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yungidreamer · 4 years ago

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First Bite

Starting at the beginning!

Summary: Seonghwa attends a house party, all part of keeping up appearances as a high ranking duke trying to hide his immortality. She is the the little nobody, there by luck or by fate, and when their paths cross he decides she is his, he just has to convince her of that fact.

Wordcount: 8.2k

Content warnings: Not a ton, kissing, Seonghwa is a bit possessive and supercilious, descriptions of biting and arousal, references to sex but none yet.

Seonghwa sighed, trapped inside the stiflingly warm, dark carriage as it jostled along the road to the manor. He didn’t want to go. He didn’t like travel. It was all a massive waste of his time. But he had to do it once or twice every few years. Prove he was alive and well, caring for his land, and protecting the people. His somewhat distant lands provided some buffer to his official obligations.

He stayed in one of his fiefdoms for 20 or thirty years, however long he could hide the fact that he didn’t age, then left the land to a caretaker while he moved to his second, repeating the process when he had to or when the situation in one place became intolerable. War, famine, and unrest; they were all inevitable and sometimes he stayed and sometimes he didn’t. It mostly depended on what he could do and what he had to risk. Though he was incredibly deadly with his strength, agility, and speed, his inability to bear sunlight made him a useless soldier. At least these days they didn’t expect lords to go out at the head of their army.

This wasn’t war. This was almost worse. It was a useless social obligation, hours and days of mindless chatter and social interactions. This was going to be hell, but it had to be done. He had to be one of them occasionally, had to play the role, play the part he was obligated to be by society. At the first chance, he was going to leave and go back home. Thankfully most of the people who would be at the function were degenerates who slept the day away and loved to party all night, so at least his schedule wouldn’t make him stick out all that much. And food would be plentiful as the chaperones were always eager for a little trist with a lord after their charges went to bed.

Seonghwa sighed and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes, wishing he could sleep to pass the time. At least he could just let his mind wander to more pleasant things.

The halls were still relatively quiet in the manor. It was morning and the guests who were already there were mostly still abed and probably desperately hung over. She tiptoed down the hall to the library, having snuck out while her shared chaperone and her fellow charge were sleeping the day away. She needed another book to read, something to break the mind numbing boredom of the chatter in the ladies rooms. The sewing and knitting and the like didn’t bother her, she in fact, enjoyed them. It was the hours of meaningless chatter that killed her.

Nothing could make her care about the latest gossip about who had done the latest scandalous thing; like dropping their napkin at the last dinner or who forgot to use a properly sized parasol while taking a turn in the gardens. She didn’t care who had done what and, thankfully, it was never about her. Being barely in the class that allowed her to be here and having no relations who were of much more import, no one cared what she did so long as she never stepped outside of her station. Never presumed to be more than she was supposed to be. And that suited her just fine.

Slipping in amongst the tall wooden shelves, she searched for the section she had discovered on her last trip, determined to pick up the book she had been thinking of since she spotted it on the shelf on her last trip.

“Where was it, where was it,” she muttered to herself. “I know it was somewhere around here.”

“What were you looking for?” A voice drifted in from behind her, startling her. Spinning on her heels she turned to find a man behind her, a stranger who must have joined the party sometime after she had retired to her room the night before. What was he doing here in the dim library? No one was ever up at this hour aside from the servant.

She paused, taking in the figure that seemed to have appeared from the ether to loom behind her. He was tall and slim and impeccably dressed in something a few years out of fashion. Given the perfect state of his clothes and the ornate trim and frippery, she guessed it was a personal preference rather than old clothes he was simply making do with. His hair was dark and glossy, not powdered or covered in a wig, as was currently fashionable. From what she could see in the dim corridor of the shelves, he was pale and in possession of beautiful angular features that fit his oval face perfectly. The expression on his face had the sort of effortless disdain that only an aristocrat could manage.

“Just a book,” she curtsied, knowing her place and what was expected of her in the presence of such people. “I didn’t realize anyone was here. I apologize for the intrusion.” She bobbed again as she backed away, looking to escape, knowing how many things could go wrong in her position if she was found alone with someone like him.

“Wait,” his voice was soft but held a command to it, something that said he was used to being heard and obeyed. She froze, raising only her eyes as she waited for whatever he would ask of her. “What book?”

“The City of Ladies,” she replied softly, dropping her eyes to the floor.

“Come,” He said, turning and going back down the aisle. Falling into step behind him, they moved to the next row of shelves. He went in a few steps before turning to one side and running his finger along the spines of the books on one side until he found what he was looking for. Pulling a small leather bound volume off the shelf, he turned it in his hand to double check the cover, then handed it to her.

Blinking, she looked at what he had handed her. Pressed into the cover of the book in Old English typeface was The City of Ladies by Christine de Pisan. How had he known where this was, she wondered to herself.

“Is that not what you were looking for?” He asked, when she merely looked at the book in her hand with no response.

“Oh yes, it is,” she nodded, pulling herself together. “Thank you. I’ll leave you to your business.” Without another word, she turned and made her way back out of the library as quickly as she could without looking back.

The day had passed quickly and the incident in the library seemed to have gone unremarked upon by anyone else. He probably didn’t mention it to anyone, she told herself, feeling a sense of relief at the thought. She probably wasn’t worth the breath to him and had been dismissed from his mind the moment she had closed the library door behind her.

Sitting in front of the small vanity in the corner of her room, she looked at herself in the mirror, lit by the single flickering taper she had on the tabletop. Her nimble fingers pinned the last errant curls up on her head before picking up the furry puff from the ceramic canister and giving her hair a light dusting of powder. She pulled the towel from her shoulders and shook it out the window to get rid of the dust it had caught. Giving herself one last glance in the reflection to check for anything out of place, she blew out the candle and headed out of her closet sized room to join her chaperone and the other charge to head to dinner.

The older woman, paid by both of their families to watch over their unmarried daughters as they attended the house party, was gushing over Emma, the other girl who was her charge, as she dressed and prepared for the meal. They were both there ostensibly in search of suitable partners of the right class also in attendance at the party, but she was smart enough not to hold such illusions. Unlike the girl being properly pampered and prepared, she knew she was there mostly to pass the time and fulfill her social obligations as a spare girl to fill out the gender balance. For most everyone else there, the coming hours were the highlight of the day, the thing they most looked forward to. For her, it vied for the dullest. But alas, her attendance was required.

Taking a seat off toward the side, she waited patiently as they put the last details on the other girls outfit. A diamond comb was tucked into the curls on one side and a string of pearls were tied around her neck. Their chaperone gave her hair a few last pokes before having the girl stand so she could brush out the last crimps in her skirt. She was her best hope at landing a sizable reward for landing one of them a good partner. It was only logical that she would pour her attention into Emma.

“Alright, let’s go,” Mrs. Collins said motioning at her as she took Emma’s arm to walk the other girl to the dining room. She happily stood up and followed them as they made their way through the long halls to the dining room. At least dinner would only last so long tonight, she thought to herself. There would be a small ball tonight after dinner where people could drink and dance and mingle well into the wee hours of the morning if they wished. She, very likely, wouldn’t. Instead finding a good time to bow out, go back to her room, and read in the privacy of her little closet until she fell asleep.

Servants at the doors to the dining room bowed as the ladies passed, going to find their seats for the evening along the long, wide table that stretched the whole length of the large dining room. It was a classic room, decorated in a late baroque style that gave the room a heavy, dignified feel. The curved ceiling, covered in vivid scenes of figures, fruits, and plants made from plaster moldings that glinted with gilded accents. Busts filled oval frames above the doors and some windows that always made her feel like she was being watched and judged by people long since dead. Do you really think you belong here, they seemed to ask. Don’t worry, she always assured them silently, I won’t be here that long.

Taking her seat, she placed her napkin in her lap, letting her eyes look at the sparkling setting on the table before her. It was a safe place to look and didn’t invite nosy questions on inane conversations. There would be enough of that once everyone was seated and eating. Reverend Norwich would be seated to her right and would want to ask her if she had read her bible that morning. To her left would be Edward Johnson Esquire who wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes from dropping the cleavage of the women on that end of the table, more so with each sip of wine. At least it would only be a couple of hours.

Reverend Norwich arrived, taking his seat and giving her a bob of his head, which she returned. Thankfully, he turned his attention to the woman on the other side of him first, giving her just another moment of respite. All too soon, though Mr. Johnson arrived and, with no one to the other side of him, his attention was quickly turned on her.

“You look lovely this evening,” he told her, leaning a little too close as he spoke.

“Thank you,” she replied, giving him an obligatory smile that never quite reached her eyes.

“The dress, is it new?” Mr. Johnson asked, his eyes lingering on her neckline.

“No,” she shook her head, adjusting the gauzy fichu she was ever so glad she had worn this evening. “I wore it the first evening here, but I believe you hadn’t arrived yet.”

“It’s very, very pretty,” he stated with a small nod. “The pink looks lovely against your skin.”

“I want this seat,” said a surprisingly familiar voice from behind them.

“Pardon?” Mr. Johnson said, turning in his seat to look at the interloper who was interrupting their conversation. There he stood, the man from the library, and for the life of her, she had no idea why.

“I said,” he repeated in clipped tones. “I would like this seat.”

“Your Grace,” the hostess, the Marchioness of Umberland, drew close, her voice slightly breathless from her hurry to join them. “Your seat is next to mine, near the center as our guest of honor.”

“Lady Umberland,” the man greeted, taking her hand and giving it a light brush of his lips. “Forgive me, but I would like to choose my own seat this evening.”

“But, the seats…” her voice trailed off and her eyes flicked over the three of them for a second before pursing her lips. “Right, please follow me, Mr. Johnson.” The man stood up, following the hostess to the other side of the table while she reworked the seating to keep the gender integration and the ranks of those seated… appropriate.

Seonghwa took his seat beside her, scooting his chair in before waving at a passing servant to get him a new napkin as Mr. Johnson, in his rush to vacate said spot, had taken his with him to his new seat. Having received the acknowledgement from the man, he turned his attentions to the rather flustered woman beside him.

“Are you enjoying the book?” He asked her, fixing his dark eyes on her profile.

“Pardon?” She finally turned to look at him with wide almost startled eyes.

“The book you borrowed from the library this morning,” he pressed. “Are you enjoying it?”

“Yes,” she responded tentatively. “I haven’t gotten far, but I do like what I have been able to read of it.”

“Good,” he gave her a small nod. “It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember finding it interesting.”

“You read it?” Unable to keep the surprise out of her voice, she continued to stare at him.

“Reading fills the time and I do rather enjoy it,” the corner of his mouth twitched, almost hinting at a smile.

“Reading takes me to the world I cannot see myself,” she replied, turning to look back at her place setting.

“Is it your dream to travel, to see the world?” He watched, waiting for her reply.

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “There are things I would love to see, but I suppose I want to understand the world most of all.”

“Intelligence is as much the ideal foundation for a conversation as it is for a city of ladies,” Seonghwa said, returning to reference the book he had located for her.

“I’m not sure many share that opinion.” A rueful smile tugged at her lips. She set her chin to a haughty angle before parroting just a few of the things she had heard since she had arrived at the party. “No man wants a woman whose mind is outside the home… An educated woman makes a terrible wife; she is never satisfied and always argues, thinking she knows so much more than her husband… What is the use in a woman who can do more than read the Bible and calculate basic household finances?”

“Amen,” said the Reverend from the other side of her, having caught the last few sentences she had spoken but not the context. “A woman who is educated beyond the role that God has given her, is destined to misery and constantly reaching beyond what she is destined for.”

“I could not possibly disagree more,” Seonghwa sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Why would any man wish to tie himself to someone who is barely capable of holding a conversation? And if she is to be the mother of one’s children; to nurture and raise them, would you not want a woman who could educate and cultivate brilliant children?”

“Perhaps it is different at your station, Your Grace,” the Reverend allowed, giving a deferential bow. “But it is the fate of most women to live simple lives and those who dream of the world beyond that will find only disappointment.”

“A simple life need not be in contradiction to one of curiosity,” Seonghwa couldn’t help but retort. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the soup course as a small army of servants placed low, shallow bowls on the charger plates in front of them which was then filled with a ladle of clear brown broth.

The conversation of the room dulled slightly, replaced by periodic tinking noises as spoons made contact with the fine china. She picked up her bouillon spoon, bringing the soup to her lips, hoping that the contentious conversation was done between her two dinner companions. Much as she was enjoying seeing the reverend taken down a peg, she couldn’t help but feel like a rag being pulled between two dogs as they competed for possession of it.

“Why did you come to the party?” Seonghwa asked from beside her, having finished his soup and laid his spoon in the now empty bowl, ready to be taken away.

“The usual reasons, I suppose,” she set down her spoon, having finished enough to satisfy her. “To pass the time and, my father hopes at least, to meet a potential husband.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized how forward it sounded, as if she were dangling herself as a prospect for him. “I didn’t mean… I myself don’t think the prospects are terribly promising for me.”

“No one suitable or you aren’t finding yourself much in demand in that category?” He asked as the wave of servants returned, taking the bowls and replacing them with dinner plates.

“Perhaps both, perhaps for the same reasons,” she admitted. “None of those in attendance find me appealing and the sentiment is mutual.”

“Taste, or lack thereof, cannot be accounted for,” he commented enigmatically. Their conversation continued through the courses as they came and went, mostly consisting of him asking her something and her replying. It wasn’t that she wasn’t curious about him, but she didn’t know if it was really her place to pry. Given the gap in their stations, she couldn’t be sure of his reaction if she did.

When the meal was finally over, Lady Umberland stood up calling everyone’s attention to her as she asked them all to find their escorts and make their way to the ballroom. She started walking towards Seonghwa, expecting him, as the highest ranking male visitor to the party, to escort her. Seonghwa however turned away when he saw her moving toward him, taking the arm of the woman he had sat beside for dinner. Lady Umberland quickly sought out the second highest ranked man and headed down the hall, leading the way to the ballroom.

The guests quickly broke apart, moving into groups of milling, chatting people as they waited for the music to start. Seonghwa took her off to one side of the ballroom, finding an empty seat for her and taking a relaxed stance beside it. She could feel the eyes of others from around the room landing on them with a questioning intensity. The attention was cloying and she wondered how long it would be before she could escape.

“Would you like to dance?” Seonghwa asked as the quartet began to play the first song.

“I… if you would like,” she agreed, coming to her feet. Taking her hand, he led her out onto the open floor, not yet filled with any other couples. In time with the music they moved through the steps of a minuet. It gave him an excuse to hold her hand as they swayed and dipped in time with the music. Her hand was warm and soft and he couldn’t help but imagine what her skin would feel like under his lips.

All too soon, the music stopped and Seonghwa had to release her hand and give her a bow. She returned it and quickly made her way back to her seat, almost hoping he wouldn’t follow when she caught sight of her chaperone standing near it, her eyes boring into both of them as they returned.

“Your Grace,” Mrs. Collins bobbed, giving him a quick obligatory bow. “I came to take my lovely charge off your hands. You have been so kind to give her your attention this evening, but I am certain there are many others you wish to see this evening. We can leave you to that. Come along, young lady.”

“I am perfectly happy with the company I have,” he said, stopping her as she stood up from her seat to follow her chaperone.

“Pardon, Your Grace,” Mrs. Collins tried to sound diplomatic. “But I cannot allow you to monopolize my charge when you patently have no intentions of consequence for her.”

“Frankly, madam, you have no idea of my intentions,” Seonghwa replied flatly.

“You can’t possibly be entertaining the notion of courting her,” the woman gave a dismissive chuckle. “She’s the daughter of a barrister.”

“I have intended on doing so since I first laid eyes on her,” he stated. “My conversation with her over dinner simply served to confirm my first instincts.”

“Pardon?” The older woman sputtered.

“I thought I might wait to ask her in a more private setting,” Seonghwa took a step closer to her and put his hand on the back of her chair possessively. “But I suppose I can make my intentions clear here.” He came around to face her, going to his knee in front of her as she sat frozen in her chair. “Consent to be mine and you will never want for anything. You don’t have to say yes now, just say that you will consider my offer and you can retire for the evening.” She nodded silently, satisfying Seonghwa who then said quietly, leaning closer, “If you wish to speak about this tomorrow, you know where to find me.”

With that, he stood up, stepped back and gave her a little bow. Taking the opportunity he offered, she gave him a curtsy and quickly made her way back to her room with her chaperone following behind.

“What did you say to him,” the woman asked in a harsh whisper as she closed the door to the main room. “How did you even meet him? Have you met him before?”

“Not before coming here,” she replied, taking a seat at her vanity in her small room. “It was pure chance that we crossed paths.”

“I dare say your father will be pleased with this if you can actually land him,” Mrs. Collins sighed. “I have to go back so I’ll lock the door behind me. I’ll only say this; if you choose to pursue this and it ends in ruin it won’t be on me. A scandal would not touch a man of his station but it will be all you are remembered for. It is your risk and your reward to seek.”

With that she was left alone to contemplate how her life had so quickly, in a mere course of hours, been turned upside down.

Seonghwa retired to the library after the party, sitting himself down in front of a pile of papers related to his estate as he tried to pass the hours of the early morning. Waiting. Surely she would come. Surely she felt that same magnetic pull as he. When his manservant arrived to check on him that morning, he had tasked him with obtaining a marriage licence from the local church or magistrate, whoever could procure it most readily and most expeditiously. The man had uncharacteristically let a flash of surprise cross his face for a moment before suppressing it beneath his usual mask of neutrality. He simply nodded and ventured out to do as he was bid.

It was not until well after the noon hour that he heard the soft click of the library door unlatching and then being softly closed again that she finally arrived, drawing him from his work. He knew it was her by the soft sound of her footsteps and the almost timid entrance into the space. Anyone else who would have come would have behaved as if they owned the place, or at the very least, like they were sure of their place there; they knew they belonged.

He hurried to stand, walking quickly to meet her as she crept in the dimly lit room. He met her as she paused near the last set of shelves by the doorway before the room opened up. Her eyes met his as he came near and he could practically feel the tension roll off her in waves.

“I’m glad you came,” he said, taking her hand and guiding her to the seats arranged comfortably around the unlit hearth. “Please, sit.”

“Thank you,” she agreed, taking a seat in a broad square velvet and wood chair to one side. “I believe we have a little to discuss.”

“Yes,” he agreed, taking a seat in the chair nearest to her. “We do.”

“Do you mind if I ask you… why?” She ventured nervously.

“Why what,” Seonghwa cocked his head to the side as he looked at her.

“Why me? Why all of a sudden you decided… I’m not even sure what,” she trailed off.

“It’s simple,” he stated, leaning forward. “I want you; I find you fascinating. You were meant to be mine and I see no point in dancing around that conclusion.”

“But, why?” she pressed, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Do you not feel the same?” He asked, the first hint of doubt entering his thoughts.

“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “I know nothing about you and I would have not have dared to dream that you would be interested in me. Men like you don’t take note of women like me.”

“There are�� few men like me,” he replied.

“And women like me are rather common,” she softly challenged.

“You are not common,” He shook his head. “ You are fascinating. The fact that others have overlooked it only speaks to their idiocy, not your quality.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” her chest felt inexplicably tight.

“Give me just a little of your time to convince you,” Seonghwa proposed. “If you don’t want to sign the marriage licence when it has been procured, I will leave you alone. But give me a chance.”

“Alright,” she agreed, standing up and smoothing her skirt. Seonghwa stood as well, taking advantage of the moment to step forward and draw her into a kiss. She froze as his lips brushed over hers, slightly dry and cool as they pressed against hers. It went unnoticed that no breath caressed her cheek as he held her face between his hands, gently savoring her lips. He smelled faintly of sandalwood, paper, and ink. Her eyes drifted closed, softening under his touch.

She felt so alive under his touch; so warm, so vivid. Touching her was like facing the embodiment of every temptation he had ever faced. He could hear the faint stutter of her heart at his touch like a trapped bird fluttering in its cage. So delicate, so fragile… so tempting. He wanted to crush her to him, to hold her close. Her warmth was a delicate flickering flame that he was torn between wanting to protect it and wanting to curl his chilled hands around to the point of nearly suffocating it’s light as he tried to absorb as much of the radiant heat as he could.

“Will you have tea with me this afternoon?” He asked, finally managing to pull himself away.

“I-- yes,” she nodded, taking a step back and bringing her hands up to cover her flaming cheeks. “I believe you can send for me and Mrs. Collins at the appropriate hour.” She turned quickly and made her way out of the library while she could, a frisson of nerves tickling the back of her neck.

He spent the next three days by her side at every opportunity while he courted and coaxed her into letting him into her mind and heart. They took tea together in the afternoons under the somewhat distant but watchful eye of her chaperone. In the evenings he sat with her during dinner, discouraging any of the other men in attendance from socializing with her as he stayed, hovering over her, even when they were not speaking. He was just there, always.

On the evening of the third day, her father, having been summoned by a very distressed Mrs. Collins, arrived half expecting to find his daughter ruined or the whole of the house party in shambles. Rather he found the house, perhaps tense, but otherwise unremarkable. When he located his daughter he was somewhat flummoxed by the sight of a very well dressed and handsome man hovering silently beside her. He decided it must be the man who had caused the uproar but how someone who seemed as cold and staid as a marble statue could have done so baffled him.

With his presence, at the moment, unnoticed he waited and watched. His daughter seemed perfectly at ease in his presence and the others in the room looked at them with an occasional curiosity or perhaps envy, but little else. After a long few moments, she turned to address the man and for the first time there seemed to be a warmth to him as he leaned in and spoke to her quietly. A faint smile emerged at the corner of his lips and a warmth and attentiveness burned behind his eyes.

Deciding he had seen enough, he stepped into the room, making himself known to the occupants including his daughter. He couldn’t help but think how much she resembled her mother as her eyes landed on him and she grinned as she stood up to greet him, her feet carrying her to him with an effortless elegance.

“Papa, what are you doing here?” She asked as he drew her into a warm hug.

“Mrs. Collins insisted I come here myself and sort out whatever was going on,” her father replied. “Though I must confess I am not sure what exactly that is.”

“She was right to ask you to come but I believe she may have made things sound much more dire than they are,” she laughed, looking over her shoulder to where the mysterious figure was waiting. Upon seeing her turn towards him, the man stepped closer, coming up alongside her. “It seems that I might be engaged.”

“That is good news, my dear,” he assured her, taking her hands while giving the man beside her another assessing look. “So long as it is to someone who would make you happy.”

“I would like to introduce myself properly sir,” Seonghwa said from beside her. “Perhaps we ought to speak privately for a moment.” Her father nodded at the offer, motioning for him to lead the way to wherever he thought best. Seonghwa turned and led the way out of the main room and into a small side study, taking a seat in one of the plush armchairs and crossing his legs. Her father followed suit, taking the chair opposite, un intentionally mirroring the younger man’s stance.

“I’ve decided I am going to marry your daughter,” Seonghwa stated in such a perfectly matter of fact manner that her father could not help but blink blankly in response before clearing his throat to respond.

“I believe it would be customary to ask permission to do so,” her father returned, feeling a bit prickly at his surety.

“I did,” Seonghwa stated simply. “I asked her.”

Her father was again left blinking. In theory he actually liked that answer as he did believe it was up to his daughter who she would marry. He wanted her to be happy and very much believed in her and trusted her judgement. Still, something about the haughty certitude of the man irked him somehow. Yes the man outranked him, yes he agreed with his assertion in theory, but could he not at least pretend to want his approval?

“While I am glad that you have made her opinion in the matter of such priority,” her father granted. “I would be remiss if I did not seek to ensure that your intentions toward my daughter were good and that you intend to care for her as the treasure that she is in my eyes. I could give her away to no one who would care for her with less devotion than I do.”

“She will never want for anything,” Seonghwa replied. “Every comfort of life will be hers. I can promise that any intellectual pursuit that catches her fancy she will have the means to pursue. I would not seek to put her into a box that demands she is anyone but who she wishes to be.”

“Do you love her?” Her father asked bluntly.

“Love is a complicated word,” Seonghwa waved away the world dismissively. “And love fades like a picked bloom. I would not reduce my feelings for her to something so trivial as love. I can promise to be devoted to making her happy for as long as we are both alive.”

“Perhaps I am a strange man,” Her father sighed. “But I have never considered love to be a trivial thing. I would say I love her mother still, though she has now been dead for longer than I had the privilege of having her as my helpmate and companion.”

“You are fortunate to have had such a love that lasted so long,” he commented.

“Pardon me for saying so,” her father couldn’t help but observe. “You seem quite young to be so jaded.”

“I am, perhaps older than I look and have long been accused of acting older than my years,” Seonghwa laughed wryly. “Just think of me as an old soul.”

“Whatever word you choose to put to it,” her father steepled his fingers and touched them to his chin. “If you can promise that you will do whatever is in your power to make my girl happy, I suppose I can give you my blessing.”

“Thank you,” he said as he stood up. “I know having your blessing would be a relief to her. I believe the marriage license will be available to be signed tomorrow.”

“So soon?” His eyebrows shot up at the news. “Is it really necessary to rush so? No wedding? No vows in a church.”

“I am not fond of churches,” he explained without really explaining anything at all. “But I would not object to a small ceremony here, perhaps tomorrow evening.”

“Not to repeat myself but, so soon?” Her father asked, his chest feeling slightly hollow. “I won’t even have time to get her a dress or gather her trousseau.”

“She needs nothing more than the clothes she has brought with her as far as I am concerned,” Seonghwa shrugged. “I will provide her with clothes that befit her new station. You can send any of her belongings she will want to my residence. I can provide anything she needs, but I cannot replace things of sentimental value.”

“I will send them along when I return home,” her father swallowed past a lump in his throat. “I do hope you won’t object to an occasional visit by her old father now and again.”

“You are welcome to visit our home,” Seonghwa said simply.

“Thank you,” her father bobbed as he also stood. “I am relieved to hear that, if I am honest.”

“You can come soon and assure yourself that your daughter is well,” Seonghwa offered in a tone that might be mistaken for kind as he opened the door to the main room, allowing her father to exit first before he closed the door behind them.

They found her waiting for them, keeping busy with her nose buried in a book, though she had clearly been keeping half an eye on the door, waiting for them to emerge. When she saw them step out, she closed the book on her lap and stood up, looking at them expectantly. Her father came to her, a smile on his face as he took her hands in his.

“Congratulations my beautiful girl,” he pulled her into a hug. “I shall miss having you at home to stop me from letting my work keep me up too late.”

“Maybe you will have to find a new wife who will make sure you will take care of yourself,” she suggested, only half joking.

“Perhaps,” he chuckled. “Or I can just listen to the spirit of your mother nagging at me and do as I know she would have told me to.”

“Mmm, so long as you actually listen,” she scolded lovingly.

“I will, I will,” he promised. “Would you perhaps have a private dinner with me this evening? One last meal, just the two of us.”

“Yes, of course,” she agreed. “I’ll go tell the kitchen that we will take our portions in your room, if that is alright.”

“Excellent,” he nodded. “I believe I will go now and wash the road off me before then. Give me an hour and then please join me.”

“Alright,” she replied, watching as her father straightened his jacket and headed out to ask after his room.

“Just one thing,” Seonghwa caught her arm as she started to go to find a servant to send word to the kitchen. “When you are done with dinner, come to my room. There is something I wish to discuss with you tonight, alone.”

She nodded in acknowledgement and he let her go, heading out of the surprisingly busy library to see to dinner.

It was late by the time she left her father, but most of the guests of the houseparty were still busy with dinner and the after meal socializing so there was no one in the halls to take note of her sneaking to Seonghwa’s room. She knocked lightly on the door, still half unsure if she really should have come. But, now with her father’s blessing, it seemed more certain than ever that she would actually become the Duchess of Harrington tomorrow. Seonghwa answered the door quickly, indicating that he had been eagerly awaiting her arrival. He shepherded her inside, closing the door firmly before he pulled her into his arms and taking her lips in a hungry kiss. He had been starving for the taste of her ever since that first kiss in the library, her taste and warmth teasing him with the mere memory.

After a moment he forced himself to pull back. He had to tell her tonight, give her the chance to back out now or decide to go forward, knowing what he was. With a strength and determination he had not been sure he had in him, he stepped away from her, leaving her blushing and dazed in the wake of his passion. She looked tempting and delicious standing there in his rooms, ready for the taking.

“I don’t mean to sound as though I object to this,” she said, touching her lips at the lingering sensation of the kiss, “But if this is why you asked me to come, I think it is best if we wait until tomorrow to do anything more.”

“It isn’t,” he admitted, shifting on his feet. If he could have blushed, he would have. “I want you to understand what it means to bind yourself to me. I want to know that you are choosing this life with me freely and with a full understanding.”

“If you are wondering if I intend to try and abstain from what I understand to be my wifely duties,” her eyes flicked to the tall, damask draped four-poster bed on the far side of the room. “I do not, but I would still ask to wait one more day.”

“I am comforted to know that, given how short a time we have known one another,” he said with a calm formality that did not match the lustful turmoil inside him. “I have a… special requirement of my wife.”

“If it’s about having an heir,” she tried to reason out what he must be trying to get at. “I have no reason to believe I would not be capable of providing you with one. I know that it is vital for men of title.”

“I cannot have children,” Seonghwa replied plainly.

“How…” her brow crinkled as she looked at him. “How do you know?”

“For the same reason that I have a special requirement that I would ask of you as my companion,” he stepped forward and took one of her hands and placed it on his chest. “Those who are like me are simply incapable of producing new life. Is it important to you to have children of your own?”

“To be honest,” she gave him a self effacing smile. “I had expected to never marry which means I long ago accepted the idea that I would never have a child. I remember losing my mother when she had my brother who followed her not long after she passed. It could perhaps be a blessing not to risk such a thing, though I am still not sure how you know that you cannot have children.”

“Should I show you what I would ask of you?” He questioned, taking half a step towards her.

“I suppose that is the simplest way for me to understand,” she agreed, nerves tingling with a mix of anxiety and anticipation.

“Come here,” he reached for her, taking her to stand in front of the unlit hearth. Two candelabras sat on either end, providing the room with flickering light from their tapers. Behind them, in a frame on the wall was a glinting mirror. Seonghwa positioned her to stand facing herself in the reflection and stood behind her, his dark eyes locking with hers as he put his hands on her shoulders. His fingers gently pulled the gauzy fabric of her fichu from where it was tucked in at her neckline, tossing it away and onto a nearby chair. She opened her mouth as if she was going to say something but seemingly thought better of it, instead biting her lip as she continued to watch him in the reflection.

“My precious, do you trust me?” He asked as he brushed the hair away from the side of her neck.

“Yes,” she replied. She couldn’t have told you why, but she did trust him.

“This might sting at first,” he instructed gently as he pulled her back towards him and leaned closer to her, breaking eye contact as he looked at the soft flesh of her neck. “But don’t pull away. I promise it will feel good.”

She didn’t reply or even nod, instead, simply allowed him to tilt her head to the side as she watched, almost as if she were seeing it done to someone else in that reflection. Seonghwa kissed the side of her neck with his cool, slightly dry lips, feeling the gushing pulse of her blood just below the soft veil of her skin. Her scent wafted off her, carried by the very vital heat of her body out to tease his nose. He knew she would taste sweet to him, like the finest candy. All human blood tasted delicious and was satisfying as it coated his mouth each time he fed. It was the only thing that truly held taste for him like this and each person tasted different, tasted like them. They carried the hint of what they ate and anything else they put in or on their bodies, which naturally made some more tempting and delicious than others, but they still tasted mostly of whatever their innate flavor was, He could smell someone and know largely how they would taste, the good and the bad; and she smelled good.

His tongue darted out, getting some small first taste. He had spent so much of the day with her, waiting for her, or mired in thoughts about her, he hadn’t yet taken the time to feed. The borrowed warmth and life he took with each feeding had diminished and the thought of getting it from her excited him. Opening his mouth, he set his teeth on her skin and looked up to meet her eyes which had gone slightly wide as she watched him… and still she did not pull away. Snaking one arm across her chest to hold her to him, he bit down, his fangs sinking into her neck with a fluid ease.

She stiffened and let out a small gasp at the sensation, the flash of pain. But almost as soon as she felt it, the pain vanished and was replaced by a strangely insistent pleasure that seemed to flow through her as if it could replace the blood he took. Her heart fluttered under his hand and her body ached for something, she knew not what.

As Seonghwa fed, watching as pleasure bloomed on her face like the evening primrose at dusk. Her gasp became a breathy moan as she leaned into him, giving herself over to him and the pleasure he bestowed upon her. She tasted as good as he had thought she would, perhaps better, and it took immense resolve to pull himself back when he had eaten enough. With a gentle brush of his tongue, the wounds closed, leaving only two small pink marks in their place. They would surely go unnoticed, or at least unremarked upon.

Her legs felt weak and she couldn’t help but sag in his arms as the pleasure faded, leaving her fuzzy headed and slightly dazed. Lifting her into his arms, he sat down in the large, old armchair, cradling her in his lap. He held her, murmuring to her softly as the feelings faded, leaving her mostly tired and slightly confused.

“What are you?” She finally asked.

“Vampire,” he whispered, as if the lower volume might make the word less threatening to hear.

“I didn’t think they were real,” she said back, continuing to let her head rest on his shoulder.

“Not everything they say is true,” He answered, giving her comforting pats and strokes.

“What is, then?” She asked, letting her head remain resting on his shoulder.

“I can see in near total darkness,” he began. “I am stronger and faster than I was before, long ago. I seem to be cursed to live forever like this and can quickly heal nearly any injury so long as my body is largely intact and my heart is not pierced by wood or silver. I cannot go in the sun or even the direct reflection of its light.”

“Does a bite feel as good for you as it does for those you bite?” Her question was honest, holding only the faintest hint of embarrassment at the half hidden admission.

“I only remember the feel of it from your side once and it is different,” he considered, thinking back to what he remembered of it. “But feeding from you gives me great pleasure if that is what you are wondering.”

“Then does that replace lying with me for you?” She sat up straighter, wanting to look at him as she asked. “Is that why you can’t have children?”

“No,” he smiled as he took one of her hands and gently guided it to rest on his very ready erection under the layers of his clothing. “I am quite capable of that as well, but we will save that for tomorrow… if you will still come.”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

“Then for tonight, give me one more kiss and then I will let you go on your way.” He reached for her, turning her face to his with his now warm hands cupping her soft cheeks. Her lips parted under his touch and she allowed his tongue to venture in to dance with hers. The faint tang of iron teased her taste buds as he kissed her and the brief thought that it was the taste of herself fluttered through her mind as inconsequentially as a fall leaf caught in a fall gust.

Breaking the kiss, Seonghwa stood them both up, giving her some small distance before taking her hand and guiding her to the door. He brushed a hand over her cheek, letting it trail down over the side of her neck where he had bitten it.

“Tomorrow I will make you mine for all the world to see,” he vowed before letting his hand drop and opening the door to the hall with a quiet click.

“Tomorrow,” she nodded once before stepping into the hall and slipping away before anyone could notice her presence.

Masterlist

#park seonghwa #seonghwa smut #ateez smut #ateez imagines #seonghwa imagines #kpop smut #kpop imagines #ateez fluff #vampire au #vampire #historical AU #historical fiction #smut

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litafficionado · 3 years ago

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Four Questions with Garielle Lutz:

I’m extremely beholden to Garielle who took the time to respond to my silly, garbled, childish, intrusive questions. You can purchase her latest book Worsted here and here, among many other sites. --------- Q. You've attributed the resuscitation of your literary career in quite considerable measure to your teacher and editor Gordon Lish. It seems like you guys are particularly close, even as you seem to have largely confined yourself to Pittsburgh(mostly driven by your erstwhile teaching career but also by your liking the city over time). How does it feel to hear someone like Gordon speak so highly of you, “I think there’s more truth in one sentence of my student [Lutz] than in all of [Philip] Roth. Lutz gives [herself] away. “The speaking subject gives herself away,” says Julia Kristeva. I thoroughly believe that. What you see in Lutz, [her] lavish gift, is [her] refusal to relax [her] determination to uncover and uncover. It is, by my lights, quite wonderful, quite terrific.[…]Lutz is entirely the real thing?” Does one feel vindicated? How do you navigate the waters of self-effacement and self-indulgence as a writer and as a person? A. I haven’t had a literary career before or after studying with Gordon Lish. I don’t think one finds one’s way to him in hopes of launching a career. Anyone with vulgar ambition along those lines would have been shown the door pretty quick. I would never presume to be close to Gordon or to feel that I am part of his life other than in my role as a student. He dwells in another realm entirely. I attended his classes and tried to grasp, to the best of my abilities, the things he was saying about how to get from one word to the next. He also talked about how to free a word from the constricting range of its permissible behaviors, how to drain it of every sepsis of received meaning, until there is nothing left of the word but the skeleton of its former self, just the lank, gawky letters sticking out this way and that, and then how to fill the thing up again, to the point of overspilling, but this time with something that would never have been allowed to belong in there before, and then see whether the word, now close to bursting, can hold up and maybe have a new kind of say. I’m always surprised and relieved whenever Gordon says anything approving about anything I write. I think that for a lot of his students, his opinion is the only one that counts.

Q. You've said, "A typical day goes like this: noon, afternoon, evening, night, additional night, even more night, furtherest night, then bedtime, though I don’t have a bed or furniture of any kind.” Have you always been a lychnobite, sensing the overwhelming superabundance of life after the sunset or is it a relatively recent development facilitated by your retirement from teaching? Do you consider yourself in any way to be a minimalist? Does your room bear any resemblance with a sparsely lit opium den where all exchanges happen at the floor level?

A. I think the pandemic has had a lot to do with it. Lately I’ve been up until five, sometimes six. But I’ve always found mornings the harshest and ugliest part of the day (maybe it’s just because of the place where I live, but I never open the blinds anyway). There can be something awfully scolding about a sunrise the older you get Evening seems to extend every form of leniency, and in the dead of night, expectations go way down, which is where they maybe ought to stay. I do spend all of my time on the floor, but my apartment doesn’t bear any resemblance to an opium den. It’s more like a crawlspace or the back of a dollar-store stockroom.

Q. Even with your reputation of being a page-hugger than a typical page-turner, how do you decide which books to read apart from your line of work? Do you try to keep it largely in the familiar territory, like exploring the oeuvre of a time-tested writer? How does one unshackle oneself from this constant niggling that one ought to read so many books? Here's Ben Marcus: “When I was in graduate school, there was this sort of cautionary adage going around by the poet Francis Ponge that we can only write what we’ve already read and one way to hear that is you’re just sort of doomed to kind of regurgitate everything you’ve read and so if you’re just reading all the popular books, the books everyone else is reading, in some sense you’re maybe unwittingly confining yourself to a particular literary practice that’s gonna look pretty familiar. I remember at the time thinking, okay well if that’s true, if I’m just fated to that, then I’m gonna read things that no one else is reading. I loved to just go to the library and pretty randomly grab books, because I think for a little while, and I’m kinda glad this passed, but I really just had this feeling that a writer just consumes language and just sort of spits it out. So it didn’t matter. Like it didn’t have to be a great novel for it to be worth-reading. And I still read very little fiction in the end compared to non-fiction, essays, works of philosophy, science. And the other sort of dirty secret is: I don’t finish a lot of books. I just don’t care enough. I only finish a book if I have to or if I really want to. And, often, I’ll stop reading a book three pages from the end. I think that as writers, we probably feel a lot of pressure about what kind of a reader to be, what kind of a writer to be in, and we feel this shame, like “I haven’t read DH Lawrence, I’m such an asshole.” You begin to feel like you’ve these deficiencies and you gotta make them up and you never will and a lot of it is just kinda tyrannical. Of course, obviously, we must be naturally motivated to read and read and read and read but I guess I just started to notice that…I got a lot of my ideas by just reading…e.g. a gardening book…like the weird way a sentence was structured.” Then there's Moyra Davey: “Woolf famously said of reading: “The only advice … is to take no advice, … follow your instincts, … use your reason.” A similar thought was voiced by her elder contemporary Oscar Wilde, who did not believe in recommending books, only in de-recommending them. Later, Jorge Luis Borges echoed the same sentiment by discouraging “systematic bibliographies” in favor of “adulterous” reading. More recently, Gregg Bordowitz has promoted “promiscuous” reading in which you impulsively allow an “imposter” book to overrule any reading trajectory you might have set for yourself, simply because, for instance, a friend tells you in conversation that he is reading it and is excited by it. This evokes for me that most potent kind of reading — reading as flirtation with or eavesdropping on someone you love or desire, someone who figures in your fantasy life.”“What to read?” is a recurring dilemma in my life. The question always conjures up an image: a woman at home, half-dressed, moving restlessly from room to room, picking up a book, reading a page or two and no sooner feeling her mind drift, telling herself, “You should be reading something else, you should be doing something else.” The image also has a mise-en-scène: overstuffed, disorderly shelves of dusty and yellowing books, many of them unread; books in piles around the bed or faced down on a table; work prints of photographs, also with a faint covering of dust, taped to the walls of the studio; a pile of bills; a sink full of dishes. She is trying to concentrate on the page in front of her but a distracting blip in her head travels from one desultory scene to the next, each one competing for her attention. It is not just a question of which book will absorb her, for there are plenty that will do that, but rather, which book, in a nearly cosmic sense, will choose her, redeem her. Often what is at stake, should she want to spell it out, is the idea that something is missing, as in: what is the crucial bit of urgently needed knowledge that will save her, at least for this day? She has the idea that if she can simply plug into the right book then all will be calm, still, and right with the world. […] Must reading be tied to productivity to be truly satisfying […] Or is it the opposite, that it can only really gratify if it is a total escape? What is it that gives us a sense of sustenance and completion? Are we on some level always striving to attain that blissful state of un-agendaed reading remembered from childhood? What does it mean to spend a good part of one’s life absorbed in books? Given that our time is limited, the problem of reading becomes one of exclusion. Why pick one book over the hundreds, perhaps thousands on our bookshelves, the further millions in libraries and stores? For in settling on any book we are implicitly saying no to countless others. This conflict is aptly conjured up by essayist Lynne Sharon Schwartz as she reflects on “the many books (the many acts) I cannot in all decency leave unread (undone) — or can I?”” What way out do you suggest? Do you deem it worthwhile to eschew any shred of obligation and be propelled in any direction naturally? Like you said you found grammar books and lexicons more engaging and enjoyable than the novels.

A. I seem to remember that in some magazine or another, James Wolcott once said “Read at whim.” That has always sounded like the best advice. And I assume it means to feel free to ditch any book that disappoints. Like Ben Marcus, I’ve had experiences of abandoning a book just a few pages from the end, but I often don’t make it that far in most things anymore. I came from a long line of nonreaders, so I’ve never felt any guilt about passing up books or writers that so many people seem to talk about a lot, and I don’t expect other people to like what I like. Some books I’ll start about halfway in and then see whether I might want to work my way back to the beginning. Others I’ll start at the very end and inch my way toward the front, one sentence at a time, and see how far I can go that way. I seem to remember that in The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes recommends “cruising” a text, and maybe something like that is what I’m doing at least some of the time, if I understand what he means. And every now and then I’ll read a book straightforwardly for an hour and afterward wonder whether the time might have been better spent staring off into space. Too many books these days seem ungiving. It’s the ungivingness that disappoints the most. A lot of contemporary fiction has the gleam and sparkle of a trend feature in a glossy magazine, and I can appreciate the craft and the savvy that go into something like that, but I am drawn more toward stories and books that demand being read slowly and closely, pulse by pulse, the kind of fiction where everything--what little might be left of an entire blighted life--can pivot on the peal of a single syllable. Q. I'd like to ask you so many questions. But let this be the last one for matters of convenience. Also, in a capitalistic world, one's enshrouded with guilt for taking one's time without being remunerative in any way. Among the books and films that you recently encountered, which ones do you think deserve rereads/rewatches? A. I used to feel like the woman you’ve described so movingly above, someone who questions her choice of books almost to the brink of despair. At my age, though, I no longer have a program for reading, a syllabus or a checklist, and I’m okay with knowing there’s a lot I’ll never get around to. I’m happy being a rereader of a few inexhaustible books and chancing upon occasional fresh treasure. The one book that has shaken me the most in the longest time is Anna DeForest’s A History of Present Illness, which will be out next August. It’s a blisteringly truthful novel written with moral grace and unsettling brilliance and an awing mastery of language. A couple of recent books I have read in manuscript, books that totally knocked me out with their originality and uncanny command of the word, are Greg Gerke’s In the Suavity of the Rock (a novel) and David Nutt’s Summertime in the Emergency Room (a short-story collection). I haven’t watched many movies in the past few months, and the ones I watched aren’t ones I’ll probably be rewatching anytime soon.

#Garielle Lutz #lit #Worsted #Moyra Davey #Ben Marcus #Gordon Lish #Anna DeForest #A History of Present Illness #Greg Gerke #In the Suavity of the Rock #David Nutt #Summertime in the Emergency Room

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thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 4 years ago

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If you ever wrote a Griomer fic set in modern times, what job would Grima have? What car would he drive? What kind of beer or wine would he drink? Where would he live? What would he do to relax? How would he and Eomer meet? Curious minds would love to know :)

A BEAUTIFUL, BOUNTIFUL THOUGHT.

May your crops be watered and your cows plentiful.

Ok so the first real question is setting. I’m going to go with Portugal. Lisbon, to be exact. Because I don’t know any modern AU that takes pace anywhere other than America and England. With a few exceptions that just prove the rule.

Grima works for the government in the legal department of one of the ministries. Maybe Foreign Affairs or Finance - something in that vein. Is he on the take? Probably. Can you get things done by shoving him a handful of dirty 100 euro bills? Yes.

He was also absolutely was running a book during the dust up between that one anti-masker judge and the director of police over Covid. When the judge challenged the police director to hand to hand combat saying that if he won the police director would have to publicly state “I’m an idiot, a puppet and the government’s bitch.”

Grima LIVED for that whole hot mess. He also absconded with all the funds from running the book because Grima is here for that sweet sweet cash money.

But yeah, he works in a government legal department and people just refer to him as “Grima from legal,” as if there are other men with his name running around. Mostly people avoid him, yet somehow he keeps climbing up the ladder and no one understands how or why this is happening.

He is a riot to have on calls though because when people are like “if we pass this legislation would that contravene the constitution” he always answers “I can make it so it won’t”.

Examples of a day with Grima at the office:

Grima: I’m not sure I like this language in the contract as it stands - it makes it seem that we would be liable to pay the local municipality a bucket of money. And we’re not going to do that.

Random civil servant: That language came from the city’s mistrust of us at the central government.

Grima: Completely fair, I don’t trust us either. But we’re taking it out. The municipality is on their own. Shame them with their bad fiscal planning if they kick up a fuss.

[...]

Civil servant: Can we even do this? Like, are we actually allowed to pass this kind of legislation?

Grima: I mean you can. The courts will hate you and you will have judges out for your blood. But you can. Theoretically, government can do anything.

Grima: Anyway, there are regulations already in place to support the legislation’s implementation. We’re cart-before-horsing it here but trust me. It’s fine.

Civil servant:

Grima:

Civil servant:

Grima: I mean, I do maintain that it was a mistake to pass the regulations so quickly but uh .... things got out of hand. Which is typical.

Civil servant: Got out of hand? The regulations are a mess.

Grima: They’re a mess because we’re just making it up as we go along.

As they’re in Lisbon I suspect Grima takes public transit or walks to work on the average day. Also, I don’t know enough about cars to have an opinion of what kind he would drive.

Grima, as a contrast to other Portuguese people, prefers wine to beer but will drink whatever you put in front of him. I enjoy head-canoning that his preference is for rose and he tells people who judge him about this to go suck a metaphorical dick. That said, I suspect his table wine/what he always has in the house is red. Probably from the Duoro region. Also your bog-standard liquor collection.

That said, those little 15cl glasses that beer comes in Portugal. He finds that acceptable.

I think he’s a snacker. Like he just snacks through the day instead of eating real meals. Five minutes between meetings and he’s casually eating a sandwich. Where did he get the sandwich? Who knows. Why is there a bag of chips suddenly appearing? Magic.

I head-canon, in both universes, that Grima a) likes pickled things, b) hates asparagus and walnuts, c) consumes vast quantities of coffee and d) has a serious sweet tooth. How many pastéis de nata can this man consume in a single sitting? So many.

For how he spends his free time - he does like the football and has many spicy opinions about everything relating to it. Especially the latest fiasco in the UK. Also, the UK in general.

Grima: England was a mistake. Shouldn’t have happened.

Eomer: Guess we’ll just visit Ireland and Scotland.

Grima: Why would we do that? It’s cold up there. I want to go to Croatia or Naples.

Eomer: We went to Naples last year.

Grima: ... Your point?

Though he pretends to be disinterested in it for Reputation Reasons, I suspect he’d be a big fan of Eurovision and does one of those March-madness style betting pools with his siblings over it. It’s the only time he talks to his brothers.

Christmas? No. Civic holidays? No. World Cup? No. Eurovision? Yes.

Eomer thinks this just demonstrates that Eurovision is the solution to most problems.

In terms of day to day hobbies/way to spend spare time - lots of reading. Many books. Eomer is like “One day we’re going to be eaten alive by your books. There are so many of them.”

As it’s Grima, he has a chaotic organizational system for them that makes sense only to him. Also, he never re-shelves them so there are very neat and precise stacks of books around the flat which he finds rather soothing. He makes upset noises whenever Eomer tries to tidy up.

Eomer believes in de-cluttering. Grima does not.

Puzzles - I firmly believe Grima likes puzzles. And those crazy ones too, like 7k pieces of the moon. So it’s all white and grey.

Also strategy board games and trick-based card games.

And for where he lives? I assume a flat - one bedroom, nothing too fancy those he has Aspirations and Dreams of being filthy, stinking rich one day and being able to spend money like an American.

Oh man, how did they meet? I feel like they’re on opposite sides of some legal issue or argument. Like Eomer works for the Lisbon government and there’s a jurisdictional dispute and Grima’s representing whatever Ministry is involved and it’s all knives out.

Then afterwards they keep running into each other because Life is Full of Trouble. Grima’s like “can a man not drink his coffee and eat his pastries in peace?” and Eomer slides into the chair across from him, “How’s my favourite corrupt government lawyer?” Grima gives him a rude gesture.

Grima’s all, “Excuse me, I’m busy.” Proceeds to take out a deck of cards to Very Visibly play solitaire.

Eomer is thinking, Oh my god what a freak. What comes out of his mouth is, “So you want to grab dinner or something?”

Grima, “No.”

Eomer, “Drinks? Go for a walk?”

Grima:

Eomer, “.... I know a book store with a cafe in it that sells really good croissants and does like an overly fancy charcuterie board”

Grima, “I’m free next Friday at 8.” Immediately goes back to his cards.

Oh he’s also permanently attached to his cellphone. Like it’s probably glued to him at this point. An additional limb coming out of his left hand.

Eomer: We’re on holiday.

Grima: government never stops babe.

Thank you so much for this ask. I love them so much they’re both so dumb.

<3 <3

#THAT GOT SO LONG #lotr #lord of the rings #grima wormtongue #eomer #ask #reply

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sleepmusicland-1 · 3 years ago

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Gone Chapter 4

Ella POV:

For 4 months now I was already in New Orleans, the De La Crux circle was more dangerous than I would have thought. They acted in secret, used the other circles to get their way and, above all, they acted against Mikaelsons. Something that had already cost many witches his life.

Something that had amazed me was that no one, neither Isabella nor her members in the circle seemed to have been touched by the fact that someone had died. Murdered, only by whom was not clear.

For exactly 2 months I lived in a small apartment, on the edge of the French Quater, why the witches left me alone, although I supposedly played such an important role that their ancestors had torn me out of my life, was a mystery to me.

But one thing I could do undisturbed, both on the Internet and in the library, looking for information about what an Earth angel was and what my gift had to do with it, because since I was here, I kept encountering deceased souls and could also feel the presence of other people, vampires, werewolves and witches, I knew exactly who was near me. Even though I did not know these people, I knew when it was a human being and when it was not.

The scent of old books struck me as I entered the library, Getrud, an 80-year-old who had made her love of books her profession, greeted me with a cheerful "good morning" and informed immediately afterwards how my day had been so far.

I had to get used to communicating with someone in my mother tongue, because when I was still living in my own world, I had only spoken Dutch, simply because there was no one with whom I could have German spoken and then I often had to speak English, because the companies I had worked for often had English as the only official language.

But Gertrud was simply happy that she could talk to someone in her mother tongue and so I had learned early on that she knew about the supernatural and was one of the few people who had never gotten between the fronts. Because no one bothered to ask the librarian what she knew and she knew a lot. But in my search for the meaning of the earth angel, she could not help me either.

Gertrud wished me "good luck" before she turned to her work, although more and more people no longer borrow books, the library was still received by a sponsor. She had told me this right when I first came here, and she was so proud of her library, the treasures that were just waiting to be discovered in it.

"Thank you", I thanked her and entered the library myself.

The room itself was large, on both sides’ shelves upon shelves, full of books of all kinds, the smell of old books, dust and for me knowledge was in the air. Ever since Isabella decided to find out more about Earth's Angels before she wanted to start the ominous training, which I still did not know what the training meant, it gave me time to find out how I got here and how to get back to my old life, because I was not satisfied with one that Isabella claimed I could not go back.

I did not believe her, I would tell myself about the same thing in her place, in order to prevent people from trying to get back home.

I had just walked between two books shelves as my neck hairs lined up, the tingling that normally crept from my neck over my back started this time on my stone leg and goose bumps told me that I was no longer alone, but it was not a spirit, it was a supernatural being.

How did I know it was supernatural beings and not a spirit? I had no idea; it was as if my gut feeling had improved so much since I was here that I had developed a radar for supernatural beings and spirits.

Said supernatural being in this was Marcel Gerard, one of Isabella's allies, and even though he did not know where I came from and what I seemed to be, he had not even tried to get to know me better, as if it was enough for him that Isabella had said that I was important for her plan, whatever that plan was.

Because she had not told me that, I was supposedly the key to making an old prophecy come true, but how exactly she planned to prevent it was a mystery to me.

"Ella, right?" he spoke to me and seemed to let his charm play, maybe even worked for other women, but I was not like other women, like cliché, that sounded too. As an asexual person, it was not easy anyway.

"Yes?" I answered questioningly and did not expect an honest answer, but only an excuse why he was here.

"Someone wants to get to know you and he has a few questions, questions that Isabella does not want to answer", he answered me, immediately my neck hairs lined up, this someone wanted information from me. Maybe he even wanted to know where I came from.

And I could not say that I came from another world, where this was a series. That sounded stupid even to my ears, even if in my case, it was reality.

"Who is this someone?" I asked, I would certainly not go anywhere to meet some mysterious person who had questions that Isabella did not want to answer.

"Ever heard of Elijah Mikaelson?" Marcel informed himself and I somehow managed not to let my heartbeat beat treacherously faster than I heard Elijah's name. I still couldn't believe that the version I had seen on the show wasn't the same one I had come to know for a moment months ago. "Don't tell me anything, I'm not very good at remembering names," I answered him and that wasn't a lie. It took me several weeks from time to time until I could assign the names of the respective persons to their face and remember it.

"Don't worry, he just wants to ask a few questions, nothing more if you would please follow me?" Marcel asked me in a tone that did not tolerate any contradiction.

Elijah POV:

Marcellus took the young woman I had met in the cemetery a few months ago to the arranged meeting place, an old, abandoned church, where I could be surethatnone of the witches would eardrop on us.

I watched her body language, she appeared consciously confident and did not let herself be intimidated by her surroundings, she looked around and when her gaze fell on me, she seemed to recognize me again.

"What do they want?" she informed after the reason why she was here, no greeting, she got straight to the point. "Normally one greets his interlocutor" I answered her, where I did not miss that Marcellus was amused, since she did not adhere to the customs.

"Normally you don't get ordered to a conversation like they did," she contradicted me and slapped her arms on top of each other.

Either Isabella had not told her who she was dealing with, or she was one of those people who did not let themselves be intimidated by vampires, which in my eyes was not only incredibly stupid, but also dangerous.

"On the one hand, I would like to know where they come from, because they are not American," I answered her and she looked at me with her head tilted to the left, „The country where I lived or the country where I was born? Even then they don't get the answer they seem to be looking for, because my nationality is and will always be, Dutchwoman", she answered me, she was born in a different country than where she lived now? Where did it come from? What had Isabella done? The slight undertone of bitterness had not escaped me.

"May I guess that they were born in Germany?" I informed myself and Ella looked at me, "Because I have such a strong German accent?" she indirectly confirmed my suspicion that she had been born in Germany, to which Marcellus replied that he had German heard her talking to a few German tourists and that she had no accent, which made him suspect that it was either her mother tongue, or that she had lived in Germany.

And with that, she now knew that I had let her observe, but I did not know a detail of Marcellus's connection to Isabella at the time.

"Because I speak accent-free German, am I automatically born in Germany?" she asked and looked at me from Marcellus.

"This is actually the only explanation, because according to my contacts, they do not have a social insurance number, nor other documents to confirm their identity," I replied to her statement and observed her reaction, her heartbeat was calm, no signs that she was surprised by my statement or the fact that there was no documentation about the woman in front of me.

"The only explanation? I can think of ten other possibilities", she contradicted me, I was honestly amazed at how often she contradicted me and showed no fear.

"But why am I here? Why am I being executed here?" she added, and it amazed me how good her pronunciation was, because she had indirectly confirmed that English was not her mother tongue.

But I did not let this be noticed, a sign of weakness and your counterpart took advantage of it for their own goals. "I want to know what exactly Isabella is up to, especially because when I first found her near the Bone Mausoleum, the mausoleum that is only used for the witches of New Orleans when it is very important," I explained to her the reason why I had ordered her and commissioned Marcellus to bring her here.

"And I should know why? Ask Isabella herself, I'm not a witch and I have no idea what the meaning of whatever mausoleums have, which as you yourself have already noted, I don't come from here, so how am I supposed to know what exactly any mausoleum has for a meaning", Ella answered me and for the first time I noticed that she was wearing a chain, she was wearing several pendants on a black string, but I could not see which pendants they were.

For the moment I pushed my observation aside, there were more important things, especially because Ella really did not seem to know what Isabella had used the bone mausoleum for.

"Can I leave now? Or do they want to know more?" Ella hinged slightly annoyed, her attitude had changed, instead of standing bored leaning against one of the old banks, she stood upright, and her attitude revealed that she perceived something, we were no longer alone.

Could it be that she was paranormally gifted? That would be the only explanation, because their attitude had changed and not only, I noticed the change, Marcellus had also noticed the change.

A click echoed deafeningly loudly through the old, abandoned building, for vampire ears it sounded noticeably clear and loud in the ears, for people ears it was not audible.

I would learn more about the mysterious woman very soon and discover an old secret...

#elijah mikaelson #elijah mikaelson imagine #elijah mikaelson fanfiction #the originals #Gone fanfiction #elijah mikaelson x oc #chapter 4

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hotpotrandomfics · 3 years ago

Text

Fifth Year Summer AU: A Tropical Journey to my Boyfriend

Summary: Merula and some her companions have been invited to visit Jason in the Dominican Republic. However, the Great Snyde must face her greatest task yet. Jason’s mother.

Word Count: 5,600

The school year had come to a close, and all the students of Hogwarts had all headed home. Merula had made friends with Jason friends one at a time. They had bonded with each other in the last few months of school and had become friends themselves. Merula actually had planned to hang out with Penny during some of the summertime they were off. Mainly because the two had a plan.

"So do you think he'll be surprised, Penny?" Merula asked as she looked through her suitcase, making sure she had everything necessary packed. "It's not weird if we show up, right?"

"No, why would it?" Penny said as she checked her hair in her mirror.

"We have only been together for a few months. So I'm still nervous about him and me being so close. I mean we are talking traveling to the other side of the planet here!" Merula looked at her as she flopped down on the ground groaning. "I mean, this would be the first time I would meet his mother! What if she doesn't like me or she thinks I'm not pretty enough for him. Penny, you know Jason is a knockout, and his little fan club went mad when I took their idol!"

Merula kept going on and on about how nervous she was about this secret trip she and the rest of the curse breakers had planned. The whole reason being is Jason's parents had divorced, and his parents had agreed to shared custody despite their constant bickering that he should stay with one or the other. But Jason made it clear to his parents he'd rather be on his own if his parents couldn't compromise. If not with each other at least for his sake.

"Merula, I'm sure it'll be fine. Remember, you're the girl who bagged the best guy at Hogwarts!" Penny patted Merula shoulder, giving her a thumbs up. "Trust me, plus once Jason gets a load of you in all these cute outfits, there is no way his mum is gonna argue against this. Or is the self-proclaimed best witch of Hogwarts too scared of her future mother-in-law?"

"I'm not scared!" Merula snapped out of her little funk. "W-who would be scared of that? I'm not!"

"Merula, your shaking like a leaf. Everything will play out, and we'll have a good time. His mum knows we are coming with a few more. Rowan, Ben, and Barnaby are coming with us too- oh look at the time!" Penny shouted as she looked at her watch slightly panic. "If we don't hurry, we'll miss the port key!"

Without a moment's hesitation, the girls finished their packing and made their way to the port key location. The girls were taken by Penny's parents to the local train station and had traveled to an old train station frequented by wizards. The two met with their friends at the coastline where a man stood with an old fisherman outfit and staff. He pulled a pocket watch from his pocket as the five of them made their way to him.

"Payment and passports?" the old man asked as the teens stood in front of him.

Each of them pulled a few Galleons and their passports, paying him as he inspected their passports. After a few moments, the old man smiled as he was satisfied with the amount of coin he weighed in his hand.

"Alright, go ahead and grab the pot," the man directed them.

The friends laid their hands on the pot, waiting as the old man counted down. They all shook with anticipation waiting for their little "flight" to take place.

Five. Four. Three. Two. One...

As the old man uttered the last number, the kids were sucked into a cyclone, pulling them into the shoe as they screamed, not of fear. But out of pure excitement, they never traveled by port key, so their expectations weren't let down. After a few moments of screaming the group of friends landed on the sandy ground. They groaned as they stood up, dusting themselves and looking around themselves: Sun, palm trees, mountains in the distance, and the buzzing of the local town behind them.

"Wow, this place is beautiful," Merula said as she gazed at their new surroundings. "So exactly how are we going to Jason's place from here?"

Just then, a pearl white limousine rolled up next to the group with a tanned elderly man dressed in an elegant suit and gloves.

"Senor Rowan. Senor Ben. Senor Barnaby. Senora Penny and Senora Merula. Welcome to the Dominican Republic," he bowed with one hand across his chest, "I am Manuel, your guide and the head butler for the De Leone family. Dominar Jason's mother's side of the family. If you, please follow me." Manuel drew his wand, lifting their suitcases, and guided them into the trunk of the limousine.

"Well, that's how," Rowan said as he and the rest of them entered the rear of the limousine.

Inside of it, the interior was tanned coffee leather with a minibar toward the front section, with a raised roof with shelves of different forms of alcohol and coffee beans. Five goblets of water flew into the passenger's hands. It was impressive to see the progress of magic and the combination of muggle technologies. The car began to move as the friends watch the city pass by and they made twists and turns till they reached a narrow alley wall, plowing through a building as the group of teens screamed but then the car phased through the wall.

They were now in the wizard city of Pueblo Leona, a port town famous for one of the best Quidditch teams in South America, resorts, cliff diving, and the hometown of the De Leone family. As they drove through the town, they stopped at a large golden gate with two lion statues that stood fifteen feet tall. The statue's head followed the car as the gates opened, and the limousine pulled in front of the manor before them. It stood three stories tall, designed in the form of a Mediterranean with white marble columns with blue and gold accents to the edges at the bases of the walls. The roof was made of wood and polished to the point it reflected the light of the sun.

Manuel stepped out, holding the door of the car as the teens stepped out and looked at the mansion in awe.

"Jason said his family was wealthy..." Rowan said as he stared at the building in awe.

"No, kidding. How does anyone find their way around a place like that?" Penny chimed in.

"I hope we don't get lost," Ben muttered as they followed Manuel into the demesne.

The ceilings were raised high with polished wooden beams mounted with golden chandeliers and a central staircase with an azure carpet draping the stairs. The walls were decorated in paintings of the sea, port towns, and ships. As Manuel was explaining the layout, the head of the house came down the stairs. A woman who'd worn a blue sundress, with golden bracelets on either wrist and a necklace made of gold. Her skin was bronze with dark brown hair and blue eyes. She was around the same as Merula, Jason's mother, Thalia De Leone.

"Hello, welcome," Thaila said with a gentle smile, "I hope the drive wasn't too rocky. Let me see if I get this right, Penny?"

"Yes, ma'am! It's a pleasure," Penny smiled brightly.

"Ben?"

"H-hello ma'am," Ben stuttered as he stared at the woman. "I am Ben C-Copper..."

"You're right Penny, and he does seem nervous. You needn't be worried mi nino." Thaila laughed as she continued. "Barnaby?"

"That's me!" Barnaby laughed.

"Energetic, quite nice. You are Rowan?"

"A pleasure ma'am, your son is-"

"You're his best friend, I know. Thank you for watching him." She nodded then turned her gazed to Merula. Studying the girl carefully invading her personal space. "And you..."

"Hello, Miss De Leone. I'm M-Merula Snyde," she muttered. What was with her, she thought. Usually, adults didn't intimidate her, but this one did oddly. Her bubbly demeanor and the analyzing look she had in her eyes were similar to eyes she knew too well.

"Merula Snyde. Hmm, you bullied my baby boy, and yet," Thaila's expression turned severe.

"I um..."

"But," she grinned and pulled her into a tight hug. "You made my boy smile!"

"Miss De Leone! You're crushing me!" Merula coughed as she was mumbling confused.

"Oh sorry! And dear, call me Thaila. Or mom." Thaila let Merula go as she rubbed the back of her head like Jason. Yep, they were related. "Ah, Jason should be out on the veranda in the back. Warning though, he doesn't know you're here. So you gotta be sneaky."

The group nodded in unison as they followed Thaila through the home. They gazed at the artwork and architecture in amazement. The detail was so subtle and precise that it would sin to touch even the walls. As they approached the double doors leading to the back they saw the young man they had all been looking forward to seeing.

Jason was sitting at a table sipping away some coffee while reading a book with his free hand. He wore his necklace Merula had gotten him for Christmas while a black v-neck, ripped jeans, and his hiking boots. How he wore that in hot weather was anyone's guess. He seemed too invested in noticing the door opening. But something did catch his attention, a particular scent that sent him over the edge — the aroma of fresh mountain air with the hints of lavender and nail polish.

"Jason, I have a surprise for you-" Thaila began speaking but was through off when her son jumped over the table and tackling Merula. "Jason Piscius Aurelius De Leone! Do not jump over the tables!"

"Ah! Jason!" Merula squealed as Jason lifted her and spun her around almost slinging her into their friends who had to dodge out of the way. "P-put me down, you knucklehead!" She laughed as her boyfriend pulled her into a hug but started to blush when she realized everyone was staring.

"Oh, sorry!" Jason placed her down while looking at his friends and giving them all hugs with the same amount of happiness. "What are you all doing here?"

"Well, we came to see you. Isn't it obvious?" Rowan laughed as he tapped his friend in the chest.

"I orchestrated the whole thing with your mum. I hope that's okay." Penny laughed as she hugged Jason sided.

"Really now? Gracias ma," Jason turned to his mother, smiling at him.

"Of course. I must say though," she looked at Merula and nodded in approval. "You got a good taste in women. She reminds me a little bit of me when I was younger."

"Haywood!" Merula cheeks started turning red as she wrapped her arms around Jason's arm. "How long are you gonna hold on to my boyfriend, hmmm?"

"Oh! Sorry, Merula!" Penny let go laughing as let Jason go. "She is similar to me in that regard," Thaila laughed. "I was a bit possessive of my men."

Merula blushed at the comment Thaila. She doesn't like others touching her stuff; especially touching Jason. She buried her face into his chest and sighed, trying to hide her embarrassment.

"Oh Meri," Jason leaned down and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

As the group of friends was each shown to their rooms, they all had lunch out on the veranda. They chatted all about how the summer had been for the first few weeks. Penny and her family had gone to a muggle theme park in celebration of Beatrice being freed from the curse of the portraits. Barnaby had gone to Germany visiting many magical creature sanctuaries. Rowan visited his relatives in India while reading a small library worth of books. They shared many other stories until Jason suggested he showed them around the city. Everyone agreed to it with much enthusiasm.

Manuel had the limo drop of the teens in a market area. Manuel instructed them he'd come to get them before dinner for the evening was prepared. The group then followed behind Jason as he showed them the town. The streets were littered with people working stalls, kids playing, and many tourists enjoying the city's bright and vibrant life.

"Wow," Penny looked around at a stall of bright dresses and swimsuits. "These are so pretty! Merula, look at this!"

Merula walked over and looked at the wares intrigued by the patterns. Some of the models and symbols she saw looked as though a child drew them.

"Jason, what are those characters?" Merula looked at him bewildered.

"Huh?" he walked over and looked at them. "Those are Taino symbols. They were the natives of the Caribbean. They were relatively peaceful. That symbol is the "sun" or "sol." It looks a little odd, doesn't it?"

"It does but has a unique charm to it." Merula smiled at him. "So what else can be done around here?"

"Well, we can go to the beach? Surfing? Cliff diving?" Jason held his chin as he ran through his thoughts.

"Beach? That sounds nice!" Rowan chimed in as took off a mask he had bought from a kiosk. "Jason, do you have a spot in mind?"

"Wait, we left our swimsuits in our luggage," Barnaby said as he had been stuffing his face with ham croquetas. "I mean I got no problem swimming in my underwear-"

"Barnaby, no." Merula shuddered at that suggestion. "The beach does sound good, but we don't have our suits as Barnaby said."

"I think I can help with that. Follow me," Jason said as he took Merula hand as their friends followed Jason into a nearby shop. "Tio Rodrigo, donde estas?"

"Aquí mi sobrino, ¿qué necesitas?" said an older man walking out to the front of the store dressed in slacks and a button shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His skin was slightly tanner than Jason's but had a similar glow to him. "Oh my! What beautiful girls you brought here? Who are they?"

"Tio, this is my girlfriend Merula and my friends, Rowan, Penny, and Barnaby," Jason said as he explained they're from school and came to visit it (with it being planned by his mother) and that they needed swimsuits for the beach.

"Well, that is how my cousin is. But yes, I think I got a few things for you. Gimme a hand sobrino," he said as he walked into the back with Jason following.

A few minutes later, as everyone went through the store's wares, Jason and his uncle walked out with a few different swimsuits for everyone to try. They were each given individual bags so they could be their stuff separated. As they all decided and put their clothes over the suits, Jason tried to pay his uncle only for him to deny him as it was a free service since his friends came all this way to see him. Jason thanked him and left with his friends to the beach.

The beach was a sight to behold as the crystal clear water glistens with the gentle warm breeze of the sea. The gang made their spots and tossed off their clothes revealing for the first time their swimsuits.

"Jason, your abs," Barnaby commented as he poked at them, "how are they this sculpted?"

"It is interesting," Rowan commented as he did the same thing as Barnaby. "How often do you exercise or rather where do you find the time to do such things?"

"My parents tell me I must keep my appearance up and all. So can you stop- oh, Merlin." Jason stopped as he eyed Merula, who was looking at him nervously as his heart raced. He walked over to her as she looked away messing with her hair.

"W-well? Does it look weird?" Merula glanced at him.

"Meri, the only words I can use to describe you is beautiful, but even that doesn't describe how amazing you look." Jason smiled as he lifted her chin. "How I was blessed with such a beauty I got no clue."

"Oh, s-shut up!" Merula hid her face into her hands, trying not to peek at him. "But I do look beautiful?"

"You always do, mi amor," Jason blushed as he took in her appearance as a whole. Her swimsuit suited her well, he thought to himself.

A two-piece bikini in with an emerald shade and silver specks that acted like stars; the sight could make any man fall in love. Lucky she has already had the one person heart she needed.

"Um, guys?" Penny called to the adorably innocent couple. "Are we going into the water or not?

"Uh, y-yeah! Let's get going!" the two lovers said in unison, pausing briefly to laugh at their synchronization. They really were a match.

With that, the friends ran to the water and begun the joys of their vacation. Barnaby, in his excitement, picked Jason up and bodyslammed him into the water with a loud splash. Barnaby then picked up Rowan holding him over his head with screaming Rowan begging for mercy only for Jason and Ben to tackle their large statured friend. Merula and Penny laughed as the boys were acting well like boys. It was a pleasant sight to see their friends all having fun. While the two girls were laughing the boys snuck up and lifted them only for them to protest as the boys got ready for tossing them.

"One! Two! Three!!!" The four boys said in unison as they tossed Penny and Merula having loud shrieks pierce the air.

"Let's do it again! This fun!" Barnaby bellowed as he clapped his hands on Ben and Rowan's shoulders. "That was brilliant!"

"I dunno Barnaby, I don't want anyone getting hurt," Jason said only to feel something grab his ankle. "Huh? WOOOAH!" Jason yelped as he was pulled under the surface.

"Ha!" Merula said as she broke the surface. "Wait, that wasn't Barnaby."

"No, it wasn't Snyde," Rowan answered giggling.

Merula screamed as her boyfriend wrapped his arms around her and dragging her under. It was a surprise, to say the least as she wormed her way out of his grasp. As she stood up coughing, she looked around trying to find her giant dork.

"Are you alright, Meri?" Jason looked at her with an apologetic look. He hoped he didn't let his excitement get the best of him.

"Oh I'm fine, but you are a dead meat!" Merula lunged at Jason, climbing over to his back and putting him in a headlock while wrapping her legs around his waist. "You are in trouble you little twit!"

"Ah! Meri-" Jason yelped as he tried to keep his balance in the rocking waves of the shores. He tripped as a massive wave, swallowed him and Merula. The two rolled around in the waves until Jason was able to get his footing back. "For Merlin's sake, what were you thinking?" he coughed as Merula held onto his back.

"You were the one who tossed me in, so it's your fault," Merula said as she coughed up some water, "or do I need us to go under again?"

"You win. I submit to Merula Snyde, the most powerful witch on the beach." Jason laughed as Merula climbed off his back, and the two hugged each other with Merula flicking his nose. "Ouch!" What did I do?"

"Nothing, just need you always to remember even if I'm shorter than you I can still reach you somehow." Merula grinned as she wrapped her hands around the nape of his neck.

As the afternoon progressed, the friends walked around the city some more as Jason talked about some of the significant landmarks. One was the quidditch field at the center of the town, The Emerald Lion Dome, name mainly due to the emerald-shaded dome on the structure carved of white marble. It stood twenty-three kilometers wide and was to be the grounds for the next quidditch world cup as the sun started to set the group head back to Jason's home.

"God, I got sand all over!" Ben whined as he tried to shake off the sand that was slowly stuck on his body.

"I know, right?" Barnaby said as he blew his nose out. "It was so much fun, though. Did you see that sea serpent?"

"Sea serpent?!" Ben gulped at Barnaby's excitement of seeing a sea serpent.

"Oh? Yeah, don't go playing with the serpent." Jason said as he walked his friends back to their rooms. "It tends to eat those not paying attention. Don't worry Ben, and no one has been eaten in a couple of days."

"Wonderful." Ben opened the door to his room, scared.

"Dinner is gonna be in an hour or so. Get cleaned up and prepare for a feast!" Jason smiled as he made his way to his room.

"Oh, boy, I'm starved!" Barnaby groaned as his stomach growled.

Jason chuckled at his friend's honesty as he entered his room and making his way to his personal bathroom. He looked through his closet and thought about his options. Since his friends were here and how his mother was, he needs to consider something fun and functional.

On the other end of the manor, Merula had finished cleaning herself up and looked through her outfits. Penny had helped her pick out. She debated between a sundress Penny said looked good on her and a skirt with a blouse. What would be the best to impress Jason's mom and Jason himself?

"Awe, you all look amazing!" Thaila said at the first three to show. Ben, Barnaby, and Rowan had been told to dress for a party. Thalia had been planning this little piece while the teens were up and about exploring the city.

"Thank ma'am!" Barnaby smiled, puffing up his chest. He wore a green button-up, black trousers with his signature rings, and new dress shoes.

"I wish I asked Andre more on dressing advice." Ben looked at his own outfit. His attire consisted of a red polo with a golden bird on upper left pectoral, off-white slacks, and cleaned tennis shoes with what seemed to have a checkmark? Maybe from a muggle company.

"I agree we all look well, Ben. Stop worrying for a bit. We're here for fun." Rowan placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. Rowan had an olive sweater, with beige dress pants and black dress shoes.

As the festivities began, relatives and friends from the De Leones flooded the manor. Many had brought dishes from their homes and thus began the largest welcome party some of the young wizards had ever seen.

Merula had just stepped out of her room when she heard the sounds of festivities. She gazed out to a window adjacent to her door, seeing the people enjoying themselves. "Quite rowdy," she thought to herself as she started making her way down the hallway to the main stairs. Merula heart had been racing ever since she left her room. So far, the day has been good, but she hoped it stayed as she hoped. Merula was at the top of the stairs before she noticed someone across the adjacent section of the stairs.

Jason had finished getting cleaned up before he walked out to the stairs in an excited mood. He hadn't expected to see his friends till school or at least till he had done part of his summer in Italy with his father. But he couldn't think of that for the time. Right now was a time for celebration as his friends were here; and one that was a special one at that. He took a deep breath as he descended the stairs to meet Merula in the middle.

"You look amazing-" the couple said in unison.

"You go first!" Jason spoke with his nerves evergrowing.

"N-no, you go first!" Merula responded.

"No, I insist the most powerful witch goes first."

"So thoughtful of the gentleman," Merula smiled as she took a good look at Jason.

He wore blue chinos with an off-white button-up with his sleeves rolled up. Jason wore his necklace Merula had gotten him for Christmas, charcoal dress shoes, and an onyx-colored watch. His hair combed, and the scent of his cologne sent Merula heart ablaze.

"You look quite dashing if I must say," Merula blushed as her eyes dart to Jason and shot to the left, repeatedly.

"Not as beautiful as you though. You look amazing Merula," Jason caressed her cheek while giving an earnest smile.

"It doesn't look odd? I mean this isn't my cup of tea. Haywood suggested this and other outfits." Merula had decided to go with a sundress with a jade green tint, with her necklace from this past Christmas, and sandals.

"Merula," Jason took her chin and gently kissed her. "No matter what you wear or how you think you look, I'll always believe your beautiful."

"You're such a sweet talker, you know?" Merula stood on her toes and kissed him back. "Let's get going. I want to see what all the noise about."

Jason laughed as he took her hand and led her outside. The two walked arm in arm as the party seemed to be going well. Ben talking with some of Jason's uncles while playing dominos and as far as Jason tell his friend needed some work on it or they'd bleed him dry. To the left, Barnaby was helping himself with the food while two girls were trying to get his attention. They were most likely daughters of his mom's friends probably.

Jason had gone around introducing Merula to his many, many, relatives. Some young cousin. Aunts and uncles. All of them welcomed Merula as one of their own and comment on how she's so beautiful like Jason described. Clearly, someone can't help but brag about the best witch of Hogwarts. Over at a table, Rowan was sitting with Penny and Thalia. He and Merula decided to head over and sit down next to them.

"Ah! Mi hijo y mi futura nuera. You two look amazing!" Thaila smiled at the two love birds.

"Mama! ¡No digas eso!" Jason faced turned red.

"Aye. Sorry hijo, I just can't help myself at times. Merula, your dress looks lovely. It compliments you very well."

"Thank you, ma'am," Merula smiled, feeling happy by her dress selection.

"Now then, I want to know something if you don't mind me asking." Thaila leaned forward with her head in her hands.

"About what ma'am?" Merula asked.

"How much do you love my son? What is it that makes you love?" Thaila grinned like a schoolgirl finding out the latest gossip.

"Mom!" Jason shouted, embarrassed at his mother's questioning of his girlfriend.

"It's alright, Jason." Merula squeezed his hand. She cleared her throat and tried to muster as much courage as she could. "Well, Jason and I never got along in the beginning. I didn't think that someone like him could even consider loving me."

"Because of your lineage?" Thaila raised an eyebrow.

"Y-yes," Merula sighed, "but the fact he treated like an average person. Correcting me whenever I was in the wrong and trying to get me to see my actions will determine my fate. That I am the one to make my choice if I want to be like my parents." She glanced at Jason with a smile.

"And my dear?" Thaila looked at Merula curiously.

"Jason risked death for me too many times that I could even count. He saved my life and me from myself. From the monster, I thought I was," Merula looked at Thaila. "That's why I love him."

Thaila had her eyes clothes as she was in a deep thought considering Merula words before smiling at her. This girl has given her son happiness, and he has done the same for her. Now Thaila was thinking about planning their wedding in secret but knew Jason would find out and possibly flip his lid if she got ahead of herself.

"You are how he describes you truly. I can see why he loves you. You better not go breaking this heart mi nino, am I clear?" Thaila looked at Jason with a severe glance. "Am I clear?"

"I think I rather face another dragon than risk a broken-hearted Merula. I could at least die, knowing I didn't hurt her."

"Hey! I thought we agreed! No, dying!" Merula grabbed his ear, pinching it till his ear turned red.

"Ouch! Meri! Please, that hurts! Aaaaaaaaah!" Jason yelped as Merula tormented him as she did when he got all "tempt fate" and see what would happen.

"I think a dead you would be heartbreaking!" Merula pulled him close, releasing his ear and kissing it.

"Awww, Merula being friendly!" Rowan teased.

"Khanna, I swear I will end you!"

"Noted." Rowan held his hands up, surrendering to the threat. "But, I got to admit it's nice seeing how you act with him."

"Rowan, buddy?" Jason called as rubbed his ear.

"Yes, Jason?"

"Shush, please. I don't want any dead bodies on my home because I'm sure I'll have to bury them," Jason looked at his friend smirking.

"Well, that's enough of the talk. Come along children. It's a party after all!" Penny said as she took Rowan's arm and decided to hit the dance floor.

"I'll leave you to allow, but don't get too crazy now," Thaila smiled and winked at Merula and Jason, making her way to a group of adults.

"Um, sorry my mom put you on the spot." Jason hung his head as he rubbed the back of his neck. "My mom is eccentric and is-" he tried to continue but was cut off by a finger to the lips.

"Jason, you don't need to make excuses." Merula smiled. "I understand she is just concerned. Any parent would wonder who the person that has their child's heart is. Mine does because I brag about you in my letters."

"Meri," Jason smiled and pulled her into a hug, "I love you so much."

"And I love you," Merula pecked his cheek. "Why don't we go join the fun?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

The couple made their way to the dance floor and danced to their heart's content. Merula had gotten better at the dances Jason had shown her these past few months since they started dating. Some of Jason's relatives comment on how she moved well. He knew how to pick 'em. The two of them danced till they couldn't anymore. Sweat dripping down their faces with shallow breaths being taken.

"You hungry?" Merula panted as she held Jason's hand. "I'm starving," Jason said as they made their way to the food table.

"Good grief, this all smells delicious and looks the part.

"Presentation is always keen with food," Jason laughed as he handed her plate and got one for himself.

The two filled their plates and walked to the low standing section of a wall by the view of the city and sat down to eat. As they ate, the two had talked about how the quidditch world cup was coming soon. Though they had different teams, they agreed that somehow they'd go to see it someday. Maybe someday soon. Who can say?

For now, Merula just wanted to enjoy the time she has with Jason. This has probably been one of the most fun days she has had all summer. Her nerves about meeting Jason's family were put aside as she had his mother's approval. It was funny how Thaila is more than willing to welcome her as her future daughter-in-law. If Jason was okay with it, that is. But that was a thought she could think for another day.

"Hey," Jason wiped his face with a napkin, "there's something I want to show you."

"What is it you got to surprise me this time?" Merula looked at him curiously. "You better not try to propose to me," she teased.

"No! Well not now," Jason muttered nervously. "Come on, follow me." Jason offered his hand to Merula with a smile as she took it.

The two left the party and headed down the hill where the mansion was located. Merula wondered where Jason was taking her at such a late time in the evening. As the two made their way down a couple of blocks, they reached a beach closed off.

"Another beach?" Merula smirked. "Again?"

"Look closely," Jason pointed out to the gentle waves.

"If you say so- what the?!" Merula gazed at the water, shocked as it began to glow in a soft color.

"Impressed? Those are supposed to be bioluminescence from how muggles believe it is, but no one truly knows."

"It's beautiful," Merula said as she tried to comprehend the beauty of the lights.

"I don't understand it much myself, but I thought of it like stars swallowed by the seas. I wanted to show it to you because it is one of the most beautiful things I've seen," Jason gazed drifted to his love.

Merula didn't notice until Jason hugged her from behind. He was warm, and the scent of his sweat mixed with his cologne was all too familiar. Jason was, is, this best person Merula had ever know despite how he doubted himself and never tried to be someone he's not. An honest and caring person.

"So what's holds the spot as number one?"

"You."

#harry potter hogwarts mystery #hp hogwarts mystery #hphm fanfiction #hphm mc #hphm fic #jason piscius aurelius de leone #merula snyde #jason x merula

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lilyvandersteen · 5 years ago

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Facing Your Dragons Chapter 7

Author’s Note: I know, I know... It's been ages!! The fact of the matter is, though, no matter how much I like writing this story, I have no real plot for it, and it's going to be shelved after this chapter until I figure out where to take it. I know that I want Sam to end up living at Blaine's house, and I know I want to keep the tone of the story light and upbeat and fluffy. Apart from that, it's all a big blank. Suggestions are more than welcome. Please help me shape this story, so that I can bring it to a satisfying conclusion.

Chapter 7: Back to School

When he felt his phone buzz with a text message notification, Blaine got off his motorbike and sighed.

Show time, I guess.

He’d arrived at school early, had parked his bike near the back entrance and had been waiting for Kurt and his girls to turn up.

From: Kurt

We’re under the bleachers.

Blaine made his way to the bleachers, his eyes darting left and right to check for jocks with a grudge, but there were none. Too early in the day, perhaps.

Kurt was leaning against a metal pole, his eyes half-mast and his lips curled into a lopsided smirk.

Blaine couldn’t help grinning, and Kurt beamed back and met him half-way for a kiss.

“He’s cute, Porcelain, I’ll give you that,” a smoky voice behind them drawled.

Blaine turned around to look at the three girls under the bleachers. One blonde and two brunettes, all sporting the same smirk he’d seen on Kurt’s face just now. Had to be a Skank thing.

“Nice butt,” said Brunette no. 1, peering at him from over her glasses.

The blonde gave Blaine a slow once-over and then an approving nod. “He clearly works out. Great biceps, and look at the thighs of him!”

Kurt huffed. “Stop objectifying my boyfriend.”

They quirked an eyebrow at him – eerie how in tune they were – and said in unison, “No.”

“You bring us a piece of man candy, we’re gonna look,” said Brunette no. 2.

Kurt rolled his eyes and turned to Blaine. “Okay, so… These are my girls: Lauren Zizes, Santana Lopez and Quinn Fabray. Girls, this is Blaine Anderson, my boyfriend. Look all you like, but don’t touch. He’s mine.”

Santana snorted, and Lauren murmured something like, “Making no promises.”

Blaine smiled at the girls. “Nice to meet you.”

Quinn smiled back politely. “Pleased to meet you too.”

Santana snorted. “No need to dust off your country club manners for us.”

“At least I have manners,” Quinn bit back. “And they’ll help me get out of here after high school.”

Lauren rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, you’ll go to an Ivy League school and become a big-shot lawyer and fight for women’s rights in America. Tell that to someone who’ll believe you. None of those snobby schools is gonna want a teen mom.”

Quinn’s spine stiffened. “That’s behind me.”

“It’s all in the records. Like your Lucy Caboosey period. It’s gonna come back to haunt you forever.”

“Fuck you!” Quinn snarled, and she stalked off in a huff.

Kurt swore under his breath and went after her, talking to her in a low but urgent voice, and eventually bringing her back.

Lauren grinned and seemed to gear up for another attack, but Kurt stopped her. “Don’t. Okay? I know you’ve got ammo enough to make all of us miserable, but let’s face it, everyone else here at school already has it out for us, so it would be nice if we Skanks could have each other’s backs. All right?”

Lauren shrugged. “Sure, ruin my fun.”

Kurt smirked at her. “Oh, I’ll give you plenty of fun. Blaine here knocked Karofsky into hospital, and his football buddies will no doubt try and get even with him. So girls, stick with us and show those jocks why nobody messes with us.”

The three girls grinned at Kurt, their good humour restored at once.

“I can defend myself,” Blaine grumbled.

Kurt rubbed his arm in comfort. “I know. But one more strike and you’re out. And I want you to stay here at McKinley. So let us deal with the blockheads. They won’t come anywhere near you with us around.”

Blaine gave in with bad grace, and went over his schedule for the Skanks’ benefit. He shared each of his classes with at least one of them, and promised to stick with them to keep safe.

He soon found out that Kurt was right. Everyone, even the jocks, gave the Skanks a wide berth.

“We can fleece them with our snark, kill them with our glares and hurt them in a million ways,” Kurt explained during AP French. “We’re not boxers, but Quinn and Santana and I used to be Cheerios, and you don’t want to be on the receiving end of our high kicks. You really don’t. And Lauren is a champion wrestler.”

Blaine blinked at Kurt. “You were a what?”

“A Cheerio. That’s what the cheerleaders are called here.”

Blaine looked at his boyfriend, trying to picture him in tight spandex, showing off his acrobatic prowess. Nice!

“So why did you quit?”

Kurt shrugged. “Quinn got kicked off the squad when she got pregnant. Santana got kicked off when she got a boob job. At least, I think that was the reason. And for me, it was the community service that did me in. The Cheerios’ schedule is insane. They train for hours and hours every day, even on weekends. And Coach Sylvester didn’t like me skipping training on Wednesdays and Saturdays to go sing and tell stories at the home. At first, she cut me some slack, ‘cause her sister lived in a home too, and ‘cause she has a soft spot for me, and ‘cause I always trained at home by myself those days. But then my forty hours were up, and I just kept going to the home, though I didn’t have to anymore. And she told me I had to make a choice: Cheerios or volunteering. I bet she thought I’d snap out of it fast. But I’d already lost my friends Quinn and Santana on the squad, and volunteering made me happy. So I handed in my uniform and left.”

Blaine pouted, sad that Kurt no longer had the uniform, because oh, the possibilities…

« Monsieur Hummel et compagnon, comme vous semblez avoir une opinion très forte concernant Baudelaire, vous pouvez venir ici et nous en parler ! » (Mr. Hummel and company, seeing as you seem to hold a strong opinion on Baudelaire, you can come here and tell us about it!)

Blaine looked up at the teacher, aghast, but Kurt wasn’t intimidated in the least. He went to stand at the teacher’s desk, and gave a passionate speech about Baudelaire, and about his work being censured for the themes it contained. All in French. And he ended it by reciting what he said was his favourite Baudelaire poem.

Blaine’s mouth wasn’t the only one hanging open when Kurt stopped talking. Even the teacher needed a minute to regroup.

“Intéressant. Je vois que Baudelaire vous passionne. Et vous, Monsieur… ? » (Interesting. I can tell you’re passionate about Baudelaire. What about you, Mr. …?)

“Anderson,” Blaine hastened to supply. “Comme je viens de dire à Monsieur Hummel, je préfère l’œuvre de Verlaine. J’adore sa musicalité. » (As I just told Mr. Hummel, I prefer Verlaine’s work. I love his musicality.)

Just then, the bell rang, and Blaine felt his anxiety ebb away.

The teacher smiled at him. “Très bien. La semaine prochaine, vous pouvez nous en parler plus en détail. Cela compensera pour les devoirs que vous avez manqué les jours passés. » (Very well. Next week, you can tell us more about it. That will make up for the homework you didn’t make the previous days.)

Blaine nodded and jotted down the assignment before gathering his stuff and following Kurt out of the classroom.

“Your French is impressive,” he told Kurt, who grinned and told him he looked forward to hearing Blaine’s views on Verlaine.

In the cafeteria, Kurt steered Blaine towards what he said was the glee club table, and he introduced Blaine as his boyfriend, which made Blaine’s stomach swoop happily and made him beam like an idiot.

The only one at the table Blaine recognized was Rachel, who greeted him and asked if he was joining glee club.

“Oh… Uhm… I…”

“Your singing voice could use some work, but it’s got definite potential.”

Kurt rolled his eyes at Rachel and then turned to Blaine. “So that’s Rachel. You already know her from the home. Next to her is Finn, and then there’s Artie, Tina, Mercedes, Puck, Mike and Sam.”

“Sam’s the one from the superhero club?” Blaine whispered to Kurt, and Sam perked up when he heard the club mentioned.

“Yep, that’s me. Blonde Chameleon at your service! What’s your super alter ego?”

Lunch hour flew by as Blaine talked superheroes with Sam, and he had to be reminded by Kurt that the bell was about to ring, and that Quinn was waiting for him to go to AP Biology.

Blaine quickly exchanged numbers with Sam and then hurried away.

That afternoon, after a history class he shared with Lauren, Blaine was accosted by Rachel, who asked if he was going to the home.

“N-no. I’m scheduled tomorrow.”

“I see. Well, think about glee club, okay?”

Blaine nodded, and then his face brightened when he saw Kurt coming towards him, Sam by his side.

“Mind if Sam joins our cooking lesson today?” Kurt asked.

Blaine grinned and shook his head. “Awesome. Are your brother and sister coming too?”

Sam grinned back. “Yep. We were just about to go and pick them up from school.”

“Come to my place,” Blaine said. “So you can borrow that comic book I was talking about at lunch. And there’s a big garden to play in, and spare bedrooms for when your brother and sister get tired. Mom won’t mind a bit, I promise.”

Kurt frowned. “Dad won’t like that. He had to make his own dinner yesterday, and grumbled about it.”

“Well, today at yours and tomorrow at my place, then, maybe?” Blaine asked.

Kurt bit his lip. “Friday Night Dinner is sacred for Dad. Can’t skip it. But you and Sam can cook by yourselves. I’m thinking vegetable wok. I’ll write down the recipe for you.”

Blaine looked at Sam. “What do you say? Can we do this? Stevie and Stacie can help, too.”

“We can do this! I do have a shift delivering pizzas starting at eight p.m., though, so we’ll have to make it an early dinner. Today too.”

“No problem,” Kurt promised.

Stevie and Stacie proved to be just as outgoing and friendly as their older brother, and instantly enamoured with Blaine when he told them the story of Jack and the Beanstalk while they were cooking.

When Burt got home, he grumbled a bit about Kurt always bringing more people home, but soon enough, he was talking cars with Stevie and football with Sam and Blaine, with a wide smile. And when Stacie fell asleep on the sofa soon after dinner, Burt was the one to suggest Sam’s siblings could stay over and sleep in the spare bedroom.

“And you can kip on the sofa,” Burt said to Sam, “after your shift. Kurt will give you the spare key.”

Sam looked at his sleeping sister, bit his lip and nodded, walking out of the living room. “I need to call my mom.”

He came back a few minutes later and said it was okay. “I asked for tomorrow, too, Blaine, if you were serious about us staying over?”

Blaine beamed at Sam. “Totally! It’s going to be amazing!”

Sam carefully woke Stacie so she could get ready for bed, and Kurt and Blaine went to the attic to find her and Stevie some pajamas from when Kurt was little, sharing some sweet kisses while they were alone together.

As soon as the children were tucked in, Sam and Blaine left, and Blaine dropped Sam off at the pizza place. “See you tomorrow! Can you find someone to bring you back to Kurt’s?”

“Yep, no problem, Puck will come and pick me up. Thanks, man!”

K&B

On Friday morning, Blaine had his first altercation with a jock since he’d come back. He was securing his motorbike when something hit the back of his head. Hard.

A voice hissed, “You think you can put my best friend in hospital and then come back here and parade your nancy boy around school?”

Blaine turned around slowly, and saw a tall black teen glaring at him.

“Adams! No fighting or you’re off the team!”

The jock turned towards his coach and opened his mouth to retaliate, but she stopped him. “No, I don’t need to hear it. I know what happened to Karofsky, but I also know it was provoked. I know that under Coach Tenaka, you could do as you pleased, but I’m telling you now that I don’t condone fighting. Nor bullying. I don’t care how well you play. I WILL throw you off the team if you so much as touch this boy again. Leave him alone.”

The jock glared at her. “And let him get away with almost killing Dave?”

The coach sighed. “Don’t exaggerate. Karofsky was never in any danger of dying. And it was five against one, hardly a fair fight. Can’t fault the boy for wanting to knock you guys out as fast as he could. I would have done the same. Why were you picking on him anyway?”

That seemed to take the wind out of the jock’s sails, who shrunk and shrugged.

“Just for the fun of it, huh? Well, that stops now. I’m going to work you guys so hard that you won’t have any time or energy for shenanigans.”

The jock grumbled under his breath.

“How many games have you won so far, Adams?”

More grumbling.

“My goal is to make you winners. So you had better apply yourself, or I’ll find a replacement for you. Is that clear?”

The jock nodded.

“Now clear out and leave this boy alone.”

The coach stared the jock down until he turned and left, and then turned to Blaine. “I know the fight wasn’t your idea. And I promise I’ll keep an eye out for you, pumpkin.”

“Thank you, Coach.”

She smiled at Blaine. “Feel free to join our power training on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sometimes we do some boxing, and I think my boys can learn a thing or two from you.”

Blaine grimaced. “I’m not sure I want them to learn how to beat me up.”

“Adams and Karofsky tend to skip power training, pumpkin. They’re lazy. As soon as I find decent replacements for them, they’ll be out in a heartbeat.”

Blaine stared at her. “Won’t their parents make a fuss?”

“More likely they’ll be mad at their son. I’ve won the championship with every team I’ve ever coached. So if their child doesn’t make the team, they’ll blame him, not me.”

She winked at Blaine and walked off.

K&B

That afternoon, Sam and his siblings came to the home with Blaine, and together, they told the story of the Four Clever Brothers, who saved a princess from a dragon.

Like Dolores had said, Sam was great at doing voices, and the children listened as if spellbound, and cheered when after the story, Blaine announced they still had time for a few songs.

Sam played the guitar this time, and they all sang together until the hour was up.

At Blaine’s house, they did their homework before starting on dinner, Blaine pairing up with Stacie and Sam with Stevie to help them where needed.

When Pam came home, Blaine and Sam were wearing Star Wars costumes from Blaine’s chest of Halloween apparel, re-enacting a fight scene to the loud encouragement of Stevie and Stacie.

Pam quirked an eyebrow at Blaine and inquired, “New boyfriend already?”

“Mom!!”

She smirked when Blaine hotly denied having swapped boyfriends, but her eyes softened when he introduced his new friends. Clearly, she remembered what Kurt had told them about Sam’s family, which was probably why she didn’t say a word when Blaine mentioned all the Evans children were staying over.

The next morning, when Sam’s parents came to pick up their children and thanked Pam for her hospitality, she reiterated what she’d told Kurt. “You know, this house is WAY too big for just the two of us, and I’m having a hard time covering the rent on my own. So if you like, you and your family could move in here temporarily, until you get back on your feet. You could have the second and third floor, and share the kitchen and the living room with us.”

The Evanses looked taken aback, and Pam waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, this is sudden, and we don’t know each other yet, and I’m probably weird for mentioning this straight off the bat. I know, I know. I don’t expect you to decide right away, of course, but think about it? Our children get along well, and it would help out both our families.”

Mrs Evans nodded and thanked Pam again, with a smile that was a bit brittle around the edges, but genuine nonetheless.

Her sad eyes haunted Blaine the whole weekend.

#klaine fanfiction #my fic #facing your dragons #chapter 7

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crystalninjaphoenix · 6 years ago

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Save Him

A Stitched Story

JSE Fanfic

Oh, I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. I’ve had this planned out for a while. Notice how pretty much every one of the boys except Jack has been permanently injured? Wonder how Jack feels about that...probably not too good for someone who loves his friends so much. Also, read until the end, I promise it’ll be worth it :D

Tagging @septic-dr-schneep for inspiring this AU with this post.

“But thank you guys so much for watching, if you liked this video, punch that like button in the face, like a boss! And! High fives all around. Wh-pssh! Wh-pssh! But thank you and I’ll see all you dudes...in the next video!” The moment he was done with the outro, Jack dropped his smile, slumping deeper in the chair. Not for the first time, he considered taking a break from YouTube. The stress of making videos every day, on top of everything else—and he was recording videos for Chase’s channel, too, just to make sure nobody started getting suspicious about where he’d gone. If someone called the police on his missing nature, he doubted they’d be able to do anything, and it would be better if no one else got mixed up in this.

Jack turned off the camera, and then the computer. He swiveled his chair around and stood up, stretching. His work for the day still wasn’t done. He left his recording room and came out into the hall. This was a fairly big apartment, but it was still an apartment. There was a tiny room he’d chosen to record in, a bathroom, a living room, a small dining/kitchen combo, and two bedrooms. Everything was packed close together. It only took about five steps to get from the recording room door to the guest bedroom door. As Jack opened the door, he thought that it wasn’t quite a “guest” room anymore if the person staying inside couldn’t really leave.

There had been no change in Schneep’s condition in the two months since...well, they didn’t know exactly what happened. It wasn’t like Schneep could tell them. They’d tried everything to get some sort of reaction, anything, from him, but their efforts were in vain. It was like he was in a coma. One where your eyes were open and dripped static tears all the time.

Jack ran through the motions of checking on him. There’d been no change from yesterday. He was still lying on the bed in the exact same position. Jack had told the hospital that Schneep was on vacation, de-stressing indefinitely. He’d also used Schneep’s ID to get in and, well quite frankly, steal some medical supplies. There was an IV and a heart monitor, steadily beeping just like it had been doing for weeks now. Jack couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more he could be doing, but...god, he didn’t know. He didn’t know any sort of medical shit. He didn’t know anything about magic or the occult or whatever the fuck this was. Why couldn’t he actually do something?

“Schneep,” he sighed. “I wish...I wish a lot of things. But I wish you hadn’t gone after him alone. I wish we were all together here now. All of us.” He patted his shoulder. Maybe he could hear and feel him, somewhere in there. “Wake up soon. Please.” Then he turned and walked away, looking back one more time before turning off the lights and closing the door.

He left the room and started to turn down the hall, immediately running into JJ. He startled, backing up a couple steps. “Jesus, dude, you startled me. Didn’t hear your footsteps or anything. Did you want something?”

JJ was clutching a piece of paper tight to his chest. He was bouncing on his feet nervously, adjusting his mask with one hand. Quickly, as if he was trying not to talk himself out of it, he shoved the piece of paper toward Jack, then retreated a few steps down the hall.

Jack blinked, confused for a second before looking at the sheet of paper. There was cursive writing on it, which Jack recognized as JJ’s handwriting. He read the words: Jack, I have been doing some thinking during these last few weeks, and I have decided that there is more I can do. I’ve been avoiding going home, simply because I have been scared of what happened there. But I can’t let that stop me from helping you any longer. I can’t stand by and watch my friends get picked off. So, if you will agree to accompany me, I would like to go back to my home. There are some heavier magick spells and magic books in the apartment above my shop that could be of use. I hadn’t thought the situation serious enough to consult them before, but now it’s clear that we are running out of options. Despite the risk, retrieving them could possibly shed some light on this horrid situation.

He looked back up at JJ. “You’re sure?” He asked. “I know how much it freaks you out to even think about going back there.”

JJ nodded once. He folded his arms. It was clear to Jack that he was still scared: his hands were shaking and he was avoiding looking directly at anything. But he was trying. He must’ve really thought this was worth it. “Alright, if you’re positive. I’ll get my jacket, it’s s’posed to be chilly today. Then we’ll walk down to the shop.”

It was indeed a cloudy and chill afternoon. It took Jack and JJ about forty-five minutes to get from Jack’s apartment building to the shop, walking swiftly, driven by nerves. Jack didn’t actually think they’d find anything there, but the lingering feeling of what-if made him wish he knew how to shoot a gun, like Chase.

When they finally reached the shop, the sight of the dark, dusty windows sent chills down their spines. It had been nearly seven months since either of them had set foot in there, and it looked abandoned. JJ fished about in his vest pocket before finding the keys. It took him a minute to unlock the door, as he kept shaking. The door creaked when it finally swung open, accompanied by the ringing of the bell that was supposed to announce customers. The inside of the shop was just as dark and dusty as the windows. Stacks of cobwebbed knickknacks cast eerie shadows on the walls.

“Oh god. This is fucking freaky,” Jack muttered. “Let’s hurry.” JJ nodded in agreement, and the two of them practically sprinted across the main body of the shop to the locked door that would lead upstairs. JJ once again took out his keys and unlocked the door, revealing a narrow staircase leading up. He gave Jack a worried look. “It-it’s okay,” Jack assured him. “We’re doing good so far. I’ll go up first.” The two of them vanished up the stairs. Once they were gone, the door closed behind them.

There was another door at the top, but this one didn’t have a lock. It swung open, and JJ’s hand immediately darted to the side, flicking the light switch on. The apartment matched the shop downstairs in decor, which was to say it looked like it belonged in a different time period. The 1920′s perhaps. The two of them had entered into a living-room sort of area, with a sofa and two chairs covered in dust. The curtains were drawn, so without the yellow light of the lamp dangling overhead, the room would have been completely dark.

“I don’t...see anything.” Jack’s eyes darted about, but it just seemed like a normal apartment, albeit a bit old-fashioned. “So, where are the things you need? On the bookshelves in here?”

JJ shook his head. He made a few signs—he was getting better at them, enough so that Jack could figure out he was saying something along the lines of There’s a room down the hall.

“Well, then we should go look there, shouldn’t we?” Jack gave the living room one more look-over, then followed JJ down a hall to the left. There were three doors, two to the right and one to the left. That was the one JJ opened, darting inside the room. Jack was right behind him.

It was a storage room. Every wall had shelves full of items nailed to it, there were piles of books and boxes and chests stacked on the floor. Everything was labeled, organized meticulously. “Wow,” Jack breathed. “When you said you had a collection of magick items, this is more than I was expecting. What are we looking for?”

JJ promptly walked to the far end of the room, stopping next to a book pile, waving at them in a way that indicated that was what they were looking for. Jack nodded, joining him. He tilted his head to the side, reading the titles on the spines. Half of them he couldn’t pronounce, and of the half remaining he could only guess at what the titles meant. There was a label on top of the pile, a piece of paper folded over with the words Strange Entities, Spells, and Phenomena: Research/Info (Magic) written on it. “Okay,” he said slowly. “There’s no way we can carry all these back to my apartment, so you’re gonna have to help me choose which ones to prioritize. Each of us can hold...uh, three or four, maybe five if we choose thinner ones? Let’s get started.”

A few minutes passed, wherein JJ and Jack sorted through the pile. Usually this involved Jack holding up a book for JJ to look at, and then he’d either shake his head, or take the book and thumb through the pages, then either put it aside or nod to say they should take it. After a while of this, they narrowed it down to eight books that were important enough to take back. “Do you think we should take any of this stuff?” Jack indicated the objects on the shelves. JJ considered for a moment, then shook his head. He signed something that about meant Not enough room, not worth it.

“Alright, then.” Jack grabbed four of the books. “Let’s go.” The two of them left the room, emerging into the hallway again.

The lights died.

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. He looked behind him to see JJ had done the same, his eyes wide. Jack wanted to say it was nothing, but they both knew better than that. “Just...be ready,” Jack whispered. JJ nodded shakily. Jack turned back around and crept down the hall. It felt like his eyes were going to burst out of their sockets, he was looking so hard, waiting for something to happen.

They reentered the living room. But it was different. There were things hanging from the ceiling, dangling from lengths of green thread. Jack looked closer and saw they were thin, silvery, bloodstained needles.

There was a muffled yelp, then a series of thumps behind him. Jack spun around and saw Jameson had fallen to the floor, dropping the books he’d been carrying, bracing himself against the nearest wall. His eyes were fixed on the needles overhead. “James? No no no, it’s okay, it’s fine!” Jack dropped his books in turn, rushing to Jameson’s side. “They can’t—they’re just—they’re not going to hurt you!”

A laugh echoed around the room, causing the needles to sway. “You don’t k̷n̸͠ow ̕͝t̸ḩ͟a͝t̵̶, Jackaboy.”

Jack’s shoulders raised at the mere sound of the voice. He resisted the urged to rub his throat, instead turning and looking back to the room. “Where are you?”

“Neither h̴e͢r͞ę̢͞ nor t̀͠h͏e͢͟͞r̸ę͝.” The voice was coming from everywhere at once, but it was also coming from nowhere at all. “But there’s s̷o͢m̢é̡òn̷͡e̡͠ who’s been...h́͏̧o̸pi̸͠n͞g͢͠ to see you two.”

Everything turned red for a moment. And when it cleared, there was Chase, sitting on one of the chairs, staring at them through the static film over his eyes. Jack inhaled sharply. He hadn’t seen him in person in months. And Jameson hadn’t seen him at all. Jack looked over to see him touching the spot where his mouth was under the mask, his eyes fixed on the stitching around Chase’s neck.

“Chase...” Jack said softly. “Are you...there?”

“I̧'m͡ ̛h̡eŕe͝.”

“That—that’s not what I meant.” Jack stood up, slowly. Chase mimicked his movements almost perfectly. “Do you remember? Please tell me you remember me, and Doc, and JJ.”

“I͏ ́remember̨ y͝ou͢. But́ w̕h̷y̶ ̷do̧ ̴you ma̢tter?̵” Chase held his hand out to the side, like he was waiting for someone to give him something. And suddenly there was a knife in his hand, formed out of thin air.

Jack felt his heart freeze in his chest. “Chase.” He raised his hands. “Please, don’t do anything stupid. Look, we’re not dangerous. You don’t have to do this.”

“H͟e͝ ̸toļd̨ m͠e ̀t̶o.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean you have to do it!” Jack said, not bothering to mask the desperate note in his voice. “Chase, just...try and think for yourself. Do you really think it’s a good idea to—to do whatever it is he told you to do? You’re going to end up hurting someone. You’re gonna hurt someone who hasn’t done anything! I know you think that’s an evil thing to do. You shouldn’t do whatever he says, because he’ll tell you to do awful things. Please, Chase, do you really want to do this?”

For a moment, the static in his eyes seemed to clear a little. The hand holding the knife lowered a bit. Jack let himself hope. And then—

“Y̡ès̀.”

The knife sailed through the air. Jack instinctively ducked away from it, but he hadn’t been the target. There was a wet thump, then what sounded like someone screaming with their mouth closed. Jack whirled around. Jameson was still sitting against the wall on the floor, but now his hands were wrapped around the blade that had lodged in his stomach. He looked at Jack, and there were tears in his eyes.

Something broke inside Jack’s heart. He spun back around, facing Chase again. “Is this really it?!” he shouted to the room at large. “You’re gonna send someone else to do your dirty work for you?”

“Well, w̶h͏ỳ̷ s͏̕ḩ̕͞ơuĺd̴ń'ţ͟ Į?̨” The voice returned, bouncing from corner to corner, breaking and distorting. “If I have a p̛͠͠up̡̛p̷̢e͏t̡̢, might as well u͟sé̵́ ̀͞h̸̨i̵m̵͏.”

“Why is it him, though?” Jack demanded. “Why is it him, Anti?”

There was a slight pause. Then, Anti hissed, “He was the eą̀ś̷̸ie̛s̷̢t̡̀͏ ͟͠onè̷̕ to turn.”

Jack stared at Chase. He hadn’t moved since throwing the knife, his expression perfectly blank. Jack hated it. He would give anything for him to stop looking that way...he would give everything for his friends to be back to normal. He took a deep, steadying breath. “Anti, do you know what’s even better than a puppet you had to turn?” He hesitated for a split second, then made his decision. “One that’s willingly joined you.”

Absolute silence. Jack didn’t look away from Chase. That is, until he heard some scrambling sounds behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see that Jameson had moved a couple feet toward him. One hand was still on the knife, still stuck in his torso, the other was reaching toward Jack. Jameson looked him in the eyes and shook his head. There were a few muffled sounds coming from underneath the mask, and Jack could guess that Jameson was doing his best to plead with him through the stitching. “It’ll be okay, JJ,” Jack said soothingly. “I—I know what I’m doing. Just make sure you don’t bleed to death or anything.”

“It will be b͢e̶̕t͡t̢̕e͠r̸̨ than okay.” Jack’s head whipped back around. He was here now. Or maybe he wasn’t quite here. His edges seemed...fuzzy, and patches of red, blue, and green were falling off his body in droves. He was grinning madly. “What are you ơ̢f̵f͏e͞ri͡ǹ̛g̷̀ m̡͟e, Jackaboy?” Anti asked, stepping closer.

Jack fought the urge to take a few steps back. “I...I’ll take his place,” he said quietly. “I’ll take all their places. I’ll join you, I’ll let you do whatever the hell you want to me, but only if you let them all go.”

“How do I know you’re not l̵̸̡y̵͟i̶͢n͠͏̴g̷͟? How do I know you won’t tr̢͏y͞ ̴̨́t͞͠o̴͢ ̶ru̡n̵̡ at the f̸̕iŕ͟şt̶͟͠ opp̡o̷r̡͢t̡͏͏uǹ͢͞i͏t͡͡y͠͡?̷̧͠”

“I won’t! I...I swear it!” Jack swallowed. “On my life. On their lives.”

Anti stared at him blankly, his eyes flickering between blue and green, the open throat gushing blood through the string straining to keep it closed. Then his grin widened. “Alrig̶hţ̀,” he said, voice crackling. He disappeared, then was suddenly right in front of Jack. “A ͡͠d̷́éà͢͡l̕'s͏͟ ͡͏̴a ͝ḑè̷̵a͟ļ̵.” Before Jack could argue or demand more, Anti grabbed him by the shoulders. A wave of neon, glitching distortion spread from his hands, enveloping Jack’s body in seconds. When the glitches faded away, Jack was gone.

Jameson cried out, the sound turned into a mumble. No, no, no Jack didn’t—he couldn’t have—that was so stupidly heroic, didn’t he know it wouldn’t work? That he’d just give himself up for nothing?

Anti turned his attention to him. He smiled triumphantly. “Ḩ͞á͠v̡̕͟e͏ ̢f̧ưn̷̛.” He pointed to the ceiling, then wiggled his fingers in a cheery wave before he and Chase disappeared.

Jameson looked up. The needles were still hanging from the ceiling, but they were jittering, moving. The threads holding them were flickering in and out of existence—

He barely had time to curl into a ball, flinging his arms over the back of his head and neck before the threads vanished altogether, sending the needles crashing to the floor in a wave of silvery death. He cried out again as he felt the sharp jabs, the thin piercing pains, all over his arms and back. The gently metallic sound of needles hitting the hardwood floor was all he could hear. And then, as quickly as it started, it was done.

He stayed in that position for a while longer. Not just because moving caused the needles to jingle and the knife still inside him to stab deeper, but because he was scared. Was he alone? Or was Anti still there? Eventually, he found his courage, slowly lowering his arms and raising his head. The apartment looked empty. And it felt empty...too empty.

Jameson really was alone.

Hours later, he’d managed to make it back to Jack’s apartment. Thank god Jack had given him a key, otherwise he’d be forced to find other accommodations, since there was no way in hell he was staying back at the shop. He’d managed to get most of the needles out back there, but he’d kept the knife in until he had access to the medical supplies Jack kept in the bathroom. He didn’t want to bleed out. Once back at the apartment he’d double-checked for needles, pulling out the last of them. Most of his backside and his arms were covered in tiny holes that thankfully hadn’t bled much, but still required bandaging. He’d also finally treated the massive stab wound, though pulling out the knife hurt almost as much as it being buried in there in the first place.

After he’d managed to do that, he checked on Schneep. Just as he suspected, he was in the same condition as before. Anti had lied. He hadn’t let the others go, he’d just taken Jack. No doubt he was laughing at him for believing he’d ever relinquish an inch of control.

And Jameson was angry. No, he was furious. At Anti. He was still terrified of him, of course, but now it was mixed with a rage he’d never felt before. Anti thought he cheat and manipulate and hurt without consequences. He thought he could take his friends from him and get away with it. Well, he was wrong.

Jameson had the presence of mind to grab four of the books he and Jack had originally set out looking for before leaving the shop. Now, he sat at Jack’s kitchen table with one of them open before him, carefully reading the pages and trying to push through the pain in his abdomen that would shoot agony up his chest whenever he moved. There had to be something, anything, in here. A tiny hint as to what, exactly, Anti was, the mere mention of a way to defeat a thing like him. The windows grew dark, and still he read, still he studied.

There was nothing in the first book. Nothing he could use. Sure, maybe he saw some spells that could help, but he was magickal, not magical. Magick just needed certain charged items, specific rituals to follow to make something happen. Anyone could use magick. But spells, enchantments, curses, jinxes...for those you needed a certain amount of pure talent, a bit of magic in your soul that you had to be born with. And if you weren’t born with it? Sucks to be you.

Jameson slammed the book shut, then slammed his forehead onto the kitchen table. He still had three books to go, but he had a feeling they were all like this. Plenty of useful and interesting information, but nothing to shed light on his current predicament. Many powerful spells and hexes, but nothing he could actually use.

Why had he ever thought this would be a good idea? Why had he ever believed he would actually be able to do anything? Why did he think ever he was useful?

He raised his head. Those...weren’t his thoughts. Actually, they were, but...they were the same sort of things Anti had said to him so many months ago. The things that this demon, or whatever he was, wanted him to think. And thoughts like this had been plaguing him ever since then. He was thinking of himself the way Anti thought of him.

Jameson sat up straight, placing his hands palm-down on the table. These thoughts...they just wouldn’t do. If he let himself think this way, how was he better than Anti? He certainly wasn’t helping anyone. He was just letting Anti win. And that was not something he could do. Anti could not get to him. And if Anti thought he was weak and useless and all those other things, then he’ll have to prove him wrong.

He closed his eyes. He wasn’t worthless. His friends needed him, now more than ever. And he wouldn’t let Anti get between him and saving them. It could not happen. He would save them. He would save them. He would save them he would save them he would save them—

Something snapped.

That was the best way to describe it. It wasn’t a bad sort of snap, like a heartstring breaking. It was like the snap of chains breaking free. His eyes flew open, and his world was glowing blue.

He looked down at his hands on the table. The light blue glow was coming from them. Or, more accurately, the rings that had appeared around them. They were flat, concentric circles that reminded him a bit of that hero movie Chase had made him watch one day. Between the rings of each circle were...runes. The language of magic and magick. Or at least, one of the languages, there were multiple runic alphabets one could use. These runes were dancing, running around the circles. He recognized a few of them: save, protect, guard, friendship, loyal, soul, rescue.

He raised his hands. The rings stayed with them. He thought about them growing bigger. They did, changing from the size of dinner plates to the size of trash bin lids, the glow flaring in turn. He wished for them to disappear, and they winked out of existence. He wished for them to return, and they faded back in.

This wasn’t possible. He’d tried magic spells before, they hadn’t worked. He thought he wasn’t magic. But apparently he’d been wrong. Maybe he just needed some proper motivation. Maybe he just needed something—or someone—to fight for.

JJ was smiling. Under the mask, he was honest-to-god smiling. The motion was pulling at the stitching, and he welcomed it. It had been so long.

No more listening to Anti. No more waiting on the sidelines, not even trying, because he thought he couldn’t do it. He could do it. He was going to save his friends.

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye fanfiction #jacksepticegos #septic egos #septic egos au #dr schneeplestein #jameson jackson #chase brody #antisepticeye #jackieboy man #marvin the magnificent #tw: needles #brigid writes fanfiction #stitched anti #stitchedstories

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talesofwight · 5 years ago

Text

Memories of Fire and Blood

((Part 2 of my earlier story you can find here about Ruff’s time in-between SB and ShB, and his fancy new GNB-ness. It’s about 5,600 words so it’ll be under the cut, barring the first paragraph. Also since I just wanna be nice, I’ll say there is a trigger warning for death and blood, if that helps? Don’t wanna upset anyone.))

The sun hung high in the sky over the deathly quiet town. To even call it a “town” was generous. There were a number of buildings in the centre of the town which looked fairly well cared for. A general goods store, an apothecary, an - of course - an inn. Surrounding it were myriad smaller hovel-type dwellings that seemed to be scavenged of rotten wood and eroded metal, whatever had been on hand at the time. Not the worst place Rufus had ever seen in his life, but far from the best. The dirt path he walked through the centre of the town was still slightly damp from the snowfall the prior day, announcing his presence with each footfall he made into the squelching earth beneath. The quiet in the place quickly became an unsettling one to his senses, still partially on-edge from being attacked on the road barely a bell ago. He caught glimpses of movement behind doors and down narrow alleys and felt a most unwelcoming gaze follow his progress up the main thoroughfare. A brisk gust of air sailed along past and through Rufus, causing him to shiver and sniffle, letting out a displeased groan to accent his frustration. The blankets he had found the day before had been partially shredded and made unusable in the brief encounter with Brankothgar. His need to find a proper coat became more prominent with each icy breath that left his lips.

The door to the general store was as bland as one could be. At the very least, someone had attempted to paint it a nice shade of off-white (or was it blue?) at some point in time. It had long begun to fade and feel from the wooden frame, which seemed to barely be clinging together at all. Hesitant that even the slightest touch would send the thing crumpling to a heap on the floor, Rufus gingerly grasped the handle and let the door swing ajar a moment, before carefully pushing himself inside the room. To his surprise, the interior was surprisingly balmy compared to the bitter cold outside. He caught the purveyor - an older hyuran woman, just slightly rotund under the thick clothing - by the eye and offered a pleasant smile. She had just looked up from a halfway-read book on her counter with such sudden surprise that Rufus wondered how little custom she must see from outsiders, or if her reading material was not entirely Halonic in its contents. Regardless of that thought, he shut the door behind him and made his way at a slow gait to the counter, casting his wandering gaze throughout the small store, though nothing terribly special caught his eye. “Well, well!” The woman behind the counter spoke in a tone of elation, a smile a fulm wide parting her lips. It was a nice change of pace, Rufus noted, from either corpses, Imperials, or the mistrustful stares of others. “’Tis a rare day when I get custom from someone I’ve as-yet not laid eyes on. What are you after, young man? A razor for that beard, perhaps?” Rufus couldn’t tell if she was jesting or not. The jovial look she exuded was surprisingly not telling. Being addressed as “young man” took him a moment to react to as well, though it soon faded from forethought. “Oh, um... no thank you. It’s the only thing keeping my face warm right now.” Rufus responded in an unambiguously mirthful voice, cupping his chin softly with his gloved right hand. “If keeping warm is what ails you, I’m sure I could find something far better than those rags around your shoulders, son. Shall I go take a look?” The woman offered, already rising out of the small stool behind the counter. She was a lot shorter than Rufus had initially guessed. “Actually, that would be perfect. I’m like to turn into a blueberry if I stay out there much longer in these...” He responded gratefully, flapping the scraps of cloth around him like the threadbare wings of a mutilated bird. It was a sorry sight.

The kindly lady nodded her head in understanding and hurried her way through to the back of the space. As Rufus turned away to peer around the store, he could hear the sounds of boxes and various items being shoved this way and that. Some of the shelves in the room were bare, save for some small items here and there. He moved closer to the front window to observe empty rows along it where likely food was once stored. The weather likely did little to offer the chance for imports, not to mention the fact that the land was technically embroiled in conflict. Not that one would guess from the sleepy nature of the town. He picked his way through loaves of brick-solid bread to little avail. Food would have to wait until he stopped at the inn. “Ah! Here we are, at last...” He heard the woman stomp her way back through to the front room with a long coat slung over her shoulder. Woollen with fur set around the neck of it. Dusty as an abandoned manor, but serviceable and undoubtedly useful in the weather. She threw it down atop the counter and gave it a few solid thumps, sending cascades of dust shooting up into the air to hang and twist in the pale daylight that streamed through the window. “There! Oof, that’s not getting any easier... ah, but this ought to be in your size. Thereabouts anyroad. Better than naught, eh?” With that, Rufus could not disagree. Having paid for his new coat, Rufus stripped himself of the dishevelled cloth hung haphazardly from his shoulders, bunching them up tightly for later disposal. He fumbled awkwardly to remove the weapon slung across his back in the de-facto sling, pulling it over his head and letting it rest against the counter with the tip pointed at the floor. He was more careful to disguise the weapon this time, owing to the outright aggression afforded to him for his carelessness last time. The new coat, surprisingly, fit him rather well. He felt an immediate warmth around his torso as it was pulled into place and fastened, and he quietly thanked Nymeia for his fortune. Not a few moons prior and he would surely have been far too broad to fit into it. A silver lining in trauma. “Fits wonderfully, thank you ma’am.” Rufus said confidently, offering her a smile of gratitude as he picked up the weapon sling from the ground and proceeded to shift it over his head again. The extra layer of fabric added a good deal more comfort as the cloth, weighed down as it was, couldn’t dig against his travelling tunic as harshly. “Well I’m glad for that! Wouldn’t do to have you out there at the mercy of the ice and snow. What brought you out this way anyway? Not exactly a good place for a getaway.” The shopkeeper inquired, looking to Rufus intently. She was quite right that this was far from the best place to be right now. “Honestly? Life back home had started to become... a bit too heavy for me. When that happens, I like to wander. I set my sights in a northerly direction, and here I am.” “Oh, an adventurous spirit!” She exclaimed; her excited little face practically glowing. “What a life that must be... going anywhere you desire, doing anything you wish. What I wouldn’t give...” She sighed wistfully, casting her eyes the colour of turquoise down to the book on her counter. “But here is where I belong. Someone has to keep the people fed and clothed.” She ended on a surprisingly cheerful note, clambering precariously atop the stool to sit at Rufus’s eye level. “About that... I noticed when I walked in how quiet this place was. Is it always like that?” He probed gently, casting a glance to the street outside. Not a soul could be seen through the hazy glass. “It is now, anyroad. Most of the able-bodied have been marshalled and made to fight in some gods-forsaken skirmish abroad. Only the young, the old, and the frail remain. And barely at that.” She gestured with an open hand to the shelves by the window. “We’ve barely enough food to fill our bellies. What little we do have; we need to make last as long as we can.” She explained in a quiet, melancholic tone - a stark juxtaposition of her prior disposition. “I see...” Rufus responded in an empathetic voice, brows pulling together in a tight furrow. His thoughts turned to anger towards the Garleans, who so loved to make others suffer under the name of “unity”. A bloody conquest was more accurate. What unity could ever be found in tearing families, friends, and lovers apart? “I’m sorry for poking my nose into your town’s business. I hope things improve for you and yours.” Rufus voiced earnestly, stepping away from the counter to straighten himself. “I’ll be going now -- thank you for the coat, ma’am.” “Greda, dear. And I wish you safe travels.” She corrected with a gentle smile. One Rufus was only too eager to return. “Rufus. Take care.” He turned and left the shop, closing the door tightly behind him. Back out in the cold he began to smile to himself. The cold, which prior had penetrated him like an icy lance, now bounced off his thick woollen outer shell. And so it was with that a refreshing sense of warmth coursing through him, he set off towards the inn to await the return of his new acquaintance. He was prepared for a long wait.

His wait proved to be a lengthy one. He sat at a table in the dingy bar, picking over the bland gruel he had been served as “food”. He took sparing bites from the meal, interspersing it with sips of water to wash down the nearly tasteless slop. Just as he was finishing up, the doors of the tavern swung open and in strode a comparatively huge creature compared to the door frame to which he had just passed. Wiping his mouth, Rufus raised a hand to flag down Bran, catching his attention quickly. He looked as though he had walked a thousand malms before arriving here, worn and weary. The greying fur reflected the man’s older age, which Rufus had not noticed on their initial encounter. He was shockingly spry, all things considered. He didn’t have long to ponder on that note as Bran made his way to the table where Rufus was sitting. He offered a slow incline of his muzzled head to Rufus prior to dropping into the open seat opposite him. “You came. I wasn’t sure you would stick around.” Bran began, his piercing large eyes studying Rufus closely, free of their prior blood lust. All that remained now was a deep melancholy. “Can’t just leave now, can I?” Rufus retorted softly, searching in his pocket for Gaut’s soul crystal. He located the gently glowing stone and deposited it in the middle of the table for both men to stare at. “I have to know more about... all of this. What is this? What are you, for that matter?” A meagre smile formed upon Bran’s maw, the melancholy in his eyes fleetingly replaced with amusement. “Never laid eyes on a Hrothgar before, have you? Not too surprising.” He said, leaning back in his chair, folding his tree trunk-like arms over his chest. “A... Hrothgar. That is the name of your people?” Rufus inquired curiously, leaning forward with his arms crossed atop the table. “Yes. We are native to fair Ilsabard. Oft we have been compared to miqo’te, only bigger and more animalistic. Comes with the territory of having fangs and claws.” With that, he split his maw open wide, showing to Rufus the deadly-sharp fangs jutting from his mouth. “I... see.” Rufus responded in a discomforted quiet from which he soon recovered. “Hrothgar... well, that’s just fascinating.” He said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. He looked all the wiser in that gesture for the growth of beard he sported. “Many fail to look beyond the beastly visage. We Hrothgar pride ourselves on being excellent merchants or tradesmen, in addition to our capacity for battle. Not to mention the mechanics behind our gunblades...” Bran trailed off, nodding his head to the weapon handle that stuck out over his shoulder. Rufus’s eyes may as well have been beacons for how brightly they lit up then. “Yes...! I, uh... speaking of your gunblades,” he paused, attempting to compose himself. “I would be keen to hear more about them. You said before they differ from those wielded by the Garleans.” Rufus learned further forward; his attention rapt. “It is a fairly lengthy story but suffice it to say, in the days of Allag, they once wielded firearms not dissimilar to the ones we have today. They were called “guns”. An order of Hrothgar devoted to their queen Gunnhildr created blades with the capacity to store and shoot cartridges of varying offensive and defensive effects to combat these guns. The weapons they bore were called “Gunnhildr’s Blades”, which later became “gunblades”. These elite troops were mobilized on the battlefield to combat the guns of Allag, breaking through enemy lines to destroy their weapons. Thus was the term “Gunbreaker” created. That is what I am, and that is what I believe you have the potential to become, if your resonating with Gaut’s soul stone is any indication.” “A Gunbreaker...” Rufus repeated, testing the word in his mouth. He looked quietly at the soul stone in the middle of the table, then slowly reached out to lay his fingers upon the multi-faceted crystal. He felt a faint heat emanate from it as his skin made contact, which sent a shiver through his spine. He lifted his eyes to Bran then, closing his hand around the stone entirely as he nodded his head in stern fashion. “If you think I can, then I would be honoured to learn from you, Brankothgar.” “It is quite unusual for one of my clan to impart this knowledge on an outsider, but I believe you are capable. You fended off my attack, even when you were ambushed. You have some skill, that I can see. But know that this is not a simple path to tread. The gunblade is a complex weapon that will take a great deal of time to master, even with that soul stone to impart knowledge to you.” Bran warned, though there was a certain kindness in his tone that almost disarmed Rufus. “I’m not afraid,” Rufus said, showing Bran an earnest smile. “I have been through a lot in my years, and I’m not one to shirk something just because it’s difficult.” “I will hold you to that, Rufus. We shall rest here for the remainder of the day, and your training can commence on the morrow, agreed?” Bran unfolded an arm and stuck a meaty paw out towards Rufus expectantly. “Agreed.” Rufus responded firmly, reaching forward with his right hand to clasp the oversized man’s hand, the two shaking hands firmly. Though he contained it, a fire of excitement flared to life deep within Rufus’s core. A Gunbreaker... For the first time in what seemed a long while, Rufus’s dreams were untroubled. Nothing of dark and shadowy limbs seeking to drag him screaming noiselessly to a hungering abyss. Rather, what played before his mind’s eye were those images conveyed to him when he first laid hands upon the gunbreaker’s soul crystal. He saw Gaut as he was when he lived. Tall and proud, and an unflinchingly fierce combatant. He observed the techniques and movements that the now-dead Hrothgar employed in combat. He was a whirl of motion, striking savagely, then defending with aetheric barriers launched from his gunblade. It was truly a sight to behold. His educational slumber was cut painfully short as he was roused with a start, being shook and commanded to wake by the growling voice of Bran. His senses kicked into alert as his eyes snapped open. It was dark in the room but as his eyes quickly adjusted, he noticed a red glow stream in from the nearby window. “Get up, Rufus! We must go!” Bran bellowed, rising away from Rufus’s bed to stand near the window, peering out with pensive anger. It took Rufus a moment to process his surroundings, but as he did, he heard a piercing scream fill the air. What vestiges of sleep that clung to him were promptly cast off as he bounded out of bed and hastily began to dress himself. “Gods alive, what is happening out there?” He asked to Bran as he laced up his boots. “The Empire... seems they have found me.” The Hrothgar responded grimly. The smell of acrid smoke began to fill the air as Rufus rose. With horror, he witnessed from the window flames consuming the dilapidated houses lining the thoroughfare of the town. People ran in panic on the street below, only to have them cut short by Imperial troops moving methodically through the town, setting flame to the buildings as they pass. “By the Twelve...” Rufus uttered in horror at the sights. Bodies lay strewn through the muddy street. A hot flash of anger fell about him as he took up his gunblade and looked to Bran. “We have to help them!” Bran nodded back at Rufus and without delay the pair set off down the stairs of the inn. As they emerged into the main space, they did so in time to watch a soldier wipe his blade clean of the barman’s blood, before setting torch to the wooden interior. Growling his rage, Brankothgar leapt forward without hesitation and brought his gunblade to bear. With a thunderous explosion, the blade all but ripped through the soldier’s torso, sending him crumpling dead to the ground. It happened in the blink of an eye, yet it was not quick enough to forestall the fire now beginning to spread through the wooden interior. Smoke made Rufus’s eyes sting as Bran righted himself and turned for the exit without pause. Rufus hastily followed, exiting out into the burning street. When he did so, he watched as Bran all but tore through two more troops just a few fulms from the doors to the inn, drawn by the sound of his gunblade’s explosive attack. Rufus barely had time to gawk, a sword-wielding trooper rushed at him from his right side. He drew upon what little of the Gunbreaker arts he had witnessed from his slumber and braced himself. The soldier’s blade arced through the air towards him, but with a heavy impact, Rufus parried the blade to the side, pirouetted, and sent his own blade slicing downwards, biting into the man’s neck. The blade bit deep and as he wrenched it free, he was rewarded with a gout of dark crimson as the body fell to the mud. It had been some time since his last mortal battle, but that metallic smell of blood was unforgettable. He felt something stir within him. A familiar feeling of blood lust he was once all but slave to. He fought to suppress that feeling, focusing instead on where his new mentor had gotten to. In the time it took for Rufus to dispense with a single soldier, Bran had made his way an impressive distance up the street with a trail of bloodied and broken bodies in his wake. Rufus didn’t know whether to be horrified or impressed, but without delay he chased after the Hrothgar. As he ran up the street, he found himself drawn to an abrupt halt as he passed the store he had been in earlier. Horror seized his heart as he saw the building in flames, the windows and door broken. But what affected him most was the charred body laying on the front porch of the store. Diminutive and rounded. Even charred beyond otherwise recognition, he knew who it was. “Greda...” Rufus uttered in silent disbelief. His right hand reflexively gripped tighter on his gunblade as the rage swelled within him. He gave the poor woman a final look, before turning to resume his chase up the street. His mind was whirling from the sudden awakening, to the horrors that unfolded before his gaze. Before he could think further, two soldiers emerged from a nearby alleyway. One with a lance, and one with a bow. The archer spared no time in launching an arrow at Rufus whilst his compatriot charged with lance bared. As if compelled by an unseen hand, Rufus raised his gunblade to the air and pulled the weapon’s trigger harshly. The resultant explosion sent his arm recoiling, but as he watched, the arrow in mid-flight abruptly clashed against an aetheric barrier which had sprung to life before him. Seizing the opportunity before another arrow could be sent his way, Rufus sprung for the lancer. He swung his blade down, catching the spear by the haft and pushing it into the mud, the wielder’s momentum causing him to trip. When he did so, Rufus spun vertically and stabbed downwards, tearing the blade through the man’s back. He left him there as he turned to the archer, who was just about ready to nock another arrow. Again as if guided by a force unseen, Rufus coiled to the ground like a wolf ready to pounce and aimed his blade backwards. He pulled the trigger and again felt that explosive recoil, but as he did so, he lept forward and used the staggeringly effective momentum to propel himself forward like a missile, closing the short gap between the two combatants. He brought his blade to bear in mid-flight, as the forward momentum lent extra weight to his swing, he savagely divided the soldier, his upper torso suddenly freed from the rest of his lower body. Rufus didn’t stop to look at what he had done. No time to think. Had to catch up to Bran. His feet carried him forward at a sprint, passing bodies of townsfolk and Imperials alike. When he emerged from the other end of the town, he caught up to Bran in time to find the Hrothgar stood stock-still, staring out into the planes beyond the town’s border. “Bran? What--” Rufus began, promptly interrupted by the hrothgar raising his hand to bid Rufus to stop. After a confused moment, Bran stepped forward with his voice raised to an admittedly fearsome shout. “Dagfinn! Come out here, you coward! Murderer! Vile bastard!” He challenged the darkness to Rufus’s eyes. Yet, after a few moments of silence, he watched as a figure emerged from the darkness. A Hrothgar, like Bran. This one was dressed in Imperial fatigues, however. He looked younger, with pale blue fur, and a horn protruding from his forehead. “Brankothgar...” The one identified as Dagfinn spoke. He held an unusually sombre tone and looked at Rufus’s mentor with pleading eyes. “I ask you to lay down your gunblade and surrender. No more blood need be shed here tonight.” The imploring tone shook Rufus. He looked behind him to the burning town, wreathed in a shadow of smoke. Was he truly asking for a peaceable end now? Bran seemed to be of similar mind when he spoke, fury gripping his every word. “Your men butchered these townsfolk without mercy! It’s me you want, why did they have to die?!” He spat furiously; his grip tightly wound around the handle of his gunblade. “I only follow my orders, Bran...” Dagfinn responded, shaking his head. “Aiders and abettors cannot be suffered to live, now please... come quietly.” “Piss off, traitor! Shove that ivory standard up your arse and die on it!” Bran shot back, trembling now with barely contained rage. “I see... if that is how it must be...” Dagfinn trailed off, raising his right hand high into the air. “Rufus, guard yourself!” Bran bellowed, as he himself raised his gunblade and shot off a cartridge, as a barrier of aether exploded to life before him. Fumbling, Rufus barely had time to do so himself before the sound of ringing gunfire emerged from the inky darkness. Surprised, Rufus found his barrier waning quickly in the face of the barrage. To his shock, it abruptly shattered to pieces like so many shards of glass floating in the air. He felt next the bite of an impact sinking deep into him as a bullet lodged itself into his abdomen. Before he knew what had happened, Bran had stepped forward to bear the brunt of the assault for them both, maintaining the barrier with one hand as the other sought for something at the back of his belt. He pulled free a device of some shape. What it was exactly, Rufus could not tell. The pain coursing through his system caused his vision to distort and become blurry. But he watched as Bran threw the device towards the darkness and, but a few moments later, watched as an explosion tore through the night, revealing in its fiery light the vague shapes of a small host of troops suddenly cast into havoc by the explosive device. Rufus’s body felt heavy as he clutched his abdomen with his gloved left hand, crimson sinking into the fibres. Pain had oft been a part of his life before, but now... now he had no way to feed from that pain and become stronger for it. He felt heavy all of a sudden, then just as suddenly, he felt himself being pulled up from the ground and slung across Bran’s shoulder, as the burly Hrothgar took off at a run into the darkness away from the recovering Imperials. As he was carried off, Rufus began to feel the dark closing in on him all around. As his vision faded, he could have sworn then that he witnessed shadowy hands reaching out to grab for him. Then his consciousness slipped away, and that darkness overcame him. The last he knew was the acrid smell of smoke intermingled with the taste and scent of blood on the air. In the rivers of his unconscious mind, Rufus swam in the lightless void. He heard nothing, he saw nothing, and he felt nothing, save an excessive cold which gripped him like a giant icy claw. He tried to struggle against the feeling, but to little avail. Here again... He thought in dismay. Far lonelier now... He added bitterly. At least if his dark side had been here, he would have someone to pass the time with until even his unconscious mind faded. How long had he been here already? He couldn’t say. He never could. All he could do was wait for a change -- something to herald him back to the waking world. Or perhaps to death? He knew not which would come. He fell into comfort in the dark space, and as he did so, he found himself in reflection. Thoughts of his journeys and experiences in Eorzea were brought to his mind. From his youngest days, to days more recent. The myriad people who had come into his life, and those who had also left his life. For as long as he could remember, he spent his efforts, his body -- his very life itself, in service to protecting others. To limit what pain and loss he could. Why did I do that, though? He wondered. To him, it had always seemed natural. He would suffer a hundred years if it meant that those, he cared for would not suffer for even a day. Reality was often far from kind to that ideal, however. Is it enough, what I do? The thought gnawed at him. He wanted to be of use, but ever since he had been injured and had to rebuild his strength - his loss of his command of darkness - could he still protect others as he wished to? And how much more of himself would he need to give to see that goal accomplished before his life was finally claimed? His body bore the scars -- proof of his sacrifice, or so he considered them. His entire left arm was a mechanical fake. How many more limbs could he lose and still continue to fight? He didn’t know. And the cloying questions that ran through his mind made him want to simply curl up and shrivel away to nothing. Nothing.

He awoke with a start, rising up suddenly. More suddenly than he should have, as his body told him when pain shot through his system, emanating from his gut. He seethed quietly and looked at his exposed stomach, to where it had been bandaged and taken care of. Rufus blinked in quiet surprise, recalling his final moments before passing out. “Bran...?” He voiced meekly. His throat was dry and his voice hoarse. “I am here.” Bran assured him gently. “You should stay down. It will take some time to recover from that wound.” The hrothgar spoke, gently guiding Rufus to lay upon a small bed of leaves against a stone floor. Rufus noted that the pair were presently sheltered within a small cave. He could see it was still night out, as his eyes focused. Or had he been asleep long enough that a day or more had passed? “Where...?” He croaked out quietly, as Bran moved to Rufus’s side, raising his head gently to administer a skin of water to the Hyur’s lips. He drank without pause, feeling slightly better with every gulp. “Safe, for now.” Bran explained as Rufus drank. “I carried you as far as I thought you could stand to make it. Thankfully you seem made of sterner stuff than even I had thought.” Having had his fill of water for the moment, Rufus pushed the skin away and rested his head, letting out a quiet chuckle at Bran’s words. “I do try.” He joked quietly, before his expression became sterner, looking up to the quieter man with a curious gaze. “Who was that? You’re hunted by the Empire...?” He asked. Bran did not immediately respond, and Rufus could see upon his leonine face a wistful and regretful delve into memories. When he emerged forth, he sat back against the wall of the cave, his gaze fixed on the outside. “That Hrothgar we encountered -- Dagfinn. He was once a comrade of mine and Gaut’s. A friend, too. On a mission, he was captured by the Empire and imprisoned. There, he was tortured and warped. The man that went in died, and the man that came out was a slave to the Imperials. He has been hunting us ever since that day, all those years past... Gaut and I had been eking out a fair living for ourselves but... well, you found Gaut yourself. You read his journal. You can figure it out.” Indeed, Rufus put the pieces together. A grim expression fell about his features as he looked upon Bran with a piteous gaze. “He sounded sad, that Dagfinn...” “Maybe. But that doesn’t excuse his actions.” “No... you’re right, it doesn’t. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about Gaut. You two must have been close.” Rufus said, his sympathies expressed clearly upon his mien. Bran grew quieter for a moment, his head bowed, his eyes a gateway to the pain in his heart. “He was my world. And I, his. After we left out clan... we were all we had. And we were all we needed. We were happy for a long time. Before.... before...” He didn’t finish his thought, as Bran quietly lifted a hand to cover his face, his breath shaking his entire body. He struggled and choked back quiet sobs. Rufus, witness to this great beast of a man breaking down once again, could not help but feel sorry for him. He remained quiet himself for a time, until Bran had visibly calmed at least a little bit. “I’m sorry, Bran. I know what it is like... to lose a loved one, to Imperials, no less. I promise to honour Gaut’s memory as best I can with his gunblade and his crystal.” “I... thank you, Rufus.” Bran responded, rubbing his eyes between his thumb and forefinger, and sniffling heavily. “That means a great deal to me.” Rufus responded with a little smile and nodded his head. No more words needed to be exchanged between the two on the matter. “I’m still tired... mind if I sleep some more?” Rufus inquired softly. “Of course. Rest as much as you can. Your Gunbreaker training will commence as soon as you are able -- if you are still willing?” Bran asked, looking at Rufus thoughtfully. “Very much so,” Rufus responded with a slight nod. “When I wielded the blade, back in the town... I don’t know. It felt so... right. Like I was meant for it... something like that, anyroad. I want... to feel that again.” Bran nodded and showed the ghost of a smile. “Hold onto that feeling. It will take you far.” Rufus nodded back to the man, then slowly nestled himself in as comfortably as he could for sleep. He was not unfamiliar with sleeping in rough terrain, and the weakened state he was in was conducive to sleep. Before long, he felt his consciousness slip once again into the depths of slumber, as those memories from the crystal played out before his mind’s eye once again. There he saw the image of two Hrothgar, smiling softly to one another with hands clasped in each other’s.

#ffxiv #ic #hyur #midlander #balmung #Rufus Wightman #hrothgar #Brankothgar Leyvasch #i do a write #it's part 2 y'all #tw: blood #tw:death #tw:violence #just trying to be good to people who have things about that stuff

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johnfaa · 6 years ago

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Book Care 101: How to Properly Store and Clean Your Personal Library

Article orginally published on November 2017, reporpused for Tumblr.

We all know basic book ettiquete -- don't read it with greasy hands, don't sit on it, don't get it wet, and don't you fold that page corner, damn it! But not only by following these basic rules will our book survive in good condition for a lifetime.

This is book care 101: simple, basic rules you must follow to assure a long lifespan for your book collection (50 to 500 books).

Having a long-lasting library relies heavily on the carer of such collection -- you and your decisions regarding how to store your books. At this point, everything is important: from the location that you choose, to how you clean them and the products that you use. It's not as difficult as it sounds, it's more planning than hard work, actually.

Paper is, in a way, alive. It breathes and it expands and it contracts and it changes according to the environment, hour of the day, season of the year and dare I say, mood of its own. Therefore, it's not something static. In order to make sure that we are taking good care of our books, we need to have in mind that paper moves (quite literally) in its threads… And, like any living being, it adapts to its surroundings. Our job is to make sure that these surroundings are relatively stable and adequate for them.

For this, you need very basic tools:

THE “KEEP MY BOOKS FOREVER” KIT:

Indoor thermometer

Humidity gauge

Reusable cleaning cloths

Gel or liquid alcohol

Optional:

An air humidifier OR a dehumidifier

Reams of acid-free paper

Protective gear: dust masks and disposable latex gloves

Don’t go buying the most efficient and expensive de/humidifier that you see on Amazon just because. As we’ve seen, paper can adapt to its environment, so suddenly changing this can have a negative effect on your books (making them crackle and harden or become damp).

If you have some special book in your collection, or a more fragile edition that is very dear to you but is old, you can use a sheet of acid-free paper to create a dust-jacket for it. The paper will protect it for the most part and it won’t affect its surface.

The protective gear is highly recommended for those who have a lot of books and not a lot of time to clean them constantly. Once too much dust is settled, you best take precautions for your health.

LOCATION

1. If you are laying them against a wall (be it on mounting shelves or a bookcase), be sure to choose inner-walls for your books. This way you'll prevent any occasional dampness/infiltration or sudden and constant changes in temperature from the exterior world.

2. Be sure to also protect your books from direct sunlight, using shades or choosing a wall that doesn’t get direct exposure. But don’t keep your books in a dark room, this will also impact their lifespan and can be way too appropriate to pests to set up camp among your books!

3. Mind the plumbing -- avoid setting up mounting shelves against walls that you know have plumbing going through them, so basically kitchen and bathroom walls in which you have sinks, showers and sanitary toilets against it, as well as distance from radiators and vents.

It's not a given that you're going to have an infiltration on that outer wall, but in the case of books, it's better safe than sorry!

With the Indoor thermometer and humidity gauge you’re going to be able to monitor the stability of your environment and even analyse if it’s necessary to buy an air de/humidifier (if there’s a lot of fluctuations in the relative humidity of the air, it’s best to buy one, for example).

WATCH OUT! The Library of Congress recommends relative humidity between 30 and 50%. This will avoid paper degradation from both too dry or too damp environments.

SHELVES

SHELVING: try to shelve books of similar sizes together. This way the face of the covers are maximally supported by the neighbors on each side, preventing distortions and bending. Always keep shelved books straight and not leaning (use bookends for that!). If the book is too big and heavy, you should store it lying flat.

CLEANING: You're going to use the reusable cleaning cloths with the liquid alcohol or gel to clean the shelves alone. Be sure to remove all the books, and using a damp cloth with a mixture of water + alcohol (the relative portions are always personal, but I prefer 50/50), scrub the shelves clean.

The books, once removed from the shelves, need to be cleaned one by one, using a DRY cleaning cloth. Do NOT use water or alcohol or any other product. A dry cloth is plenty sufficient to clean your books, I promise you. Anything else and you’ll be harming, and not preserving, your collection.

Provided a stable environment, the removal of dust is already enough to make that book lifespan gain 15 years.

Be sure to clean both covers (front and back), the spine, the fore edge, the top edge and, if you’re feeling too much dust on it, open it up and clean the endsheet of both sides.

When cleaning the top edge, be sure to scrub in only one direction: from the headband forward, taking the dust to the outwards end of the book, and not to the inside of the spine.

This whole process can be done every few months, it depends on how dirty your room gets. My tip to you is that if you can see a thin layer of dust, it’s already time. Don’t let it accumulate because dust carries all types of specks and you just can’t know for sure what’s in there, and it can be something that’ll harm your books (and maybe even you).

Attention! Only put the books back on the shelves when the surface is COMPLETELY DRY.

SHELVING MATERIAL:

MDF: Cheaper and weaker materials such as MDF and the like will easily bend and get destroyed by any water contact overtime (especially longer shelves) and this can harm your books over time if you’re not paying attention. However, it’s not a volatile as wood, so it won’t be affected so heavily by weather changes or termites at all.

HARDWOOD AND PLYWOOD: If you want to go more classic and opt for wood shelves, choose wood of good quality (plywood is fine, and hardwood is always best, but not always affordable). The problem with wood is that unless we're talking about excellent hardwood, the dangers of the wood itself getting affected by all types of variables (from termites to humidity) is quite high, and usually what affects wooden shelves, affects books, because guess what, they’re made from the same material!

METAL/STEEL: For affordable, sturdy and good shelves, prefer metal shelvings with a coat of paint on them, which will protect your books from any eventual rusting and give you plenty of time to take care of that. Bear in mind that for very humidy places such as coastal cities, you should make sure you’re buying stainless steel shelving.

There’s a lot more detail and subtletry to the art of book conservation, but from my experience, this little guide is more than enough to take care of a personal librabry of up to 500 books!

Hope you enjoyed it!

more info on the subject:

· Dos and Don’ts for Taking Care of Your Personal Books at Home - NY Public Library Shelly Smith, NYPL's Head of Conservation Treatment, shares tips on how to keep your treasured books in shape.

· Overview — NEDCC PRESERVATION LEAFLETS To go deeper into book conservation, The Northeast Document Conservation Center is an excellent start. It specializes in paper and book conservation.

· Care, Handling and Storage of Books - Collections Care (Library of Congress) How to care for your books, including how to find a book conservator.

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fetchingtears · 3 years ago

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A Bouquet of Holly and Oleander - Chapter Four

It was just dark by the time they got there. The road that got them there was winding and had several offshoots. It wasn't the kind of place you could wander in on.

"I apologize for the state of the place. It's been awhile."

The cabin was fairly small and looked abandoned from the outside, and the windows were coated in a thick layer of yellowed dust.

The first room was wide. In one corner was a loveseat, a rocking chair and a small tea table. A wooden chest and floor-to-ceiling bookshelf took up most of the space on that side.

The other side had a fireplace, a dining set and a compact kitchen. Aside from that, there were three other rooms: a bathroom and two bedrooms.

The bedrooms were barebones, with a bed, desk and a wooden chest at the foot of both beds.

"I feel I must apologize again for the state of it. I never expected to need this place."

"I like it." Abigail said tentatively.

Will walked over to the bookshelf and sat his bag down on the chest. The top shelf was medical journals, most of the titles in Latin or abbreviated. The second shelf had stories, like Frankenstein, Dante's Inferno and a few other classics. Third and fourth shelves were cookbooks. Six or so of them were in English but the rest were in languages he didn't understand. Although he did recognize Japanese characters.

"What now?" Abigail asked.

"Now we rest."

Huh. Rest. Now that the notion was plausible, he felt like a hummingbird on a sugar crash.

They'd hit the ground running five days ago and even in the quiet moments, his head was still on the run. He was worried about Jack finding them.

Less than a week. He'd still be considered missing.

Had they found evidence of Abigail? They would have had to.

"I wonder what they really think," Will said, thinking out loud.

Abigail looked like she'd been deep in thought too. "Who?"

"Jack and Alana. I know what they said on the news, but that doesn't always reflect what they're thinking."

"You think Jack and Dr. Bloom know you weren't taken against your will?"

He looked to Hannibal. "Yes, I do."

There was a pause before Hannibal spoke. "What's to be done about that?"

"Nothing, I suppose."

The room went deafeningly quiet. Abigail picked at the sleeve of her sweater, looking far away.

"You look like death made over, Hannibal."

"Are you being poetic or telling me a fact, Will?"

It didn't feel poetic. He looked worse now than he had before. His eyes were glazed over. It seemed like his fever wasn't any better, though thankfully he still acted lucid.

Outside, a twig snapped.

Their heads whipped in the direction of the door. Will stood slowly, taking wary steps. He pulled the curtain back just enough to see, scanning the clearing.

It was a grizzly bear, a female judging by the size of it. She stood up, sniffing at the air.

"Is it gonna attack?" Abigail was peering out the window from behind Will.

He shook his head. "Probably not. They don't usually attack unless they're surprised or provoked." Saying that, he felt tempted to shut the curtain.

"Slavic hunters would use spears to kill bears. They'd wait until the bear stood, then push the spear into its chest and plant the end of the spear into the ground."

"If the bear lunges at you, it'll only impale itself further," Will said, filling in the rest.

"I've always been interested in trying it."

Will was incredulous. "You're not planning on doing it now?"

"It would have to be soon. Once winter is here, we won't see it again until spring." Hannibal turned, facing him. "I'm not dying, Will."

"I know that, but you don't need to accentuate your broken ribs by getting mauled by a bear."

"We'll table the matter for now," He said, stepping away from the window.

The bear fell back down to all fours and wandered away, disinterested

Will volunteered to sleep on the loveseat. What an odd word. Loveseat. He knew why it was called that, seeing as it was essentially a couch that could only fit two people. But still, loveseat sounded indecent.

***

Another night of pitiful sleep. The sounds of the forest kept waking him up. He always thought that the bear had come back or Jack had found them. He was more worried about it being Jack.

When he finally fell asleep, he dreamt about Hannibal killing the bear. Snow fell hard, catching in their hair and melting into their clothes. He felt the cold in his bones.

They stood opposite each other and the bear laid between them, its blood pooling at their feet.

Hannibal was covered, his hands red up to his elbows. He kept asking, "Why did you do it?" Over and over again.

***

It was still dark when Abigail woke up. She stayed in bed, staring up at the ceiling. It didn't sound like anyone was awake, so she slipped out of bed.

Tiptoeing across the hall, she found Hannibal's door open. She wasn't sure if he started doing that when she lived with him, or if he always left his bedroom door open while he slept, but she appreciated it nonetheless.

He was sound asleep, barely breathing. So she made her way into the living room.

Will was seemingly still asleep, although all she could see was the top of his head poking out from the blankets; a wild mess of brown curls.

She picked up a book but couldn't focus on the words. It was as if she was too distracted by her thoughts. In fact, it was the opposite. Her head felt empty, like there had been so many thoughts bouncing around and now it had suddenly stopped. It left her exhausted.

"What are you reading?"

Guess Will was awake.

She turned the book over and read the cover. "Fall of the House of Usher."

"Not exactly light reading, is it?"

"I've read it before. For school."

He nodded before his eyes drifted away. He looked like he'd stepped away.

She wondered where he went when he was gone. Home with the dogs, probably.

"What do you think is in there?" She gestured towards the wooden chest.

"You wanna look?"

"Wouldn't that be like snooping?"

He considered it for a moment before shrugging and making his way over to it. He tried opening it, but found it stuck shut.

She sat next to him and tried to help open it, but it was stubborn.

"The varnish probably got messed up because of the weather, maybe it didn't dry correctly," Will sighed.

"So what now?"

"Let's find something to pry it open with."

He went to the kitchen, going through the drawers until he found a butter knife. He put the point of the knife between the lid and the chest, and hit the butt of the blade.

Nothing. He hit it three more times before it gave, almost expecting it to pop like a soda can.

Inside, they found more blankets.

"Well, that's disappointing," Will puffed.

Abigail picked up the blankets and set them aside. Underneath was a photo album, filled with black and white photos.

It was large, bound in brown leather, the title embossed in gold. Fleur-de-lys details decorated the corners. He didn't understand the title, although he did recognize the name Lecter.

He turned to the first page. There was a picture of a castle, tall and ominous looking. Then, a picture of a family.

The mother was beautiful, with long dark hair and sharp eyes. The father, who stood with his arm locked with hers, had lighter hair and similarly sharp eyes.

In front of them stood two young children, a boy and a girl. The boy, who Will assumed was Hannibal, stood with his mother, her free arm draped over his shoulder. The girl looked like her mother. She had the same long, dark hair but her expression was soft, a smile that seemed out of place compared to the other three. She looked to be a few years younger than her brother.

He set the book down.

"What's that?" Will asked, pointing to something Abigail had in her hands.

"Those are knitting needles," Hannibal replied. He sat down between them, picking up the photo album.

"Do you knit?" Abigail asked.

He flipped the book open, stopping on a picture of the kids from the family photo.

"No." He pointed to the girl in the picture. "This is my sister, Mischa. Those needles were promised to her, when she was old enough to use them."

It went quiet, save for the sound of the pages turning.

"You may keep them, if you'd like. I believe there's yarn in there."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. There's no reason for it to go to waste."

"Thank you."

He kept flipping through the pages, scanning each one for several seconds before going on to the next one.

"How old was she?" Will asked, his voice barely there.

"Two. She was two."

The pictures stopped a little over halfway through. He shut the book and put it back in the chest, piling the blankets back on top.

"I'm sorry," Abigail murmured, backing away.

They sat in a circle, existing in a nebulous. Nobody said anything for several minutes. It felt wrong to break the silence.

Finally, Will stood, leaving to get dressed. When he went for the front door, Abigail stopped him. "Where are you going?"

"I'm gonna go get firewood. We need some before it gets cold."

He went out, shutting the door behind him.

#hannibal fic #nbc hannibal #hannibal lecter #will graham #abigail hobbs

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cloudbattrolls · 7 years ago

Text

So Little So Much

Chimer Latrai || Geovyn || Two Sweeps Prior

They look up at you with eyes only beginning to thread with color, and this must be one of the only places on the planet where such a hue wouldn’t be culled on sight. You still marvel, sometimes, that a place like Geovyn manages to exist; even if they don’t actively rebel, you’d think the Empire would wipe them off the map out of spite.

The town chugs along, and so do you, Rennay at your heels bouncing to keep up with your longer strides.

“Miss Latrai!” They announce, loudly as if they’re trying to speak to the whole cavern. A few trolls look over at the pair of you and quickly away again; even in a town where the spectrum supposedly doesn’t apply, a pair of fins still earns certain reactions.

“Yeah?” You squint down at them. Damned short kids. You should be used to it, Sevenn’s so tiny, but despite his height you can always read his face pretty well. Rennay’s taller, if anything, though not by much.

Both of you are dwarfed by the vast cavern, carved out of the sandstone who knows how many sweeps ago. It’s littered with statues and carvings that the town historian told you were seadweller relics, but you’re having a tough time buying that. Mostly because you were here when it was still ocean, and you don’t recall this place. Admittedly, that doesn’t mean much; there were plenty of places you never saw, and Rennay being here...

“Do your gills ever itch?” They ask, poking at their own vestigial slits with a claw.

“Don’t do that, kid, you’ll get dirt in them. Not sure if yours can get infected, but here’s a tip: don’t try, despite what the docterrorists tell you germs are not the hot new thing, not when they’re in your fleshparts.” You say, waving a finger and then booping them on the nose. “They can itch sometimes, if I get in bad water or if parasites try to make a go for them, because we all have to make rent somehow.”

They pout. “Why can’t mine get infected, if yours can?” There’s an amusing amount of sulking going on, as if being able to get specific uncomfortable illnesses is a badge of honor.

Though it is, you guess. In a dumb sort of way.

“Because I was...” You pause. “I’ve been fuchsia for a very long time, and I’m not a cusp like you, kiddo. I’m pinker, see?” You tap the symbol on your chest.

Can’t say you were hatched it. Tabula Raisaa was rust as what grows on metal in the rain, and you’re the product of storybook nonsense.

They stare at you, and the two of you pass the oliveblooded librarian, who gives you a friendlier wave than you’ve seen so far, and Rennay smiles a large, pointy grin full of razor teeth that belong to a seadweller, even if their skinny body is as warm as that green.

“Irchta!” They call. “Look at my new friend! She’s weird.”

The olive looks up from her book, half-moon glasses looking like they’re dangerously close to taking a dive to the floor before she adjusts them. She’s a little taller than your companion, and much softer and curvier. She also doesn’t seem at all bothered by either of you, which is a first.

“Mmhm, what else’s new? You don’t make friends with anyone normal, Renny.”

“You’re my friend.”

“I said what I said.”

They cackle like she’s told the world’s greatest joke, and the two of you make your way over to the archives section of the cavern. Irchta doesn’t work here; instead there’s a few elderly lowbloods puttering around and the smell of dust fills the air between the crammed, meticulously organized stone shelves.

One of them looks up at you as you walk in, an annoyed look on their face. Thank god.

“The archive’s reading hours are closed, miss.” The scratchy rasp of the voice matches the slightly withered-looking horns and the scruffy graying hair; then again, plenty of Geovyn trolls look like that from spending too much time underground. The small outcroppings of citrine on their face are nicely polished.

“Didn’t come to make you fetch anything; wanted to ask a few questions, that’s all.”

“If you’d like to schedule an interview, please see our secretary.”

“Why’re you bothering, Chimer.” whines Rennay, rocking back and forth. “They never tell me anything! I said, don’t you remember? They won’t look up my records for nothin’.”

Their pigtails bounce as they shake their head, then they stop in their tracks. “Are you going to make them?” They ask hopefully. “Tell them I’m important!”

“I prefer to only make people do things when I have to, Rennay. It’s rude. They glare at me too, which is terrible for my skin.”

Rennay mulls over that one while the archivist stiffens, probably wondering if despite your light words and joking tone whether you won’t bully them after all. You might not have the legal right to here, but six foot seven of fuchsia tends to make people bend, if not break. The spectrum is wired in too hard.

Lucky for them, that’s not why you’re here.

“Rennay’s a cusp, Textkeep.”

Their ears pin back as they look up at you suspiciously.

“I know this, Latrai.” They say, curling their hands probably to keep them from flashing their claws at you. You feel slightly bad, but you resolve yourself. Can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

“Do you? Funny, you’ve been treating them like they’re about to pick up a trident and go lusus hunting!”

“Do not lecture us in our own space, Latrai! We suffer your presence because we must, but if you think to tell us what to do with our own citizens you will be asked to leave!”

The Textkeep is breathing hard, but there’s fear in their amber eyes. Poor bastard, even if part of you is annoyed; you know you shouldn’t be, and you shove it down.

“Look...Rennay’s not a true fuchsia. I tested them myself. Remember, Rennay, we looked at your blood? We took your temperature? Besides, fuchsias are a gaggle of geese honking at each other with not a lot of sense to go round.”

An exaggeration - those of your caste who survive to adulthood are usually all too competent, or else strictly controlled - but it gets you another one of the kid’s cackles.

“Yeah! I’m maroon.” They say, proudly. “So why don’t you let me look at my records, huh?! Jeez.”

“No true maroon has gills.” They mutter, but they’re wringing their hands together, and their ears droop.

“Maybe you’ve got a good reason for stopping them. But Rennay’s not, and never will be, a seadweller. So don’t do it for that, for their sake.”

They look up again and they see the challenge in your eyes; isn’t Geovyn a place of equality? Yet neither of you are so naive; a cusp like Rennay is a wild card that can explode. They could have latent rogue psi, they could have destructive aggression just waiting to be riled...no highblood strength, at least. No true gills. Just floppy partial fins and slits.

Still, you understand the Textkeep. Fuchsias are dangerous, often wild, either fodder to make an example at the end of the Empress’s fork, political tools, de-fanged propaganda stars...or you.

Not that you’re special in any way but one; it’s just that the Empire doesn’t really know what to do with you, and culling you would be a waste of resources, so they do nothing as long as you keep to your agreement.

Rennay’s bright half-gray eyes don’t know anything of that life, or the politics that come with it. It’s about time people treated them that way.

The Textkeep looks away, then down at Rennay.

“When you are nine, Rennay, you may see your records.”

“What! That’s two whole sweeps off.” They whine, shuffling their rubber-booted feet.

“Take it or leave it, kiddo.” You say, and you’re tempted to ruffle their hair, but they’re back to sulking.

“If they’re boring, I’ll never forgive you for making me wait!” They say, puffing out their cheeks. You can’t tell who they’re more annoyed at, you or the archivist.

You suppose it doesn’t matter.

#cloud writes #Chimer Latrai #Rennay Laliqe #trying to ease myself back into words

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smallgeneration · 6 years ago

Text

beginning

Anneli Knight first appeared in the sunlit second floor window of the Shakespeare & Company bookshop. It was my first day in Paris, and she leaned out over the flowerbox and waved at me like we already knew each other, and for a heartbeat I truly felt like we did.

I'd been talking to Joe, a man I recognized from my youth hostel who happened to be selling his artwork on the street outside the bookstore. Joe was the oldest person in the hostel by about a foot and a half of white beard, and he'd been traveling from Canada to Paris since the 70s to draw intricate street scenes and sell his work in front of Shakespeare & Company. He looked like a hippie Walt Whitman in a floppy hat and a faded Key West t-shirt, the only one I ever saw him wear.

"Hello, Joe!" Anneli called from the window.

"Hey, Anneli! Come down and meet a friend of mine.”

"I'll be right there!"

She shut the window, which was painted with a portrait of Virginia Woolf reading a book, and in a moment she was emerging from the ancient blue door that led to the apartments above the bookshop. I still remember what she was wearing. Red pants and a delicate black button-up with a pretty gold pin holding the collar together. The most beautiful array of freckles and eyes that smiled right at you.

Barely two minutes after Joe introduced us as fellow gap year travelers, Anneli pronounced us kindred spirits. We were both eighteen years old, trying to call ourselves writers and artists, but feeling too young and too small to name ourselves after our dreams.

Anneli had left the farm outside of London where she’d grown up and was currently living at Shakespeare & Co as a tumbleweed. That’s what the employees called the young travellers taken in by the bookshop and given a free place to stay, read, and write in exchange for a few hours of work a day. I'd come to Paris specifically to take part in the shop's age-old tradition, to join the list of tumbleweeds that included Ernest Hemingway and Allen Ginsberg, but there was just one problem.

"Please don't tell anyone I told you this, but the shop is having a bit of trouble with bedbugs," Anneli whispered.

She pointed out the bites on her arms and neck, and told me to talk to the bookstore managers about whether or not I could move in after they fumigated the tumbleweed living quarters. I told her I would come back every day until they let me in, bedbugs or not, and she beamed and hugged me tightly.

"That's the spirit!"

Anneli gave me a long list of cafes, shops, and museums I should visit in the meantime.

"I'm only one of two tumbleweeds at the moment, and we get a bit lonely sometimes. We should have a late-night picnic soon and split a bottle of wine."

I agreed, and told her I was starving, and she recommended a place around the corner that sold cheap but delicious sandwiches.

"And they've got meringues piled in the window the size of your head, in every flavor and color you can imagine!"

She explained that she had to get back to a piece she was writing, and made me promise to meet her here again tomorrow to discuss me becoming a tumbleweed. Joe had wandered off to work on a drawing, and I was overwhelmed with the happiness of making a friend in a foreign country, a true kindred spirit.

We hugged and said goodbye multiple times, as she kept remembering places she wanted to show me, stories to tell me, and cafes to recommend. She disappeared through the big blue door, back into the bookstore of my dreams, leaving me breathless with joy and anticipation and the sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Postponing college was never my plan. Everything leading up to my graduation from high school had been only a series of tedious stepping stones on my way to what I considered The Rest of My Life; college in a big city, jobs and internships in the movie industry, and making it as a director by the time I was thirty. I had everything planned out, with no room for scenic routes of indecision or wandering. But when I was accepted into my dream school only to find that its tuition had been raised too much for me to attend, I had to rethink the plans I’d been making since I was eleven. I knew I had to get away from home, away from boarding school, away from everything I thought I knew about myself. I needed time to breathe and think, and a space far away from my plans where I could reevaluate who I was, with no agenda.

So I ended up with a one-way ticket to Europe, my entire life savings, and a single backpack, with no idea what I was doing. I’d read that Shakespeare and Company, the hundred-year-old bookstore that first published James Joyce and was a regular haunt of many of my favorite writers, let young travelers sleep among the bookshelves for free. They didn’t take reservations, and they gave no guarantees. All I had to do was show up in person and ask if there was room. It was the only plan I allowed myself to make.

I ate my sandwich and meringue lunch on a park bench in front of Notre Dame, the crumbs calling on a flock of pigeons to poke around my feet. It was a beautiful and warm September day, but the excitement inspired by meeting Joe and Anneli grew heavy and cold and tinged with a sudden feeling of distrust. I felt like a living cliche. A lost American would-be artist who travels to Paris for inspiration is the set-up for a story that’s been lived many times before. Watching the tourists take selfies with the statues, I licked my fingers clean of the sugar dust left by the meringue and opened my notebook, but couldn’t bring myself to write anything down. What was the point? It had all been written, hadn’t it?

The sunshine feels different here, and the sky is a slightly brighter shade of blue.

I cringed at the thought, and stuffed my notebook down into my bag with the rest of the unfinished sandwich I was saving for dinner.

I tried to walk around the city but ended up being drawn back to the bookstore. I was afraid that straying too far would make it disappear, that if I was gone for too long I’d return to find that Joe and Anneli had been figments of my imagination, just stories I’d told myself to live up to the cliche. I’d been in Paris for one day, and it was all feeling too good to be true.

Back on the cobbled sidewalk in front of Shakespeare & Co., Joe was drinking coffee and hanging his art on the iron fence of the small park that separated the bookshop from the busy street. He waved to me as I passed by, and asked me to join him after I explored the shop for a while.

Inside, I climbed the thin wooden stairs to the second floor and wandered through the quiet bookshelves. I picked up the newly-published history of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop and settled into a chair in the back to read. Flipping through the pages, I read about the shop’s humble beginnings and descriptions of the lost generation of expatriate authors and artists who flocked to its doorstep, the lost generation who found themselves in great works like A Moveable Feast, Ulysses, and The Great Gatsby.

I came upon a chapter of journal entries by past tumbleweeds from the sixties and seventies. In it were photographs of young hippies and intellectuals shelving books and drinking wine over their typewriters, fellow runaways and gap-year travellers smiling up from the faded polaroids and blurry snapshots. They looked like Anneli, like versions of myself in a past life I was desperately trying to reincarnate.

I turned a page and froze. It was a photograph of Allen Ginsberg tucked into a small bed surrounded by walls of books. Closing my finger between the pages to save my place, I stood up from the chair and walked into the bookstore’s adjacent room, where the stairs let out into a narrow hallway lined by bookshelves that led to a raised platform covered in pillows against the back wall. I opened the book again and held it up, matching the angle of the photo to the scene before me.

I closed the book and sat down on the platform, which was essentially a bench, just long and wide enough for a person to sleep on. How many writers, famous or otherwise, had slept here, dreaming my dreams and hoping for the same inspiration I hoped to find within these book-lined walls?

I reshelved the book and wandered outside. The sun was starting to set and the golden glow of Paris in the early evening made everything look like an oversaturated movie. I sat down next to Joe, who was still sipping his coffee as he watched the people come and go.

We chatted about the day, the beautiful weather and the crowds of tourists who seemed to only care about getting a selfie in front of the shop’s signature portrait of the Bard above the door.

“Why do you think people keep coming here?” I asked. “Being a tumbleweed seems like the perfect situation for any young aspiring writer, but aren’t they all just trying to be the next Hemingway or something?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Joe sighed in his strong Canadian accent. “I think there’s a kind of magic in this place, whether it’s a part of the bookshop itself or just made up of all the stories of folks that come through here. Certain people are drawn to it, I guess.”

“It just seems like a magnet for cliches.”

“Maybe. But stories have to start somewhere, even before they become cliches.” Joe laughed. “Wasn’t Romeo and Juliet a cliche, even before that guy wrote it?”

He pointed at the bookshop sign where Shakespeare stared vacantly over our heads into the Paris skyline.

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a great story,” he said, sipping the last of his coffee.

I spent the next day at Shakespeare & Co., reading books and talking to the shop manager, a tall Parisian man who looked like he just walked off the set of A bout de souffle, about my hopes of becoming a tumbleweed. He never mentioned the bedbugs, but he made it clear that it was unlikely they would have a place for me in the next two weeks.

My heart sank. I knew that with my small budget I wouldn’t be able to afford two more weeks at the youth hostel where Joe and I had eaten breakfast together that morning.

As the day went on, I continued reading biographies of past tumbleweeds and flipping through photographs for familiar faces of my favorite writers. I found a portrait of Ginsberg hanging above the second floor window that looked out over the cobbled sidewalk where Joe sat and talked to customers and passers-by.

I still couldn’t bring myself to write anything in my notebook. Even ‘Paris is too good to be true’ felt trite and obvious, too defeating to put those words on paper.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked up from the empty page.

“Are you staying for the reading event tonight?” Anneli asked, grinning and itching a bug bite on her neck.

I smiled. Of course I was.

The event was a small celebration of a newly published book by a past tumbleweed who now worked full-time in the shop. Anneli read an excerpt and served wine to the twenty or so guests who sat on pillows on the floor as the author answered questions posed by his readers and other bookshop employees. When she wasn’t fulfilling her tumbleweed duties of refilling glasses and leading guests to their seats, Anneli sat next to me, occasionally squeezing my hand and smiling at me as she did when we first met.

After the questions finished and the wine was gone, the event ended, and I helped Anneli restore the pillows to their rightful place on the empty tumbleweed beds.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said, picking up a tray of empty glasses and heading for the basement. “I’m getting a bottle of wine and a box of crackers for our picnic.”

It was almost chilly outside by the river, but the wine kept us warm and everyone was laughing. There were three of us besides me and Anneli; Jess, the second tumbleweed and native of New Zealand, and two other shop employees I’d been introduced to on the walk from the bookshop to our picnic spot on the stone quai, where our feet dangled over the water and we let crumbs fall into is dirty, glittering swirls.

“Does this ever get old?” I asked, gesturing to the golden towers of Notre Dame that loomed over us.

“Never!” Anneli exclaimed.

Everyone agreed, and chimed a haphazard toast to Paris.

“Sometimes I do feel a bit ridiculous,” she said, taking a swig from the bottle of wine. “I actually wrote a poem on a typewriter today, and it was awful.” She hiccupped and laughed. “I feel so cliche.”

“Everyone does,” said one of the booksellers, smiling as he lit his cigarette. “I mean, just look at us.”

“And isn’t that kind of wonderful?” Jess asked. “I know we’ll never be the next Scott and Zeldas, but we’re here! We get to make up our own stories right where they lived theirs!”

I felt a sudden surge of warm butterflies in my stomach. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the exhilaration of a new friendship, and the feeling that I wasn’t alone. But it all felt like I was living a miracle. The magic that Joe was talking about became real in that moment, as cliche as it sounds. Maybe there’s a certain kind of power inherent in the stories that repeat themselves over history. Perhaps star-crossed lovers and self-searching travelers exist as a fundamental story in human nature. Repeat these stories enough, and they become legends.

Meeting Joe and Anneli really was a miracle, the first fallen dominoes in a series of stories that spread from the streets of Paris to the countryside of England, and back again to Shakespeare & Company, where it all began.

#stories

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