals of One Dark Little Bird✨ by IWillBeTheEndofYou (oneshot, fluff) Tokoyami is trying so hard to tell you something. You're so smart! Why can't you just figure it out on your own?[COMPLETED]
Rip It Off Like A Band-Aid ✨by @myheroacademiashorts (oneshot, jealousy, fluff, lil angst) You knew Tokoyami still liked you… At least, you were pretty damn sure he did. You glanced over at the scene again, brows furrowing as you watched your boyfriend duck his head closer to Tsuyu as the pair whispered.[COMPLETED]
Misunderstanding ✨ by @lordsister (oneshot, fluff, humor) Reader’s Quirk: Weretiger (can turn into a giant Siberian tiger) Kaminari stared at you as you gazed at Tokoyami, what he perceived to be a predatory gleam in your tiger-like eyes. “This is bad! She totally wants to eat him!”[COMPLETED]
You Are Just My Type by @myherofuckademia (oneshot, fluff)Despite his life of darkness, you were Tokoyami’s sunshine.[COMPLETED]
Beak Kisses [Tokoyami x Reader]✨ by Angry_Kitten_Bakugou (oneshot, fluff) Tokoyami is worried about kissing you, and you assure him through fluffy beak kisses that you don't mind.[COMPLETED]
attracting opposites✨ by whatisreggieshortfor(oneshot, soulmate au, fluff) Your Quirks complement, you marks line up. It’s how you find the one that’s yours.[COMPLETED]
Face the Sun by @dira333/ Fogfire (oneshot, fluff) Tokoyami has a Crush and Class 1-A is adamant on helping, or at least getting all the tea about it.[COMPLETED]
Gift | Tokoyami by Nacatu(oneshot, friends to lovers, fluff) It’s the holidays and you want to send Tokoyami off with something from the heart.[COMPLETED]
Secret Admirer by AshREvans (oneshot, fluff) A fluffy tokoyami scenario where his female crush confesses to him after sending him a few secret admirer notes?[COMPLETED]
Sun-Kissed by LennonBlue(oneshot, fluff with lil angst)Just as the moon had fallen in love with the water and all of its ripples and mysteries, Tokoyami had fallen in love with you and all of the little things that made you yourself.[COMPLETED]
Maybe Feather Mites Aren’t so Bad After All ✨by BlackSoul36 (oneshot, fluff) Hawks gets feather mites and infects Tokoyami. You have to deal with treating them.[COMPLETED]
Valentine's Day - Tokoyami ✨ by NightfallRevel (valentines day au, fluff)[COMPLETED]
Feathers by orphan_account(oneshot, fluff with lil angst)Newly working as a sidekick under the hero name Harpy, reader finds herself mentally and physically struggling with her quirk when things go awry, and receives assistance from everyone's favourite edgey birb.[COMPLETED]
Soulmate AU Tokoyami w/ Black and White AU hcs by @writing-freak (oneshot, soulmate au)your soulmate’s fears and insecurities are like shadows, and can turn your vision grey until you meet them. when tokoyami’s colors start fading, he becomes desperate to find you.[COMPLETED]
Soft Feathers by @justanotherpersonwhohateslife (oneshot, fluff) Tokoyami let out a small huff as your fingers rand over his feathers again.[COMPLETED]
#recs#fanfic rec#fanfic#fanfic recommendation#fic recs#fics#fanfiction#fic rec#fanfics#recommendations#mha fanfiction#mha#mha x reader#boku no hero academia#boku no hero acedamia#my hero academia#bnha#bnha x reader#fumikage tokoyami#mha tokoyami#bnha tokoyami#tokoyami x reader#tokoyami fumikage#dark shadow#ao3#ao3 fanfic#fan fiction#archive of our own#mha oneshot#bnha oneshot
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Re-design of my tribes flag, thoughts?
Did this just for fun, and also because I thought our original flag is kind of ugly. I like the seal, but a flag shouldn’t be a seal slapped onto a rectangle, especially with just our name at the top in bold white.
CGP grey taught me better than that.
So here we are.
Explanation for everything:
The large eagle in the middle is there because eagles are very important to my tribe, messengers of prayer. We also own an eagle sanctuary for injured birds and distribute their sacred feathers.
The fire has two meanings, one for our name and role, Fire Keepers/People of the Place of the Fire, and the fire has seven points for the seven fires prophecy. (A very important part of our tribals history migrating across turtle island)
The eagle has a three pointed crest on their chest, one for each tribe in the three fires council that makes up the Nishnabe
The crest is in a circle, not just as a reference to the original seal but also for our dancing circles at powwows.
And finally the boarder is a medicine wheel for the four directions, seasons and sacred medicines.
Thank you for reading!!
#potawatomi#native american#native#indigenous#indigenous culture#indigenous art#native art#flags#american indian#digital art#flag design#vexillology
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professional opinion on dragons with both feathers and membrane wings? Saphira from the (ugh) Eragon movie comes to mind. are they physically possible? is there any evolutional advantage to them?
I don't know about specific evolutionary advantages, beyond maybe thermoregulation, but we actually have fossil evidence of a real animal that may have had both membranous wings and some form of soft cover like feathers on its wings! it's the yi qi!
(image description: black and white scientific drawings of the yi qi, a prehistoric animal that resembles a bird but has long finger bones as well as an extra straight bone at its wrist. the first image shows it from above, as if in flight, with two different positions for the extra wrist bone that could change the way its wings might have been shaped. this image puts a light grey color where the wing membrane might have been, and a darker grey where the feathers on the wings might have been. the second image shows a yi qi standing up, in a profile view, with no extra shapes around the wing bones. end description.)
the feathers on the yi qi's wings were most likely only along the arm area, as covert feathers. because of the membrane, it would not have had any flight feathers. Now, because we don't really see thick patches of fur on bat wings, it can be inferred that having a patch of softer covering on the wings may not give any particular advantage to membranous wings. if it did, I think more bats would have something similar, but I'm not a biologist! so take that opinion with a grain of salt. but just because it might not grant any special notable advantages doesn't mean you can't use it for fantasy!
just keep in mind any feathers and fur you add onto membranous wings like this should stay concentrated on the "arm" of the wings and not really extend to the membrane. I've seen a lot of art of the yi qi that even leaves the patagium bare, I don't know if that's very accurate or it they would have had feathers up there as well, more like the top edge of a bird's wing. I think either way is fine.
(image description: a simple sketch of a small dragon with feathers on its body and along the top side of its bat-like wings. end description)
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I rarely speculate on Patchface’s seemingly prophetic jingles because, unless they refer to past events, it’s always a challenging exercise to parse out what they might mean. However, a few things stuck out to me as I was revisiting the ACoK prologue, especially when considering how this chapter works as a narrative mirror to Dany X, the AGoT prologue, and other chapters that come later in the series.
ACoK’s prologue takes place in Dragonstone, where Maester Cressen looks at the red comet in the sky and considers it an omen—"prophesies in the sky", as he calls it. This in itself isn’t particularly remarkable, as most characters who see the comet interpret it as a sign of something supernatural. Then, Shireen and her bizarre fool, Patchface, enter.
Shireen wants to see the raven that recently arrived from the Citadel—a white raven that marks the end of the longest summer in recorded memory. This, Cressen acknowledges, is certainly noteworthy.
And yet . . . and yet . . . the comet burned even by day now, while pale grey steam rose from the hot vents of Dragonmont behind the castle, and yestermorn a white raven had brought word from the Citadel itself, word long-expected but no less fearful for all that, word of summer’s end. Omens, all. Too many to deny. What does it all mean? he wanted to cry.
And Cressen is right; all of these are omens connected to prophecy. According to prophecy, the end of a long summer precedes the rise of a hero destined to wake dragons from stone and fight the darkness.
“In ancient books of Asshai it is written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him.” Davos I, ACoK
It is written in prophecy as well. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. The bleeding star has come and gone, and Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt. Davos III, ASoS
“He is not dead. Stannis is the Lord’s chosen, destined to lead the fight against the dark. I have seen it in the flames, read of it in ancient prophecy. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. Dragon-stone is the place of smoke and salt.” Jon X, ADWD
The omens that unsettle old Master Cressen foretell the birth of a hero of fire. Daenerys Targaryen, in the chapter that directly precedes this prologue (Dany X, AGoT), became that hero when she emerged from Drogo's pyre as "the Unburnt" and "the Mother of Dragons".
It is important to note that Dany X is a direct narrative parallel to the AGoT prologue, where creature of ice were seen again. The return of ice demanded the birth of fire, as all things must remain in balance. And Maester Cressen makes note of this as well,
The smallfolk said that a long summer meant an even longer winter […]
As a mirror to the AGoT prologue and Dany X, the ACoK prologue is full of references to Azor Ahai and the Long Night—too many to ignore. What’s particularly interesting is how this prologue circles back to a motif first introduced in Dany X: the birth of dragons. This comes to the forefront when Patchface utters his first prophecy in the series, which leads to an intriguing conversation between Cressen and Shireen about dragons coming to life; this conversation is occasionally interrupted by more cryptic jingles from the fool.
The fool turned his patched and piebald head to watch Pylos climb the steep iron steps to the rookery. His bells rang with the motion. “Under the sea, the birds have scales for feathers,” he said, clang-a-langing. “I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”
Before I proceed, I want to address my thoughts on the phrase "under the sea". I subscribe to the theory that Patchface's prophetic ability was awakened because he drowned and was brought back to life. After his "death" at sea, he became an emissary of the Drowned God.
The boy washed up on the third day. Maester Cressen had come down with the rest, to help put names to the dead. When they found the fool he was naked, his skin white and wrinkled and powdered with wet sand. Cressen had thought him another corpse, but when Jommy grabbed his ankles to drag him off to the burial wagon, the boy coughed water and sat up. To his dying day, Jommy had sworn that Patchface’s flesh was clammy cold. No one ever explained those two days the fool had been lost in the sea. The fisherfolk liked to say a mermaid had taught him to breathe water in return for his seed.
Thus, “under the sea” could refer to the process of dying and being reborn; note that this phrase often appears narratively as an accompaniment to talk of death. More generally, "under the sea" could represent a state in which suspended life is reanimated. Keeping this in mind, the image of birds having scales for feathers “under the sea” refers to dragons, which exist as suspended life forms encased in stone until they are brought to life
The conversation between Cressen and Shireen that directly follows Patchface’s first jingle continues the theme of stone dragons coming to life.
“Sit with me, child.” Cressen beckoned her closer. “This is early to come calling, scarce past dawn. You should be snug in your bed.” “I had bad dreams,” Shireen told him. “About the dragons. They were coming to eat me.”
Though Cressen tries to assuage her fears by telling her that dragons carved from stone cannot be brought to life, Shireen aptly remarks on the significance of the comet in the sky.
“What about the thing in the sky? Dalla and Matrice were talking by the well, and Dalla said she heard the red woman tell Mother that it was dragonsbreath. If the dragons are breathing, doesn’t that mean they are coming to life?”
Dany X proved that stone dragons have indeed been born. But Daenerys is the least of Shireen's worries. While her dragon-related nightmares are tied to Azor Ahai and the prophecy of his coming, it is her own father she must truly fear.
What’s truly puzzling, however, is Patchface’s next jingle, uttered as Cressen and Shireen turn their discussion toward the end of the long summer.
Patchface rang his bells. “It is always summer under the sea,” he intoned. “The merwives wear nennymoans in their hair and weave gowns of silver seaweed. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”
In a word, this is nonsense. "Nennymoans" don’t exist and are never mentioned again after this chapter. The term doesn’t refer to anything in the real world either. So, what exactly is Patchface talking about? I’ll have to take some liberties here to try and tease out the meaning behind this.
"Nennymoans," as a few fans have suggested, could refer to anemones. An anemone could be one of two things: a multicolored flower in the buttercup family that blooms in spring or fall, or a multicolored sea creature that resembles these flowers and grows in the depths of the ocean. Given that this chapter centers on the Long Night and dragons, this jingle likely plays into those themes.
Anemones, in whatever form, are tied to the cycle of life and death:
Greek legends say that Anemos, the Wind, sends his namesakes the Anemones in the earliest spring days as the heralds of his coming. […] Greek myth gives the anemone two meanings, the arrival of spring breezes and the loss of a loved one to death […] (Flower Meanings: Anemone)
This cycle of life and death is central to the Ironborn belief: “What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger”. With spring winds—or flowers—in their hair, the mermaids become agents of this process.
This cycle of life and death is also closely related to the waking of dragons:
She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder. Only death can pay for life. Dany X, AGoT
Dragons are also tied to the Lands of the Long Summer, which mirror the Lands of Always Winter—a place of death. Ice versus fire, death versus life, dragons or Others. This is the essence of the Long Night.
Other clues in the text help us understand the mermaids’ silver gowns:
On the crown of the hill four-and-forty monstrous stone ribs rose from the earth like the trunks of great pale trees. The sight made Aeron’s heart beat faster. Nagga had been the first sea dragon, the mightiest ever to rise from the waves. She fed on krakens and leviathans and drowned whole islands in her wrath, yet the Grey King had slain her and the Drowned God had changed her bones to stone so that men might never cease to wonder at the courage of the first of kings. Nagga’s ribs became the beams and pillars of his longhall, just as her jaws became his throne. For a thousand years and seven he reigned here, Aeron recalled. Here he took his mermaid wife and planned his wars against the Storm God. From here he ruled both stone and salt, wearing robes of woven seaweed and a tall pale crown made from Nagga’s teeth. The Drowned Man, AFFC
The only other time seaweed is woven into cloth is in Aeron’s thoughts, as he reflects on the Grey King, the legendary figure who slew the fire-breathing sea dragon Nagga. The Grey King wore gowns of seaweed and decorated his hall in a similar fashion. This was where his warriors feasted:
But that was in the dawn of days, when mighty men still dwelt on earth and sea. The hall had been warmed by Nagga’s living fire, which the Grey King had made his thrall. On its walls hung tapestries woven from silver seaweed most pleasing to the eyes. The Grey King’s warriors had feasted on the bounty of the sea at a table in the shape of a great starfish, whilst seated upon thrones carved from mother-of-pearl. Gone, all the glory gone. Men were smaller now. Their lives had grown short. The Storm God drowned Nagga’s fire after the Grey King’s death, the chairs and tapestries had been stolen, the roof and walls had rotted away. Even the Grey King’s great throne of fangs had been swallowed by the sea. Only Nagga’s bones endured to remind the ironborn of all the wonder that had been. The Drowned Man, AFFC
Aeron believes that those who serve the Drowned God will be taken to feast in his halls when they die (The Prophet, AFFC; The Foresaken, TWoW). This evokes imagery of Valhalla and its inhabitants, the Einherjar—dead warriors who are destined to be reborn to fight in the final battle during Ragnarok. The Valkyries, who take the dead to Valhalla, parallel the mermaids mentioned in Patchface’s jingle. Both partake in the cycle of life and death, acting as agents of an apocalypse.
If we associate “under the sea” with the cycle of death and rebirth, then gowns of silver seaweed might symbolize either armor or the more spectral funerary garments worn by the dead (or ghosts). The latter seems more likely, given Shireen’s next line:
Shireen giggled. “I should like a gown of silver seaweed.”
This is a child’s innocent wish—but tragically, it will come true. Shireen will receive her silver gown, her funerary garment, soon. The next line seals her fate and is what inspired this post in the first place:
“Under the sea, it snows up,” said the fool, “and the rain is dry as bone. I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.”
It puzzled me for quite some time what Patchface was referring to here. But given that this chapter focuses on the Long Night and dragons, this jingle is clearly referencing the latter—especially considering it directly follows Shireen’s unwitting prophecy of her impending death for the sake of a dragon.
On the surface, this third jingle doesn’t seem connected to the birth of dragons at all. However, remember that Azor Ahai will be born after a long summer, amidst “smoke and salt". And remember, this prologue is set on Dragonstone, which sits on the Dragonmount—a volcano where dragons once lay, where ash and smoke billow up (this detail will be important later). The jingle seems to describe the conditions that breed dragons! “Snow falls up… rain [is] dry as bone” clearly refers to “smoke and salt".
Up until this point, you’d likely think this jingle refers to Dany and her dragons—and you’d be right, but only partially. From this point forward, we see that Patchface’s jingles align closely with another character who is being positioned as Azor Ahai—Jon Snow.
Let’s revisit the second jingle about mermaids with “nennymoans” in their hair. It’s noteworthy that although Patchface often uses the sea as the backdrop for his prophecies, mermaids only appear twice in the entire series. The first instance is in this prologue, where they seem to evoke imagery of life after death. The second instance occurs just before a pivotal moment—before a Targaryen prince, a dragon, is put to sleep.
Patchface jumped up. “I will lead it!” His bells rang merrily. “We will march into the sea and out again. Under the waves we will ride seahorses, and mermaids will blow seashells to announce our coming, oh, oh, oh.” Jon XIII, ADWD
For context, this prophecy follows Jon’s announcement of his intent to lead the ranging beyond the Wall—a ranging that would surely lead him and his men to death’s door. Patchface’s assertion that “[they] will march into the sea and out again” could symbolize the process of wight-ification—a perverse form of new life springing forth after death.
The mention of seahorses is also intriguing. It could refer to serpentine sea creatures, which ties into the broader theme of dragons and their role in the cycle of life and death. Dragons serve as vehicles for new life after a period of death, a theme that is mirrored in Daenerys’s campaign in Slaver’s Bay. However, I’m also inclined to think of Kelpies—grey or white sea-horses that lure men and women to their death under the sea. The imagery of grey or white sea-horses calls to mind part of Patchface’s second jingle, where mermaids wove gowns of silver seaweed.
While I won’t speculate too much on the point about riding seahorses, it’s worth noting how Patchface’s third jingle relates to Jon Snow. This particular jingle, which references snow falling up, has two narrative parallels—and they complicate things quite a bit. The first parallel comes later in this prologue, just before Cressen meets his end:
Patchface sprawled half on top of him, motley fool’s face pressed close to his own. He had lost his tin helm with its antlers and bells. “Under the sea, you fall up,” he declared. “I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.” Giggling, the fool rolled off, bounded to his feet, and did a little dance.
The dichotomy here is fascinating. If the first mention of snow relates to the “smoke and salt” that provide the necessary elements for the birth of dragons, what does it mean when the focus shifts to Cressen himself? “You fall up” evokes the image of a person being lifted from the ground—resurrected. Where the first instance of snow falling up might reference the birth of dragons, this second instance could refer to the rise of their natural enemies, the wights.
That this second instance of “falling up” refers to the creation of wights—perversions of life after death—is further reinforced by the unsettling tune Patchface sings in the preceding paragraph.
Over the clatter of knife and plate and the low mutter of table talk, he heard Patchface singing, “… dance, my lord, dance my lord,” to the accompaniment of jangling cowbells. The same dreadful song he’d sung this morning. “The shadows come to stay, my lord, stay my lord, stay my lord.”
But this isn’t the first time Patchface sings this. When Shireen finally sees the white raven, Patchface unleashes his prophecy:
“Clever bird, clever man, clever clever fool,” said Patchface, jangling. “Oh, clever clever clever fool.” He began to sing. “The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord,” he sang, hopping from one foot to the other and back again. “The shadows come to stay, my lord, stay my lord, stay my lord.” He jerked his head with each word, the bells in his antlers sending up a clangor.
I think it’s clear that the shadows Patchface refers to are the Others, who are often described as “white shadows” throughout the text. Remember, this chapter mirrors the AGoT prologue, which featured Waymar Royce’s confrontation with an Other—“dance with me, then", Waymar challenged. That was just before he died at the hands of the Other and rose as a wight. Shireen also states that Patchface began signing this tune only recently—perhaps once the comet became visible in the sky.
Jon Snow, a narrative parallel to Waymar, begins his twelfth chapter of ADWD fighting the dead atop the Wall. Though his dream and its immediate aftermath suggest he will be victorious, the specter of death follows him until the next chapter, when he is assassinated by his own brothers. This sense of death lingers as he meets with Queen Selyse, Shireen, and Patchface in Jon XIII.
They found Her Grace sewing by the fire, whilst her fool danced about to music only he could hear, the cowbells on his antlers clanging. “The crow, the crow,” Patchface cried when he saw Jon. “Under the sea the crows are white as snow, I know, I know, oh, oh, oh.” Princess Shireen was curled up in a window seat, her hood drawn up to hide the worst of the greyscale that had disfigured her face. Jon XIII, ADWD
Other than the ACoK prologue, this is the only time snow is mentioned in Patchface’s prophecies. And this second instance is even more puzzling than the first. What does it mean for Jon, the crow, to be “white as snow”? If the first instance says “snow falls up", does that mean Jon, who is the snow, will rise?
The entirety of ADWD is centered around Jon’s impending death.
You are wrong. I have dreamed of your Wall, Jon Snow. Great was the lore that raised it, and great the spells locked beneath its ice. We walk beneath one of the hinges of the world.” Melisandre gazed up at it, her breath a warm moist cloud in the air. “This is my place as it is yours, and soon enough you may have grave need of me. Do not refuse my friendship, Jon. I have seen you in the storm, hard-pressed, with enemies on every side. You have so many enemies. Shall I tell you their names?” “I know their names.” “Do not be so certain.” The ruby at Melisandre’s throat gleamed red. “It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold.” Jon I, ADWD
But, a key point is that Jon will return, for Melisandre has seen it in her flames.
Death, thought Melisandre. The skulls are death. The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was a man, now a wolf, now a man again. Mel I, ADWD
But what’s interesting is that the language surrounding Jon’s death and rebirth mirrors the birth of dragons—“smoke and salt”, “snow fall[ing] up”, and “rain dry as bone” mirror the “ashes and cinders” in Mel’s visions of the boy.
And keep him away from the red woman. She knows who he is. She sees things in her fires.” Arya, he thought, hoping it was so. “Ashes and cinders.” “Kings and dragons.” Dragons again. For a moment Jon could almost see them too, coiling in the night, their dark wings outlined against a sea of flame. Jon VIII, ADWD
Mel is the first and only person in the series to recite the prophecy of Azor Ahai being born amidst salt and smoke to wake dragons. In fact, she always precedes it with “I have seen it in the flames”. Though Daenerys fulfilled those requirements in her last AGoT chapter, it’s still noteworthy that the narrative continues to present this prophecy as something that is yet to reach full completion. From a Doylist perspective, you don’t repeat a motif if it is no longer relevant to the ongoing narrative, especially when it is presented in a particular context; in this case, as it’s continuously presented in Jon’s Dance arc.
Mel is the primary person in the current timeline who links the waking of dragons to Azor Ahai, and every time she looks for this hero, she sees Jon!
Yet now she could not even seem to find her king. I pray for a glimpse of Azor Ahai, and R’hllor shows me only Snow. Mel I, ADWD
It’s striking that the last time the idea of dragons waking as part of Azor Ahai’s rise comes up in Jon X, just three chapters before his death.
Melisandre’s face darkened. “That creature is dangerous. Many a time I have glimpsed him in my flames. Sometimes there are skulls about him, and his lips are red with blood.” A wonder you haven’t had the poor man burned. All it would take was a word in the queen’s ear, and Patchface would feed her fires. “You see fools in your fire, but no hint of Stannis?” “When I search for him all I see is snow.” The same useless answer. […] “Would you know if the king was dead?” Jon asked the red priestess. “He is not dead. Stannis is the Lord’s chosen, destined to lead the fight against the dark. I have seen it in the flames, read of it in ancient prophecy. When the red star bleeds and the darkness gathers, Azor Ahai shall be born again amidst smoke and salt to wake dragons out of stone. Dragonstone is the place of smoke and salt.” Jon had heard all this before. “Stannis Baratheon was the Lord of Dragonstone, but he was not born there. He was born at Storm’s End, like his brothers.” He frowned. “And what of Mance? Is he lost as well? What do your fires show?” “The same, I fear. Only snow.” Snow. […] “You are seeing cinders dancing in the updraft.” “I am seeing skulls. And you. I see your face every time I look into the flames. The danger that I warned you of grows very close now.” “Daggers in the dark […]” Jon X, ADWD
This passage not only foreshadows Jon’s impending death, but once again, we see “cinders dancing in the updraft”—a phrase that echoes “snow falls up, and the rain is dry as bone". Both the ACoK prologue and this chapter discuss the waking of dragons, and in both, “snow” is linked to the conditions necessary for such an event. This raises interesting questions about Melisandre’s visions of “smoke and salt”—what exactly did she see?
Regardless, Jon is quite firmly wrapped up in the mysteries surrounding Azor Ahai and the waking of dragons. Not just in this chapter, but a common motif that comes up in his Dance arc is the aspect of sacrifice to wake dragons.
Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow; live ones were another matter. Two kings to wake the dragon. The father first and then the son, so both die kings. The words had been murmured by one of the queen’s men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. “There is power in a king’s blood,” the old maester had warned, “and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this.” The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast? Only a monster would give a living child to the flames. Jon I, ADWD
Much of this revolves around the sacrifice of a living child. Jon sends Mance’s son away with Gilly, believing he’s bypassed such a tragedy. But GRRM has confirmed that Stannis will sacrifice his own daughter, reinforcing the theme of royal blood as a powerful magical catalyst. The prophecies set in stone in the ACoK prologue through Patchface and Shireen are thus mirrored in Jon’s Dance arc.
What’s particularly interesting is how the idea of burning dead children to wake dragons is paralleled by Dany X, when Rhaego was placed in Drogo’s pyre, bringing dragons into the world and “rebirthing” Daenerys as Azor Ahai. Dany had her dragon eggs waiting to be brought to life, but at the Wall, there are no such eggs. So where will the dragon come from? Jon himself questions this:
“That I would speak to Stannis, though I doubt my words will sway him. A king’s first duty is to defend the realm, and Mance attacked it. His Grace is not like to forget that. My father used to say that Stannis Baratheon was a just man. No one has ever said he was forgiving.” Jon paused, frowning. “I would sooner take off Mance’s head myself. He was a man of the Night’s Watch, once. By rights, his life belongs to us.” “Pyp says that Lady Melisandre means to give him to the flames, to work some sorcery.” “Pyp should learn to hold his tongue. I have heard the same from others. King’s blood, to wake a dragon. Where Melisandre thinks to find a sleeping dragon, no one is quite sure. It’s nonsense. Mance’s blood is no more royal than mine own. He has never worn a crown nor sat a throne. He’s a brigand, nothing more. There’s no power in brigand’s blood.” Sam I, AFFC
As of Jon XIII, ADWD, there are no dragon eggs at the Wall. But what we do have is a Targaryen prince—Jon Snow—bleeding out in the snow, growing hard with cold as all memory of warmth flees from him (Bran III, AGoT). Jon himself is the dragon waiting to be woken, a “sleeping dragon” not of stone, but of blood and prophecy. Exactly how he will be woken remains a mystery, but we see a fascinating thread running from ACoK through ADWD regarding Jon’s role in the series’ central conflict.
In the ACoK prologue, Patchface sang of mermaids with spring in their hair, weaving funerary gowns. In ADWD, he sings of these same mermaids blowing seashells to announce the coming of those who have descended into the sea’s depths and emerged alive once more. How intriguing that both of these jingles are framed by discussions of dragons.
“A grey girl on a dying horse. Daggers in the dark. A promised prince, born in smoke and salt. It seems to me that you make nothing but mistakes, my lady. Where is Stannis? What of Rattleshirt and his spearwives? Where is my sister?” “All your questions shall be answered. Look to the skies, Lord Snow. And when you have your answers, send to me. Winter is almost upon us now. I am your only hope.” Jon XIII, ADWD
The first two prophecies have already come to pass. The third, however, still looms over the narrative. Yet, it too will soon reach completion. A crow has now become white as snow—dead. But as in Patchface’s prophecy, he will emerge from under the sea—a dragon reborn, the promised prince who will save his realm.
#this was really only gonna be a one pager that was like: isn't it interesting how patchface's acok prophecies mirror jon in dance?#and then it just spiraled out of control 🫠#anyway its finally out of my hands rfnruifne;ndxwioux#asoiaf#valyrianscrolls#patchface#maester cressen#shireen baratheon#the long night#dragons#azor ahai#jon snow#daenerys targaryen#melisandre of asshai
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