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rngknsk · 3 years ago

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The Aftermath

Chapter 2: Dinner

Sanemi Shinazugawa/Reader (F)

Three months have passed since you woke up at the Butterfly Estate beside your good friend Sanemi Shinazugawa. You have healed physically, but not emotionally. You take up an offer to spend some time by yourself at the Shinazugawa residence, hoping to finally find peace with yourself.

**THIS STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE DEMON SLAYER MANGA. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE MANGA.**

Tags/warnings: Shared trauma, angst, survivors guilt, slight tw, comfort, slight fluff, reader is a Hashira

Chapter 1 can be read here.

You can also read Chapter 2 here on Ao3.

Enjoy! :)

A little over three months had passed since defeating Muzan Kibutsuji and the remaining Upper Moons. Your injuries, along with the others who had survived the fight, were just about fully healed. One week prior to today, the demon slayer corps had been disbanded. Sanemi Shinazugawa, Giyuu Tomioka, and yourself had attended the final meeting called by the late Kagaya Ubuyashiki’s only son and successor, Kiriya Ubuyashiki. The remaining Ubuyashiki children were very grateful to you three. As the only remaining Hashira, they were only able to verbally express their appreciation for your support, to that you three slayers returned as well. If it wasn’t for the Ubuyashiki family, Muzan would have never been defeated in the first place. It was due to their clever organizational skills that any of you were even alive.

Concluding the meeting, Kiriya went on to inform the three of you now-retired Hashira that they had planned for a glorious celebration dedicated to the demon slayers to celebrate humanity’s victory. The celebration would be held at the Ubuyashiki estate since the grounds were substantial enough to hold all sorts of people and activities. Crows were sent to villages and towns across the land to inform of the festival, welcoming those who wished to show their appreciation to the remaining retired demon slayers for risking their lives for such a noble cause, and to pay their respects to those who committed the ultimate sacrifice. Every single village that was visited by a crow had accepted the invitation, many planning to bring dishes, drinks, and desserts of all kinds. Another large town had offered to bring fireworks to light up the skies at dusk.

After you were released from the Butterfly Estate’s infirmary, Sanemi had allowed you to stay at his residence while he remained. You had grown up living at the Rengoku residence after Shinjuro Rengoku saved you after your family perished at the hands of demons. Even after you became a Hashira, you would return to their home after long missions; however, part of you wanted time to yourself after losing so many people in such a short time. You loved Shinjuro and Senjuro Rengoku like family, but a feeling deep down in your heart persuaded you to accept Sanemi’s kind offer. After spending three whole months at the Butterfly Estate, constantly being woken by the voices of others you shared your hospital room with, you thought this would be a perfect opportunity to allow yourself to mourn in a healthy fashion. You spent a week at the Shinazugawa residence, taking time to heal your mental state in solitude. Sanemi Shinazugawa was a very secluded man and claimed he did not need the aid of the Kakushi throughout his time as a Hashira, so his residence remained empty until you arrived. There, you took time strolling through his gardens, tending to his flowers and various plants he owned and raised. You were surprised he didn’t show you his gardens after spending so much time training with him in his courtyard. The idea of Sanemi watering flowers made you laugh to yourself; this tough, vicious man taking the time out of his violent days of slaying demons to water some plants. Through the garden ran a small creek surrounded by neatly placed stones on either side, depositing into a pond with koi fish which seemed to be rather well behaved. At the center of his garden was a great, majestic weeping willow tree. The leaves of the tree draped down magnificently, just several feet from the ground. Most of your week was spent meditating underneath this tree. You felt safe underneath it, almost as if it was protecting you from anything outside of its weeping branches. The faint running water of the stream aided your meditation, allowing yourself to find peace at last. You also made sure to frequently check on his rhinoceros beetle that he kept in a quaint tank. You had seen him once or twice when you had visited Sanemi in the past, the memory of his name resting at the tip of your tongue. Taichi? That sounded right. You had to admit though, he was pretty adorable for a bug, and quiet too. You didn’t exactly know what to feed him, so you tried giving him a mix of greens and fruit you had harvested from the garden outside. He seemed pretty happy with what you gave him because he just about finished whatever you gave him.

It was evening when Sanemi had returned to his home, as promised by the nurses of the Butterfly Estate. In honesty, Sanemi had recovered almost two weeks ago, however the nurses insisted he remain in their care until they knew for sure his injuries wouldn’t reopen. To your surprise, Sanemi didn’t argue like he typically would. Instead, he simply agreed to stay, while on the other hand, you were able to leave just a week later. He had sent his crow the day before, informing you of his anticipated arrival, so that morning you were sure to stop in a town nearby to purchase some ingredients for a hearty meal that you figured you two could share. He wasn’t a picky eater by no means. You picked out many ingredients, green onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, napa cabbage, fresh beef, and wheat flour for the noodles you planned to knead and cook yourself. You also made sure to purchase the ingredients you needed to make his favorite sweet, ohagi. The villagers had recognized you as one of the former Hashira, insisting that you did not need to pay them for your pickings, however you persuaded them to accept your money regardless of your status. It was a strange feeling; you didn’t like being treated as someone of such importance. After all, you weren’t a Hashira anymore since the demons were defeated.

Once you returned back to the Shinazugawa residence, you spent the entirety of the day preparing your dough for the sukiyaki dish that you planned to make and bounced back and forth between making that and the ohagi as well. You imagined how Sanemi would react to making such a large meal, although you were sure he would enjoy it just as much as he enjoyed the meals prepared at the Butterfly Estate. Admittedly, the Kakushi who prepared your meals were very talented with cooking, and you were pleased that they provided such a wide range of dishes during your stay. It was a nice change to be provided with a warm meal that you didn’t have to make yourself. While living with the Rengoku family, you were typically the one to cook the meals during your days off from slayer assignments, and while on the clock, you were the one to provide for yourself. However, out of all the years you knew Sanemi, you never cooked for him before, and that made you anxious. What if he didn’t like your cooking? What if the noodles were too tough, or the vegetables were undercooked? You took a deep inhale in through your nose for a moment, then exhaled through your mouth. There was no time for worrying. If you wanted to make these dishes perfect, then you needed complete concentration.

Just a few hours before the sun set, Sanemi arrived at home. You had finished setting the table, just gathering up the leftover dishes that you used to cook. The door slid open and you jumped at the sound, reflexively whipping your frame around to face where he stood. He no longer was covered in bandages; only extra scars added to the previous ones littered his exposed skin. His face held an expression of disbelief at the sight of the prepared table; he certainly wasn’t expecting a home cooked meal.

“Welcome home, Shinazugawa-san,” you chirped. “I made dinner for us, so I hope you’re hungry.”

“You made all of this?” He questioned, taking a few steps inside before sliding the door close behind him. “I smelled it a mile away, of course I’m hungry. It smells great, L/N-san.”

You let out a quiet sigh of relief. That was a good sign, he thought it smelled good! You removed your apron and neatly folded it, setting it down on the ground beside the table. Sanemi made his way towards the table, kneeling down in front of it before scooting himself forward. You followed, clapping your hands together in thanks.

“Thank you for the meal!” You said, drool practically leaking from the corners of your mouth as you hovered over the hot, steaming bowl of sukiyaki. Sanemi smiled at your gesture, putting his hands together as well.

“Yeah, thanks for the meal,” he agreed. “I really appreciate it.”

You only gawked at the man sitting across from you. Was this really the same guy you’ve spent the last few years training with? He’s always been so brash, even towards you. The Sanemi you know would have scoffed at you without even voicing any thanks and dug right into his meal. You didn’t really know how to feel about his recent alter in personality. To be honest, you started to notice the drastic change as soon as you woke up in the Butterfly Estate just a few months prior to today. Sure, he’s always has his moments when he was tired, or even for an hour or so on a day off that you both shared sparring, but ever since the day you woke up, ever since you saw him cry, he’s been incredibly passive and compliant towards everyone. You told yourself that it was most likely due to the defeat of Kibutsuji and all demons. He didn’t have to hold such an aggressive persona anymore now that humanity’s biggest threat was eliminated. He could let his guard down a bit and try to enjoy the new chance of life that he was given. You couldn’t complain though, as amusing as it was whenever he would yell at you or call you names while you two trained or were assigned on missions together, it was nice to be friends with somebody who treated you as their equal rather than their inferior. Somewhere deep down, you thought, Sanemi never meant the things he said that might have hurt your feelings in the past.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to start eating?” he mumbled through a mouth full of noodles and meat. His pale lavender eyes darted downwards toward the faintly steaming ohagi resting on a dish in the center of the table. “I see you also made ohagi. Hopefully you made it right.”

Your cheeks puffed up in a pout, swiping the chopsticks from beside your sukiyaki dish. “Of course I made it right, red bean, just how you like them!”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sanemi chuckled after he swallowed.

After you both finished your sukiyaki, you sat and chatted for a little bit while munching on your ohagi. He told you about how he was one of the last patients to leave the Butterfly Estate, and how annoying he thought this one Kakushi worker was.

“She would check up on me almost every thirty minutes, always asking if I was hungry or thirsty, or if I was in any pain,” Sanemi groaned, visibly becoming more irritated as he explained. He was certainly picky when it came to people. That certainly did sound annoying, however you knew that the Kakushi girl was most likely only doing her job to make sure Sanemi was as comfortable as possible. “It got to the point where I had to start telling her to screw off, but she never got the hint. It was almost like she kept bothering me on purpose.”

“It seems to me that she was just doing what she was told,” you reasoned as you picked up your tan ceramic mug of warm green tea, taking a sip before continuing. “I’m sure she wasn’t doing it on purpose, she probably had orders to keep an eye on you.”

“Well, I’m sure she didn’t have orders to check in on me that often, nobody else was checked on that much at the Estate, not even you or Giyuu. I bet if I had been more aggressive towards her then maybe she would have left me alone.”

You rolled your eyes at his last comment. That sounded more like the Sanemi you knew, trying to scare people away, especially people who tried to help him. You knew that all too well. He was the same way towards you when you both met for the first time. You became a Hashira after he did, so he initially saw you as his inferior. He tried to intimidate you before every Hashira meeting began, to which you will admit, you did end up becoming nervous around him during those gatherings.

A few years ago, shortly after you were just promoted to a Hashira, you both were assigned on a mission together. It was a several day-long mission, most of it consisting of travel time. He was very hostile towards you in the beginning of your journey, snapping at you over any small question you asked. You had always made the first move to question what he wanted for dinners, but it ended up becoming a chore to agree on meals with him. Whenever you suggested something, he would always shoot down your proposal before eventually insisting on what his tastebuds craved. You imagined that you both could have saved so much time on that mission if he had just answered you appropriately the first time. After several days of sticking together, you could tell he was starting to calm down around you. Sanemi could never be perfectly calm, so when you say he “calmed down,” he was just slightly less hostile towards you whenever you spoke to him. Regardless, you tried your best to stand your ground and remain friendly towards him after contemplating if this was just the way he was always going to be. Sanemi was your partner on this mission after all, so to make sure the mission was completed correctly you figured you’d at least stay on good terms until then.

Following the completion of that mission, Sanemi’s taunting seemed to die down during Hashira meetings, and you found yourself having neutral conversations with him from time to time. It wasn’t until after Kyojuro Rengoku’s untimely death that you found him approaching you outside of Hashira meetings.

You were truly heartbroken over the death of your closest friend, and you took it very hard. Admittedly, you were on the verge of giving up as a Hashira because of it. You stopped showing up to Hashira meetings and received many letters from the other Hashira and even Kagaya Ubuyashiki himself, but you ignored them all. The first person to approach you was Sanemi, who had traveled to the Rengoku residence where you lived. He had come to offer you a meal and some company, which was quite astonishing to you. The last time you had seen him was during Kyojuro’s funeral, but he had not interacted with you at all; none of the Hashira did, except Mitsuri Kanroji for a brief moment of mutual comfort.

Sanemi apologized that he didn’t offer his sympathies earlier. He also informed you that everyone was worried over your lack of participation, to which you scoffed.

“If they’re so worried, then maybe they should check up on me themselves,” you said.

“That’s why I came instead.”

You were taken aback by his quick response. That was the first day that you recalled his change in personality, at least towards you. He was easily able to persuade you to begin attending meetings again, and even went as far as to invite you to train with him at his residence. Slowly, you started to notice yourself becoming more and more comfortable around him, enjoying the time that you spent in his company. There were certainly still times that he insulted you for not being able to knock him down in a spar, but he didn’t come off as purposefully aggressive like he used to. Kagaya Ubuyashiki recognized how well you two regarded each other and sent you on many missions together. You eventually became confused over how you truly felt towards Sanemi.

You never wanted to admit it, but it was certain that you deeply admired your fellow Hashira. In any other case, you would have believed that you were in love with him, but there was no way that you would ever admit to something so ridiculous. Sanemi was the complete opposite of you, so self-assured and violent, he was discourteous to everyone he met, which would frankly only harm your reputation if you were to commit to him. But the biggest reason of all was that you were both demon slayers, Hashira particularly. Neither of you had time to devote to such a thing as a relationship, because any mission you could take on may well possibly be your last. Being a Hashira was a considerable obligation, to which you were entrusted to protecting the lives of those weaker than you.

For the time being, you pushed away your feelings for Sanemi. You figured that he was too focused on his work and didn’t have time for a romantic relationship anyway. That was, until you woke up after defeating the demons.

“L/N-san? What are you looking at? You’ve been staring at my shoulder for a while. Is there a bug or something?” You were pulled out of your reminiscing, focusing on the silver-haired man you were recalling from your memories once again. He dorkily brushed his shoulder with his hand. “Nothing’s there,” he murmured.

“Sorry, Shinazugawa-san, I guess I zoned out for a second there,” you stammered.

He raised a faint eyebrow towards you, almost as if in question. You tapped your fingernails on your cup of tea that was now room temperature before quickly pulling it up to your mouth to chug the rest of the herbal liquid in hopes to break this awkward tension. When you returned the cup to the table in front of you, Sanemi spoke up to change the subject.

“I received a letter from the Ubuyashiki family’s crow yesterday, it was a reminder about the celebration tomorrow night.”

You softly gasped, remembering the same letter you received the previous day as well. You were so focused on seeing Sanemi again today that you totally forgot that tomorrow was the celebration that was dedicated to the former demon slayers.

“Oh, yeah,” you began. “It is tomorrow, isn’t it? How time flies,” you chuckled to hide your uneasiness. It was no matter, Sanemi effortlessly picked up on the way your body tensed up.

“Did you have something in mind that you were going to wear?”

You pondered for a moment, trying to imagine the inside of your closet back at the Rengoku residence. You owned a few pretty kimonos, however you received them as gifts when you were still an early teenager. Now that you were almost a decade older, you had no doubt that they didn’t fit you anymore.

“Well, not exactly,” you started off. “I have some kimonos, but I don’t think they really fit me anymore. After I became a demon slayer, I typically only wore my uniforms while I outgrew the other clothes I had.”

Sanemi hummed at your response. He leaned forward onto the table, propping himself up with a forearm while grinning strangely at you. His gesture sent a chill up your spine, and you noticed your face feeling rather warm. “Huh, is that so? I guess that means that we’ll have to go to town tomorrow to find you something nice to wear. I’m not letting you go to the festival looking like a fool.”

You gaped at him, unable to articulate a response right away. Your heart fluttered at his words, feeling flattered, almost honored, to be his concern. He wanted you to look nice tomorrow is what he was trying to convey. Such a trivial thing to be concerned about, you thought, but he did have a point. You would be meeting many people the least you could do was try to look presentable. After all, this was a celebration in honor of your victory.

“You’ll go with me, Shinazugawa-san?” you questioned with wide eyes, just to be sure you heard him correctly.

“Of course I’m gonna go with you, did you even hear what I just said? You can spend the night here and we can leave at dawn, I have an extra futon you can use. We’ll have a while before the festival starts tomorrow afternoon, so maybe we can stop for lunch when we get there. My treat, since you made such a good dinner tonight,” Sanemi avoided eye contact when he complimented your cooking skills, almost as if he was too shy to actually admit it to your face.

Your face broke out in a wide smile, a wave of encouragement washing over you. He actually liked your cooking! After worrying all day over it, you actually succeeded in making a meal that Sanemi would enjoy! Not one bit of his meal was left you noticed, and he even finished two or three cups of the tea you brewed. That was a huge accomplishment in your book.

“That sounds like a great idea, thank you for coming along with me!” You bowed your head in appreciation. “I suppose it’s smart to have a second opinion on whatever I decide to wear.”

Sanemi scoffed, standing from the table and gathering your empty dishes and cups and walking away with both hands full. “I’m sure you’ll look fine in whatever you put on,” he mumbled as he strode off to the kitchen.

You were left alone at the table, looking down as you twiddled your fingers nervously. It was one thing after another that made your heart rate speed up, it seemed. You didn’t exactly know how to handle this new Sanemi, you figured he wouldn’t care what you intended to wear, or to even go as far to take you out to find a nice outfit. Typically, he would mock anything you wore that wasn’t your corps uniform, so that final compliment was what threw you off the most. You exhaled loudly and clapped your palms against your reddened cheeks, hoping to scare away the tingles that ran throughout your body. The only thing you could focus on right now was figuring out what Sanemi’s intentions were with you. Sure, they were harmless compliments and kind gestures, but it was a whole other level for this man. He didn’t regularly give out compliments. In fact, he didn’t give them out at all. But now…? No, you thought. He’s just your friend, he just has a funny way of showing it. There was no way that he felt anything romantic for you. Even if he did, you would know it by now. Sanemi was a very blunt person, and he was always honest with you… sometimes a little too honest. You bit your nail as scenarios raced through your mind. Being Sanemi’s friend was like being on a rollercoaster, sometimes you didn’t know what to expect. Sometimes it was disappointing, while other times it was a thrill.

Footsteps approached you again, tearing you from your ruminations. “It’s getting pretty late now; we’ve been talking for almost two hours. If we’re gonna be up early then we should at least get some decent sleep.”

Sanemi showed you to his room where he laid an extra futon just a few feet away from his own. You had been using his futon since you arrived at his residence a week ago and made sure to wash it before you first used it and after you last used it. He fluffed his extra futon up, asking you how you preferred to sleep, to which you insisted that you were pleased with any way your futon felt. You were just grateful that he even offered to have you spend another night.

He blew out the candle that sat between your futons that he originally lit to illuminate the room until you were both situated in your mattresses. You turned to your side to face away from his direction, taking a bundle of your heavy blanket into your embrace. You wondered to yourself if you should tell him good night or not. Would that be weird? You always said good night to Kyojuro and Senjuro. After a minute, you took in a deep breath and worked up the courage to speak, but were alas disrupted by a deep snore. Sanemi must be one of those people who fall asleep easily, you thought. It wasn’t very long before you followed, feeling an unfamiliar sense of comfort just before you fell into the unconscious world of sleep.

#shinaguzawa sanemi #sanemi shinazugawa #sanemi #shinazugawa #sanemi shinazugawa x reader #kny x reader #kny #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #fanfic #comfort #fluff #angst #writing #sanemi fanfic

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subbing-for-clones · 4 years ago

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Stranded Part 2.5

Savage Opress x Reader

A/N: so I'm calling this 2.5 because it's super short but it's been forever since I updated so I needed something to get the juices flowing again. And a break before all the angst that's about to come.

Word Count: 1.5k

WARNINGS: mentions of death, super duper fluffy fluff with our favorite himbo.

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"Relax. If you want to connect to the surrounding force you have to breathe. You have to relax."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"Every time I try to focus, I just see her face. I see my brother's face. I feel his bones crunching in my hand."

Savage was sitting cross legged at the edge of the cool water spring next to his princess. Light pink blossoms drifted lazily through the air leaving a floral scent in their wake. She had a fishing line bobbing in the glimmering waters lit by the late morning sun, a yellow sundress pooling over her legs. She was facing him but he couldn't see that behind his eyelids.

"Do you think he blames you now? Do you think he blamed you then?"

"He called out my name."

"And was it a curse or a call for your mind to return to the present."

"I... I think he knew I was being controlled."

"Does the witch still control you now? From wherever she is in the galaxy, can she call your name into space and force you to do her bidding?"

"I don't think so."

"Can you feel her fingers in the back of your mind?"

"No."

She stood and walked behind him, wrapping her arms over his shoulders, splaying her hands across his broad chest and resting her chin in the crook of his neck. Without opening his eyes, he held one of her hands to him and rumbled a purr.

"Then you have nothing to fear. Her influence has been severed. It has been since you disobeyed her order and fled her and the count you spoke of."

Savage rumbled an acknowledgement.

"You brother forgave you. You may have been the one to end his life but it was a kinder end than one he could've met. I have no doubt you will be rejoined in the dusk of your own life."

"Thank you."

"That’s enough for now," she pressed a light kiss to his temple.

"Help me catch our lunch."

Many moons had risen and fallen since Savage crashed on this strange planet. She had been right; time was nearly impossible to keep when you had no engagements or even a chronometer to keep track. The only thing that mattered was where the sun was in the sky. Had it been weeks or months? Hard to tell when the moon is always full, although the leaves were starting to fall slowly and the flowers danced on the wind in larger quantities than before.

They had grown incredibly close. It would be difficult not to when one needed comfort at night and the other needed kindness during the day. She never had someone to hold when the nightmares came and he had never felt a kind touch before. How do you know you're falling in love when you had never fallen before? It didn't feel like a fall, it felt like a warm embrace. A kind form to lean agianst and an ear to listen, a voice to guide.

He felt lighter, like his feet weren't pounding into the earth but walking across it. Like his presence wasn't a burden or disturbance. Like he was wanted by her, by this planet, by the creatures who lived here.

They spent their days in meditation, tending the garden, hunting, caring for the chickens and wading in the springs. They spent their nights by the fire, preparing meals, he watched her fiddle with this or that and tried multiple times to whittle away bits of wood like he had seen her do. No matter what the evening started with it always ended the same, wrapped in each other’s arms. It had been a while since he found her rocking in the center of their home in the middle of the night. Even longer since he adamantly thought about seeking revenge agianst those who had harmed him.

After lunch they decided to take Mira to the orchard close by and pick the juicy red fruits for canning, she had told him that winter would be coming. During the heart of it, the longest night of the year. The planet would be lit only by the moon for the equivalent of a week.

The lowest hanging fruit was still too tall for either of them to reach so he picked her up to sit on his shoulders. She giggled and filled the basket he held with the sweet treats. Rather than ride Mira back they made their way leisurely, picking mushrooms, berries and flowers that caught her eye.

They left the tree line during the golden hour and she paused to admire how the light shone agianst the spring. He had never seen anything so beautiful as the creature who stood before him, bathed in brilliant light. She turned to him and motioned him to lean down towards her holding up a floral wreath she had woven on their journey back. She stepped towards him almost bashfully and his breath caught in his chest. They held one another at night and she had given him the occasional kiss to his head but there were a few levels of intimacy they hadn't breeched. He had never wanted to feel a set of lips grace his own as much as he had in this moment.

Her face broke into a smile as she took the basket into her now free hands and made a ridiculously animated bow in his direction, head dropping down her knees.

"Lord of destruction and new beginnings, king of fallen petals, our castle awaits! And dinner must be cooked." It took him a moment to realize she had placed the wreath on his head like a crown and he rumbled a laugh.

"I think you've finally convinced me that you might be insane."

She curtseyed and flashed him a mischievous smirk.

"All the good ones are my dear."

He chuckled again and took off the crown and placed it on her head. He held her cheek in his hand. He didn't miss how her eyes darted between his own and his lips, slightly wetting her own with a flick of her tongue.

"I think we've already established you're the princess in this scenario, this is your castle and your kingdom."

"What if... if it was ours?" It was the first time he had ever seen this look on her face. This hesitation, this want. He froze for longer than he wanted to admit. It was the closest thing by far to acknowledgement of what was brewing between the two of them.

Her brows furrowed just slightly in regret and she started to turn away but before she could he grabbed her arm as gently as he could in his desperation and spun her back towards him. Without hesitation he took what he sought and pressed his lips to her own. They were even softer than he imagined.

Her eyes fluttered closed and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself closer to him. He lifted her up into his arms without breaking their contact and purred agianst her. One of her hands traveled to the back of his head and brushed agianst the base of a horn causing him to gasp silently. She took the chance and ran the tip of her tongue agianst his, deepening the kiss.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, dancing and gliding their lips and tongues agianst one another softly until their breathing became ragged. He broke the kiss and set her down but their arms remained wrapped around one another. Foreheads pressed together they stood until their breathing slowed and the heat fell from their cheeks.

For a moment he was worried he took it too far. The idea of ruining whatever it was they had bloomed in his chest and took root. But like all of his fears she chased them away with the sound of her delighted giggles. She grazed his lips again with her own, smiling before she bent down to refill the basket she had dropped by his sudden affections. Of course, he helped her before allowing her to lead him by the hand back into her home.

Their home.

For the first time in his life felt... giddy. He helped her prepare for dinner but allowed himself to brush his hands agianst her as often as he could. When they lay together that night, she kissed him again, long lingering tentative kisses that brushed agianst the point of no return for both of them. He fell asleep with her on his chest wondering how he had gotten so lucky.

She knew what he had done, what he was capable of and accepted him anyway. He thought himself a monster but how could someone so beautiful, so capable and soft care so deeply for a monster. Maybe he wasn't one after all.

#savage x reader #savage opress #swtcw #swtcw au #savage opress x reader #savage fluff #savage opress fluff #star wars #star wars au #star wars fluff

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thefamouswhitewolf · 5 years ago

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It was a long winter and Geralt didn’t come down from Kaer Morhen until mid April, meaning the ground was still swampy and covered in muck, and the ponds and streams still had ice collecting at the edges. It meant cold baths in said bodies of water, and the wish for a warm bed by the time Geralt reached ground that wasn’t uneven and hard to sleep upon.

The fruit trees had begun to bloom and the smallest of the bothersome insects had woken from their winter slumber, forcing Roach to swat her tail endlessly and toss her head to avoid the mayflies that went for her eyes. Geralt swatted at them with his hand when they went for his face and growling, the Witcher made camp away from the water the insects enjoyed, meaning he was well hidden from the road, but had to walk a good distance to get fresh water.

One trip was to fill a pot with water for boiling some eggs; Geralt had met a trader along the road that didn’t show as much fear of a Witcher as usual. Pleased with a sale so early in his travels, the man sold Geralt a dozen duck eggs, two loaves of bread, a block of very hard, fragrant cheese, and a sack of potatoes. It was a good haul that Geralt wasn’t charged extravagantly for. The man thanked Geralt for lightening his load early on, and he left with a wave and bit of advice for the Witcher; there was a wandering spirit in the woods beyond the next town that didn’t hurt anyone, but haunted the woodsmen at night.

“Cryptid?” Geralt asked, sure that the man knew he meant monster.

“Nah. Word is it looks human. Sings a song that entrances, but then sucks the life outta them while they sleep. Don’t kill ‘em, just tires ‘em out. Be mindful, Witcher. I doubt it’s picky on what kinda man it catches.”

“Thanks.”

Geralt wasn’t exactly frightened of whatever was lying in wait for himself or another weary traveler; he could handle the worst of the monsters birthed from the bowels of the Continent. It was the trader’s mention that the creature didn’t kill its victims that had Geralt’s attention.

It could be something as simple as a succubus or incubus, but Geralt thought it may be a Manchachicoj; a very seductive yet deformed creature that wandered the world having relations with many people, in an attempt to seek out an impossible love with a kind, understanding human.

The Manchachicoj was an elusive creature Geralt had only read of in Vesemir’s bestiary, but he didn’t for a second think that they were extinct. He’d been surprised by the discovery of any number of beasts once thought obliterated from the Continent, and no amount of trader gossip and sworn statements from local villagers would make Geralt believe anything until he’d seen--or not seen-- things with his own eyes.

The woods the trader spoke of sat less than a half day’s ride from the base of the mountain and Geralt, still stocked up on supplies from Kaer Morhen and the trader, settled down for the afternoon in a small clearing away from the nearest stream, for the same reason as before: bugs. They weren’t nearly as bad where he was making his fire, and even Roach wandered away a little to munch the fresh spring grasses popping up at the base of nearly every tree in the forest.

Seeds and squirrel stores, no doubt, growing thick where the sun lit the ground and where the trees dripped water during the heavy spring rains.

Fire roaring and swords at his side against the log he’d rolled over for a bench, Geralt again boiled water from the stream and this time added all of his ingredients to it, making himself a thick stew. He wouldn’t hunt that night since he wanted to keep his presence low, but he had everything, including dried venison from the keep’s larder, to make a stew even Vesemir would eat, the picky bastard.

Only evening birdsong and the haunting chirps of the treefrogs came, as the sun began to set. Geralt had heard travelers on the road hours earlier and they didn’t so much as mention his camp. Most people were grateful for warmer weather and were eager to get on with their springtime business; a random fire in the woods with a saddled horse meant another traveler, no more. None suspected it was a Witcher in their midst.

There wasn’t even anything for Geralt to work on as he waited. His armour had been mended and his swords were sharpened long before he even left Kaer Morhen, so he closed his eyes and had a bit of a meditation break, listening to the crackling of the fire, the birds, the frogs.

He could pinpoint Roach’s snorts as she stalked through the longer grasses nearer the camp, and the sound of a lute coming from far off to his left.

A lute?

His eyebrows drew together as he rumbled a suspicious growl, opening his eyes and gathering his swords together, one in hand and the other over his back. It could be a man, some minstrel wandering from town to town now that the snows had ended and the road was again passable, or it could be some creature Geralt hadn’t seen before.

There weren’t any footfalls advancing on his camp site, but Geralt ducked back further into the woods anyway, keeping one eye on the fire so he didn’t lose his bearings. The scent of the burning wood was a good compass to a Witcher, but Geralt was trying to use his sense of smell to determine what was instead around him. Trees, rotting leaves, mud. Empty badger den, deer shit, rabbit shit, nightcrawlers.

He focused until the weaker scents became noticeable; pine tar, mushroom dust, the faintest hint of apple and cherry blossoms from the barely-open fruiting trees in the orchard on the outskirts of the town he’d already passed. Lavender.

That was different. Lavender was a plant grown only in the south of the Continent, and it wasn’t in bloom for nearly two more months, sometimes three, during a bad spring season. A liniment perhaps, or a balm? It certainly didn’t smell like anything other than a light scent on human skin.

Human skin. It wasn’t a creature sneaking up on his camp. It was a human.

Geralt slipped out from behind the knotty pine he’d used as a temporary shield and held his sword out only until the stranger came into view, then he lowered it so the threat was at least lessened.

The human was dressed in the bluest clothes, and the flamboyancy of them definitely suggested a performer of some kind. The lute strapped over the man’s back confirmed what Geralt had immediately suspected: a bard.

But a bard wandering through dense woods at night? Alone? A shapeshifter, perhaps? No human was stupid enough to do such a thing, unless they had a death wish.

Or a purpose.

Geralt’s medallion wasn’t reacting to magic or monster, so he listened without interruption. Though it didn’t mean the person before him wasn’t some kind of non-malevolent spirit. Trickster beings, woodland child spirits, fae folk; all were playful but harmless so the medallion often stayed silent in their presence.

“So,” the bard began, his voice light and his face pleasantly youthful. “The rumours in town were true. There is a Witcher in the woods. I suppose it’s better than a witch in the woods. Far more dangerous, those.”

Geralt snorted but didn’t immediately put his sword away. Wordplay was the trick of a great many forest spirits, and he wasn’t about to get himself killed simply because this was a very pretty looking being before him.

“Depends on the Witcher. I could kill you before you have the chance to make another sound.”

The bard smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners; aged slightly, Geralt thought, but still couldn’t be more than thirty or thirty-five in human years. “But you didn’t. Do Witchers kill humans? I thought you had some kind of honour code or something. No meddling in the affairs of men.”

“That only means I won’t kill a man at the request of another. If you’re a threat, I’ll easily dispatch you and be on my way.”

“But I’m not that; a threat, I mean. Just a bard, wandering the world on his way south now that the snows have ceased. Bloody winter was so long, wasn’t it? Anyway, care for some company? The townsfolk thought me mad to come in search of you but I’ve a taste for adventure and you, Sir Witcher, look very tasty.”

#musings #long fic is long #that's why it's behind a cut #I really should start posting on AO3 but there are so many better authors there #you darlings know who you are #with your Witcher aftercare #and Geralt selfcare #and Kaer Morhen winter fuckery YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE CIRCULAR BIRDY #geraskier eventually #first time meeting #not canon timeline compliant #not saying Jaskier's human because what fun is that?#might continue might not iono yet

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maxante · 5 years ago

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Easter Friday Mycelium Meditation

10th April 2020

I went for my daily walk with Myt down to the field, over the gate, through the fence. We’d started going that way for the past week or so, changing from walking down the road. It was much nicer being surrounded by all the trees. And this new walk got me thinking, that this would now be a good time to do another journey.

I’d felt since the last one, about 7 weeks ago, that going again would be a good idea, but I just needed to know when the right time was. Margaret had said it was ok to take 2 of the mushroom chocolates, and so I’d had them ready since the last trip. They were in the pink foil wrapping, magical little pyramids of power, waiting to be unwrapped.

Myself and Myt had done our usual loop and then come the beautiful large tree that I had come to admire. I told Myt this was the spot, he smiled and suggested I sit with my back to the tree, then quietly and calmly left me there.

I found my spot under the tree, sat there in a meditation position and opened up the first chocolate. It was so dark and smooth, almost shiny. It wasn’t like the chocolates I’d been carrying around for years. This looked fresh and new, because it had been kept discretely in Margaret’s freezer these past couple of years. I took a bite, then another, and swiftly devoured it. It tasted smooth, was easy to eat, not too rich like others had been. Then I sat for a little while, feeling that wondering... that almost fear of if I should have another. There was a little almost debate, but I quickly realized the second pyramid was in my hands and was unwrapped in no time.

After I’d finished both, I just sat there. The world was quiet. I was alone. I looked up to try and see Myt. I could still see his form, walking further away down the path. That is strange I thought, he is taking a while to leave. It felt like more time had passed. I had checked the clock when he was leaving and it was almost 1pm.

Then I looked up the other way, out towards the field, and it was there I could see the shimmering of the bamboo. There was this beautiful glade of bamboo planted towards the river, and looking at them, they shimmered with great speed and beauty.

Is something already starting to happen, I wondered. Surely not. Not much has passed at all. And so shifted from closing my eyes and withdrawing my attention into an inner meditation, and then looking out at the beauty of the trees and the shimmering.

After some time I started to feel something. It was now that I began to wonder about what I’d done. I’d just taken 2 complete chocolates. And they were “fresh” potent chocolates. I’d never had them like that before. Did I really know what I was doing? Maybe this was actually crazy. Margaret’s batch was new to me. I don’t know their potency. And here I am, starting with a “heroic” dose, literally. Am I going to be alright, I wondered, down here by myself. What exactly am I getting myself into, I thought.

I could feel something beginning to swirl on the outskirts of my mind.

It was hard to know exactly how everything began to happen. I did check the clock, and now it was only 1.15pm. I had better put the timer on, I thought, because I expect this to take about 3 hours. I then looked up and saw that Myt was indeed gone now. I was alone.

But not anymore, they said.

You are not alone.

Ah... you’ve come, I said to them. Yes, we’re with you now. And you have come to the right place, and we have much to share with you. Open yourself, allow us all the way in, for the time near, and we have much to show you.

I closed my eyes, and I began to see the colours and shapes moving through the darkness that is the typical view behind the eyelids. But now, so much was beginning to open up. I felt the expansion throughout my body, as an explosion of colour took form behind my eyes.

Then I felt the presense of something, and the invitation to move, deeper. It’s like I turned a corner in my mind, and started to move down levels. They were like vast caverns, and yet all lit up in these electric red patterns that had so much power, you were compelled to move further and further in. I was losing control. I was out of control.

Yes, you are indeed, out of control. And this is why you’re here. I felt fear. I began to feel terror. And there before me, in this inner world of forever red layers of an underground network taking me on a some psychedelic ride, was the most revolting, dark form of consumption I had ever witnessed. It was so powerful, so all consuming... yes, here to consume even you!

And it shared all of this without speaking as it’s pulsating form, like some giant combination floating red jellyfish, with a huge tongue opening and closing, trying to open devour me...

Enough! I called out! Opening my eyes. No. No. No. I won’t let that happen.

You can’t stop us, it said. You can try and escape by opening your eyes like this.

Yes, look up the trees all you like. Nothing will save you here. You are in our domain now. We have you. Everything you see around you... you are surrounded. We are coming for you. We are coming for all of you. Nothing can stop us now.

And what I felt was like a tumbling. A tumbling out of control. It’s like I was going. This was so complete, and yet so subtle, I had no idea how this happened to me. But I was no longer me. I no longer had a face.

I had fallen down. I was on the ground. But there was no ground to stabilize me. My fists held on tightly to the grass.

Hold on, I said. It’s like it was laughing. “I” was gone, and here “I” was trying to hold on. Hold on for dear life.

We’re sorry, so sorry, but your life... you realize by turning up here, you turned up to die. And now, more than ever, you have drifted so so very close to that edge. You are on a knifes edge now. Things here are so very dangerous. More dangerous than you ever even imagine.

Where is my protection? I asked. We can only do so much, they said. And now that you have pushed the project so far, you are seen, they see you, and web is all around you, the noose is tightening around you, the space you have here in this world is shrinking, the very life here is falling away, everything here is not like it was before. You are under threat, more threat than you have ever been. Your friends, Tim, you are all under threat. We are so very very sorry. This is a great loss. There is no more that we can do. You must be so so very careful. You are now living on this knifes edge.

Consciousness itself is under threat.

I was overwhelmed. I felt too cold in the shade of this huge tree. I need the light of the sun. Things were too dark here. Get up, I said to the body. It was hard to move. But I sat up. Then I was basically yanked up. Like my shoulder was being tugged upon. It was as though I was a doll being pulled up. Then I was let go, and collapsed, as I fell back down to the earth.

I was under this pine tree, and surrounded by pine needles. I began to crawl my way forward, across the pine needles, out of the shadows and into the sun.

Collapsing again out in the light, I asked, what was it that I had seen. What was that most terrifying force?

It is the force of consumption. The machine. The darkness. That has come here to consume the world. To eat the world. You were inside it there. You were witnessing it’s experience at it’s raw truth. A hunger, an ugly desire would eat you, kill you, and feed upon you.

I opened my eyes and looked out, seeing my hand. Do you see what you are? What you actually are, here in this world? You are flesh. That is where you are housed, within this fleshy body. And I could see my hand, white and pale, and yet shimmering. There was more going on. I could see the luminescence of my own hand, it was almost glowing, with blues, pinks and greens that I had not see before on myself.

This form, this body is made of this world, but you are not of this world. You are out of place. You have no place here, because you have been grown away from the natural order of things. You were grown in the machine. But now you have come back to us. We have moved totally within you. You can feel us moving into the very depths of your being. To the highest order of your operating system. And there, deep within, I could this force of psilocybin moving and penetrating to a depth within my brain, within my mind, that I had no idea even existed.

I groaned. I moved. But not much. There was little I could do. No where I could go. I lay there, disintegrating into something that was no longer me. I had become a plant. I had felt the darkness... yes the darkness is all around you.

And then I felt him. Closing my eyes, I could feel Mark. He was huge in power and awareness, coming to inspecting me. Fully checking me out. You do realise you are in my domain, on my land, this is all my space that you have been invited into. Yes, I said. You are here under my generosity, and protection. I am bigger than all of this that. Much bigger than even you would think. You have no idea, but now, in this moment you feel my power. Respect and understand that by my grace, you are here.

And with that, the large active force of Mark’s giant form was gone as quickly as it came. He had appeared in some form that looked nothing like the human Mark we would speak of, and yet it was the force that moved through him.

There was some more time now of formlessness. Where I could not move, could only be here, feeling the full intensity of life, the living force of the world pulsing through my form.

I’m so sorry I said, realising I had failed in my mission to save the world. Do say sorry! They fiercely said. This is no time for apologies! This is time for work. You must get up, you must continue. There is so little time left. And your life is stark danger. You cannot afford to fail. You cannot afford to make a misstep. You must be diligent. Focused. You cannot take a wrong step, otherwise your life, and all that we have worked for, through you, will be lost. You realise how long it took to get this point. How much we have lost, and even now, as we all stare down the barrel of the gun. The machine has all of us in it’s sights, make no mistake. Your life rests by a thin threat, and now more than ever we can feel the life been drained, as the machine tightens it’s grip.

In some strange world, where I was gone. And yet was being instructed on how to operate under these new, dangerous conditions, I was moving been the heat and brightness of the sunlight, and the soothing shadows under the tree. Finally finding a good spot, close to where my first spot was, that started the whole journey, I sat there, in meditation.

We know you are scared. But the only thing to do, is turn to face it, no matter how ugly, difficult or dangerous this is. Close your eyes. Turn inwards. Feel the full intensity of this crash through you. For these are the lessons you need. This is our teaching for you, at this time. And so I sat there, becoming more and more deeply absorbed by what they were showing me, and how this form that was once me was unravelling at a great speed.

Then I felt him. I opened my eyes, and turned, and sure enough, through the rustling noise of moving leaves and grass there was Tim, smiling, outstretched with an offering of a blue bottle of water. “Hey man, Martha asked me to bring you this.”

I could barely move. Turning to face him took a huge effort. He is speaking to me. This is a human that has come here. Can’t he see what we are? That we don’t want to be disturbed at this time?

I could not find words to speak, for I was no longer as I was before.

“Mmmm.... ok..... thanks...” I made grunting noises trying to express something to appease this human presence.

“Also man... there’s more... I’m sorry for disturbing you... but it’s Mark... he’s trying to come down here with the mower. I’ve come to help you, probably move away from this spot, as he’s planning on coming all the way down here.”

Oh, so I need to actually move? Mark? It all sounded absurd.

“Ok man, help me up a little. It’s not easy to move or speak like this.”

And so Myt motioned, or moved, or something... and I found myself moving somewhat to the side. Then we looked up, and saw this moving buggy, off in the distance. There were strange beings on it, with big hats or helmets. “Is that him?” I asked. “Could be” said Myt. But something told me, it was not Mark. Then we saw them turn, and there were multiple people on the quad bike.

The machine had already consumed humanity. So many humans were empty, hollow, made of straw. Brittle like the machine. Everything was part of a process to become lifeless. Busy lifelessness.

We were now sitting to the side, a little away from the main path. And I was feeling many things to share with Myt. I would feel the messages coming through, and share what I could. Myt would start laughing, and I had to keep telling him to shut up! That we had to be discreet, that we were in danger in this world, and that the others could feel us.

I began to tell Myt more of what I was learning.

I told him that his own life was short. That he personally was in great danger. That the threat was so so close now. That our life here in this world stood on a knifes edge, that we lived in a world where the oxygen was running out, literally.

That the machine expanding and had taken over nearly completely. Nearly all the humans were under it’s spell. For that is what it was. A spell cast by the dark forces. A lie about what this world was, and who the humans truly were. And how the humans were even being grown by machine, from the very beginning, directly under its’ spell.

For in this moment, it was clear I was no longer a human. I was flipping in my conversations, sometimes speaking as me, sometimes from the plant world, sometimes from the star beings.

I had to share more about what the humans were doing. How they were the agents for the machine now. Nearly all humans were corrupted. Made weak, seeking comfort, confused completely about what this world is, and who they are.

I shared how women were actually a whole other species to men. The women had been grown here, directly out of Gaia. They had come from the goddess of the world. They had given birth to men, and created the channel for the star beings to move through and come into the world.

The women were the originals, they were the first here, and from them came them came the men. And women felt betrayed by the men. Disrespected. Women had once held such a position of power, strength, wisdom and playfulness throughout the whole world. Then through their embodiment of the human form, the men came out from them. And then there were forms of humans. The stars had whispered to the women, to allow them into the world as well, now in human form.

These new men gave the women a playful form of humans to explore with in a new way. Firstly, women were now able to have sex. They had access to whole new realms of pleasure and deliciousness. And so it was. But the women were too full of their own pride. For they thought they were the first ones. They were not.

The plants were here first. First there was the world, Gaia was here, Earth. And maybe even before the Earth there was the water, this was not clear.

But then, from the Earth, the plants came. And from the plants grew all life. All the animals, fires, fish, insects, and the women came forth. And life expressed consciousness here in the world for the first time in this new way, embodied through the women. And then from the women, they gave birth to the men.

As the men grew, they showed their own power, and it was very different to that of women.

But it was here that the problems began. Because in the world, the demons began to find a way to hack in. The demons were able to corrupt the men most easily, and through the tools of the men, the demons showed men how they could harness more and more power. And so the men became corrupted in the world. And so it was that the demons entered into the world, through the metallic tools of men.

And violence began to be dealt to other men, and most of all to women, and then onto the world, and all life itself. The violence of the machines built by the demonic force moving through the men, corrupted every aspect of the world it touched. And soon it was that women were also being caught up in this snare of darkness and destruction.

The darkness had no end to it’s appetite. It sought only more. More was the only word it understood. Consume, devour, was it’s mantra. And in it’s sight, it saw the possibility for complete annihilation of the living world. For this world was not seen as a living beautiful thing by the machine demons. It was seen as the potential for expansion of perfection.

And there was nothing more perfect than the removal all dirty, messy, biological life. And humans were now within the grip of the machine, grown from the machine, controlled by the machine. The humans were entranced, consumed by an endless hunger for power and safety. The greatest spell was cast over humans, and that was the ability to count, and define everything as simply a number. The counting spell was cast over humanity, and it was not long before the humans wanted nothing more than to amass the largest quantities of numbers. All of life had now been quantified and reduced to a series of numbers.

This was the first major win of the machine demons, to entrance humans with the potential of perfection, casting them under the spell of winning. Little did the humans know that there was actually nothing to win this game, but demise of life itself in this realm. For as the machine grew, so did its plan of complete world domination, until there was nothing left, but a perfect sheen of metal across the world, with consciousness itself reduced down to binary code of ones and zeros.

The world was built through 5 layers.

First there was the Waters

Then there was the Earth.

Then the plants grew on the Earth, taking water and creating physical form with it.

Then the women grew from the plants and became like walking water.

And then from the women came the fire of men, as they carried light into a different form.

And then from the men came the metal to make the machines.

And it was here, in the metal of the machines that the demons were able to enter the world, and cut through these 5 lays, corrupting each one in turn. Until the power the demonic machine had touched every aspect of the world.

The Earth itself was the prize, total dominion of the whole world.

Nearly all the men were taken by the machine demons, and harnessed to destroy the world.

Many of the women were still in touch with the Earth, and so were not able to be as much of a useful destructive force. And so the stage was set for complete annihilation.

Humans were so gullible, thinking they were in charge.

But still the star beings had to keep coming. For now, there was still life in the world, and it was worth protecting, even though the time was so very short.

I began coming more and more back to my body, and told Myt how difficult it was being here, as a plant, in this human body. He kept laughing so much, and I had to keep telling him to shut up.

Then I fell on the ground again, and stared up at the tree for the longest time while they spoke. I would move in and out of human consciousness, not always sure who I was. I would share much of what they said with Tim, but he was not always clear what was being said.

I drank more from the blue bottle that Martha had given to Tim. On it’s label was “Life Factory”. I showed that Tim. He got it right away and he started laughing so loudly, I had to keep telling him we were drawing attention to ourselves, he needed to shut up! Which only made him laugh more.

Especially the more he realized the Factory thought it was life, when life itself needed no factory. Life stood alone, and now the factory had taken over, and the balance was lost. Then it added the “.” Dot com on the bottle. LifeFactory.com was right there. We both laughed at this, which is why the “com” stood for comedy. The whole thing is one giant “comedy” I showed him, as he rolled around on the ground in fits of uncontrollable laughter.

We would move some more down the path, and we sat once more. A small plant revealed itself in the grass. It was incredibly beautiful, with a little almost face telling me so much of what was happening. Preparing me, training me. It was like it illuminated in all the grass, this tiny plant face form, no bigger than your little finger nail, and yet sharing so much. I could feel myself broadcasting it’s message, sharing it all with Tim, speaking what it spoke to me. The warning of what we had to do. That we were all that stood in the way of the machines coming to destroy the plant world, running the whole down, pressed into complete flatness, like a mirror.

That was the ultimate goal the machine. A perfect sheen, reflective surface, like a mirror, that would allow the machine to stare into its own perfection for an eternity, without end, without life or connection to the force of life. For while the metal said it would be perfectly reflecting itself, by the time it accomplished its goal, there would be no light left to reflect its own image, so the to, the machine itself would be dead, lifeless, barren in its preserved perfection.

As we saw the little 4W drive buggy again in the distance, this time with children all over it, Myt felt we should move off the path, that we were too exposed. So I looked to him for guidance, then they reminded me to just move and the path would become clear. An opening in the side of the path appeared, and we stepped through into the forest. It was large, with massive trees everywhere. These trees were dark, and spiky. I pull a branch off, it snapped easily in my fingers and I used it to cut through the forest. It all opened up so easily. And yet, it was all so spiky. “I don’t like this” I said, “too dark, too spiky in here. Let’s go back to where it is more light.”

So we moved back through the dark and spiky, and found a small opening filled with light.

We sat, relaxed there for a while, as I breathed in the forest. “It’s as simple as air” I explained to Tim. “The air is a gift from the plants, and yet the humans forget even that which is most precious.”

We stayed a little while, before I got up again, and begun moving back up and down the long path, lit up by the sun.

“Will I ever come back from this”, I was asking Tim.

He confirmed I would, that I always did. That me would return, and that this was simply a temporary thing, being a walking moving plant.

Can you believe I’m actually in this human form, I would say. It’s almost disgusting to be like this. Human... moving around in this fleshy suite. I shared how hard it was to be here.

Would I ever be normal? I asked.

Do you want to be normal, was the reply. Why would you ever want to be normal.

And I felt like sobbing, yet there were no tears to do this justice.

I felt like vomiting, yet there was nothing to puke up, because I was that which was sick in the world.

We need you stand up, this is no time for shrinking back. Stand up! Be strong! We need you. We sent you. We are you! The small plant spoke again, like a tough master, instructing me that the hour was late, and they depended upon me, upon us to stand with life.

And yet, the paradox was, I would have to enter deeply into the machine, to do was needed to be done. And that was so very very dangerous.

I felt them passing, as I was more and more here, it became easier to move and speak like a human. I said, “We’d better check the timer” and I reach out and touched the dark small monolithic form that Myt was keeping for me. It was hard, and cold to the touch, strange, alien to operate. I opened its magic, and pulled up the counter. Everything about it felt strange and not from this world. We looked in wonder, as the timer showed 2:59:42:12 seconds.

“You see, I said “They ware showing us just how precise they are, down to the millisecond. The odds of this happening. Just watch me hit stop, right on the 3 hour mark, and you’ll see just how powerfully in tune the world of life is. It doesn’t need the machine, rather the machine rests here, within the world. Gaia is the force that holds us all, and she is so perfectly in tune, without getting out of balance.”

And sure enough, I touched the off, on 3:00:03:45 seconds. “You can’t get much more precise than that. Everything is a 3. We live between heave and earth. And yet as a human, we so easily forget. We can no longer afford to forget, she is asking us to step up, as the children of the Earth, and protect life itself. Otherwise, if we fail, and we have to come back here again, God help us with what we’ll have to face. God help us. We cannot let that happen.”

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padfootagain · 5 years ago

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Rob The Bank

So… here I am, writing for a new fandom!! But these two are too adorable for me to resist!! So here it a cute little thing :) I hope you all like it. Of course, as I've started writing for them, you can ask requests for them from now on! I will not be writing reader inserts for them though, I ship these two too much for that.

Gif not mine

Word count : 4594

Aziraphale was the one to be easily fooled. He was also the one to get into trouble because of it often. His kind and trusting nature was undoubtedly to blame for this pattern. He seemed to miss all the signs of betrayal that were thrown at him, until the deception was so obvious it was actually unfolding for the entire world to see. Not that Aziraphale was stupid, he had come out of difficult situations, and with a little bit of time forcing wisdom into his brain, he had been able to avoid some traps set on his path. Still, more often than not, the angel found himself in a trap, and Crowley generally came to the rescue. A little miracle and pouf! Everyone could go home safe and sound, or well, knowing Aziraphale, chances were that he would invite the demon for an excellent meal as a gesture of gratitude.

But not this time.

This time, it was Crowley who found himself trapped behind bars. And he still couldn't believe how he had found himself in this tiny cell.

His mission was simple though. It was the second half of the 19th century, the migration in the Western parts of the continent was going strong in the US. And despite the dry weather and few people around, the little towns were popping out of the ground like mushrooms colonizing the ground of a rainy forest in autumn. The rash weather and the isolation from bigger cities made these new towns a perfect playground for the demon. And he had found the perfect weapon.

Saloons.

Easy to build, easy to finance, easy to take care of afterwards and it held a power of destruction that no one in Hell had foreseen (including him). Alcohol was the perfect catalyst for violence and stupid actions. Crowley merely had to make sure that every person in the desert would have a chance to get a few glasses of whiskey. Humans would do the rest of the job. Even better, Crowley had found out that planting both a saloon and a bank in the same town increased exponentially the disruption in this area. From murders to robberies, the list of crimes was reaching the stars.

At least, that was the official version he had given to his superiors in Hell. The reality was that humans had created this abomination that was alcohol all by themselves, and they had felt the need that one of the first things that any man, no matter where he was in the world, should have access to was alcohol. Apparently, it was much more important to them to get whiskey rather than healthy food, provisions, medications, doctors or any other goods and skills that could increase their lifespan. Which is why they created saloons. And seeing the results, Crowley had claimed it all as his own idea when the question had been asked to him if he had been in the initiative of this or not. Now, obviously, it was expected from him to make sure the saloons bloomed through the desert like roses in Kensington Gardens in June. And so he did. After all, he didn't really have a choice.

However, he had been surprised at first not to see anything coming from the other side, but he reckoned that Aziraphale was too busy trying to save a few Native Americans. A point Crowley had not foreseen happening entirely, but understood now. Humans were greedy. Humans were unrespectful. Humans were quick at pointing at differences and claiming them as arguments for establishing different values amongst people. The colour of one's skin, their language, their traditions… as soon as these aspects parted from their own, they were considered as a proof that these people they didn't know and had never met before were their inferiors. And when Europeans had first set foot on the American continent, neither Crowley nor Aziraphale had imagined that they would decide that slaughtering entire civilizations and stealing people's lands and belongings and traditions and freedom would be a good way to start their adventures on this brand-new piece of land. But looking back, Crowley reckoned that they had both been fools. Slavery and slaughters had always been a part of human history, why would it change now?

Crowley brought back his mind on the present with a loud sigh. It wasn't the time to drift back towards the past and meditate on the stupidity of the human race. So he brought back his train of thoughts back on the issue he was dealing with before his mind drifted away.

Aziraphale. Trying to save people in the wild west. Explanation to why Crowley was left building saloons and banks all around the US freely.

Crowley had been opening a brand new establishment in this little town set in the middle of absolutely nowhere when troubles he had not foreseen were thrown upon him. Which, he reckoned, was particularly unfair. He had been merely minding his own little business, and there came trouble, without invitation or provocation.

Two dirty-looking rascals had walked into the new saloon. With a few drinks in them, they had shared with Crowley their plan of robbing the bank set right across the street. Their plan though, as they presented it to him, seemed altogether rather messy, at best. So of course, Crowley had considered it his duty to help them out by giving them a few ideas of his. He knew they would work well, he had helped planning another robbery in a nearby town just a month before.

And that was when the treachery happened.

For the two rascals were indeed not rascals. Despite their pitiful looks, they worked for the sheriff and they had been looking for the brain behind the robbery that had happened in the neighbouring town. And Crowley had fallen right into the fire.

Before he knew what was happening, the sheriff had thrown him into this disgusting cell. He was accused of orchestrating the first robbery and trying to hire people to attempt a second stunt. And Crowley felt very offended by both statements as :

a) He had not been a part of the first robbery, had never even set a foot in the building in question, and had merely given a few advices, just like he had attempted to do again in the saloon with the two fake rascals.

b) He had never tried to hire anyone and was merely minding his own business in the first place.

He could have tried to miracle his way out of it. But he had been using quite a lot of these to build up his demonical plan spreading alcohol and money-reservoirs across the western lands. And he reckoned that using a major miracle now would only pull too much attention towards him. Considering his arrangement with the angel and his own personal appreciation of his freedom of actions on Earth, he was more than reluctant at using his powers for this.

He would have to find another way out of this. But how?

He was deeply thinking about this in the middle of the night, the cell and sheriff's house all filled with shadows, lying on the very hard bench he would have to call a bed for the evening, when he felt a familiar shudder shaking the air.

It was not much, just a presence nearby. A little tremor through the stillness of the night, like a whisper carried by the wind. He recognized it instantly though. It was always around him, in the distance, and he didn't pay much attention to the acknowledgement of it that constantly took place at the back of his mind, except when the presence was not far but closer, causing bigger ripples in the velvet canva of the Universe than usual. Suddenly, this tremor in the air had grown strong enough for Crowley to be fully aware of it, and a smile formed on his lips before the door even opened upon the familiar silhouette of Aziraphale.

The silvery moon embraced his shape in an almost surreal contrast with the rest of the world drenched with shadows. He was wearing a white ensemble from the tip of his cowboy boots to the edge of his hat, that formed a sheer but familiar contrast with the black clothes Crowley wore. He had a little bit of dust upon him, that coloured slightly his white suit and long beige coat in a yellow-to-brownish shade. His skin seemed either a little tanned or merely coloured by the dust as well, it was hard to tell from Crowley's place in the cell. After all, the angel had not alit any candle yet, the demon could only count on his developed sight for now.

Aziraphale hurried inside and urgently closed the door behind him. He searched for Crowley through the shadows, but it took him less than a second to spot the slender form lying in the cell.

"Crowley! Is that you?"

"Who else could it be?" the demon answered, standing up and resting his hands against the bars.

"What have you done again, you silly snake?!"

Aziraphale advanced through the room until he faced his friend – although he would never admit out loud that Crowley was his friend, of course, wrong sides and all these technicalities… - until he was standing right before the cell, and it looked almost as if Crowley had placed his hands against a wall on either sides of the angel.

"I didn't even do anything!" Crowley protested. "I didn't! I was just opening a saloon, 's all!"

"Opening a saloon?"

"Well of course! Temptation, chaos, crimes, and all that. And then these two guys arrived and for some reason they put me in that cell!"

"They say you've… robbed a bank!" Aziraphale tried to control how loud he spoke to not draw the attention of anyone who could have been passing by before the building. But at this ungodly hour of the night, there was no one outside but a few rats and the whispering of the wind in deep conversation with the leaves of the crooked tree growing down the street.

Or well, almost no one…

"They're going to hang you, Crowley!"

The demon raised an eyebrow.

"Well… that is a little extreme for merely being accused of orchestrating a robbery…"

"Not here, it's not. They're going to hang you! You have to miracle your way out of this!"

"I can't. Used too many miracles lately, I can't draw attention on myself or they might learn about our little arrangement."

Aziraphale shuddered, but nodded.

"Alright, I'll get you out then."

Crowley could hardly refrain the grin that started to form on his lips.

"Well, if you could hurry then, Angel…"

But the loud echoes of boots hitting the wooden ground right on the threshold echoed, and Aziraphale panicked. He grimaced, trembled, his eyebrows shot up towards his hairline as his eyes grew rounder and bigger than saucers and his lips parted in a horrified 'O' shape.

"No, don't panic, get me out…" Crowley tried to calm his friend down, but it was too late.

Aziraphale was gone.

"Angel!" Crowley called, and his friend reappeared for a mere second.

"I'll get you out later."

"Why? No! Now!"

"They'll look up for you everywhere if I do. Don't worry, I have a plan."

The door unlocked and Aziraphale let out a loud gasp that was halfway towards a shriek before he vanished into thin air again.

Crowley cursed under his breath as the Sheriff walked in, but there was nothing he could. He had to wait for rescue…

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

Crowley was starting to become a little worried. As his executioner was tightening the knot around his neck, he was beginning to think that, despite the risks coming from Hell, he might be wiser to miracle his way out of this one now. He reckoned that the paperwork coming with him being discorporated would bring much more wrath upon him than producing a miracle.

The sun was too hot and the air too dry, the dust swept away by the harsh wind stuck to Crowley’s sweaty skin. He had asked as a last will to keep his sunglasses, but his black hat had been taken away, and he regretted the accessory. If he was constantly amazed by how people in this part of the world constantly found ways to spread chaos, he couldn’t deny that he preferred the climate in London right now…

The crowd that had gathered to watch his execution shuddered with excitement. Crowley had not been paying much attention to the executioner as he enumerated the laws the demon had broken and that led him there, to be cooking up under the too hot sun like an egg in a pan. And he guessed that the executioner must have had a moment of eloquence to make the crowd so excited all of a sudden. Crowley did not pay any attention to it all, however.

Instead, his snake-like eyes were searching through the crowd. He couldn’t believe Aziraphale was not here. Or well, actually, he knew his best friend was here, he could feel it. But where by the Devil’s name was he hiding?

A glint of beige caught his eyes, seeming even brighter under the intense sunlight, and Crowley’s lips curved up at the corners as he finally recognized the angel.

He was dressed in the same manner as Crowley had seen him the previous night, and the demon didn’t fail to notice that his clothes were a little more covered with dust than the previous night. Catching his friend’s gaze, Aziraphale couldn’t refrain a nervous smile. He gave Crowley a nod, letting him know he had the situation under control. To which the demon replied by painting on his features an expression that meant "better hope so, angel".

There was an excited tremor through the crowd as the executioner rested his hand on the lever that would open the hatch under Crowley’s feet. But all the while, Crowley kept his attention focused upon Aziraphale. And the angel’s lips formed the smallest of smiles as he looked at Crowley, a content look on his kind features, sign that everything was going as planned.

And if Crowley had any doubts left (and he would not easily admit that he already had no doubts left the second he spotted Aziraphale standing there in the crowd), they dissipated with the sight of the angel's content little wiggle. So Crowley didn’t try anything. It was as much as his trust in the angel was absolute: as the lever was pulled and the hatch under his feet opened and he felt gravity pulling him down towards the ground and the rope around his neck slip up a little, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t try any miracle of his own. He let Aziraphale save him, thinking that he would have to make sure to buy his friend the best meal he could find. And as the rope stopped his fall and he started to feel the knot digging into his skin, he closed his eyes.

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

Aziraphale was generally a patient man, but not so much when he was worried. He then had a tendency to wiggle a little more than usual, pace a lot and imagine the scenes that would occur in his mind thousands of times. But now it was more than nervousness. It was impatience. Pure and simple. After all, even if everything was going as planned so far, it was still a messy and rather risky business he was going through. The sooner he was getting it all over with, the better.

So, while he was waiting at the undertaker, he kept on pacing in the man's office. Ten minutes he had been waiting for the man already, he was certain that he was going to lose his mind. Besides, he was not at all where he was supposed to be. He couldn't stop himself from worrying about either his or Crowley's side learning that he was here, with Crowley lying in a coffin next door…

"Mr… Azira… fell…"

He jumped as a rather crooked and old man appeared behind him.

"Aziraphale. Yes, hello, sir." The angel's face broke with a bright grin.

"Right… so, ya' here for the robber?"

"Yes, indeed. I would very much like to get back his body. He's a cousin of mine, no matter the terrible things he seems to have done, and he should be resting with our family…"

The old man shushed him with a quick and rather impolite gesture of the hand.

"Whatever, no one 'lse gonna claim tha' bastard. Be off wi' him 'en."

"Really? Oh, thank you, my good sir!" Aziraphale shook the man's hand with a thankful and relieved smile.

He had expected some checking of his parentage with Crowley, or at least more questions… but he guessed that the authorities, just like the undertaker, didn't care much about a hanged man.

"Can ya take him now?" the grumpy man asked.

"Oh, yes. Of course."

"Good, well, then, go ahead. Do you want me to put him in a coffin?"

"Well… is it not what one is supposed to do with a… dead body?" Aziraphale frowned.

"Do ya 'eally think I'm gonna waste my time wi' a culprit? I got better things to do wi' my time!"

"Of course… well, if you could just put him in a coffin anyway, I would be grateful. After all, we need to get out of town, and I would rather have everything looking as normal as possible."

"Can you pay fo' the coffin? These things ain't fo' free."

"Of course, I can."

As if to prove his point, Aziraphale showed him some money with a large smile, and at the sight of coins, the undertaker finally seemed to be a little less grumpy than before.

Only a few minutes later, the coffin, that turned out to be little more than a big wooden box, was put at the back of Aziraphale's wagon. As he guided his horses forward and across town, the angel couldn't help but imagine that most people he passed by were suspiciously staring at him, but then, he figured that it might have been his imagination mingling with his strong awareness of doing something secret and illegal – according to both human laws and the laws of Heaven and Hell. But then, the situation called for desperate measures, there was nothing he could do about it.

He didn't slow down nor stop before he was out of town and couldn't see any sign of civilization around him anymore. By then, the sun had sunk beyond the horizon already, and the velvety sky had chosen to wear a dark purple shade instead of its usual blue. The orangish dust of the desert was blown by the wind in little spirals that erased the traces left by the wheels of the wagon. Aziraphale had been careful in leaving no trace of their journey.

He finally heaved a relieved sigh, letting his eyes rest for a few seconds on the distant chasm of the canyons carved in red stone, barely visible under the shy light of the crescent moon. Stars were beginning to appear here and there, tiny spots of burning gas light-years away. Aziraphale couldn't help but feel a little sting of melancholy as his eyes drifted amongst the shining lights, the thought crossing his mind that some of them were not up there anymore, that they had already died out and exploded into clouds of atoms along time ago, and that the light he saw now was but their handprint left on the sky.

But he quickly shook himself out of his thought, bringing himself back to the matter at hand. He turned around to the wooden coffin, and with a mere snap of his fingers, he opened the top.

Crowley was lying there, eyes closed, hands resting on his abdomen, looking paler than usual, his red hair pushed back to reveal his thin face. And for a moment, Aziraphale was hit by the truth that this time, his best friend, his only friend really, when he came to think of it, or at least the only one he could really rely on no matter what may happen, could truly have died out there. He would have been merely discorporated, and would most likely have been back after a short while, but Aziraphale couldn't imagine what kind of troubles he would have run into in Hell. He imagined that being discorporated would have gotten him into the worst kind of trouble indeed… He shuddered at the thought. He shuddered at the thought that he had come so close to losing the only being that understood him. He blamed for it the millennia they had spent alone on Earth, but he knew deep down that there was something more to it. He chose not to investigate further on his own feelings for now, however, and instead pushed away the dreadful thought of Crowley's pain and gently touched the demon's shoulder.

"Crowley? We're in the clear. Wake up."

But the demon didn't move, making Aziraphale frown.

"Crowley?"

He shook the demon's shoulder, but again, his friend remained motionless. And all of a sudden, the angel was taken over by such a tidal wave of pure and agonizing panic.

What if something had gotten wrong? What if Aziraphale had failed his miracle? What if… what if Crowley was dead because of him?

"Crowley! Crowley! Oh no… oh dear…"

He shook the demon some more, feeling his heart breaking in his chest in such a painful way he had never experienced before, not even when he had had to witness the Great Flood, or all these people dying of new diseases like the plague or the smallpox… these touched humans and if he truly loved them, Crowley touched another string in Aziraphale's heart. Something that echoed deeper, something more personal somehow, something he had both chosen and not chosen at all… He could hardly express it into words, all he knew was that he was more afraid and hurt than he had ever been before.

But then, the most beautiful sound echoed around him, and he heaved a relieved sigh, finally acknowledging the tears that had appeared in his eyes.

Crowley let out a low groan, before opening one eye.

"Angel?" he asked in a hoarse, raspy voice.

"Yes! Yes! Oh, you scared me so much!"

Crowley let out a second guttural sound.

"Let's never do that again," he sighed, rubbing his painful neck. "I feel like I've been trampled by a horse."

Aziraphale helped him sitting up.

"You could have just miracled me out of there. You didn't need to overdo it," Crowley complained.

"Yes, but then, they would know you were alive, and they… they would have been looking for you. Dead or alive. You would have been in danger."

Crowley couldn’t refrain the smile that formed on his lips at the sight of the worried angel by his side.

"Well, I'm alright, and they think I'm dead. Should I say thank you?"

"No need for that."

"I reckon I shouldn't linger around here too long still."

"Probably not."

Crowley finally noticed that he didn't have his sunglasses anymore, and he winced. Until Aziraphale reached for his pocket.

Silently, the angel handed him his pair of glasses, and Crowley was so touched by the gesture that he merely thanked the angel with a smile. He hesitated to put them on, but changed his mind. After all, there was only Aziraphale around, and he reckoned that if there was one person in this Universe with whom he could be himself, it was the angel. So instead of placing them on his nose, he put them safely in the pocket of his vest.

He climbed out of the coffin and came to sit next to Aziraphale, who was looking up at the stars again.

"What were you doing at all out there anyway?" Aziraphale asked his friend, without taking his eyes off the burning lights.

"I told you, I was opening a saloon."

"Oh, I should have known you were behind these. Do you know how much bad alcohol does to this world?! Or well… rather their excessive use of it."

"It wasn't my idea. Humans found that all by themselves. But then I was asked by my side if I had invented these, and I could hardly tell the truth. Now, I'm expected to open more of those."

"I see," Aziraphale nodded, his voice calmer again.

"And then I was accused of a crime I didn't even commit! I didn't even rob these banks, or organized anything. I did give the robbers an advice or two, but you can hardly speak of me as the mastermind behind it all even then. Actually… perhaps I should rob a bank. Right now. We should do it together. We go to the next town and we rob the bank, so at least, they will have tried to discorporate me for a real reason."

"Us robbing bank? Don't be ridiculous," Aziraphale replied, trying to sound outraged, but he was merely amused, really.

"What about you? I heard you were trying to help with the slaughtering."

"I'm afraid I am losing though, Crowley. I am trying to make them see that they all can live peacefully together but… they always end up stealing and then killing and… I don't know how I can make things better."

Crowley remained silent for a moment, a saddened expression on his face.

"Well… if I have to get away for a while to avoid being discorporated, and if you can't do anything to stop humans from stupidly slaughtering each others… what about we take a little break."

"A break?" Aziraphale asked back, finally looking at the demon next to him.

Crowley nodded.

"For how long have you been away from your bookshop?"

"Oh dear… I think it has been years…"

"We should go back to London for a while. We can't do anything good or bad here anyway. We could go home."

"We can't Crowley, we have… missions to do and…"

"Oh, come on! You can't stop them from killing each other. And I can't go back or they'll hang me again. So what is the point? We're not abandoning her missions, we're just… facing the harsh reality that we cannot succeed this time. Besides… who cares? They're not going to check on us, Angel. No one will know. Wouldn't you rather be back home, with your books and some nice tea?"

"Oh, right before coming here, I found this very rare edition of some of Rousseau's The Social Contract… a real beauty." Aziraphale let himself be convinced, and he was suddenly full of this adorable excitement of his. "I have to show you!"

A rather tender smile formed on Crowley's features, although he would have denied that he was even capable of feeling tenderness at all.

"I'd love to see it, Angel."

"But first… what about we stay here for a moment?" Aziraphale proposed, with a slight blush blooming on his cheeks that he failed to hide. "The stars are particularly beautiful tonight, don't you think?"

Crowley looked up at the sky, his same tender smile still on his lips, but it was hard to tell then if when he spoke again he was really talking about the stars, or something else entirely.

"You're right, Angel. It all makes a rather beautiful sight."

***********************************

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discomfort-food · 5 years ago

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Terrifying, Beautiful, Maddening (A Hegeleth fic) 4/?

Read on AO3

Jeralt, famed Blade Breaker, former Captain of the Knights of Seiros, and captain of the Silver Wolves mercenary company, has held many titles throughout his many years. But there is only one that would make him stop midway through a battle briefing with his company lieutenants and, most importantly, set down his morning coffee.

“Dad!”

His men are confused at first as to why he stops mid-sentence, but it is made clear to them after following his gaze and spotting the familiar head of dark hair running full-tilt through the mercenary camp. Barely eight years old, the small girl is sure-footed and possesses an almost uncanny amount of grace, deftly leaping over piles of firewood and darting between unaware soldiers, causing them to stumble to stay on their feet.

“Dad!” She repeats again upon reaching him, skidding to a sharp halt, not short of breath in the slightest despite her dash across the camp.

“What is it, kiddo?” His voice is cheerful, but inwardly he is more than a bit alarmed at the uncharacteristic exclamation of his name not once, but twice.

She looks up at him, clenching and unclenching her fists as she takes a moment to find the words. “In… In the woods.” She turns slightly and points behind her.

“What’s in the woods?” He says patiently, encouraging his daughter to elaborate. If Byleth had been like most children, he would have told her to wait until his meeting was over, but Byleth was not like most children. It would not be uncommon for her to go the whole day without talking, and when she did decide to speak it was never more than the minimum necessary to get her point across.

“A fox. It’s hurt.” She clutches the edge of her tunic and only now does he notice the blood on her hand.

He sighs. “Looks like you’re hurt too, kiddo.” She looks at her hand and then back at him, nodding blankly. He turns back to his men. “Okay, boys, I think we’re about done here anyway. Vilja, Edran, make sure all the horses and wagons are inspected and ready to set out tomorrow. Caius, take a few men and scout the forest ahead, report back to me this evening.”

Saluting, his lieutenants disband. Jeralt swigs the last of his coffee in a single lukewarm gulp and pats Byleth on the shoulder. “Let’s get that hand looked at, and then we’ll go see what we can do about this fox, all right?” Byleth nods and follows her father to the medical tent.

Once her hand is cleaned and bandaged up, Byleth leads her father out of the mercenary camp and into the thick pine forest surrounding it. They travel in silence for a good ten minutes, the girl occasionally glancing behind her to ensure Jeralt is keeping up. He feels a small pang of parental guilt for letting his child wander so far unsupervised, but in truth she is far more capable of spending the day alone in the woods than many grown adults he has met. To this day she has never gotten lost, and is always sure to return before sundown. She is also quite proficient with the small dagger on her hip, although he has told her only to use it in self-defense as a last resort.

They slow as they approach an outcropping of moss-covered rocks in a relatively clear area of the forest. Byleth stops a few paces away from it and points towards where two rocks have fallen against each other, forming a small cave less than two feet high. The dried pine needles carpeting the ground have been scraped aside in front of the cave, exposing the dirt beneath, as if something has been thrashing about.

“It was caught by the wire, but it went in there when I tried to free it.”

“And I suppose that’s when it decided to take a nip out of you, then?”

Byleth nods and rubs at her bandaged hand. Jeralt steps closer to the rocks and spies a thin wire tied to a nearby sapling, pulled taut and leading into the small cave. “Did you set this?”

“I thought it was a rabbit den. Caius showed me how.”

“What he should have taught you is to be more careful when dealing with animals that can fight back,” Jeralt says, making a mental note to have a discussion with Caius about appropriate lessons to teach his daughter. He crouches down and peers into the cave. He can just make out the huddled form of the fox, ears pressed backward and mouth opened in a stressed pant.

Byleth kneels down on the ground next to him to get a better view.

“Now, reaching a hand in there is just asking to receive another bite, so we’re going to have to get it to come out on its own. I want you to untie the wire at the other end so it has some slack, all right?” Byleth nods and complies.

With a little time and a long stick, they manage to lure the fox out of its hole so Jeralt can grab it by the scruff of the neck and loosen the snare that had been pulled tight enough to draw blood. Once the snarling animal is free, he releases it, and they watch it bound away into the trees. He looks over at his daughter and sees her brow is furrowed in thought.

He plops down onto the soft pine needles and pats the space next to him for her to sit down. “What’s on your mind, kid?”

She picks up a twig and snaps it in half, the pieces falling to the forest floor. “Why did it bite me? I was just trying to help it.”

He chuckles and ruffles her messy hair. “I know you were, kid. But it was just scared of you and trying to protect itself. They can’t talk, so they have to use teeth and claws. Even a rabbit can give a nasty bite to someone who isn’t paying attention.” Byleth’s blue eyes grew wide. “An animal is most dangerous when it is cornered and feels like it has nowhere to go. So I want you to be careful in the future, all right?”

Byleth nods, understanding written on her face.

Jeralt smiles and stands, holding his hand out to help her up. “What do you say we head on back to camp?”

---

Byleth was about a day’s trek from Garreg Mach monastery by her estimation. Despite the proximity to the school, the valley she was in was rather isolated, with steep mountain peaks surrounding it, and would cause difficulty for any large group to traverse quickly and unnoticed.

The day was cool and heavy with the threat of more rain after the morning’s showers. The trees were gilded orange and gold, and the sound of water falling from the canopy through the glistening leaves kept her company as she meandered along the slow-moving river at the base of the mountains. As she followed it she noted that there would likely be plenty of fish to catch here.

There was no need for haste this day. Her quarry had made no pretense of hiding her tracks the night before, and a clear path of snapped saplings and branches made for an easy trail to follow. The two of them had fallen into a sort of pattern; Byleth would make progress during the daylight hours, and the other seemed only willing to travel at night, taking shelter in a cave when possible or finding some sort of resting place during the day. Today though, that cycle would break.

Around midday the path wandered away from the river’s edge and into the dense forest. Byleth noted marks on several trees, where bark had been raked off by sharp claws, but they were not fresh. A bear, most likely. A bear that would likely not reside much longer in this valley if it still did at all.

Soon, the trail led her to what she hoped she would find: a cave. Framed by crawling tree roots and moss, the entrance was a good size, perhaps three times her height, rather narrow, but from what she could tell from a safe distance, it opened up further inside.

Curiosity getting the better of her, Byleth took a step forward to get a better look, but her foot found a branch that had been obscured by the carpet of fallen leaves with an echoing snap. She froze, hoping her transgression had not been noticed.

One second, two seconds. Byleth was about to let out the breath she held caged, when a low, rumbling growl echoed out of the cave. Slowly, she put her hand on the blade at her waist, and waited for any signs of movement. Nothing. Not willing to test her luck further, Byleth retreated back the way she came until the river was in faint earshot again.

The trees thinned near the river, and Byleth found a suitable location to set up camp: flat, and a stony ledge on one side providing shelter from wind. The river was shallow here, and provided an ample number of smooth rocks to build a low wall for a campfire, though she did not light it yet. Lamenting the fact she had no pole or line to fish, she made do with a simple meal of mushrooms and berries she had collected earlier that morning.

For the rest of the day, Byleth meditated. Letting thoughts, worries, hopes wash in and out of her mind like the moon-drenched tide, she sat cross-legged and still. She steeled her mind for what she might have to do that night if things did not play out as she expected. While it was true she always had the option of using the power gifted to her by Sothis if things went awry, as she had found with the death of Jeralt, some events in time were fated to be fixed. Her gut told her whatever way tonight went, that’s what the universe wanted to happen, and who was she to stop it?

Her face grew warm as she felt the rain clouds leave to be replaced by the afternoon sun. It was nice here. Her mind briefly flitted to the idea of not going back to the monastery, but- no. Too many people were counting on her, trusting her to provide leadership. She couldn’t do that to Seteth, to Dimitri. They had probably already grown concerned at her absence. Seteth, bless him, would be organizing search parties within the next month if she did not return. Still, the thought of going back to being a simple mercenary was comforting, and it entertained her until sundown.

Alas, the brief moment of warmth was soon to flee, and as the late autumn chill reached through Byleth’s cloak, she rose to gather firewood for the night. There was no need to build a towering blaze like she had done on previous nights, she was close enough to be found easily. She built just enough of a fire to keep her comfortably warm, and settled down to wait.

The rose gold of sunset faded into dusk, and dusk gave way to a moonless night. Byleth gazed up to the stars, tracing the constellations her father had pointed out to her as a child. She wondered what he would think of her now, if he would approve of her choices. She hoped he would, and rubbed the scar on her hand where a scared fox had bitten her so long ago.

Several hours passed. The shadows of the forest closed in around her as her fire dimmed, the flames growing lazy and small. She was contemplating throwing another log on the pile when a gust of cool air fanned the flames for her, releasing a cascade of glowing sparks up into the heavens.

As rapidly as it had blazed, the fire receded again, and as Byleth’s eyes dropped from the stars above, she found the pitch black shadow of the treeline against the stars above to have gained a new, familiar shape. It would easily be mistaken for another tree if not for the pair of glowing red eyes staring down at her.

“Hello, Edelgard.”

The eyes drew back slightly, as if the mention of her name had caused her to flinch.

A rattling breath, and after a moment, a voice rusted from months of disuse replied. “So. You have finally grown tired of toying with me. Are you here to finally put an end to my sordid existence?”

“No.”

“Then why ? Why must you torture me so? I am haunted day and night by you.”

Byleth sighed. “I… I don’t fully know why I’m here. Just that I have to be.” Words had never been easy for her, but for once they came tumbling out in earnest. “Things shouldn’t have turned out this way. I’m sorry, Edelgard. I’m sorry that you felt you had no other choice than to become-”

“Become what? A hideous monster that children scream in terror at? A wretched beast that nature herself doesn’t wish to exist?” She spat her words out, the growling tone underneath growing deeper. “Now, I suppose, my exterior matches my interior.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Edelgard.”

“No? Well, then you are a greater fool than I believed you to be, professor, ” the last word said in a mocking tone.

“No. You almost killed that girl, didn’t you? I know you didn’t want to do that. There is still human in you yet.”

She heard the sharp crack as a branch snapped. “You know nothing about me anymore.” Her voice was low, strained with frustration.

Byleth was silent a moment. “I know that I want to help you, Edelgard. I’m not sure how, but I want to try.”

The red eyes across the fire bored into her soul. “Leave. Me. Alone.” Each word was a threatening rumble.

Byleth continued, unphased. “If you stay here, I can protect you. This valley is isolated, and the Knights of Seiros won’t find you, I’ll make sure of it.”

The infernal crimson eyes disappeared and for a moment Byleth thought she had left in disgust, but a dry, creaking sound grew steadily louder and she realized it was wry laughter.

“Where else can I go? You have made it clear to me I am thoroughly and sorely beaten. Very well. I will stay, a feral beast caught in your pen. But be warned: like your dear prince said, the Edelgard you once knew is long gone. Who knows how long I will be able to hang on to the faint memory of her?” She stepped forward just far enough that the light from the fire could illuminate the faint outline of her face. Despite the bitter anger in her words, Byleth could just make out dark trails, slick with moisture at the corners of her eyes.

“I will stay, you have my word. But don’t come back.”

As silently as she had appeared, the shadow melted back into the forest, and Byleth was alone once again.

#fire emblem #edeleth #fe3h #3h #three houses #edelgard #byleth #hegeleth #fanfic #fic #au

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suggestionstories · 6 years ago

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#24. Suggestion: Persnickety

Title: Apple Cider Vinegar

She was a blur of purple moving throughout the stark white kitchen.

Her shoes were a regal lavender closing her toes off from the tile. A deep shade bubbled in and out up her ankles and calves. A long light shade that looked like repurposed curtains flowed from her waist. Her jacket and blouse dueled in clashing shades of amethyst and jam. Her purse, spilling miscellaneous tissues, coins, receipts and empty tubes of Burt’s Bees Wax, was a handwoven mess of periwinkle and plum.

Marie contemplated her sister, her exact genetic copy, as Mona whirled around opening cabinets, picking up canisters of spice and examining boxes of tea.

“I’ve been making all of my clothes. Well, most of them. These shoes,” Mona looked down at her feet, “I traded for them with a young girl in my yoga class. They were probably made by some child in Asia, but I didn’t pay for them so I’m not responsible. Well, not really anyway. Do you have any green tea? Any apple cider vinegar? Turmeric? I’ve been making this health potion. It’s keeping me young and thin.”

Marie shook her head. Mona definitely looked thin. They’d always been exactly the same size, but now she was a good 20 pounds lighter. Young? With patches of stark white popping out from the magenta dye and deep lines on her face and hands, Mona looked a good 20 years older. Well, 15 at least.

“I’ll get some at the store later. How long are you in town for?”

____________________________________________________________________________

Later, they took the Volvo to Safeway.

“I suppose you don’t have too many health boutiques around here. My friend Stan opened one in Saugerties. He makes these detoxifying smoothies that make me feel 16 again.”

They walked through the health food aisle.

“Make sure you get the one with the ‘Mother” in it. Otherwise, it’s no good. The ‘Mother’ is what really cleanses your guts. You’re going to love it, Mar’.”

Marie put the jar of turmeric, three bottles of Apple Cider Vinegar (with the “Mother”), a pound of gourmet coffee, two boxes of green tea, a container of organic shea butter soap and two packages of Acai berries on her Visa. As they carried the packages back to the car, Mona took in the landscape.

“My goodness, it is such a shame what they’ve done to this area! Wasn’t that a forest over there? Does Lingley really need a Cheesecake Factory? I mean, I’ve never eaten in one, but I can’t imagine the cheesecake is good enough to make up for the homes lost by all those poor, innocent creatures. Oh well, I guess the squirrels and the deer will have to make two with a dumpster for their home. I hope they like GMO-laced garbage.”

Marie didn’t respond. She’d quite enjoyed the times she’d gone to the Cheesecake Factory. She’d shared a delightful crab and artichoke dip with a man from Manoa she’d met on Match just the week before.

___________________________________________________________________

Marie had wanted to watch American Idol. She’d really been enjoying Alejandro’s performances.

“Oh God, Mar’, really? That’s not music they make on that show. It’s plastic. Shiny plastic.. Junk, made for the illiterate masses. YOU are better than that.”

Marie would have to look up Alejandro’s performance later and figure out what number to text to vote for him.

Instead, they sat in the living room.

“Mar’, make me a G&T, will ya?”

Marie came in with a full pitcher and a bowl of sliced limes. They citrus smell hit her in the nose and took her back to the beach house they’d gone to every summer as kids. Mona, apparently, went to the same place.

“Do you remember how Mimi used to make them? It all seemed so elegant and grown up.”

The twins would wait until their mother, grandmother and aunts would drift off in a tipsy fog to the porch to listen to the ocean and gossip about cousins and neighbors. Then, they’d drink from the mostly empty glasses and pitchers. They’d get stone drunk, then hold hands, giggling as they snuck off to the beach hoping to meet boys.

“It’s good to see you, Mona,” Marie told her sister for the first time since her arrival.

___________________________________________________________

The mornings, at least, were mostly the same.

Marie would wake up, as she always had, at 5:45 am. Decades of being at school in time for the early arrival kids had made her incapable of sleeping past sunrise. No matter how long she’d been retired, no matter which time zones she visited, she always woke up very early.

Not Mona. She woke up between 10:30 and 1. She’d wander down to the kitchen and grumble for coffee. She wouldn’t speak in full sentences until she’d had at least half as cup. After a lot of caffeine and a small bite of food, the adventures would begin.

They drove out to an antique store in the country. Mona pointed out puffy red stools and burgundy rocking chairs and gaudy little faux-Buddha statues and urge her sister to buy them.

“You should get that and put it in the living room. It would add some DESPERATELY needed character. My goodness Marie, all of that white you have. It’s so… sterile. I feel like I’m back in the loony bin.”

Marie politely declined and suggested Mona buy it for herself. It would be a nice piece for her to bring back to Saugerties with her.

“I have everything I need there. YOU need some life in your house.”

________________________________________________________________________

Three weeks was a rather long time to have one’s life and space disrupted. Marie tried to stay light and positive. But she kept finding purple rings on her counters and her coffee tables. She found a pile of dried, discarded bags of green tea on the guest room desk while Mona did yoga in the backyard. She found splotches of maroon on the carpet in the living room, and in the den.

She ordered more bleach and carpet cleaner and furniture polish from Amazon Prime.

____________________________________________________________________

She spent the next morning thinking about how she could talk to Mona. She needed to find out what Mona was planning. Why was she here? Was she planning to stay? Was she just going to hang around until Marie forgot they hadn’t seen each other in five years, until she forgot that they weren’t roommates, until she forgot it wasn’t HER house?

If she was going to stay, there would HAVE to be changes. Mona would have to pick up after herself, and try not to make such a mess in the first place. And if she wanted her pricey organic foods and teas and spices and Apple Cider Vinegar, she’d have to chip in for groceries. And she’d, she’d, she’d….

Mona came downstairs, earlier than usual. She looked solemn.

“We need to talk.”

______________________________________________________________________

Needless to say, they didn’t talk about any of the things Marie thought they needed to talk about.

“I’ve been worried about you, and it turns out I was right to be.”

Marie started to protest.

“Wait, let me say what I need to say. I’ve been thinking a lot about us and why we’re the way we are. I think it’s partially my fault what happened to you.”

“What happened to me…”

“This… person you’ve become, Mar’. I mean look at yourself, look at your house. It’s so fucking tidy, so fucking clean, everything is in its place. I’ve been waiting for you to scream at me over the mess I make for a month, but you haven’t said a word. You’re so bottled up you can’t even stick up for your own anal-retentiveness.”

“Well, I was going to…”

“When? I’ve watched you sigh and tense up since the moment I got here. You think I’m so far off in Mona world that I don’t notice you? That I can’t still feel what you feel. Your aura is a hot mess.”

“That is rich coming from you, Mona. I... have my life together. Why are you even here? Did you get evicted? Are you coming to live here? Do you have any money in the bank? I, I… You’re the hot mess and you just want me to take care of you! Again!”

“That’s my point. That’s, exactly, my point, Mar’. That’s what I’m trying to get to. I was at this meditation retreat a couple of months ago and I had this very clear, very disturbing lucid dream. We were at mom’s funeral and I was looking at you. But you were so old. Even older than you are now. And you started shaking, like, really violently. And then you were a teenager again. And then you were a baby. And I picked you up and you looked right at me and you said to me ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.’”

“That is what I said to you when you….”

“I know. I was talking to my therapist about it later. When we were kids, we were both wild. Mom was wild too. Mimi and Aunt Sarah and Aunt Nancy. They were all wild women. We come from a legacy of wild women. Wild women who couldn’t be tamed. But when Mom died….”

Mona started crying a little. Marie felt a pit of fire in her stomach. She began obsessively swallowing to tamp it down.

“When Mom died, somebody was going to have to grow up quick. To get their shit together quick. It was like a race to self-destruct the fastest to avoid the responsibility. And I won.”

Marie was struggling to keep her breath under control. Mona was wiping her tears.

“When I… when I.. hurt myself, you had to grow up. You took care of me. You took care of the estate. You took care of everything. And you never stopped. You still haven’t stopped. When I left, you stopped taking care of me, but you’re still holding everything together. It’s like you’re furiously pulling a, a, a tarp around you, but there’s not anything else to hold in.”

Mona came across the room and took Marie into her arms. They’re faces were both sopping wet with tears and snot and history.

“So… that’s why I’m here.”

“Why… exactly?”

“To save you.”

“Save me, how?”

“Well, um, this was the best I could come up with.”

Mona produced a plastic baggy with about two heaping fistfulls of gnarly looking mushrooms.

___________________________________________________________________

The trip was surprisingly delightful. Marie had taken mushrooms as a teen and as a college student, but she certainly hadn’t touched them as an adult. They’d rented a cabin in the country for the night and wandered through trees and a lovely garden for hours.

Marie picked up a very large green leaf from the ground and stared at it.

“I think this leaf is our mother. Is that a terribly sad thing to say? It doesn’t feel sad.”

“No,” Mona agreed. It didn’t feel sad at all.

______________________________________________________________________

She’d pleaded with Mona to stay, at least another week, if not longer.

“I really have to get back. I’m afraid all of my gentleman friends will have new old ladies by now. I’ve got to reclaim my turf. Besides, I’ll be back soon. It’s been so wonderful to see you, Mar’.”

Marie watched her sister drive off. Then she went up to the guest room and collected a half a dozen cups of half-drunk Apple Cider Vinegar and turmeric tea. She took them down to the kitchen sink and left them to soak. Then she began carefully scrubbing purple stains out of her formerly pristine white countertops.

#fiction #shortstory #shortstories #twins #flashfiction #improvisedfiction

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iammarylastar · 6 years ago

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2. Back to my feet.

I woke up the next morning, it seems I’ve been out around the clock. I’m alone in my room, sprawled in the middle of the mess I left, a solid headache knocking at my eyelids.

Mikomi, my rock, my lifeline left me. I deserved it. I hurt her. I frightened her.

The door unexpectedly opens on Sensei, Mikomi’s father and the leader of the village. His face is closed as fuck and he barks orders at me, which I don’t understand. He’s not Mikomi, her voice is always clear and soft, her Japanese simple and slowly uttered.

I do my best to quickly sit up, join my hands together and bow my head in respect. He looks clearly pissed off, I assume by my tantrum and I can’t have him mad at me or he would chop me in pieces with his katana.

Mikomi appears, padding in smoothly like she floats above the floor. She kneels down before me, her gaze at my feet, where she places a pile of clothes and a bowl of water. Before I can speak she disappears again, to be back instantly with what I assume be shaving items and a mirror.

I quickly grab her wrist and whisper her name but she keeps her eyes away from me.

“I owe you an apologize for what happened. I.. I don’t know, I’m still confused. I… Just lost my mind. I’m sorry.”

She gently pushes my hand back and says under her breath “I can’t talk to you now. Please clean up and shave. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

The door slides shut, leaving me all by myself again.

I grab the mirror and study my reflection. Jesus I’m a waste, Sensei said something about a pig, yeah that’s me.

My hair has grown monstrous, no trace left of the clean military cut. Wild, disheveled curls twist on my scalp, traces of vomit coat my beard. I stink, like sweat and urine, I must have pissed myself while passing out.

The Japanese value cleanness as a mark of respect to the others and to yourself. I look more like a homeless, sick bear than a human, without Mikomi to care for me. I’m not Cup anymore. Gaijin fits better, I’m a stranger to my own self.

I take off the wasted hakama , those large black Japanese pants and start to clean myself up, taking stock of my body for the first time in months.

My leg looks great, light red and swollen at the foot -thanks to my little stunt I guess- , the scars are clean and neat, Mikomi has done an excellent work. As usual.

The skin of my chest look nice as well, I realize it doesn’t hurt anymore. I wash my body, face and hair, shave and cut them the best I can by myself, then clean the pants in the bowl. I gather the cut hair, clean up what’s left from my mess on the floor, tied the bamboo splinter back on my leg, tied up the new kimono and find a somewhat comfortable seated position and just wait.

I wait for what seems hours. Time for me to gather my thoughts and my strength, put myself together and stop being such a whiny bitch.

Holy shit, how lame of a soldier I’ve been, weak and crying like a baby, Angie would have laughed at me and kicked my ass.

“Stop braiding daisies, Softie. I’m waiting for you!”

Fuck you’re right honey. Let’s go, let’s do this. Let’s be a man again, let’s fight for what I lost. From now on, I promise I’ll fight to have you back, Angie, you and our baby. I’ve cleaned my mess. I’m ready.

As if he’s heard me loud and clear, Sensei enters the room, checks me out from head to toes, then nods, satisfied.

“Yoi. Keiko. Ashita.”

God help me. He just said I’m starting work out tomorrow. He’s gonna kick the shit out of me.

****

My new daily routine is hell. I’m woken up by a gong, calling Sensei and his disciples for an early meditation. I’m not attending, not yet but I’m sure my turn will come.

Fucking land of the rising sun, the day starts at 4 a.m. and I can’t go back to sleep. 5.30 a.m. sharp: Mikomi arrives, resplendent in her flowery kimono, places a solid breakfast on my lap and leaves without a word. I’m sure she’s still mad at me about my behaviour during that nightmare. Or Sensei forbade her from talking to me. Anyway, I miss her so badly. I eat alone, but nonetheless do my best to respect the rules of the art of entertaining.

Mikomi appears again the second I put my hashi down, and leaves again just as fast.

Then the Master stands before me, ready to break me in pieces. Mikomi’s cares were so sweet compared to this monster of poise.

His strong fingers destroy my leg as he massages, mobilizes, and stretches it. I miss the needles Mikomi used for acupuncture, they felt like honey and I want them back. Instead big iron hands bluntly and mercilessly press on those fucking points, eliciting hisses and grunts from me. At first. Each time I’m complaining, Sensei whips me with a wooden stick, hard as fuck.

“Kurusai!” is the only word he knows, which you can translate into “Quiet!” if you’re in a good mood, or more likely “shut the fuck up!” in my case.

I’ve quickly learnt to hold back my screams and squeeze my fists as tight as my lips. I undergo his torture in a perfect Japanese style.

He instructs me to bulk up my arms so I can use the crutches properly. I spend the rest of the morning to eat my daily dose of home made weight lifting, jars of water or sandbags, and a shitload of push ups, my bad leg resting on my other calf.

Around noon, about a second before I pass out, my sweetheart Mikomi brings me a bowl of water and a bowl of soup with noodles and vegetables, or rice and unknown mushrooms.

First I clean myself up, then eat properly. In no time I collapse for a solid nap, before Sensei whipes me for the next torture.

The afternoon is dedicated to training to be back on my feet. My back is wrapped in a brace, so tight I can barely breathe but at least it stops hurting.

Day one was hard, really hard but Mikomi was there and it gave me strength. Holding back my grunts, I grabbed the iron hand Sensei held me out and stood up on my feet. Up on my two feet. FUCK I was standing up on my feet again. Ignoring the huge smile taped on my face, Sensei handed me a pair of wooden crutches and just left.

But Mikomi stayed. She was my sole goal. Go, Yankee, walk up to that beautiful doll.

I clumsily stumble, like a newborn deer, but my feet moved me forward, my hands firmly clawing at the clutches. FUCK! After months in bed, I was finally dragging myself to the other side of the room. Ha!

Exhilarated, I kept walking towards my Japanese sweetheart, her smile gave me enough strength to stay balanced.

“You made it Gaijin!” She finally spoke, breaking days of silence.

I’m so happy I could cry, but the shadow of Sensei’s whip kept my tears at bay.

“Iwai!” She congratulated me. Yeah I deserved it.

I couldn’t help but bend down and kissed her cheek, hugging her small features with one arm.

“Arigato Mikomi!”

She shyly blushed and sneaked out of my embrace and padded away.

“Follow me.” She whispered.

I somehow followed her steps that lead me outside. I’ve been stuck in that room for months, that day was my first time outside. And it really was worth the efforts.

The view was just breathtaking. Jesus, beauty was everywhere. Cherry blossom trees, traditional Japanese houses, temples, pines, bonzaïs, carps swimming in little pools, paper lanterns, rice paddies hung on the hillside, the ocean in the distance. The scents, delicate like so many fragrances. The sun, kissing my skin. The air, pure and fresh, filling my lungs. Mikomi, shining in the daylight, so proud of me. This place looked like Heaven.

The end of the day is my favourite. Japan is a treasure, the temple of millennarial arts. Sensei introduces me to each of them. Penmanship and kanji. Martial arts and the art of war. Fengshui and shiatsu. Samuraïs and katanas. Everything meticulously and flawlessly executed, from the way you cook and eat food to the way you tied up your kimono. Japan manners means perfection. Hence the billion of rules that dominate the daily life. Hence Mikomi.

It didn’t last long since Sensei noticed my lack in Japanese. I can tell he was impressed by my progresses both physically and mentally. He was touched by my interest in his culture and as how I got involved in the life of the village.

He quickly asked Mikomi to serve as a translator for all the lessons he taught me. Which was a delight. Which still is.

My handwriting is shit and I’ve a hard time staying still on the zafu while meditating but beside that, I’m making huge progress.

I follow Mikomi like I’m her shadow, we’re getting close again. I mean, we chat, we laugh, she walks with me to the bathhouse where I can walk and train my leg easier, in the hot water from the waist down. I noticed the way she got lost, her eyes wandering across my bare chest, but since I had the nightmare, I’ve only eyes for Angie. At least the distant memory I have left of my angel. The truth is I’m not sure about my feelings for her, all I know is I need her by my side. To keep going. She’s my hope.

After a pretty short time using my crutches and thanks to all the work out and sweet torture Sensei forced me in, I’ve been able to walk on my own. As I’ve become more capable, I started to take part in the village’s life and participate to the shores. People were shy and suspicious as first, but by the time I was able to walk out from Sensei’s house, we all got to know each other. I was not a Gaijin anymore even if they’ve kept calling me so.

Children found in me their main attraction. My sunkissed skin was still the lightest they’ve ever seen and my blond curls and blue eyes were considered as the utmost curiosity. They’ve only known almond shaped black eyes and straight hair. I became their favorite fairy wheel, and quickly replaced the jars I lifted every day.with eager children. I did weight lifting with a child taped on each hand, then walked miles with one kid wrapped around each leg, another on my back. The whole thing have them laughing so hard, their parents politely smirked when I passed their homes, children packed as a donkey. Even Sensei smiled at me, calling me silly.

After just witnessing men practicing martial art, my turn comes and I now am a decent fighter. I help every day to harvest rice, fruits and vegetables, fix houses and fences, even cook with Mikomi, which have Sensei pulling his hair out, some things being strictly reserved to women. I practice meditation at sunrise, go the the temple and pray, mostly for having Angie back. I enjoy the show of women dancing with ushiwa, the Japanese fan, sipping black tea with Sensei, while he keeps teaching me about life.

The only task I suck at is milking cows. Definitely not my cup of tea.

Days passed, this peaceful and quiet daily life fits me. Heals me. I nonetheless have noticed Mikomi’s mood slightly changing, her eyes sometimes red from crying at night, and all I got when asking her the reason was deep silence.

I talk to her friends but no one can help me understand. I should have suspected what has happened, I should have known she is in love with me. I suddenly realize I’ve known about that, from the very beginning. I’ve been fucking selfish, too focused on recovering, dreaming of Angie, praying to have her back. Getting back to her.

My dickhead self has just used her, ignoring my own feelings, ignoring hers, killing her hope to keep mine alive.

Hope. Mikomi in Japanese. Fuck. How could I have been so blind?

I have been blind but Sensei hasn’t. The wise man knew. The Master just knows.

One day, not different from the previous one, he just walked to me and stated.

“ Time for you to leave. Mikomi has to marry someone from her clan and you have to go back to your wife. You’re a good man Gaijin but you can’t stay.”

I nod my head. He’s right. It’s time.

Two days later, I’m ready. I packed all my stuff in a traditional bundle, along with enough food to survive during my first trip.

I said goodbye to the whole village, everyone had a little gift for me, mostly food and handwritten prayers for my safety. As an educated gentleman, I received each present within both my hands, bend down slightly in respect and whispered thank you in the best Japanese I could.

Chan and Zhou are in charge with walking me to the nearest pier down the hill, they’re just waiting for me to be ready to leave, impassible.

“Sensei, there’s no words strong enough to express my gratitude. You saved my life, you healed me, you kicked the shit out of me so I can stand up again, as a proud man.”

I glance at Mikomi who just blushes slightly. She offered to translate my words to her father but I’m giving her a hard time. Swearing before a sensei could have you struck down, and giving importance to someone extremely inappropriate. But I know she’ll manage it. She always has.

“I owe you Sensei.” Before I bend down as low as I can to show him my deepest respect, I notice a glimpse of emotion in his eyes, which is like a declaration of love here.

I stay bowed, waiting for his benediction, waiting for my own emotions to pass.

Sensei starts the traditional prayer to the ancestors, asking them to keep the voyageur safe and as I’m overcome by his wisdom and benevolence, I feel his hand on the top of my head. Which is not supposed to happen.

My throat tightens and I force myself to slowly breathe out, stopping the tears that threaten to appear.

It’s a great honour to have Sensei praying for you, and you have to behave as well, as a brave man. Any gesture of affection can be shown, but with one of your kids, it could be mistaken for weakness.

Weak, that’s exactly how my knees feel while he pronounces the last words. Instead of calling me Gaijin, stranger, he said musuko-san , son.

Oh God, how blessed I am.

My eyes meet his, my heart speaks through them: Domo arigato gozaimasu, gratitude Sensei.

Mikomi has left her father’s side, where has she gone? As hard as it’s going to be, I can’t leave without telling her goodbye.

I spot her slim features, beside the crowd. Another weird strict rule here: do not show your emotions, especially your tears. She’s alone with her tears and her sorrow.

Silent steps lead me to her, in the shadow of a cherry blossom tree.

I stroke her neck and feel her shiver but she doesn’t budge, her back to me, shaken by unsteady sobs.

“Mikomi… I have to go…” my voice trembles as my throat tightens. There’s so much things I want, I need to tell her, but Im running out of time. And of words.

“Ikanaide kudasai” she whines, likes she’s drowning.

I sigh heavily. I knew it’s going to be hard, but it’s looking impossible.

“Look at me.” I gently turn her so she faces me, but she keeps her gaze on the ground.

“Haanii…” I lift up her chin and search for her eyes. “Sweetheart. You know I can’t stay.”

She closes her eyes, tears lazily trailing slowly down her cheeks.

“Did I do something wrong?” She asks, hardly hiding her cries.

“ No please, Mikomi, don’t think that way. You mean so much to me, I couldn’t have made it without you. You know how much I care. I love you Mikomi, but not that way…” It breaks my heart to break hers.

The truth is I love her, with all my heart. She saved me, in all the ways a man can be saved. I love her more than a friend, more than a sister but there’s only one woman I want, one who stole my heart and my soul.

“I know. Not like her…” She averts her eyes from me, biting her lips to keep them from trembling so hard.

“I’m so sorry.” Oh God I’m so sorry.

“Don’t be. I’m blessed to have met you.” She buries her sweet face into my chest and lets it go, desperately clawing against me. I wrap my arms around her and hug her as tightly as I can. She’s been my rock, my hope, my mother, my Sun for the last 9 months. How could I live without her by my side?

Slowly, she pulls back and lifts her soaked eyes to meet mine. I’m sure she can read the deepest sadness in them. “I’ll miss you Cup.” She whispers.

Cupping her face in my palms, I thumb the tears that keep flowing down her cheeks. Before I break down and burst into tears myself, I bend down and gently kiss her lips. A long, fierce, heartfelt farewell kiss. That’s the least I could do for her.

“I’ll never forget you.” I swear I never will.

Melting into my palm, Mikomi runs her fingers along my wrist and trails few kisses on my skin. Fresh kanji, the Japanese ideograms sit there, inked in my flesh forever. Marks of the new life that has started here. Pleas for the life that’s waiting for me across the Pond. 見込み. Mikomi. Hope. Hope, I’ll need you.

It’s so hard to let her go, but I really have to leave or I will faint.

A last glance at Sensei, a nod to Chan and Zhou, a last squeeze on her hand and I turn around and just walk away.

Angie. Angie is waiting for me somewhere. I hope so.

Next step: America.

@dreamersdreamlife @narfea @smartieblue22 @bookgirlsthing

@kenzieam

@every-jai

@captstefanbrandt

@jojuarez26

@kiiiimberlyriiiicker1995

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@cry-baby-92 @iago-of-denmark @captainkagtopia

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@onceinabillionlifetimes @sajess98 @carlos8989

#jai courtney #hope #morning cup #angelina jolie #maggie q #fanfiction #unbroken

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wanderer-of-sol · 4 years ago

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3 Days in the Desert

This is a little WIP I’ve got to finish.

Wanderer has been seeking guidance on a problem he’s facing. His old friend, a seer on Mars, has a good chance of divining a solution for him. The problem is finding him somewhere in the vast deserts of Mars.

Three days, Wanderer had been holding his namesake in the deserts of Noachis Terra. The basalt dunes shifted and sank underfoot. The ancient sand knew many things from millennia of listening to the murmuring winds of Mars. One thing they were reluctant to share was information regarding the acquisition of water, or the location of the seer Wanderer had been seeking.

His old friend Rickert could speak to the sand, and the stones, and what little life scratched out an existence here. Wanderer once tried to learn to speak with Mars, but it all came at once. The voices of Mars are loud and many. Without practice they could overwhelm an untrained mind , causing them to drift throughout the desert until thirst or hunger claimed a new voice. Wanderer would do his best not to tell his stories for the rest of time on the Martian surface. He needed shelter for the night, if not from the harsh desert, than from their unending words.

Wanderer pulled a ball from his pack and tossed it onto the black sand beside him. Upon contact it snapped and spun into a modest tent that could fit one. He then produced a small metal box, which accepted a capsule into a port on it's side. With the press of a button the box began seeping flames, warding off the encroaching dark and warming the tired traveler. All that was left is to fashion something to eat with one of his few remaining prevision, and try not to listen to the chanting of the stones around his camp.

The Martian dark is especially eerie, and even more so for the particular gifted individuals who can hear subtle muttering of the land.

“He's coming.” said the dry grass “It has fangs!” exclaimed a pebble. “They can read it, if asked of them.” “You'll never know how they died.” “Nine paces and he'll find his end.” “Took his bones! His bones!” “Whisper in his ear as he burns.” “The right eye forgot tears, but remember everything else.”

The night dragged on as Wanderer sipped his tea and scraped the last of the rehydrated stew from his cup. The comfort food had done little to ease his nerves. Shadows danced at the edge of his tent, prophesying relentlessly. One shadow caught Wanderer's eye. It stood still while the others quivered in the licking light of his fire.

“Ask! Ask! Ask!” screamed the choir of black sand. Wanderer shot to his feet, pistol in hand “Who's there?! Step in to the light! I only give one warning!”

“You know your light has no baring on me, friend, but I'll happily surrender if you make me a bowl of whatever you were cooking.” A figure stepped into the radius of the camp fire, light glistening off his foggy pale eyes and hairless head, his hands half raised in foux-surrender, and a grin from ear to ear.

“Rickert, you bastard! I almost put a hole in you!” Wanderer shouted with relief as he walked forward to hug the desert nomad. “I'll cook you whatever I can! It's good to see a friendly face out here.”

“And it is good to hear your voice again.” Rickert replied with a pat on Wanderer's back. He sat before the fire, placing his bladed walking stick on the sand at his feet, calm as the colossal dunes that surrounded the camp. “The desert has been restless tonight, have you heard it, friend?”

Rickert knew full well that was why Wanderer had been so jumpy. This was his way of poking fun at the voice he hadn't heard is so long. It would be difficult to get a chuckle out of a rock, so teasing a living friend must have been a rare commodity.

Wanderer pored a bit of the last of his water into a small silver pouch, compressed a bubble that was laminated into the side of the packaging and watched as steam rapidly spewed forth from the opening in it's top. “Yeah, they're pretty talkative. I don't remember them being so active last time I was here.” Wanderer replied, reaching out to Rickert's hand and placing the precious gift of lab-grown venison, hydroponicly raised vegetables, and off-world sourced mushrooms in his grasp.

“I would say it's because you're are growing in strength, that you can hear them so clearly, but there is more to it than that.” Rickert sipped his stew “This is really quite good my friend. But no, your clairvoyance is not the sole cause. The wind has been carrying new tales on it. Though I cannot discern it's meaning yet. They started three days ago. As much as I missed your voice and your stories of travel, I must ask, what have you brought with you, to my small red stone, my friend?

“I was hoping you could tell me...”

END CHAPTER

Morning came. Wanderer arose with first light to find Rickert perched cross-legged on a dune, gazing into the distance, towards Hellas Planitia, with unworking eyes. His silhouette of dark skin and dusted red robes blended perfectly with the obsidian sand and iron tinted particles frosting the tops of the drifts. Rickert was a child of Mars. He belonged here.

“Good morning, old friend. Rest well?” spoke the shadow.

“Surprisingly well, considering the ground I slept on kept complaining about lost coins and a feathered serpent all night.” Came the groggy reply.

“Sounds important. Would you like breakfast, my friend?”

Wanderer looked around to notice an empty pan placed atop his camp stove, and no sign of previsions. “Rickert, I don't know how you survive out here, but I can't photosynthesize like you must be able to. Where does one find somethin' to eat in a place this harsh.”

“all one must do...” Rickert raised his hands from his lap to his chest, fingers together as if in some offering of prayer or meditation. His spear cradled in the notch created between his thumbs and index fingers. The ritualistic charms and beads hanging near the knife's edge glistened in the morning sun. “Is listen.” And with that he lobbed the spear in a high arc.

“...Could you get that for me?”

Wanderer trudged through the sand to find the spear perfectly vertical, like a spire framed by the rising sun. Reluctantly, the shaft lifted from sand and at it's end is a strange looking lizard, covered in feather-like scales. It hung lifelessly as Wanderer hoists the spear over his shoulder and walks back up the dune. “Ok, I'm listening. Teach me how to cook this iguana-chicken.”

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clairetherose · 7 years ago

Text

Draecember2017 Day 17 - Overcoming an Obstacle

Wow I’m so sorry this is 1, so late, and 2, so LONG. This was one I’ve wanted to write for a long, long time, and I guess I just WENT for it. Apologies for over 4300 words. Maybe I’ll finally get caught up, after this. I have a week!

A week had passed since Kelci had mounted the peak of Mount Neverest. She had gotten to know Daolong, at least to a point of casual friendship, over that time. Most of the days had been spent resting, though he did instruct her on ways to better meditate. She’d been practicing that, most of all. “It will help with the training,” He said, every time with a knowing tone in his voice. “Just trust me. It is important that your body and mind are at peace when we begin.” Though she had asked around the town, nobody could give her a straight answer as to what Master Zhao’s training would consist of. The only whispers she could get were that his last pupil had died from it. None seemed very hopeful that they would see her again, after it began. At her own request, she tried to converse as much in Pandaren as she could. If she were to live here for an extended time, it would be best if she learned the language.

Finally, the long awaited day had arrived. Kelci hugged a heavy blanket about her shoulders as they trudged back up into the mountains of Kun-lai. She’d grown more accustomed to moving about in the snow, and her hooves found more purpose with each step. She bore a look of confidence, and was eager to finally begin.

“Nearly there, Kelci.” Daolong called out from just ahead. “We will be going off the path, up here. Follow the sounds of my footsteps.” It was easy enough to do. Daolong wasn’t small, even by Pandaren standards, and his steps were heavy and clear.

Kelci nodded back, “Where are we going, Dao?” She asked, curiously. She’d grown to see him more as a friend than anything else, falling back into a casual, familiar tone.

Daolong clicked his tongue. “Ahh, you forget yourself. I am Master Zhao, to you. Today, your training begins.” He chuckled, heartily, “Do not forget your place, my young pupil.”

Kelci frowned, “You do remember I’m older than you by nearly three thousand years, yes?” She paused, but added, “...Master Zhao.” If it meant her overcoming what she’d lost, she was willing to swallow her pride. Not that she had much left, anyway.

“Mm, good.” Daolong continued to chuckle. The sound of his footsteps stopped, replaced by him grunting and stone grinding against stone. “Ahh, this will do. Come here, Kelci.” He spoke loudly and clearly, so she could find him. “And tell me, what do you know of the Mogu?”

Kelci followed the sounds of his voice easily, stopping when she figured she was very close. She gripped her staff in both hands; the same one she’d cut that first day in Pandaria. “Ahh, not much, really. I’ve heard only a little, since I got here. From what I understand, they’re like… evil, animated statues, right? Something like that?”

Daolong took a few moments to speak again, rolling over the thoughts in his mind. “Hm, close enough. Just know that if you do ever meet one, it will try to kill you.” The rest of the story could come another time. “And also, they have tombs scattered across the mountains. Like here, for instance.” He gently led Kelci forward a little ways. Her hooves started to click on stone beneath, rather than snow, and the air grew musty and dull. They’d likely entered a cave. Kelci wrinkled her nose at the smell of the old air.

“Right, so they’re bad. I got it. What does that have to do with anything?” Kelci didn’t mind the history lesson, but since they were supposed to be training, now, it seemed less relevant. “Also, are we underground?” Though he had grown much quiet, Kelci was still able to stick near Daolong.

This seemed to delight the Pandaren. “Yes, we are underground. And I make sure you know, just in case you meet one.” There was the sound of air moving around his arms and a soft, soothing feeling filled the air around Kelci. “I want you to feel this, right now. Hold onto it. Remember it. This is Chi.” He moved to be directly in front of her. “When you think you can sense the orb I’m holding, I want you to grab it.” An easy task, for someone who could see. “Usually, I blindfold pupils for this part. So you are at no disadvantage. Yet.”

Kelci breathed in the more refreshing air from his weaving. “Chi. Huh. I mean, I can feel it on my skin and in my lungs, but am I supposed to be able to… see it? Or is this something else?” She tried to concentrate on the feelings that the Chi had given her, focus inward on it, as he had said. Daolong refused to answer her questions, remaining silent. Kelci glowered. “...fine. Alright. I’ll try to just… sense it.” She took a deep breath. Her brows knitted upon themselves, and she grew still, going into one of the meditative trances Daolong had showed her.

There was nothing but the usual blackness. In her focused state, the air around seemed to pound inward. Her breath was laborious and filled her chest with tension. The feeling of the Chi she had been given was all that remained, and she poured her whole mind into it. There had to be more to it than what was on the surface. It was cool and soothing, but it had carried another feeling, deeper beneath. One of energy and life. It was on that feeling she concentrated, drawing herself further and further toward it. And then, there it was. A spark.

She reached out and swiftly reached for the space directly above Daolong’s hand. She had sensed the orb he was holding. She even picked up on the faintest outline of his hand beneath. Though not really sure how to do so, she took the Chi in her own hand. She could feel it, sense the movement of energy between her fingers. The warmth spreading from it. She continued to concentrate on that feeling, and brought the orb to rest near her chest, holding it with both hands. “...sorry that took so long.” She said.

Rather than his usual silly nature, Daolong was, in a word, dumbstruck. “No, Kelci, I’ve… never had a pupil so quickly perform that. And certainly never on their first try. And to be able to not just maintain the orb, but grow it…” He sounded legitimately impressed, and laughed. “You will be fine. You may do with that orb as you wish, but I wouldn’t recommend spending too much of your energy on it. You’ll need it for other things.” He turned in place and began to walk.

Kelci balked at the idea, “What? No way, surely you’re not serious. You just say that to motivate new students, right? It’s okay, you do--” The Chi orb abruptly dissipated in her

Daolong turned back and said rather sharply, “I don’t lie about anything. Nor do I paint things as anything less than they actually are. None of what I said is untrue. The first step on your journey is going to be to stop doubting yourself.” He sighed, “But I know how hard that can be. It will likely be the last step of your journey, as well.” He turned again. “I am going to lock the door. I will come back for you in three days. If you are alive, then we can begin. Water can be found somewhere in this cave, as can some limited food. And also Mogu.” He chuckled, “So be cautious. Remember the sense of that Chi you held. That will save your life.”

“Wait-- three days?!” Kelci sputtered, running for him. Her hoof caught on an edge of stone and she stumbled, instead, having to halt. “Master Zhao!” She was too late. The sound of stone on stone told her that the door had been closed. A heavy sound against it told her it had also been locked. She reached it just in time to pound a fist against it. It was in vain, however. She couldn’t hear anything through the stone. Several minutes went by before she could drag herself away.

She had to fight back a feeling of dread building up in her. She wasn’t ready for this, not by a mile. “Three days in a cave full of stuff that wants to kill me.” She sighed out, softly. Having put it to words, she realized it might not be the best idea to speak aloud, anymore. Three days could feel like a long time, or they could pass in an instant. Her best option was to give herself purpose. First, find the water Daolong had spoken of. Thankfully, in the musty air, her hoofsteps didn’t echo as loudly as they normally might have. Likely that the ceiling was lower to the floor, as well. By finding purpose, she could make the days seem shorter.

It took nearly an hour of searching, but through sense of smell and careful movements, she found water. Another hour after that, the bottoms of some hopefully not poisonous root vegetables. For a reason she couldn’t quite place her finger on, she just kind of knew that they were safe to eat. The same with the mushrooms she found. Some gave her a bad feeling, while others felt safe. She gathered up as much as she could, taking it back to a makeshift shelter, near the water source. All of the going was slow, as she had to grope her way around the walls and be careful with her hooves along the rough, stone floor. The first day went by rather quickly and uneventfully. Maybe there was no threat, after all.

On the second day, she awoke to a sinister laughter coming from deeper within the cave. It made the hairs on her arms stand completely on end just by the sound of it and sent a shiver of dread down her spine. Whatever calm had set in after the first day was quickly pushed aside in favor of a gripping, gnawing sense of fear. She stumbled awake, hooves scraping on the stone floor, and she reached for her staff, gripping it tightly in both hands. If there was any advantage she had, it was that whether it was light or dark made no difference, to her. Although, she had no idea if Mogu could see in the dark. Assuming what she heard was Mogu and not anything else. It took effort to force the negative thoughts from her mind, but one remained above the others: doubt. Kelci doubted herself. Doubted her ability to survive, doubted her very nature. As much as she pushed it down, it kept surging back up, biting into her mind. “I’m going to die here,” she whispered to herself. She almost believed it.

It was that ‘almost’ that kept her going. She only almost thought she was going to die. Something sparked in her. This doubt wasn’t natural. She had plenty of doubt, to be sure, but she never fell this far into it. Something one of the passing Monks had said came back to her. A legend.

“The last breath of the ancient slain,

Which breeds one’s doubt to fear in vain,

And though despair may take the mind,

It is only anger found in kind.

And soon from anger hatred breeds,

Where after are only violence’s seeds.

Each of these falls prey to pride,

The last breath, from which one cannot hide,

Where in darkest depths they draw,

They wait beneath in caverns deep,

The Sha.”

“Sha,” She whispered the name to herself. It was a name she’d heard before, in some of the stories travelers had told about Pandaria. Nobody seemed to say or know very much about them, beyond that they were terrifying. She ran through the lines of the legend in her head, again. “Doubt.” She hissed, shutting her mind to its influence as best she could. This wasn’t her doubt; this was something from some creature, deep beneath the stones. She tried to push herself back to her meditative state; of a clear, balanced mind. Like how Daolong had taught her. And slowly, as she sought that feeling of serenity once more, the doubt started to trickle away. Furthered in her resolve, she only focused more, until she found herself wholly at peace.

A long exhale escaped her lips. “You will die here, mortal!” A wicked sounding voice echoed off the walls, startling Kelci out of her trance, “And your soul will feed the rebirth of the Mogu empire!” Heavy steps that sounded like stone on stone carried just as much as the voice did, and Kelci scrambled up to her hooves, heart beating through her chest.

That sense of fear threatened to break through her mind, but she managed to push it back down. She stilled her breathing as much as she could, and tried to step as lightly as possible. Back and away, she moved, using her staff to feel the wall behind her, looking for a place to hide. It would be difficult to fight. She hadn’t fought anything in many, many years, though her body seemed to remember the stances and grips of doing so. Staves weren’t her preferred weapons, but she had trained with them all the same. She shifted into a defensive stance, holding the light bamboo keenly out before her. As if she could see any of the attacks coming.

Then suddenly, an opening. There was a small inlet in the wall and Kelci scrambled inside. She hunched in as much as she could, trying to still her breathing. She hadn’t been followed as she moved; she would have heard something. What she could hear, however, was her makeshift sleeping area being ransacked. The scrape of metal on stone filled the cave with the same sinister laughter from before. “So you’re trapped here, little one!” The same voice called out, “And now, you have no food. Or water. How long can you survive, hm?” Heavy footsteps drew closer and Kelci halted her breathing, completely. “Better to die by my axe than suffer!” More laughter followed and Kelci had to brace a hand over her mouth to stop from crying out.

After what felt like, and very may have been hours, the footsteps passed by, then retreated back into the cave. Probably trying to lure her out of hiding. It would be hard on her resolve, but she had to stay here, for the time being. Stay still, and stay silent. Finally, just as she thought she might finally be safe, the footsteps returned. “Clever.” The voice cackled, “And so brave, in the face of doubt. But no matter. You can’t hide in the dark forever. You will come out, eventually.” Kelci didn’t move from that spot.

Another long, indeterminate period of time passed. Kelci was thirsty. And hungry. She’d been thirsty and hungry for more hours than she knew, by now. She had no idea how long it had been since she’d hidden here, or even how long she’d been in the cave. Daolong said he would be back in three days, but it was all but impossible to tell how much of that had passed. Whether or not he had come, decided her to be dead, and left her. Her back and hooves were hurting from this cramped space. She’d tried to adjust into a more comfortable position, but it was of no use. Even for someone as small as Kelci, this was a tiny space. “Going to have to face it, eventually.” She murmured to herself, and nodded. She had a plan. Head for the place she’d stayed, try to scrounge up what food she could, get some water down her throat, then make for the exit. Even if it wasn’t yet time, it had to be close. If time had already passed, maybe he’d left the door unlocked. “Move, Kelci.” She told herself, and carefully pushed out of the shelter.

The cave was silent. Kelci sighed. Gripping her staff, she made her way back in the direction of her camp. Her hooves were louder on the stones than she wanted them to be, but there wasn’t really anything she could do about it. Draenei aren’t quiet on hard floors. She reached the spot without incident. It was slow going, as usual, but something about it seemed easier than before. Just before her staff would connect with something, she sort of knew it was going to happen. To the point that at the spot where she’d slept, she didn’t need to tap her staff against anything. She just kneeled down to examine the scene with her hands. Her heart sank a little.

All the food was crushed. Inedible. It would be near impossible to find any more with the Mogu about, so she’d have to just go without. With the emphasis on haste, she moved to the water, only to discover a foul stench coming from it. Poisoned. “So no water, either.” She whined, slumping against the wall and thumping her horns into it, repeatedly. “Damn it. Come on, Kelci, you’re not dying in here.”

“And that is where you’re wrong, mortal!” The booming voice returned, very nearby. Kelci hadn’t heard anything. Was it just laying in wait? Her only instinct was to jump backward, away from where the voice had come. It was just in time, too, as the sound of something heavy and metal hitting the stones rang out with cacophonous fury. “Ooh, you’re a quick one.”

“My people aren’t mortals,” She retorted, as if that was going to get the Mogu to back off. “We’re ageless. We existed long before you, and we’ll exist long after.” The staff was steady in her hands as she faced the direction from which the voice had come. She was far enough away, now, that she should hear any action. Any move to attack her. The darkness of the cave was of no consequence, to her. There was no escaping the fight, this time. She shifted her stance to a defensive one, ready to react to the first sound she heard.

And hear she did, the brute just calmly strode forward, heavy footfalls thumping against the stone floor. “Not mortals, hm? You can still die.” Kelci heard stone move and the sound of air being pushed past something. That same feeling of instinct thrust her to move, as well. She dodged to one side and struck with her staff. Somehow, it rang true. The hardened bamboo connected with the Mogu’s leg, and it stumbled. Stone scraped across the floor. She was faster than it. Much faster. An opening. She struck again, this time aiming for what she hoped was just below its neck. Once again, her staff rang true, beating into the Mogu hard enough to send it sprawling. Her mind flowed and roared, focused on the feeling of Chi, like she’d been told. But it wasn’t just her mind. She could feel something surging through all of her. Energizing her. She could win this.

The Mogu roared in angry defiance, pushing itself up and spinning back toward her with an arc of its blade. Kelci’s dodge was just barely quick enough, and she now sported a thin slash on one arm, though it was only deep enough to hurt and to bleed a little. The Mogu’s movements were filled with anger. They lacked any control or form, and were easy enough to reason out where he might strike next. Something in her head willed Kelci to try another attack.

Skidding back from the dodge, her hoof caught something on the stone for support and she used it to leap forward, turning with her hips to deliver a sharp kick to the monster’s chest. If there were lungs in it, they would have emptied. Instead, it staggered back, stumbling over itself, and the blade fell from its hand with a loud clang on the floor. Kelci dove for it. It was good she was faster; she got there first. Much to her dismay, the Mogu’s spear was almost too heavy for her to life. Three hundred years ago, this would have been easy. She grunted. All she could manage to do is pull it out of the monster’s reach, but she stumbled in doing so. And her hoof stepped on a panel in the floor that clicked.

Whether it was luck or instinct that saved her, she dove out of the way again, just as a flurry of arrows shot from the ceiling and pounded into the stone where she’d stepped. Not quite fast enough, though. One of the arrows pierced her leg, just above the hoof. Her shrill cry of pain filled the echoing cavern. She tried to put her weight on it, but nearly toppled over, again. This was bad. How was she supposed to keep fighting like this?

The Mogu just laughed at her. “Poor little girl. Finally out of tricks?” It probably didn’t need more than its fists to kill her. She attempted to strike, but her balance was so off, the staff carried no weight behind it, and the Mogu simply knocked it aside, the gripped her about the neck and lifted her off the ground. It must have been full foot or two taller than her. “I told you that you would die here, though you made it much more fun than I thought it would be.” His grip tightened, “Goodbye, little goat.”

This was it. Nearly three thousand years and she was going to die, alone, in a tomb. Her breath was fading and it felt like her skull might crack if it gripped her any harder. This wasn’t the life she had promised. To Anu and to Ki. “No…” She gasped, tugging at the Mogu’s arm with both of her hands.

“No?” it laughed back. “You’re alone, trapped in a Mogu vault. You will die here and your soul will awaken another of my brothers.” A he, then. Kelci hadn’t been able to tell until now.

“No!” She repeated, more firmly, and something burst from her. The energy from earlier, the Chi, it welled up within her and she somehow knew that she could force it out. With the strength of will she had left, a burst of Chi and force came from her hands and into the Mogu’s arms, blasting them apart. The sounds of a million little stones raining on the floor beneath were a sign of her victory. Though she fell on her wounded leg, she didn’t feel any pain.

The beast roared in fury. “You little-- You’re a Monk?!” He sounded incredulous, still staggered from the blast. He fell to his knees.

“No,” Kelci repeated for the last time. She was smiling, even though it was likely too dark to see. “I’m only a pupil.” She put her hands together right by the Mogu’s face. Another burst like the first one came from it, and the monster’s head shattered like a dropped vase. She breathed out, heavily, and whatever that rush of power was, left her. The pain in her leg returned in force, and she fell to the ground. Her tail coiled in pain close about her and she began to fumble around for wherever her staff had gone. Her hand touched cold bamboo. She sighed in relief. “At least you’re intact.” With whatever purpose she could muster, she began to head back toward the direction she believed to be the door.

“Kelci!” Daolong’s voice called out. It seemed like she need not struggle to get there and a flow of overwhelming relief toppled through her pain. “I felt a terrible sense of dread when I opened the door. A feeling of doubt flooded me--” He stopped short when he saw the scene. “Yu’lon’s breath… a Mogu war-captain. And you brought him down, all on your own?” He noticed her injured leg. “...I am sorry. I chose the tomb poorly. I have not scouted this one in many years, and I assumed it still empty. There was a possibility of lesser Mogu, but not something like this.” He crouched down and fussed over her leg.

Kelci was too shaken to protest. “I’m fine,” She lied. Daolong poked the arrow, gently, and she cried out in pain. “...okay maybe I’m not. But I’m alive.” She laughed, knowing that she was safe had pushed out all else. “Has it been three days?”

Daolong laid his hand near the arrow, still run all the way through her leg. “You’re alive. And it has been three, almost to the hour.” If he had noticed anything about how she defeated the Mogu, he didn’t say. “This is going to hurt a lot.” He gave a warning with just enough time for Kelci to brace herself as he pulled the arrow out of her leg in one smooth motion. Though she didn’t cry out, this time, a wincing moan escaped instead. She whimpered. “You’ll be alright,” Daolong reassured, “We will get you outside and I can heal a wound like this,” and without even asking, he lifted her like a child.

“Did I do well enough that you’ll train me?” Kelci asked as she was being carried. The pain had lessened, but only somewhat. She was surely leaving a trail of blue blood behind.

Daolong just laughed, “You accomplished far more than I could have ever expected of you. It would be my absolute honor to be your Master.” He sounded genuine, even in his surprise at what she had done. “No pupil has faced a first challenge so difficult, and most of them have failed or died on the easier ones. You might be something special.”

Kelci relaxed and closed her eyes. “Thank you for your kind words. It would be my honor to train under you, Master Zhao.” She smiled. “Though, first I could really use some food. And water. And a bath.”

A hearty chuckle overtook Daolong. “I could never say no to that!” He grinned and led her outside of the tomb. Her first real training. She probably should have died, but somehow, had come out on top. Only the first challenge of many more to come.

#draecember #draecember2017 #draecember day 17 #draenei #writing #long post #LOOOOOOONG POST #SERIOUSLY WHY DID I KEEP WRITING THIS IS SO LONG #NO WONDER I'M BEHIND #warcraft #pandaria #roleplay #kelci shadeleaf

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kootenaygoon · 5 years ago

Photo

So,

Astaria sluiced out of the lake like a river otter.

It was mid-September and the light was excessive, as if the sun was trying to scorch the rattling orange stones where I stood naked on a Wednesday afternoon. We had just finished swimming across a small bay to a muddy crescent of Red Sands, where we covered ourselves scalp to heels in grey muck, and now I was putting off returning to the Star office. What else was there to accomplish there? I lifted a joint to my lips and watched Astaria ascend dripping, a gift to a younger version of myself who had been in love with her since I was 17-years-old. I’d known five different versions of her since we met at Bible camp, as she changed her names over the years, and now I was trying to lure her to the Kootenays to establish her sound healing business.

“So how come you have to go to South America to be a sound healer? Like what’s different down there than here?” I asked her, as she began to towel off. “I mean, there’s all kinds of sound healers here.”

“It’s a whole different community. They do the ayahuasca ceremonies, and there’s whole communal villages where everybody contributes. I’m feeling done with North America these days, you know? I want something more pure.”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. Now that Trump was a year-deep into his candidacy it was clear that the world of North America wasn’t getting any better. I’d been caught up following the long list of sexual assault survivors who had gone after him, all unsuccessfully, and every week it seemed like there was some new outrage or gaffe. Lately he’d been going toe-to-toe with Kim Jong Un, threatening nuclear war on Twitter, and I didn’t blame anyone who wanted to throw up their arms and give up. That was the thing I’d loved about Astaria since I met her -- she was unapologetically herself, doing her own thing, wherever that took her. She’d been a fashion designer, a chocolatier, a musician. Even though her latest endeavour was a little strange to me, I admired her for always being herself.

“I’m half-tempted to come with you,” I said. “But I feel like I’m too addicted to Nelson.”

“It is a beautiful place. And it’s so cool you’ve found this niche for yourself.”

“Yeah, but ever since Paisley I’ve been feeling like I’m over-staying my welcome. Going to my sister’s wedding really reminded me, you know, that my supports are elsewhere. I’ve got some new people out here, but most of the time I still feel totally alone.”

During our trip from Vancouver to the Kootenays we’d talked about solitude. Astaria liked to routinely trek out into the Island wilderness with her instruments and trinkets, far beyond the walking trails, and then would take mushrooms or meditate on the nature of the universe until something inside of her, that part of her that kept track of reality, snapped. She told me multiple stories about literally hugging trees, naked and soaked in the darkness like an infant. Listening to her experiences made me uncomfortable, made me wonder if I was incapable of breaking free from reality in that way. As a journalist I was so hung up on facts, on what I could prove, that I didn’t get regular access to my imagination.

Sitting in my passenger seat she hooked up her music to my console, and played an elegiac melody that made me feel like an eagle soaring silent through a mountain range. Her voice echoed, barely human, as instruments I didn’t recognize thrummed and sung.

“I can’t believe you actually made this music. It sounds like it came out of the bowels of the earth or something,” I said. “Crazy.”

Astaria told me that particular frequencies, harmonies, were capable of re-aligning our essence. Eventually she told me a story about trekking solo into the woods against her father’s protestations as a woman in her 30s. Her mother had died when she was younger, so he was her only safeguard. He argued that men who found her naked in the woods would have no mercy, that she would get raped before she was killed, but she had no fear. Or at least she was pretending not to have any fear. But once she got to a small beach beside a babbling creek, suddenly her mind was full of violence. She saw knives and blood flash before her eyes.

“It was so weird, Will. Right as I was seeing these things, suddenly my Dad broke out into the clearing looking all panicked. He’d followed me the whole way there!”

I asked her what she thought about experiences like these, where seemingly supernatural powers came into play in ways we didn’t think were possible. She’d grown up Christian like me, pre-disposed to some form of God, but she’d left that behind a long time ago. Now all her otherworldly characters seemed to be female, maternal, goddesses traipsing through the wilderness. I wanted her to move to Nelson but it was clear she belonged in Guatemala.

I finished my joint on the orange stones, pink from the sun and feeling anxious. Astaria was getting dressed and I was trying to be respectful, watching from my peripheral vision. I knew I was supposed to be at work in twenty minutes but I wanted to stay put as long as possible. I began to pull on my boxer shorts, hopping on one foot.

“When you come to my session tomorrow you can’t smoke pot, okay? I want you to experience it sober,” she said. “Promise?”

I nodded, while doubting that would happen. “I can’t wait to check it out, honestly. I’m excited.”

Hiking away from the water and past the derelict remains of the Kootenay Forest Service mill, I reflected for the millionth time on the stupid beauty of Nelson. It felt like a petri dish designed specifically for me. Looking across at Elephant Mountain I could see the Pulpit jutting out, ready for somebody to take the mic and start preaching. Did I really belong here, or was I on borrowed time?

Somehow I knew it was all coming to an end, but I wasn’t willing to accept it.

The Kootenay Goon

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gethealthy18-blog · 5 years ago

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287: How to Create and Rekindle Passion & Libido in Relationships With Susan Bratton

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/287-how-to-create-and-rekindle-passion-libido-in-relationships-with-susan-bratton/

287: How to Create and Rekindle Passion & Libido in Relationships With Susan Bratton

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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This episode is brought to you by SteadyMD, my family’s source for concierge medicine and our primary care doctors. Once something only available to the ultra wealthy, concierge medicine is now available to all of us thanks to SteadyMD. This means my family is connected with a highly qualified MD certified in functional medicine and who knows our medical history, the supplements we take, our preferences for medical treatments and who is available anytime we need her via text, video chat, or phone call. She’s been there when I was trying to decide if I needed to take a kid in for stitches or a sore throat, she’s looked at my kids ears remotely via digital otoscope that I connect to my phone and she manages and advises based on regular labs. I’ve always said that your doctor should be your partner in managing your health and should listen and take into account your symptoms, feelings and preferences and with SteadyMD, that absolutely happens. I feel supported, heard and confident knowing that I have one of the top doctors in the country available when I need her. With her help and thanks to diet and lifestyle changes in the past few years, I’ve been able to confirm that I no longer have any of the symptoms or lab markers of Hashimotos and am completely in remission! I truly can’t speak highly enough about steadymd and hope you’ll check them out. Head to steadyMD.com/wellnessmama to learn more and to take a quick quiz to see which doctor you match with.

Katie: Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com. And today’s episode, may be one you don’t want your little ones listening to, so if you are a mom or a driving in the car with little ones, you might wanna listen to this one sometime when your kids are not in the same room, unless sex is a topic you’ve already talked to them quite a bit about. Because I am here with Susan Bratton, who is considered a champion and advocate for all who desire more passionate relationships and she’s considered a sexpert. She’s been called the Dear Abby of sex with her fresh approach and original ideas that have helped millions of people of all ages to transform sex into passion. She’s been married to her husband, Tim, since 1993. But we hear a little bit about their story today and that it wasn’t always just sunshine and rainbows.

She’s an author, an award-winning speaker, and a serial entrepreneur, whose passion is to help couples all around the world. With her husband, she is CEO and co-founder of Personal Life Media. And she’s authored 20 books, including, “Relationship Magic,” “The Passion Patch,” and “30 Romance Tricks That Work Like Magic,” as well as her international best-seller, “Sexual Soulmates.” And in this episode, we go deep on things like why intimacy seems to die at a certain point in marriage and what you can do to revive it, why women and men are so different when it comes to intimacy, and how women can learn to be more in touch with their bodies in a way that’s really sexually satisfying. So, buckle your seatbelts. This is a fun one. But, again, maybe not one for little children’s ears.

Susan, welcome. And thanks for being here.

Susan: Oh, Katie, It’s so lovely to have the opportunity to share a conversation that we have with others. You’re always a joy to me. And thank you so much for the conversation around our sexuality and how it manifests over the different life stages we have, as a woman. I know that’s a big part of what we wanna cover today. So, thank you.

Katie: Absolutely. And I’m so excited to jump into this with you because, not only are you a friend and an expert on this, I think this is a topic that doesn’t get talked about enough. We’re pretty comfortable talking about all the other health topics. But I feel like this is really an important aspect of health that doesn’t get talked about even sometimes among close friends, and one that can be so helpful if we have the conversation in a constructive way. So, if you’re willing to get a little vulnerable, at first, I know from knowing you that you have a pretty amazing story when it comes to yourself with your husband. So, if you don’t mind, can we start there?

Susan: Of course. Yeah, well, I’m a sexpert. And that is a funny thing to be. And I’ve really had to grow into it because it takes a lot of courage to be a sexpert because people are really triggered by conversations about sex. And that comes mostly from people’s shame and traumas that have happened to them, and their parents never taught them much about sex. Their parents never were very intimate together, weren’t very touchy or lovey. Many people feel like they came from what would almost be called a sex-starved environment. And then they get out in the world and things happen. You know, we get abused or we get shamed. We date and things happen. Maybe we have unplanned pregnancies or we contract an STI or, you know, it’s scary. We’re taught to be almost afraid, “Don’t get pregnant. Don’t get an STI.” But nobody ever tells us about how to make love, how to connect, how to keep, you know, your marriage bed in a really happy place. And so, we have a longing and a fear around sex. And many, many people, they feel like they’re not enough or they have body shame issues, or they don’t think they look pretty down there. There’s just so much many things that can get in the way of having that deep, connected, loving, passionate relationship with your partner.

And I think, for me, it started… Gosh, I just remembered this, I think the catalyzing moment where I…and the very beginning of what happened to turn me from a successful Silicon Valley Executive into a sexpert, was the day I was standing outside on the front step of my Silicon Valley mansion, having had incredible financial success and entrepreneurial success in business. And there I was, standing there with my little girl, and she was six years old. And she was rubbing her little blanky on her lip. She liked to take the little satin edge of her blanky and rub it on her lip when she was nervous. I could always tell when she was… It was her little, like, poker tell when she was nervous. She was rubbing it on her lip. And my husband was in his SUV, was all packed up, and he was gonna drive down the driveway, and she said, “Daddy, are you still gonna be my daddy?”

Like, oh, and I mean, I tell you that right now, and it literally, like, my whole chest gets coated in upset feeling from thinking that I was on the edge of ruining my little girl’s life and losing my husband because we had grown apart in the last 11 years. The first 11 years of our marriage, we had stopped being intimate. I didn’t really want him. I wanted to want him, but I didn’t want him. He was so mad at me because I didn’t really like to have sex with him anymore. And he was very emotionally checked out. And he was gonna drive away and go to a hotel, and we were gonna proceed with a divorce. And I thought, “What am I doing, man? How did I get here? How did I get here? This is not right. I don’t want this to happen.” I loved him, I just didn’t want him. And if I only knew what I know now, I could have really prevented it from happening. Really, my whole career, the last 15 years, have been devoted to helping couples not get to the point that I got to that day where he was about to drive down the driveway and out of my life, and I was gonna ruin my daughter’s childhood.

And we just didn’t know what we didn’t know. We said, “All right, let’s not do it. Park the car, don’t drive away. We can’t do this.” And we started to go to therapy. And then we went to sex workshops, talk about edgy. I would have a meltdown in the car on every trip to a workshop. We did these human awareness institute workshops, and ecstatic loving workshops, and orgasmic meditation workshops. And we really wanted to try to figure out how to rekindle our relationship in the bedroom because we were great friends, we were great parents, we had an incredible life together, but we were living as brother and sister. And really what had happened was I had sex with my husband for a decade, and I never had a climax during intercourse. And if you hear about this thing called… Have you ever heard of this thing called the orgasm gap? Have you heard that saying, or phrase, or concept?

Katie: I’ve heard the term, but I’m not totally familiar with the meaning.

Susan: The orgasm gap is that over 90% of the time, the masculine, if you will, the penis owner, he has a climax from intercourse, but less than half the time some women are able to have an orgasm from intercourse. So, you go for a decade having intercourse with your partner and never having experienced, you know, a climax from it. And how long do you wanna do that? Like, my limit was 11 years. I didn’t wanna do it anymore. It wasn’t good for me. It was great for him. He didn’t understand why I didn’t want to have sex. And I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So, we said, “Well, let’s figure it out. Let’s learn.” Because what I’ve realized since then is that orgasm is a learned skill. So many women are ashamed or they feel not enough because they can’t have an orgasm or they’re not sure if they’re having one, or they have one but only in a certain way, or only with their vibrator, or only once in a while. It’s elusive. And what I’ve come to learn through all of the work that I’ve done is that all you have to do is know how to do it and someone just has to teach you how.

And so, I’ve devoted the last decade of my life to teaching women and their partners, how to have, not only one kind of orgasm, but 15 different kinds. Our bodies have unlimited orgasmic potential, and so do our partners. Men leave a lot of pleasure on the table. They don’t seem to be as upset about it. They seem to be happy with their kind of go-to strategy. But us women, we have so many ways we can experience orgasmic bliss with our partner. And nobody teaches us how and you certainly won’t see it on pornography. I am a very, very, very vocal detractor of pornography. I think it’s degrading to women. It doesn’t teach the right things. It’s not emotionally connected. And so, I really like to show people, give them techniques and ideas about, “Okay. Here’s what you actually need to do to achieve that pleasure.

You just didn’t know that you were missing some of these parts of the arousal experience and you weren’t quite sure how your genitals worked.” So, what I do is I just teach people all these different ways to do what I call bridging the orgasm gap or I like to call it “Crossing the gasm.” You know, because we can have as many orgasms as our partners if we just know how to do it. But we just need to learn that there are people out there like me that can teach these things. And I give away most of this stuff for free. I love to give, give, give, give, give, give, give and do very well, just giving away lots of techniques. And so, that’s what happened for us, but there was another issue, too.

And that is that, when I was young, I was sexually abused by my stepfather. And then when the first time that I lost my virginity, not the first time, the only time, the first time I had sex and lost my virginity, I got pregnant. And it was very, very… I was 19 years old and I had an abortion. And I knew that was the right thing for me, at that time, but I had a lot of loss and sadness over that. And then I had a time when I dated a boy and he almost raped me., and I felt very afraid of men. And I had a boyfriend one time who I had sex with and he kicked me out of bed and said, “Get your clothes and go home. I’m never going to call you again. You’re no good in bed.” Oh my God, I mean, I had so many wounds that I was carrying around, that even when I married my husband and I loved him, and I loved our lovemaking, it was so repetitive. And I wasn’t really having a great experience with it, that when the new relationship energy wore off, and I had all that kind of, like, trauma I was carrying around, that between all the trauma I’d experienced and the lack of orgasmic pleasure I was having in my marriage, I just didn’t wanna have sex anymore.

So, we went to therapy and he went with me, and we unwound all the trauma, I had a great therapist, and my husband was by my side every step of the way. And I was able to come to compassion about what happened and about my perpetrator, my stepfather, and I felt forgiveness for him, and I let it go. And I moved beyond it, instead of stuffing it. And I learned skills from these workshops. And all of a sudden my sex life with my husband became alive and on fire. And I found my feminine fire. I was having incredible pleasure with my husband and I. We just thought, “Oh my gosh, why doesn’t anybody teach these things. All our friends are dropping like flies. They’re all getting divorced. And it’s not the finances, it’s the sex. It’s the lack of good sex.” He’s gonna go get another younger girlfriend and she’s gonna get just as bored with him. And he’s gonna have multiple divorces and re-marriages because they didn’t know what they were doing because there’s no place you can learn to have heart connected, passionate lovemaking.

So, that’s how I ended up here, 15 years later, as the trusted hot sex advisor to millions, married 26 years, never more in love, never had better sex, totally love my husband. And I teach people how to find that themselves, how to understand the anatomy, and arousal, and libido, and desire, and sexual health and it is the most rewarding thing. You know, your greatest wound becomes your greatest gift.

Katie: Yeah. Absolutely. And that’s interesting that you said it was about 11 years in for you guys. It seems like there is something between that 10 to 15-year mark of marriage where… I hear this story from a lot of people from a lot of friends, that there seems to be a change that happens for a lot of people, at that point. Why do you think that is? Do you think it’s just, like, for you, all those years of it not being what it could have been and getting disillusioned? Are there other factors that come into play in that time period or why does it seem like so many people may be hit that at the same time?

Susan: Well, there are a couple of stages of abject boredom and sexual dissatisfaction. It sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Yeah. The first one is about four months to four years into the relationship, the new relationship energy wears off. And then there’s that seven-year Itch, which some of us can keep going until about 10 years, but it’s really boredom. It’s just that orgasm gap thing where it feels great to him, so he wants to keep doing it. But you get bored out of your mind and you need more… As the female, you need more seduction. You need to be moved towards your pleasure. You need more arousal. You need to feel desire. You also simply get bored and you need just more excitement. You need it to be fun. It ends up being rather perfunctory, after a while, if you’re not learning new things together. Really, the interesting thing about libido is that it is your general health. And as you age, your gut microbiome gets messed up, you get more toxins in, your hormones start to decline. All those things are actually… You know, you’re not producing as much serotonin in the gut. You’re not producing as many hormones. If you’ve been on birth control pills, that’s tamped it down. You know, there’s just a lot of factors at a physical level that happens, and then desire at an emotional level.

You maybe have frustrations with your partner, or withholds, or you’re not really being honest, or they’ve maybe, you know, gotten a potbelly, or they’re not grooming themselves like they used to, or they’re dressing sloppy, or things like that, that make you less…you desire them less. So you’ve got kids and you’re tired. And your husband’s a little, like, I don’t know, rough around the edges. You know, he’s not showing up for you the way he did when you first got together. He’s not romancing you. Sure, you might have date nights, but he’s not putting the effort in on the romance side of things. You know, when was the last time he brought you flowers or, you know, things like that.

And so, that kind of pulls down your desire. And then because he doesn’t understand how to arouse a woman, because testosterone starts out already. You know, he wakes up horny, and you don’t. He’s got this morning wood and he would just be happy to have sex every morning, just intercourse. It would be great for him and he’d go on his merry way, but that’s not really what women want. We wake up in the morning, gaving to get the kids off to school, and a million things to do. And quickies, honestly, I am against the quickie. I stand for no quickies because our genitals, our female genital are urogenital structure. We have as much erectile tissue inside us, as our partners do on the outside. If you think about it, he’s an outie and we’re an innie. And he gets almost instantly aroused because the blood flows into his penis and he gets that erection, so his visual signal is, “I’m ready to go.” And that’s the thing with testosterone, it’s full speed ahead. It thinks it knows what it’s doing. It’s overly confident. It has more certainty. That’s why it never asks for directions, right? Even when it’s lost, it just thinks it knows. It’s overconfident. It’s cock shore, right? And estrogen is more eyes on everything. It sees flaws. It has more anxiety, naturally. It has trouble getting in its body. It’s in its head. And it’s bothered by things, that the room is too cold, his beard is scratchy, the sheets aren’t snug on the bed, the lighting is too bright, the music isn’t right or it’s too loud. You know, we notice everything. And so, we have a harder time settling in. It takes us longer to get aroused. Our husband doesn’t realize this because he’s full steam ahead. And he’s kind of immune to the little things in the room that take us out of our body and we notice.

And so, we get this disconnect, where over the years, you haven’t taken, or insisted upon, or known to make sure that you get enough physical stimulation, that you take a slow arousal and let your body, and let your desire come to you. We don’t start out horny. We need to be turned on. We need to give ourselves the opportunity to first relax, which is the beginning of arousal. And then to build our turn on and our engorgement, which is the blood flow to our genitals. We need to kiss and be held, and stroked, and loved first before our husband grabs our breasts or grabs our Yoni. That’s not right for us. But he doesn’t know because the first thing he wants you to do is grab his manhood. That makes him feel calm. And like, “Okay. This is good for me. I’m being touched where I wanna be touched.” If he grabs you that way, it contracts you. It’s not right for the woman. And so, most husbands don’t know these things. And so, you go on for a decade, getting manhandled by a guy, you know, who thinks he’s better than he is. Eighty-percent of men, think they’re above average in bed. Okay. That math doesn’t compute. So, if you don’t have someone showing you how to turn on slowly and giving you the chance to do that, how many times are you gonna wanna have sex? You’re gonna want to stop that after a while. And that’s what I think happens to a lot of marriages. And the fun goes away. You’re not learning new things together. And I’d love to tell you more about that, too, the way to kind of, like, rekindle it, if you will.

Katie: So, I definitely do wanna jump into how ways you can try new things and rekindle in the bedroom. But first, I just wanna drive home a point. You mentioned that, for you in that phase, you had trouble reaching climax from intercourse alone. And I think that this is probably a pretty common thing for women, but it’s not one that’s talked about very often. And I wonder if maybe women feel like alone or, like, something’s wrong with them when they’re not able to that because it’s a common theme, that they probably think that’s something normal to happen. So, I’m curious, is that common for women to have difficulty with that? And if so, are there ways to learn that or to make it still very pleasurable, even if that’s not the case?

Susan: Yes. Most women don’t orgasm from intercourse, only the lucky ones. It’s actually a learned skill. So, we are biologically wired to learn how to make babies. That’s slot A into tab B. And that works pretty well without anybody teaching us what to do. But what we’re not taught and isn’t easy to understand or doesn’t come naturally to us is having orgasms. There are 16 types of female orgasm by my count right now. And what I would call orgasms from intercourse or penetration orgasms, or PIV, is what a lot of sexperts call it, penis-in-vagina orgasms. I don’t like that one as much. That is one of the most learned types of orgasms that there are. And the best way to do it… Well, I’ll tell you that I have a series about how to do it. I explain all of the details of exactly what to do in a series of YouTube videos on my Better Lover YouTube channel. So, I can’t get into all of it on this podcast because there’s a lot of things because it’s different things for different women. But generally, the biggest issue is two things.

The first is lack of proper genital engorgement, which means, not enough time with getting your genitals massaged, and/or pleasured prior to intercourse. And then the second thing is lack of his skill in the thrusting and lovemaking side of things. He will tend to go immediately inside you. You won’t have enough engorgement. You won’t have enough blood flow. You won’t have enough turn on. You won’t have enough lubrication. And he’ll go too fast, he’ll go right in. And then he’ll go in and out, kind of like the piston in a car motor, rather than the teasing, short, shallow strokes, combined with longer, slower strokes, hip drops and pelvic fluidity instead of a stiff pelvis. He’ll do too much, too hard. He won’t give you breaks. He’s not really conscious of what his penis is doing inside your vagina. You’re kind of just holding on, if you will, unable to relax. There’s probably a lot of vaginal rigidity. There’s probably a lot of missing terms of endearment, and verbal appreciation, and encouragement. There’s probably lack of kissing and full-body touch, and things like that. The positions may not be comfortable for you. It might be that you’re rushing into it and you’re not propped up with pillows. The environment might not be right. You might not have enough application of good organic nut oil. I like coconut oil or avocado oil, organic oil added to the situation so that you’ve got a good glide. There’s just probably a lot of components missing that are preventing you as the woman from really surrendering to your pleasure and it feeling very good to you. But I can tell you that, if you lay in all of these types of things… And there’s nothing wrong with the desire for your husband, you love him, you’re not mad at him. He’s meeting you’re outside of the bedroom relationship values, that the two of you can learn how to make love in a way that is much more orgasmically satisfying for her and not just him.

Katie: That makes perfect sense. Yeah. So, what are some of the ways…? I’d love to hear both from your experience and now what you teach, just a few more ways that people can rekindle that. You gave some great suggestions on how to make sure it’s beneficial for both. But when people hit that time, where like that seven-year itch you mentioned, what are some ways to rekindle that and to make things feel alive again for couples?

Susan: The best way is to schedule erotic playdates. So, I didn’t say schedule sex because that’s one more thing to do, which is the last thing we wellness mamas need, right? The last thing we need as one more thing to do, “Service, my husband, boring.” And not to have any lovemaking out of shame, or mercy, or feeling like you have to, or duty, or anything like that, instead, scheduling erotic playdates where you learn new things together. Because your old dog needs to learn some new tricks. But because he’s testosterone dominant, he thinks he knows everything and he’s great in bed. So, you can’t tell him he’s not, but you can tell him, “Let’s try some new things.” And new things might be, “Let’s do a little role play.” Maybe it’s, you know, “Let’s play doctor and nurse,” and I’m gonna wear some little nurse outfit that’s super cute because that can be fun for some women. They like to dress up in sexy things and that makes you feel sexier. Or, “Let’s try a new position that we’ve never tried,” or, “Let’s make love in a different place,” maybe out in the backyard or something that feels a little naughty like, “The kids are all gone, let’s try the dining room table.” That can be really fun. Or, “Let’s learn a new skill together.” So, maybe an expanded orgasm practice or something like that. There are so many different ways that you can think about learning new things together. And the couple that plays together, stays together, especially in the bedroom. So, moving from, we’re having sex to we’re having erotic playdates, really gets you back into that new relationship energy that’s gone missing. And it helps your guy learn some new techniques that will make sex better for you. So, it’s a really good kind of ninja female technique that invites new learning without any blame game.

Katie: Another great tip. And I’m curious, though, I think that there’s probably another side to this as well, which is that whether it be through childbirth or, for my own experience, when I had Hashimoto and was really in the thick of it. Those things can really kind of tank your libido. And I know that there’s… I’ve talked on this podcast before a lot about that testing that needs to be done and definitely getting thyroid checked, and things like that, the physical side of libido. But what about for women who don’t even have, maybe, that desire to really do that? They don’t feel like their libido is there at all.

Susan: Yeah. Libido, desire, and arousal, they’re the three interconnecting circles. I like to think about it as the three circles. It’s called a Venn diagram, technically, the three circles, and then in the middle is a little heart, where all of that connects. Libido is, you’re feeling your physical body and its interest in making love. And when you’re ill, your vitality is diminished, and your sexual vitality is the same as your life vitality. You can’t feel passion for your sex life if you don’t feel passion for your general life. So, anything that’s essentially crunching down your physical vitality is also dampening your sexual vitality. So, ground zero for you is your gut, getting your gut moving, making sure your microbiome is working, making sure you’re pooing really easily and well every day, making sure you’re well-hydrated, making sure that your vaginal microbiome is in good condition. You know, a lot of women suffer from everything from like, and sclerosis to yeast infections to bacterial vaginosis to cystitis and UTIs and all of those kinds of things. We’re very delicate, our vulva region, our urogenital complex is very delicate. And so, we have to be in good health to have a libido. Your heart is beating, your libido is a beating heart too. And then desire is, are you in good shape with your partner? Are there any withholds, anything you’re mad about? That needs to get fixed before you can want them again. If you’re mad at them, you don’t want them. And then the arousal pieces, what I was talking about, giving yourself enough time to get fully engorged and turned on, and use good lube and, you know, learn new things, and actually learn some techniques, and things like that, that’s like the care and feeding of your intimate life.

And so, really, those three things have to come together to feel good. There’s another interesting piece that is, vaginal restoration. For a lot of women, after having a child, if they’ve had a severe scar or an episiotomy, some women get fistulas or varosoles, or things like that. They’ve had wounding or damage from a bicycle or horseback riding, or they’re starting to have incontinence, or they feel vaginal laxity, lack of tone. All of these things affect the vast amount of us females. And there are many, what I would call, vaginal restoration technologies coming to the fore now that are available to us, that are not surgical in nature. They’re not vaginoplasty or labiaplasty. They are almost what you would call lunch break treatments. Using CO2 lasers and RF devices intravaginally, up inside the vagina, that are similar to what you would do if you were having Fraxel or BBL, or an IPL or any of those kinds of things on your face, any kind of like… You know, you talk about photobiomodulation a lot on your show. So, you know, you’re using essentially, light to stimulate new growth. So, the laser is light that does subcutaneous damage to your vaginal mucosa, which is hormesis, which creates new growth in the tissue and re-colleganate the tissue and tightens and tones the vaginal canal, and helps stimulate the musculature to rejuvenate the musculature tissue to help with incontinence. And then there’s also RF devices on the outer labia and inner labia that can be done for older women who are getting a lot of loss of tone. And then there’s, of course, the O-Shot. Have you ever heard about the O-Shot?

Katie: I have. And I actually had someone who does it on the podcast a while back, and I have actually tried it myself. But please explain what it is for anyone who hasn’t tried it.

Susan: Oh, great. Who did you have on? Robin?

Katie: No. I had someone from GAINSWave down in South Florida.

Susan: Oh, great. Yeah. From GAINSWave. Right. So, that’s what you do. You get a GAINSave for your husband and a P-Shot, and use a vacuum erection device to reverse his natural atrophy because as men age, their penises shrink, they atrophy. We’re shriveling up as we age. And so, to reverse the natural atrophy, especially, if there’s been any health issues, you use the GAINSWave to knock the plaque off and then you get the blood flow again. And then you use the penis pump to open and pull that tunica albuginea up so that the chambers can fill with more blood and the P-Shot does that restoration of the tissue. It’s the same with the female, only, when we shrink, we get bigger, more open. Our vaginas get lax, they lose tone. So, his penis shrinks as your vagina gets bigger. It’s the cruelest cut, Katie.

And so, the O-Shot is actually PRP, platelet rich plasma from your own blood, same as the P-Shot for him, spun in a centrifuge and then the white blood cells are taken off, and the red blood cells are taken off, and you’re left with this healing broth, this golden broth of platelet rich plasma that has cytokines and healing factors that get injected. It doesn’t hurt. You’re numbed, injected into your clitoral structure, your clitoral structure being erectile tissue, and your urethral structure, which is your G-spot… It’s not a spot. It’s an area. And it’s actually a tube of erectile tissue that surrounds your urethra canal, which is where the urine flows out. Those structures, you inject with this PRP, and it rejuvenates that tissue. It regrows new clitoral tissue because over time we get sensation loss. By the time you’re 50, you’ve probably had 20% or 30% sensation loss from when you were 30 years old. It’s just a natural part of aging. But now, we have these regenerative therapies that we can use to bring back full function to our genital system from injury, childbirth, trauma, and aging. And they work really, really well.

Katie: Yeah. That’s super fascinating. And I’ve noticed even just, in my own life, like you said, that whole body approach, all of those things have to be in line. I don’t think maybe, for a lot of people, especially, people my age, those things may not even be necessary yet. But I do know this, for sure, when I eat clean, and I get enough sunshine, and I get enough movement, and I get enough sleep, those things all line up better, and my libido is definitely stronger. So, I think that’s really sage advice to really focus on all of those factors and, like any aspects of health, not look at libido as a thing in isolation, but look at it as part of your overall health. And that makes perfect sense.

Susan: Yep. It is just part of our life force.

Katie: I also wanna circle back and go a little deeper on the trauma aspect because I really appreciate you sharing so openly about that and about the pain in your past. And I know that, statistically, a lot of women have some form of sexual trauma in their past. I do have sexual trauma from when I was in high school. And I this is a very common thing. I have many, many friends who have been through some type of sexual trauma. And I know that that also may be a very personalized thing. And you mentioned therapy and things that helps you. But are there some general steps if someone has that in their past and is maybe willing to face it, that are a good starting point?

Susan: Yes. First of all, know that trauma has happened to probably 60% of men and women. Men are definitely equally traumatized. And trauma comes in many forms. It can come from someone doing something to you or shaming you. Trauma can come from lack of knowledge and the fear that comes from not knowing. It can come from health procedures, and not even necessarily gynecological procedures, but just general health procedures, where people are touching your body in ways that you did not give them permission to. It can come from, obviously, the dating world and the shame of things that happen there, whether it’s STIs or unwanted pregnancies, or mean people, or aggressive people. There are so many ways that trauma can happen.

And what I can tell you is a couple of things. The first is that, your partner is your greatest healer, that most people heal their traumas together as a couple. The second thing that I can tell you is that trauma is not just rational and that it’s primarily in your body, not as much in your mind… It’s in your mind, it’s in your psyche. You can talk about it. You can talk therapy out of some of it, but most of it is actually caught in your enteric nervous system. So, we hold a lot of our sexual wounding in our pelvic area, in our sacral chakra, in our womb, in our tissue, all that tissue that we have in us, in our pelvic area. And it needs to actually be touched to be released. That’s why G-spot massage is one of the most common somatic healing technologies, that we use body healing technologies when our partner can give us a general massage and stroke that G area right inside the vagina, right on the roof of the vaginal canal, right up in the top of the cave. It likes pressure and it needs release.

For many women, their vagina is very rigid and hard because it’s been traumatized and it’s kind of locked down. Their pelvis is locked down or they’re having painful sex. And every time they think about sex, it hurts before they even are entered. And all of this is just trauma waiting to be loved and released into and let go. So, there are things that trigger us. We get triggered. We feel unsafe. And that’s why having a lot of these kind of loving touch modalities are very important.

I also have a really nice series on recovering from sexual trauma on my YouTube channel with Arielle Giarretto. Arielle runs an organization called fullembodiment.org. And she is, to me, the preeminent sexual trauma healer in the world today. I have very good connections. And we did a series about releasing trauma, being the partner of someone who’s been traumatized, supporting your partner through healing. What somatic healing is, somatic healing modalities, how to release enteric upset and shame. And so, you know, we can’t go into all of it in a less than an hour of a podcast, but that’s a resource that I would send you to. It’s at betterlover.com. And you can just search trauma on my YouTube channel. And you’ll find a beautiful series that we did together on healing trauma together as a couple.

I mean, we went to therapy, but it was my husband that healed me, as he began to massage me and release all the things that I had withheld and buried in my womb. Sometimes things would erupt out of me like… It would sound like the Wicked Witch in the scary cottage of “Hansel and Gretel,” where I would go…and make all these weird sounds that just erupted out of me as he was stroking that G-spot area. Or I would squeal like a hyena or I would roar like a train was coming through the room. I mean, and I would cry. He would hold me after that massage. And I would cry, and cry, and release, and release. But he just held me in his safe masculine container. And he just let me let all that go. And as I let all that go, then I began to feel pleasure. And that was really what allowed me to begin to have those orgasms from intercourse because now I’d lost all that armoring that I’d had, all that emotional armoring that had shut me down, and locked me down, and I released it all. And I began to release and release, and then I could connect with them. And when we made love, I didn’t dissociate. I didn’t leave my body. He’s kept me, “Look me in the eyes, baby, I’m right here. Everything’s okay, I’ve got you. Do you need me to stop? Do you need me to slow down? Let’s take a break.” And he just healed me from all of the injustices that had happened to me in my lifetime.

And that’s how I got from shut down, about to lose my marriage, to lose my wonderful husband and to ruin my daughter’s life, and my life, and to be alone, to start over, and to not have that happen, and to go on, to heal, and to go into the upward pleasure spiral where lovemaking just got better and better. And we so changed that we wanted to bring this change to other people. We wanted to make all this information available to everyone in the world who could find us. That’s the beauty of the internet. I mean, I’m not able to put these things on Facebook because Facebook, they’re just, like, nothing about sexuality. Even sexual health, no, no, no, nothing, nothing, nothing. It’s actually hard to find this information. But YouTube luckily lets me keep a channel that I can teach people things. And my sexual vitality summit is available to people for free because the healing is out there. The knowledge is around. And I just really appreciate you giving me the time to come on to “Wellness Mama” and touch the people in your world with the possibility of healing, and connection, and pleasure.

Katie: I’ll make sure we find those links as well and put them in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. So, if you are driving or exercising, don’t worry about trying to write that down or keep it in your phone. Those will all be at wellnessmama.fm, so you can find Susan more. Before we wrap up, there’s another topic that is just timely for me right now as I’m under a month away from having a teenager myself is just the thought of how do we hopefully teach our children a healthy and positive attitude when it comes to sex? Because I think a lot of people… Like, I know I went into marriage with a lot of interesting attitudes about sex, but in including ones I had to work through about all the early childhood ones about sex being bad. That was taught, you know, when you’re young and you’re not supposed to be quite having sex yet. Like, I had to work through that at marriage, once sex was wonderful and good. But do you have any tips, especially, for the moms listening, and especially for our daughters of how we can raise them with a healthy, and realistic, and wonderful attitude towards sex and toward their bodies?

Susan: Yes. And thank you so much for asking about that. I actually have quite a bit of knowledge and experience in how to talk to our children about sex. And just to give you some kind of highlights about the approach. Yeah. We are traumatized by people scaring us about sex, “Ooh, don’t get near any semen, it’s bad for you. You’ll get pregnant,” and you know, “You’re gonna get STIs and it’s dangerous.” Our heads are filled with all these negative things. And then we don’t have names for our genitals and we’re not taught our anatomy and, you know, everything is just the negative, negative, negative. And so, we have to teach ourselves.

So, the one thing I’ll tell you is that, forgive your parents for not teaching you. They didn’t have the tools. It wasn’t the time. And when they tried to, if they tried to, you probably gave them a big eye-roll, and it was hard for you to talk to them about it. So, forgive them and move on, and know that it’s actually your responsibility, just like personal growth is your responsibility, just like continuing to always work on your health and making sure you are saving money and, you know, you’re getting your exercise and eating your vegetables. Your job is to open and expand your sexual potential yourself. It’s not your parent’s job, so let that go. Because what I find is people hold a lot of bitterness about that with their parents. And that’s unnecessary, so forgive your parents.

The second thing is, children wanna know very early on what the anatomical parts are between boys and girls. And so, it’s very nice to tell them about, “This is called your vulva. These are your labia. You have inner and outer labia. You have something called a vaginal canal. You have something called a clitoral structure. A boy has a penis. He has testicles. They’re in a sack called a scrotum. You know, he has something inside called a prostate. There are lots of interesting parts, but we all started out the same. We all started in the womb as little girls, but then about 8 to 16 weeks during gestation, half of us became boys, girls have innies and boys have outies. They fit together to make a baby.” What you do is you start with the simple things,”This is called your vulva. You have different parts. Boys is called a penis. He has different parts.” And then you layer in extra pieces, “And then here’s how babies are made. The penis goes inside the vagina and something called semen comes out that has sperm inside it, that fertilize a little egg inside the girl, that grows inside, her belly gets big, it comes out her vagina, and that’s how you get a baby.” Right.

So, you teach them those kinds of things. And then later you talk about, “Sex is a beautiful thing between adults. It’s something that you share. It can be a really sweet emotional connection. It’s like your best friend with benefits.” So, you know, you start talking about the emotional aspects. And then you start saying, “You always wanna honor that you should only do what you wanna do. You’re in charge of your own sex life. You never do anything you don’t wanna do. If someone’s pressuring you, here’s what you do, you call me or you leave immediately. No one owns your body, but you.” You do the body safety pieces. And then as they start to get a little older, you say, “There are some things you have to watch out for in sex. You wanna be careful not to get pregnant. When you’re ready, we’ll talk about contraceptives. I recommend non-hormonal contraceptives. I’ll teach you all about that when we’re ready. And we’ll also talk about safe sex and setting your boundaries, and having agreements about what you’re willing to do and what you’re not willing to do. And I want you to feel comfortable talking about sex. And then, you know, you go into more and more details about all these things. And what I find is that, over the years, if what you do is you just drip, drip, drip, you know that…

What’s that phrase about how the river always finds its way? It goes under, it goes around, it goes over, drips, drips, drips to find its way to the ocean, that’s what you’re doing with your child. You’re taking them on a journey, one drop at a time, so that… Their sexuality isn’t something where you sit down and have the talk, you’ve just always been having those conversations with them. You’re just layering knowledge. And then you also get some good books and you put those books in your family library, and you say, “I bought some books about human sexuality. There is a resource for you. Anytime that you’re curious, you can always ask me, but you can always refer to books as well. And they’re there when you’re ready.” And then the kids can go take them and look at them when they’re ready, when they have the curiosity in the knowledge. So, I think the combination of always layering in more info…

And when your kids are teenagers, when you’re driving them someplace, just drop one little thing, and then be done. Let it soak in for them and don’t expect to have a conversation about it. Just give them a little interesting fact, without them having to talk to you back about it. So, it’s not a two-way conversation unless they wanna make it that way. That’s also good advice for how you talk to teenagers who are resistant to everything you say because that’s their natural process of individuation. It has nothing to do with you. That’s how the individuate. So they have to. They’re compelled biologically to negate what whatever you say. That’s just them growing up, so you can’t take it personally. So, those are some of my little tips and techniques about that.

Katie: Those are great. And I can’t believe our time has already flown by so quickly. But a couple of quick things I love to ask at the end, the first, is there a book or books that have really impacted your life. If so, what they are and why?

Susan: I would highly recommend the “Women’s Anatomy of Arousal” by Sherry Winston. Sherry is one of my mentors. And she talks a lot about that piece that I want all women to know more, which is how we experience arousal as different than the masculine, the pussycats versus the puppy dogs. And learning about that, a “Woman’s Anatomy of Arousal” by Sherry Winston is an amazing book.

Katie: I will make sure that is linked in the show notes as well. And any parting advice you wanna leave to all the women listening today?

Susan: Yes. Demand the time that you need and the sensation that your body craves in the moment when you have connection with your partner. Stop doing what you think you’re supposed to do and listen to your body, and clue your partner in about what she needs and honor your Yoni.

Katie: Awesome. And Susan, you mentioned quite a few of your resources, but I’ll make sure those are all again linked in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. So, anyone listening, you guys can find Susan, and continue to learn from her. But thank you so much for being here today and sharing your story so vulnerably and openly, and sharing what you’ve learned with us today.

Susan: Thanks, Katie. My pleasure.

Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and for sharing your valuable asset, your time, with both of us. We’re so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/susan-bratton/

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garywonghc · 7 years ago

Photo

The Man Who Told the Future

by Pico Iyer

Kristin and I were scuffling around the back streets of Kathmandu on a lazy November afternoon. We’d already gone to the zoo that day, and been unsettled to see a brown bear clutching at the bars of his cage, wailing piteously. We’d trudged around the National Museum, where every artifact of the King’s life was recorded, with particular reference to “The Royal Babyhood.” We’d passed an early evening amongst the spires of Durbar Square, watching bright-eyed boys play Carom while their elder brothers brushed against us in their jackets, muttering, “Brown sugar, white sugar, coke, smack, dope.”

But now the afternoon was yawning ahead of us and we didn’t know what to do. It was a rare opportunity for shared sight-seeing: Kristin was accustomed to heading out every night at 10 p.m., reeling through the pubs and bars of the old city, being chatted up by self-styled mystics before fumbling back to our tiny room in the Hotel Eden as the light was coming through the frosty windows. I’d take off, a little later, into the heavy mist, notebook in hand, to record the bearded sages who sat along the streets peddling every brand of cross-cultural wisdom. She was collecting experience, we liked to think, I was collecting evidence.

We’d met in New York City eight months before and, on a wild impulse, had decided that Kristin should join me on the last stop of a four-month tour through Asia that I was planning to take. She had a charming boyfriend back on East 3rd Street, and I was romancing my notebook, so it felt more than safe as we settled into our sixth-floor room on Freak Street.

I opened my Lonely Planet guide — my companion through all the countries I’d visited — and pointed out to her one item that had long intrigued me. There, tucked among long lists of trekking agencies and meditation centers, explanations of living goddesses, and reviews of apple-pie emporia, was the single most startling entry I had seen in such a work: “The Royal Astrologer.” For a price, the write-up said, this mage who consulted with the palace on even its most important decisions — When was the right day to pass some edict? Which time boded well for a royal birth? — was available to anyone who wished to see him.

How could either of us resist?

I had grown up in England, among little boys at boarding school who defined ourselves by everything we imagined we could see through. By day, we committed to memory the lines of Xenophon and Caesar; by night, we proved ourselves “superior” to everyone around us with cascades of fluency and quasi-sophisticated airs we’d borrowed from our books.

Three times a year, I left my all-male internment camp and flew back to my parents’ home in California. There, in a blindingly yellow house perched above the clouds, my father was reading the palm of every stranger who visited, talking of Aquarian precessions and the “Ascended Masters of the Himalayas.” His students, graduates of the Summer of Love, were attuned to psychic vibrations, auras, and verses from the Bhagavad Gita, but I wasn’t sure they’d recognise real life if it punched them in the face.

What better environment for producing someone who loudly announced he believed in nothing?

Kristin, however, had never given up on magic. She was five years younger than I — twenty-three to my twenty-eight — and she had a powerful belief in herself (or some parts of herself), matched only by her conviction that life would reward that faith.

One time, she’d come to my office, on the twenty-fifth floor of Rockefeller Center, and I’d pulled out a backgammon set. I was one throw from victory, and the only way she could defeat me was by throwing a double six. She closed her eyes, she shook the dice again and again between her hot palms, she muttered something nonsensical, and then she sent the dice clattering across the board.

One stopped rolling, and disclosed a six. The other came at last to rest: another six.

Now, as we tried to follow the runic instructions to the Astrologer — what true sage would allow himself to be listed in a Lonely Planet guide, I wondered? — we found ourselves passing through empty courtyards and along a scribble of narrow lanes. We were directed toward a golden temple, and then through another maze of darkened backstreets, and then led out into an open space where a ladder brought us up to a second-floor redoubt.

When the Royal Astrologer greeted us with a business card listing his doctorate and his work for NASA, my every doubt was confirmed.

Still, I was sure I could get a good story out of this, so we agreed on neither the priciest of his readings, nor the cheapest. We padded off to while away the hours before he could give us his verdicts, and settled into one of those Kathmandu cafés that might have doubled as Ali Baba’s cave.

Nepal in those days was budget time-travel to all the revolutions we were too young to have experienced firsthand. Pillows and cushions were scattered across the floor of this (as of many a) café, and a swirl of peasant-skirt bedspreads turned the space into a kind of magic tent. A creaky cassette of “The Golden Road of Unlimited Devotion” unspooled blearily on the sound system, and any number of mushroom enchiladas and “secret recipe” lasagnas on the menu promised transport of a more mysterious kind.

Travel, for me, had always been a testing of the waters. Every journey is a leap of faith, of course, a venture, ideally, into the unknown. But for me a large part of the point of encountering the Other was to see what and how much to believe in. Every stranger approaching me with a smile posed a challenge of trust — and asked, silently, how much I could be trusted, too. Something was at stake in nearly every transaction, I felt, and it was as essential as whether you believed the world made sense or not.

Kristin and I had met when she, a former student of my father’s, had read a cover story I’d written on the Colombian drug trade. She dreamed of being a writer, though for now, just out of college, she was working as a temp in a succession of Manhattan offices, deploying her capacity for typing at a furious speed. I had similar dreams, though for the time being I was cranking out long articles every week on world affairs for Time magazine, drawn from the reports of colleagues in the field. The explosion of demonstrations that was convulsing apartheid-stricken South Africa, the manoeuverings preceding the Mexican election, the gas leak in Bhopal: I covered them all with the assurance of one who had never seen the places I was describing.

In the warm summer evenings, the two of us met often in the gardens of tiny cafés in the East Village, and she showed me the story she’d just written about Desirée, an Indonesian bride arriving in America. I told her of the book I was going to write on Asia. We swapped our latest discoveries from James Salter or Don De Lillo, and she told me of her girlhood adventures growing up in India and Japan and Spain (her father a spy under deepest cover).

By the time we headed out into the streets again, dusk was beginning to fall over the Nepali capital, turning it into fairy-tale enchantment once more. Oil lamps and flickering candles came on in the disheveled storefronts and faces peered out at us, almost invisible save for their eyes. We slipped and lurched across the uneven, potholed paths, the silhouetted spires of temples all around us. The noise and the crowds of the big city seemed to fade away, and we were in a medieval kingdom at its prime.

As we climbed the stairs back to the Royal Astrologer’s chamber, we might have been stumbling into an emergency room after an earthquake. Half of Nepal was there, so it seemed, shivering in the near-dark as everyone waited for his or her fortune. A family wondering when to take its newborn to the temple, and how to name him; a nervous couple thinking about auspicious marriage dates.

Quite often, a sudden thump at the door announced an urgent messenger — from the palace perhaps? The Royal Astrologer handed out futures as easily as a doctor might, and the people who left his room were seldom the same as when they came in.

Finally, he summoned us closer and pored over the charts he’d drawn up from our times and places of birth.

“So,” he said, turning to Kristin — she craned forward, taut with attention — “generally, I have found that you have a special talent.” She braced herself. “This gift you have is for social work.”

I’d never seen my friend look so crushed.

“Does it say anything about creative work, an imaginative life?”

He looked again at the circle with all the partitions and said, “Your talent is for social work.”

She didn’t say a word at first. “Nothing about writing, then?”

He shook his head.

When it came to my turn, I worried it might prove awkward once he confirmed my future as a ground-breaking writer after what he’d said to my friend.

“So,” he said, looking down, “generally I have found that your strength is diligence.”

“Diligence?”

He pointed out the calculations and quadrants that confirmed this.

“‘Diligence’ in the sense of doing one’s duty?”

“Yes,” he said, and began explaining every scribble, but to someone who was no longer listening.

I knew that diligence was the quality that the Buddha had urged on his disciples in his final breath. But the Royal Astrologer wasn’t a Buddhist, and nor was I. To me, the word smacked of Boy Scout badges and “to do” lists.

“I think,” he went on, perhaps sensing our disappointment, “that every month, on the day of the full moon, you should meditate for an hour. And eat no meat all day.”

This sounded like the kind of thing my father would say. He’d been a vegetarian all his life and was full of talk of the virtues of stilling the mind and fasting so as to access a deeper wisdom.

I negotiated the sage down to fifteen minutes a month and a day without meat, and we filed out.

My four months wandering amidst the conundrums of Asia changed my life more irreversibly than I could have imagined. I went to California to write up my adventures, and when my seven-month leave of absence was over, and I returned to New York City, I knew I could never survive in an office now that I had such a rich sense of how the world could stretch my sense of possibility in every direction. While writing up my droll account of the magicians of Kathmandu — and the others I’d met across the continent — I’d remembered to keep an eye out for the full moon and had sat still for a few minutes once a month, restricting myself for one day every thirty to Panang vegetable curries.

It hadn’t seemed to hurt.

So now I served notice to my bosses at Time, packed up my things in the elegant office overlooking another 50th Street high-rise, emptied my eleventh-floor apartment on Park Avenue South, and moved to a small room on the backstreets of Kyoto without toilet or telephone or, truth be told, visible bed.

As I was settling into my cell, on my twentieth week in Japan, I found a letter in my mailbox downstairs. It was from Kristin, in New York. Her father had died suddenly the previous year, she told me. She’d been distraught, hadn’t known where to turn or how to get her longing out, so she’d taken to her desk.

Every night, while everyone around her slept, she’d typed — and typed and typed. When her novel was finished, she’d sent it out to publishers. Within hours, Random House had signed her up for a six-figure sum, and by now rights had been sold in a dozen countries around the world; she and her friends were spinning a globe as the number mounted.

At twenty-six, she seemed assured of a glorious future. She’d rolled a double six again.

A few weeks later, I walked, as I did every Wednesday afternoon, to the little shop across from Kyoto University that stocked a few foreign magazines. It was my one tiny moment of connection with the world I had abandoned. I forked over 700 yen, collected the week’s edition of Time magazine and consulted it, as I always did, while ambling back through the quiet, sunlit lanes to my tiny room.

As I was paging through the magazine, from the back, something caught the edge of my gaze that looked like a misprint — or, more likely, a projection of an over-eager imagination. There, in the Books pages, was a picture of someone who looked a bit like me — or, rather, like me in my previous life, in button-down shirt and striped tie.

I knew the magazine was eager never to take notice of books written by its staff — even former members of the staff — but I looked again and there, among the eminences, was a small, friendly review of my book about whirlwinding across Asia, accompanied by a visa-sized picture. I had any number of other projects I’d been chafing to complete, and now, I felt, I could try to be a writer at last.

“Diligence” and “social work” indeed! The Royal Astrologer didn’t know a thing.

That was half a lifetime ago, almost to the day, and more than a hundred seasons have passed. A few years after our visit, the palace in Kathmandu was torn apart by a crazy massacre and I had no doubt that the Royal Astrologer was no longer in service (if only because he would have been in trouble if he had predicted such a bloody coup — or if he hadn’t. Telling futures for the powerful has never been a reliable source of income).

As for Kristin, her path of double sixes had continued, almost impossibly, for quite a while. Her boyfriend in the Village, like so many, was a committed Star Trek fan and, like thousands of Trekkies, no doubt, had sent in a script on spec to the program’s showrunners in Hollywood.

Unlike most such fans, though, he’d seen his script accepted. He’d been flown out to L.A. and offered a full-time job with the program. He’d taken up a big house with Kristin in the Hollywood Hills, a chief architect of the universe he’d once worshipped from afar.

Few couples of my acquaintance had found such lustrous futures in their twenties. When I visited, Kristin and her beau seemed to have exceeded anything they might have hoped for, with their Spanish-style villa above the canyons, the red, open-top sports car, publishers and TV executives waiting to turn their words into pictures.

But Kristin had always had a restless soul — perhaps the same soul that had brought her to Nepal and sent her out into the streets every evening — and somewhere along the way, in flight from stability but not sure exactly of what she wanted instead, she’d burned the life she’d found and lost it all. Now, in her early fifties, she lives alone with a beloved cat, tending to every lost animal, still writing, but in a world that doesn’t seem very interested in novels, especially from the not so young.

Her strongest quality, though, remains her fierce attachment to her friends. She lives through them and with them, the centres of her universe, and keeps up with pals from high school in Tokyo and Delhi on a sometimes daily basis. She sends me warm and mischievous messages on my birthday and remembers every last detail of 1985. As the years have passed without bringing all the adventures that once seemed inevitable, she tells me that the trip to Kathmandu was one of the highlights of her life.

And me? A couple of years after my first book came out, I sat in a car just under the yellow house above the clouds and watched a wildfire take it apart, every inch of it, so that everything I and my parents owned — not least the notes and outlines I’d drawn up for my next three books — was reduced to ash.

In any case, I’d fallen under the spell of Japan and silence by then and decided to take on a wife and two kids, giving up my thoughts of becoming a writer, and simply turning out several articles a week to support an expanding household.

Writing, I’d seen, demands a ferocious, all-consuming commitment, a refusal to be distracted — or, sometimes, even to be responsible. That would never be my gift.

I smile when I hear people say that the young are too credulous, too open, too ready to be transformed. I and my school friends were so much the opposite. It was only travel — being propelled beyond the world we thought we knew and could anticipate — that stripped us of our petty certainties, our flimsy defences, our boyish confidence. It was only figures such as the Royal Astrologer who showed us that we didn’t know a thing.

We sit on opposite sides of the world now — Kristin essentially a model of social work, with the passionate attention she brings to her friends, while I steadily meet my daily deadlines, the very picture of diligence — and see that life has much wiser plans for us than we ever could have come up with. The only one who really was exercising a writer’s imagination, the kind that sees the future as easily as the past, was the well-meaning man I had mocked as he tried to nudge us toward a truer understanding of who we really are — and were.

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