#had to jump through many hoops to be allowed to walk with this year's spring grads and still not totally sure i will

[booksbwaybadflower]

If you're gonna take time off of school just make sure you still graduate in a spring semester. Even if that means taking more time off than you wanted to or needed to.

[ilguna]

Could I get a piano session of "Suburban Legends" off of 1989 TV + Finnick Odair?

☼ suburban legends (Finnick Odair) ☼

warnings; swearing,

wc; 2k

prompt; Piano Sessions: Suburban Legends by Taylor Swift.

--

There is nothing that can save the sinking ship that is your relationship with Finnick.

A part of you knew that you would not make it through the summer when you started dating him in the spring. As much as you would have liked for it to be false, realistically everything began falling apart about a month in. If you had tried to fix it then, maybe this wouldn’t be happening, but instead you chose to wait.

You knew full well what was going on between him and Daniah, even before you’d started dating him. The lengths he’d go, the hoops he’d jump through—just to be able to see her for a few hours. He was so careful to hide it from you, coming up with these excuses that could never actually be feasible. 

You figured them out pretty quickly. And that should’ve been the deal breaker right there. You remember thinking it would be a better idea to end it than to continue to entertain him, or let him walk over you. If the thought of you being broken up didn’t hurt so much, you would’ve gone through with it, too.

You chose to forgive him, without ever telling him that you knew he was cheating. You wanted to initially, you spent nights rehearsing what you would say to him. You went through the phases of being angry, and then the sadness that came with it. While the infidelity would’ve taken the love out of anyone else, your heart beats for him.

Finnick is your best friend. Or rather, was. You trusted him, especially in moments that you never should have. He hasn’t done anything like that before, so you gave him the benefit of the doubt. Whereas, if it were any other boy in District Four, you wouldn’t have let it get this far. 

You never would have given them the light of day, but you handed it over to Finnick as if it didn’t mean anything to you. Lately, you’ve been blaming it on the magnetic pull that he possesses. He attracts a certain crowd, one that you shouldn’t classify in, but here you are anyway. 

Finnick is—for a lack of a better word—cool. He earned that title sometime after he won his Games, proving to the rest of the victors in Four that he was more than just a boy. He’s one of them. He deserves a place in their stupid hierarchy.

And he got it, of course. Why wouldn’t he? Finnick set the record for the youngest victor in history, one that likely won’t ever be broken again. In his first year of mentoring at fifteen, he brought you home. Which held the attention of the Capitol for the next two years, shadowing over you. He became one of the most important Darlings.

In District Four, Finnick became one of those victors that no one could get too close to without getting anxious. He had everyone wrapped around his finger, whether he wanted them or not. Which allowed him to fit right in with the victors that made the important decisions.

Despite the many attempts you’ve made to join them, they never had room for you. It didn’t matter who’s ass you kissed, if you went through a whole style change, or if you were suddenly popular in the Capitol. They didn’t want you, not until you started dating Finnick, which then got you a rite of passage.

It was a blessing and a curse after that. As you spent every waking moment trying to brag the same way they did. You dug up every secret that you’d been holding on to for special occasions just to impress Finnick. To get him to look at you the same starry-eyed way that he saw them.

The way he sees Daniah.

She’s everything that you’re not, you can see that now. She won a couple years after you did, when there was finally enough spotlight to share. She’s got the same air around her that Finnick does. They’re practically the same person, which must be why they get along so well.

But you know what they say, right? Opposites attract. They can teach each other new things, and give new opportunities. Even if they aren’t really meant to be together. Except, the only one benefitting in this situation is you, and it’s not even what you want.

You want Finnick. You want him to love you and no one else. Is that really too much to ask for?

“Are you enjoying the party?” A hand wraps around your waist, snaking to your stomach as Finnick pulls you back into him, leaning over your shoulder. “Because it looks like you’re planning an escape.”

It wouldn’t be the first time you came up with an excuse to get out of a house party like this. You don’t know why they insist on having one every weekend, they turn out to be the same as the party before. They aren’t even the talk of the district like they used to be.

“I’m having fun.” You ignore his comment, twisting in his arm to look at him.

Finnick’s curls are damn near perfect this evening, he must’ve washed his hair this afternoon to get them to look so good. Before you became his girlfriend, his bronze hair used to be a frizzy mess, unsure of how to take care of it. You taught him a different routine, and ever since, people can’t seem to keep their hands to themselves.

Neither can you.

You fix the few on his brow, he lifts a glass to his lips, tilting his head back to finish the cup. It’s likely a mixed drink, he told you earlier that he wasn’t feeling the classic drinks. It doesn’t seem like a big change, but to the people in this house, it will be.

Finnick reaches for a coaster with two of his fingers, placing it on the glass table before setting his cup on top of it. He then turns his attention to you, free hand cupping the side of your face, swaying with the music. There’s a small smile playing on his lips, gazing into your eyes.

With the two of you in your own bubble, you shift in a small circle. He holds you close to his chest, his hand rubbing your lower back. While your body begins to warm up with the love radiating off of him. How are you supposed to believe that he doesn’t want you too, when he does something like this without being prompted?

He leans forward, stealing the last of your space, lips coming for yours. You suck in a breath, wanting to dodge the kiss, because you know that it’s a bad idea. If you want to break up with him tonight, then you can’t push it. You can’t test your limits again.

It’s too late.

Finnick stops moving when his lips press into yours, wanting it to be soft, gentle. You can feel your heart skipping beats, excited that he’s touching you this way. And when he pulls back, your bones ache for more. You even catch yourself thinking that you could do this forever with him. Nothing has to change.

You could go to the Capitol together, hand in hand, showing everyone there that he’s yours. That you managed to catch the boy that they can’t get to stay. He wanted you, a girl that’s nothing like them or anyone that he surrounds himself with at home. A victor, but a lesser known one. One that doesn’t mind being quiet, one that’s fine with being overlooked. You would forget about everything else, including the way they treated you. 

But you can’t, and you won’t. 

“Finnick, we need to talk.” You tell him, hands loosening from his shirt. “And I’d rather do it in private.”

“Is everything okay?” He asks, face twisting with worry.

You press your lips together, which is telling enough to Finnick, because he takes your hand tightly to guide you through the packed house. This week, the party is being hosted at his place, which means that no matter where you go, the conversation won’t be interrupted. His people are too polite to go wandering and snooping where they shouldn’t.

He brings you upstairs, down the hall, and into his bedroom. He lets you step inside first, where you get an eyeful of his unkempt bed while he shuts the door. A bed that the two of you have shared. How many times has he brought Daniah here, too?

“Are you feeling alright?” Finnick asks, coming around.

You shake your head, “No, Finnick, I’m not.” You meet his eyes. “This isn’t working between us.”

His eyebrows twitch, his cocking to the side briefly before he straightens up. He breathes out a laugh, reaching for you. “What do you mean, (Y/n)?”

You avoid his hands, pushing them away. “I mean that we’re in two different places, and I am not what you’re looking for.” You watch his face smooth out, beginning to understand. “I don’t belong here.”

“You don’t have to belong here, (Y/n). Not as long as you’re with me.” He sighs. “And you are what I’m looking for. We wouldn’t be dating if I wasn’t.”

“Daniah.” Her name slips from your mouth before you can catch it. Finnick visibly pales. “Cayden, Sitara, Emrin.” You list. “Are they also not what you’re looking for?”

“They mean nothing to me, honey.”

“They mean enough, if you’re sneaking away to be with them everyday.” You hold up your hand. “I’ve already made up my mind. We’re finished.”

“I haven’t talked to them in a very long time.”

“A week is not a long time.” You point at him.

“Since we began dating in March?” He challenges. “I stopped.”

“You can’t lie to me, Finn. I’ve known this entire time. I’ve just been ignoring it because I couldn’t stand the idea of this ending.” You motion between the two of you. “But I’m over it now. I’m over the lying and the dodging and the stuffy parties.”

You back up for the door, hand reaching for the knob. Finnick is shaking his head, following after you. “You can’t just leave, (Y/n).”

“I am.” You tell him, stepping out.

“You’ll come back.” He tells you, and it’s not because he’s being confident. There’s a look in his eyes, “We’ll get back together. There’s something between us that won’t keep you away.”

He must know this is a chink in your armor, because you hesitate for a second. Does he think about you the same way? You shake your head, trying to rid the thoughts.

“I’m not coming back.”

You turn for the stairs, heading down them quickly. Thankfully, the door isn’t too far from the bottom step. You squeeze between the nicely dressed upper-class, passing the glass table with Finnick’s empty cup. Once you make it to the front door, you know that you’re safe, because he won’t risk chasing you out.

The warm summer air feels nice against your face. You leave the house, and when you swing the door shut, you lock your composure inside by accident. Unable to retrieve it, you let the tears build in your eyes as you leave Finnick’s porch, heading for your house a good number of feet down the sidewalk.

This was the right thing to do. You had to break up with him, because he never would have done it. He had himself convinced the same way that you did, he would have let the two of you drown if it meant you stayed together. As if he couldn’t stand the idea of hurting you.

For your sake, you hope that he’s not right. You don’t want to run back to him.

--

this was part of my 3k celebration!!

[lorelylantana]

Compulsion

Ao3

This oneshot was inspired by this post by @snooze-zzz

Oneshot rating: G

His father wasn’t happy when Link was called to his office, a scowl etched into his brow. Link stepped in and stood at attention, expecting his father to grumble about some last minute change to the guard’s rotation before assigning him to a troop to fill in the gaps left by such shifts. Link had been knighted only recently, and as the most junior member in his unit he was expected to pick up this sort of slack. Link didn’t mind, a little sleep lost was a small place to pay to quiet that writhing feeling in his chest. It wasn’t silent just yet, but he was getting closer. When his father got up to walk around the room, Link made no move to maintain eye contact, standing at attention. It was a test of sorts, teaching Link to hold his position until told otherwise. It took some practice to tamp down the instinctive urge to turn towards the speaker, but he was getting it. So when his father walked behind him, he thought he was just checking his form.

“Do you think this is a game, son?”  the Captain’s words were cold, dripping with the kind of disappointment that would make any child’s blood freeze. Link’s pulse began to race. His face flushed, but his training held and he stood rooted to the spot.

“Sir?”

“Do you know how many fourteen year old knights there have been in recorded history?”

“One, sir,” Link answered, bracing for a lecture.

“Right, one. You are the only knight to ever be sworn in so young,” his father continued, coming around to face him again. Link almost flinched when he saw the quiet rage in his father’s eyes. This wasn’t going to be the ordinary scolding for being late to the mess hall or having a spot on his armor.

“I had to jump through a lot of hoops for you to be allowed to swear in early. I stuck my head out for you because I had faith in you. You told me you could handle the responsibility and I believed you. I don’t appreciate you dragging my name through the mud with this little stunt and I definitely don’t appreciate you going back on your word.”

Link racked his brain, still completely at a loss to the ‘stunt’ the Captain was referring to. He’d looked after his armor meticulously, arrived early for morning drills, he even took time out of his break to have a barber crop his hair to match Hyrule’s military regulation, leaving his neck uncovered for the first time in years.

Then again, he did break one of the sparring dummies yesterday, a swing of a sword that landed a bit too hard. The drill sergeant laid into him for that, sending him to run laps while everyone else got a water break.

“I can fix the dummy, sir.”

That was the wrong thing to say apparently, because when his father’s face contorted even further. The Captain shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You knew perfectly well that tattoos visible in uniform aren’t allowed, let alone one blatantly disrespecting the royal family, so what possessed you to undermine the sacrifices made to get you here?”

Link’s hands were shaking behind his back. He couldn’t remember the last time his father was so angry with him, and he still had no idea what he was being reprimanded for. He didn’t get a tattoo as far as he remembered, and he didn’t drink, so it wasn’t a memory lost to wine. 

Justified or not, the Captain’s anger stung after Link tried so hard to uphold the high standard his father held him to. He had been proud to meet that standard, but it was hard to hold his head high when his captain and his father looked at him with such disappointment, whatever the reason turned out to be. He felt his face heat with shame and his throat close. 

The Captain sighed when his son failed to answer, and Link knew that he had fallen in his father’s eyes, and that thought alone was enough to bring tears to his eyes. 

“I don’t understand,” he whispered, his knight’s countenance cracking at long last, “What did I do?”

His father shook his head, refusing to look him in the eye, “If you can’t be honest and own up to your own actions, then I have to put you on probation. Pack your backs and come back when you’re ready to stop treating the knight’s oath like a joke.”

Link saluted, maintaining his silence in a desperate attempt to regain his composure, though he couldn’t stop a few childish tears from leaking out in what would be his last show of emotion for a very long time.

The sun was setting as Link started down the road south to Castle Town where he’d stay the night, wondering what he’d tell his mom. His stomach twisted in dread. He didn’t want to see the inevitable disappointment on his mother’s face. He still didn’t know what he’d done wrong, but whatever it was had to be so obvious that any denial would read as insubordination, so he doubted she would believe any defense he could muster.

He wanted to scream that he didn’t think knighthood was a joke. In truth he wouldn’t even consider it an ambition. He supposed it was an instinct, if anything. Perhaps it was because he was the son of the Captain of the Royal Guard, but that answer tasted wrong in his mind, like it was far too trivial an explanation for the growling dissatisfaction in his chest. 

He’d always had fun swinging the wooden swords his father brought home when he was small, but time and again Link would be overtaken by some deep set sense of urgency to learn and hone any skill he could use in battle. He would be seated at the dinner table or doing his chores when something that tasted like an elegant, tempered version of panic would consume him and demand he rush outside to practice his sword forms. His mother scolded him for it at first, but couldn’t bring herself to reprimand him after she saw how distraught he would be if she stopped him, so she left him be, only calling him in if it was bedtime or if he scraped a knee.  If he couldn’t find a sword, he’d pick up a broom and pretend it was a spear, or he’d make a claymore out of an iron hammer. He’d go hunting even though he’d have to drag a buck along on the ground because he was too small to carry it himself because standard targets simply wouldn’t cut it. Anything he could use to practice he would.

At first it was just repeating basic swings and perfecting technique, but after a few years passed there chime began to sound in the distance when he took up his arms, and soon after that ring grew into words reverberating in his head. At first, Link had thought the voice, ancient and vaguely feminine, was that of the Goddess. He didn’t think that now though. She, if the voice was, in fact, a she, felt isolated, personal. Link had the distinct impression that the voice was interested in him and him alone, and he didn’t think the White Goddess Hylia would play favorites, least of all with him. There was no praise or scorn from the voice, only instruction flavored with an odd sort of affection that felt older and steadier than the land itself, and Link, still driven by a baseless devotion, did as he was told. 

When she told him to hone his agility by shadow sparring on a fence, he obeyed. When she told him to climb Mount Floria to strengthen his body and spirit he obeyed. And when he was told to visit the Spring of Courage to pay homage to his predecessors he obeyed, whoever they may be. Then old and forgotten combat arts were whispered in his ear, and Link began to fight unlike any man or beast in thousands of years. 

It wasn’t long after that his father returned to Hateno on leave and took note of his progress. The Captain made a blithe comment that Link could hold his own against a royal guard, and once again the urgency rose, not to take up arms, but to head towards Hyrule Castle. He’d begged and pleaded with his father, swearing up and down that he would uphold the knight’s standard both in and out of combat, the voice reassuring him all the while.

When he was sworn to Hyrule’s service and he settled into the Military Training Camp the voice quieted down. He felt a tad lonesome without her, though he didn’t miss the mind numbing sensation so close to terror that always preceded her voice. It had been relaxing to train and talk and go about his life without a sense of foreboding shadowing his every action. He was where he needed to be.

As he walked further and further south he could feel it growing again, pulling him back the way he came. Link thought back to his childhood, wondering when this feeling, so much like a sickness, first came to him. Now that he thought on it, he was quite certain the first taste of this compulsion came to him at the late Queen’s funeral. 

Yes, he remembered it clear as day. He had been outside the cathedral in Castle Town bearing lilies on his family’s behalf, since his father was guarding the ceremony and his mother had taken ill that day. Once the priestesses had concluded their rite there was a bid for all those in attendance to leave their offerings if they so wished, and when it was Link’s turn to approach the coffin he caught sight of Princess Zelda.

She was so small, smaller than he was, and though no tears fell Link saw her quivering ever so slightly. The sight of her green eyes and sun bright hair was so familiar even though he’d never seen anything like it. She looked up to meet his gaze, and within her green eyes Link found a fleeting epiphany tinged with nostalgia. In that moment Link could feel something deep within the earth beginning to rumble awake, dark and devastating. He’s certain that’s where his fixation began, and after years of contemplation he deemed the swell in his chest at the sight of her protective, though the nature of such devotion was lost on him. 

Link had come up on Hyrule Cathedral then. He stood there a moment, wondering if he should seek Hylia’s guidance before heading on his way. Who knows, perhaps the voice would return to him and give him an objective to work towards, something to drown out the devastation in his chest.

“You are not to leave that spot until dawn breaks, Zelda. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father.”

And there she was again, all snow white and burning gold in the light of the setting sun. He could see her glowing faintly in the firelight of the torches around her, kneeling in the middle of the Cathedral’s garden to pray. Possessed, he stepped closer to the wrought iron fence that separated them, drawn to her like a moth to any warm, bright light.

 It had been years since he’d seen her shaking at the loss of her mother, but she somehow looked more hopeless and alone kneeling there in the grass. That observation tore at him, momentarily eclipsing his own desolation. In that instance Link wanted to be there by her side, if only to provide a moment’s reprieve from the storm they were trapped in.

His wish struck through him light a flash of lightning as though granted by a higher power.

Link spun around on the street and walked right back to the gate, retracing his steps, though he had no intention of returning to the Military Camp. He didn’t know where he intended to go, only that there was a white hot tether curled around his heart and soul dragging him back north, relentless and daunting. 

He walked on into the night, after the people of Hyrule settled in to sleep and doused the fires lighting his way. The darkness mattered little, because whatever drove Link’s feet, it wasn’t his sight. He walked past the Camp he’d left not hours before, keeping out of the nightwatch’s range. He didn’t know what he was doing, but he didn’t need interruptions, and the guard would just get in his way. No one entered the Lost Woods without a death wish, at least, not before tonight. The fog of the ancient forest was potent, laced with an old magic, but it parted for Link, yielding to a more powerful, primordial force. It was a familiar feeling, Link realized as he passed between two seas of swirling white. He could hear her chime as she led him into the warmth of the Korok Forest. He didn’t hesitate to walk up to the sword where it lay in stone. The massive tree before him began to shift, but Link paid it no mind as he took hold on the blade and pulled. 

The blade came free effortlessly, but Link tumbled back, overtaken by visions of death and destruction and ruin.

He’d heard whispers of a fabled apocalypse brewing beneath the land, but Link hadn’t listened too closely. They were only rumors, inconsequential when compared to the mind consuming drive to become a better warrior. Link had trained himself for years, mastering every weapon he could find, all in preparation to wield this sacred blade of evil’s bane.

But it wasn’t enough. It was nowhere near being enough to stop the horrors the voice in his blade spoke to him of. 

Link didn’t return home after that. He couldn’t, because he knew that if he faced his father and mother just once he would break down, and that wasn’t an option anymore. He needed every hour he could get, and with the Calamity looming over the horizon he couldn’t justify something so selfish. He had to protect the Princess, he had to protect all of Hyrule, and weak as he was now he didn’t stand a chance. With the blessing of the Great Deku Tree he remained in Korok Forest, learning skill after skill. He trained dawn till dusk, sleeping in the Deku Tree’s hollow and cooking meals from the mushrooms and herbs the Koroks gathered for him. 

He appreciated the little forest spirits, their antics helped cheer him when the weight of it all began to crush him.They were helpful in small but essential ways. They mended and refreshed his clothes, told him their stories and sang their songs, and when his hair grew long they found him a band to tie it with. He asked them to send messages to his family that he was still alive even though he had no idea if they were successful. They would listen to the whispers of Hyrule and tell him which monsters were causing the most trouble so Link could gain some real battle experience. Hestu helped him pack enough provisions to make a pilgrimage to Thyphlo ruins, where he stayed day and night until he had mastered fighting blind, and then he returned to the Korok Forest to fine tune his skills until his seventeenth birthday.

He could slow time, and move faster than an arrow in flight, but he still wasn’t satisfied when the Great Deku Tree spoke, his voice painfully similar to his father’s.

“You must leave now, Hero, go and face your destiny.”

Link didn’t look up from his swings, the sword humming in his hand, “I’m not ready.”

“No one ever is, child,” the tree said, sadness and affection melting into one another, “you must go nonetheless. The princess needs you to be her strength. The land of Hyrule calls for your aid. You must answer their call”

The sword whispered in agreement, so he sheathed the blade and said his goodbyes to the forest children before emerging from the fog for the first time in months. He stopped to look at the Military Training Camp, wondering if he should visit his father. He thought better of it, continuing on his way. Even if they allowed a deserter within the barracks, Link didn’t think he could hold himself together in the face of the family he had left behind.

Link’s father stood at attention behind King Rhoam’s throne. He was Captain of the King’s Guard, which meant he had to watch over the weekly constituency. The King sat on a throne while the Princess occupied a plush, though less ornate, chair placed to the right of her mother’s vacant seat. He’d received the promotion a year after his son went missing and he accepted, since he no longer had a reason to stay at the Military Training Camp.

It took him three months to realize his son had disappeared.

When his wife asked after their Link’s whereabouts upon his return to Hateno on leave the Captain had been annoyed, at first. It was easier to believe that his son was simply acting out, surely to return once he’d felt he made his point, then to face the truth. That flimsy belief didn’t hold out for very long, because deep in his heart he knew better. Link had made a mistake perhaps, but he’d never run from the consequences of his own actions. The tears of his distraught wife hammered home the heartbreaking reality. 

Whatever had befallen his son, he wouldn’t be coming home.

There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t regret how he’d sent his son off that final time. He should have told his son that he loved him, protocol be damned. 

There were countless reminders of his son that tore at him. Small things. The Captain would be on patrol and he’d see a doodle of a young man wielding a winged sword that the children of castle town must have scrawled on a wall. He opened a drawer to find a scrap of fabric from the tunic Link was wearing when he left the Training Camp, and he would return to his office to find honeyd apples and other treats his son loved the most. The universe seemed intent on haunting him, and he knew he deserved it. 

He was so proud of his boy, but his final act as a father was to push Link to tears.

A chill went down the Captain’s spine, and he snapped to attention, kicking himself for letting his mind wander when he was supposed to be protecting the most important people in the kingdom. His time as a soldier had tempered his instincts, and he could sense a quiet, oppressive strength that would make a Lynel cower spread throughout the room at the sound of light footsteps padding towards the center of the room. A quick glance around the room revealed that his subordinates felt the same, shifting from foot to foot and hand twitching towards their weapons.

“State your business, boy,” came the King’s command, loud but not enough to drown out the ferocity leaking out from the diminutive hylian standing in the center of the Sanctum, his feet planted on the royal family’s crest.

Link said not a word, only reaching over his shoulder to pull the Master Sword from its sheath. The guards moved to intercept him, but he drove the tip to the ground before they could come close. The Captain stepped forward, swallowing his fear while he drew his sword to face the intruder.

“Stop!”

 The Princess’ voice rang out with an uncharacteristic authority, bypassing the King himself to halt the guards’ assault. The adrenaline seeped from the Captain’s blood, and he took a good look at the swordsman. 

He knew those eyes, their tearstained image had been burned into his memory for years. His son was taller now, though still on the shorter side. His hair was longer, much longer and swept back in a ponytail. The scrap of fabric the Captain had taken to wearing around his wrist was a perfect match for the tunic his son wore. The Captain’s sword clattered to the ground. Link was alive.

His son was alive!

But as he looked at the man his son had become, he felt some of that joy slip away. It was still there, but it was tainted by the realization of just how much Link had changed. Children grow, the Captain was well aware of this fact, but his son wasn’t just grown, he was distant and restrained. He stood less like a man and more like a statue carved to scare off malevolent spirits and sinners.

“Go to him, Zelda,” the King’s voice barely registered as the Captain struggled to reconcile this stoic, intimidating figure with the giggling, infectiously bright child he had raised.

Link hadn’t expected to run into his father so soon, his resolve was beginning to crack at the sight of the hesitant, regretful joy on the Captain’s face. He clenched his fist around the Master Sword’s handle, suppressing the urge to throw himself in his father’s arms and never leave. But then Princess Zelda stood before him in all her gentle radiance, fate given flesh, and he held onto her. Her presence banished any doubt within him. Link could feel her slumbering power, pulsing softly with the rise and fall of her breath. She felt like sunshine, and looking at her reminded him that this is where he needed to be. She too had destiny woven into the very fabric of her soul, the only other one of his kind.

Link knelt on the stones before her, laying the magnificent blade he commanded at her feet.

“That’s it then,” the King said, and the Princess nodded.

“Yes, it’s the Sword that Seals the Darkness,” she said, voice shaking, “We’re running out of time.”

“Not necessarily,” Impa piped up, “the fortune teller stated that the wingcrest would appear on the Hero’s body when the time drew near, I see no such mark.”

The Captain made a choked, distressed sound, but no one paid him any mind. All focused on Link. His hand was indeed blank, but after a moment’s confusion the Hero lowered his head before his princess, brushing his hair to one side so she could see the back of his neck. Her fingers brushed across his skin, sending a warm shiver down his spine. Link found himself relaxing under her hand, the touch felt like sending water from a hot spring rushing down his back and soothing the restlessness writhing inside him.

“How long have you had this?” she whispered, her fingertips lingering on the crest. Link could feel them shake slightly and felt a surge of protectiveness course through him. 

“Two years, eight months and six days,” the Captain answered. 

The King turned to his Captain, nonplussed, “You know this young man?”

“He’s my son,” was his broken reply. King broke into a smile.

“Well what do you know? You must be very proud of your boy today!”

“I’ve always been proud of him, your Majesty,” the Captain replied, “Always.”

Link took a shuddering breath as he felt some of the guilt from the last three years melt away, but his face remained stoic.

“With such a son I imagine you’d have little choice in the matter,” the King laughed, deaf to the thick emotion in the other man’s voice. Link felt the Princess’ hand stiffen before she drew away, a chill replacing the gentle heat he was already starting to miss.

“Rise, Hero,” she commanded softly, and he obliged without a word, sheathing his sword and taking his place by her side, the disquiet that had clawed through him since childhood finally satisfied. The Captain followed the divine pair as they declared the constituency over and the arrival of the Hero of Hyrule was announced, hopelessly at a  loss.

The night was quiet when Link was headed to his assigned quarters below the Princess’ tower, much like the evening he was called to draw the Master Sword. He had put his hand on the door’s handle when he heard steps approach.

The Captain approached his son with caution, consumed with hatred for his own cowardly hesitation. After years of grief, his son stood before him yet again, and here he was, trying to dredge up the courage to give his boy the apology he deserved. He didn’t know how to approach Link like this. He wasn’t his son anymore, it seemed, but the Hero of Hyrule, the answer to the prayers of thousands. Here stood the Knight who Seals the Darkness, the paragon all aspired to the second they took up a sword.

Looking at his son felt like looking over the edge of a cliff, but it was his eyes that concerned him most. The blue eyes passed down from his mother lacked the good nature and mirth once found there, a trait shared with her. Instead there was an emptiness, a great void between the Captain and the Hero far too wide to cross.

No. Now that he looked closer, it wasn’t a void, it was a wall, and that broke the Captain’s heart all the more. Deep down he knew that he couldn’t reach his son like this, but he owed it to his family to try.

“I’m sorry,”

He’s not sure what he expected, he still hadn’t heard his son’s voice, and drawing Link in for a hug felt like crossing some unspoken but no less potent boundary that legendary blade had cut around the Hero. The Hero of Hyrule nodded in acknowledgment of his words, and the Captain didn’t feel like pushing further would be fair on his son, so he nodded his goodnight and walked further down the path with a heavy heart to write a letter to his wife, not sure what exactly to tell her happened to their little boy.

[perseusjackson-jasongrace]

Day 8: “Is this really the time for jokes?”

This may be the cutest thing I have ever written which is kind of rude to my jercy brain but whatever!

masterlist

I wrote a post for Percy's birthday that had a "headcanon" in it that inspired this fic

canon-compliant

Percy Jackson tucks a small box into his pants pockets, before adjusting the collar of his shirt and making sure the beaded necklace he never takes off still sits at the hollow of his throat, the trident directly in the middle. 

The unusually cool breeze that flutters through their villa brushes the back of his neck, instantly allowing him to breathe more easily. The bright blue ocean spreads out below them, calm and inviting. Like visiting his mother’s house. Or stepping into their apartment after a long day: his girlfriend curled up on the couch with her wire frame glasses propped on her nose, hunched over a book. It is comfort that he looks out on.

“Pers?” Annabeth calls from the bathroom.

“Yes Wisegirl?”

“Do you mind grabbing my heels by the bed, the blue ones.” Her voice bounces across the room.

He moves away from the mirror in the corner and gets onto his knees near the bed to find the shoes. Hidden between the side-table and the frame are baby-blue satin heels. Ribbons hang from the ankles and he knows they’ll look godly wrapped around her golden legs.

“Found them?”

He steps into the bathroom with a soft smile on his face, and hands them over. He takes her in and all the breath screams out of his lungs. His heart jumps in protest but he can’t bring himself to inhale. He’ll choke on her beauty.

She is wearing a soft, silk dress that hugs all the hard plains of her, and stops mid thigh. Her generally unruly curls are barely contained in a low bun, small strands already springing out and falling around her face. Her ears, usually decorated in her signature owl earrings, now adorn small jewels in her two lobe piercings. One he recognises as the earrings he got her for their fifth anniversary. Her helix piercing is still the same silver hoop they both bore after a drunken decision and a 24 hour tattoo shop. Percy’s mother was not impressed, but she wasn’t nearly as angry as the tattoo debacle.

“You ready?” His girlfriend squeezes his hand, looking at him with appreciation and love in her grey eyes.

“For anything.” He squeezes back. They had faced enough in their years that the words held more weight than most people could bear. But their shoulders had held the sky, and together they would hold the world.

“Where did you reserve a table?”

“At the restaurant we got to when we came here the first time. That one where you snorted your orange juice and we both laughed so hard the waiter thought we were dying.”

A giggle erupts from her and it lights up the room like neon sunshine. ‘I remember. Oh gods we were an absolute disaster.”

“I thought it was very cute of you to spurt orange juice through your nose and onto my white shirt.” He grins.

She shoves his shoulder and squeezes his waist. Her head brushes his cheeks, the heels giving her height on him she didn’t usually possess. He loves it. It makes it easy to kiss her. And he does. Long, and hard, and with enough affection to drown them both.

She pushes away eventually, “We’ll never get anywhere if we carry on like this. And i am not wasting another pretty dress.”

“Is it really a waste if i got to see you in it?” He pouts.

“Yes.” She raises a perfect eyebrow, giving him that look that says ‘i dare you to argue with me’, but there is so much light glittering in her eyes.

“Alright, alright. Let’s go Wisegirl.”

So they step out of their little slice of paradise for the week and onto the cobbled white streets of Athens. The night air is fresh, and full of ocean breezes, and pretty memories. He hopes to make a few more before they leave in two days.

The restaurant is not far from their hotel so the walk is short and filled with lingering touches and comfortable silences. Annabeth looks like a goddess as the moonlight strikes her dress at all angles and gives her an ethereal glow. The ribbons of her shoes wrap around her legs and make them look impossibly longer. He is sometimes struck so inexplicably by her beauty he feels like his ribs are splitting from his spine.

A waiter greets them and leads them to a table in the back where the lights are low and the candles are bright. The crimson tablecloths drape elegantly and Percy has to remind himself that he is not the undeserving little kid who wasn’t allowed to even look at things that cost more than fifty dollars. He is a grown adult, making his own money, deserving of all the things he has gotten and achieved in life.

As if sensing his hesitation, Annabeth gives his arm a gentle squeeze and then sits down at the chair he’s pulled out for her. One of the many lessons his mother insisted on drilling into him. Walk a partner to the door. Open the car door for them. Pull out their chair. He may be chaos in motion but he is respectful all the same. He is his mother’s child through and through.

“Can i get you something to drink?”

He looks at his girlfriend, smirking as they both recall the orange juice, and with one voice order the infamous drink. Along with lemon water and celebratory cocktails. Today they’ve been together seven years. Today he is twenty five years old. Today they are alive. Today they deserve to live.

He feels the little box in his pocket and he hides a grin. There are no nerves thrumming through his veins. He has never been more sure of anything in his life.

“I can’t wait to go to Onassis Stegi tomorrow,” Annabeth sighs, a faraway look in her eyes. “I hear they have the most beautiful exhibitions and their work is monumental.” He senses he’s lost her to architecture so he grabs her hand and gets lost with her.

“They’ve just completed a project to light up the Acropolis. Oh Pers it’s so beautiful we must make time to see it. I’ve been fascinated with it’s structural integrity ever since I was eight years old.”

He doesn’t hide his amazement at the fact that Annabeth was researching the structural integrity of anything at eight years old, but he doesn't interrupt her either. She has that look, cheeks flushed, grin wide, and hands animated that tells him she’s been dying to gush about this.

When he had first surprised her with the holiday she had burst into tears because there were so many things she hadn’t gotten to see the first time they had come to Athens. Whereas before they were tourists, with ancient roots in this beautiful city, now they are simply architect and boyfriend, social worker and girlfriend, Percy and Annabeth.

Their evening proceeds in a similar fashion: her gushing, him listening, trying to keep up; him joking, her laughing. When they drain the last of their cappuccinos and he feeds her the final bite of brownie, they are live wires dangling over cool water.

“Want to go for a walk along the beach?” He nods towards the walkway, where the ocean dances under the light of the moon.

She stares at the beach, a calculated look on her face. She glances at him and something crosses her face that he doesn’t have time to read. Even all these years later he is still figuring out the enigma that is Annabeth Chase.

“Lets.” She holds onto his shoulders, and unties the ribbons at her ankles.

Immediately she shrinks to her usual height at his shoulders , and he can’t help but place a kiss to the top of her golden head. She offers her shoes to him, before lopping her arm through his and tugging him along. They step onto the sand, which sinks underneath his feet and suddenly she is running towards the sea, curls flying, dress fluttering, and her hands rising to touch the sky.

“Come on Seaweed Brain!’ She yells. And he can see the happiness radiating of her.

Tugging off his own shoes, and socks, he races after his girlfriend, vaulting onto her back. With a grunt she wraps her arms around his legs and takes off at a sprint, feet splashing on the shore. He laughs into her hair and her reactionary smile lights his soul on fire. It is then that disaster strikes. 

Annabeth trips over a small rock, and they both go flying towards the sandy, shore. She lands on her stomach and he rolls right over her head and onto his back. They are a mess of limbs and wet sand and laughter like ringing bells.

“Guess you’re really falling for me,” He grins.

She wipes grains out of her eyes and pins her grey gaze on him. “Is this really the time for jokes, Seaweed Brain?”

“There’s always time for jokes Wisegirl.”

He hauls himself into a kneeling position, pretending to adjust his clothes, as she gets up and wipes off the fall from her now wet dress. The cream silk clings to her even more, and her hair is caked with ocean sand and tiny shells. She looks beautiful. 

He pulls the box out of his pocket and looks up at her. She is still distracted by her clothes and the water lapping at her bare feet.

“Wisegirl,” He says softly.

She looks to him, fire crackling in her eyes as if she’s preparing to frown at him for another joke. Her legs visibly shake at the sight before her.

“I have loved you since the day you stood over me and told me i drool in my sleep.” He smiles, and it echoes hers. “I will love you until we’re old and more grey-” Their eyes flick to the twin streaks in their hair. “And i get to tell you you drool in your sleep.” 

She rolls her eyes but there is mirth dancing on her chest.

“You are my best friend, the greatest warrior i have ever fought beside, and the only person that can choke on orange juice at the same restaurant three years apart.” Their laughter catches in their throat. “Would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”

“Only if i get to say something first.” She smiles delicately. He nods. She continues, ‘I have heard sirens tell me my deepest desires, I have rebuilt Olympus, i have found the Athena Parthenos and held up the sky. We have even gone to Tartarus together. But my greatest adventure, and my most beloved pride, has been standing by your side.”

There are tears in both of their eyes; the drops land in the ocean and find their way home.

“Yes Perseus Jackson, I will marry you.” She leans down, cups his cheeks, and kisses him like time is merciless. “Over and over again. I will marry you and fight by you and love you, over again.”

“I love you Wisegirl.” He slips the sapphire ring onto her finger.

“I love you Seaweed Brain.” Annabeth Chase kisses him again. “Together?”

“Together.” Percy Jackson smiles. And their next adventure begins.

----------------------------------------------------------

Tags:

@nishlicious-01​

@leydiangelo​

@spoopylucy​

[andmaybegayer]

Last Monday of the Week: 2021-03-01

First Monday of the Month. My boss just quit at work which means I'm now the only formally trained engineer left who has any particular specialization in embedded systems. This week is going to be a doozy.

I also wrote a Very Long set of media updates because I’ve been consuming some stuff that makes me think a lot. Never a good sign.

Listening: I spent all of Saturday playing Minecraft after talking with some friends about it during the week on IRC. Practicing what I preach with regards to my Large Biome Supermacy policy, which does involve a lot of walking. Hence, I started catching up on The Adventure Zone: Graduation again, I'm like ten episodes behind.

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/adventure-zone/the-adventure-zone-graduation-ep-32-by-a-haircut/

I don't really enjoy Travis' DM'ing style. It's very loose and he has a tendency to let players run wild without much structure which is a tricky thing to handle. He does a lot of worldbuilding and character design but doesn't seem to plan much in the way of arcs. That pays off sometimes (returning to the school to realize they broke a promise they made a few sessions earlier and had to deal with consequences, for example) and when it does, it’s really good, but it's finnicky. I know DM's who can do that, but, well, actually I know One Single DM who can do that well and she's absurdly smart.

Reading: Still on Worm, I just got past chapter 8 or so now. It lives in my phone browser so I've mostly been reading it whenever I get some spare time, which is a good sign. If a book doesn't grab me I need to really settle down in a quiet space to avoid getting distracted, but I can read Worm while someone else is on the phone in the same room.

It is a story with a lot of very well-conveyed feelings and events. It's very easy to imagine yourself in it. Characters actually act like they care about what they're doing, I feel like writing this took a lot of care to keep everyone on model.

There's also a certain care given to the superpowers that you'd usually only see in forum posts arguing about an actual superhero story. Everyone always likes to argue about how far you can push a superpower: can you use teleporting to fly? What prevents a speedster from catching fire in the air? Where does the energy for a  pyrokinetic ability come from? Worm takes these and runs with them as a way to make absolutely any fight become a series of gambits relying on whether a power can or cannot be used to perform some high-stakes trick.

The world certainly has some underpinning contrivances to explain why no one gets killed very often but I've always considered nitpicking the base contrivances of a setting silly, because that's precisely what they are: contrived, in order to allow the rest of the story to flow from there. Like arguing about Omega’s abilities in the famous thought experi-*I am dragged off stage by the ratblr police for making a by now extremely stale joke*

Watching: I came and edited this section in like an hour before this posts because I keep on forgetting to put it in. I don’t really like watching TV and with my parents stuck at home in Pandemic Times it’s how they pass the time.

I did finish S3 of the Good Place. It’s very funny. I’m glad I’m watching it and I’m going to have to go find S4 because ZA Netflix doesn’t have it for whatever reason. It feels a little like it was written by Phillip Pullman if Phillip Pullman was a comedy TV writer.

I also really enjoyed the PBS Spacetime video about how time causes gravity. Love when an explanation of concepts is good enough that you drawn the conclusion on your own.

Playing: Visual Novel Hell plus Minecraft.

I spent approximately seven hours in Minecraft over two days. I tend to hop in and out of games for 1-2 hours at a time but there's a handful that can suck me in for an entire day. Minecraft, Warframe, Horizon Zero Dawn, Night in the Woods. Bastion, to a lesser extent. I end up avoiding them because I don't like loosing entire days, but I wasn't really planning on doing anything this weekend anyways.

Minecraft was mostly a long-ass trek to find a saddle, because as previously mentioned, I enjoy playing it with Large Biomes for the sense of scale.

I also completed Act 3 of Psycholonials and Eliza.

Psycholonials is odd. It is doing the thing that Hussie does where it dances around what's ostensibly the story to carry out the actual story. You get used to the trope after your first encounter but it still makes you wonder when the other shoe will drop, and of course, there's no reason it ever has to. The story may remain in suspended animation behind the every growing mess of narrative red tape tying the B-plot together.

Stories about Social Media have no well established norms. I think I might pick up Feed by M. T. Anderson and also perhaps Hank Green's books sometime. See what context they set that in.

Eliza is frustrating to me. It's a game for programmers, by programmers, about programmers. I'm friends with a lot of Capital P Programmers, the types who go to university and get sniped for developer positions at Seattle or Silicon Valley tech companies and who make great and terrible things and then warn you about the deep problems that underpin the slowly rolling ball of venture capital and bloated technology that is the tech industry. But at the same time, it makes me feel like I've burnt out on that conceptually before I even went in. It’s a whole other world that I’m familiar with but very distant from. In fact, that’s kinda how I feel about Psycholonials too. I’m familiar with the social media rat race but I also don’t go there. Parallels!

My cousins (who are halfway to Capital P Programmers, only so much you can do halfway around the world from silicon valley) warned me not to go into CS, because it would bore me, and that's a non-trivial part of why I'm in Engineering. They gave the same advice about Biology and Physics, without that I may have ended up in Microbiology. it’s not my domain, but because of how Engineering is going, you end up a lot closer to programmers than you think. I found out the other day that most of the software developers on my team have no formal tertiary qualifications, which is accepted in CS but of course, right out when it comes to engineering. It’s a whole other world that I kinda expected to skip around. I might go into this another time, since this post is already getting long.

Making: I haven’t done any engineering scicomm posts on here in a while so I started a few blank drafts and finally got one off the ground. With some luck I’ll have that ready this week. What’s it about? Not saying! It might change!

I’ve been doing layout for a custom keyboard, I need to call a laser cutting place and find out what their kerf requirements are so I can adjust the path accordingly. Wouldn’t do to burn a couple hundred rand on an oversized part, I’m paying for this, not my employer like the other times I’ve done laser cutting, so I’m probably not going to spring for getting one of their designers to check my design. At some point I should CAD up a chassis, but at the same time I might just buy some wood and go ham with a router once I get the plates cut.

Computers Slot: I got WeeChat set up properly on my desktop, which technically was just a matter of getting my SSH keys moved over. It’s taking me forever to move in to Cinnabar, in part because Stibnite lost her boot partition and I haven’t bothered to fix it.

So here’s a pitch for WeeChat as a good quality Terminal UI IRC Client. Many of my closest friends live there and it has a good set of tools to help me keep in touch.

WeeChat is very configurable but with perfectly sane defaults, I didn’t configure it for years. The UI is smarter and less arcane than something like irssi, and if you enable mouse support it can be downright modern. Running it remotely like this limits some features but as long as you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops to do filesharing, IRC is really great like this.

One of the big ones is the ability to do that double-pane thing, I can keep an eye on two channels at once (really as many as I can cram on my screen, but usually two) which is great when you want to browse channels while talking in your home channel.

It also has a good array of remote access tools, from what I’m running up there, just weechat running on my server inside tmux connected over mosh for low-latency SSH, to weechat-relay, a relay protocol built in to weechat. At the moment relay only supports android phones and the glowingbear web client, but I’ve never really looked around since both of those cover all my needs. Easily one of the best ways to get IRC on a modern mobile device, barring maybe IRCCloud.

[hypnoticwinter]

Down the Rabbit Hole part 1

It's five in the afternoon just outside of Corpus Christi and I and my poor old Elantra with the broken AC are stuck in a traffic jam because some dickhead decided he wanted to cut across five lanes of traffic and got mangled by a semi truck. And then the jam’s compounded by all of the damn lookie-looes slowing down to a crawl as they squirm through the two lanes still open, the metaphorical arteries of the gigantic beast that is the United States highway system, trying to get a good look at something gory on the way home.

I'm slowly melting into my seat, barely able to keep my eyes open. I keep glancing over at the water bottle I'd set snugly into the passenger seat, my cupholders being full with spare change and old receipts and little mini bottles of hand sanitizer, but just the way the sun's reflecting off of it makes me sick thinking about how warm the water would be by now.

I'm a few cars back from the wreck now. A police officer, looking sweaty and tired, steps out into the road, stopping traffic to let a couple of paramedics cross. A loud radio ad is playing in the car next to me and I look over. The guy in it looks about as done with this as I feel. I smile to myself, go back to watching the wreck.

The paramedics have stopped now and are talking to the policeman in the middle of the road. He looks annoyed, gestures at the cars ahead of him. One of the paramedics shakes his head and points back towards one of the cars.

The radio ad ends and the throbbing beat of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire" comes on and I find myself singing along under my breath without even thinking about it.

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray

South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio...

Another paramedic joins the group in the middle of the highway and then they hustle over to the wreck. The police officer gestures and we move fractionally forwards, then stop again. The asshole in the giant pickup truck ahead of me has decided to stop and watch them peel the door off the crushed sedan like the scab off a fresh cut. I can see something pink and fleshy and hurt-looking inside, where the driver's seat ought to have been, and I look away quickly.

We didn't start the fire

It was always burning since the world's been turning...

I end up meeting the eyes of the guy in the car next to me. He's bobbing his head along to Billy Joel and gives me a somewhat sheepish, embarrassed look. He's balding, looks about forty. A tired, haggard, sweaty face. I roll my eyes and smile at him and he smiles back. Someone behind me honks and I twist backwards and give him the finger, really slam it at him against the dirty rear window. We're rolling forwards so slowly that it's absurd to even honk, just people blowing off steam. I suppose on some level it's equally absurd to give him the finger for it, but whatever.

Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball

ARPANET, Free Tibet, what's in Mystery Flesh Pit?

Buddy Holly, Ben Hur, space monkey, Mafia

Hula hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go...

Wait. What?

Now that we're past the wreck the highway widens out. More lanes open and the guy next to me merges over to the left. Billy Joel's voice disappears into engine noises and honks and the sound of the wind whipping past my open windows, but I still keep thinking about the lyrics I had just mouthed along to.

What the hell is a Mystery Flesh Pit?

I glance over at the phone sitting in its holster on the dash but something about the way the car I’d just past had crunched in on itself like a discarded candy wrapper makes me think better of it. I shift a lane or two to the right, get in line for my exit, and then I'm off the freeway. I make every light on the way to my apartment, all four of them, and it's just enough time that I forget about the line in the song. I jump into the shower and let the cold water run over me for fifteen minutes, which turns into thirty, which turns into forty-five, which turns into an hour.

When I get out I'm shivering but the warm Texas air blowing through my open window wraps me up like a warm hug, and I shrug into a flannel shirt, leave it unbuttoned. I put my cigarette out, leave it crumpled in the ashtray, stifle my coughs. I’m still not used to smoking this much. I eye the half-empty pack laying on the table but I let it alone.

The letter I received yesterday is on the kitchen table where I'd dropped it. The envelope is still on the floor somewhere. I think about going back and reading it again, or going and finding the envelope and throwing it away, but I don't want to. There wouldn’t be a point.

My phone buzzes; I see the name of the contact and let it ring. I don’t want to talk to him.

Outside, down in the courtyard, an old man is taking his dog for a walk. There is a vast darkened array of clouds closing in from the east and it already smells like rain, the wind is carrying it. I might take a walk too, later tonight.

I go back to the dresser and take my shirt off, slip a bra on, and then put the shirt back on. I almost light another cigarette, then I stop myself.

What the hell is Mystery Flesh Pit?

I had almost forgotten. Almost, but not quite. Billy Joel got stuck in my head and while I'd been puttering I'd hummed along until I got to that verse.

I shake my head and go get my laptop, type it into google half-expecting to find a porn site. A few travelogue type posts, a Wikipedia page...I click on that one and get hit with a redirect. Permian Basin Superorganism Containment Area? ("Mystery Flesh Pit" redirects here. For the defunct U.S. National Park, see...)

I read the page, and then I stop. The growing sense of unease I felt while I devoured the Wikipedia article is now almost too much for me to handle.

This can't possibly be real. This has to be a prank or something, some kind of internet joke gone out of control. I click on the link to the National Park and see pictures, too many and too high quality to be faked. It's like something out of a Michael Crichton novel but it's real. It has to be.

The Permian Basin Superorganism (Immanis Collosseus), I read, is a subterranean organism unique to modern biology, being the sole occupant of the Phylum Immanemqa. The organism was discovered by a pilot well drilling crew in 1973; later efforts were made to expose more of the organism through drilling and surface mining explosives. The Permian Basin Superorganism is notable for its immense size, being the largest living animal on the planet, its equally immense age, and for the degree and sophistication of human exploitation concerning the animal, culminating in the opening of a National Park largely within the creature’s body, allowing visitors to descend within the Permian Basin Superorganism and…

I read about gullets and bones and digestion, about an ancient animal of some kind living baked into the stone and earth outside of Gumption, Texas. I read about the sheer enormity of it, I read about how a mining company turned it into a tourist attraction, splitting its throat wide open with metal retaining walls and letting people ride an elevator a thousand feet down into its insides. I read about ballast, some kind of secretion exuded by the creature that acts as a kind of panacea, healing afflictions untouchable by conventional medicine. They made great baths out of the glands that produced it, let people bathe in its diluted aphrodisiac waters. I read, finally, about the 2007 disaster that closed the park, when a pump failed to activate and drowned the thing, making it wake up – god, wake up? – and swallow almost seven hundred people, making it spew caustic vomit so high into the air that there are still pockets of it being found here and there nearly a hundred miles away, burning into the ground and poisoning water tables. And the way they managed to get it to go back to sleep is classified by the US Government. Did they nuke it? Christ, Gumption is only...okay, well, it's about five hundred miles away, so I guess I'm a little less concerned, but, god, this happened in the same state as me and this is only the first time I'm hearing about it. July Fourth, 2007...

I realize after a moment, with a strange little knot in my stomach, that actually, I did hear about it. I wasn't in the state in 2007. It was four years ago, I'd just gotten out of school and I was still in Oklahoma, but I remember my parents telling me about an earthquake at midnight that they'd felt, that woke them up, knocked a couple of things over. I had never known...

I feel a little like I've just woken up and gone to the bathroom and looked outside and all of a sudden the sky is a bright green, and everybody I ask about it just looks at me really strangely and says that it's always been green.

I google my way all over the internet, looking at photos people have taken decades ago on their family trips, hosted on filesharing sites or on ancient GeoCities-era pages. I see smiling families, people in hiking gear, people swimming inside biological hot springs, people digging pitons into great sheer walls of flesh, not minding the blood that gushes out. I see a shaky video someone's taken of their television, of CNN back on the Fourth of July, 2007, I see a vast bloody pit, carved into the great flat nothing of central Texas.

I feel like my head is spinning. I get up, get away from the computer, grab another cigarette and smoke it slowly, standing on the balcony, looking out over the sprawling cityscape in the general direction of Gumption, Texas, or at least where I think it should be. If north is that way, then…

Alright. It's real. There's enough evidence, photographs, videos, spread across so many different web sites that it would be impossible to fake. I look up an old rating list of National Parks, making sure that it's from around 2004 or so, and find Mystery Flesh Pit near the bottom. The tiny two-sentence blurb describes it as "strange," "horrifying," and "easily skippable," so I guess that could also explain why I had never heard of it.

And, of course, the ballast. Some kind of miracle liquid. I read on Wikipedia that they’d tried to synthesize it after July 4th, after the supplies had been cut off, but no matter how molecularly perfect they could make the compound it was so much drossy bathwater, without the power to cure even a hangnail. It has to come straight from the source for it to be any good - who knows why.

There is a slow, anxious curl unwinding in my stomach, and for a moment, I fear the results it may lead me to.

I look at the map I'd opened in another tab again; Gumption, Texas; a tiny little county named after a tiny little town, or so I've heard. Now that I’m thinking about it, I vaguely remember passing through Gumption once, very briefly, during a family road trip back when I was six, but I don't remember much more than that. The only reason I even recognize the name of the town is because at the time I thought it was a funny name and I kept saying it to myself after I'd asked my mom what the word on the sign meant when we drove into town. Welcome to Gumption. Did it have more, perhaps? “Home of the Mystery Flesh Pit?” I don't remember visiting the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, that's for sure. I think that would have stuck with little six-year-old me.

I eye the scale on the map, use my fingers to estimate the distance from Corpus Christi to Gumption.

It'd be a solid day of driving, seven or eight hours on the road, not counting breaks for food, sleep, restroom. I grimace at the computer screen, then zoom the map out. Lubbock, though...I could take a plane to Lubbock. That'd be, what, like two hours? Maybe? And then rent a car, drive down to Gumption...

I swallow, then laugh at myself. Why bother? I think. Why bother driving down to look at some fences and security guards? It's closed off, the Wikipedia page said, nobody in or out, just some scientists and a sedative plant. The fun stopped when it woke up, back in ‘07.

Flights are cheap. Ninety-nine dollars, ninety-five dollars. I start to type in the address to check my bank balance, then stop, fold the computer closed. I want a cigarette.

On my way out to the window my foot brushes against the envelope I'd left discarded on the floor and again I think of picking it up and putting it away, and again I leave it there. It doesn't really matter.

It'd be a horrible waste of money, probably. And I doubt I'd find anything really meaningful. Even if, you know, I use the excuse of going and looking around so I could write a story on it or something, I don't know if Jim, my editor, would really care that much. From what it seems, Mystery Flesh Pit is ancient history.

I take another look at the sheet of paper sitting on the table, curled over on itself like a dead spider. Fuck it, I think, then repeat myself out loud. I stub out the cigarette and go retrieve my cell phone, look up the phone number for American Airlines out of Corpus Christi airport. Fifteen minutes on hold later I am the proud owner of one business class ticket to Lubbock, Texas, leaving in four hours out of gate nine. I hang up the call and say "fuck it" aloud again because it makes me feel a little better, and then I go pack.

The plane ride is okay. Security was a bear and a half but it always is. I realized from the pleasant-unnerving swooping sensation in my stomach when we took off that it had been long enough since the last time I'd been on a plane that I had forgotten what it feels like. I was lucky to grab a window seat next to a little kid and his father; they didn't bother me as much as I'd expected. Once he turned to me to show me something on the handheld video game he was playing but his father quickly intercepted him and apologized to me; I was a little put out, honestly, I would have wanted to look at it. I'd forgotten to stick a book in my carry-on so I had been stuck staring out the window, and about a half hour in the plane had angled in such a way that the setting sun was glaring me right in the face and daring me to enjoy the scenery, so I did the most sensible thing I could and closed the shutter and tried to fall asleep. I think I managed to do so about fifteen minutes before we landed, which lead to me letting out a rather embarrassing yelp when the landing jolted me awake. The kid and his dad looked at me and I blushed, mentally kicking myself for blushing, but I smiled at them and shrugged and said that I'd fallen asleep and we had a laugh about it.

Lubbock is alright, I guess, if you don’t look at it too closely or stay too long. I rent a car at the airport and drive into town, and consider driving to Gumption that night, but I decide after some deliberation that it'll be better to do a little reconnaissance here first, if I really am going to make a story out of this. Am I? I've been treating that as my excuse so far and yeah, I brought my voice recorder and my camcorder and my DSLR and plenty of memory cards and extra batteries...but I guess I hadn't really taken it seriously.

The city's very alive at night, more so, it seems to me, than Corpus Christi, but I also don't get out very much back home, so maybe my perception is skewed. Everywhere I look there are clubs and shows and bars and things, and then, as I pass into the seedier areas, huddled groups of people spotted here and there. I imagine they’re eying me as I drive past and I tamp down the little curl of fear rising in my stomach.

I find a Motel 6 and then I try to find a Waffle House, but seemingly there aren’t any in Lubbock. I settle for someplace called The Pancake House, and then in a couple of hours I feel better, and then a couple of hours after that I finally manage to fall asleep.

I wake up having slept like the dead. I think about going someplace for breakfast but think better of it after I sit up too quickly and my stomach gives an uneasy lurch in protest. I get dressed leisurely – it is my weekend, after all. For a moment I even manage to fantasize that I'll be able to catch a flight home in time to make it to work on Monday but then I laugh at myself, which I seem to be doing quite a lot of lately.

Barely a hundred miles away, Mystery Flesh Pit is waiting for me. I don't know what I'll find there – personally, I feel rather certain it'll be a hell of a let-down – but it feels nice to have a purpose for once, to feel as though my life is being put to some kind of use other than to see how many cigarettes I can smoke in a single day and still retain some dignity.

It's nice to not have to think.

I take a breath and throw some clothes on and get started on the hard part.

 * * *

 The guy mopping the floor at the bus stop:

"Excuse me, sir? Do you know anything about the Mystery Flesh Pit Disaster of 2007?"

"The what?"

 Businessman on the street, approached while tying his shoes:

"Excuse me, sir? I'm doing some research on the Mystery Flesh Pit disast –"

"I'm sorry, lady, I don't have any money."

 Lady at the counter of the pharmacy:

"Excuse me, ma'am? I'm trying to find out some information on the Mystery Flesh Pit, do you have a moment to talk about it?"

"Sure, honey, but I'm afraid I don't know that much about it. That was back in, what, 2003? 2004?"

"2007, actually. Did you ever happen to visit while the park was still operating?"

 "It was a park? I just remember something about some sort of tunnel collapse."

"Right. Thanks for your time."

 Guy at the 7-11, asked while filling up the tank on my car next to him:

"Hey, dude, you know anything about the Mystery Flesh Pit?"

"Went there once when I was a kid. Pretty cool. Why?"

"I'm a reporter, doing a story on it. You remember the disaster that closed it down?"

"It's closed now? That's lame. What happened?"

"Thing woke up and ate everybody."

"For real?"

"Yeah. I've been asking around, like nobody's heard about it. Kind of surprising."

He taps his finger to his chin. "You know," he says thoughtfully, "it has been like five years since then."

"Four years."

"Even so. People don't have any kind of attention span any more."

His pump clicks off and so does our conversation.

 Yeah, alright, maybe it isn't a very representative group, but it seems like nobody cares. Is that reasonable? Well...seven hundred plus people died, most in pretty gruesome ways, according to Wikipedia. Then there were the, god, the thousand or ten-thousand-plus people affected by the vomit and ejecta scattered hundreds of miles away. I’m not sure. You'd expect that apathy from the rest of the nation, maybe, I don't know why somebody in Arkansas or Kentucky or Illinois or wherever would give a fuck if they didn't personally know somebody who was affected, but here? Just a hundred miles from the place or so?

Maybe they did a really good job of cleaning up the cities, maybe it's only the little towns and places where the legacy of it has really clung on. I know there has to be a story, somebody who was there, somebody who saw it. That jerky camcorder video of CNN is a start, but something real, something visceral, in the words of a survivor...

That was the one thing I didn’t find much of. No memoirs, no autobiographies, just a few mentions here and there but nothing like a back-to-front story of what that night was like. That is what I’m really after.

I put my cigarette out in one of those trashcan-cum-ashtrays that dot the corners of every city I've ever been to, Lubbock no exception. I get in the rental car and again forget that it has crank windows instead of buttons. "To the library, and step on it," I giggle to myself as I pull out into traffic. I feel a little lightheaded and I remember that I never bothered to eat anything.

Perusal of the newspaper archives at the Mahon Public Library downtown confirmed what I'd already assumed – that there was no big government coverup, there was no conspiracy of that sort. The disaster at the Mystery Flesh Pit was capital-letter Very Big News for about a month, back in 2007, at least in the area. The stories towards the end of the month cast a little light on why it didn't last, though – it wasn't ongoing, it was just sort of a one-and-done thing. Yeah, finding the caustic vomit everywhere kicked up another stink a week or so later but the Powers That Be seemed to get that under control fairly quickly, at least in more populated areas. After that there were grumblings about disclosure and fault and blame and all that, and quite a few articles about Anodyne Mining or whoever going bankrupt but by the end of the month, aside from a few overly sentimental memorial pieces dedicated to delicately sidestepping the exact causes of death of the people they were memorializing, the news had moved on.

A librarian pokes around the corner with a cart and smiles at me; I smile back at her. She's young, pretty, long skirt, dark eyes. I scoot forward so she can pass behind me. I read on for a while, the faint swish of her skirt and the slim sliding sound of books going back into shelves registering dimly and pleasantly in the back of my mind. I put the paper down and stretch a little, and then I notice she's glancing over at me. I smile at her again.

"Doing some research?" she asks, and I nod.

"Yes," I say. "I'm a reporter for a paper in Corpus Christi and I'm doing a story on the Mystery Flesh Pit. Have you heard of it?"

As soon as the words pass my lips there's something dark and guarded lurking in her eyes that makes me perk my ears up. She waits a couple of seconds before she answers, clearly thinking of what to say, of how much to tell me. I mention, after a moment, that I'm surprised that so few people here in Lubbock seem to really remember it or care about it, and she nods, leans up against her cart.

"It was a big deal for a while," she says, gesturing to the stack of papers next to me, "but after that I guess it just wasn't exciting any more. The only people who really remember it are out in all the small towns where it really affected them. Here, in Lubbock, they just had vans working overtime to clean everything up and then it was easy to forget about. Every now and then I hear about them finding another pile of that vomit somewhere just...festering away out there in the desert."

"Were you there?"

"No," she says, "but my brother was."

"I'm sorry," I tell her. I want to reach out and touch her or something but I don't know if she'd appreciate it, so instead I keep my sympathy subdued. "Is he - ?"

"No, no," she says quickly, "he's alright. He was a park ranger there, he just…happened to be working that night. He, ah...it really fucked him up for a while," she says finally, giving me a grimace. "We haven't talked in a long time."

"I'm sorry," I say again. "That must have been hard, for both of you."

"Yeah," she says, cutting her glance downwards. "He always said some strange things about the disaster, real Alex Jones type stuff. But he just couldn't, you know, move on at all. We got in a big fight about it and, well, that was that."

I wonder what to say for a moment before I cross my legs, set the newspapers aside. "You must have gone there, then, while it was still operating."

"Yes, plenty of times."

"What was it like?"

She laughs softly. "God, that's such a...like, where do I even begin, you know? Have you been to many other National Parks?"

"A few," I tell her. "Not as many as I'd have liked. Crater Lake, Devil's Tower, Badlands, Petrified Forest..."

She laughs. "Real Midwest girl, aren't you?"

"Hey, Crater Lake is in Oregon, that's not the Midwest."

"I wasn't knocking it. Um. Well, it wasn't like any other park you've ever been to, I can guarantee that. It was like, you drive up to it and you park and you walk up these stairs to get to the main observatory building, and you get in there and you look down and there's just...skin. In a hole in the ground. It was extremely disconcerting. From that distance it didn't look real, it looked like it was plasticine or something, like it was a model. And there was something...I don't know, kind of lewd about it?"

"Lewd?"

"Yeah. The way they were spreading it open with these giant metal, like, flanges or whatever, and how it was all raw and pink around the opening...Freud would have had a field day with it. Made you feel like you were watching a gynecological exam."

"I still kind of can't believe they found this thing and thought opening a theme park was the best thing to do with it."

"It was the 70s, I guess." she shrugs. "Place is old, you know. Anyway, once you actually got down into it, it was...it was an experience. You rode this giant elevator down and they had a massive visitor center something like 1200 feet down inside the thing's throat, and you could look out the windows and see all this flesh outside. It was honestly like something out of a movie, it was so surreal. I went there a bunch of times with my brother cause he got an employee discount and I could get in for five dollars and I saw at least ten people have panic attacks and hyperventilate."

I think about my next question for a moment. "Would you say overall that it was, you know, a negative thing? Like, the park on the whole."

"No, absolutely not."

"Why's that?"

She licks her lips. "I think that it's really easy to forget how small we are. We've done all these great things, we've built civilizations, we've put people on the moon, we're exploring the bottom of the ocean, I think humanity in general likes to think that we have everything figured out." She shrugs. "The Mystery Flesh Pit is a really good reminder that we know basically nothing. I mean, they were studying it but they knew practically nothing about it, not how big it was, not whether there were more creatures like it elsewhere in the world, not where it came from, not even if it was awake or if it could move or what the thing looked like as a whole. I think what they ended up doing with it was stupid as hell, but as far as the experience of actually going down inside of it and walking around on a trail and, I don't know, watching macrobacteria roll past outside the fence or seeing something really weird moving around down there and seeing the park ranger guiding you not know what it is either, that's an experience I genuinely wish everybody got to have. It'll change your life."

"How did it change yours?"

She laughs. "Besides, you know, everything with the disaster and my brother and all that shit? Just going down there really made me realize who I was."

"How, exactly?"

She shakes her head. "Like I said, I figured out just how small I was and how – I don't know, how insignificant we really are. These days whenever I get worried or bothered or I stress out over something I think about standing there in the elevator looking up through the glass ceiling and watching the light get smaller and dimmer, like I was falling into a bottomless pit, and I find peace."

"Seems like an odd way to find peace."

"Different strokes, right? Anyway. I really ought to put these books away. Was there anything else you wanted to know?"

I think about it for a moment, then shrug. "I'm planning on heading down to Gumption tomorrow, aside from the pit itself is there anything else I ought to check out?"

She lets out a low whistle. "I think you're going to be very disappointed. They don't let anybody go to the Pit any more, it's all sealed off, has been for years. And Gumption, well...that town has seen better days. I'll give you a tip, though, even though maybe I shouldn't. Look for my brother there, I know he still lives in town. I can't give you his number or his address, unfortunately, because I don't have them any more, but I know for a fact that he works at the only gas station in town, a 7/11, so ask around there and you'll be able to find him. His name's Peter; I'd tell you to tell him I sent you but I kind of get the feeling that might not get you very far."

I thank her for the tip and set the newspapers aside. If I head out tonight I might be able to get some good shots of the fence around Mystery Flesh Pit. I think of it, of the sunset, then discard the thought. Forget it. I'll need a whole day to really dig into it, I think. And more's the better. I have plenty of batteries, I have plenty of storage. Easy girl, there's no rush. Assuming they let me just walk up and start filming, but if I really hype myself up I can half-believe I could talk my way into at least getting some shots of the fence, at the very least.

"Oh, and one last thing."

I blink, look back up at her. She has a faint smile on her face, probably from watching me zone out, that fades quickly. "Don't stay in Gumption too long."

 * * *

 The drive down to Gumption is dusty and hot and boring. I get about halfway before I realize I'm not driving my poor old Hyundai, I'm driving a rental car, and that it has a functional air conditioner, and then I feel very silly, for though the wind certainly felt nice on the whole I would have much rather just rolled the windows up and sat in the cool air. I see a grand total of four other cars, all coming from Gumption, on the two-hour drive. It's mostly a straight shot but my phone tells me to take a county road that turns into just a dirt track towards the end that, after a little meandering, plops me out onto a back street of Gumption, Texas.

The research I'd done suggests that at one point Gumption had been a bustling little town, fuelled by the Pit’s tourist draw, and initially its size would indicate that it still is. But as I drove slowly through the empty streets, the general air of disrepair and decay became more and more apparent. I see a couple abandoned houses, and not the foreclosed sort with realtor's signs out front, but straight-up shattered-glass, boarded-windows, holes-in-the-roofs abandoned. The ones that weren't just looked sad, like no one was taking care of them properly. The cars parked on the street are all at least five or six years old, as best as I can tell. I see only two people out and about while I'm driving around at 15 miles an hour, getting some video footage, cruising down the middle of the road, eyes flicking between the empty street ahead and the screen on my camera. One, a youngish-looking black guy, keeps his head down and doesn't look at me, and the other, an old man in a wifebeater mowing his lawn, stares at me all the way down the street, until I turn the corner and pull onto the main road.

There's the 7/11. I'm tempted to head to it right away but I refrain, look for a diner or something, but the ones around look about as welcoming as the rest of the place. There's a McDonald's but it's so small it doesn't even have a drive-through, which is something I'd never seen before. There's a drug store and a liquor store and one of those tiny little storefront churches, something something Starry Wisdom. I think about going to McDonald's but instead I pull a u-turn and head back to the gas station. The clerk, a haggard-looking woman, doesn't look up from her magazine when I walk in. I wander to the back and grab a Coke out of the fridge unit. The credit-card reader is broken so I have to dig around in my wallet and find some bills. The entire exchange continues without any speech at all until I work up my nerve and lick my lips and ask her if there's a hotel around here somewhere.

She looks at me for a few moments and then jerks her head towards the road. Her voice sounds like a frog croaking. "There's a motel down the road a ways. When you pull out take a left and turn at Third street."

"Thanks."

"No problem."

"By the way."

"Yeah?"

"Can you tell me when Peter works?"

I had to think for a moment to remember his name. I have it written down in a notebook but it's out in the car. Her eyes flash a little more lively. "Who's asking?"

I think of what to say for a moment before I shrug. "A friend."

For a moment I think she's going to tell me to fuck off, but something in my face must have convinced her. "He's off today. Come in tomorrow at eight or nine at night, he'll be here. He works graveyard most days."

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

I walk out the door and the heat hits me like a thrown punch. I blow a breath out and lean up against the rough cinderblock edge of the gas station building and drink my Coke.

It's four in the afternoon and it'll take me maybe half an hour to drive down to the Mystery Flesh Pit. It'll be cooler, too, in the evening, and if this town is any indication I doubt there'll be much of a line. I wonder where the people who work there live; maybe they have a dormitory there or something. Clearly they don't live here. Maybe there's some little patch of suburbs somewhere, behind those hills over there, perhaps, where all the people are, but it's four in the afternoon and I've seen a grand total of three other cars driving around, so maybe not.

The guy at the motel gives me a nicer greeting than the lady at the 7-11 did, although not by much; at least I get a few dirty molars of a smile out of him as he hands me the key to my room. I had to wake him up from his nap at the front desk in order to get the room to begin with, and though I tried to do so as gently as I could he still started and almost fell out of his chair.

"Here for the Pit?" he asks as I'm about to leave, and I turn back, glance at him.

"Yeah," I say after a moment. "Just going to see what's there now."

"You're heading over now?"

"Yes."

"Huh," he grunts after a moment. "Most of you folks don't do that 'till dark."

I frown. "Us folks?"

"You know, you..." his eyes roam over my face and his mouth drops open very slightly. "Oh," he says heavily. "Never mind."

"What?"

"Nothing, ma'am. Now if you'll excuse me –"

"Wait, hang on –"

"You have a good day now, ma'am."

He disappears into the back room and I stand there, glaring at the door as it swings shut, key still looped around my finger. I have half a mind to vault the desk and head back there and demand to know what the hell he was talking about, but I take a deep breath and let it out. What could he have meant? Maybe he thinks I work over at the Flesh Pit or something, although that wouldn't explain why they only head over after dark...that doesn't make sense. Tourists, maybe? But that doesn't make sense either.

I chew on my lip for a little while and then shake my head, push the door open and let the heat swallow me up again. There's no sense brooding on it; the only thing to do is to move forward.

 * * *

 The drive down to Mystery Flesh Pit is, if it were possible, even hotter and more boring than the drive down to Gumption. The heat is pounding on the window and begging me to let it in so I turn up the AC, trying to drown it out, but it's no use. No matter where I put my arm the sun is pouring down on me, and if I leave it still for more than a moment I get that unpleasant prickling sensation that tells me I'm starting to burn already. I've already got a pretty terrible driver's tan from the ride down but this is just overkill.

No cars pass me on the long road that my phone assures me is the way to the Permian Basin Superorganism Containment Corporation. It's only wide enough for one so if someone did come by someone's going off the road. Hopefully not me, as this rental Toyota is not built for that sort of thing. It's already been complaining at me creakily and jostling me around. I'll have to get it a car wash or something when I get back to Lubbock, whenever that ends up being. I didn't read over the rental contract very closely but I'm pretty sure if I bring it back this dusty there's some kind of fee.

You can see the outline of the plant, growing larger up ahead. It looks unassuming, exactly like any other indecipherable cluster of industrial buildings you'd see along the side of the highway, all greyish-white, tubes and pipes and tanks and corrugation, warning signs and fences and barbed wire, power lines and scaffolding and light poles, all clustering out of the ground like mushrooms after a cold rain. The guard in the gatehouse is watching me as I pull up, but I turn off the road, turning the car around so I'll be ready to go whenever I need to, well away from the road so anyone trying to get in or out can get by without any trouble.

The sign on the fence broadly proclaims that this is the site of the Permian Basin Recovery and Superorganism Containment Corporation, and says that the administration building is to the right, along with the barracks, infirmary, commissary, and so on.

I get out, shut the car door, take my camcorder with me. I keep it on but held low, taking a shot of my feet. I wander up to the gatehouse and the guard steps out, hand on the butt of his pistol, resting loose but confident. He has an MP helmet on and I wonder whether the National Guard is in charge of security or something, and then I wonder if I'm about to get got for trespassing. Surely there'd be more of a commotion if I was, right?

The guard has a sharp face but disconcertingly watery eyes. "Hi," I tell him.

"This area's off-limits to civilians, ma'am," he tells me.

"I'm not trying to get in," I assure him. "I'm a journalist, I just want to take some photos. Is that okay?"

He relaxes a little, points up and down the fence. "Right now," he says, "you're on public land. You go over that fence, you're trespassing on Federal land. Understand?"

"Yessir," I grunt, reflexively. Some old habits never die.

"You can take photos of whatever you like except for people inside the fence, understand? Before you leave I will check your camera."

"Yessir."

"Any questions?"

"Can I take a photo of you?"

"Am I inside the fence?"

"No."

"Then yes, you can."

I bring my DSLR up, snap a picture of him. He gives me a cheesy grin. I look at the display and then back up at him. "You blinked."

"Better take another."

I do so. "You know," I say to him, "this is a much more civil interaction than I expected it to be."

He pauses, halfway back to the guardhouse, to shrug at me. "You're just lucky that the government doesn't also own the land around the park. On most military bases it's like that, you know, they own a hundred-foot radius out from the fence, but here it's different."

"Cause it used to be a National Park?"

"I believe so."

"Do I have to stay in your sight or anything?"

He shakes his head. "No, there are cameras. Just make sure you don't touch the fence, it's electric."

I look at the sign on the fence again; I'd sort of skimmed over it before but a few more things catch my eye this time, especially the bright red one proclaiming that it's charged to 10,000 volts. I whistle. "Y'all really don't want people getting in, huh?"

"It's dangerous."

"So I've heard. Want to do an interview?"

"Can't do that, ma'am. What paper are you with?"

"Corpus Christi Star-Tribune."

He raises his eyebrows. "You're a long way from home. What brings you down to Gumption County?"

I briefly explain what got me interested in the Mystery Flesh Pit and he nods. "Lot of people seem to have forgotten about this place. It's for the best, I'd say."

"Care to elaborate?"

"No, ma'am," he says, but not unkindly. "I can't talk to reporters."

"Come on," I wheedle. "Who'd know?"

"We're on camera," he repeats.

"Fair enough," I shrug.

He gets back in the guardhouse and I run a hand through my hair and turn my attention to the fence. I take a shot of the gates, of the fence, of the signs on the fence, of the great bulging buildings visible through the fence. I get a nice one of the fence extending along into the horizon, a great metal wall bisecting the flat, hot plain of West Texas earth, extending into infinity, it seems, a shimmer of heat distortion bubbling off of it down in the distance. I get another good one of the sun dipping downwards behind the plant, swallowed by it, casting shadows across my face, long spidery ones that scrape the ground. Then, once I'm at about fifty-percent capacity on my memory card, I put the camera away and sit there on the trunk of the car, kicking my heels idly against the gravelly ground, taking it all in. I read the sign again and I call out to the guard. After a moment he comes out of the gatehouse again.

"What is it?" he asks.

"What's that sign mean?" I ask him, pointing to it. He turns, looks at it.

"I don't think it's very ambiguous," he tells me, and I roll my eyes.

"No, I'm serious. What the hell does it mean? 'Over 500 people die each year attempting to commune with the Organism?' What does that - ?"

"Ma'am, I really can't talk about it."

I look at him carefully but he seems serious, and the sign, well...it's a sign on an electric fence on federal property, so surely it's serious as well. I turn my camera back on and snap a photo of it, then I realize that there's a bit of background noise, coming slowly closer. It's the rumbling of an engine.

There, down the road, is an unmarked white Econoline van. It flashes its brights at me and I step out of the road, let it pass by, while the guard at the gate straightens his uniform. It pulls up to the gate and the guard leans in. He and the driver have a brief conversation before the guard steps back and reaches into the booth to open the gate. The gate opens but the driver of the van sticks his head out, looks back at me. He has a jowly, bristly face, about two five-o'clock shadows away from a beard, and a large bald spot.

"And you, what are you doing here?" he calls, and I get up, a little surprised to be addressed so abruptly. The guard comes out in a hurry, shaking his head.

"Sir," he starts, but the guy in the van isn't having any of it.

"Shut up for a second," he says. "Lady, what're you doing out here?"

"I'm –"

"Sir, you really shouldn't –"

"Look, lady," he says, gesturing me closer. "Things don't have to go this way. There've been a lot of advances with medical technology that can really help you out with those urges. There's –"

"Urges?" I ask. I get a prickly feeling all up and down my spine, like I'm hearing something I ought not to.

"Sir," the guard says, urgently now, "she's a reporter."

The man's mouth snaps shut so quickly he might as well have been a cartoon character. He flushes an angry red and glares at the guard as though he wants to say something but he just ducks his head back through the window of the car and drives through the gate, which closes after him. I shake my head.

"I suppose," I say after a moment, "that you aren't going to tell me what he meant?"

"Not a chance."

"Well," I say, getting up and stretching, "it's been fun."

"You have a good night now."

"Am I going to get a visit from the Men in Black at my hotel room later?"

"I wouldn't worry about that."

"Riiiight." I waggle my eyebrows at him. "That's exactly what they'd want me to think."

He laughs. "Good luck," he tells me.

"I get the feeling I'll need it."

"You’ll be fine," he says after a moment, but I do not feel reassured.

 * * *

 I drive back to Gumption with the setting sun blazing in my rearview mirror. It slips out of view entirely and coats the sky in dusky purples that quickly fade to black, and then it's the figurative middle of the night. One-handed I manage to wriggle a cigarette out of the pack on the seat next to me and transfer it to my mouth and then feel around for my lighter, and then I groan and pull over. The guy at the rental desk at the airport had seen the pack of cigarettes in my hand while I was filling out the paperwork and told me very strictly that I had better not smoke in the car and I, of course, had managed to forget completely. It's a good thing I remembered before I lit up.

The night is cold but not unbearably so. I spend a long time there, leaning against the trunk of my car, cigarette in my hand but forgotten momentarily, staring up at the sky. There's so little light pollution out here that I can see what feels like all of the stars, practically, great scattered dustings of them sweeping across the whole of the night sky like someone had tossed them there. There's the Big Dipper, there's Orion, there's the Little Dipper... I think that bright one is Mars, maybe, it looks a little reddish. And that cluster there must be the Pleiades.

I take a breath and blow it out and realize exactly how tired I am. It's somewhere lurking in the back of my skull, right behind my eyes, coiled around my neck. If I closed my eyes I'd probably be able to fall asleep out here, right on the hood of the car.

I crack my neck and wince. The moon's bright and full tonight, at least, so I can still see the barren terrain all around me.

I consider the cigarette for a moment before I throw it to the ground and crush it out. I don't normally litter, really, I swear, but the exhaustion creeping over me is making me not care.

There's a long drainage ditch along the side of the road here, terminating in one of those white-concrete tunnels disappearing into the dirt, its mouth wide enough to swallow me whole if I felt like going down there. I stifle a yawn, kick a rock down into the ditch, and traipse around the side of the car, get in and start it up. From where I parked it, the headlights angle downward enough to reveal a sliced-pie cut of the inside of the tunnel and there, inside it, I see for only the briefest second a pale, wide-eyed face staring at me, along with a dark-jacketed body and a hand, curled there on the floor of the tunnel like a spider before, in a flash, the man retreats into the darkness deeper in the tunnel and is gone.

I can feel my heart beating out of my chest and I realize my mouth has dropped open. Real animal fear has seized me and my rational mind cannot jerk back the reins. I put the car into gear, fumbling first and sticking it in neutral, and then push the pedal all the way to the floor and roar off into the dark.

I was very lucky that there was no one trying to get to Mystery Flesh Pit that night, for I probably would have flipped the car trying to go around them. The closer I get to Gumption, the slower I drive, until finally I manage to get myself to stop the car just outside of town. I pull over again and get out, curling my lip at my shaking hands, and light up another cigarette.

It was just a homeless guy, hiding in a drainage ditch. I probably spooked the fuck out of him, pulling up right there on top of him and hanging out. He must be wondering what the fuck I was doing out there. Probably scared him more than he scared me.

Why did I wig out so bad anyway? I like to think I've got a pretty good nerve. Well, stress is a good excuse, I guess. Or perhaps it's because he was simply hiding down there, unknown, unnoticed, the whole time I was sitting there on the hood of the car, completely oblivious. He could have rushed out and attacked me, if he'd had the guts to, and I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

I take another drag at the cigarette and glare up at the stars again. Ursa Major, Orion, Pleiades. Sometimes, when it's quiet like this, I allow myself to think about what the coming year, or possibly years, if I'm lucky, will be like.

Whatever.

I crush the cigarette out and drive back into town, head back to my motel room. I feel better once I've showered and put on some shorts. I get into bed and pull the covers up, and even though they're the scratchy, weird-feeling covers used in seemingly every cheap motel in America, regardless of location, I drift off to sleep easily enough.

Continue with Part 2

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[kelyon]

Golden Rings Chapter 6: A Shop

The Storybrooke Sequel to Golden Cuffs

Rumpelstiltskin gathers his thoughts and his stuff

Read on AO3

As Rumpelstiltskin drove Gold’s wife in Gold’s car to Gold’s pawnshop, he got a chance to look around Storybrooke. It was a cool, sunny, Monday morning in October. The first real morning since the curse had been cast. Last night, Emma Swan had decided to stay. After twenty-eight years, time was moving forward for the people in this town.

Did they know? These people, who led as ordinary lives as this world allowed, did they have any idea of what they’d forgotten? The man walking a spotted dog, the brick-haired woman thundering toward the hardware store, the flocks of children in their school uniforms. Could they even imagine who they used to be? With the Savior’s arrival, the curse was beginning to break. Was there any sign, any hint that things were different now?

Yes.

“Well look at that.” Rumpelstiltskin said as he opened the car door for Mrs. Gold. “The old clock tower is running again.”

She squinted up at the building across the street from the pawnshop. For the past twenty-eight years, the clock in the tower on top of the library had been stuck at 8:15. Gold had walked past it every day for as long as he could remember. Now it read 8:55. It wasn’t much movement yet, but it was a damn good start. 

Mrs. Gold made a polite, vaguely interested noise and then sashayed her way over to the side door of the shop. She had been quiet for most of the morning. Breakfast had shown both of them that the things that had pleased Gold were nothing but ash to him now. 

That meal had given Rumpelstiltskin a taste of just how enormous a task he had set out for himself in living with this woman. Mrs. Gold was only happy if her husband was happy. And Gold showed his pleasure with his wife by how frequently he used her, and how closely he controlled her. If Rumpelstiltskin left the woman alone, if he allowed her to live her own life and make her own decisions, she would think that he was ignoring her. And the only reason Gold gave for ignoring his wife was to punish her. Gold always wanted her to know every time he thought she wasn’t worth the price of her upkeep. 

Rumpelstiltskin didn’t want Mrs. Gold to feel worthless. He had taken mercy on her earlier, by ordering her to write out a shopping list. It pleased Mrs. Gold to do things for her husband. Gold had trained her to believe that was all she was good for. 

She was waiting for him at the door, hands behind her back, just as she had posed in front of the door to the house last night. She didn’t have a key to the shop either. 

“Do you--” Rumpelstiltskin looked at her for a moment, but then had to shift his eyes to the key in the lock. “Do you remember the last time that clock was in working order?”

Mrs. Gold tilted her head and thought. Her nose crinkled just like Belle’s. 

“I… don’t... think so? Would it have been when there was still a library?”

“Probably.” He opened the shop door and held it for Mrs. Gold. “I don’t remember the library ever being open.”

That was true. The Storybrooke Free Public Library had come into this world an abandoned wreck. Gold had taken pride in making sure it would stay that way in perpetuity. He owned the building but didn’t allow it to be put to use. There was no benefit for him in people having free access to knowledge and services. He even objected to the thought of the library as a place for people to come in off the streets without spending any money.    

“When I was in high school, we used to break in and drink beer. Try to find dirty books.”

Rumpelstiltskin raised his eyebrows at Mrs. Gold. He hadn’t realized the memories the curse would give them would be that comprehensive. 

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Well, Hunter, of course, and he never went anywhere without Jesse. And Sean Herman--you know, Mitchell Herman’s useless prettyboy son. Oh, and that pathetic Ashley Boyd was always hanging around Sean, trying to get him to commit.” Mrs. Gold sniggered. “That didn’t really work out for her, did it?”

They were in the shop now. It was a cool, dark room, filled to the brim with merchandise. Rumpelstiltskin shut the side door and went to unlock the front. Gold always had the store open promptly at nine.

“I’m surprised you remember so much about your adolescence.”

Behind the back counter, Mrs. Gold looked down at her hands. “I… I didn’t drink that much, Mr. Gold. But I understand if you don’t want me to talk about that… trashy stuff. I know that’s not who I am anymore.” She bit her lip and twisted her wedding ring.

He turned his back on her to flip the sign in the door from ‘Closed’ to ‘Open. He pulled up the venetian blinds and let the morning sunlight in through the front windows. 

Without looking at her, he asked, “How long ago was it? When you were in high school, drinking beer with boys?”

She scoffed. “God, a million years ago.”

He nodded. Of course she would say something like that. It would have been too easy to help her realize the truth with mere facts. According to her age, it should have been less than five years ago, at most, that she had been a teen-ager getting into trouble. But there were far more than five years’ worth of memories between that time and now. She had been married to Gold for longer than she had actually been alive. But he couldn’t simply point that out and expect her to believe it. 

The curse didn’t work like that. It wasn’t a faulty theorem that could be disproven with logic. No, the curse was the axiom of this world, the basis of logic. The curse was reality. Mrs. Gold could no more resist it than she could fight her need to breathe or the pull of gravity on her body. 

The curse was the truth for almost everyone in this town.

Mrs. Gold tapped her painted fingernails against the glass counter. “When did you want me to go to the grocery store?”

Rumpelstiltskin looked out the window. He could see the library from here. Belle would have been thrilled by the idea of a public library. She would read every book, and talk to people about what they were reading. When the curse broke, he would show it to her. 

“The sooner the better,” he answered the woman who was not Belle. Might as well get her out of the way for an hour or two. There were things in this shop that he needed to find, and it would be better not to have her hovering around.   

“Oh, okay.” Mrs. Gold had taken off her scarf and set down her purse, but she immediately began to collect them again. “Then I’ll pick up the ice cream before you close the shop? That way it won’t melt before I can get it in the freezer.”

For just a moment, Rumpelstiltskin wanted to ask the obvious logistical question: Why couldn’t she go home with the ice cream and then come back? Or stay at the house for a while? Why did Mrs. Gold have to revolve her activities around her husband’s schedule? 

But he knew the answer: Because Gold didn’t want her in his house without him. Because Gold didn’t trust the woman he married. Because Gold got off on making life difficult for his wife and then giving her a pat on the head after she successfully jumped through the hoops he set up every single day. 

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. 

“That’s a good plan,” he said quietly. 

“Thank you, Mr. Gold! I’m not always as stupid as I look!” 

Gods, her smile was dazzling. Even like this, even as she insulted herself, she was so beautiful. She looked so happy. Belle’s face, Belle’s eyes, Belle’s smile... He could look at Belle forever. But he couldn’t stand the sight of Mrs. Gold.

He stood in the center of the shop, with his cane set out in front of him like a longsword. She flounced over to him, then hesitated. Her hands reached out, halfway between her body and his. But Mrs. Gold knew better than to touch her husband without permission.   

“Is there anything else I should do today, Mr. Gold?”

She was waiting for him to touch her, he realized. Her body was poised for him to pull her in for one of Gold’s signs of affection--a breathtaking kiss, a possessive squeeze, a playful swat, or something rougher. Rumpelstiltskin knew those gestures. He hated to let Belle out of his sight without some last physical expression of his love.

Mrs. Gold was used to the same thing from her husband. Only there was no love in it on Gold’s part.

With a sweep of his arm, Rumpelstiltskin backed away from Mrs. Gold to open the front door for her.  “No, there’s nothing else I need. But take your time. If there’s something you’d like to do today, feel free.”

She swallowed and looked at him dubiously. “Maybe I’ll… go to the lingerie shop. Stock up on cheap panties?”

Rumpelstiltskin tried to keep from grimacing. “Whatever makes you happy, dearie. Let me give you some money.”

Mrs. Gold took the cash and strutted down the street. The mention of tear-away underthings had put a spring in her step. He watched her from the doorway. He saw the citizens of Storybrooke stop what they were doing to stare at her. His wife. Gold’s most expensive possession, on full display. 

He went inside and shut the door behind him.

****

The store was filled with bits and pieces of other people’s lives. This was a pawn shop, after all. Everything here had once belonged to someone else. Some of the merchandise was from Storybrooke--old snowshoes, a garden windmill, a telephone in the shape of a cartoon mouse. But many more objects had the inextricable mark of the old world. There was a set of seven beer steins, an oil lamp from Agrabah that had once been the home of a genie. A pair of marionettes gave a shockingly accurate depiction of the horror of unwilling transformation. 

Some of these objects had been a part of his collection in the castle. Other things had been kept close by people who treasured them. Even in the old world, people built their identities from the things they kept around them. With the curse, material possessions had been ripped away from their owners as completely as memories and identities.

Gold prided himself on taking things of sentimental value from the people of Storybrooke. To a man who already owned everything, sentiment was the best kind of value to take. People came to him and traded their past for their future, a part of their soul for a little of his money. And Gold, a man with plenty of money but hardly any soul, made that bargain eagerly. He bought people’s lives. Bit by bit, deal by deal. 

Now Rumpelstiltskin found himself looking around the shop for the pieces of his own life. His life, and Belle’s, and the life they had shared together, all too briefly. It didn’t surprise him that the objects he valued most would be for sale in Gold’s shop. Rumpelstiltskin’s mementos meant as little to Gold as they would mean to his wife. Less than one day ago, he had been as cursed as she was. 

But now that he was awake, he could rescue her. Or try to. At the very least, he could protect her. In a world without magic, his reach was limited. But there were still tools available to him. Many of those tools were in this shop. 

He found Belle’s necklace first. It was on display, priced so cheaply that it wasn’t even locked behind the counter. Her mother’s necklace--the only heirloom Belle had been able to bring to the castle-hung from a metal stand, crowded in with plastic beads and costume jewelry. 

Rumpelstiltskin held it up to look at it. In the old world, a piece of unicorn horn had hung from a golden chain. There were no unicorns here, so the small pendant took on the sheen of mother-of-pearl. It was still beautiful. Tiny and delicate, just like Belle. It had barely taken any effort at all to snap the chain off her throat. In the darkness of a dungeon, he had stolen it from her as a way to bind her to him.

That had been the first time he had ever made Belle cry.

Sighing, Rumpelstiltskin laid the necklace in a narrow gift box and put the box in his jacket pocket, close to his heart. Being Gold was not the first time he had been a monster to Belle. Their first deal had been for his complete domination over her body and her will, the right to cause her pain whenever he wanted. 

Belle had agreed to the pain, the degradation. She had even enjoyed it, and began to ask for it. She had leveraged her ability to endure mistreatment into a way to get close to him. They made a second deal that he would give her a piece of the truth as a reward for impressing him. So she got to ask questions. Persistent, invasive, disarming questions. Soon it became that every time he pushed her body to its limits, she did the same to his heart.

And he liked the pain she gave him as much as she liked the pain he gave her. 

That was how they became equal. That was how it became unendurable for him to hold real power over her. He could not allow her to give him her whole heart without giving her his own in return.

So he had given her back this necklace. He had given Belle her freedom. And when she had come back anyway, he finally gave her himself. 

He had given her his dagger. 

For millennia, the power of Dark Ones had been harnessed to a magical dagger. Whoever owned it held the most powerful being in the world as a slave. Or the owner could stab the Dark One through the heart and take the power for themselves. Rumpelstiltskin had been rare among Dark Ones in that he had never lost control of the dagger. Magic had never forced him to do the bidding of another. 

He had given it to Belle before he had asked her to marry him, before that thought had even entered his mind. Putting himself under her power was the easiest way to pay the debt he had accrued to her. 

Gold had put the dagger in the window at the front of the store. As far as he was concerned, the thing only had value as something to catch the attention of passers-by. It was a curiosity, not an antique. Gold saw it as a knock off of a Javanese kris with a faux-European style hilt and ridiculous vanity engraving. To him, it was obviously fake, a modern creation for the sort of person who wore sparkly wings to a Renaissance Fair.  

And it was easy enough to see why. Even with Rumpelstiltskin’s well-honed sensitivity to magic, the dagger was inert and lifeless. There was no power in it, not even a trace of dark energy. In a world without magic, this was nothing but a length of steel with some fancy enamelwork. 

Still, it was better to have it near him than to have his true name boldly advertised in his shop window. There was no way of knowing who else might have awoken from the curse. This town was Regina’s triumph, so it seemed likely that she would know the truth. She would want to be aware, to enjoy her victory. Perhaps there were others. Perhaps others would emerge gradually. Now that the Savior was in Storybrooke, anything was possible. He had to be prepared. He had to keep his cards close to his chest.

He put the dagger in a cardboard box and continued his exploration of the shop. There was a spinning wheel in the back office. It wasn’t one of the wheels from the castle, on which he had spun straw into gold. This was an artefact from this world, a great wheel, used to spin flax into linen. It was hidden behind a bedframe and some paintings too large to hang on the walls.

 His fingers itched to spin. There was never a better way to gather his thoughts and calm his mind. Spinning, and listening to Belle breathing while she slept. 

But taking home a spinning wheel would be too obvious. It wasn’t the sort of thing that he could hide or explain away, especially not to Mrs. Gold. She knew very well that her husband didn’t do handicrafts from the middle ages. There was only so far Rumpelstiltskin could strain her credulity. He would have to wait until the curse broke before he could safely spin again. 

In the back of the shop, there was a box full of broken scraps. As mercenary as Gold could be, he also liked to keep things for a rainy day. Even discarded junk could be broken down for parts or sold as-is to artisans.

That was where he found the chipped cup. It was wrapped in a ragged shawl.

Baelfire’s shawl. Rumpelstiltskin had made it, when he was just a poor spinner. He had shorn the sheep and spun the wool and dyed the yarn and knitted row after row--all in secret, so Baelfire would be surprised to have a present on the winter solstice. That was the year after Millah had left. It was such a meager gift, but Bae had been so happy to get it. His boy had insisted on learning how such a thing had been made. And all through that winter, father and son had worked together on a second project--a cap that Bae had worn every day until his head grew too big for it.

Carefully, Rumpelstiltskin pulled the shawl away from the cup. He held both objects to his heart and all but collapsed on a cot in the corner. Memories threatened to drown him in tears. Belle had found the shawl and the cap, in the room in the castle where he had locked them away. Belle had dropped this cup while serving him tea for the first time. When it had chipped, it had become something special. It had become meaningful in a way few other objects ever did. 

The chipped cup used to be their signal. If Belle gave it to him when she served him tea, it was her way of asking for him to play with her. To be rough with her, at her request. He never ordered her to give him the cup, there was always a whole teacup available. Every time she offered it--every time she offered her body in this way--it had been her choice.

That was a choice Gold never really allowed his wife to make. 

Gathering himself, Rumpelstiltskin wrapped the cup back in the shawl and placed it in the box with the dagger. He filled the box with a few other things--a butter dish, a tea kettle--and left it on the countertop. 

No one came into the shop all morning. It was the day after rent day. No one had anything to trade with Gold, nor any pressing need to. The bell above the front door didn’t ring until Mrs. Gold came in with her bags of groceries and lingerie.

“Hello!” she cried with her standard bubbly cheer. She made her way to the back of the shop and put the bags down in the office. “Miss me?”

Gold would have replied Never, then pulled her in for a kiss. Rumpelstiltskin said, “Of course,” but stayed behind the counter.

Mrs. Gold’s smile dimmed a little but she soldiered on. “Grocery store was uneventful. The boy stocking the produce section seemed very aware of how I was stroking the cucumbers. I didn’t stop until I found some too thick to get my hand around.” 

She snorted, and Rumpelstiltskin made himself grin.  

“And I did get something new at Sugar ’N’ Spice. The girl there, Mara Trudine, assured me that it was very sturdy. So if you want to get it off of me, you’ll have to use scissors!”

Rumpelstiltskin swallowed. It was an excellent idea, cutting fabric off of Belle’s body. He had always used magic when he wanted to undress her quickly, but this worked just as well. There was no reason not to destroy her clothes the moment they got in the way of his desires.

Gold’s desires. Not Rumpelstiltskin’s. 

He cleared his throat. “Did they have everything on the list?”

“Yes, I’ve got the receipts right here.” She produced the long strips of paper and laid them on the counter with a flourish. 

Rumpelstiltskin’s heart ached at the sight of Mrs. Gold. She was so delighted to obey him, so proud of herself for remembering his orders. Gold had set up a structured routine to control her, and she enjoyed meeting his cruel demands. 

He made a show of looking at the receipts, but he didn’t care how she spent Gold’s money. Gold only cared because he wanted to make sure it was spent. He couldn’t allow his wife to have any money of her own, that she might spend on something he didn’t know about. This way, she couldn’t squirrel anything away for herself to save for the day when he might kick her out for good. No, Gold wanted her to depend on him, every day, for every penny, just so he could hold it over her head what a waste of money she was. 

What a twisted arsehole. 

“Very good,” he said, and handed the papers back to her. “I’ll give you more money later.”

Mrs. Gold nodded, smiled. As far as she knew, things were back to normal. “What would you like to do for lunch?”

It wasn’t until he heard the word lunch that Rumpelstiltskin realized how hungry he was. This was his first full day in a human body. He wasn’t yet back in the habit of eating. But yes, that explained the familiar ache in his stomach, the slight draining of his energy. He hadn’t been hungry in years.

“You didn’t eat breakfast.” He realized her plight at the same time as his own. “You must be starving.”

She shrugged. “You didn’t have breakfast either,” she said. “Because I was such an idiot and burnt the toast.” 

“Stop that.”

 It was all he could do not to take Belle’s hands. He wanted to look his wife in the eye and hold her. It was Gold’s fault that she said such things, that she believed them about herself. He wouldn’t touch this woman, but he did try to speak kindly to her. 

“Tell me, Mrs. Gold, how do I instruct you to make my toast and coffee?”

“As black and bitter as your soul.” She repeated the phrase like it was a sacred truth.

“Yes,” Rumpelstiltskin said wearily. “And that’s very black and bitter indeed. You performed your task correctly this morning. It’s not your fault that I didn’t tell you that what I wanted had changed.”

“I’m still a cheap, stupid slut.” 

Again, she said it with a smile. That phrase was one of Gold’s secret signals, another unspoken game they played. Every time Mrs. Gold called herself a “cheap, stupid slut”, Gold reassured her that she had actually been quite expensive. The underlying “truth”, of course, was that she was still stupid, and still a slut. 

Yet another game that Rumpelstiltskin would not play. 

“You’re not stupid,” he said sternly. “And I would appreciate not hearing anymore of that kind of talk coming out of your pretty mouth.”

“I--Yes, Mr. Gold.” She stood up straight, with her hands behind her back, and looked at the floor. “Thank you for your instruction, Mr. Gold.”

“Good girl,” Rumpelstiltskin murmured. 

Perhaps it was unfair to give her even these orders, to act in the persona of Gold even for her own benefit. But he was not so heartless as to leave this woman utterly adrift. She did depend on her husband, as a drunkard depended on wine. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t deprive her all at once. 

Reaching into his jacket pocket, Rumpelstiltskin pulled out the gift box. “I have something for you.”

Mrs. Gold’s eyes lit up. “Ooh! What is it?”

“Open it.”

She did an admirable job of hiding her disappointment at the necklace. Her smile froze, but it stayed in place as though it had been nailed to her mouth.

“You don’t have anything in that style, do you?”

“No,” she answered, as she looked down at the thin gold chain. “Most of my other jewelry is… very different from this.”

Most of the jewelry Gold gave her was large to the point of being gaudy. The fact that the stones in the various necklaces, bracelets and earrings were genuine never made them look any less tacky.

But this was Belle’s necklace. This was precious to his real wife. Rumpelstiltskin felt a faint flicker of hope in his chest. Maybe… maybe this necklace could make a difference to Mrs. Gold.

“Will you put it on?”

Nodding, Mrs. Gold handed him the box. She removed the scarf from around her neck and stood in front of him, facing away.

Well, he had walked into that.

It was the closest they had been since he had gotten into bed with her last night. As he fastened the necklace, he found himself smelling her hair. He wanted to trace the line of her neck down her shoulder and over her bare arm. He wanted to hold her hand in his own. He wanted to wrap his arms around her tiny waist and hold her. He wanted to press himself against her body, to feel the soft curves of her bottom rub up against his hardening cock. He wanted to kiss her, to nibble her ears until she squealed with laughter. He wanted to make love to his wife.

Instead, he stepped back, turned away, and pressed his hands against the glass countertop.

Mrs. Gold spun around, her skirt flaring over her bare legs. Of course she was still Mrs. Gold. Of course there would be no change. There was no magic in this world, so there would be no magical solution. At least, not yet. 

“How does it look?”

He gave her as long a glance as he could bear, then nodded. “Lovely. Do you like it?”

“Of course, Mr. Gold. I don’t take your gifts for granted.” She took one tentative step toward him. “What do I need to do to earn this?”

If you have to earn it, it isn’t a gift, dearie! His hands balled into fists as he thought the impish words. As the Dark One, Rumpelstiltskin said that he never gave and he never stole. Everything was a trade, payment one way or the other. While Gold worked by the same principle, he didn’t have the same penchant for precise terminology. 

But there was no explaining that to Mrs. Gold. Instead, he pulled a money clip out of his pocket.

“Go to Granny’s and bring back lunch,” he said as he counted out a few fifty-dollar bills. “I want to try the sandwich that’s called a ‘reuben.’ You can order whatever you like, but--” he slid a fifty over the counter to her, “--you tell Ruby Lucas to keep the change from this.”

Mrs. Gold smirked. “Are we playing nice with her now?”

“Better to play nice than to not play at all.” It was a meaningless jumble of words, but Mrs. Gold nodded and went off to do as he said. 

****

After lunch, Mrs. Gold hung around the shop. They didn’t say much to each other. Rumpelstiltskin kept his hands busy by polishing all the silver in stock. He kept his mind busy by looking around at the various objects and determining who they had belonged to. Gold had a ledger for the shop as well, with many of the same names as in his rent book at the house. This was another way Gold had power over people. He knew their histories, knew the value of their lives to the penny.

Mrs. Gold dug up an Art Deco hand mirror and spent the afternoon looking at her reflection. She kept pulling the pendant of the necklace back and forth along the chain. Belle used to do that when she was nervous. Had Mrs. Gold ever done it before? Had Belle’s necklace actually awoken something in her? 

It was possible. Magic, especially the breaking of a curse, could work very slowly. Especially in a world where it didn’t exist. But it was possible. The Savior was in Storybrooke. Things were going to start changing.

It was possible for him to have hope.

When the time came for the shop to close, Mrs. Gold went to the ice cream parlor next door. Rumpelstiltskin had never had ice cream, but he knew enough about it to be amazed that Gold worked so near a place that sold it and never bothered to indulge.  

While Mrs. Gold was out, he loaded her bags of groceries into the back of the car. It was awkward with his cane. He could only hold one paper bag at a time, and he had to leave open the doors to both the shop and the car.

But it was worth it, to see Mrs. Gold’s jaw drop when she came back. “You--I--” She stammered for a moment before settling on “Thank you, Mr. Gold!”

He gave her a smile, a real one for once. “There’s just one more thing before we go home.” He gestured into the shop, for the cardboard box on the counter. “Will you give me that box, and everything in it?”

“Yes, Mr. Gold!”

It was a cheap trick, the sort of thing a fairy would do. Normally he thought himself above that level of deception. But it worked. When Mrs. Gold placed the box into his waiting hands, she gave him the dagger he had given to Belle. By the laws of magic, his power was his own again.

Perhaps there was no need to take this precaution. But Rumpelstiltskin was not one to leave things to chance if he could avoid it. He had given Belle the dagger because he trusted her with his power and his life. But he couldn’t offer Mrs. Gold the same trust, not with this. Not with something so dangerous as the truth.  

[iamrheaspeaks]

omitted truths 3

Erik x OC! (Briana)

Word Count: ~2.5k

Warnings: Smut

A/N: As always this was lightly proofread/ edited 💋

Catch up: Part 1 Part 2

Briana’s life was starting to fall back into a nice, albeit new, rhythm of hellos and goodbyes. There was Alisha who worked at the local Veterinary Office, but she actually met her in a bar bathroom. Alisha always looked out of place because of her bright blue hair and giant butterfly neck tattoo but it made Briana swell with pride at how she never let anyone shame her for her decisions. Liss, short for Melissa, a connect she met at a novelty shop called PlayRoom. Girl could up sell her ass off too. And Jordan, a pint sized ball of sass that she witnessed give her mom Victoria hell every morning as she loaded up the car before taking her to daycare. Whenever Briana had a moment to spare she’d help Victoria out. She was happy with the change of pace that came from being closer to her best friend it was safe to say that Briana didn’t really have any quips about being back in Connecticut. ––

“Briana Lynn Clark! Ohmygod!” Denver was in hysterics standing in the entryway of Briana’s new place. “I was expecting to be wowed by the décor but oh my god bitch your hair!” Denver shouted before covering her mouth finally stepping through the door. Circling around Briana to take in the full view. Following Denver’s motions with her eyes Briana wore the biggest grin at her friend’s antics and her own need to be extra. Big hoop earrings hitting her round cheeks as her head moved side to side, stopping when Denver came to a halt in front of her and cupped Briana’s face in her hands. “You cut your hair!”, she whisper shouted.

“What? You don’t like it?” Briana coyly questioned running hand over her low fade smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.

Denver hastily pulled her phone from her jacket pocket and began tapping at the screen frantically shaking her head, “You guys see this shit? The woman that’s supposed to be my best fucking friend went and cut her damn hair off and I knew NOTHING ABOUT IT!!!” Briana just waved to the camera before sticking her tongue out at Denver. As her friend continued to rant about how much she loved the haircut but was not happy about being left in the dark Briana went into the kitchen to grab snacks to tide her over while she made something for them to eat. Briana had invited Denver over for a girl’s night in to celebrate her new place instead of doing a house warming. It was also Briana’s way of thanking Denver for opening her space up to her while she looked for her own.

Briana was cooking the two of them fettuccini pasta with pesto sauce. This left Denver to venture the apartment by herself, but that didn’t keep her from shouting things at Briana as she did so. She was sure her entire place was up on Denver’s social media for everyone to see. “Ooh! Bri! What’s in this fancy purple box in your closet?”

“Bitch! Touch that shit if you want to”

“Oh my! Bri! What the hell? Don’t you think you should hide this shit?”

“Why? I live here!”

“I’m just saying, I keep my treasure chest in the bottom drawer of my dresser but, you right.” Denver said walking into the kitchen helping herself to the wine on the counter. “Hurry up though so we can get this marathon started before your stalker pops up.”

Briana just rolled her eyes at Denver’s comment. She hadn’t talked to Erik in months and no one else knew about the move. “Anyways, I figured we’d watch from the most recent to the oldest. You know since War Paint is my favorite.”

“No arguments here.”

The girls found themselves curled up on the floor backs against the couch wrapped in blankets by time they were reaching the end of their Iliza Shlesinger binge watching session. Everything about tonight made Briana happy. It was nothing but continuous laughter and reminiscing. Feeling like she had stability again and that she could finally relax and stop hiding. They even shouted in unison with the television as Iliza said her famous line, “This isn’t a bra, it’s body armor. And this isn’t make up, it’s war paint.” Denver had work in the morning, per the norm, so she got up to relieve herself while Briana began to pick up in the living room. As she finished folding the last blanket and setting it into the end table that doubled as storage Denver came back into the room to start gathering her things. “I put some aside for you to take home” Briana said holding out a container of pesto for Denver to take.

“I got something for you too” she responded not looking up from the black hole she calls a bag on her shoulder. She was digging through it blindly like a typical bag lady, just to sit down to start shoveling threw it with both hands. Denver really wanted to find whatever she was looking for. Briana took this time to continue moving about the room and making sure things were back where she wanted them.

“Found it!” Denver proclaimed gleefully as she stood back up and went to meet Briana by the door to bid her goodbye. They hugged really tight, swaying side to side a little before breaking the embrace. As Briana opened the door she dropped her head shaking it as Denver just stood there laughing. Of course Erik was standing there.

“You can’t keep popping up on me like this Erik. I’m sick of moving and I like my new apartment” Briana spewed out like vomit at the sight of him. That was until her eyes got drawn to the glint of shiny wrapping paper. It reflected in the hallway light as his shoulders shook because of how hard he was laughing.

“Damn. I’m not always the bearer of bad news princess.”

“Could’ve fooled me!” Denver snide as she handed Briana the small pink envelope she was searching for earlier before making her leave.

The gift was a framed Dia de los Muertos elephant painting. Briana knew exactly where she would put it in her spare bedroom that she planned on doing something creative with but had no idea what yet. The painting was the perfect combination of her favorite things though so she’d probably build the room around it.

It was safe to say Erik was just as thrown by Briana’s haircut as Denver was. He just kept touching her head commenting how he never thought she’d cut it. And laughed as she whined for him to cut it out while swiping his hand away. Seeing Erik settle into her couch and not springing dire news on her allowed Briana to relax. Still in the mood to watch something on the funny side Briana put on Kevin Hart’s Let Me Explain. Noticing pretty early on that Erik wasn’t being his usual confrontational self, Briana paused the special and looked at him. “What’s going on up there?” she inquired while jabbing her finger at his temple.

“I wanna try again Bri.” Erik said squeezing and releasing her uncovered thigh lightly but not making eye contact. Erik knew how heavy those words were. He’d been carrying them around since the beginning. “Please say something.” he continued. Briana removed her legs from over Erik’s lap and got up to cross the room. Shaking her head the whole way fighting with her thoughts. After everything that’s happened, besides Denver, Erik’s been the only constant through it all. Never judging her but always trying to help, most times to a fault.

“I can’t count how many times we’ve said goodbye.”

Erik’s head dropped because he knew, and it haunted him the larger the number got. But at the same time he couldn’t deny that everything about Briana truly was different now. Everything he put her threw, everything she had to cut herself off from in order to stay in Witness Protection all those years. Erik fully understood why Briana couldn’t say it. Why she couldn’t admit she loved him that night. Denying her love for him was the only way she could maintain the lie. That’s how she was able to reinvent herself as Mila and leave Briana behind.

“Loving you is chaos Erik.”

“I know that we can make it work. Give me a chance to make this work.”

“Tell me. Tell me you’ll never leave.” Briana whispered through sniffles as she tried to keep her emotions from bubbling over, making her cry. “And mean it.” she added. Erik lifts off the couch striding over to Briana and enveloped her in a hug. His arms holding her to his chest, his right hand gripping her left shoulder as the left squeezed her right hip. Feeling her melt into his touch did something to him and Erik reveled in this moment, having finally gotten Bri back into his arms.

“I’m not leaving.” Briana tightened her grip on the back of Erik’s hoodie in response. Her whole being had radiated with warmth from her chest at his simple admission.Eventually Erik loosened his hold causing Briana to do the same. They took a moment just looking at each other while time stood still before Erik cupped her face hungrily crashing his lips into hers.

“Fuck!” Briana shouted as she stumbled back out of the kiss, colliding with her kitchen table.

“D–Did you just shock me?” Erik asked in disbelief.

“No! You shocked me!” Briana quipped. Standing there in silence for a moment before laughing uncontrollably.

“That shit ain’t funny Bri. My lip is tingling yo.”

After calming herself down from her laughing fit Briana looked up at Erik who was also laughing. His bout of laughter had his shoulders jumping and his dreads bounced around playfully. The soft expression on his face a welcomed contrast to the serious demeanor he normally sported. Everything about him in this moment pulled at Briana’s heart. Then when their eyes met a pulse boomed through her. Suddenly all the pain, all the tears she cried, all the lies, none of it mattered because Briana missed the fire that they had. She loved Erik and never stopped. It was undeniable. “Seriously Bri, say something. I’m beggin’ here.” The base he added to his voice for emphasis along with the fact Erik was begging made her walls flutter.

“Take me on the table.” Briana uttered sitting back on the rim of the table hands gripping the edge. The hushed desperation in her voice coupled with her position made Erik’s manhood jump. Moving to close the gap he now stood in between Briana’s legs hands gripping at her hips.

“One more time. I don’t think I caught that.” Not actually giving Briana a chance to respond Erik began kissing and nipping at her neck. Left arm extended out so his hand could rest on the table while the right hand traveled up her spine stopping at the base of her head.

“Take me there I’ll take you back.”

“Is that all princess?” He breathed still attacking her neck getting lost in the feeling of her skin against his lips and tongue. Slightly annoyed when he had to stop because Briana didn’t answer, Erik took her chin pulling her head down and waited for her to open her eyes. Hazily she lifted her lids, pupils blown wide with lust, Briana licked her lips and smiled before grabbing the back of Erik’s neck pulling him closer to her and kissing him passionately. Biting his bottom lip and leaning back again while simultaneously spreading her legs further apart thankful for the easy access her dress would provide.

“It’s a start.”

“Is that right?” Erik’s index finger was tracing its way up the inside of Briana’s thigh before wedging it inside the lace barrier. Briana’s mouth fell open as she squeaked out a moan from his knuckle brushing against her untouched bundle of nerves. Erik let out an approving moan of his own because of how wet she was. “All this for me?”

“Wet enough for you daddy?” Briana giggled.

“Almost.” Erik snapped back before quickly dropping to his knees and pulling her panties to the side. He wasted no time tasting her nectar as he slowly licked her slit from her entrance stopping at her clit. Briana audibly gasped and laid back against the table while he sucked the whole thing into his mouth. The more Erik hummed his praises into her love cave the wetter Briana got, and the wetter she got the hardest his dick grew. Just as he went to add a finger she came.

Erik stood up and leaned over Briana kissing her, letting her taste herself before teasing through pecks, “Now that you’re wet enough, turn over.” Briana did as she was told, the junction of her hips now hugging the edge of the table with her hands down on the surface. She could hear Erik remove his hoodie and toss it somewhere along with the weight of the things in Erik’s pockets weighing his pants down to the floor as he removed them. Stroking his length in one hand and flipping up the back of her dress with the other instructing her to remove her underwear.

Before the tiny fabric could hit the floor Erik was behind her still stroking with one hand while the other pushed down against the small of her back until her toes barely touched the floor deepening her arch before sliding in. They groaned in unison as Briana threw her head back in bliss. After that it didn’t take long for them to fall into a rhythm. The sound of their skin slapping together being the drummer whose beat they danced to.

Briana could tell that Erik was holding back by the way he periodically leaned down and drug his teeth over her skin. So when he did it again through labored breaths she prodded, “Just do it.” Not having to be told twice Erik bit into Briana’s shoulder. As she yelled her praises her walls clamped down on his manhood making him groan with her flesh still between his teeth. Just then something snapped and Erik strong gripped the both sides of the table for leverage and begin drilling into Briana sans mercy. The creaking of the table legs being the only sound you could hear besides the praises they shared for each other. It wasn’t until she heard a bang and the sound of glass clanking together that the fog pulled back from her mind as Briana realized that the table was banging into counter. Never realizing that they fucked her table across the kitchen floor.

“Fuck! I missed you so much.”  

“Erik!”

“I’m sorry for everything.”

“P–Please Erik. I–I can’t.”

“I fuckin’ love you”

Between the pounding he was delivering and his admissions Briana knew she wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. As if on cue with those last four words, the knot that had been tightening in the pit of Briana’s stomach snapped. Making her body convulse underneath him. She screamed, “I love you too” as she squirted almost painfully taking him with her. Erik slipped out of her and leaned down on the table catching his breathe as Briana slid down to the floor in a squatted position. Unable to stand anymore thanks to her legs feeling like jello. “I need to smoke.” Briana whispered when she finally caught her breath.

Briana fell asleep with her arms still propped up on the table totally spent before Erik could even pull his pants back up. He picked her up and made his way back to the couch with Briana cradled in his arms. Once seated Erik kisses her forehead and smiled before his head dropped to the back of the seat as slumber took him.

Tags: @savagesensitivity @cancerianprincess @another-imaginesblog @loosewindmill @bidibidibombaclaat @muse-of-mbaku @chaneajoyyy @itsangeludaku @eriknutinthispoosy @im5ftbutmythroat66 @theunsweetenedtruth @blackpinup22 @fonville-designs @wawakanda-btch @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade @nickidub718

[little-chimchim]

Our Little Secret (M)

Copy of ask: I read your hongseok smut, and I love it!! can I request maybe a yuto version of that? like the same party but with yuto?? thank you so much!

Rating: R

Word Count: 1851

Genre: Smut

Pairing: Yuto x Reader

A/N: Thank you for requesting this! For all of you that may not know, this is a spinoff of my previous Hongseok fic, Friday Night. It’s told from Yuto’s perspective. I hope you guys enjoy! Love you all - Kay

Yuto wasn't too pleased with how the party was turning out. He wasn't a fan of the music and there were far too many people, all mindlessly moving to the music. The night started out with three of them. Now there was only him and Shinwon left, standing at the back of the room in awkward silence.

“Do you think betting Hongseok was a very good idea?” Yuto asked his friend, leaning in close so Shinwon could hear. The taller man smiled slyly, taking a drink from his plastic cup. “Who knows? I know he’s been wanting to ask her out for a while. He wasn’t going to do anything about it unless I nudged him to do something.” Shinwon admitted.

Yuto sighed and bent his head. He still wasn’t happy with Shinwon for betting Hongseok to sleep with a girl, despite him having feelings or not.

Shinwon smirked and nudged Yuto lightly with his free arm. “It's been awhile since you've gotten any action, Yuto. Why don't you try to get some tonight?” Shinwon urged. Yuto shook his head and looked around the thunderous party. “I'd rather not,” He said quietly.

Shinwon laughed and pointed to a group of girls. “Why not? You know just as well as I do that girls flock around you just to get a look from you. It won't be that hard to find someone willing to fuck you.” Shinwon stated, still searching for a possible girl for his friend.

Yuto shook his head and turned to walk away, too annoyed with Shinwon’s antics to continue talking. In fact, he was too annoyed with the entire party to stay. He wanted to come with his friends to have a good time, not be pestered about his notably dry sex life. He also came to see you, even though he didn't see you once at the party.

It was his little secret. He never told a soul. Granted, he never told anyone small details about his life so this was somewhat normal. Though, you were his favorite secret. It had been a little over a year since the two of you had started dating, even though it felt like much shorter.

He loved you unconditionally, despite that numerous circumstances why he shouldn’t. You were Shinwon’s little sister, already a red flag in anyone’s eyes. You couldn’t date your best friend’s sister and expect it to blow over easy. Your parents were strict and rarely allowed you to leave the house, let alone let you have a boyfriend. It was hard at first, getting accustomed to the obstacles he had to conquer to be able to see you. Though, as time went on, he learned how to jump through the hoops with ease. If it meant being with you, he would gladly do it.

He walked outside for some fresh air. To his surprise, there was no one outside on the porch. Save for you, who was sitting on the railing, sipping a bottle of beer and looking up at the stars.

Yuto smiled and strode over to you, shoving his hands in his pockets and standing next to you to stare up at the stars. “Is this when I say that ‘She thought the stars were pretty but I found her prettier?’” Yuto whispered, carefully not to startle you.

You grinned and turned around to look at your boyfriend. You knew he had tried to be quiet and stealthy, but you could hear his steps the second he stood on the porch. “If you don’t mind.” You smirked, offering him a sip of your bottle.

He took it and leaned against the railing, carefully ghosting his fingers on the small of your back. “I’ve been looking for you.” He said, giving you back your bottle after he took a swig of the amber liquid.

You chuckled under your breath and sighed. “I don’t know why I spent days trying to convince my parents to come if I’ve been out here the entire time.” You grumbled, scrunching up your nose and finishing up your beer.

Yuto laughed and slowly wrapped his arms around your waist. “I suppose we have the entire night to kill now.” He whispered in your ear, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck. You smiled and leaned into his head, bringing your hand up and running it through his short hair. “I suppose we do. What are you implying, Mr. Adachi?” You teased, knowing how much he hated being called that.

Yuto nudged his head towards to driveway, a soft smile forming on his lips. “I have a car with a pretty wide back seat.” He implied, already letting go of you and taking steps towards his car. You grinned and jumped off of the railing, excitedly following your boyfriend.

The car’s windows were fogged up from the two of you. Your heated breaths had clouded his car windows in just a matter of minutes, proving to anyone how pent of both of yours sex levels were.

It had been months since you had been able to be intimate with Yuto. You remembered the last time so vividly, like it had been yesterday. Your parents were away for the weekend and Shinwon had staying over with a friend, leaving you at home alone for the entire night.

It was the perfect opportunity to have Yuto over, something you had never been able to do unless Shinwon had invited him. It was you and Yuto, alone, for hours. Of course you had sex.What teenager wouldn’t if they had this kind of opportunity? Though, it had been your first time, making it one of the most memorable moments of your life.

What you were experiencing currently was everything compared to the first time. His lips trailed along your breasts, hastily sucking against your nipples, making you groan out in anticipation. While his mouth was moving against one breast, his fingers were playing with the opposite one, pinching the growing bud in his fingers.

With his other hand, he pressed his thumb against your clothed heat, rubbing a few small circles into it. He desperately wanted to hear your reaction. You sucked in a quick breath, not having expected the sudden ministrations.

You raked your fingers through his hair, slowly pushing his head down closer to your heat. Yuto looked up at your innocently, playing with the band of your pants. “Eager much?” He teased, slowly pulling your pants down, your underwear coming with them.

“It’s been months, Yuto. Of course I’m eager.” You muttered, pushing the rest of your pants off and throwing them into the front seat of the car. Yuto laughed and leveled himself with your core, admiring it fondly. “You’re beautiful,” He whispered, lowering himself down on you.

He toyed with your clit agonizingly with his tongue, flicking it just enough that it would cause you to jolt, but not enough to give you release. You leaned your head against the window, closing your eyes shut and spreading your legs a little farther.

He licked a long strip up your folds. He moved his hands to hold on to your hips tightly, making sure he had more of a hold on your body. He stopped moving his tongue and brought himself to suck on your swollen clit. You moaned out, clenching your legs around him.

He continued like this until you were shuttering with pleasure. He pulled away before you were able to orgasm. You whined as he moved away from you, your core throbbing painfully. He wiped his mouth on his thumb, grinning widely. “I missed this,” He groaned. He brought his hands down and fumbled with the buttons on his tight jeans. He tugged them down his legs, struggling to get them off from the lack of room in his car.

You laughed and helped him out, leaning forward and pulling down to the bottom of his thighs. You eyed the tent that had formed in his boxers, grinning widely as you reached over to grab him.

He let out a soft sigh as you palmed him through his boxers. You yanked his boxers down, allowing him to spring free from them. You laid back, spreading your legs further apart so he would have room.

“Anxious?” He whispered. Yuto held his length, pumping himself a few times to become fully erect. His cock was ruby red, precum already spilling from it. You smiled and wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him into a hungry kiss.

“You have no idea,” you said against the kiss. Yuto position himself at your entrance, running his erection up and down your folds tantalizingly. “Yuto, please,” You whined, the uncomfortable heat between your legs was becoming too much to bare.

Yuto laughed under his breath and bent down to grab your hips. He held them tightly and finally pushed himself into you. You groaned out, the pressure finally being relieved from between your legs. You leaned back against the window again, clamping yours eyes shut while you waited for Yuto to start moving.

“Are you ready, Babe?” He asked breathily.

You nodded your head and grabbed his shoulders, bracing yourself for it. Yuto smiled and started to move his hips, starting slowly at first. As he got the hang of it, the faster he went. You both were getting into it, starting to pant and fog up the windows even more than they already were.

He started snapping his hips into yours, not going as deep as he possibly could. You dug your fingers into the skin of his shoulders, muttering his name over and over again as he fucked you in the backseat of his car.

He leaned down and pressed a messy kiss on your lips. He gripped your hips tighter, continuing to move them into you. You started to roll your hips in time with his, trying to get as much pleasure as possible.

It definitely worked.

Soon, between labored breaths and heavy pants, the two of you were reaching your climaxes. It only took a few more thrusts before you were putty in his arms. You screamed out his name, throwing your head back and tightening your hold on him.

Seconds later, he reached his. He bucked his hips until the overstimulation was to much to handle for the both of you. He was breathing slowly, his body shuttering while he rode out his high.

Once the two of you were both finished, he looked up to you and smiled. “I love you,” He whispered sweetly. You ran your fingers through his hair and leaned over to kiss the top of his head. “And I love you,” You whispered back.

You hated having to keep the secret of dating Yuto, and for once, you wanted to tell the entire world about your relationship, despite what would possibly come of it. For once, it was a risk that you were more than willing to take.

[xtruss]

Why Are So Many Health-Care Workers Resisting the COVID Vaccine?

— By Dhruv Khullar | February 2, 2021 | The New Yorker

C.N.A.s have questions about the speed of vaccine development, the immunity it confers, long-term side effects, and what could happen if the virus mutates further.Photograph by Yuki Iwamura / Reuters

Tiffany Chance has worked as a certified nursing assistant since 2005. As an African-American woman in her mid-thirties, Chance typifies the demographics of her profession: most C.N.A.s are young, over a third are Black, ninety per cent are women. She was born and raised in Ohio, and for years worked at a single nursing facility. When the pandemic started and nursing homes faced dire personnel shortages, as many employees contracted the virus or quit in fear of it, Chance started picking up scattered shifts through IntelyCare, a staffing agency that allows health-care workers to choose jobs the way that Uber drivers accept riders. She often works six shifts a week, eight or twelve hours each, across several nursing homes.

When considering a shift, Chance, who has asthma, tries to choose nursing homes without active coronavirus spread. This information, however, is self-reported, and there’s often a delay. “I’d pick a place that said they don’t have the virus, then I’d show up and they’d say, ‘Actually, some of these people have covid,’ ” Chance told me. In early October, she scheduled a shift at a new facility, which, she was told, had no coronavirus-positive residents; she was given a surgical mask, not an N95 respirator. A week later, as she started to develop a runny nose, she received a call: a resident had tested positive. Soon, her breathing worsened. “God, it was terrible,” she said. “It felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest. I couldn’t walk an inch without getting out of breath.” Chance couldn’t work for weeks; during that time, she received no sick pay. She tried to sign up for food stamps and unemployment benefits, but “I had to jump through so many hoops. They wanted my medical records, my test result, my pay stub, my last employer. I’m thinking, What does my last employer have to do with this? I need help right now!” She tried to e-mail the paperwork, but was told it would take longer to process than if she dropped it off. “I’m, like, I can’t drop it off, I have covid.” As the weeks wore on, she turned to family for help with food and money for rent. “I kept thinking, You work this hard, you care for so many people. And when you get sick, this is how you’re treated.”

While navigating these bureaucratic hurdles, Chance’s symptoms worsened; during one especially rough night, she considered going to the hospital. But the following morning her breathing eased, and slowly it returned to normal. Chance is convinced that her illness didn’t get worse only because, a few years ago, she’d received the pneumonia vaccine. “I really think it helped,” she said. “That vaccine saved me.”

Chance doesn’t want a coronavirus vaccine. (Because it’s not known how long naturally acquired immunity lasts, the C.D.C. recommends that people who have already had the virus still get vaccinated.) I asked her how she has come to believe that one vaccine saved her life but another threatens her health. The vaccine “came out too fast,” she said. “I think they removed a lot of barriers to get it done faster.” She continued, “It’s not that I don’t believe they’re trying to do a good job. I think they have awesome scientists working really hard. I applaud them for doing what they’re doing. I just don’t believe there’s been enough research yet. There’s no way they’ve been studying it for long enough.” Beyond the speed of development, Chance has questions—about how long vaccine-generated immunity lasts, about how serious the long-term side effects might be, and about what could happen if the virus mutates further. Until these questions are answered to her satisfaction, she has no plans to get immunized. “I’m not saying never,” Chance told me. “I’m just saying not now.”

Like Chance, Kia Cooper has been a certified nursing assistant for nearly two decades. She works in and around Philadelphia; early in the pandemic, she would split her time between traditional nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. She prefers the latter. “Nursing homes give you too many patients, and they are much more dependent on you for everything—dressing, bathing, feeding, transport,” she said. “It’s backbreaking work.” In Cooper’s experience, it’s not unusual for a single C.N.A. to care for twenty nursing-home residents at a time. One evening in the spring, she arrived for an overnight shift to find that the other C.N.A.s scheduled to work hadn’t shown up. “It was me and two nurses for fifty residents,” she said. “The charge nurse kept calling people to try to get them to come in but no one responded.”

Cooper now prefers to work in home care and assisted-living facilities, where the residents require less support; she’s found four assisted-living facilities on the outskirts of Philadelphia that she likes. Recently, a previous employer offered her a chance to get vaccinated. She passed. “I’m not totally against it,” she said. “But it was so rushed. I want to wait and see how others do.” Her experience with a health-care industry that seems to put profits over the interests of patients and staff—that denies hazard pay, that fails to provide adequate protective equipment—also contributes to her hesitancy. “I do wonder if it’s a money thing,” she told me. “These are big companies trying to force these products on everyone. You have to wonder, Are they doing it for us or are they just trying to make money?”

Destiny Hankins, a licensed practical nurse from Tennessee, currently working in Ohio, shares these concerns. “Sometimes, it feels like no one cares about us,” she said. “I’ve worked in places where pretty much the whole staff walked out because the facility lied to us. They said there was no covid when there was. They didn’t give us P.P.E. They didn’t have the decency to be straight with us.” During the pandemic, Hankins has been sleeping in her garage to avoid infecting her twelve-year-old daughter, who has epilepsy, and her fiancé, who has an autoimmune condition. She told me that she’s managed to stay safe by adhering to a mantra she’s dubbed the “three ‘P’s”: prayer, precautions, and P.P.E. When the vaccines first became available, she decided that she didn’t want to get immunized. She thought that the vaccines might contain live virus, which would pose a threat to her family; she saw a video of a woman who, after receiving the vaccine, claimed that she was unable to move properly. She heard from some colleagues and acquaintances that the vaccine contained microchips. Eventually, she learned more, and decided that she wanted the shot. But because she works part time at several facilities, and full time at none, she hasn’t been able to get one.

Despite confronting the damage of covid-19 firsthand—and doing work that puts them and their families at high risk—health-care workers express similar levels of vaccine hesitancy as people in the general population. Recent surveys suggest that, over all, around a third of health-care workers are reluctant to get vaccinated against covid-19. (Around one in five Americans say they probably or definitely won’t get vaccinated; nationwide, hesitancy is more common among Republicans, rural residents, and people of color.) The rates are higher in certain regions, professions, and racial groups. Black health-care workers, for instance, are more likely to have tested positive for the virus, but less likely to want a vaccine. (Thirty-five per cent turned down a first dose.) Compared with doctors and nurses, other health professionals—E.M.T.s, home health aides, therapists—are generally less likely to say that they’ll get immunized, and a recent survey of C.N.A.s found that nearly three-quarters were hesitant to get the vaccine.

At Yale-New Haven hospital, ninety per cent of medical residents chose to get the vaccine immediately, but only forty-two per cent of workers in environmental services and thirty-three per cent of food-service workers did. The problem may be most pressing in nursing homes. In December, the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, said that sixty per cent of the state’s nursing-home staff had declined the vaccine; in North Carolina, the number is estimated to be more than fifty per cent. According to the C.E.O. of PruittHealth—an organization that runs about a hundred long-term-care facilities across the South—seventy per cent of employees in those facilities declined the first dose.

This hesitancy is less outright rejection than cautious skepticism. It’s driven by suspicions about the evidence supporting the new vaccines and about the motives of those endorsing them. The astonishing speed of vaccine development has made science a victim of its own success: after being told that it takes years, if not decades, to develop vaccines, many health-care workers are reluctant to accept one that sprinted from conception to injection in less than eleven months. They simply want to wait—to see longer-term safety data, or at least to find out how their colleagues fare after inoculation.

Another major hurdle is mistrust of both the political and the health-care systems. The problem is most acute in historically marginalized communities, which already live with racial disparities in life expectancy, maternal mortality, access to medical care, representation in clinical trials, informed consent, the physician workforce, and covid-19 outcomes. And it’s exacerbated among health-care workers who are underappreciated and poorly paid. “In many cases, vaccine hesitancy is not a lack-of-information problem, it’s a lack-of-trust problem,” David Grabowski, a professor of health-care policy at Harvard, told me. “Staff doesn’t trust leadership. They have a real skepticism of government. They haven’t gotten hazard pay. They haven’t gotten P.P.E. They haven’t gotten respect. Should we be surprised that they’re skeptical of something that feels like it’s being forced on them?”

Health-care leaders have resorted to various carrots and sticks to get their employees vaccinated. Given the newness of the vaccines and the lack of long-term safety data, most employers have opted to encourage—not mandate—vaccination; some have offered cash bonuses, days off, even Waffle House gift certificates. (“If that doesn’t get you in line, I don’t know what will,” the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, said.) But officials at some organizations have started mandating vaccination. (The law generally allows companies to pursue compulsory vaccination, and recently the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission signalled that employers might begin requiring it for the coronavirus.) “I have very mixed feelings about mandates,” Grabowski said. “I see this a lot on Twitter: just mandate the vaccine and good riddance. Putting the ethical issues aside, the people who say that have no understanding of the labor market here. It’s a very fluid workforce. A number of employees would just say, ‘No thanks,’ and nursing homes would be even more understaffed than they already are. That’s a very dangerous place to be.”

Relative to the staff, nursing-home residents have very high levels of vaccine acceptance—above ninety per cent in many places. This is good news, considering the devastation that covid-19 has visited upon these facilities. So far, nursing homes and long-term-care facilities have accounted for some hundred and forty thousand covid-19 deaths—forty per cent of the total U.S. death toll, though these facilities represent only five per cent of the country’s cases. But, even in nursing homes, vaccination efforts have not proceeded with the requisite urgency. In the month after the vaccines were released, less than a quarter of the doses made available for nursing-homes were administered; even today, nearly a quarter of residents of long-term-care facilities have not received their first dose of a vaccine, according to the C.D.C.

In most states, CVS and Walgreens, in partnership with the federal government, are responsible for vaccinating people in long-term-care facilities. The federal government sends vaccines to the states, which allocate doses to nursing homes; teams from the pharmacy giants then visit the facilities on pre-specified days. In mid-December, Alex Azar, the head of Health and Human Services in the Trump Administration, suggested that all nursing-home residents could have their first dose by Christmas. But, even before Azar spoke, many states had informed the C.D.C. that their programs responsible for nursing-home vaccinations wouldn’t be active until at least December 28th. Four weeks later, some facilities are still waiting for their first appointment.

“It’s worth saying that this was never going to be easy,” Grabowski told me. “Given the number of facilities and the population you’re dealing with, it was always going to be an operations and logistics nightmare. You can’t just set up a drive-through or bring people to Dodger Stadium en masse. You have to go to every facility, make sure every resident has a chance to get vaccinated—that requires very high levels of management and coördination.” The speed of vaccinations has been further complicated by what some believe is unnecessary paperwork, including, for example, gaining written consent from residents, many of whom have dementia or other cognitive deficits. Large pharmacies also don’t have established relationships with care facilities and cannot use nursing-home staff to help administer the vaccines. “If you talk to them, I think they’d tell you that things are actually proceeding according to schedule,” Grabowski said. “It’s just a slow schedule.”

Some states have opted out of the program. West Virginia has relied on local pharmacies, in addition to the big chains, to administer vaccines; by the end of December, the state had the highest nursing-home-vaccination rate in the country—all two hundred and fourteen facilities had been offered the vaccine, and more than eighty per cent of residents in two hundred homes had received their first dose. Nationwide, each CVS or Walgreens is responsible for vaccinating around twenty-five nursing homes; in West Virginia, there are more pharmacies than nursing homes participating in the vaccination program. Many nursing-home residents in West Virginia received their second dose before those in other states got their first.

Kimberly Delbo has been the director of nursing services and innovation at an assisted-living facility in central Pennsylvania for three years. Delbo takes great pride in the culture that she’s helped create. “We’re a small, tight-knit family,” Delbo told me. “The most important thing we can do as an organization is make sure people know that we truly care about them.” In an industry where a fifty-per-cent annual staff-turnover rate is not uncommon, Delbo’s facility did not lose a single employee in 2019; last year, it had a ninety-per-cent retention rate. During the pandemic, employees have had access not only to adequate protective gear but also to what she calls the “health-care heroes’ room,” complete with a massage chair, aromatherapy, antioxidant drinks, and fresh fruits and vegetables. “They work hard,” she said. “They deserve a tranquil environment.”

Around Thanksgiving, the facility had a coronavirus outbreak in which nearly one in seven residents and half of the staff were infected. One woman—a C.N.A. for more than forty years—contracted the coronavirus and lost her husband and her father within the same month. “She still came back to work,” Delbo said. “She said, ‘This is what I’m made for.’ When you see that kind of resilience, it’s truly humbling. You think, These are the real heroes.” To manage the staff shortage, Delbo lengthened shifts from eight to twelve hours, and reached out to contacts in the state’s health department to arrange emergency staffing. Her son, also a nurse, took time away from his regular job to help out. “It sounds bad—and it was—but, compared to some other facilities, we were relatively spared,” Delbo said.

In early December, Delbo was told that her facility would be vaccinated by the end of the month. As the New Year approached, however, the projected date was revised to mid-January. She sent some staff members to a local hospital to see if they could get immunized; it wasn’t until January 23rd that the pharmacy team finally delivered the first doses to her facility. “The vaccine-distribution process has been very discouraging,” she told me. “It was presented one way on paper but turned out to be completely different in reality.” The residents at her facility are aged seventy-eight to a hundred and eight. “You would think this is a priority population,” she said. “We were like sitting ducks, just praying we could dodge the bullet of another outbreak. We were watching as the general public started getting vaccines, and we were still waiting.”

Like staff at nursing homes across the country, those at Delbo’s facility are split on whether to get vaccinated. “I have a staff member who’s been with us for twenty years and said, ‘Can I be the first person to get it?’ ” Delbo said. “But others are very unsure about it. They ask me, ‘Kim, what do you think about this vaccine? Is it safe?’ ” Delbo has made educating residents and staff a central priority. “We’ve been very proactive about building confidence in it, about getting them the facts, about debunking conspiracy theories and social-media myths,” she said. “We can engage in this dialogue because they trust us. I think what’s important for people to understand is that you don’t build trust in a day and you don’t build it for a specific purpose. We’ve been investing in trust for years. We were doing this before the pandemic, and we’ll do it after.”

— Dhruv Khullar, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, is a practicing physician and an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medical College.

[dailyaudiobible]

01/09/2018 DAB Transcript

Genesis 20:1-22:24, Matthew7:15-29, Psalms 9:1-12, Proverbs 2:16-22

Today is the 9th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It’s great to be here with you today around this roaring global campfire that we call our community, where we can come in out of the cold, out of the dark, out of the struggles, and just center ourselves in the presence of the Lord and allow His word to wash over us. So, we’re all set. Nice cup of steamy coffee here to my left, a nice microphone right in front of my face, and off we go. We’re reading from the Christian Standard Bible this week and picking up from where we left off yesterday, Genesis chapter 20 through chapter 22 today.

Commentary:

Alright. So, in the book of Genesis we have the fulfillment of the promise. Isaac is born to Abraham and Sarah in their old age. This child that this couple had longed for for so many years finally was in their arms as God promised, and they obviously raised him up until he could walk and talk and travel. But then God asks Abraham to do something pretty much unthinkable and he gets up the next day and heads out to do just that. And we need to step out of the story for second and just talk about the Bible. I mean, a story like this one with Abraham and Isaac, it makes you go, wait, wait, wait, what is going on here? This doesn't feel right. That's on purpose. The Bible will disrupt us in all sorts of ways as we move through it this year. It has no problem doing that and it will happen on a lot of levels and when that does happen it's intended to stop you in your tracks. You're supposed to then invite God into what it is bringing up in you, no matter what that is. So, yes, this story of Abraham and Isaac going to a mountain where Isaac will become a sacrifice to God is disruptive, but as the story goes, Abraham believed God, he put his faith in God and that was credited to him as righteousness. And God entered into covenant with Abraham, which fundamentally meant what's mine is yours, what yours is mine, I will fight for you, you will fight for me, whatever I have you can have, I will withhold nothing from you. And although the idea of covenant is ancient, it is also very modern. Many, many of us are in covenant. Right? The covenant of marriage. And don’t we say basically the same thing, I will withhold nothing from you, all that I have is yours, all that you have is mine. So, Abraham's in covenant with God and one of the promises of the covenant is that Abraham's offspring will grow to be a multitude that cannot be numbered and will bless the nations of the earth. In other words, God is beginning a new thing with a new people. And God had promised that that would come through Isaac. So, when Abraham set off with Isaac to go to this Mount Moriah where this sacrifice would be made, he knows all of that. This is cryptic. It's counterintuitive, what he's being commanded to do, but he knows all of that. And we get clues into Abraham's state of mind when he and Isaac have this conversation, when they kind of depart together. Isaac asks him, we have all of this stuff for the sacrifice, but what about the Lamb? And Abraham's reply is, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And when the time comes, that's exactly what God does. And when Abraham is halted it's very clear that Abraham will withhold nothing from God, which becomes an amazing foreshadowing, because God will withhold nothing from those He is in covenant with. So, Isaac was spared and God sent His son. And one of things we can get out of this is the fact that God will withhold and is not withholding things from us that are good for us. But we also have to acknowledge that we're not the ones that get to define that. So often our estrangement from God is that we cannot seem to find a way to get Him to do what we want Him to do.

But that's not the posture that Jesus is showing us in the Sermon on the Mount. It's almost backward to that. Our identity and our hope itself can only be centered and rooted in God alone. Everything starts there and spills outward, not the other way around. And as dramatic as the story of Abraham and Isaac is, that's what Abraham is modeling. The covenant with God is the central thing. Nothing can be withheld with God. It begins and ends with God. So, Abraham knew God had promised through Isaac would be this multitude of people and he believed that and he believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. So, he didn't know how this was going to work, but it was going to work out. He was in covenant with God. So, the question then becomes, what am I withholding from God? Is my motivation the benefits of this covenant? Am I trying to make God my squire that I can order around to do things and throw promises in his face that He has to do them? Am I making myself shiny and sparkly and running around trying to show off my spirituality because, somehow, I think that's what's going to get me what I want from God? That posture isn't going to work. And we hear that from Jesus as we’re concluding the Sermon on the Mount today. Jesus says, ‘not everyone who says to me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in Your name, didn’t we drive out demons in Your name, didn’t we even perform miracles in Your name. Then Jesus says, ‘I will announce to them. I never knew you.’ And all the sudden we see how big of a deal were talking about here between the Old and the New Testaments today. God wants to know us and be known by us in a covenantal relationship that is faithful and that is loyal and that is deeper than even our own marriage covenant. And God withheld nothing from us to make that happen. He offered His Son. So, what are we withholding from God. When you answer that question, you have identified idols in your life.

Prayer:

Father, this is disruptive. This makes things shake inside of us. This opens our eyes and lets us have a glimpse of clarity. This explains so much about how we’ve been trying to make our relationship with You work. And we confess, we've withheld plenty from You and we’ve lived backward a long time just trying to jump through whatever hoops that we feel like are in front of us so that You will do what we want You to do. When what You want is our heart. What You want is to know us and for us to know You intimately. And, so, we invite You to continue the work that You’ve begun from Your word today. May it continue to churn inside of us. We invite your Holy Spirit to bring up the ways that we been living backward and the ways that we’re withholding from you, that we’re giving our heart in worship to something else besides you, in pursuit of life. Come, Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, its where you find out what's going on around here. Couple things.

And I’ve been mentioning for a few days that the 14th of January, which is this coming Sunday, I'll be speaking in Louisville Kentucky at New Song Christian Fellowship Louisville. So, love to see you. If you are in that region, you can get all the details at dailyaudiobible.com in the Events section.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, then I give you humble, heartfelt gratitude. This global campfire that we have, this community that we share is something that sprang up out of the dust of the Internet and is what it is today because we did it together and it continues into the future because we’re doing it together. So, thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello, my Daily Audio Bible Community. This is Brett M. From Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. I called in for the first time for the Christmas Holiday Party. I’m calling in this time because I have a surgery on my ear on January 9th. And I’m just praying that, I’m requesting prayers that my hearing will improve after this surgery. I am in the process of becoming a chaplain for the United States Army and this is kind of put a wrench, if you may, in the process. It’s kind of caused everything to be put on hold until they figure out what’s causing my hearing loss. So, we are hoping that this surgery will improve my hearing. And just please pray for my ear to heal after the surgery. I’m actually driving down to Murfreesboro Tennessee, where my brother is an ear nose and throat surgeon and he will be doing the surgery for me. And this, again, is on January 9th. If you would please remember me in prayers that would be great. And please know my friends, I hear all your prayer requests and I pray for you all on a daily basis and I am thankful for the Daily Audio Bible. This is year number two for me. This is my second time around going through the Bible with Brian. And, so I am very thankful. I have three of my family members on board and I’m working on the other ones to join us as well. Thank you. I love you guys and I am…

Hello DAB family. This is Marsha from Colorado. This morning, while listening to Brian talk about the growing pains DAB has experienced, I was stunned to hear that there have been 5 to 10 requests per second to access the Daily Audio Bible web player and the new app. So, Beloved By Him from the UK, it looks like your prayer for people to find the DAB app has definitely been answered. My prayer is that everyone that listens on a daily basis would prayerfully and financially support this ministry so that the added expense to deal with the influx of new people wanting to hear the word of God in 2018 would never be a concern for Brian and his team. The people that called into the prayer lines today blessed me so much. His Little Sharee from Canada, what you said about this life on earth being the only chance we have to love and worship God in the middle of our messes really spoke to me. And John from Bethlehem Pennsylvania, your prayer of blessing over Brian, reading back to him what he read over us on the last day of 2017 was so special. Thank you for doing that. Jordan from Michigan, I want you to know that I’m praying for you to finish well in 2018 as a teacher. The world needs teachers like you and I know God will give you the strength that you need this year to finish well. And Purely Pampered from Maine, all I can say is, wow! You have been faithful to pray for people you’ve never met all this time. I was humbled by your call. And today I am asking for personal prayer. I was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 and after seven weeks of treatment I will have a PET scan the first week of February to determine if the cancer is gone. So, I’m asking God for a good final report and for healing of the many side effects that resulted in my treatment. I’m humbled and I’m thankful for your prayers. God bless you.

Hi Daily Audio Bible. I have been listening for several years but this is my first time calling and leaving a prayer request. I really need prayer for my family. I went to a part-time position this year because of serious migraines that I get, chronic migraines that I’ve had for over 40 years. And my husband is a realtor and business has really just come to a complete halt. And, so, I would just ask that God would pour out his provision and open doors for business for him. And then, we also have a 16-year-old son who’s making some terrible choices, rejecting godly values, and getting into drugs, and believing all of the enemies lies. And we know that he has a strong foundation in the Lord. And, so, I’m just asking that you would lift him up in prayer, that he would stop believing those lies, and that he would remember who he is in Christ, and that you would just unify our family with all of these challenges were faced with. So, thank you for your prayers and bless all of you. Bye-bye.

Hello Daily Audio Bible community. Happy New Year. It’s the 5th January today. My name is Judith, I live in England, south of England. And I’m calling for two reasons today. One, was really encouraged by someone who called in from Canada yesterday, 4th of January, talking about praising God in our brokenness. You were talking about when we’re going to be in glory with God and everything’s going to be perfect but how…and how wonderful that will be…but how it’s great that we can come to him in our brokenness now. That was so encouraging to me. So, thank you very much. Number two, I have an adopted brother. I myself am married and with my husband and baby. So, I’m not at the family home. But I do have an adopted brother who I won’t name for security reasons, but he lives with my parents and he’s been with us…oh…with my family for eight...coming up for nine…I think…years. He’s just turned 13. He’s very, very difficult. He has a lot of problems based on his background and it’s getting really, really difficult for my parents and there’s potential it could get to the point where the adoption will be ended, which is not of course what my parents want and not what would be good for my brother. So, please, please be praying for him, that my parents get the support that they need, and that he will be able to stay as part of our family and…yeah…please be praying for that. It’s really important. Thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers. You might also hear Isaac, my son, in the background. Please be praying for us too, but mostly for my brother at this time and for my parents and family, that they would get the help they need. Thank you so much. Lots of love to you all. And happy New Year again. Bye.

Happy New Year Daily Audio Bible family. This is Michael in Compton California calling to wish the DAB family a happy New Year and a happy New Year to all of the new listeners for this year. If you’re new to the forum this year you will enjoy this ride because it is a wonderful blessing to be able to listen to God’s word each day. And I thank you Brian and Jill and China and the other Hardin family members and the workers behind the scene that make sure that this podcast gets played 365 days of the year. What a blessing. And, I understand Brian, at the end…what you mean when you say at the end of…when you read the very last of the Bible for the year. There’s an overwhelming feeling of…its indescribable…it’s…I think we…it’s a glimpse of God’s glory and His grace that He’s allowed us to do this for a year, to be able to stay in His word and to listen to His word and enjoy it with an international family. So, God bless everyone. Looking forward to a great 2018 and looking forward to Daily Audio Bible every day. God bless you all. Bye.

[kevindurkiin]

Spring Awakening Delivers Another Unforgettable Year Under Its Own Skyline [REVIEW]

Nothing worth working for comes easy — and Spring Awakening Music Festival (SAMF) knows it best.

In recent years, the music festival has jumped through hoops, changing venues from Soldier Field to Addams/Medill Park to its new home in Hoffman Estates. Physical and logistical challenges that could otherwise prove dooming for such a large-scale event proved to be just that — mere challenges for the festival. SAMF is indeed thriving and its recent 2019 showcase only further demonstrated its wholehearted determination and appreciation for the dance music scene.

Photo: Matthew Dippel

The most prime example, SAMF’s iconic Solstice Stage transformed in ways that truly had to be seen to be believed for this year’s installment. It must have been especially difficult for organizers, leaving previous locations and memories behind, trading the bustling city for the quiet burbs. However, as we approached the newly formed Solstice Stage for the first time in 2019, we could almost hear it saying — No skyline? No problem. SAMF built its own. A host to many greats over the weekend including Zedd, DJ Snake, Dillon Francis, Chris Lake, and GTA, just to name a few.

With the Solstice Stage in full form, the other stages and curated events fell into place. The Equinox stage packed in the action, experiencing sets from some of the most sought after acts in EDM all weekend long. Illenium, Rezz, Malaa, Flosstradamus x 4B, G Jones, 1788-L, GRiZ, Excision, Herobust, Rusko and Peekaboo took the stage, as well as signature hometown heroes including Porn and Chicken and Birthdayy Partyy. The Equinox captured much of that indescribable SAMF energy, delivering nonstop party vibes over three full days.

Photo: Matthew Dippel

As we’ve come to realize over the past few years running, Spring Awakening sources the biggest and brightest names in the game — resulting in one massive conflict. To experience SAMF in all its glory, is to experience all of the stages and pop in on each of the curated events over the weekend. The Hangar took on multiple personalties in 2019, hosting an Ajunabeats takeover in its first day with Andrew Bayer, Jason Ross and more, which shifted into the Bass Kitchen on day two. Bass heads got their fix with Liquid Stranger, Spag Heddy, Dion Timmer and more, plus a very special b2b2b2b at the end with the most bass heavy artists SAMF had to offer. The final day switched up yet again, with a mix of artists including Crankdat, Cheat Codes, and the legend Benny Benassi.

Of course, no Chicago bred music festival would be complete without house music. The beloved genre trickled onto the main stage thanks to performances from Gettoblaster, Gene Farris, Chris Lake, and GTA’s Purple Set. However, The Function served as the festival’s constant heartbeat, consistently pumping out grooves around 125 bpm. The roster was just as impressive as any other stage: Shiba San, Brohug, Dom Dolla, Golf Clap, Claptone, Nora En Pure and more. Plus, a second-day AMF takeover led by Destructo, featuring Dombresky, Matroda, Dillon Nathaniel, Noizu, Masteria, and Ayoo. More on that here.

Photo: Matthew Dippel

Just as SAMF valued its established acts and headliners, the festival celebrated plenty of upcoming and fresh, new talent. The STFU! Silent Disco, The Bus Stop, and the Corona Electric Beach tent were the festival’s true hidden gems, which allowed attendees to experience something different and walk away with some new favorite artists. Speaking of which, our favorite unexpected set of the weekend: Gianni Blu at Corona Electric Beach.

We can dish out these play-by-plays on the talent, the stages, the curated lineups and the overall electrifying weekend that was Spring Awakening 2019 — but the reality is, no words can do it no justice. If there’s any part of you hoping to experience SAMF firsthand, or return for another year — just go for it!

Spring Awakening Music Festival returns Friday, June 5, 2020 – Sunday, June 7, 2020. More information here.

  Photos via Matthew Dippel

This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Spring Awakening Delivers Another Unforgettable Year Under Its Own Skyline [REVIEW]

Spring Awakening Delivers Another Unforgettable Year Under Its Own Skyline [REVIEW] published first on https://soundwizreview.tumblr.com/

[bluebuzzmusic]

Spring Awakening Delivers Another Unforgettable Year Under Its Own Skyline [REVIEW]

Nothing worth working for comes easy — and Spring Awakening Music Festival (SAMF) knows it best.

In recent years, the music festival has jumped through hoops, changing venues from Soldier Field to Addams/Medill Park to its new home in Hoffman Estates. Physical and logistical challenges that could otherwise prove dooming for such a large-scale event proved to be just that — mere challenges for the festival. SAMF is indeed thriving and its recent 2019 showcase only further demonstrated its wholehearted determination and appreciation for the dance music scene.

Photo: Matthew Dippel

The most prime example, SAMF’s iconic Solstice Stage transformed in ways that truly had to be seen to be believed for this year’s installment. It must have been especially difficult for organizers, leaving previous locations and memories behind, trading the bustling city for the quiet burbs. However, as we approached the newly formed Solstice Stage for the first time in 2019, we could almost hear it saying — No skyline? No problem. SAMF built its own. A host to many greats over the weekend including Zedd, DJ Snake, Dillon Francis, Chris Lake, and GTA, just to name a few.

With the Solstice Stage in full form, the other stages and curated events fell into place. The Equinox stage packed in the action, experiencing sets from some of the most sought after acts in EDM all weekend long. Illenium, Rezz, Malaa, Flosstradamus x 4B, G Jones, 1788-L, GRiZ, Excision, Herobust, Rusko and Peekaboo took the stage, as well as signature hometown heroes including Porn and Chicken and Birthdayy Partyy. The Equinox captured much of that indescribable SAMF energy, delivering nonstop party vibes over three full days.

Photo: Matthew Dippel

As we’ve come to realize over the past few years running, Spring Awakening sources the biggest and brightest names in the game — resulting in one massive conflict. To experience SAMF in all its glory, is to experience all of the stages and pop in on each of the curated events over the weekend. The Hangar took on multiple personalties in 2019, hosting an Ajunabeats takeover in its first day with Andrew Bayer, Jason Ross and more, which shifted into the Bass Kitchen on day two. Bass heads got their fix with Liquid Stranger, Spag Heddy, Dion Timmer and more, plus a very special b2b2b2b at the end with the most bass heavy artists SAMF had to offer. The final day switched up yet again, with a mix of artists including Crankdat, Cheat Codes, and the legend Benny Benassi.

Of course, no Chicago bred music festival would be complete without house music. The beloved genre trickled onto the main stage thanks to performances from Gettoblaster, Gene Farris, Chris Lake, and GTA’s Purple Set. However, The Function served as the festival’s constant heartbeat, consistently pumping out grooves around 125 bpm. The roster was just as impressive as any other stage: Shiba San, Brohug, Dom Dolla, Golf Clap, Claptone, Nora En Pure and more. Plus, a second-day AMF takeover led by Destructo, featuring Dombresky, Matroda, Dillon Nathaniel, Noizu, Masteria, and Ayoo. More on that here.

Photo: Matthew Dippel

Just as SAMF valued its established acts and headliners, the festival celebrated plenty of upcoming and fresh, new talent. The STFU! Silent Disco, The Bus Stop, and the Corona Electric Beach tent were the festival’s true hidden gems, which allowed attendees to experience something different and walk away with some new favorite artists. Speaking of which, our favorite unexpected set of the weekend: Gianni Blu at Corona Electric Beach.

We can dish out these play-by-plays on the talent, the stages, the curated lineups and the overall electrifying weekend that was Spring Awakening 2019 — but the reality is, no words can do it no justice. If there’s any part of you hoping to experience SAMF firsthand, or return for another year — just go for it!

Spring Awakening Music Festival returns Friday, June 5, 2020 – Sunday, June 7, 2020. More information here.

  Photos via Matthew Dippel

This article was first published on Your EDM. Source: Spring Awakening Delivers Another Unforgettable Year Under Its Own Skyline [REVIEW]

source https://www.youredm.com/2019/07/05/spring-awakening-2019-review/

[greatlakereviewoz]

The Zoo

Written by Evelyn Sokolowski, our Fiction Head Editor Fall 2016-Spring 2019

***

I hate the zoo. It is my absolute least favorite place in the world––other than Hell. As much of a good, born and raised Christian man I am, I rather live my afterlife unfairly in the burning pits of Hell than to step foot into a zoo ever again.

My grandchildren, along with my own flesh and blood children, don't understand why. The animals are cute. The family has a great time there. It is a guaranteed clean and safe, family-friendly place with great corn dogs. Overall, compared to many other places to be nowadays, it is the best.

Why do I hate it so much?

Why do my guts twist and bend when I hear those syllables uttered? Why do I scowl in response as if I just sucked on a lemon? Why do I want to smack the back of my children's heads whenever I hear my grandchildren whine about me not wanting to take them?

It all dates back to 2040. I was still a decently young parent at the ripe age of forty-two with three children, two in their early teenage years and one who had yet to reach double digits.

We decided on a sunny, yet slightly cloudy day to go to the zoo. A week prior was my forty-second birthday, so going to the zoo was meant to be like my unofficial birthday gift. In actuality, the youngest was in the midst of a penguin obsession, so going there was more so for her than anything else.

Anyways, there we were: the zoo.

We saw the monkeys swinging on their vines and scratching their asses, elephants splashing water on themselves as a bath, and lions jumping through hoops for a snack. Without failure, we saw the black and white, flightless birds waddle around their miniature North Pole and slide on their bellies into the freezing water.

To say my daughter was ecstatic is a ginormous understatement.

But we did not end our zoo visit there. We made sure to visit all the animals my wife and I wasted forty bucks per person (that would be two-hundred dollars in total) to see.

Our last stop was the reptile exhibit. None of the kids cared much for those critters, other than the alligators that my son thought were "bad-ass." Honestly speaking, I had a soft spot for tortoises since I had two of them growing up as a child, so I would say out of all the exhibits, I was quite thrilled to visit the reptile one.

However, it was that very exhibit that ruined the zoo––no, animals––no, humanity for me for the rest of my life.

Unlike all the other exhibits, there was a swarm of people with signs gathered around its entrance. I couldn't tell you for the life of me now what they said, but I knew they were along the lines of the world ending and us saving animals and how cruel the government was. The crowd, though, was surprisingly silent––blankly watching us as we walked into the exhibit.

One thing I do recall is a little girl who was at least five years old and had the brightest, blondest hair I had ever laid eyes on. She was the closest to the entrance, and with her tiny, pudgy hand, clutched onto just barely the tip of the hem of my flannel shirt.

My eyebrows furrowing in confusion, I paused in step and looked down at her. "Yes?" I asked hesitantly, glancing at the crowd of protestors to make sure none of them were about to pounce on me. It is common practice for men like me to be extremely cautious when talking to children who aren’t your own in this day and age.

"If yew go in 'der, yer gunna re-re... not gunna like what yew see," she murmured before letting go of my shirt.

Before I could utter a response, I remember my eldest daughter grabbing my hand and yanking me into the exhibit. She must've muttered some kind of sarcastic response as to why I was taking forever, but the little girl's words echoed in my ears. As I assumed the girl was attempting to pronounce "regret," I wondered what I was going to regret seeing. What was I not going to like seeing? What was about to happen?

My stomach churned as I trailed behind my family through the exhibit. Everything appeared normal. There were no brand new signs that I could spot––only the ones explaining what specific reptiles were behind each glass case.

My son pointed out the second crowd of people huddling around the largest case in the whole exhibit. However, compared to the crowd outside, these people did not seem like they were protesting. No signs, no blank stares, no creepy child telling prophecies. There was a murmur spreading through the crowd, but I couldn't make out any of their words.

I don't remember how my family ended up at the front of the crowd. I think there may have been security guards or workers at the front cycling out people, so everyone had a glance. Someone told us we had ten minutes to stand there. Regardless, we ended up front and center of the glass––of the tortoises––of what I thought were tortoises.

They looked like normal tortoises. There were three adult ones and two smaller "baby" ones. They were all lying on the grass, except for one adult who was taking a dip in the water in front of us. What felt like five minutes passed until one of the adult tortoises lifted itself and started walking.

My eyes were glued to the adult tortoise. For some reason, it was almost mesmerizing watching it move. Although it was not walking fast, as it was a tortoise, its movements somehow appeared fluid and just slightly faster than the average tortoise. I assumed it must have been younger than its appearance since I was not a turtle expert––but then it happened.

"What's the fuss about?" my wife whispered in my ear right as the tortoise's foot froze mid-air. It began twitching forward and back as if it was glitching.

I hoped my eyes were deceiving me when I saw light gray puffs of smoke rise to the air. Unfortunately, they were not deceived. Barely a second past when two workers with toolboxes appeared out of the blue and rushed to the tortoise who was still glitching.

I flinched when a voice boomed over the speakers, "Ladies and gents, we apologize for the technical issues you are currently witnessing. As we are perfecting our animal models," I learned to hate those two words, "there are still technical issues that arise every now and then. If you would like to record this moment..."

I forgot who I asked what "animal models" were but I remember someone telling me that, since most, if not all, animals on Earth were going extinct, this zoo was the first of its kind where it was replacing all its real, breathing animals with animatronics. I never knew about this global issue to begin with, because my family did not own television as I did once back in the day, so news channels were no longer a thing neither me nor my family watched.

My eyes wanted to unsee the panel being lifted from the tortoises' side. It released a large puff of gray smoke, but once the smoke died down, I saw the cogs and gears attempting to rotate inside the tortoise.

Although my heart shattered at the realization that the tortoises, along with all the other animals of the world, were no longer real, what made me sick to my stomach was information I found out sometime after my zoo visit. When I was told that real animals were being replaced by animal models, I did not know that the method of replacement was the mass slaughter of the remaining animals. No one ever explained why, and I could not find a reason on the Internet (most likely due to the increased level of control the government has taken over what us civilians may access online).

For whatever reason, my children accepted this ungodly change in dynamics. They accepted the fact that God was no longer in control of creation––that all of His power was now put into the hands of us mortals who were not even serving his intended purpose of other creations roaming the Earth with us.

Forget my upbringing!

My children blindly accepted the slaughter of millions of innocent creatures––and all for the sake of what? Those "animal models" continue to remain behind the glass as the real animals did. We are not allowed to interact with them beyond the walls of government-sponsored zoos. Animal models don't even provide meat for us as meat is now as extinct as the animals they once came from.

So these are the reasons why I hate the zoo––why I lost faith in both humanity and God.

[junker-town]

Why nobody stopped the Warriors from signing DeMarcus Cousins

Cousins’ market barely existed, and there’s a reason why.

DeMarcus Cousins is a member of the Golden State Warriors, all for the cheap price of one year and $5.3 million. One hundred and ninety two players made more than $5.3 million last season. None of them averaged 25 points and 13 rebounds per game.

Naturally, this has spurned all sorts of jealousy from anyone who follows the league. What is the point of competing when the Warriors can just sign All-Stars like Boogie for that little money? Why do the rich need to get richer? Wasn’t there some way to stop the Warriors from continuing to amass an embarrassment of riches?

Apparently not. The market for Cousins’ services barely existed, and may not have existed at all. Cousins himself said there were no offers, which was disputed by the New Orleans Times Picayune. The Celtics were reportedly the runner-up for Cousins, but they might not have actually made an offer, either. It seems hard to believe on the surface. Nobody wanted DeMarcus Cousins? Really?

But dig into Cousins’ unique situation, and there’s a reason that market didn’t exist.

For starters ... he ruptured his Achilles!

That’s a big deal! The Achilles injury is the worst one you can suffer, and most players are never the same.

Even if Cousins recovers perfectly from that injury, it’ll take him until well into next season to do so. Most teams don’t have the luxury to invest a lot of money into a player and wait that long without any certainty that he’ll be the same player.

We simply cannot downplay the injury. If he had injured any other body part, he likely has more of a market.

Even before the injury, how valuable is Cousins?

It’s a worthwhile question to ask. We know Cousins puts up huge numbers, but he’s never made the playoffs in his career and has a crushing number of bad on-court habits that hurt his teams. He’s not always in shape, his defensive effort comes and goes, he turns the ball over a ton, and he’s prone to losing his cool at the worst possible time.

Cousins has played on one above-.500 team in his career: last season. Before Cousins’ injury, the Pelicans were 27-22 and outscored teams by an average of 1.2 points per 100 possessions. After Cousins’ injury, they went 21-13 while outscoring teams by 3.1 points per 100 possessions. Then, they swept Portland in the first round of the playoffs, with Anthony Davis dominating.

There are mitigating factors — most notably, the addition of Nikola Mirotic at the trade deadline — but the fact is that New Orleans was better without Cousins than with him in about the same number of games.

That, plus Cousins’ reputation as a difficult player to coach (to put it charitably), blunted his value around the league even before he ruptured his Achilles.

OK, I get all that. But still, nobody offered more than $5.3 million to Boogie Cousins? Surely his talent alone is worth much more than that

In an ordinary market, perhaps. But this summer is no ordinary market. Blame the 2016 cap spike for shrinking the available money for teams to spend.

Let’s walk through this step by step.

Who could have conceivably offered Cousins a maximum contract?

In alphabetical order: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, the Lakers, and Philadelphia. Sacramento and Phoenix had a little less than the max to offer, while Utah, Indiana, and the Clippers (in a very elaborate scenario only) could have found max cap space if they gave up on retaining key players from last season.

None of those teams had much reason to want to spend that space on Cousins.

Atlanta and Chicago aren’t interested in competing now.

The 76ers don’t need Cousins with Joel Embiid.

Phoenix just drafted DeAndre Ayton.

Dallas chose to use that space on DeAndre Jordan instead.

Indiana and Utah understandably kept the band together.

The Clippers had to jump through too many hoops to put themselves in the mix.

Sacramento ... lol.

We’ll come back to the Lakers.

Once Dallas went after Jordan, that max offer wasn’t ever coming from someone else.

What about the Pelicans? Can’t they exceed the cap to keep Cousins?

They could have, yes. Before free agency began, my colleague Kristian Winfield argued for them to bite the bullet and max out Cousins despite all these concerns.

But consider the massive risk they’d have taken on if they had done so. Such a move would have put the small-market Pelicans up against the luxury tax, making any subsequent move difficult. If the contract was for multiple years, it’d vaporize any salary-cap flexibility to improve the roster as they enter a critical period in Davis’ career.

Would you take on that risk for a big man coming off the worst injury in sports, especially when the team was better last season after his injury? You can understand why they didn’t, especially when the more cost-effective option of acquiring Julius Randle instead fell into their lap.

So with them out and all these max slots out, who could pay Cousins?

There were a few teams that lacked cap space that might have been interested in Cousins sign-and-trade scenarios. Two that immediately spring to mind: the Portland Trail Blazers and Washington Wizards. Portland reportedly held exploratory talks, and the Wizards are a logical destination because of Cousins’ relationship with John Wall.

But sign-and-trades have become increasingly difficult since the higher luxury-tax penalties were installed after the 2011 lockout. Teams that exceed the luxury tax by more than $6 million — this is known as “the apron” — are not allowed to add players via sign-and-trade. In effect, the second a team executes a sign-and-trade, they have a hard cap of $129 million and can’t do anything to exceed that.

The Wizards and Trail Blazers are right up against the luxury tax as is, so they run the risk of approaching that hard cap. For a sign-and-trade to remotely have a chance, the Pelicans would need to take back equal (and maybe even more) salary. That’s asking a lot because they, too, are seeking to avoid the luxury tax.

There were technically ways for the Wizards to make a sign-and-trade work financially, but they were incredibly complicated even before deciding whether the value was actually worth it for both sides. Bullets Forever explained this in more detail here.

The same logic applies to Portland, with another unique complication as well.

ESPN Sources: Portland and New Orleans had discussed the possibility of a sign-and-trade for DeMarcus Cousins, but a road block existed since he shares the same agent as RFA Jusuf Nurkic.

— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) July 3, 2018

Bottom line: saying “What about a sign-and-trade?” is like saying “We need to get a third team involved to make this trade happen.” It’s technically possible, but it’s also so difficult that you’re clearly grasping at straws.

OK, fine. But my team surely could have offered Cousins the same thing or more, right?

Not really. Without cap space to spend and without viable sign-and-trade scenarios, most teams really couldn’t offer more than that $5.3 million.

Remember: every team gets access to one type of mid-level exception:

Teams that use cap room get the Room Mid-Level Exception, which starts at $4.4 million.

Teams that will be over the luxury tax get that $5.3 million Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception.

Teams over the salary cap, but under the luxury tax, get the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception starting at $8.6 million. But just like with sign-and-trades, using this means that your team salary cannot exceed $129 million under any circumstances.

Only a handful of teams could have conceivably used the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception without approaching the luxury tax. That list: Cleveland, the Clippers, Memphis, New York, Orlando, San Antonio, and Utah. It’s hard to see any of those situations appealing to Cousins, though it’d have been hilarious to watch Gregg Popovich coach him.

That left a handful of teams that only had the $5.3 million Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception to offer. Those leftover teams:

Boston

Charlotte

Denver

Detroit

Houston

Miami

Milwaukee

Minnesota

Oklahoma City

Portland

Toronto

Washington

And, of course, Golden State

None of those teams are winning a free-agent pitch battle over the Warriors if they have the same money to offer. Considering the circumstances, of course Cousins chose the Warriors over anyone else.

Let’s circle back to the Lakers

This is the one team that might be kicking themselves. They are the only team that a) could have given Cousins a richer offer than the Warriors did and b) had some reason to do so.

In the 24 hours after getting LeBron James, the Lakers used cap space to nab Kentavious Caldwell-Pope for $12 million and Rajon Rondo for $9 million. (They used the Room Mid-Level Exception on Lance Stephenson and a minimum contract on JaVale McGee, which they could have done regardless of other moves). Even after those two signings, they could have renounced Randle’s rights (which they did) and used the Stretch provision on Luol Deng to open up around $18-20 million in cap space for Cousins.

Would Cousins have taken a one-year, $18 million offer to join the Lakers over a deal for a third of that amount to join Golden State? Would it have made more sense to give Cousins the combined $21 million that was spent on Rondo and Caldwell-Pope? These possibilities might have been a reasonable gamble while keeping the cap sheet open for next year.

Alas, we’ll never know if Cousins would have accepted or even if such an offer was considered. Maybe the Lakers’ odd locker room couldn’t afford to take on Cousins as well. Maybe LeBron wanted players who were guaranteed to be ready by opening night.

But I can at least understand Lakers fans who are annoyed about this missed opportunity. Everyone else, though, needs to consider the full context before getting mad that their team let Cousins walk to the two-time defending champs.

[ntrending]

Meet the mountain bikes built to survive a backflip off a cliff

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/meet-the-mountain-bikes-built-to-survive-a-backflip-off-a-cliff/

Meet the mountain bikes built to survive a backflip off a cliff

Think back to childhood and that nervous—even scared—feeling you had in your stomach before bombing a steep hill on your bike. Crank that feeling to 11,000 and you still won’t match the insanity of big mountain freeriding. The biggest event in the sport is Red Bull Rampage, an annual competition in which the best riders in the world head to Utah to literally huck themselves off cliffs.

How do these riders—and their bikes—survive such brutal impacts? A lot of it has to do with the skill of the pilots and their ability to land smoothly after jumping a canyon. But, the bikes still take a beating; it requires a lot of engineering and rugged materials to withstand that kind of punishment. You can, however, walk into a high-end bike shop and almost all the components—except for the total lack of fear—right now.

Suspension

Mountain bikes with suspension on both the front and back wheels first showed up in the neon-soaked early ‘90s. Back then, just a few inches of travel on each wheel absorbed bumps that would otherwise be transferred to riders’ hands or sit bones (which is the fancy way cyclists say “butts”). In 1995, the RockShox Judy DH fork was the burliest around, with just 3 inches of travel. Now, full-suspension bikes typically boast eight or more inches of travel on both wheels.

This year’s Rampage winner was Kurt Sorge, a 28 year-old rider from Canada, and also the 2015 champ. His Polygon Collosus bike was running a Cane Creek Double Barrel DBCoil shock at the back wheel. It’s a totally stock piece of gear that you could buy retail right now, but Sorge’s has an impressive lineage. “Kurt [Sorge] actually won Rampage last time on that exact same shock,” says Jim Morrison, director of engineering from Cane Creek. “We serviced it at the beginning of the year, but it’s the same hardware.” Combined with the bike’s frame, it gave Sorge 8 inches of travel at the back wheel.

More travel in the suspension means it can absorb more energy from a landing before it transfers to the rest of the bike or your body.

The rear shock on the bike consists of a piston that moves through oil as it compresses and rebounds. A sturdy spring surrounding the piston controls the movement. This is a standard piece of kit for aggressive mountain bikers, but the impacts of Rampage require a distinctly different setup process.

“Kurt [Sorge] probably weighs around 150 pounds, but he’s using a spring that would typically support a person who weighs 300 pounds, or maybe even more,” says Morrison. The titanium spring—most offer steel, which is heavier, but much cheaper—helps the shock compress in a linear progression, meaning it doesn’t get harder to squish the further down it goes. This makes the bike ride in a more-consistent and predictable way on the trail.

That extra spring strength on Sorge’s bike helps prevent the suspension from running out of room to compress (known as “bottoming out”), which can lead to catastrophe. “If you go through all your travel, you hit the bottom of the shock with a lot of force, which gets transferred to your wheels, your frame, and ultimately your legs,” says Morrison. “You only really want to bottom out when something went wrong and you needed all of it to save you.”

Oil valves inside the shock slow down the rate at which the piston bounces back after compression. This is called rebound damping, and it’s what prevents that heavy spring from catapulting the rider like a pogo stick over the handlebars.

A stock suspension fork from SR Suntour called Rux cushions the front of Sorge’s bike. It also uses an unorthodox setup. “You wouldn’t want to ride Kurt [Sorge]’s bike for more than a minute,” says SR Suntour’s Dan Dacko. The fork is so stiff that the bumps in a regular trail would hurt your hands.”

Long rides on typical trails with this setup could result in what’s called suspension packing, in which smaller bumps gradually squash the shock without giving it time to bounce back. Packing reduces the effective travel, negatively affects the geometry of the frame, and ultimately leads to a choppier ride.

Sorge’s fork has two 38mm diameter aluminum stanchions that sink into magnesium sleeves called lowers. The right stanchion contains a cartridge with valves for controlling damping, while the left stanchion is pressurized to create an air spring that replaces familiar metal coil. A typical ride of Sorge’s weight might use roughly 50 PSI worth or pressure, but for rampage, that number would grow to over 85 PSI.

Unlike spring shocks, air has a progressive compression curve—it gets harder to compress the more it’s squished—which many riders prefer, especially on ramps. “The most force the fork will be subjected to happens during the take off on a jump,” says Dacko. “Without the right amount of pressure, the fork compresses too quickly and messes up the bike’s geometry.” An improperly configured fork will try to absorb the lip of the jump rather than allowing the rider to boost off of it, which means less distance and possible catastrophe.

Like the shock, the fork employs high rebound damping to reduce the speed at which the fork bounces back after big hit.

Ultimately, both sides of the suspension on a bike built for this purpose are overly stiff for just about anything else. Typically, manufacturers recommend that simply sitting on a bike should compress (or “sag” in MTB parlance) the fork and shock by roughly 25 percent, so it can extend and compress to stay in contact with the trail. A bike like Sorge’s would likely give 10 percent sag or less, which translates into an extremely bumpy ride.

The frame

Carbon fiber is the material of the moment in just about every segment of the bike market for its weight savings over aluminum and its superior stiffness, and this one is no different. Trek, which provided the Session 9.9 DH bike for 2016’s winner, Brendan Semenuk, crafted a fully carbon frame with custom geometry to accommodate the 26-inch wheels.

Trek tests its carbon frames with more extreme measures than its other carbon frames to ensure they can withstand the rigors of intense impacts.

The wheels

27.5-inch wheels are popular in the bike world right now, but many Rampage riders opt for the tried-and-true option of 26-inch aluminum hoops to keep the wheelbases short—better for doing spinning tricks on the course. Sorge was riding the Hope Tech DH-Pro 4 wheels, which have 32 spokes and a 28mm wide inner diameter. That’s a standard number of spokes for an MTB tire, but consider that Hope’s pro cross-country wheel, which is meant for lighter hits, is just 19.5mm wide on the inside. The wider rims distribute the force of the impact over a larger surface area to increase durability.

Internal metal structures support the rim and the walls are reinforced with thicker metal to prevent the whole thing from turning into a wheel taco during a sketchy landing.

The pedals

For his winning run, Sorge ran Deity Bladerunner pedals, which are actually the thinnest pedal the company has ever made. It sounds crazy when we’re talking about cliff hucks, but there’s a reason. At 11mm thick, these pedals give the bike more ground clearance, especially when the suspension is compressed, so they won’t get caught on a rock, root, or any other junk that may be on the trail.

The aluminum pedals have 10 threaded pins on each side that stick up and bite into the rider’s shoe to prevent feet from slipping off. Machined grooves in the pedal bodies further increase traction by cutting down on smooth surfaces.

The Brakes

Brakes are crucial for controlling speed in addition to stopping, which is why bikes at this kind of competition—and in serious downhill racing environments—use hydraulic disc brakes with big, 8-inch rotors. When you squeeze the brake lever, hydraulic fluid pushes calipers with metal or resin pads into steel discs to generate friction and slow you down. The discs have holes and radiation fins to help dispense the heat created during the braking process. When discs get too hot, brakes start to lose power (known as fading), which can be very bad news. When the brakes are fresh, however, they typically only require one finger to pull the lever and provide impressive stopping power.

Shimano Saint brakes are a common option for big mountain riding because they use four ceramic pistons to push the pads against the discs. Many typical MTB brakes only use two, which means less power pushing the pads.

Written By Stan Horaczek